Mr. Absolutely Not! (The Seattle Svenssons #1)

by Alina Jacobs

“I’m in my thirties. Compared to the college-age girls you usually sleep with, I’m shocked you don’t think I’m geriatric.”

“I can hear you talking, and—word to the wise from someone who’s been in the corporate world longer than you’ve been shoving tampons up your vaginas— save your shit-talking for girls’ night, not the office!”

“You think you’ll get in good with her and she’ll talk sweet nothings into my ear and you’ll get a promotion? Guess what, smartass—you miscalculated. I can’t stand Mandy. Even if you tied her down and force-fed her coffee and fried pastry until she agreed to sing your praises to me, I wouldn’t care. I am not someone who you can use social engineering to manipulate. Save that for the idiots we milk for investment cash. If you want to impress me, bring in a contract. Don’t think you’re going to coast on your frat-boy drinking-buddy bullshit.”

The possessiveness is immediate. Unyielding. “She’s mine.” I manage to relax my clenched fist before I can punch Isaacs in his gelatinous face.

“What do you know about grocery shopping, Lauren?” Gran snorts. “I thought your boyfriend dumped you because you weren’t wife material?” My father sucks in a breath then slowly backs out of the room.

“Fight! Fight!” Gran yells as my sisters roll around on the floor screaming and hitting each other.

Outside, we hear a lawn mower rev up. “Now you’ve done it!” my mom screams at us. “You’ve upset your father. He’s going to be out there all afternoon mowing the lawn!”

I take the pink panties out of the bag, close my eyes, and press the fabric against my face. These have not been washed. They smell like her and something deeper. I want to feel them soaked with her juices, want to see my cum all over the pale-pink fabric. I crave it.

“You’re a big boy,” she slurs angrily. “You are fully capable of sucking your own dick.”

“No, sweetheart, because firing you would mean I have to let you out of my sight, and that is never, ever going to happen again.”

“And a man is a man. Working-class men have the biggest cocks, Mandy,” Gran tells me sagely,

“Call me Gale! Mrs. Miller is my mother-in-law.” “Crusty old cunt,” Gran mutters.

“Praise jeebus.” Gran throws up her hands. “Salinger’s the real baby daddy. We’re all rich! Kick that lump of barely sentient used lubricant to the curb.”

“You’re being stalked by a violent man, Sweetheart. Fuck respecting your wishes and fuck your boundaries. I’m going to find him and annihilate him.”

“I am going to make sure you know you’re mine and make you taste the blood after I kill this motherfucker.”

“Ooh, look—it’s a penis!” She holds up the molded white-and-pink-striped bath bomb then drops it. The water fizzes pink as the penis shrivels up and dissolves, fizzing wildly. I stare. “That’s not disturbing.” “I’m a witch, mwa-ha-ha!” She laughs, kicking her feet in the pink water, flicking some of it on me. I’m in love with her. The realization is a punch in the chest. I need to get out before I propose marriage.

“See, I’m like a cockroach—I was born in garbage, I have a hundred siblings, and I can survive in a nuclear wasteland on spite and shit. Can you?”

“The locking-you-in-the-penthouse trick wasn’t going to work again, because I was afraid if I kissed you, you’d cut off my balls. Jail was the safest place for you to be while I dealt with Jaxon.”

“I’d hit that no matter what you’re wearing.”

“Get off my grass,” Salinger yells at more of his brothers. Several of them give him the finger and flop down on the lawn.

“Only because I love you, we can have a wedding on my lawn.” He nuzzles my neck. “I’m glad you weren’t scared off by my family. That means I can propose.”

Gran hikes up the bodice of her dress. “Mandy’s new husband is going to ride that hard tonight. You don’t want clumps of hair coming out. That’ll ruin the mood. Almost as bad as the time the teeth of this guy I was seeing came out right as he was going down on me. Thought I was going to have to get the hot emergency room docs to fish them out of there.”