Scandalous - Michael B Jordan

chapter 6

he grabs my arm. "you're not opening that door." for a split second, i thought he meant he wasn't gonna make me see my agent, cortez. i turned to look up at him to tell him it was fine, i'd have to face the music sooner or later, but he set me against the wall in the hallway.

"wait." he orders. goose bumps raced across my flesh as i watched his huge, muscular body move down the hall toward his bedroom. the memory of his intense stare and his hand on me as he fed me made me shiver. no man has ever looked at me like that.

not even in a movie. i didn't even know a single actor who could've pulled that kind of intensity off. which was a giant warning that i was in over my head, but i was too busy fantasizing about the most dominant, most masculine, most infuriating man i've ever met and dangerously forgetting every reason why i swore off men.

i was tryna convince myself that just because he'd offered to send cortez away didn't make him trustworthy when he came back down the hallway dressed. black shirt, black jeans, and some black trainers, he was shoving a black gun in a holster on his waist, and he looked almost hotter than when he was parading around in nothing but his underwear.

forcing a screen-worthy smile as my traitorous stomach fluttered, i straighten my shoulders and looked at the insignia on his shirt. are all the bodyguards at azul and associates ridiculously ripped? my previous bodyguard, steelo, was a few inches shorter than bakari and had about thirty pounds less of muscle, but he'd still been ripped by hollywood standards—by any standards, actually.

steelo had also been movie star handsome. i told him he should be an actor, but he'd only laughed. i couldn't picture bakari laughing. i couldn't even picture him in a full smile. that was the other huge difference between him and steelo. steelo had actually been nice, polite even. bakari wasn't polite. and striding toward me, he didn't even look cordial. he looked pissed off and battle ready, and i wouldn't wish him on my worst enemy.

"give me a timeframe." he clips, moving past me in a wave of masculine scent i wanted to bottle and sniff every night for the rest of my life.

"timeframe for what?" there was something wrong with me, because all i could think about was that he was even hotter pissed off. he stopped at the door as cortez pounded on it again.

"how long you want your agent here?"

"funny." i laugh without humor.

i made cortez. he'd gotten me my first break, but i've earned every contract after that because i've worked my ass off and done everything right. tez was set for life from the money he'd made off me and the subsequent a-listers who'd flocked to him hoping to get a piece of the magic he claimed he created for me.

he was rich beyond his dreams because i've been too stupid and too young to negotiate a better contract with him, but he acted like every breath i took was because of a privilege he'd provided. i was over it.

i've been over it, been planning for the past year to fire tez after this movie. i was sure he suspected what was coming, because his assholeness had upped to a new level and he's been riding me hard about signing the deal for the next movie, but i outright ignored him.

looking completely unamused, bakari stood by the door with his hand on his hip. "there was nothing funny about the question."

"more like ironic," i explained. "tez's a class-a asshole, and he'll stay as long as it takes for him to rip me a new one for whatever i did last night, then lecture me how he made me, and try to strong-arm me into signing the next deal, which i won't do. so, however long that takes." i waved my arm toward the door. "let mr. my-shit-doesn't-stink in and you can witness it all for yourself."