at the gym on time.
Only a half hour after Elliot and Weston, which was on time for me. With my late nights, mornings were a struggle. But last night, once I’d cleared Vincent’s guests from my apartment and taken care of the raging erection left by the leggy, quirky blonde who’d utterly destroyed my sheets in the best way, I’d slept like a fucking baby.
Only to wake up early this morning rock hard, the memory of her taste still sweet on my lips.
Elliot Levy, my friend since our Stanford days, lifted an unimpressed brow through his reflection in the mirror as he did bicep curls. My definition of early differed from Elliot’s by a mile. He had never once arrived anywhere more than a millisecond past the appointed time.
I climbed on the open treadmill beside Weston, the third member of our trio. He’d have said I was the third member since he and Elliot had been friends since childhood, but I had shoved myself snug in the middle of the two of them, so there was no way I was number three.
Weston glanced at me while he kept up his fast clip. “You look rested for once.”
“I am. I was asleep by eleven.”
“In your own bed?”
“Yes.” I punched some buttons on the control panel, and the treadmill got started. “All alone too.”
On fresh sheets, which I didn’t mention. Though a sick, filthy part of me had been tempted to lie in that pretty girl’s mess. If I had, there wouldn’t have been any sleep for me, and my dick would have ended up chafed from a night of stroking it.
He tapped a button, slowing his pace to match mine.
“You went to bed alone?”
“You sound like you don’t believe me, West.”
“It’s not that.” He swiped his sweaty forehead with the collar of his shirt. “You’re not one to brag about sleeping alone. That leads me to believe there’s more to this story.”
He had me. I needed to talk about what had gone down with Sasha last night, but for the first time, possibly ever, I really didn’t want to share any of the finer details. Weston would be grateful for that. He always humored me, but he wasn’t on tenterhooks to hear about my hookup’s tit size or the joys of bedding a former gymnast. West was quiet about it, but he’d had his fair share of women over the years. No doubt anything I had to say was old news.
Now that he was with Elise, who happened to be Elliot’s younger sister, those days were history for him. The fucker was the happiest I’d ever seen him too.
“There was a last hurrah,” I told him.
Elliot strolled over, wiping his face with a small towel. “Why last?” He sat down on the circuit machine in front of the treadmills.
“I met with the consultants the board hired yesterday.”
Elliot’s chin lowered. “And? What did they have to say?”
“I have a bad reputation.”
Weston barked a dry laugh. “That’s an understatement. Were consultants necessary to tell you that?”
“Like I said, the board brought them in. They did a top-to-bottom evaluation of my image.”
Elliot paused his leg press. “And what did they conclude?”
I shook my head and let out a humorless laugh. “That it’s a bad look for the new CEO of Rossi Motors to be dubbed ‘The Playboy CEO’ by CNBC.”
Weston chuffed. “Let me guess, they conducted a focus group and wrote a ten-page report to deliver this information to you.”
“Wrong.” I flashed him a grin I didn’t quite feel. Having my life taken over wasn’t exactly conducive to good humor. “Fifteen.”
“And how did they advise you to change your image?” Elliot asked.
With a groan, I shoved my fingers through my hair. “I’m to stop going to events and clubs with women I’m not in a relationship with.”
“Which means you’ll be going alone,” Weston supplied.
“Right,” I agreed.
Since unexpectedly taking over my father’s position as CEO of our family’s company, Rossi Motors, everything he’d done now fell on me. That meant the dinners, conferences, charity fundraisers—each drier and more boring than the next—would be my responsibility. I’d done some of that in my role as VP, and the only thing that made them slightly tolerable was the open bars and surety I’d be sinking my cock into whichever beautiful woman I brought with me as my date.
Elliot stopped again. “They told you you’re not allowed to date?”
“Not in the way I currently date. In fact, I was told CEOs who are married inspire seventy-five percent more confidence in shareholders.”
Weston slowed down a little more. “So now you have to get married?”
Elliot made a strangled, choking sound. “How does one get married without first dating?”
“I don’t know. It’s all bullshit, and everyone knows that. I don’t leave the office until eight at night on a good day. Since stepping into this position, my entire lifestyle has changed. I haven’t even had time to get laid, and I see no end in sight. I’ve changed without trying.”
And it pissed me off to no end. These days, I was either tired or angry, and the throbbing headache that had taken up semipermanent residence behind my right eye didn’t help anything.
“If you have no time, what was this ‘last hurrah’ you mentioned?” Weston asked.
“It was more of an almost hurrah,” I admitted. “Vin threw a party at my place last night.”
