That is actually a good idea. I made a note to get some tablets so we could have clerks taking orders while people were still in line. Their order would be done by the time they got to the register.
Which reminded me.
“I notice you didn’t say anything about the register,” I pointed out, splitting up the stack and handing her half. The register was a beautiful turn-of-the-century mechanical type that I spent the better part of three months restoring to proper working order.
It was an affectation that I couldn’t get over. Sam had also come to like it quite a lot. While it didn’t help with credit cards or the like, a surprising amount of people in Sunrise Valley still paid exclusively in cash.
Besides, it was adorable. It made the most splendid ringing sound and became an iconic fixture of A Game of Scones. Even when people paid debit or credit, we still rang them up with the register. People enjoyed the sound and the little numerical plates popping up in the glass display.
Sam looked at her stack of papers and picked them up like they might bite her. “Everybody loves the register. That doesn’t count.”
“How interesting.”
Immediately Sam bunched up one of the applications and tossed it halfway across the room into the trash without looking. For a moment I was concerned that she might not realize what she had done. Then she lifted her gaze from the papers and looked at the trashcan. “Did I just?”
“You did, that was impressive.”
A blush took hold of her creamy skin and she ducked her head back to the applications. “Yeah well, I am pretty awesome,” she muttered, balling up another application and tossing it wide of the trashcan this time.
“You’ll hear no arguments from me.”
With Sam helping me with the interviews I was confident that we could pick a couple of solid people to employ. If she would stop throwing applications into the trash.
7
Claire
The meeting was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I never thought they would take it easy on me but I did not expect how severe Torrey could be.
He was the closest thing to a professional friend I had but the man was scathing with his criticism. I tried not to take it personally. Especially when he would come up with even better alterations that I had never thought of.
Most of the meeting went like that. I felt nervous and concerned that they were being unnecessarily harsh, only to learn that they were only trying to make the best ideas possible.
It was not personal, it was business.
I was wrung out by the time I called Thomas and let him know I was coming home. Finally.
On the ride home I went over the meeting in my head, looking at it from new angles I had not thought of before. Throughout all of it, despite the harshness, not a single one of them voiced their disinterest.
In fact, I was beginning to realize that their aggressiveness was a sign of keen interest. They would never have bothered to put so much effort into sorting out zoning laws for upstate New York if they were not interested.
When I unlocked the door to our apartment I was practically giddy with excitement. Thomas would be thrilled. The meeting had been rocky but it was undoubtedly good news. McLaughlin, Torrey, and Cirose all agreed to look over the data I had given - which included hasty amendments - and would call me back in a few days.
Two steps into the foyer and Thomas was there, wrapping me in his powerful arms like twin pythons. My worries emptied out like an overturned pitcher.
I loved it when he crushed me to his chest. The scent of him filled me and I let my muscles relax as I laid against him.
This was what I had missed. All throughout the meeting I could not help but think that if Thomas was there I would not have been nearly as nervous.
There was no safety net for me here. No senior consultant that could swoop in and clean up my mess if I screwed up.
Thomas’ support meant the world to me and if I was being honest, he looked delicious in a three-piece suit. Sometimes he dressed up for me so I could take his clothes off. It was the adult equivalent of unwrapping a birthday present.
“How was your day?” he asked, putting me at arm’s length and looking into my eyes with those deep black soulful eyes of his.
“I met with some potential business partners,” I said, savoring the way his attention hung on my every word. He followed me like an adorable puppy as I kicked off my shoes and padded into the kitchen to get a cup of juice.
“And?” he prompted when I straightened up from the fridge.
“And, they said they would let me know in a few days, but I think it’s a done deal. This is big, Thomas. Huge. Bigger than anything I’ve ever done on my own.” I leaned against the counter with my hip. I needed to feel something solid or I felt like I might float away.
“That’s wonderful.” His face lit up. I wanted to burn the image of that handsome, happy face into my mind so I would never forget it. “How about I fix up some dinner and you can tell me about it?”
As always, Thomas was incredible. “I like the sound of that.”
