Free A Demonic Bundle by Angie Fox, Lexi George Kathy Love

clerk.
    He opened his locker and stared at his mailroom smock, the royal blue badge of how far from Ava Wells’s world he was. The ugly coat that might as well be a serf’s rags in comparison to her royal finery.
    He sighed, pulling out the coat. As he shrugged into the dreaded garment, he made up his mind that he had to make a move soon. He needed to get his portfolio in front of someone.
    You are a photographer and Ava will date a photographer.
    He’d get his portfolio ready tonight and put it in front of either Finola White or Carrie Hall by tomorrow. He shut his locker with a determined slam, but then he hesitated. No one would probably even look at his work. They certainly wouldn’t take him seriously. He couldn’t rush this. He’d just started delivering mail to the fifteenth floor. Soon he would become familiar with some of the HOT! team and then they would be more willing to look at his work. It was the best plan.
    He just didn’t want Ava to forget about him. If she was even interested, period.
     
    Ava stared at herself in the large mirror as the stylist yanked and pulled her hair, teasing it into a style quite reminiscent of what her hair had looked like when she’d woken up in Charlie’s bed that morning.
    Ava closed her eyes, her head jerking with every tug of the comb, but she didn’t imagine the tugs being caused by the plastic teeth of a comb. Instead she remembered Charlie’s fingers tangled in her hair, his mouth on hers, his erection filling her, making her feel more complete than she had in . . . forever.
    Every moment with him had made her feel more alive than she had in years. And the last image of him, asleep, stretched on his stomach, his body bare, his skin golden, would stay with her forever. Even now, amid the bustle of models getting ready for the shoot, her body reacted to that final image.
    Final image.
    Leaving this morning was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she knew she had to go. And she had to go without saying good-bye. If she woke him and saw his crooked, adorable smile, those beautiful, golden-green eyes filled with kindness and warmth and desire, she never could walk away.
    And she had to walk away. Any contact with her put him in danger. He wasn’t a small rebellion like gorging herself on Devil Dogs or Ho Hos. Yes, he’d been a forbidden treat, but not one she could repeat.
    Finola wouldn’t allow it and Ava was frightened of how she would put a stop to the relationship. Finola had done horrible, awful things in the past. Ava knew she would do so again without hesitation.
    As if thinking about her made her appear, Ava heard Finola’s voice coming in her direction, insulting each model and stylist as she made her way toward Ava.
    “Gino, that makeup is atrocious. She’s modeling high fashion, not straddling a motorcycle for a calendar.”
    “Oh dear, dear God, please tell me she’s not wearing that dress. It makes her look like a poorly made float in some hometown parade.”
    “Bette, it’s hair. Style it, don’t turn it into a nest for returning swallows.”
    Ava didn’t have to open her eyes to know Finola had reached her. But after a slow breath through her nose, she did open them.
    Finola stood beside her chair, with Tristan, her toady, right behind her. They both regarded Ava in the mirror. Ava stared back, trying not to flinch as she met Finola’s pale grey eyes—eyes that saw everything. But Ava remained stoic, keeping all emotion off her face. That ability was perhaps the one advantage her years in front of the camera had given her. She could control her expressions.
    In her head she repeated that Finola couldn’t know anything.
    She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. She can’t know.
    Yet her little chant didn’t convince her. Finola White wasn’t just a controlling, powerful boss. She managed to know everything, whether you were good or bad, naughty or nice, sleeping with a mailroom clerk. She was like an evil Santa Claus, but instead of