ONE WEEK LATER

CALISTA

“T aking me so well this time, Spitfire. You missed this giant cock, didn’t you? Sucking me in real tight with that obedient little pussy of yours,” Gage coos, clamping his hands on the curves of my sides, thrusting his cockhead into my cervix and holding me captive with his hypnotizing strokes.

When one of my moans pitches into the air, no longer bayed by the grit of my teeth, a hand comes down on my ass cheek, smacking it so hard that the skin’s probably turned red. With each snap of Gage’s hips against my ass, he stokes the onslaught of pleasure in my belly.

“God, I love it when you’re loud. Letting everyone know I own this cunt.”

I bore my nails into the sheets of his bed, clinging to the mattress as my body rocks forward and my cunt squeezes back in retaliation. “And all this talking is making me dry,” I growl.

Another slap to my ass—one that ripples my flesh and issues a loud noise into the lust-laced atmosphere.

“You call this dry?” Gage slots himself rather sloppily into my pussy, the evidence of our arousal slicking together in a squelch that confutes my jab at him, and I hate to admit it, but the sound of us together makes me even wetter.

My thighs tremble even as they’re supported by the edge of the bed, and my heart rebels in the cavern of my chest with an equally loud echo—one

that I’m sure he can hear among the viscous sloshes and the slapping of skin.

Ceasing his onslaught on my ass, he sets his attention on my hair, weaving his fingers through the strands and yanking harshly. “Don’t lie to me, Calista. Especially not when I’m inside you.”

God, I hate him sometimes. I really do. I hate him with the burning passion of a thousand suns—oh!

Gage speeds up with his punishing ruts, delving somehow deeper, the balls of his piercings bumping inside me. They don’t fully set me off, but they’re like tickles of cold against my sweltering heat, teasing me with the choreographed roll of his pelvis. My brain’s so addled with delirium that my smart-ass reply fuzzes on my tongue, and I’m stripped of the ability to thread together a full sentence.

I can feel his cock dancing just outside of my G-spot, refraining from giving me that instant gratification, and at the same time whimpers warble out of me, satisfaction rumbles to life in his chest. “Not going to lie to me again, are you?” he taunts.

My tone assumes an acrid bitterness that I unashamedly love the taste of. “Are you going to stop being a pretentious ass?” I hiss, bearing back down on his dick and causing him to falter in his sequence of pumps, his hand sliding out of my hair and slamming against the mattress to steady himself.

I know I should be shaking in my metaphorical boots, seizing up in stomach-turning anticipation for the punishment he’s about to give me, but I love playing with him, testing the limits he’s willing to stretch and obliterating them completely. That sought-after victory is just outside my reach, and no way in hell am I going to submit that easily.

Gage’s breath shudders out of him, but his tongue still curls around a note of irritation. “Wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t such a brat.”

“I’m not a brat. I’m just not some cock-dumb girl drooling over you,” I counter, all while getting split on Gage’s engorged length, his leisurely pace graduating to a rough set of bottoming thrusts that pinch tears from the corners of my eyes.

It feels so fucking good. The pressure in my lower stomach is almost painful, but it’s the kind of painful I chase in increments—and the kind of painful that leaks from my stuffed cunt in milky-white emissions.

He leans forward enough to brush his lips over the shell of my ear, the heft of his ball sack hanging heavy against the backs of my thighs. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

I wish I could rebound with another witty remark, but my words are on a collision course with the mewls that tumble from my raw throat. My cunt flutters around the plug of his dick, lubricating enough of his shaft to suck him in deeper than he already is, and my walls ripple over the foreign metal of his piercings. They satisfy a recurring itch I can’t scratch, and the way Gage weaponizes them makes bliss froth in my belly.

He removes his steeling arm and drags his hand down the arch of my spine, resting his fingers on my healing tattoo, and a shiver folds like an accordion through my body.

“Why’d you get my number here, Spitfire?” he asks, though I know the question is rhetorical.

And considering I’m the putty in his hands for a change, I don’t have it in me to engage in flirtatious banter. I need to come. I need it so badly that I’m at the point of praising Gage just so I can feel that liquefying release.

Praising him. Every time I grow that ego of his, a little part of me dies inside. I’ll be eviscerated by the time he pulls out of me.

