I took my time dragging my eyes over her face. She was hot with me. Her shoulders straight and that button nose scrunched. I stayed on her lips a moment too long, and licked my own right where I wanted to taste her. I wondered if that milky sweet drink would taste better from her mouth. Her chest rose in a sharp intake of breath when I leaned down, not quite to her ear, but close enough so she could hear exactly what I whispered next.

“It’s not in a place you’ve ever gotten to see, sweetheart.”

“I despise you.” Those brown eyes burned with absolute loathing, making my cock pulse. Fuck, I wanted to take her right there. “If you’re trying to throw me off my game, you’re going to have to work a lot harder than that,” she huffed, then spun on her heel and strode back into the living room with that pert ass swaying in a way only a woman who had grown up swinging her hips to bachatas could.

“Glad you could rejoin,” Chase drawled as we walked back in. Alba responded by sending a “this is on you” glare in my direction.

“What did you say?” I asked Chase with more than a little hostility in my voice and was glad to see that he paled before muttering a “nothing” under his breath.

I was not in the mood to be fucked with.

“Chase and I were discussing that it might be fun to do a joint Q&A first,” Mona, who seemed a lot smarter than her boss, told us as she stepped up with a pleasant, if strained, smile on her face.

“Awesome idea.” This time I was the one sending a “see, I was right” look in Alba’s direction. She mouthed “I hate you like poison” in Spanish at me, then smiled placidly at Mona.

“That sounds great!”

“We usually do a little getting to know you thing at the beginning of the show,” Mona explained, while Chase scowled. “Just an informal Q&A where our producer sits down and gives you some prompts so the audience can get a feel for your background, your history, your personalities. We don’t typically show the whole thing at once but will use snippets of it throughout the series as filler. Just some fun little moments of levity.”

“Think of it as an icebreaker,” Chase said in a tone that very much said it’s going to happen so just deal with it.

“An icebreaker should be fun,” I said, which elicited a murderous glare from my co-host.

“Since when do you like icebreakers?”

“I love icebreakers.” I lied to her face and waited for the explosion I knew would come.