“Because you don’t suck at this?” He wanted her to believe it. Wanted to hear her say it. Still wanted to text her bitch of an editor and put her in her place.
“Because if I don’t keep trying, I’ll never gain the experience I need to be successful.”
Logan nodded and patted her knee. Her confidence was still shaky, but it would strengthen with time. He turned his head to yell down the corridor, “You’re up, Reagan! Do you think you can unlock your lips from Trey’s long enough to answer Toni’s expert interview questions?”
“Not really,” Reagan’s voice carried into the room.
“Then Toni’s going to make up a bunch of shit about you!” Logan yelled. “And I’m going to put ideas in her head.”
“I’ll be right there!”
Logan rose from the sofa and bent to press a kiss to Toni's forehead. “You’ve got this, lamb.”
She smiled and nodded. She lifted her chin a notch, and his chest swelled with pride, which was the weirdest-fucking emotion he’d ever experienced in all his thirty-two years.
Reagan bounded into the room and tackle-hugged Toni on the sectional. “Are you really going to include me in the book?”
“Of course I am,” Toni said. She patted Reagan’s shoulder as she tried to sit upright. “You’re part of Exodus End, aren’t you?”
“Not really, but I do appreciate the gesture.”
Logan rolled his eyes and shook his head. Did Reagan still feel excluded? He supposed he would have to fuck with her more so she felt like one of the guys. Or perhaps they should forbid her from riding on Sinners’ tour bus. She spent more time with Trey’s band than her own.
“If you two start making out, holler for me,” Logan said as he stepped into the corridor to give the women privacy. “I wouldn’t want to miss that.”
Toni’s eyes widened when Reagan shifted to straddle Toni’s lap and gave his justfriend’s boobs a squeeze.
“I always wanted a pair like these,” Reagan said. “If I can’t have my own, I might as well play with someone else’s.”
Logan reentered the lounge and made a beeline for the sectional. “Yes, I’d love to watch. Thanks for asking.”
“I promise not to molest your girlfriend,” Reagan said, scrambling from Toni’s lap and shoving Logan out of the room. Smiling brightly, she made a peace sign. Then she turned her symbol of good will against her face to flick her tongue between her index and middle finger and slid the door shut an inch from his nose.
Logan groaned and rested his forehead against the cool surface of the door. Surely Reagan had her hands full with two men. She couldn’t possibly need to add a woman to her stable of full-time lovers, could she?
with Reagan Elliot
“I just can’t resist fucking with that guy,” Reagan said, breezing past Toni and flopping onto the sofa. She propped her bare feet on the coffee table and patted the cushion next to her.
The same cushion that Logan had been lying on when he’d come in Toni’s mouth moments before. Toni reached for the cola Logan had so thoughtfully brought her and took another swig.
She was going to have to start staging her interviews in a different location. She couldn’t stop the X-rated images from filtering through her thoughts.
“He is fun.” Toni scooted closer to Reagan, her nearly empty beverage clasped between her hands. Maybe she’d have more luck keeping on track while interviewing a woman. She hadn’t planned on doing any additional interviews, having decided Dare’s advice to just talk to them was her best move, but now that she felt she needed to prove herself to Logan as well as her mother and Susan, Toni decided she should at least attempt all the preplanned formal interviews, even if they didn’t amount to much.
“We can finally have that girl talk,” Reagan said, grabbing the bottle out of Toni’s hands and taking a drink.
Toni cringed, thinking that if Reagan knew where her mouth had just been, she would not want to share.
“What’s that face?” Reagan said, lowering the bottle and eyeing her with suspicious gray-blue eyes.
Toni shook her head. “N-nothing.”
“Did you just suck Logan’s dick or something?”
Heat flooded Toni’s face. “Maybe.”
Reagan crinkled her nose and shoved the nearly empty bottle into Toni’s chest. “And you let me drink after you?”
“I’m sorry.”
Reagan shook her head and went still when her gaze landed on something on the floor. “And you just leave your sex toys lying around on the carpet?”
So much for her interview with Reagan staying on track. “I found that under the sofa when I was hunting for my pen.”
“Sure you did.”
Toni was so embarrassed that she didn’t know whether to hide under the cushions or cry, so she laughed uneasily. “Honest. I didn’t even know what that thing was until Logan explained it to me.”
Reagan cocked her head at her, her dirty-blond bangs sliding over her face to cover one eye. “So are you two serious or just having a good time?”
Toni wasn’t sure how to answer that. She wanted them to be serious, and he made her feel like he was serious about her, but she was pretty sure she was just clueless about these things and reading more into his actions and words than was really there.
Reagan touched the back of Toni’s hand, and Toni looked up into a pair of concerned eyes. “Don’t let him play you unless you’re playing him right back.”
“I don’t know if he’s playing me. And I wouldn’t know how to play him if I had an instruction manual and a tutor. Not that I want to play him.” She just wanted to love him. She shook her head and planted her face in her palms. It was much too soon for that. Even she realized that.
“Oh, honey, you didn’t do something as stupid as fall in love with him, did you?”
Toni nodded miserably.
“Because falling for someone too quickly . . .”
Toni steeled her heart for the advice she knew would follow. She knew the coming words were true. She just didn’t want the truth voiced aloud, because that would make it real and then she’d have to face it.
“. . . is the most amazing experience ever!” Reagan said.
Thinking she needed to clean out her ears, Toni lifted her face from her hands and arched a brow at Reagan. “Huh?”
“Are you recording this?” Reagan nodded to the recorder on the table.