“I’m her boss. Who the fuck are you?”

“Her steady dick.” He cocked his head sideways, smirking. “And I don’t like competition outside of the ocean. So I suggest you take a hike.” He tapped the blunt with his forefinger, sprinkling ashes into my car. Onto my leather seat.

Bad play.

I heard Edie’s soft giggle behind him, and maybe it was because she’d bailed on Luna’s party, and maybe it was simply because I was done restraining my inner asshole when it came to her, but I was already deep in ruthless mode, ready to kick it up a notch and become a total cunt. I threw the car into park, opened the door, and stormed outside, rounding the front of my vehicle before cupping her elbow.

“If you don’t get in the car right now, you’ll see exactly what happens when the countdown ends,” I whispered into her hair, my lips accidentally brushing the shell of her ear. My cock jerked in my pants and I groaned. She twisted her head to watch me, bewildered.

“Why in the world would I do anything for you outside of working hours, Rexroth?”

“Because you told me you had important business today and therefore couldn’t attend my girl’s party when you were, in fact, going to pork a goddamn meathead in a rat-ridden abandoned building. I swear, Edie. If you don’t get in right this second, your father gets a Sunday visit from his business partner tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell him all about your thieving ways and peculiar sexual escapades.”

Threatening to rat out an eighteen-year-old to her parents was some sort of rock bottom, surely. At the same time, she didn’t need this. Smoking pot and fucking in a public place. Make no mistake, I’d done exactly that at her age. Oh, well. I never said I was above being a fucking hypocrite.

“Hey, now, old man. Chill your calcium-deprived bones and stop treating her like crap, or I’ll have to kick your ass.” Blondie Dudebro got in my face, and I was going to end the night in a police station. I shoved him once before Edie thrust her body between us, pushing us both in opposite directions.

“Hey, hey, hey, stop it!”

“You don’t need another Jordan, Gidget. Tell him to fuck off.” The kid pointed at me, his lips twisting in disgust. She shook her head, her flat palms on his chest, walking him backwards toward the bench. Her other friends were staring with their mouths open so wide you could practically see what they’d had for lunch. They stood up from the bench but didn’t get any closer. Fucking cowards.

“It’s not like that, Bane. Look, I’ll explain later. See you tomorrow at the beach.” She turned her back to me, pressing her lips to his. Their mouths brushed in a familiarity I’d never had with a woman because I’d never stuck with someone for longer than two weeks, and I watched, my teeth slamming into each other.

“Enough of this shit. Time to go.” I practically threw Edie’s ass to the passenger seat before rounding to my side of the car and buckling up. I started the engine, trying to wrap my head around my reaction to this surreal encounter and figuring out where in the fuck I was going to take her.

“Where do you live?” I threw the car into drive. She didn’t answer, staring out the window, harboring unshed tears in her eyes. My car slid through the dirt road leading out of the reservoir, the noiseless electric engine making our silence particularly unbearable. I choked the steering wheel, feeling my nostrils flare.

She wasn’t going to answer. Not before I explained my behavior.

“You’re my business partner’s daughter, Edie. I can’t let you run around smoking pot and fucking tattooed boys. I can overlook it when I’m not around you, but if I bump into you in the middle of the night in a deserted place, I’m sure as hell gonna act on it.”

“Please.” She sniffed, clinging to her cool with everything she had in her. “Never bullshit a bullshitter. You can spare me your stupid explanation. You don’t give a damn about Jordan Van Der Zee, and you sure don’t care about his daughter. This was an act of power, Rexroth. You were pissed I didn’t go to Luna’s party, and you decided to retaliate. But know this—I did go somewhere today. Somewhere important. Just because I made it back in time to hang out with friends doesn’t mean I ditched Luna.”

Edie was partly right. I was pissed with her choosing to hang out with her friends over spending time with my daughter. What was possibly worse was that the other reason I’d dragged her away from her weekend hangout was because I was infatuated with her ass. Or at least, with the idea of tapping it. Of course, that would guarantee Jordan would somehow find a way to kick me off the board, out of the company, and essentially ruin my entire career. Not to mention I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror after fucking a teenager, legal or not.

“Where do you live?” I repeated my question, ignoring the valid points she’d made. She huffed and dug inside the black backpack in her hand, reaching for her cell phone.

“Hey.” I snatched the device from her hand, my eyes still on the road. “I’m talking to you.”

“Yeah, well, that hardly means I’m listening,” she muttered.