“Did you really think I’d wear your jersey every time we had sex?”

Gage’s cock stirs—whether it’s from my bite or the image, I have no clue. “Considering how many times we have sex, that would be ridiculous.”

Even though we’re having a full-on conversation for God knows why in the middle of fucking, his plows never plateau to a sloppy mess, and that hockey player stamina of his doesn’t even jeopardize a single breath. He’s all hard muscle against me, the grill of his abs pressing into my ass, and every nerve pathway inside of me lights up in preparation for a sensory overload.

“You could’ve gotten it anywhere else —”

A warning halfway to a growl. “Gage…”

A whimper lurches out of his quivering frame, and he gently forceps the skin of my back between two fingers. “You got it so I would see it every time I took you from behind, didn’t you?”

I hydrate my esophagus with a swallow, white-knuckling the covers beneath me, trying to redirect my focus on anything but the hungry kickback of his cock or the shamefully abundant gush now coating his length.

“I got it so I’d turn you on every time I reached for something on the top shelf,” I jest.

“Baby, you turn me on by simply fucking breathing,” he groans, snaking his other hand to my swaying tit, where he circles the tapered point of my nipple with his thumb before pressing down. Sensitive—as is every part of my body under Gage’s Midas touch—I rear my ass back into his torso, blighted by the need to squirm.

He tweaks my bud once more in that torturous seesaw motion, and gooseflesh ignites over my clammy skin, unearthing all kinds of embarrassing noises to grate from my mouth.

“Gage, please…”

He switches his attention from my nipple to the mound of my breast, kneading it with his large hand, rough enough to make my belly contract but soft enough to abstain from leaving a bruise. “You gonna be a good girl now, Cali? You gonna be a good girl and let me fuck your sopping wet cunt? You gonna let me come all over that slutty little tramp stamp?”

I nod weakly, mentally trying to bargain with my hormones to chill the fuck out before I lose the last bit of my dignity, but they toxify the lust-thinned blood running through my system and suck my sensible thoughts into a black hole.

“Use your words,” he orders. “Tell me how badly you want to come.”

The slightly wet smack of his balls against my legs reverberates in the room as he speeds up, knowing just how much control I surrender when he quickens his pace, and it feels like my innards are mutilating themselves with each pull of his dick. He nicks my G-spot, and the tears now snail down my cheeks.

“I want to come,” I whine. “Please. Please let me come. I can’t —”

Through my body’s convulsions and my water-obscured vision, it’s surprising I feel Gage’s lips play on the wing of my shoulder blade at all.

He peppers tender kisses there, trilling out praise under his breath, and his hand falls away from my tit to offer me respite.

“I know. You’re doing so well, though. Taking me without any trouble, using me just like you should. Love everything about you and this God-gifted pussy.”

I bow my spine like a cat stretching on a sunlit windowsill, throwing my saffron hair back to waterfall down the small of my back, and I inadvertently pluck a lengthy moan from Gage’s vocal cords.

“Christ, Cali. You can’t be moving like that,” he says through clenched teeth, his hands reclaiming their brutal grip on my hips, the smallest, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blip in his unforgiving pace. “Gonna come in three seconds if you do that.”

I milk his hard erection in angry pulses, soaking him to the hilt with my slick, and failing to regulate my breathing. My whole body is on fire with sweat and tears sullying my face, that tingly sensation in my stomach radiating outwards. “Then stop fucking me like that,” I hiss.

I can practically hear him grinning.

“Fucking”—thrust—“you”—thrust—“like”—thrust—“this?”

I’m going to kill him. Right after I come. Or maybe I’ll kill him with my pussy in a two-birds-one-stone situation. A scream nearly wrenches itself from my throat, and pressure is building in everything south, causing my legs to shake and my grip on the bed to slip. It’s almost too much. I almost need a breather, but I’m so close.

“I’m going to—oh, God. I don’t know how much longer—” I’m not sure if what I said even made any sense. My underdeveloped thoughts are a bunch of fine-point needles in my pin cushion head, and my impending orgasm—the one he’s been drawing out for a good thirty minutes—begins to bubble up from behind my navel. With the position he has me in, it would be a miracle for me to get my cum solely on his sheets.

