I took a cautious sip of the smoothie. It definitely tasted like grass, but the banana and pineapple helped a bit. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, we're still trapped in this thing, and if I'm honest, I'm driven by something other than a need to escape you." He gave me a rueful look, stretching his mouth to the side. "That may have been my goal originally, but for obvious reasons, I'm not finding the idea of sharing a space with you all that terrible."
"Fuck, I should have offered my pussy sooner," I joked.
Ignoring that, Knox swiped vegetable remnants in the compost slot and wiped the counter. "My mother needs to be taught that I'm not fair game, and I still feel that my original plan to force her to back out of the lease is the best option. If you agree to a fake engagement, we should accomplish that in a perfunctory way."
"This again," I groaned, getting up from the bar seat and swiping up my smoothie. "Why does it have to be an engagement?"
"Because it's exactly what she wanted," he replied. "And my mother only responds to three things—power, money, andinfluence. Once she thinks she has successfully influenced us, she’ll let her guard down, and I’ll catch her saying something incriminating. Azura, our lawyer, just needs one sentence from her, and then we'll have plenty of evidence to take her down.”
“Take her down seems kind of harsh,” I murmured, eying Knox warily. “Why not just confront her?”
Knox held my gaze. “Youwouldconfront her, wouldn’t you?”
“I will right now.” I searched around for my phone. “I’ll tell her off; I’m not afraid of your wealthy tyrant parent.”
Knox sighed through his nose. “You can’t do that, Gem. It’ll only make her more determined to win.”
I frowned. “You seriously don’t trust me at all, do you?”
"Gem." Rook tossed the cloth he'd been wiping with on the counter. "You’re changing the subject. Doyoutrustme?This is my mother. I’ve dealt with her for thirty-six years.”
He had me there, kind of. “I’m sure you do know her better. But if I get even awhiffthat she’s still playing us, I swear to God—”
“—you’ll cut her to ribbons with your katana tongue. I know,” he said dryly.
"And to be clear, you want me toactuallypretend we're engaged?" He nodded. I squinted my eyes in suspicion. "And amidst all this scheming, you're going to bend me over the counter, huh?"
He smiled, slow and hard, pushed away from the counter, and practically stalked me like prey. He backed me up against the island, and the heat from his body suffused my chilled limbs. "Is that alright with you?"
He'd told me to think about it, but I didn't need to. I wanted to lick a line from his jeans to his pecs, letting my tongue slide over the rivets of his abs and the smooth softness of his skin. I wanted to attach myself to his body like cling wrap on Sunday dinnerleftovers—sucked in tight. I tilted my head back and considered him with a shrewd look. "I suppose that's… acceptable."
"Good." He brushed his lips against mine lightly. "Then get back in the bed."
Chapter twenty-two
Knox
Rule #25: Roommate gifts are unnecessary.
As I expected, my mother called soon after breakfast to address what I had said the night before. Given that I had told her I was engaged to Gemma, it would have surprised me if she hadn't. Thankfully, Gemma had agreed to go along with the fake engagement, at least for the moment.
But thewhiffof a game Gemma had referred to was all too real, and my suspicions about her straightforward personality barreling into my mother and complicating the situation had only been confirmed this morning. If Gemma knew my mother was using her, she would fly off the handle. Then, my mother would dig her heels in, and we wouldn’t get anything useful from our conversations with her. I didn’t see how telling Gemma about my mother’s insulting scheme would help matters. If Iwanted to best Sylvia and extricate Gemma from this mess, then I needed to be strategic. Calm. Rational.
All things I never felt around Gemma.
I answered my mother's call from where I sat on the couch, glancing at Gemma as she played her online video game with headphones covering her ears. "Hello?"
"Knox," my mother responded tersely.
I put down my controller, opened a recording app on my phone, and answered. "How can I help you, Mother?" Gemma had gotten me hooked on this stupid go-kart game. I was obsessed with beating my own times.
"I'd like to speak about what happened last night."
I glanced at Gemma again. Her eyes remained fixed on the screen, and she had her pink tongue poking out from her teeth as she concentrated on a battle. "I'm sure you do."
"Have you truly become attached to this… matchmaker person?" she asked with obvious contempt.
