The Face of Scandal by Helena Maeve Page B

laughter.
    Hazel bit his ear in retribution. “Shut up.”
    “No, no…” He propped himself up on his elbow, heedless Hazel clenching her fists in the placket of his shirt. He hadn’t even taken the time to undress. “Tell me more,” he entreated, cheeks flushed with exertion. “It’s not every day I get to hear about your fantasies. I’m almost afraid to ask but—what did you make of our Ward?”
    “A young Mr. Burns?”
    Dylan threw his head back with a loud guffaw. He was impervious to Hazel slapping his ass by way of redress.
    “You can’t tell him!”
    “Are you kidding?” Dylan snorted, dipping his head to flick her nipple with his talented tongue. “Soon as he steps through the door, it’ll be Montgomery this, Montgomery that…”
    “Don’t you have anything better to do with that mouth?” Hazel quipped.
    He pretended to mull it over. “I can think of a few things…”
    As they kissed, Dylan settled back against her gently, their momentary hiccup in the playroom already forgotten. It wasn’t the first time their plans went up in smoke. It probably wouldn’t be the last.
    I warned you.
    Hazel tried to recall a time when she’d been this happy with Malcolm. They must’ve had their moments or she wouldn’t have spent two years trying to make it work.
    Maybe it wasn’t just Malcolm fucking with her head and getting away with it. Maybe it was Hazel letting him. She wondered if she was doing as much with Dylan and Ward.
    Her eyes fluttered shut as Dylan slipped out and replaced his cock with two long fingers, crooked just so to make her lose her mind. There would be time to worry about why this worked for them later, Hazel decided. For now, she gave herself over to the sensation of Dylan’s hands on her, gently coaxing another slow, unearned orgasm from her aching body.
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    Barring the Enrique Iglesias playlist warbling from the car radio, the drive over had gone by in complete silence. Hazel killed the engine and waited for courage to find her. “You didn’t have to come with me,” she said, delaying.
    “Are you kidding? It was this or sitting around while Mom frets and flits and asks me what happened to Frank for the umpteenth time.” Sadie liberated her phone from her handbag. “You said an hour, right?”
    “Maybe less.” Maybe not at all, unless Hazel found the strength of conviction to slide out of her seat.
    Sadie peered out the windshield. “Doesn’t look too shabby.”
    Right across, beyond the narrow strip of sidewalk, lay a brick wall, recently repainted, dotted with square windows at various heights. Admission into the building it belonged to was granted through a pair of glass-and-wood doors that might have been new sometime in the late seventies.
    It wasn’t Mizzou by any stretch of imagination, but it was the best Hazel could afford on her highly limited funds.
    “You think it’s a waste of time, right?” she asked, unsure if she wanted to hear Sadie’s honest opinion.
    No one at the diner knew of her plans and she hadn’t found the guts to bounce ideas off her brother and sister-in-law, let alone Ward or Dylan. Until she was sure there was something to tell, she figured it was best to keep the news to herself.
    Sadie, as usual, was the exception that proved the rule.
    “I don’t get it,” she admitted, “but I don’t get most of what you do these days and it seems to work out, sooo…” Sadie’s sequined top scraped the frayed upholstery of the seat as she shrugged. “Least you can do is give it a shot.”
    “Right. Yeah.”
    The registrar had asked to come by after work so they could talk about her three years of college and check if she could transfer her course credits. Hazel’s shift had been over for an hour. And while finding the college in the maze of streets in East LA hadn’t been easy, the more she waited, the greater the odds of missing her appointment altogether became.
    Hazel sucked in a breath and pulled the