The Ex I'd Love to Hate (The Lasker Brothers #3)

by Nadia Lee

You can be cautious and still get screwed over.”

I’d like to help, but my life is a complete mess. It’s just that most people don’t know because I try to avoid talking about it. Maybe my experience with Grant made me become even more private, but I don’t want to turn into a source of somebody’s entertainment. I have so little that I can’t afford to lose anything.

Still, nothing ventured really is nothing gained. You don’t get anywhere waiting for life to give you stuff.

Love and dreams are for fairytales, another luxury I can’t afford. Reality requires that I make money.

Emmett will never forgive him for depriving him of his wife so early in the morning. Unlike Amy, Emmett has no problem complaining—subtly, of course, so Amy doesn’t find out—when I give her “too much work.” Ironic, since he made her work past midnight every day when she was reporting to him.

He’s mad when I’m working; he’s mad when I’m not working. The fact that I breathe seems to irritate him. There’s no pleasing this man.

Wait a minute… Emmett knew about this! When I told him I was making Aspen run with me, he only said I was going to lose. Bastard!

No wonder she didn’t argue too hard to get out of it. I’ve been outmaneuvered and used. At my own fucking firm. That never happened until she popped back into my life.

Hux doesn’t seem bothered by my injunction. He’d be more scared if it had been Griffin, because Griff could kick all of our asses with both hands tied behind his back.

“You’re just pissed that Amy still has to do the team-building exercise,”

“Yeah, because you’re still mad at me about the time sheet thing.”

They deserve each other, given what horrible human beings they are.

My headspace is too jumbled, and I don’t like what I’m feeling right now, because watching some bitch hurt Aspen is making me feel small and pathetic. A bully who picks on somebody defenseless, just because she can.

Emmett also uses Lola’s service, but if he hears I fired her—and why—he’ll drop her too, and she knows it.

–Emmett: Is Amy going to be offended when she finds out why?

Given my sister-in-law’s personality…

–Me:...

–Emmett: Then she’s ...

Grant must be on man-PMS or something. He’s moody, temperamental and just plain weird.

I probably look like a hobo next to him.

“We have to pick something else. I am not going to work commando.”

“Why not?” She looks genuinely confused.

“Because it’s unprofe...

“Honey, it’s not unprofessional if nobody knows.”

“But I’m going to know that I’m not wearing underwear.”

She snaps her fingers. “Exactly! Unless you tell, nobody’s going to know. I’m so...

Nothing boosts a girl’s confidence like sexy lingerie.

“I thought underwear didn’t matter because nobody can see it.”

“But you know what you’re wearing underneath.

She’s convinced I need a different purse for each day of the week. And something like twenty pairs of earrings and ten watches. I only need one on my wrist. Not even Grant wears ten watches!

They’re more like…reminders. Like the fourteen neat lines tattooed on my shoulder.

This is what happens when I let my emotions guide me, because she still does something volatile and dangerous to me.

Although our time together was short back then, we knew each other pretty well—easily well enough to know which buttons to push.

Does she think that I haven’t tried to get laid? None of the women on my phone look good. And I never experienced that until she reappeared in my life. It’s all her fucking fault that I am impossible and I can’t get laid. Or that I’m plagued by erotic nightmares. Or that I keep thinking about her, wondering about her, and stew in pain, anger and resentment, old and new. And jealousy, too. Because God knows I got jealous as hell when she smiled at Matthias and Don. And I hate it that she makes me feel this way.

She’s the only woman who can drive me crazy like this.

Logic doesn’t exist; the old resentment doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is the scent of her, the taste of her, the heat of her.

Life’s too short to clean up somebody else’s mess.

She’s hiding something. I need to know what that is, so I can end this unnatural obsession with her.

I love her, but I can’t live with somebody who can never, ever be wrong.

But she’s wrong about Aspen. She doesn’t add up, but she isn’t stupid or lazy or crazy. It’s something else much more complicated. She’s a thousand-piece puzzle, and I haven’t even put together the edges.

I honestly need therapy more than sex.

He dips his head to reclaim my mouth, but I jerk away. He grabs my hair, looping it around his fist, and then his mouth is back on mine and he’s kissing me like I’m more important than breathing. Nobody can fake this kind of desperation. My head spins as I struggle to draw in air. The fact that he reacts to me like a horny teenager is driving me crazy.

And a small part of me despairs over the fact that no matter how much I hate him, I’m always going to crave him like a drug.

I’m obscenely wet, and he’s impossibly perfect inside me.

Grant grips my hips and drives into me in one swift stroke. I gasp, stunned that he’s already rock-hard again—and that having him back inside me feels even better than before.

Grant pulls back and drives into me again, harder and deeper. He grinds against me, his hands on my breasts. He nips the side of my neck, then sucks hard, like he’s branding me with his kiss. Hot streaks race through me all the way to the tips of my toes. I should tell him to stop, but I can’t. Nothing right now could make me tell him to stop. Not when I want more of him.

I’m 99.99 percent convinced I’m not going to notice anything special.

I don’t give a shit if she thinks I’m being unfair. She thinks me breathing is unfair.

she’s careful not to move her head too fast, ensuring her unbound hair covers her neck to hide the huge hickey I left there.

I know what I want, and I don’t change. Why else would I be twisting myself into a pretzel around her? Even though I know she used me, my idiot self still wants her.