Elliot winced. “I don’t know why you allow him to stay with you for weeks on end. He’s worse than a frat boy.”
“It’s funny because I seem to recall you labeling me a debauched frat boy more than once,” I volleyed back, even though he had a fair point about both me and Vin.
Elliot was unbothered. “If the shoe fits.” He got up from the machine, stretching his arms over his head.
Weston cleared his throat. “I think Elliot’s trying to say that while you both party, Vin doesn’t respect your home. Didn’t he break one of your sculptures the last time he visited?”
I flinched at the memory. “Almost. He tipped it, but I caught it before it could fall.”
And I tore him a new asshole, but he’d been chagrined all on his own.
“Aren’t we getting off track?” Elliot asked.
“Yes. We were going to hear about the almost hurrah,” Weston said.
“She was in my den.” I almost allowed my eyes to close so I could bring back the image of her curled up on my couch. But the last thing I needed was to get hard in front of my best friends at the gym. “Long, long legs, silky blonde hair, and a sassy as hell mouth. We talked, clicked, I gave her a tour, she gave me a tour of her.”
Elliot rolled his eyes, but he didn’t walk away to his next machine. As dismissive as he was, he was interested, so I went on.
“Sweetest thing I’ve had in my bed in a long time. The chemistry was shockingly strong.” I shook my head in mourning. “We got interrupted before I got off. The friend she came with wanted to go, so she went.”
Weston’s brow pinched. “And that’s it?”
I lifted a shoulder. “It is what it is. If the circumstances were different, I would hunt her down to finish what we started, but as it stands, I shouldn’t have gone there last night.”
Elliot nodded. “You have to guard the brand, Luc. Bringing random women into your bed isn’t wise. She could have been planted there to extract blackmail material. Think of what you’d have to pay not to have a sex tape leak.”
“I don’t think she—”
Elliot leveled me with a come the fuck on stare. “Do you know anything about this woman?”
She was sexy, funny, liked pizza, trying new things, and her taste was forever ingrained in my memories.
I conceded his point. “Not enough to trust who she presented herself to be at face value.”
“It’s a big change for you,” Weston added. “You weren’t ready for it.”
“He’d known it was coming,” Elliot argued.
The pulse behind my eye was beginning to throb. “Eventually, not now, and sure as hell not as suddenly as it did.”
Weston gave my shoulder a pat. “How’s Vic?”
“Snarly.”
My father, Victorio Rossi, who, up until a couple weeks ago, had been the CEO of Rossi Motors. He’d been doing the job more than twenty years, since his father had stepped down. He’d have held on to the title for another twenty.
I wouldn’t have had a problem with that.
His heart had other plans.
Elliot’s normally impassive expression grew sympathetic. “It can’t be easy to go from ruling a Fortune 500 company to being told what to do, down to what he can eat. I don’t think any of us would handle that well.”
“Hell no,” I agreed. “I just wish he wouldn’t take his anger out on my mother. She’s waiting on him hand and foot, like always, and he’s being a dick to her.”
One sunny morning, my father had a heart attack in the middle of a board meeting. Our family gathered at the hospital, waiting hours to see if he’d make it out of surgery alive. The first thing he wanted to do when he woke up was check his emails.
My mother’s sobs had flipped his switch, though.
He’d retired almost immediately, much to everyone’s shock and his doctor’s delight. That meant I went from vice president—which had been a cushy title allowing me all the freedom I desired to pursue my passions and, as Elliot had put it, debauched lifestyle—to running my family’s company.
And we weren’t some mom-and-pop small business. Rossi Motors was the largest producer of motorcycles in America.
“I’m surprised Vic is capable of being a dick to Angelina,” Weston said.
“Me too.” I shoved my fingers through my hair. I’d been so busy talking I hadn’t even broken a sweat yet. “He’ll regret it when he comes out of this fog.”
My parents were disgusting. They were always kissing and laughing together. He pinched my mother’s butt whenever she bent down, and she sent him off every morning by straightening his tie and whispering secrets in his ear.
My sister and I used to gag at their public displays of affection, but as our friends’ parents got divorced, or worse, stayed in toxic marriages, we saw how lucky we were.
Which made my father’s treatment of my mother even harder to bear. She was his treasure, but he was acting like she was his jailer.
The pulse slammed behind my eye, and I was done. Done working out, done thinking about this, done talking. Circumstances were what they were. Fighting against them wouldn’t make anything easier.
I accepted who I was. Luca Rossi, CEO of Rossi Motors, soon to be the owner of the loneliest dick in Denver.
