“Probably.”
“Well, it’s going to be extremely uncomfortable to drive home wearing wet clothes.”
Oliver’s eyes narrow in my direction, his amusement from the situation vanishing from his face.
“Cassidy,” his voice is now stern. It’s demanding, once again like nothing I’ve ever heard from him. I don’t know whether it’s the alcohol or his attitude, but I feel a familiar feeling beginning to form in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you really think I’m going to allow you to drive home after drinking as much as you have? Have you seen these backroads? There’s no possible way you’d make it home safe.”
My nose wrinkles and I try to think of what to say in an act of defiance. I try to think of what to say to invalidate his point. The truth is that Oliver is completely right. I feel like I could drive, but the combination of the winding backroads and the storm hitting us would make it close to impossible with the amount I’ve drunk tonight.
Plus, my mom has Lucy for the night. It’ll be fine.
...That also means I’m having a sleepover with my ex.
“Fine,” I grumble. I’m not going to fight him on it when he’s completely right. “I still need something to change into. I’m not wearing cold wet clothes all night.”
“Let’s find you something then,” he gestures with his head to follow him and I have no choice but to.
I walk through the rest of the cabin, completely aware of the water trail I’m leaving behind me. Oliver guides me to his bedroom, surprisingly clean for somebody who’s lived a life filled with butlers and maids to clean up after his every mess.
“I know everything that I have will be too big for you, but it’ll have to work,” he says, opening up a dresser drawer.
He sorts through it for a moment before tossing me one of his white button-up shirts.
“Will this do?”
I take it, turning it over in my hands. I try not to think too much into what this all seems like, or what it could mean. We’re just two friends, two people co-parenting and trying to figure all of this out. That’s it.
“It’ll work,” I say.
“I’ll step out so you can change.”
He leaves me alone just as I realize that he still hasn’t changed out of his wet clothes. I make quick work of discarding my soaked work clothes and sliding into his dress shirt. As predicted, it’s loose...but it’ll work. It fits me more like a dress than a shirt.
I toss my wet clothes into a pile in his room before stepping out, Oliver completely out of sight.
When I find him, he’s in the kitchen – shirtless, making two more drinks for us.
“Figured there’s no point in letting the party stop now,” he grins to me.
I feel like a teenager, finding it nearly impossible to focus. All I can see is him. I’ve always stated that Oliver reminds me of a Greek god. His body is perfectly sculpted. I’ve never questioned his workout routine but I’m sure it has to be something serious.
My cheeks heat up when I think he catches me staring. I shake the thought from my head, tearing my eyes off of him and try to focus on the question.
“You’re right,” I say.
I’m mesmerized.
I’m pathetic.
In silence, Oliver finishes making our drinks.
“I’m going to go change,” he says before he vanishes, leaving me alone in the kitchen.
I wonder just how much trouble I’ve gotten myself into.
I’ve lost track of how many drinks we’ve had, although I have a feeling that Oliver has started to make them a little lighter on the tequila. I feel warm, and not just because there’s a fireplace going in front of us. My skin is thoroughly heated. I feel light and loose.
I feel good.
Oliver sits on the opposite end of the couch, now wearing a pair of pajama pants and a black t-shirt. I’m still struggling to take my eyes off of him, but I can tell that I’m not alone. Occasionally, I watch his eyes make their way up the curve of my calf, up to my thigh.
This was a mistake.
The conversation has gone from serious to idle chatter. He tells me about work, about the authors they’ve signed recently, and how they haven’t been able to keep a PR rep since I left.
“Maybe a part of me has wanted to keep the spot open for you, in case you ever wanted your job back, so I make it intentionally hard on them,” he admits, and I know that he wouldn’t say a damn thing if he wasn’t close to drunk.
“I miss it.”
Something I wouldn’t admit without the alcohol in my system. At least, not to Oliver.
“I miss the excitement of the job. Working for Crosby is nice. They treat me well, pay me what I ask but it’s incredibly boring. I fixed the one scandal that they had and now it’s like they’ll never have another.”
“I won ’t ask you to come back to New York. I know what your answer would be, and I don’t want to embarrass myself more than I already have lately. But just know that the job is always yours, whenever and if you ever decide that you want it.”
“That means a lot to me, Oliver.”
I love my hometown. I love the people. I love being close to nature. I love the food and how nothing is ever rushed. But I was just getting used to being in the big city. My mom is here, which makes parenting a hell of a lot easier, but my life was slowly becoming in New York. I miss Noelle and her ever-present ability to make me laugh or feel better about a garbage situation.
Maybe one day...
When the conversation reaches that lull, I stand and decide to go grab another drink. I try to make a mental note that it’ll be the last of the evening, but I don’t think I’ll remember that in a few minutes.
I stumble my way to the kitchen, placing my cup on the counter and making myself another drink. I’m so entranced in the process that I hardly realize that I’m not alone in the kitchen until I see Oliver place his glass down beside mine.
“A refill sounded like a good idea,” he says.
I don’t respond as I finish making my drink. When I go to step around him, something happens. Either Oliver steps back or I stumble forward. Either way, our skin brushes against one another’s.
