Page 50 of Handle Me

I shut the door behind him, not even bothering to lock it. Dragons or not, no one was getting inside this place. Now that I had a home base in London, I just needed to figure out how to get Lola inside it.

But plotting would have to wait. I didn’t bother to undress. I threw myself on the bed and drifted off to thoughts of exactly what I was going to do the next time I had Lola alone.

I woke up in the early evening in a wrinkled suit, starving. Padding into the kitchen, I opened the fridge and found several plates of food wrapped up and waiting. Apparently, the staff here were very discreet, or I was sleeping like the dead. Given the last twenty-four hours, it was probably the latter. I peeled off the wrap from some kind of chicken dish and smiled. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be eating, but it would do. I found a fork and dug in without bothering to heat it up. I was just finishing my cold dinner when I heard my phone alert. Pulling it out of my pocket, I saw it was from Lola.

Maybe she wasn’t as mad as I thought.

Boss: Are you still sleeping?

Wide awake.

Want to grab a drink?

Yeah, she was thirsty.

CHAPTER TWENTY

LOLA

His Majesty: On my way.

I stared at the message for a second before putting my mobile back on the table. I’d lost my mind, but after the longest night ever, I needed a break from Madeline Bishop. That was how I’d wound up here with two of my university mates. They were how I’d wound up texting Anders. Clearly, I should have slept longer.

“Well?” Lucy asked, taking a sip from her straw. Her eyes glimmered, framed by a thick, black fringe. She shifted on her barstool, crossing her long legs carefully since her micro skirt barely covered her. A few men paused to admire her, but she ignored them. “Is he coming?”

“Yes,” I said with a sigh.

“Brilliant.” Next to her, Beatrice smiled wickedly. Tonight, she didn’t look like a young aristocrat. In her short purple mini-dress, she blended in with the others at the club. Her honey-blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and she watched the crowd with smoky eyes. “I’ve never shagged a prince.”

“Who says you get to shag him?” Lucy asked. “It was my idea. Lola, back me up.”

“I’m staying out of this.” Inviting Anders was the last thing I wanted to do. It had definitely been their idea. They continued to argue over which one of them had dibs while I nursed a vodka soda and tried to ignore my stomach flipping nervously. The last thing I needed was for Anders to show up and give away the fact that we’d been at each other like rabbits for the last two days.

The trouble was that the last thing I wanted was for him to take an interest in either of my friends. Not that I could tell them what had happened between us. I wriggled in my seat as I remembered the last time I’d seen Anders. My knickers were no longer shoved inside me. I’d slept, showered, ate, but new underwear hadn’t erased the dirty pleasure I’d taken from what he’d done. It was strange to be both unbelievably pissed at him and desperate to have his hands on me again. Not that I could let what he’d said slide. If he thought I was just going to drop my boundaries every time he snapped his fingers, I needed to show him that I wasn’t that easy. That was made trickier by continually proving I was exactly that easy.

“He is single, right?” Lucy asked.

“What? Yeah,” I said quickly.

“Good, I’m done with emotionally unavailable men,” Beatrice said seriously.

“Since when?” Lucy giggled.

“Since Holden turned out to be a bigger dick than his brother,” she said.

“I tried to tell you he’s still hung up on Kerrigan…oh shit,” Lucy gasped and grabbed my hand.

I looked up to see what had caught her attention. “What is it?”

“At the bar,” she called over the pulse of the music.

I craned my neck to get a glimpse and found myself staring at the worst mistake I had ever made. Chad Hazlitt. While the rest of the world had been obsessing over my sister’s wedding details, I had been crying myself to sleep over the black-haired dick at the bar. Two years of on-again and off-again had flipped back on so strongly that I’d known something was up. I’d been mortified to discover he was angling to be my date to Clara’s wedding. He was a social climber, a manipulative boyfriend, and a selfish lover. And for some reason, I’d been completely mad for him. Even now, the sight of him squeezed my chest until I thought my heart might shatter.

“Do you want to go?” Beatrice asked, looking concerned.

I shook my head. “I’m over him. Besides, Anderson is on his way.”

“Ohhh! Make him pretend to be your boyfriend,” Lucy suggested.