That bullying motion of his cock ratchets in severity, and now we’re shaking the bed’s headboard against the wall every time he sends me forward. Dear God, I’m pretty sure all his teammates are still downstairs.

Actually, it doesn’t matter where they are in the house. These walls are as thin as wafers.

“Since I’m feeling so generous today, I’ll let you come now,” he drawls with all the arrogance in the world, and I’m so glad I can’t see his smug smirk.

He’s luring me to the edge, sweet-talking me into blindly falling off it, and I’m following him like a pea-brained lemming. “Fuck…”

That insult is supposed to end with “you,” but I never get it out.

“Come, Calista. Don’t hold back. Squirt all over my dick until we’re both fucking drenched.”

A protest crosses my tongue, albeit a weak one. My eyes momentarily dip down toward the floor, where I curse the carpet that’s ironically made this whole session very comfortable for my feet. “Your…carpet…”

“It’s a carpet,” Gage bites back. “Make a mess everywhere.”

I’d prefer to have a relatively easy cleanup, so when I go to debate with him, all he does is growl at me like some barbaric caveman and slip his hand underneath my torso, hovering his fingers right over my lower abdomen.

“Ga—”

“Make. A. Mess. Everywhere.”

And then, upon the command of his fingers, he presses down on my stomach, persuading everything to rocket out of me in a geyser—one that still manages to splash onto the carpet even with the obstruction of his cock.

I cry out through my orgasm, feeling all that accumulation knock down a dam and flow out of me, a jet of arousal branching off from another one and trickling down the backs of my legs.

Gage groans the loudest he has yet, rumbling the entire room, and those consistent strokes start to turn sloppy. “Fuck. Can I soak that gorgeous back, Spitfire?” His words are wrestled into one long string that barely sounds human, and I give him a matching muffle that poorly imitates a yes.

I feel him slip out of me, feel him swoop my hair to the side, hear the smack of his palm on the root of his dick, then feel him shower my back in an abundance of cum. The splattering of his arousal marries with the syncing of our labored pants, and I wait to move until he gets everything out of him, my appetite slowly becoming more satiated as I step out of my post-orgasm haze.

I never forgot how incredible our sex was the first time, but now it’s just dawned on me that I have access to his dick for the—I’m assuming—rest of my life. And Gage Arlington, you may be giant pain in my ass, but that monster cock of yours is heaven-sent.

“Are you okay?” he breathes, one hand stabilized on my hip and the other holding my hair out of the splash zone. His tone is shades softer, so soft in fact that his concern is as clear as day.

“I’m okay. Are you okay?”

Gage swipes his fingers over the small of my back, right over my tattoo, sponging up the thin glaze on his pads. “Fucking fantastic,” he replies.

My heart pretty much explodes every time Gage gives me praise, and this time’s no different. If I could move without getting cum everywhere, then I’d maul him in kisses.

He gently rests my sex-tousled locks over my shoulder before planting one of his post-sex kisses on me. “Let me clean you up,” he says.

He comes back with a towel right away and begins to clean my back, all while dishing out that praise I chase like a fiend, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a dopey, lovestruck smile smacked right on his face.

“So I’m guessing there’ll be an increase in doggy for, like, now until ever?” I joke.

“Of course not. I’m here to please you, remember? You’re the one who calls the shots.”

“I am?” I mean, I am. But I didn’t think he’d ever admit it.

Gage tends to my spine, being extra gentle with me like he always is during aftercare. “Duh. You wear the pants in this relationship.”

I make a little noise of pride and bob my head in confirmation. “I do wear the pants in this relationship.”

I still can’t see what Gage is doing, but I feel his body displace some of the air around me, and his lips are by my ear as the towel is rerouted to my upper back. “And if I’m lucky, you won’t be wearing any at all,” he whispers right before he grabs me and flips me onto my back, making me squeal and squirm.

He’s leaning over me with a twinkle of adoration in his eyes, and just as I suspected—that dopey, lovestruck smile is stretching his mouth so wide that he’s all gums and teeth. But he’s not staring at me in hopes that we go for round two. He’s staring at me just to stare at me, refamiliarizing his gaze with every stripped inch of my body, keeping record of this memory so he can watch it, rewind it, and repeat it for who knows how long.

