Page 21 of Tyrant

I was understandably grumpy the next day.

“You’re in a foul mood,” she eventually pointed out.

I was pleased she’d noticed.

“Do you know what you sound like when you talk on the phone?” I asked her when she handed me my second espresso.

Her adorable brow furrowed. Her delectable lips pursed. “What?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

“I heard you talking on the phone yesterday. Do you know what you sound like?”

“I try to sound professional. Was I not professional?”

A professional what? I barely kept myself from asking her. And then I realized what I’d done. I’d never used a filter between my thoughts and my mouth for anyone. What was making me use one now? Was it her? Her innocence? Her blasted wholesomeness?

“You sound like a professional, all right,” I told her. “You know how in old-school porn—”

“I’ve never watched porn,” she interrupted.

I stared. “Never?”

“Not once. But go on.”

I tried to move past that. “Okay, well picture a porn star answering the door to a handyman with a ten inch cock and saying, ‘Can I help you?’ in her breathiest, sluttiest voice.”

“I’d rather not.”

“That’s what you sound like.”

She was turning pink. “Excuse me?” she squeaked in the most timid voice I’d ever heard come out of her.

“A porn star at her filthiest. That’s you on the phone.”

She was blushing beet red, shifting where she stood, adjusting her glasses, not meeting my eyes because she was so embarrassed.

I got an unholy thrill out of it.

“Behave yourself,” she muttered quietly.

I grinned. “Perish the thought,” I said with relish.

“You’re out of control,” she told me and promptly left.

She came back an hour later and promptly took her revenge.

“I was added to that Facebook group they made about you. They made me an admin, in fact.”

I raised a brow at her. She was standing in my doorway, looking awfully sassy considering she’d run away blushing not long ago. “The Turner the Tyrant group?” I asked. I’d heard about it. It amused me.

She nodded. “The one with all of your ex-girlfriends.”

I raised a finger, wagging it at her as I shook my head. “Wrong. None of those women are my ex-girlfriends.”

Her nose wrinkled up and she glared. It was way too adorable. “Your ex-hook-ups then.”

I shrugged. That was close enough.

“I was wondering something,” she added. It sounded like a set up. A trap. I walked into it anyway.