Overruled

by Lana Ferguson

“Objection, Your Honor.” I almost laugh. “This is irrelevant.” Ezra directs his attention to the judge. “This is completely relevant, Your Honor, I assure you.” Judge Hoffstein nods minutely. “Overruled.”

“You don’t look like a Dani.” “I’m sorry?” “Dani is a child’s name,” she goes on, her accent giving her voice a slight edge. “Are you a child?” “I…” Part of me is bristling, but another part notices that she doesn’t look as if she’s mocking me when she says this. It’s more like she’s sizing me up. “My full name is Danica.” Her red lips part in a smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Ah, yes. Much better. Danica sounds like a powerful woman.” She takes another sip of her coffee. “I like powerful women.” This entire exchange is bizarre, but my mouth is still turning up at the corners. I decide, for whatever reason, I like Mrs. Casiraghi.

It is not marriage I am angry at. Marriage is beautiful. It is my husband that betrayed me.” “Of course.” I flip open my portfolio to the legal pad inside, grabbing a pen and unclicking it. “Can you tell me more about it?” “There is another woman,” she tells me. “I’m very sorry to hear that.” “It is Lorenzo who will be sorry.” My lips twitch. I might really like Mrs. Casiraghi.

“He has been calling her,” she answers coldly. “I have records that I pulled. There are emails also. My husband is surprisingly crass with his mistress. I can’t imagine why woman would want to be wooed with talk of his cock.” She clicks her tongue. “It hardly works anymore.”

Two fingers of scotch usually helps prepare me to handle Dani’s verbal assault, which she insists on before she defrosts. A good therapist might suggest there is something seriously wrong with me if they knew how much I enjoy our strange dynamic.

Touching Dani is like scooping the honey out of the hive after the beesting. Totally worth the pain.

Her perfectly arched dark brows are pulled together over her stormy gray eyes when I open the door, her pink mouth pursed as she taps one heeled foot. I smile at her arms crossed tightly over her chest; she always looks like someone forced to solicit for community service when she comes over. “Hi, honey,” I say sweetly. “How was your day?”

I like knowing I can ruffle Danica Pierce’s feathers, this prickly woman who takes no shit. But she’s far from prickly when she’s with me like this.

“Take your bra off,” I grate out, palming my cock through my underwear to give myself a second of relief before reaching for the hem of my shirt to pull it up and over my head. Dani’s eyes are still trained between my legs, scowling now. “Don’t tell me what to do.” “Should I ask nicely?” I drop to my knees, running my hands up the insides of her thighs. She watches the path they take, her chest rising and falling more roughly now. “Or do you just like it better when I do it for you?” “Fuck you,” she mumbles. So prickly. I grin anyway. “I plan to.”

“Be honest,” I murmur as I lean in. “You’ve been thinking about my mouth all week.” “Of course I have,” she gasps as I slide my tongue up the crease of her. That’s new. It gives me pause. But then her lips curl as she adds: “Hard not to, with the bullshit always spewing out of it.” I snort. That’s more like it.

“Fuck you,” she says again, but it sounds less threatening in the breathy way she says it. “Happy to,” I mutter, letting my lips slide against the skin under her jaw. “On your knees. Grab the couch.” “Stop fucking telling me what to do.”

“There’s always a hidden meaning with you.” “I think you think there is, but I’m actually very simple. I say what I mean, Dani.”

“Can’t wait to see you either,” Ezra chuckles. “Try to keep the bullshit to a minimum, if you can.” “But, Dani,” he says with a wide grin, “you look so pretty when you’re pissed at me.”

Finding out after so long that the people you thought wrote the book on love have been lying to you your entire life…well. It shapes your ideas on relationships and love as a whole. It made me stop believing they could even really exist. Maybe that’s why it hurt so badly when I let someone in. When Grant decided that I wasn’t enough.

However, the most surprising thing that I feel as I gawk at the person I’ve been trying not to think about for the last two weeks—because again, it’s what I asked for—is the flood of overwhelming relief that washes over me seeing Ezra standing there. Like a breath I’ve been holding. Like suddenly someone let all the air back into the room. And that feeling fucking terrifies me.

“Oh, and, Dani?” It takes me a second to realize he’s spoken over the wild rush of blood in my ears. “What?” “You really do look nice in that dress.”

I’ve been lurking by the snack table for the last hour, watching his perfect head of dark blond hair weave through the crowd as he charms everyone he meets. Literally, he’s spoken to every single person here. I’m almost positive. Well, except me.

Seeing him interact so easily with my family and their friends, like he belongs here—it’s weird. It’s almost like he fits in here more than I do. I don’t know what to make of that. I know I shouldn’t care, that it shouldn’t make me feel an odd sting in my chest watching him fit in so easily, and for a moment I allow myself the fantasy of what it might have been like if it was me who had invited him here. Would he have wanted to come? Would he be having as good a time as he seems to be right now?

“That still doesn’t explain why you would come here.” “Because I just…” He huffs out a breath, frowning as he looks away from me. “I don’t know, okay? I just know I want to text you every fucking day, and I don’t, because you don’t want me to, and I just…fuck. How stupid is it that I miss you busting my balls as often as you possibly can?” I blink, trying to process this, and then my nose wrinkles. “I don’t do that.” “That’s the part you’re focusing on?” “I don’t know what to make of the rest of it. None of what you just said makes any fucking sense.”

