Filfthy(17)

“I want to call a truce,” she says, shoving a little plastic container in my hands. It’s warm, and when I pry the lid open, the scent of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies fills my lungs. “You didn’t have to bring me cookies, gorgeous, but I’ll take ‘em.”

I pop one into my mouth, loving the way she longingly watches me lick melted chocolate off my fingers. I bet she doesn’t know she’s making that face, her lips parted and moist from her tongue slicking their length.

“You want to come in?” I offer.

She looks over my shoulder toward Rue’s driveway. “Yeah. If you don’t mind. Rue has a showing, so I can’t be there.”

As soon as we’re in, I point her toward the living room and kick off my shoes. Peeling off my gym tank, I toss it over my shoulder and snap the waistband of my shorts.

“I’m going to grab a shower,” I say, sitting the container of cookies on the coffee table. “Just finished working out. But you make yourself at home, all right?”



When I finish showering twenty minutes later, the sound of her voice trails down the hallway.

“So how do you know him again?” she asks.

The dampness covering my skin evaporates into my cool, air-conditioned surroundings, but damn if my nether regions aren’t all hot and tingly at the thought of Delilah Rosewood actually seeking me out.

Because let’s face it, she fucking wants me.

She came here pretending like she just randomly decided to bring me cookies, but I know what this is. Delilah’s not the first and she probably won’t be the last. All she needed was an excuse to step into my world for a minute, and the second I round this corner, she’s going to expect me to take the lead. To make a move. To be all over her like white on rice.

I know exactly how this is going to go. We’ll chat. Flirt. Eye fuck.

And then she’ll trace her fingers along her neck, trailing down between those two perfectly round tits of hers, and then she’ll give me a reluctant smile, grazing her tongue along her bottom lip as she waits for me to go in for the kill.

Too bad for her it’s not going to happen.

Not that I don’t want it to.

But it’s going to be fun as hell watching her squirm and try and act like she hates me when every part of her is lit like a cherry bomb on the Fourth of July every time we’re in the same general vicinity.

I see it in the way her eyes glint when they meet mine. I see it in the way her thighs clench. The way her hands tremble when I step into her space like I own it.

She can say anything she wants, but her body language wastes no time showing her cards.

“Oh, so you’ve known him quite a while then?” I hear Delilah’s voice once again. She must be on the phone.

I check my reflection in a hall mirror, finger-combing my hair into just the right position before checking my breath on the back of my hand and strutting toward the living room like a man who gives no fucks.

And then I stop. Dead in my tracks. Frozen.

Because Delilah is not on the phone.

She’s sitting across from my goddamned stalker, interview style, chit-chatting away like a couple of prattling finches.

I glance at the psychotic hot mess that is Carissa and brace myself for the familiar gut-check that follows.

“What’s wrong, Zane?” Carissa laughs like we’re a couple of old friends, lifting one of Delilah’s cookies to her lips and taking a nibble. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

My lips form a hard line as I look between the two of them.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I say. “You know that, Carissa.”

She shrugs, turning to Delilah. “I was in the neighborhood visiting my grandparents, and I happened to drive past and see my favorite man taking a pretty lady into his house. I thought I’d stop by and say hello. Just being cordial. That’s what you wanted, right Zane? For us to be cordial?”

Carissa stalked me for three straight years, showing up at every public and far too many private events for me to count. The first time I met her, she was posing as a sportscaster and waiting outside my locker room after a big game. Complete with a press pass and tape recorder, she looked the part, and she was sexy as fuck.

When she pulled me away from the team and led me down a hallway and into a private conference room under the guise of conducting a quick interview, nothing seemed off until she locked the door, fell to her knees, and wasted little time taking my cock between that pretty red mouth of hers.

The arrogant twenty-four-year-old me thought it was pretty fucking hot. I blew a load in between her cherry lips, and she drank every last drop. Delicately composing herself afterwards, she rose to her feet and slipped me a note with her phone number before disappearing.