Page 32 of Scandal
“Leave them outside. Mac can retrieve them in the morning and have them cleaned.”
The thought of leaving my shoe babies outside in the cold makes me sad, but I reluctantly agree. That is, until I try to lift my foot and it doesn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” Asher asks, clearly unable to see the source of my struggle.
“Do you have quicksand out here or something?”
“No,” he answers. “Why?”
“Because my shoe is stuck,” I whine. “My super expensive, grown-up shoe!”
There’s a beat of silence, and then his big-ass hand slides around the back of my knees, and I’m lifted right out of my shoes.
I’m momentarily stunned.
By the feel of his hands on my bare skin. By the way his hot breath curls around me like smoke, and by how utterly safe I feel in his arms.
“Um…” I swallow, coming back down to earth. “What about my shoes?”
He snorts out a laugh. “Leave them. We’ve got more important things to deal with.”
Leave them? Leave them!
“Like what?”
“Like, how the hell are we going to break it to your family that we’re dating?”
Wait.What?
ASHER
In hindsight, picking her up was a bad idea.
It didn’t seem like it at the time, but the moment my palm slipped over her smooth skin, I swear something short-circuited in my brain.
I could blame it on my less-than-stellar sex life. It’s been well over a year, but when a woman has to sign legal documents before she can suck your dick, it really takes some of the magic out of it.
But no, it’s not the sex—or lack thereof.
I’ve been tempted before, but not like this.
As much as I try to deny it, Mercury has always been…different.
Even before we met, I had always been keenly aware of her.
I used to stare at this picture in her father’s office. It was from a family vacation. She must have been a sophomore in college at the time and so fucking pretty.
I felt like such a creep, and that was barely three years ago.
She is still so damn young.
She’s barely starting out. She has a whole career ahead of her, and if I do this—if I ask this of her—how will it affect her future?
Will anyone ever take her seriously in the music industry again?
In one of our initial conversations, she told me she uses her mother’s maiden name professionally so that the bands she works with don’t associate her with her father.
“I want people to listen to me because I know what I’m doing, not because my name is on the door.”
