He huffs a humorless laugh.
“So, you kissed her again?” His eyes dart to his copy of the same tabloid Wren threw on my desk.
Kissed her. Had my mouth all over that perfect body of hers, cock stuffed inside of her. Tinges of her blood on my dick. Left my cum inside of her.
The chance of getting her pregnant hits me in the chest, not having close to the effect I would’ve thought it could. The chance of her showing up, belly big with my child, makes my cock threaten to get hard. The possibility that our lives could be irrevocably tangled for eternity makes hope bloom in my chest. Our worlds may not mix now, but a baby would change all of that.
“Yeah, I kissed her again.”
“Wren tracked you to the hotel before the pictures hit the newsstands.”
“Yeah.”
“He tracked Ms. Blair to the same hotel.” I keep my mouth closed. “What room were you in?”
I tell him, eyes focused on my clasped hands like a kid in trouble.
“Wren said she was booked into that same room.” Papers shuffle on his desk. “That’s a two-bedroom suite.”
I look up at him. “We stayed in the same room.”
His jaw ticks, and the humor in his voice when he told me over the phone that Remington wasn’t the client is gone.
“You know better.”
“You told me to kiss her!” The roar that leaves my mouth is uncontrollable. I’m not one to point fingers, but he didn’t have a problem with it then and he shouldn’t have one now.
“I never said that.”
“You hinted at it.”
That strong jaw flexes again.
“We were hired to watch her. How do two kisses land you inside of her?”
I’d argue about his presumption if it wasn’t so damn true. I scrape my hands over my face, trying to tamp down my growing frustration. Walking away from her was hard enough. Sitting here and taking shit from him is going to tip me over the edge. It takes several long, slow breaths before I’m calm enough to speak.
“You married and knocked up your client,” I remind him. “Plus, you practically gave me permission, taunted me for not following through the first time I put my lips on hers.”
Does he have any damn clue how hard it was to keep my distance after that? How watching her pleasure herself and making her come on my fingers nearly cost me my sanity with trying to stay away from her?
“Kissing the girl and fucking her are two very different things.” I clamp my mouth closed so hard, I just know I’m going to crack a tooth. “Getting caught coming out of her hotel and landing your face on the front page of a celebrity magazine isn’t what I thought would happen.”
“Me either,” I mutter, hating that Remington, who hates this kind of attention, is once again being trashed publicly.
“Did you even see this?” He snaps open the magazine and slides it across his desk.
My eyes land on a very public embrace on a dance floor. God, do we really look that amazing together? The first picture shows her smiling face angled up at mine, pure heat and desire in my eyes. The next is one of us with our mouths locked together, one hand tangled in her hair, the other squeezing her ass in a punishing grip.
“The paparazzi weren’t supposed to have access inside.”
“And that makes it okay?”
“Any number of her friends could’ve taken pictures just like this.”
“Phones were collected at the damn door. I know how to do my job.”
“It’s in every one.” He emphasizes his words by pulling a stack of rag magazines from his desk and scattering them on the top. “The damn phone has been ringing off the hook. We have hundreds of client requests we have to sort through.”
“So it’s good for business?”
He huffs. “Not even close considering #BlackbridgeSpecial is trending on fucking Twitter. We don’t know which cases are real because we’re drowning in requests from horny women. The nation thinks we’re fucking prostitutes and escorts.”
I shrug, not feeling the humor when I say, “If there’s a market for it.”
He growls, his fist slamming down on top of his desk.
“This isn’t a fucking joke, Flynn.”
Neither is walking away from someone as special as Remington, yet here the fuck I am.
“I never asked to be sent to New York. If memory serves, I was insistent about not going.”
He leans in close. “So you fucked her out of spite?”
I growl, a low rumble from deep in my chest as I glare at my boss. “It wasn’t like that.”
“So it was more?” He leans back in his office chair, eyes darting between mine like he’s reading an open book.
“Am I fired?”
“Of course not.”
With that answer, I stand and leave, his laugh following me out into the hallway.
As much as I want to hide until everything settles down, I have to know if she’s okay. That need is what carries me to Wren’s office. Several of the guys are hanging out in the breakroom, but I don’t even slow my stride before pushing open Wren’s door. Whitney screeches, tugging down her shirt as I step inside.