Exes and O's (The Influencer #2)

by Amy Lea

“Jeez, Angie. You’re getting heavier every week.” Angie. This is the Angie. The mystery girl he loves.

Angie is a child, not a woman trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience.

Playboy Trevor has a child . . . with a heart condition?

Angie casts a skeptical glance at me. “She your flavor of the month?” she asks bluntly.

“She’s my roommate,” Trevor explains, giving her a gentle pat on the head. “And don’t listen to everything your mom says about me.”

I’m a jumble of nerves under the weight of Angie’s Mafia-boss stare when Trevor peaces out, footsteps growing faint.

There’s no logical reason to be anxious. Angie is a child. And I’m at work, in my own element, technically.

No wonder I work with babies. They don’t talk. I inwardly curse Trevor for springing this on me.

“Who’s your favorite princess?” “Rapunzel.” “She’s my favorite too.

She gets him back with some sizzling burns of her own (“Do you still eat dinner all alone every night?”).

I promise to come back and visit on my breaks, if she wants me to. This pleases her. She even asks me to write down my schedule so she knows when to expect me, which I take as the highest compliment.

“You’re gonna make a permanent imprint in the couch,” Trevor warns.

Linus has since been a loyal Liker of my posts on my non-bookish Instagram account, which I interpreted as a surefire sign he would be down to father my children.

we bonded over songs we mutually despise (Maroon 5’s latest),

Daniel (childhood love) Tommy (ninth-grade boyfriend) Jacques (Student Senate boy) Cody (high school sweetheart) Jeff (frosh week fling) Zion (campus bookstore cutie) Brandon (world traveler—the one that got away) Linus (Brandon rebound) Mark (book club intellectual) Seth (ex-fiancé)

“I listen! Most of the time.” “Sure you do.” He snickers. “Why don’t you declutter your room?

Or better yet, burn the Ex-Files items of the dudes already crossed off the list?”

“No. I’m just kidding. I can’t support open fires.

“Sounds like I’m your third choice.” “You’d be my first choice if you didn’t give me so much attitude.”

“Can I come?” I ask meekly. “You really want to come to work with me?” He squints, confused.

I’m tempted to prod him a little, ask what he’s thinking about, but I refrain, recalling how annoyed Seth used to get when I asked him that same question.

with Trevor, I don’t feel the pressure to do anything but just exist.

“Can I ask—” I stop myself before he can cut in and say no. “Why do you hate when I ask if I can ask a question?” “Because it freaks me out.”

I ignore the way my stomach flips when he says sweetheart in that thick, sexy, I-just-woke-up voice.

Trevor materializes behind me. “Ready to go?” he asks, eyeing Cameron.

I go to respond, but the visual of Trevor suiting up changes life as I know it.

Even in a completely shapeless jacket, his sex appeal has skyrock...

The corner of his mouth quirks up when he notices me blatantly ogling him like a tiger awaiting a hunk of raw, bloody meat to be tossed into its enclosure.

I think I may have just ovulated.

I try to ignore the press of our knees together as the truck slants downhill. Trevor doesn’t seem to notice or care, because he doesn’t shift away.

“Hey, thanks for coming today.” “Thanks for bringing me, even if I annoyed you.”

“Not at all. Everyone loves you. Especially Cam,” he adds, his expression unreadable.

“You make everyone smile.”

If you could picture any woman to break your non-relationship spell, what would she be like? Hypothetically.”

He goes stiff as a board. “I dunno, Tara. What do you think she’d be like?”

“I always hated that movie because that girl was me. I was the annoying one that no guy would ever want to date. Anyway, I think that’s the kind of girl you’d be with. The cool one.”

His small smile is the last thing I see before my lids flutter to a close.

One hand gently palms my breasts while smoothing over my thigh, parting my legs.

There’s pressure in my thighs as rough fingers dig into the softness of my flesh.

He teases the patch of skin above where I desperately want him. Like the pain in the ass he is, he takes his lips off my skin and meets my eyes in a seductive challenge.

“Keep going,” I whisper, arching my back to push against his compliant mouth.

Trevor is certainly not in between my legs. And his mouth certainly isn’t down there, despite the warm, tingly sensation I feel, as if he really were.

I’ve received my fair share of oral sex, but no one has made me feel like that

I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t fret about how I looked, or sounded, or tasted. Then again, it wasn’t really me

I had a sex dream about Trevor. And I liked it. Really liked it.

Who wouldn’t have a naughty dream or two about a person they’ve heard having sex through very thin walls?

“You coming?” Trevor’s deep voice is muffled from behind the glass. Nope. Not anymore. Thanks for reminding me.

Ever since I was in middle school, I daydreamed about meeting my future husband in front of my locker. He’d be the popular, slightly dumb jock in a letterman jacket who discovers my secret, nerdy charm.

I think there’s something special about not having to navigate the minefield that is adult dating.

After my R-rated dream about Trevor, and after coming to the stark realization that I only have two exes left and three more weeks until the gala, I doubled down on my second-chance-romance quest.