Page 90 of Revenge Puck

Blaire leans in beside me, face next to mine. “You look hot.”

I don’t.“I look like I work at a bookstore.”

“A hot bookstore.” She studies my reflection in the mirror. “He’s cooking for you—that’s foreplay. You realize that, right?”

I want to eat your cookie…

In the back of my mind, I already knew this. The man was so loud when he was inside me, groaning and moaning and screwing me as if he has no control over himself. Aaron Bishop was not built for restraint.

Still, I ask, “Is it?”

“You don’t look at all innocent,” Blaire adds, softer now. “You look like you have a secret.”

“What secret?”

“That you know he wants you.”

It has given me some pause that Aaron Bishop is lavishing me with attention. Courting me. Romancing me. Cooking me dinner. It’s not as if I haven’t had men do this in the past. But those men were nothing like him—not nearly as intense, ordriven, or determined. Rough and rugged and my opposite in nearly every way.

Sure, he’s had his nose broken a few times. What professional athlete hasn’t?

Andyes, he’s probably missing teeth. So what?

There’s something unfair about the way it all works together—the rough hands, the sharp jawline, the scars near his eyebrow, lip, and chin. He’s not polished. He’s not pretty.

He’sdevastatinglygood-looking.

At least, to me. Which is why he’s the perfect Hall Pass.

Blaire studies my face as I internally fixate on small details, nudging me when I’m quiet for too long.

“Hey,” she says softly. “You should get going.”

Her arm comes around my middle, and she hugs me close. “Go and have fun and don’t overthink it. You are literally living every woman’s dream, banging your Hall Pass.”

I give a nervous laugh. “You’re right. I should get going.”

Blaire turns me toward her, rests her hands on my shoulders, and gives me a little shake. “Let him be obsessed with you for five seconds without overthinking it.”

“I don’t overthink it.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’ve already established that you do, so stop denying it.”

My best friend gives me a gentle push toward her door, taking my keys from the table and putting them in my palm.

“Go. Have fun. Have sex. Let him spoon you.”

I laugh again. “Aaron Bishop is not going to spoon me.”

“The man might like to cuddle.”

He doesn’t.

The first night he went down on me, he left immediately after. The second time, we had sex, and I was the one who left. Not because he’d asked me to, but because I was unsure of howto behave, or what to do with myself. It’s not as if he patted the mattress next to him to invite me to stay.

I’d crept out of his penthouse and gone to my car at five in the morning—wondering if the doorman had seen this a thousand times before—and there was a woman in the lobby, stretching for her morning jog.

“All I have to say is…” Blaire exhales. “You two are idiots.”