Rule Breaker (Mixed Messages, #1)

by Lily Morton

“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” Joan Crawford

giving a heavy grunt which makes my dick twitch, despite the loathing I feel for its incomprehensible attraction to the man at that moment.

He’s an extremely well-mannered man even to those that he’s sacking.

Nothing gets past you. You’re the most astute man that I’ve ever met.”

“He’s one of the fairest men that I’ve ever met.

Gabe might be a complete bastard, but I sort of think of him as my bastard, and I don’t like other people criticising him.

I’d stared at him, mesmerised by the beauty of his face when it relaxed into laughter.

Either that, or he’s noticed the smirk that I can’t quite hold back. “Now listen to me, you little shit,” he says, coming towards me. Yes, it’s the smirk.

The truth is that yes, a bit of me does hate the fact that Fletcher is with him. It bothers me more than I like that Fletcher sleeps naked next to him, and is fucked by him, because I’d bet my rent check that Gabe is a top.

I know I’m considered good-looking, with brown-blonde hair, a thin, square-jawed face with green eyes, and an olive-coloured complexion.

My ears have always been an erogenous zone, and just breathing onto them can make me hard.

What bothers me is that I’ve somehow read Gabe’s character wrong. I’d seen him as a possessive man, who held what he owned tight to him.

“Please,” he finally says, and my heart melts slightly because he sounds grumpy and vulnerable. It’s a combination I never would have thought would work for me, but obviously it does.

The designer said it was a chef’s wet dream.” A salacious smile crosses his lips. “I don’t know about a chef, but the designer gave me several wet dreams.” He pauses. “And awake ones.”

The man is still an enigma, but now an enigma with a lovely home that I want.

and a smile fills his face that I have never seen before on his grumpy visage. It’s warm and clear, and so full of happiness that it ruins me.

I would pay money just once to have someone look at me like that.

“I’ll have you know my little corporate whore, that this is a very fashionable colour.”

I got one who is sarcastic, argumentative, scruffy, rarely where he should be, and calls me Shithead Boss Man rather than Sir.”

“He’d call you Sir if you spanked him.”

“Dylan’s been so kind and stayed here, forcing himself on me, completely beyond my wishes or instructions. It would be nice for him if he had company in his home invasion.”

“All that - the tender touches, the snarky conversation. It was almost like foreplay for sick people.”

“It was not foreplay for fuck’s sake. That’s the way I always talk to him.” “Well in that case, I’m surprised he hasn’t got you bent over his desk every spare minute that he has.”

Don’t choose someone who will never appreciate that gift. Don’t give to someone who will take it and never give back.”

He’s not someone you can have a safe crush on. That man is dangerous and damaged. I know it.”

“Has your friend gone?” “Jesus!” I jump. “I swear you need a fucking bell on you.”

“I always obey your orders,” I say indignantly. “I am quite possibly the best assistant in history.” “That would certainly be true, if you were the only assistant in history.”

and when he looks at you with his eyes creased in amusement, it can make you feel like you’ve won an Olympic medal.

Gabe laughs. “Because Dylan here has a birthmark shaped like Italy on his bum.” “Oh my God, you said you hadn’t seen it. You bloody swore,” I say indignantly.

“I know you can take care of yourself. Gabe’s always been full of stories about you, so I know you’re your own man.”

“I wondered, and now I know.” “Know what?”

Yes, Cinderella won a real prize - a man who couldn’t see her true worth until she fitted in the shoe properly.

And it’s just like at the beginning - as if we’re strangers working in the same room with no connection at all.

“Okay, where do we start, Obi Wan?” I nod approvingly. “I like that, my little Skywalker. Begin we shall.”

“Okay Master, I’m grabbing my pole.” “Please say that again, but make your voice go all husky, like on a Friday afternoon when you’ve been yelling all day.”

I just see his eyes, and in them is everything I’m feeling - a sweet heat and desire, and almost fear.

“Tradition comes from something being so brilliant and such a good memory, that you try to recreate it every time that you can.”

I’m aware of a couple of men enjoying their view of him, and I’m filled with a sense of pride and misguided possession because just for this brief moment, he’s mine.

I can’t deny to myself that I’m fascinated by him.

“So beautiful,” he whispers in a thick, hoarse voice. “These lips, so full and pouty.”

“I dreamt about your lips last night,” he whispers hoarsely. “What was the dream?” I hardly recognise my voice, it sounds so thick and heavy.

“They were wrapped around my cock so tight. Then you looked up, and I saw your eyes and those full, red lips, and I woke up coming.”

and before I can think, he brings my lips to his, and I taste Gabe Foster for the first time outside my incoherent dreams.

All I know is that this man is special to me. He has the ability to make me feel more than any other man I’ve ever met.

He makes me angry and challenges me, almost at the same time as making me laugh and filling me with a strong sense of protectiveness towards him.

He makes me feel alive, the way that my mum had always promised me would happen when I met someone serious. But I know looking at him that ...

But to see this hurts, because I know now that when he pulled back from me in Verbier, it wasn’t because he couldn’t do anything. It was because he didn’t want to.

He didn’t want me, and all the distance since then has been his way of telling me this.

“And which group do you find yourself in, Dylan?” I smile with no warmth. “I’m wherever you put me, like an obedient pet. Just like all the men in your life. I jump when you say jump, just like Rover the happy, executive assistant.”

“Nothing,” I say hollowly. “There’s nothing fixable here.”