Insider (Exodus End #1)(81)
Author: Olivia Cunning

“Oh God, is that really what I sound like?” Toni asked, her pretty face screwed up with displeasure. “Delete it.”

“Hell no, I’m not deleting it. I’m making it your ringtone.”

Her mouth dropped open, but she quickly recovered her shock and dove for the device. He yanked it out of her reach just in time.

“Logan,” she pleaded, her big brown eyes full of turmoil. “Please don’t embarrass me.”

“There’s absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.”

He rewound the bit of audio and played it again. He produced a delighted full-body shudder at the sound of her getting off. “You have to promise to call me every five minutes so I can hear this over and over again.”

“You are not making that my ringtone.”

“Uh, yeah, I am.”

“You can’t,” she said, fist planted on either hip. There was something sexy about her standing her ground, but that didn’t mean he was going to back down.

“You bet your fine ass, I can.”

She shook her head. “You don’t even have my number.”

Stunned that she was correct, his teasing grin faded. He didn’t have his own girlfriend’s—um, new friend’s—phone number? He’d completely neglected his phone—quite unusual for him—since he’d met Toni. The woman was a constant distraction.

“We’re going to remedy that right now,” he said. And he rushed into the corridor to retrieve his phone from under his pillow.

Knowing she would erase the cock-thickening sound of her sexy vocalizations at her first opportunity, Logan played it back and recorded the sounds onto his phone through the mic. It would lose some of the sound quality, but that was better than losing it entirely.

“What are you doing?” Dare asked. He was lying in his bunk, watching the TV built into the underside of Max’s top bunk.

“Retaining evidence,” Logan said with a wink.

He grabbed a cola out of the refrigerator and hurried back to the lounge, flipping through a series of text messages, Facebook notifications, and missed calls that didn’t interest him in the least.

“I brought you something to wash the taste of my cum out of your mouth,” he said, trying to embarrass Toni. She didn’t so much as blush. She was too busy scowling down at her smartphone.

“What’s wrong?”

He handed her the bottle of cola. She opened it and took a long swallow, but avoided his inquisitive gaze.

“Toni?”

She set her phone and the bottle aside so she could massage her temples. “It’s nothing.”

It obviously wasn’t nothing. She was upset. “You can tell me.”

“It’s just the mean things my editor says to me. Rattles my confidence.”

“Shouldn’t your editor support you?”

Toni laughed hollowly. “Not when I took her dream assignment away from her.”

Logan lifted her phone from the table and read the string of messages still displayed on her screen beneath the name Susan Brennan. Brennan? Why did that name sound familiar?

His jaw dropped several additional inches with each text message he read.

Are you on your way home yet? I have my bag packed and ready to go. We both know you don’t have what it takes.

Good thing your mom owns the company. There’s no way you would have been hired for the job if you had to prove your worth.

Are you not answering my messages because you know I’m right or because you’re too ashamed to admit you’ve already failed?

Logan couldn’t believe anyone would be so mean to someone as sweet as his Toni.

“What a bitch!” he said.

He began typing a response. Listen, bitch, IDK who u think u r bu—

Toni jerked her phone out of his hand and started backspacing to delete his message.

“Why are you deleting that?”

“You can’t send her a text like that. She’s my boss! I owe her my respect.”

Logan covered his eyes with one hand. “Your respect? She obviously doesn’t respect you. You don’t owe her a goddamned thing.”

“But she’s right.” Toni wrung her hands together in her lap. Her hair slid forward to hide her troubled expression. “I wouldn’t have this job if my mom didn’t own the company. I don’t have any experience. I do suck at this.”

He sat beside her and rubbed her back. “What are you talking about? You’re doing a great job.”

She shook her head. “I’m having too much fun to be doing a great job.”

“Just because work is fun doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Unless you think my entire band is a failure.”

Her head snapped up. “Of course I don’t think that!”

“And I don’t think you’re going to fail. I hate to brag, but I’m an excellent judge of talent, and you, Ms. Nichols, are talented. Just look at how fast you learned how to give a fantastic hummer.”

“I’ll add it to my resume,” she said glumly.

He wasn’t going to let this drop until she was happy and smiling again, so she might as well stop resisting his attempts at a pep talk.

“Do you know how hard it is to get my bandmates to talk about their personal lives?”

She opened her eyes wide and nodded.

“And yet you got each of them to talk to you about things they never discuss with members of the press.”

“That’s because they don’t see me as a real journalist, so I’m obviously doing it wrong.”

“Or you’re doing it right and just don’t realize it. Like when we have sex. You worry that you aren’t doing it like everyone else does it, but when you forget to be anxious, you’re amazing.”

“I am?”

“Amazing.”

She smiled, and he swore the roof of the bus opened up, letting in rays of sunshine to brighten his day.

“Not that you’re an expert yet,” he said. “I do still have a lot to teach you in the bedroom.”

“You haven’t taught me a thing in the bedroom yet.”

He gaped at her. “What? I’ve taught you plenty. I mean, you went for that sixty-nine all on your own—very nice, by the way—but the other stuff—”

“Didn’t happen in a bedroom. It happened in this lounge and a limo and your bunk . . .”

He chuckled. “I guess it is time to introduce you to a real bed.”

“Tonight,” she promised, giving him a chaste kiss on the lips. “But first I need to interview Reagan.”