Niko smirked. “Good morning, kids,” he said, flipping the egg in the skillet. Placing the skillet down, he picked his cellphone off the counter. “Or I guess I should say good afternoon?”
Shit, had we been in his room all freaking day? Well, the shower and his room. After he got me off in there, we ended up in his sheets again, just a couple of times before he growled and said he was hungry. I hadn’t fought him because I was hungry too. He made me crazy, and I couldn’t seem to get enough.
Sliding his phone across the counter, LJ flipped his friend off, eliciting another chuckle from him. This got Niko a hit in the head bef
ore LJ shifted around and placed his hands on the counter, crowding in on me. “Want me to have Niko make you an egg? Or I can make you something else, whatever you want.”
The proposal had Niko gazing over his shoulder, smiling away. How I managed to keep my own in I didn’t know, but I had. I ended up telling LJ toast was fine, and he smiled at me before joining Niko by the skillet. The toaster was nearby.
While he got started on that, I checked my phone, getting all the social media out of my system before setting it next to his. I watched a titan and his dutiful demigod make food after that, all roving back muscles and sex on legs the pair of them. I bet some girls would pay good money to watch the kingpin himself making brunch for a girl, for me, but then I got annoyed. Thinking about other girls seeing him that way bothered me, I guessed.
Whoa, where had that come from?
Getting territorial when it came to this guy was dangerous, something I definitely knew when suddenly LJ’s phone started blowing up next to mine. He continued to cook with Niko, the two of them distracted with some kind of debate whether fried eggs or scrambled were better. All the while, texts kept coming in on LJ’s phone, and since they were, I couldn’t help sliding my gaze over.
Dasha: Hey? What are you doing right now? I need you. Can you come get me?
Another buzz.
Dasha: Seriously, where have you been at all morning? I need you…
And then another, more of the same before the next.
Dasha: LJ? What’s going on? This isn’t like you.
“Something important for you on my phone, beauty queen?”
A frown below narrowed blue eyes, LJ pulled his phone out of my sight and away from me. All humor from his earlier debate with Niko was gone now, his expression harsh and cold as he stared at me.
I lifted my hands. “No. I was just…”
“Yeah,” he said, then studied his phone. Seeing who it was, he appeared to not give much emotion toward the person, but then, he was putting a hand on Niko. “Eh, I gotta go take care of something. Make sure she gets home?”
She as in me, the girl he just got done fucking for the better part of several hours. The girl he was now ditching because another girl was blowing up his phone and saying she needed him.
Niko frowned, gaze flicking over my way before looking at his friend. “Now, bro? I mean, we’re about to eat.”
This didn’t seem to concern LJ. Not one bit before he finally faced me. He popped a chin in my direction. “You all good? We good?”
Are we… good, and just like that, he let me know where we stood.
And how incredibly stupid I really was.
I got it wrong twice. Two different guys and two different scenarios, but wrong nonetheless.
I nearly laughed as I passed my shrug off, and without much thought, LJ escaped from the kitchen. A door slammed shut not long later, probably only the time it took him to put a shirt and shoes on. Soon after that, a car started outside somewhere, and sighing, Niko scrubbed his hand through his hair.
He platted my toast himself, and after getting the jam out, he put it all in front of me. His smile was small. “Coffee with your toast?”
Chapter Seventeen
Billie
The only difference between my relationship with LJ before we had sex versus after was he’d actually started showing up to classes again. Though, this change in effort may have had more to do with the fact that the semester was winding down and he wanted to pass than it did with seeing me. He’d said very few words to me since we hooked up and he caught me looking at his phone, and though he did participate in recitation, he did only the bare minimum. He spoke up when required, then sat back on his phone the rest of the time, like he was biding his time and really didn’t want anything to do with me. He’d literally fucked and dashed, no doubt his MO, but what frustrated me the most was that I’d fallen for it. I may have come on to him, yes, but I didn’t deserve to be treated in such a way.
Even if I had peeked at his phone.
He’d gotten so frustrated, and I thought, maybe, illogically. Of course, I didn’t know his reasons, not my business, but if he was going to another girl only moments after heating up the sheets with me, he was nothing but a goddamn player and someone, you’d think, I would have known better to stay away from. I wasn’t a college freshman anymore and long past the naïveté of an undergrad.