I never thought love was real. Or, I did, but I never thought it was for me. I’d come to believe that I’d be one of those rare people who never experienced it, and who was destined to be alone for the rest of their life.

But Gage—this stupid, bigmouthed hockey player—barged his way into my life, and now love’s the only thing I’ll ever know. He’s given me enough love to last me a lifetime.

“Gage, I love you,” I tell him before the tears start to repopulate on my waterline.

“I love you so fucking much, Cali. More than you’ll ever know.”

It’s never just a “you too” out of convenience with Gage. It’s never anything less than him hand-wrapping and gifting me the stars, the sun, and the moon. He didn’t take my broken pieces and cover up the cracks to

magically fix me. He saw them, glued them back together, then let the light shine through those incredible fissures.

He turned scars into stars.

His lips are over mine in the blink of an eye, tasting and feeling like home. And when he pulls back just slightly, only allowing space to whisper to me, I know I’m going to crash right back into him.

“And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”

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Keep reading for a sneak peek of The Last Kind of Kiss (Reapers #4), Bristol and Lila’s story! Stay tuned for the release date! ♡

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THE LAST KIND OF KISS

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1

EX-FLAME COMING IN HOT

LILA

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” I exclaim, pacing back and forth in front of Kitty’s Catwalk, the modeling studio that currently holds the success of my career in the palm of its flawless, manicured hand.

The clop of my heels ricochets against the sidewalk, and the barely there coverage of my dress fails to stave off the late winter afternoon chill.

Though the constant pacing of my legs and the anxious heat circulating through my body seems to keep me from freezing into a well-dressed popsicle.

Aeris, my best friend, squeals through the staticky receiver of my phone, and I can practically picture her jumping up and down. “Li, I’m so happy for you. You’ve been working so hard for this moment. I don’t know anyone more deserving of this big break than you.”

And suddenly, the spine-crushing weight of this meeting settles deep in my bones, kicking my nerves into high-gear and churning my stomach like a rather violent rinse cycle. “Oh, God. What if I blow it? What if they realize there’s a better model suited for this campaign?”

Kitty’s Catwalk is known for turning girl-next-door types into world-famous models on the front covers of Vogue and Sports Illustrated. They’re known for creating overnight sensations and signing girls who go on to rake in an astounding eight-figure salary each year. Every model they’ve ever signed has climbed the social ladder and gone on to star in projects beyond

their modeling contract—whether it’s a supporting role in a blockbuster hit or becoming a self-made billionaire with an empire of clothing and makeup products. These are the kinds of A-list celebrities who get invited to red carpet events, who get swarmed by paparazzi if they simply make a grocery run, who start yearlong trends, and who cause mass hysteria on every social media site because of their tumultuous dating history.

I’ve worked my ass off to get here today. For the past five years, I’ve been modeling for swimsuit ads, and I’ve made the occasional appearance on the little-known catwalk. This could be the start of the rest of my life.

And I wouldn’t have gotten this opportunity if it wasn’t for the massive spike in engagement I’ve gotten on Instagram.

Since modeling was hardly paying the bills, I decided to take a stab at influencing, pretty much expecting next to nothing on the fame side. It’s hard to grow a following—and even harder to maintain interest long enough to be socially relevant. But after one of my swimsuit photos went viral, people started discovering my account, and the likes skyrocketed before I could even comprehend what was happening. Being financially comfortable isn’t just a future I’m seeking out for myself; it’s a future I’ve wanted to pave for my parents since the minute they loaned me money to pursue my modeling career.

They supported me throughout the devastating ups and downs, through the nasty, unsolicited feedback of the public about the way I’m not pretty enough to be on front covers, through the projected insecurities of guys and girls alike on the state of my body—how I look too skinny in one picture but have a belly in the next. They never once told me to stop chasing my dream, and for that, I owe them everything in this world.

“There’s no one better suited for this job. You’re the perfect fit. And if they can’t see that, then they’re stupid, airhead idiots who wouldn’t know talent and beauty if it bit them in the ass,” Aeris says, and if it wasn’t for the hundred-dollar foundation on my face, I probably would’ve blinked a few tears from my eyes.

