Page 34 of Anger Bang
What a pain in the ass. She needed to just agree to whatever Thea said.
Letting out a shaky breath, Thea firmed her stance as if she was expecting a blow but still refused to back down. “You stop expecting that I’ll do whatever you want whenever you want me to. I expect to be asked.” She turned to only her sister. “Nicely, if you can manage it.”
Thea’s mom snorted in disbelief. “My goodness, you act as if—”
“Mom,” Jackie said, cutting off their mom. “Shut up.”
“What is going on with my children?” their mom asked with a huff. “So disrespectful.”
The sisters stared at each other, exchanging some kind of silent communication that only sisters had while he watched, helpless to protect Thea from whatever was coming next. He fucking hated that.
“It’s a deal,” Jackie finally said.
Shoulders straight and her chin held high, Thea gave her sister a quick nod. “Thank you.”
Then she slipped her hand free of his and started toward the giant-ass foam heart and four billion fake flowers in piles around it. Kade stayed behind, glaring at Jackie, who simply raised her eyebrows and gave him a look that seemed to say, “What are you going to do about it, loser?”
Whatwashe going to do about it? The one thing he could do right now. Go stab a foam heart with hard plastic stems so the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about didn’t have to do it by herself. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but his writer brain was still too pissed off to make it.
“What are you doing?” Thea asked when he caught up with her.
He shortened his stride to stay in step with her. “Helping you.”
“Why?” She stopped and pivoted so they were face to face before looking up at him, her face scrunched in confusion. “That’s not part of our experiment.”
He grabbed a rose and jabbed it into the foam, unable to shake his irritation about his mom being here and Jackie being her usual bitchy self. “Neither is you agreeing to help me avoid seeing or talking about my mother for the rest of the week, but I’m hoping you’re open to an addendum.”
“Only if you agree to do the same for me.” Thea handed him a new rose.
He took it, their fingers brushing and sending a jolt of awareness that shot right to his dick and shifting his mood. “Done.”
“Well, then.” She tapped the tip of her faux rose to his as if they were clinking champagne glasses. “Here’s to our experiment.”
Yes. Their experiment. Fuck acquaintances for the span of this wedding from hell, trying to figure out if faster or slower was better. That was all there was between them. Except that wasn’t what it was beginning to feel like. At least not for him, even though that’s all she was to him or could be—all anyone could be. That’s what made this whole thing make sense. Thea Pope fit perfectly into the just-for-fun compartment in his very organized, very everything-and-everyone-had-its place world.
He always planned his books in spiral-bound notebooks.
He always wrote on a laptop in his living room with Patton snoring at his feet.
He never dated the same woman more than three times and didn’t have relationships.
He wasn’t built for those things. There was just something inside him that was missing.
There wasn’t space for anything more than random hookups, and he liked it that way.
So why are you helping Thea?
He didn’t have an answer for that one, so he pushed the question away and focused on the woman in front of him. No hardship there.
“Not part of our experiment?” he said, trailing the back of his knuckles along her jawline. “That’s only because you’ve never realized that DIY decor is a kind of slow-fucking foreplay all its own.”
Her eyes darkened with desire despite the giggle that escaped. “What am I going to do with you?”
He dipped his head down and whispered close to her ear, “You have four and a half more days to do whatever you want to me.”
A blush pinked her cheeks. “There are so many possibilities.”
The woman was right on that one, and they were going to try out all of them.
