And Alex was that way a lot.
Now Judge knew why.
He reckoned it was one of the reasons, once they got over their tiff, Rix liked Chloe quickly and unreservedly.
He was not a disabled man to her.
He was a man to her.
Alex was being awkward because she was into Rix.
Rix just saw the awkward and that made him angry.
Which of course made matters worse for Alex.
Christ.
“Mm,” Chloe hummed as she caught his hand and they moved to the door.
He knew with that Mm she didn’t know Rix or Alex well at all, and she’d still sussed all this out.
“Let it go,” he ordered under his breath, moving with her to follow Rix who was rolling toward the conference room.
“Let what go?” Chloe asked, eyes fixed on Rix, and in front of him, a scampering Alex.
“She’s not his type,” he told her the truth, slowing their gait so they’d fall back, and Rix wouldn’t hear.
That was when she looked up at him. “Not his type?”
“No.”
“You mean adorable, and although lusciously curved, his strength is such, he could, perchance, when she was trying to run away from him, likely catch her, throw her over his shoulder, or, say, toss her on his bed? That’s not his type?”
Rix liked leggy, which Alex was not.
He liked ass, which Alex had in abundance.
He also liked blondes, which Alex was not.
But any man liked a lot of hair, and Alex had that, though it was a reddish brown. A shiny, healthy, reddish brown she wore up in a ponytail most of the time, but Judge had seen it down and it was something.
Rix was also an outside guy. He exclusively saw women who weren’t only down with hiking, camping, kayaking and the like, they were seriously into it.
Alex’s shrine was the out of doors. Sometimes, Judge thought she got itchy when she had to be inside too long. She took a walk on her lunch hour every day, and if they had a working lunch at some restaurant, she always piped up and asked for outside seating.
And they weren’t this type of bros, but things slipped, and he sensed Rix was probably even more dominant in bed than Judge was.
Alex was so shy, not to mention somewhat obsessive compulsive, it was just a guess, but probably a good one that she needed a man to take control so she could let go.
So a little thing with lots of hair and a round ass he had to chase, expend the effort to break through and then toss on his bed who maybe would complain Rix didn’t camp often enough (when he did it all the time)?
Fuck.
Even if Judge liked this, he’d lived through Rix losing the love of his life along with his legs.
Rix was not the kind of man who wanted for company.
That said, getting laid by a man like Rix, and taking on a man who lost the career he was dedicated to, the woman he was going to marry and his legs in the expanse of a few months, and what all that might mean to the now and a future wasn’t as attractive to most women.
He worried Rix wouldn’t have the patience for Alex.
And he knew Alex’s reserve and timidity would be hard to break through.
So he wasn’t sure either of them were ready for this.
Especially Rix.
“Stop it,” he ordered.
All Chloe did was again hum, “Mm.”
He let it go because they were walking hand in hand into the conference room.
Chloe only let him go when she greeted her dad, then Duncan.
They then sat down to do their presentation, and he was not surprised they knocked it out of the park.
With barely any discussion, they got the greenlight.
And during it, Rix, who’d not only visited a lot of forests in his previous occupation, as noted, he was an avid outdoorsman and liked to travel, gave his spiel about the trails in Cali and New Mexico he thought would work for the additional footage, including doing a slide presentation of pictures he took when he was in those places.
With Alex hanging on his every word.
Oh yeah.
Shit.
* * *
Late that night, Judge did his best to let Chloe have time before he took over.
He went the extra mile.
But her mouth was so sweet, eventually, he couldn’t hack it.
So when she was on an upward glide of his dick, he caught her under her arms, hauled her up his body…then to her adorable noise of frustration, he rolled them so she was on her back in his bed, and he was on her.
He then reached to his nightstand for a condom.
“I wasn’t done,” she huffed, even as she opened her legs for him, and his hips fell through.
“You were done,” he pointed out the obvious.
“Judge—”
“Coco,” he put his mouth to hers, “quiet.”
She gave him the stink eye, even if it was completely invalidated by her hands grabbing his ass.