While my feet haven’t stopped trying to dig a trench in the concrete, my heart’s no longer trying to slam itself against the bracket of my ribs. I suck in a breath long enough to stilt the frenetic hammering of my pulse, and for the first time in the past five minutes, my heels come to a clacking halt.

“It just…everything has to go perfect, Aer-Bear. This is my one chance.

If I don’t land this gig, I’m back to cursing the Instagram algorithm for

shadow banning my posts.”

Sure, I’ve gone through endless casting calls before, but the twin, glass doors beckoning me to the equivalent of hell have never looked quite as foreboding as they do now. Either I’ll get burned alive in there, or I’ll claw my way out of that death pit with my champagne-pink acrylics.

This is the last step in the audition process for me. One meeting stands between me and never having to go back to a normal life ever again. Kitty’s Catwalk reached out to me months before for an initial audition, and they liked me so much that I’m one of the few finalists out of thousands of girls who auditioned. It’s surreal. I never thought I’d get this far.

Aeris’ tone melts into a softer inflection, one that overflows with admiration and coats my insides with liquid honey. “It will go perfect.

You’ve got this, Li. I believe in you. I’m proud of you. You just have to push the nerves aside for an hour and let fate do the rest for you.”

There’s that cursed F-word. I think I start to see red every time someone mentions it, which is surprisingly a lot.

A lot of people talk about fate, but they dress it up in unbelievable soul ties and Christmas miracles that simply don’t exist. I get the appeal, I do.

Fate gives people hope, but is it really worth it when that hope is about as fake as a knockoff Louis Vuitton bag?

Fate doesn’t exist. Just like soulmates don’t exist. Nothing happens because the world deems you lucky enough or the stars align or whatever the hell psychics are saying nowadays. If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen.

“Right. You’re right,” I ramble, cocking my neck and holding my phone against my ear with my shoulder while I iron out the creases in my skin-tight dress. “I’ve just got to play it cool. I’ve got this. I’ve done this a hundred times before.”

“See! Atta girl. And you have to call me the minute you hear back from them, okay? I’m thinking we do a girls’ night with some champagne and a charcuterie board to celebrate.”

A swallow glugs down my throat, and nausea surges right up to my tongue before receding back into the tight knot of my belly. “I promise I’ll call you. My call time is now. Oh, God. Okay. I’m going in.”

Either the connection’s starting to break up, or Aeris is sniffling quietly.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” I tell her, ending the call and shoving my phone into the purse dangling from my arm. I don’t have time to do some meditative breathing or psych myself up. My six-inch red bottoms carry me past the threshold and into the endless hallway that precedes the large, empty, whitewashed room that I know is waiting for me.

The studio is silent. I can’t hear anything aside from the staccato rhythm of my heels against the cement floor. I can’t feel anything aside from the increasingly urgent need to puke up the Caesar salad I had for lunch. When I get to boardroom 102, my clammy palm nudges the freezing-cold handle, and I open the reinforced door to find a barren landscape of plain backdrops and high-powered fluorescent lights.

A row of casting directors has been set up toward the front of the room, ranging from friendly-looking faces to stony, unimpressed expressions igniting over stress-induced wrinkles. Half-empty water bottles scatter the cloth tabletop, a daunting, inch-thick stack of notes inhabits the lead director’s space, and laminated headshots lay strewn about like windblown leaves.

I slowly make my way to the center of the room, hyperaware of instructing my legs to walk straight without twisting an ankle and embarrassing myself in front of my possible future employers.

“Ms. Perkins, so lovely of you to meet us,” the lead director, Rebecca, greets, lowering her diamond-encrusted glasses before poring over my file.

“Thank you for making the time to meet with me,” I reply, half-surprised that I didn’t stumble over my words.

Luxury emanates from Rebecca’s slender frame, coupled with the obvious fine taste of the black, sculpted blazer hugging her shoulders. Her bob of hair is slicked back to utter perfection with no tress out of place, and even though the gauntness of her cheekbones alludes to her being older, her makeup makes her look in her late twenties. A cherry tint fades over defined lips, thick brushstrokes of mascara line feathery lashes, and full-coverage foundation conceals every blemish on her otherwise textured skin.

“As you know, we’ve been looking at you to be the face of the newest Menoulé fragrance. You’re exactly the kind of model needed to sell this.