Just a small brush sends electric shocks through my body, turning my skin red hot. The feeling stirs something within me that I want nothing more than to suppress. I think Oliver feels it too. We both stop what we’re doing, our eyes meet.
I see it then. The lust in his eyes, the want, the need. I’m sure that my eyes match his.
I try to think nothing of it. It’s the alcohol in our systems. It’s loneliness.
This was a terrible idea on my part.
In one swift motion, Oliver reaches out and grabs my wrist. Not enough to hurt me, but enough to swing us around. The small of my back is now pressed against the kitchen counter. He pins me against it, one hand on the counter by my side and the other still holding my wrist.
“Oliver,” I say his name, expecting some profound words to follow. Something about how we know we can’t do this. However, nothing comes out.
“Cassidy,” he responds.
Neither of us moves. Our eyes are locked, bodies pressed together. I feel the heat between the two of us rising. I feel the want and the need starting to swirl between the two of us, creating something indescribable.
“You know that we shouldn’t,” I convince myself to say. Convince me because I want this. I want him. I only say it because it’s the right thing to say.
“Why not?”
He asks it like it’s not an obvious question like there are not years of history and evidence stacked against us that illustrate why exactly this is a bad idea. The frustrating part is that I know he knows why.
Either he wants me to say it, or neither of us wants to admit it.
I don’t answer.
Oliver leans in closer. I can smell the alcohol on his breath now, I can feel the heat radiating between the two of us.
My eyes seem to focus on his lips, the sa
me lips that I fantasized about kissing every day for the rest of my life so long again. The same lips that I always longed to kiss during my workday.
This man is a weakness of mine. There’s no way around it.
“Cassidy,” the way he says my name sends a shiver down my spine. He doesn’t need to ask for my attention, he has it.
“If you don’t want this, tell me ‘no’ and we’ll forget it ever happened. Just tell me ‘no’ and I’ll back off. But if you don’t say anything, I’m just going to assume—”
I cut him off. For what feels like the first time, I’m the one who ends his sentence by crashing our lips together.
It’s hard to describe what the kiss is like, what the kiss triggers inside of me, or what exactly it means to me. It’s the first real kiss I’ve shared with somebody since I left New York. It’s passionate and warm, but it feels like coming home at the same time. The kiss wraps me in warmth, envelopes me in all the feelings I try to fight back when I’m around Oliver.
His hand lets go of my wrist, coming to wrap around me, pulling me flusher against him. The kiss deepens without hesitation. It’s like once our bodies remembered each other, remembered the feeling of the other, how good it could be at times, the hesitation vanished. Now, it just feels natural.
When the kiss breaks between the two of us, Oliver rests his forehead against mine. No words are exchanged as we breathe each other in.
His hands come down to my waist, gripping it tightly as he lifts me, sitting me atop the counter. Oliver pushes his way between my thighs and locks my calves together behind him.
There’s nothing else that needs to be said between us. Either we’re going to follow through with it or not, and I think our minds have been made up from the minute we both felt that spark. He kisses me again, deeper this time. I feel myself melt into the kiss, my legs pulling him closer to me until there’s no space between the two of us.
My hands start to wander first, moving to the hem of his t-shirt. They slide underneath, fingertips finally touching skin. They run up the dip of his abs and up to his broad chest, over his shoulders. They dip back down to the hem of his shirt and I tug at it.
Oliver knows what I want immediately. The kiss breaks, only long enough for him to pull his shirt over his head and drop it onto the floor.
My hands are back on skin, touching, scratching. I want to get as much of him as possible. It’s been so damn long. He’s always been my weakness.
He leans in, places a kiss right below my ear. He starts to work his way down from there, kissing down the crook of my neck, to the little bit of collarbone exposed by the sag of his dress shirt.
His hands come up, starting to slowly unbutton the shirt. He does it at a tantalizing pace, not at all the one of someone blinded by lust and passion. Each button he undoes reveals more skin. The more skin that’s revealed, the more he can kiss. He kisses every inch of skin that appears to him, stopping with the final button.
With the shirt unbuttoned, I shrug it off of my shoulders and let it fall onto the counter. We make eye contact again, only for a brief moment before Oliver is reaching behind me and unhooking my bra. It falls onto the floor unceremoniously.
His hands slide down my body, stopping at my thigh. He grips onto the skin firmly, pushing my thighs open even further.
“I have missed you, Cassidy,” he growls, his hand moving to my inner thigh.
My body shivers at the very idea of what will come next. I’m close to shaking in anticipation. I want him so damned badly. Oliver doesn’t tease me; he doesn’t make me wait. A definite change from how slowly he removed my shirt earlier.
With my thighs open, Oliver’s thumb presses against the center of my panties. I lean back on the counter, using my arms to support me. I succumb to him and everything that he is. There’s no fighting it – and right now, I don’t want to.
His thumb rubs small circles, right over my core. It makes me whimper. It’s been far too long. And Oliver is still extremely masterful at what he does. He continues to rub small circles, watching with a slightly amused smile as I squirm on the counter.
