Lost King by Piper Lennox (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

Speaking of Wes: I realize he and Clara have disappeared, I assume to carry out that compensation deal he mentioned. Not a bad idea.

Theo takes a deep breath as I lean close to pull his earlobe between my teeth. “However,” he goes on, smiling in a stupor, “since you liked my singing and playing, you think I could get double pay?”

“Maybe time and a half.”

He laughs, turning his head to kiss me. “Deal.”

We steal away upstairs, while Georgia shouts at someone to leave the damn pies alone. “Dinner is in fifty minutes, dude. You can wait.”

“Fifty minutes.” Theo pretends to do some quick math as he shuts our door behind him. “I think I could make you come...five times, before then.”

“Sure,” I scoff as I undress, but I actually have zero doubt that he could.

“Hey,” he says suddenly, sinking onto the foot of the bed to remove his shoes, “weird question, but I just remembered—how the hell did your mom know my dad?”

“Huh?” I almost fall, tripped up by my own leggings.

“Your mom,” he repeats. He tosses his shoes aside and looks at me. “She recognized my last name. She even knows my house.”

“Oh.” My hands fumble with my bra, until Theo leans over and unsnaps it with one hand and a cocky smile that should get me instantly soaked. But my brain’s way too busy spinning some elaborate web of fibs and deceit.

No. No more lies.

“She used to work in the Hamptons.” I try to make it sound like I assumed he already knew this, then decide that’d be a kind of lie, too, and drop the tone. “From March to September, every year. In the off-season, she’d clean in Jersey.”

“Huh.” He chuckles. “Small world.”

I relax. God, the truth feels so much better.

Until it doesn’t.

“She must have worked for a lot of people I knew, then, if she was familiar enough with the neighborhood to remember my house.”

“You have a really memorable house,” I point out. Most vacation homes in the Hamptons are contemporary or faux-Colonial. Even the new construction is made to match whatever’s nearby. And among the modern houses that do pop up here and there, none are quite like the Durhams’: sweeping stretches of glass, sleek stone and steel details, and a silhouette like a child’s block tower, knocked slightly askew.

Theo’s quiet, waiting for a real answer, so I make myself nod as he finishes undressing. “She worked for a lot of people out there.”

“Huh,” he says again, shaking out the sheets to climb in.

Part of me wants him to ask which people. I want him to make the connections I’m too much of a coward to tell him.

But I’m also too much of a coward to risk losing what we have. New as it is, I already know it’s one of the best things to happen to me.

As I get in bed beside him, he pushes up on his arm. “Can I ask one more thing, and then I promise I’ll shut up and fuck you?”

Despite my smile, my nerves are shot. Every drag of his fingers over my body hurts. “Yeah,” I whisper, desperately wishing I’d brought up a glass of water or something.

Theo touches my neck.

“Was Callum the ‘friend’ who left those bruises you had here?”

The bass in his voice, anger compressed into a deceitfully calm rumble, makes me feel scared and safe at the same time. He’s the shelter and the storm, all at once.

“Yes. But I don’t think he meant to.”

“I don’t care.” His stare, so cold it turns the moss-green color into shards of glass, drags its way to mine. “If he ever touches you again, he’s finished.”

Again, I have no doubts he means this. I put my hand on his tense jaw, like the heat of my palm can soften it back to a smile. “Don’t judge him too harshly. He’s got a lot of problems.”

“I’d be his worst one yet.” He draws away, rolling onto his back with one arm behind his head, the other pinned under mine. “Not to sound paranoid as hell, but—”

“There’s nothing going on with us,” I finish quickly, knowing exactly where his mind was headed. “I broke up with him weeks ago, but he kept coming by, trying to get back together, making scenes....”

Behind my head, I feel his arm stiffen. “Is that what that was? When we stopped by your complex to get your stuff—you were worried he’d be there, or that he’d see me there with you?”

Yeah, the truth feels really good. But it’s damn hard to get out.

When I eventually tell him yes, Theo sighs through his nose, hard.

“How come this feels so fucking right, like we’ve known each other for years,” he says, “when we barely know a thing?”

“Me not giving you my full dating history right away doesn’t mean you barely know me,” I tell him. I guess I’m trying to convince myself of it, too. “Focus on the first part. How right it feels.”

He sighs again, but it gets swept into a groan when I disappear under the covers to make good on our deal.

“Wait.” He gathers my hair to pull me off, tender and rough at the same time. “Turn around this way.”

I watch his hand motions until it clicks, then laugh. “Sixty-nining always sounds more fun than it is.” I’ve tried it enough times to know.

Theo’s eyes flash, lightning through an emerald lens.

“Not when you sixty-nine me,” he promises.

“My turn? Uh...oh. I’m thankful for the cabin, obviously. And...” Isabella glances around the table, wine glass still poised for the toast, even though this whole “say what we’re grateful for” idea of Clara’s is