You’re hot, you’ve got a fresh look, and you’ve got an astronomical social media following. Honestly, this job is yours to lose,” Rebecca says, flicking her eyes up to me in a nearly knee-buckling look. Dark pools of obsidian

sear a hole right into my own eyes, and the air-conditioning does nothing to combat the flush of my skin or the film of sweat over it.

It’s mine to lose. All I have to do is convince them I’m the right choice.

But I can’t seem desperate. I have to come off confident, but not arrogant.

Shit. If I say the wrong thing, I can probably kiss this opportunity goodbye.

I straighten my spine as a smile gradually crawls across my lips. “I assure you, I’m the right person for this job.”

Rebecca mirrors my smile with one of her own, clasping her long, elegant fingers together on the table in front of her. “That’s what we like to hear. However, before we make our final decision, Ms. Perkins, we need one more thing from you.”

Anything! I scream internally, trying to quell the desperation slowly overtaking my features. I can taste this victory. It’s just within reach. I’m so close, and there truly isn’t anything I wouldn’t do. Do they want me to fight the other contending models to the death in a Hunger Games-style arena?

I’ll do it. Oh, I’ll so do it.

Thankfully, my sensibility catches up to me before I blurt out the insistence that’s, well, insistent about airing out the fame-hungry demon inside me and the one ashwagandha gummy I’m still running on.

“Of course. I’m up for anything,” I assert confidently.

One of the casting directors on the more unamused side of things scoffs under his breath, but Rebecca remains poised and professional, keeping a disturbing amount of eye contact with me. “As you know, you’ll be starring with another model for the perfume ad and on the subsequent magazine covers, yes?”

Another model. Right. Totally normal expectation.

“I am aware, yes.”

“We want to do a chemistry read with you and the male model. As soon as possible so we can go ahead with shooting,” she explains.

I’ve done plenty of chemistry reads in the past with costars. And I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I think I’m a fairly likeable person. Playing up romance for the public is all show, anyways. It rarely ever turns into something substantial. It’s hard to date when you’re in this kind of industry

—chaotic work schedules and public insight and all. I tried it a few times, and I’m definitely not doing it again. Men make me… ugh. They make me want to strangle them most of the time.

Luckily for me, though, sex appeal is something I’ve never struggled with. This will be a piece of cake. All I have to do is bat my eyelashes, touch his arm a little bit, inflate his ego so he thinks he’s the shit, and then wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, the job is mine.

“Of course. When would you need me to come back down for the chemistry read?” I ask, scrambling for my phone to set a calendar reminder.

The casting director who’s done nothing but stare at me with blistering disdain curls his lips inwards. “We were hoping you’d be up for doing the read right now,” he discloses, turning his aquiline nose up and still eyeing me like I’m a piece of half-melted gum stuck to the bottoms of his hideous Ferragamo loafers.

I’m calling him Gangrene Dick in my head. I said that in my head, right? Yeah, I think I did.

Right now? Uh. Right. Okay. Minor setback. I wasn’t mentally prepared for a chemistry read today, but I can do this. I think. I just need to focus on what’s at stake here—which is only the future of my career as a successful model.

I’m not sure how long I’ve waited to answer them, but all five pairs of eyes blink expectantly at me. I have to clear my throat because all my saliva’s dried up in the time it took for the inner panic to set in. “Of course.

I’d be happy to do a read right now.”

My voice cracks toward the tail end, and I try to keep a mask of professionalism plastered to my face, but my God, the nerves are starting to gnaw away at my stomach lining.

“Excellent,” Rebecca says, pleased. “For the male model, we’ve decided to go with a rising athlete in the sports world. With the traction he’s getting from games, he’s the perfect candidate to bridge the gap between high luxury consumers and sports fans. And we think you two would look great together.”

An athlete? I’ve never done a shoot or commercial with an athlete before. But hey, there’s a first time for everything. As long as he’s not a hockey player. That would be—that would be a fucking disaster.

I’ve been down that slippery road. Been there, done that. But the worst part of it all? I was really starting to fall for him…until he went and broke up with me out of the blue, insisting that he was “just not ready for a relationship,” even though he’d been stringing me along for months.

I set my purse by my feet. “Sounds perfect.”

