Having feelings for a man is not something I’m comfortable with. Sure, it’s happened on the odd occasion, but that grew out of lust and quickly fizzled away. This is something different. It’s raw and heavy, and I have no idea what to do about it or how to even process it.
Believe me, I’m all for squishing this weird little infatuation inside me so I can get back to focusing on the important things like getting dicked down every night of my life. Yet I find myself wondering what it’d be like to be his—to be the woman he comes home to, to have his arms wrap around me, his lips on mine.
Call it morbid curiosity. But like I said, Caesar can never know that these thoughts have been circling my mind. If he thought for even a second that I might be developing feelings, I’d be tossed aside. He made his terms of our agreement crystal clear, and here I am, on the verge of breaking them.
Being the ever-loving sucker for punishment, I grab my phone off my nightstand and shove it into my back pocket before traipsing out of my apartment and heading straight for his ridiculously oversized mansion to hang out with Zephyr. I mean, who even needs a home that big anyway? I understand some men buy fancy cars and lots of property to overcompensate for the fact they’re either duds in bed or have a micro-dick, but Caesar doesn’t suffer from either of those issues.
There’s been a weirdness between me and Zeph, and while I know our friendship is only new, I truly value it. He bringsa lot of happiness into my life, whether it’s sexual or not. I’m not willing to lose that, which is why I’m heading over there now. The last time I saw him, he was helping me clean up my apartment after getting my new couch, then the next thing I knew, Chloe was coming home, and Zeph was out the door within seconds. I never heard from him again.
It’s time I got to the bottom of this shit.
With not a single ounce of traffic on the road, I make it to the Di Rozé mansion within ten minutes, and after practically having made this place my home over the past few weeks, I help myself through the door, not bothering to wait for Zeph to welcome me in. He usually just screams from the living room or the top of the stairs to let myself in anyway.
“Zeph?” I call, striding through the foyer and following the subtle noises of what I can only assume is a video game coming from upstairs.
I take the stairs two at a time, and the closer I get toward the den, the more obvious it becomes that Zeph isn’t alone, though I don’t think it’s another girl. A friend, perhaps. Either way, I don’t care. As long as his friend is okay with me interrogating Zephyr until he cracks.
“Tilly? That you?” Zeph calls from the upstairs den.
“Yep.”
I keep going, reaching the den only a moment later before striding through the open doorway and coming to an immediate stop, realizing the friend he has over is none other than Jordan, the asshole who accosted me on the sidewalk and demanded I fuck him out of some moral obligation.
I let out a heavy sigh that’s filled with a thick disappointment, and honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t choke on it. “Oh, excellent. If I’d known that the award recipient of Perverts United was here, I wouldn’t have come.”
Both Jordan and Zeph glance up as I lean against the entryway, and while Zeph has the good sense to hit pause on their game and get to his feet like a gentleman, Jordan glares at me as though I’m intruding on their special bonding time.
“Shit, babe,” Zeph says, walking over to me and pulling me into his side before pressing a kiss to my cheek. “We must have lost track of time. Jordan was just leaving anyway.”
“The fuck I was,” Jordan says, flying to his feet and throwing his arms around to prove a point. “If she can’t stand to be around me because she’s a prude, then she should leave.”
“Fuck,” Zeph murmurs beside me, his voice low as he stares at his friend. “I’m starting to see your point.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Come on, man,” Zeph says, tossing his controller onto the couch. “It’s not as though she’s here to hang out, so unless you’re down with lubing up and becoming a bottom, then what’s about to happen in here ain’t for you.”
“Fucking hell,” Jordan mutters before striding toward us. “I’ve got better shit to do anyway.”
He strides straight out the door, passing way too closely for comfort, but he doesn’t put up a fight, and the next thing I know, I hear the sound of the front door slamming.
“Shit,” Zeph says, letting out a heavy breath. “You know, he’s really not as bad as you think he is. He’s just . . . I don’t fucking know. He’s being a dick toward you, and I don’t know why.”
“Or perhaps he’s just a dick, but you’re the exception so you don’t realize.”
Zeph gives me a hard stare and rolls his eyes, clearly not on board with my conclusion, and when he strides over to the couch and flops straight back down where he was a moment ago, I give it to him straight. “You know I’m not here to fuck you, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, his tone shifting with deep regret as he glances back up at me in the doorway with those dark eyes that are so similar to his father’s. “I kinda thought that was the case.”
“You feel it too, right? Something’s shifted.”
Zeph nods, and I push off the doorframe before joining him on the couch, throwing my legs over his as I lounge back into the cushions. He watches me with a curious stare, his eyes lingering just long enough to make me squirm. “It has,” he agrees. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t pinpoint an exact moment for you, but I know when it changed for me.”
My brow arches, and I sit up a little straighter. “Oh, please, wise one, do share with the class. Let me in on the secret.”
He stares straight back at me, grinning like he’s about to rain down all kinds of hell over me. “Which part?” he questions. “The part where you’ve been screwing my dad, or the part where I think I might be madly in love with your friend Chloe.”
My jaw drops, and I simply gape at him. “What—I . . . uhhhhhh.”
