Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
The only acknowledgment Forsythe gave was a sharp gleam in his eyes, a pointed glance. “I would thank you to break this pattern, and be sober tomorrow morning.”
“Then stop driving me to drink,” Ash said dryly.
“I make no promises,” Forsythe retorted, and swept that deeply mocking bow once more, extending his arm toward the door. “I follow where my young Master leads.”
“Asshole,” Ash said.
Forsythe’s low, velvet-and-sand laughter chased him from the room, a near-sinister purr. One that seemed to promise Forsythe knew something Ash didn’t. Some end game played by all the wrong rules.
And Ash wasn’t sure he wanted to know what would happen if he lost.
CHAPTER FIVE
BY THE TIME THE BOARD meeting was over, Ash wasn’t sure he hadn’t lost already.
Especially when he was bent over in the private bathroom in the CEO suite, losing his breakfast in the toilet while Forsythe rubbed his back and murmured soft, soothing things as if that could ease the raw, terrified nerves turning his stomach into a pit of churning acid.
That room full of stiff, balding, suit-stuffed men had eviscerated him. The cheat sheet hadn’t been worth a damned thing when they had barely even let him talk. They’d barraged him with questions, rapid-fire and accusatory, and before he’d even finished half a sentence in stammered response another would start up. If this was a trial by fire, he’d been completely and utterly burned—and only Forsythe’s hand against the small of his back, concealed by his chair, had kept him from running from the room in the first five minutes.
He coughed one last time, then straightened and flushed, wiping at his mouth—only to find Forsythe watching him, obligingly holding out a damp folded cloth and a little paper cup full of blue mouthwash, the scent so strong it stung his nose.
“Here, young Master Ashton. This should help.”
Ash took the cup and swigged it back, swishing it around his mouth before slipping past Forsythe to spit into the sink, then rinsing with water before dabbing clean with the cloth. “Don’t tell me where you were hiding that,” he said—only to turn and find Forsythe offering a plastic-wrapped toothbrush and a travel tube of toothpaste that seemed to have materialized from nowhere. Ash sighed. “Or that.”
“As I said, a proper valet is always prepared.”
Ash leaned his hip against the wide counter, the same slate as the floors and walls, and ripped the plastic off the toothbrush. He felt hollow, and not just because he’d just emptied himself out. “So you knew I was going to come running out of that meeting ready to puke.”
“I had an idea it would not go well, preparations or not.”
“They hate me,” Ash said miserably, then laid a strip of toothpaste on the brush and stuck it in his mouth, mumbling around the bristles. “They want me to fail.”
“They want to make money.” Forsythe leaned his bulk against the counter next to Ash, folding his arms over his chest and tilting his head back to regard the ceiling contemplatively, dimmed white fluorescents reflecting from the lenses of his glasses. “Right now, they do not believe you are capable of accomplishing that goal.”
Ash wrinkled his nose, then finished scrubbing his mouth out, spat, and rinsed before drying his face on one of the towels stacked to the side of the sink. “They’re probably right.”
“Are they?”
He eyed Forsythe sidelong. “You think they aren’t?”
Forsythe shrugged, so close one massive shoulder brushed against Ash. “You are here, when you could be running away.”
“That’s nothing. Being here doesn’t matter if I don’t do anything useful while I’m here.”
“Then let us be useful, young Master.” Forsythe straightened, pressing a hand to his chest in one of those light bows, even if it was significantly less mocking this time. And Ash might almost think there was actual concern in his gaze, as Forsythe fixed him with a searching, lingering look. “Are you well enough to work? Do you need medication?”
“No.” Ash shook his head, drying his hands and dropping the towel. “No, let’s get to work.”
“I am at your disposal.”
Ash managed a faint smile. “Going to be the Alfred to my Bruce Wayne?”
Jaw tightening, Forsythe scowled. “I am neither that old nor that wrinkled.”
With a grin, Ash folded his arms over his chest. “Are you insulted that I think you’re old?”
“You do not think I am old.” That scowl faded into another penetrating look—knowing, as if reminding Ash how he’d clutched at Forsythe’s arms, how he’d melted and gasped and arched when the man had kissed him like a tempest. And that tempest seemed to sweep over him in a rush of body heat as Forsythe brushed past him, sliding body to body in the narrow space for a moment before breaking free, voice drifting over his shoulder. “And I think you rather find my age appealing.”