“It’s okay,” he says softly, saving me the need. “I missed you too.”

“Someone was confident.” “Just wishful thinking,” he says with a lazy smile. I almost swallow my tongue as I watch him rip the packet open with his teeth before he spits the excess foil away. “Always wishful thinking when it comes to you.”

“I want your eyes this time,” he murmurs, his fingers holding my chin so that I can’t look away. “I want you to watch me make you come. I want you to know it’s me doing this to you.” I suck in a breath when he starts to move again, slowly. “I don’t want you lying to yourself for one more fucking second about how badly you want this.”

“You want this just as much as I do, don’t you?” My eyes try to drift closed, but a sharp smack across my ass has them going wide. “I said I want your eyes,” he reminds me. “You’re going to watch yourself come on my cock.”

Almost like a rabbit that senses it’s being hunted by a fox, and I can’t pretend I haven’t always loved to chase her. Even more so now that she’s slowing down enough to let me close the gap.

“Is that what you think?” “What the hell else was I supposed to think?” “Dani,” he laughs, actually laughs. “I walked away from that woman whose face I can’t even remember because from the second I saw you, for every fucking moment since—there hasn’t been anyone in my head but you.” He laughs again. “You might as well live there now.”

“Big plans this weekend?” I want to suck the words back in as soon as they leave my mouth. Could I be any more desperate? I don’t know what the last week has done to me, but it’s making me more and more disgusted with myself.

“Can you blame me for taking advantage? This might be the nicest you’ve ever been to me.” I roll my eyes. “I’m…nice.” “Sour Patch, you’re as prickly as a cactus.” And when I tense, he leans in, adding, “But I love that about you.”

“Well, you don’t strike me as a whiskey drinker, but I have some tequila and vodka behind the wet bar. I could cut it with something if you want.” “You don’t think I drink whiskey?” I cock an eyebrow. “Do you?” “I can do whiskey,” she says primly, determination in her eyes. I have to bite back a laugh. This woman will never turn down the chance to make something simple into a challenge. I get the feeling that even if I married this woman, I’d have to drag her down the aisle kicking and screaming. That thought gives me pause, my chest fluttering, but I brush it away as I move to the wet bar with a smirk. “Whiskey it is.”

“Overruled, I’d say,” he says softly, his green eyes shining with amusement.

“Not a fan of big weddings?” “Absolutely not,” I scoff. “I’d rather get married at the courthouse on a random Tuesday.” “How romantic.” “That is what they say about me.” “Mm. You’re as romantic as they come, baby.” “Is that another endearment we are set on?” He gives me a mock pout. “You don’t want to be my baby?” “You’re being purposefully infuriating.” “There’s no one I want to purposefully infuriate more than you, Dani.”

“Oh God,” Nate groans. “She’s going to marry him. We’re all going to end up working for Ezra Hart. They’ll call her the Heartbreak Princess. Or will it be queen? What happens when you marry a prince?” “Shut up, Nate,” Vera and I both say in unison.

“Are you an expert on the subject?” “No, but I’d like to be an expert on you, eventually.”

“Idiot.” “But I’m your idiot.” I pause at that, feeling suddenly unsure. I know what I said in the heat of the moment, but… “Are you?” His brow furrows. “What?” “You said…you said I’m yours,” I manage, my voice too thick to even remotely pass as casual. “But are you mine?” His smile is brilliant, and that increasingly familiar feeling of it lighting up all the dark corners hiding inside me is overwhelming. “I’ve been yours for ages, Dani,” he says, his voice a low, sweet murmur. “I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”

“Shut up, Dani.” I press my lips to hers, lingering. “Don’t be stupid.” She pushes at my chest, only staying close to me because I have my arms wrapped firmly around her waist. “Stupid?” Her indignant expression makes me smile; it probably means I’m a basket case, how elated her looking at me like that makes me. “Very stupid,” I tease, holding her tight so she can’t squirm away. “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight for another second…” She stops fighting my grip, her eyes softening. “What?” “Don’t you know?” I lean in, brushing my lips across hers, smiling. “I’ve loved you for ages, Dani. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”

“I can’t believe I love you,” she says with a laugh that ends with a deep sigh. “You’re an idiot.” “But I’m your idiot.”

“Did you hurt him?” I shake my head. “Not really.” “Pity,” she says blandly. I fucking love this prickly woman.

“There’s never going to be a ‘last time,’ Dani. Not for you and me.”

“You still haven’t actually answered me.” “Sounds like I don’t have much choice.” His lips curl. “Well, you can always object.” “Something tells me I’d be overruled.” He pulls me close, the folder flattening between us and his lips hovering over mine. “Absolutely, Ms. Pierce.” I can feel my own mouth curving, the smile forming there so big it almost hurts, my eyes watering as my chest swells. “Well?” His lips brush against mine in a barely there kiss. “What do you say?” I wrap one arm around his neck. “I’m sure I can pencil you in.” “I would expect nothing less, Sour Patch.”

“I’ll call you whatever you want, Dani,” he hums against my lips. “As long as I can call you mine.”

Fucking Ezra Hart. I never even stood a chance.