The Dirty Series 2(64)

I think I’m home free until 5:05, when I hurry through the front doors of the high rise where Sisterspark’s offices are housed...and find Jett leaning against his Town Car, arms crossed over his chest, smiling at me like today is the best day of his life.

I’m smiling back at him before I can stop myself, even though my entire body goes hot at the prospect of standing Charlie up. Hot, and then ice cold.

“Jett Brandon,” I say, stepping up to him and kissing him hard. “This is a surprise.”

“I left early to pick you up.” He reaches down and opens the back door of the Town Car. “It occurred to me that we ended the weekend too early.”

“Damn right.”

While Jett is sliding in beside me and pulling the car door closed, I slip my phone out of my purse and send a hasty text to Charlie. The answer comes back right away.

Have it to me before the sun comes up.





Chapter Twenty-Six





Jett



Something causes me to wake me up in the middle of the night.

The digital clock integrated into the smooth surface of the bedside table reads 3:17.

Angelica is not in bed.

It’s the first time in weeks I’ve woken up without her next to me. Not that I’ve been waking up at night. She’s insatiable. We fell asleep around midnight after our final round of sex, one in which she reveled like a woman possessed.

She was riding me, lifting her hips up and down so powerfully I thought I might come right then. Angelica ground down onto me, her muscles clenching around my cock, and then, with a gasp, she rolled over onto her back.

“Pin me,” she said breathlessly. “My arms. Please....”

What was I going to do, deny the lady’s request?

There was a kind of desperation in her eyes, a kind of hope, but there was no way in hell I was going to stop to chat.

Her final orgasm of the night was a shuddering, ecstatic thing, and afterward she’d curled away from me, sighing, stretching, burrowing herself underneath the covers.

It was the most natural thing in the world to fit my body to hers and fall asleep.

Which is why it’s so jarring that she’s not here.

I squint into the dark. There’s no light coming from around the bathroom door.

Maybe she left it off. It’s the middle of the God damn night, after all.

But there’s no sound from the bathroom, no door opening, no padding feet.

Where the hell is she?

I throw my legs over the side of the bed, wiping the sleep from my eyes. If something’s wrong, why didn’t she wake me up? I don’t need that much fucking beauty sleep, for God’s sake.

The boxers I discarded before our little marathon are bunched on the carpet next to the bed. I could hunt for her without them just for the pleasure of watching her eyes sparkle when she looks up and down my naked body, but if something is wrong—maybe she’s sick and embarrassed about it—then that approach might fall flat. So I pull them on and grab a fresh t-shirt from one of the drawers in my walk-in closet.

She’s not in any of the rooms in the master suite. The bathroom is empty and still, and so is the den.

That leaves the rest of the penthouse.

The running lights at the baseboards illuminate the floor just enough for me to make my way through the penthouse. She’s not in my office, or the second bathroom, or the guest bedroom. In the living room, ambient light from the skyscrapers of Manhattan casts a glow to the room.

No Angelica.

She’s also not in the guest suite on the opposite end of the floor, or the kitchen, or the massive pantry.

I’m standing in the middle of the kitchen listening to the silence when I hear the front door swing open.

My heart beats faster.

The door clicks as she closes it behind her, and then there’s a beep as the lock engages. I told her what the code was the day she worked from home in case she needed to go out without me.

For some reason I’d been holding out hope that Angelica had fallen asleep in one of the many overstuffed armchairs I’ve got scattered throughout the penthouse, but when I cross the living room toward the foyer, she’s fully dressed and slowly, carefully hanging her purse back on the hook, taking her shoes off without a sound.

When she turns to creep back through the penthouse to the bedroom, she catches sight of me in the dim light and gasps so sharply it could be a quiet scream. Her hands fly to her mouth.

It takes her a moment to recover.

“Jett, you scared the shit out of me.”

“What’s going on?”

She drops her hands to her sides, then lifts one up and rubs at her forehead. “I had to run out.”

“At three in the morning?”

“Two-thirty in the morning, actually.”

I cross my arms in front of my chest. What the fuck is happening right now? “Why didn’t you wake me up? Whatever it was, I could have sent someone.”