“The fuck is your problem, kid?” I asked.

“You’re my problem. My father is my problem. The world is my problem. Let me out,” she demanded, unhooking my fingers from her phone and retrieving it. The escalated tension in the vehicle made me lose focus on the road.

“In the middle of nowhere?” I chuckled. “Yeah, no.”

“Trent.”

I shook my head. I’d take her to my penthouse if need be. I had two guest rooms that were unused all year round. She could crash there and I’d deliver her ass to her parents first thing in the morning. It was a complicated solution, but one where she was safe and not fucking Blondie Dudebro.

“Let me go.”

I scrubbed my chin thoughtfully, ignoring her as I stared at the road.

Then she did it.

The crazy girl opened the door of my moving vehicle and jumped out into a bush.

I smashed the brake pedal and bolted out, rushing toward her. She was lying inside a scrub, supine. Her arms were stretched like a snow angel, and she was laughing at the moon with tears in her eyes like the lost kid she was.

Not chuckling, not smiling, but full-blown laughing.

If it was a cry for help, I chose not to listen. I chose to ignore what she was obviously going through, because we were all trying to stay afloat in this pond of misery, and helping her out came with the price of sinking further down. I pulled her up by the waist, ignoring how intimate it felt. Disregarding how her body matched mine like two pieces of a puzzle, against all fucking odds. My hand was on her lower back again, my knee between her thighs, and she was firm and athletic everywhere, but her face was soft and tender, like an Edgar Degas painting.

Our eyes fought a silent war. Her baby blues glittered brighter under the full, fat moon. I knew that if we held this position for a few more seconds, I was likely to do something I’d regret. Make the kind of mistake that could ruin a lot of lives. So I leaned toward her face to whisper to her that I was sorry for tonight. For everything, really. For being a jackass, and a hypocrite, and an asshole.

I slid in her direction, only to realize that she parted her lips, waiting for…fuck, a kiss?

I’m in. I knew the feeling, because I’d been in this position more times than I could count. She was giving me the green light, the okay, the consent to touch her. Her hips rolled toward my groin very lightly, and a low, leisured growl glided between my lips.

What an interesting turn of events. Edie Van Der Zee wants me to dick her hard.

Five years ago, I would have given her what she wanted, consequences be damned.

Tonight, though, I had too much to lose.

“Edie,” my lips moved on her temple, “is there a reason why you’re humping my leg? Thought you were mad at me for clam-jamming your ass tonight.”

She was no longer on the verge of crying, but now I had a much bigger problem to deal with, and it was pointed directly at her pussy, hard and swollen and ready to give her what she so obviously wanted.

“Why did you clam-jam me, Rexroth?” she breathed, almost into my lips, and she smelled of vanilla and woman. Not like a girl. It made standing like this, with her practically straddling one of my thighs, slightly less dreadful.

“You already know why.”

“I’m starting to think I missed out on an important detail.” Her hips rolled forward in a wave-like motion, hitting my erection once, and slightly, and so fucking teasingly, it was the last nail in the age gap debate coffin. This woman knew what she was doing. She knew how to work her body, work a man’s body, and it killed me that fucking Bane—what kind of name was that? Was he a Vicious knockoff?—knew all the secrets to her silky, sun-kissed flesh and scarlet lips and probably very sweet pussy.

I stepped away from her, leaning on the still-running car with a smirk.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t do children.”

She moved closer to me, her inner thigh pressing against the side of my leg. She smiled, her grin dazzling with white teeth—one of them crooked and slightly chipped and imperfectly sexy—and purred, “Don’t make promises that will make you feel like a pervert when you break them.”

“I won’t break them,” I deadpanned, but I still let her press her small, perky, braless—shit, braless—tits against my lower pecs. The notion that I could slam her against my hood and fuck her from behind was too much. Or maybe I could spread her and eat her out before I fucked her in the middle of the reservoir. She would let me, and that was the worst thing about our situation. Edie would let me do that to her, and not because she was a naïve girl with daddy issues.

But because she’d come here to fuck, and I was a willing body to her. Nothing less, nothing more.

“Interesting,” she said, bending her knees and grinding against me, clasping my whole thigh between her legs. Her bare skin scraped along my denim, her puckered, hard nipple brushing my forearm. I didn’t move. Just stared at her like she was a fucking health hazard, hoping she would stop or take my dick in her mouth and put me out of my misery. “You know what my favorite word is?” she hissed, clenching my thigh, feeling warm and damp.