Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2) by Mina V. Esguerra

inevitable. It made him glad for his decision to show up only when he was ready. Hopefully the idea of him helpless and alone would be abstract and hazy, shot in her imagination with flattering filters, and she’d never truly get to keep a vision of how low he had sunk. This pity, if she was feeling pity, was temporary. He hoped.
    Maybe he was overcompensating, but this led to him wanting to take control when they got to the bed. The admission put her in an emotional state, but maybe she’d remember instead his tongue against her clit, his fingers deep inside her, or, and this was likely, his impeccable timing, having rolled on the condom and then sinking into her right before getting her to come, knowing now that she wanted to come with him inside her, her hands full of whatever part of him she could find, and he felt it was perfect this time, felt the strength of the climax that tore through her, felt it in the arch of her back, her pleasurably painful grip on his hair and shoulder. 
    “You’re crazy,” she said, trying to laugh, still out of breath some time later.
    “You love me, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” she said, quickly. “That’s not the problem at all.”
     

Chapter 17
     
     
    She thought that her five-thirty alarm was already impossibly early, but when she flicked the “dismiss” option on her phone, Jake was already awake, reading on his iPad.
    “God,” she said, voice cracking from her dry throat. “I still can’t believe how functional you are at this time.”
    “I told you, I’ve perfected the power nap,” he said. “They make me wait a lot at work. I can get a good night’s sleep two hours at a time spread out in a twenty-four hour period. I swear I’m completely rested.”
    “But jet lag.” Lindsay had been doing this world-travel thing for a few years now, and coped by sleeping in planes, buses, any vehicle that she had to park her butt in for an hour or more.
    “I can align my power naps with time zones.”
    “That can’t be healthy.”
    “It means I can take the night shift.”
    Lindsay groaned and elbowed his side. He meant the night shift, during the zombie apocalypse. “You know what happens when you’re sleep deprived, right? It catches up. You drop like a log, and you don’t even know it. You’re going to suck at night duty especially if you’re armed. Might as well just give the zombies a gun.”
    “You will be proven wrong, and you’ll beg me to teach you.”
    “You like it when I beg, don’t you.”
    His leg brushed against hers under the covers. “Why are you up so early?”
    “Need to call Marnie while she’s at work. You’re going to be all right today?”
    Jake nodded. “There are some sessions I want to attend, and then I have those meetings scheduled. I think you can leave me alone for a day, I won’t set anything on fire.”
    “I’ll find you at the cocktails tonight, okay?”
    After showering and collecting her work things, she found a spot at the hotel’s business center.
    Marnie stayed in New York even during conference season. First there was the matter of her small child, but as time went on, and more opportunities weren’t taken, Lindsay suspected that she just never wanted to travel. The woman wouldn’t admit a fear of flying, but never agreed to go on flights, or ferry rides, for that matter.
    Lindsay found her on Skype and started the call. “Hey, Marnie,” she said, when Marnie picked up. “Thanks for those slides I asked for. Lucien is going to need you to stand by there for another hour or so until he finds out if his eight a.m. is going to happen.”
    “No problem. I’ll wait.”
    “And...yeah I have another thing. I’d do it myself except it’s going to distract me from actual work...”
    “What is it?”
    “Can you find out anything you can about an accident on the Rage Eternal set last year? August?”
    “Why are you looking up stuff about Jacob behind his back?”
    Lindsay groaned. “Can you not judge me about