“Great, we’re gonna have him come on in, and you two can introduce yourselves.”

With bated breath and a concerningly fast heartrate, I lock my gaze on the door, starting to feel more than antsy as I drum my fingers against the sides of my legs. I don’t know what to do with my arms. Do I fold them?

Do I just let them hang? If I don’t move, I’m going to explode.

I’m being ridiculous, right? I have nothing to worry about, so I should just chill. Yeah, Lila. Chill. Casting directors can smell fear from a mile away.

A few seconds of silence hang thick in the air before the snick of the door echoes throughout the room, and I can hear my future costar laughing about something that someone must’ve said outside. His body is turned away from me, but from the back, it looks like he has a muscular physique, he’s been gifted with some God-given height, and his luscious hair curls down his nape in a way that tells me this man’s hair probably won’t recede until he’s seventy.

But as he turns around—which is some kind of weird slow-motion sequence in my brain—realization hits me with the force of a speeding Mack truck. My first reaction is to freeze. My second reaction is to bubble with molten-hot rage. Because the model they’ve hired—the one they could’ve picked from hundreds of teams from any sport in the world—just so happens to be the very person I never wanted to see again.

Bristol Brenner. Captain of the Riverside Reapers hockey team. And the not-ex ex that ripped my heart in half, then shoved it into a shredder, then used those sad, sad pieces of me as cushion for his shoes as he walked out of my life.

A.K.A. the man who’s incited so much anger in me that he’s become a main talking point between me and my therapist.

So much for fate.

As soon as Bristol sees me, that annoyingly handsome face of his lights up, and his lips crook into a lopsided grin. “Hi, Lils,” he drawls with that stupid, honeyed lilt of his—the one sprinkled with just the right amount of gravel to make the lower half of me want to wham into his fucking dick like he’s some kind of sex magnet.

He’s acting like things are good between us. Lils? Seriously? I can’t believe this. I feel like I can’t breathe. And it’s not because I’m stunned in

shock; it’s because this douche nozzle is hogging all the oxygen in the room with that big head of his.

Rebecca raises an eyebrow. “Oh, do you two know each other?”

We speak at the same time. Granted, my tone has more of an I’ll-never-forgive-you-for-as-long-as-I-live-and-I-hope-your-future-wife-cuts-your-dick-off kick to it.

I shut it down immediately. “No.”

“Yes,” Bristol says with an ungodly amount of charm. He’s got charisma oozing out of every orifice. Hell, I think I saw his eyes sparkle like they do in cartoons. Sparkle! That’s not physically possible.

The casting director next to Rebecca—who’s less ostentatious with her well-loved cardigan and curly, product-free hair—is oblivious to the mistaken sexual tension she thinks is lingering between the two of us. “This is great news. The chemistry read should go smoothly since you already know each other, and then we can start shooting right away.”

Great news. Greater news would be if I found out I had a UTI and chlamydia at the same fucking time.

Bristol closes the distance between us, slings his arm over my shoulder, then pulls me into the side of his hard body. “Lila’s exactly the girl you want for this campaign.”

The casting directors all turn to one another with murmurs of intrigue, allowing me a split second of time to gun Bristol down with a death stare that could put him six feet under…and then some.

“Ass kisser,” I hiss under my breath, physically revolting at how close our bodies are touching. It makes my skin tingle, and not in the good way.

He maintains a perfect, toothy smile, squeezing the cap of my shoulder with his hand. “Didn’t bother you when it was your ass I was kissing.”

If I’m not— ahem—the professional I am, I would slap him right in the face. I can’t believe my luck. For the dream job I’ve been wanting ever since I was a child, I have to work with the only man who’s ever broken my heart. Are you kidding me right now? What kind of karma bullshit is this?

I’m a good person! I recycle. I help old people cross the street. I donate to those kids in need that cashiers ask you about in the grocery checkout line. I don’t deserve this.

The best day of my life has quickly turned into the worst day of my life.

Remember when I said I’d do anything for this job?

I meant anything but this.

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If you haven’t read Reapers Book Two yet, be sure to check out Kit and Faye’s love story! Keep reading for a sneak peek of The Worst Kind of Promise (Reapers #2). ♡

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THE WORST KIND OF

PROMISE

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