When he seems to be done toying with me, his hand leaves my core. I make a noise of annoyance, already missing his touch. He chuckles, reaching up to hook his thumbs underneath the waistband of my panties. He pulls them off, letting them fall to the floor with his long-forgotten shirt.
His hand goes back to my core, making direct contact at this point.
The minute he touches me, it feels like my body has been lit on fire. Warmth floods over me, more so than it previously had with the alcohol in my system. I arch into his touch, desperate for more. Desperate for him. Oliver’s fingers move skillfully, delicately. It’s like no time has passed since the last time we’ve done this.
I’m thankful for my hands supporting me, keeping me upright on the counter. My hips move to meet his gentle touches. I’m unable to keep silent, letting out soft, content sighs each time he touches me.
He brings me close to the edge but doesn’t allow me to fall over. Instead, I’m kept teetering, ready to lose it all at the slightest of touches from him.
He pulls his hand away completely and I feel like I’m going to lose it. I hate how needy, how desperate this man makes me feel.
Oliver moves quickly to discard his pants and underwear, getting them down around his ankles. Reaching forward, he grabs my hips and pulls me to the edge of the counter. It’s at just the perfect height that he can pull my thighs open again and thrust himself into me.
It’s a moment of completeness. I gasp, reaching out and wrapping my arms around his neck. I hold onto him for dear life, keeping our two bodies close to one another as he thrusts into me.
There’s a moment when our eyes meet, and I can’t decipher what’s hiding behind his steely gaze. Instead, I lean in and force our lips together. I taste the whiskey still on his lips, I savor it, savor him. He’s like a drug I thought that I could quit. One taste and I feel like I’m hooked all over again.
I feel it building within me, already close to falling over that edge. It’s been so long. He worked me up too damn well. I cry out into his mouth as I fall over the edge, my nails digging into the back of his neck, desperate to keep him close to me.
His thrusts quicken, quick enough for him to follow me down the rabbit hole. He grunts against my lips, his body shivering as he reaches his peak. He doesn’t move away from me immediately. Instead, our lips meet again in another deep kiss.
We pull away, making eye contact.
I know in the morning I’m going to regret what I’ve done.
Chapter Seventeen
Oliver
When I wake up, Cassidy is next to me in bed. For a minute, I savor it. I think about how badly I miss this, how badly I’ve wanted this for years.
But then memories of the night before start to race back to me.
We were both drunk. We both chose to do what we did. I didn’t take advantage of her, did I?
The problem is, now I don’t know how to approach this. Do we talk about it? Do I wake her up? Let her sleep? I know she has to pick Lucy up from her mom’s house at some point this morning.
I slide out of bed; my clothes are long forgotten in the kitchen last night. I think. I try to stay quiet as I rummage through my drawers, finding something else to throw on for now. I hear a soft groan come from the bed, whipping around I realize that my attempt at silence wasn’t good enough.
Cassidy is lying on her back, using the back of her hand to block the sun from her eyes. She looks at me, getting dressed in the middle of the bedroom floor, and I see realization dawn over her. The same realization that I was faced with when I woke up this morning.
“No,” is all she says for a moment. Cassidy sits up in bed, running a hand through her bed hair, “We...we didn’t.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I don’t know what the right words are. I swallow, looking at her.
“We did. I...it was mutual, right?”
&
nbsp; Now, I’m panicking. What if she thinks I took advantage of her? She was emotional last night. She was drinking. She’s going through a lot.
Cassidy doesn’t reply for a minute, sending my panicked thoughts into overdrive. She grabs the sheet off the bed and wraps it around her nude body, keeping it tightly around her.
“Where are my clothes?” she asks.
I gesture towards a chair in the corner of the room.
“I was going to throw them in the dryer for you. They’re still damp.”
She shakes her head, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it. I’ll just drive home and change before going to get Lucy. I need to shower anyway.”
“Cassidy, it’ll be just a few minutes. I can whip us up some coffee while we wait and –”
She cuts me off.
“No. We don’t need to spend another minute alone together, because clearly, we can’t.”
“Cassidy, last night was mutual, right?” I ask again because I need to know. I need to get rid of the nagging, paranoid voice in the back of my head who’s currently freaking out over what took place between us.
“Yes!” she says, exasperated. “It was mutual, Oliver, but it was a mistake,”
Mistake.
I know that she’s right, at least to her. I know that she wants nothing to do with me, or us. I know that she no longer cares about repairing our relationship. It still stings though. I feel like this karma, coming around and biting me in the ass. How many girls have I slept with in the past, only to run out on them in the morning?
I can’t fight her on it. If this is how Cassidy feels, I’m not going to change her mind.
I finish getting dressed, swallowing back my pride.
“Alright. I’ll let you get dressed. I’ll be out here if you need anything.”
With that, I step out of the bedroom and close the door behind me. I don’t know what drunk Oliver was thinking, but it was really damn stupid. He may have messed everything up. I feel like I’ll never get another shot to prove to her that I’m better than I used to be. I feel like last night just proved to her that I’m the same.
Cassidy leaves with a quiet ‘goodbye’ and I’m left alone with my thoughts. Full of memories and regrets and not a clue where to go from here.
Fake Love Rich Boss Series Page 41