He swooped in on me and gave me a kiss on the crown of my head. It always sent a tingle down through my entire body and into my toes when he did that. “Good, I’ve got some ground beef and figured we could mix it up a little tonight and make some tacos and quesadillas.”
My stomach grumbled and let itself be heard at the mere mention of tacos. Our eyes met. My sheepish greens to his coffee darks.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then,” he said with a laugh.
I hopped up onto the counter near the sink, kicking my legs like a little girl as I drank my orange juice and watched him cook. Cooking food was such an important thing for him.
He cooked to celebrate, to comfort, to reward. It was his way of giving back even though he was more than giving enough in our relationship. In practically every relationship I saw him in, for that matter.
As I sat there watching him, enfolded in the glorious smells that filled the kitchen, I wondered how I could broach the subject that I had planned this in one of our first meetings.
Thomas was far from stupid. He would figure it out eventually and it would be better if he heard it from me sooner rather than later. Except, it was so nice coming home with good news and having a nice celebratory dinner that I didn’t want to ruin it.
Which is precisely why you need to. That made more sense than I wanted it to. I had learned, through great heartache, that my natural instinct with regard to relationships was absolute shit.
If my knee-jerk reaction was to do one thing, I needed to do the exact opposite.
Without fail every time I leaned into my instincts on something like this, it blew up in my face.
“Hand me the cumin, would you?” came Thomas’ smooth rumbling bass. I reached over to the spice rack and handed it to him. Our hands touched and I felt the tingling spark that always accompanied any contact with him.
How had I been so unaware of my own feelings for him for so long? My body had given me every possible signal at a primal level that did not involve my woefully inept brain.
Over dinner, I told Thomas about the meeting. I glossed over the aggression of our potential partners, not because I wanted to downplay it but because I worried that he might take it the wrong way.
As soon as I did, I realized the hypocrisy of what I was doing. “Actually,” I said after taking a large bite out of the mouth-watering taco. The sour cream, beans, and spicy meat mingled perfectly with the insane amount of toppings I piled on. “They were pretty aggressive. I thought they hated the ideas at first.”
Thomas tensed, the tendons on the back of his hands jumped out when he gripped his utensils tightly. “Were they rude?”
I loved when he got all protective. I tried to hide the blush by ducking my head a little.
“No, not precisely. It can be hard to explain. They were interested or else they would not have been nearly as critical. I think they wanted it to work as badly as I
did and saw the value in it.”
“Then why would they be so aggressive over it?”
Poor, sweet, Thomas. I loved him with all my heart but he had a naïve streak in him a mile wide. I never wanted him to lose that. And I was deathly afraid that involving him further in the business dealings would do just that.
However, I had vowed that I would never fail to trust him. If I trusted him, then didn’t I also have to trust that he would be okay?
“A lot of business people are really aggressive. They don’t mean it personally, it’s more of a…” I groped the air for the words. Turned out that I didn’t need to. Thomas understood.
“Like adrenaline,” he answered for me.
My fingers snapped at the answer. “Yes, exactly!” He chuckled at my excitement and took another bite of his quesadilla. “Despite their aggressive stances, I listened to them and as it turned out we found quite a few faults in the original business plan. McLaughlin, he’s an angel investor, found some obscure references to a few tax laws that would help the project save quite a bit of money.”
“What’s an angel investor?”
“It’s not as nice as it sounds,” I explained, scooping up some toppings that had fallen out of my taco shell. “The gist is, they’re an individual with a lot of money to invest. Rather than a firm that manages investments they prefer to oversee it personally. That can be good or bad but I personally know McLaughlin never backs a losing plan. He would have been the first one to walk out.”
He had a notorious reputation for being flighty. However, if I could snare him in the first meeting he wasn’t likely to pull out.
I was reminded of how much better this food was than the fairly expensive tex-mex restaurant that Beth had taken me to. The one where she terrorized that poor waiter.
“So basically a rich guy who wants to make more money by investing in a business?” asked Thomas.
It struck me then that there was a lot Thomas didn’t know. I had years of schooling and experience afterward to learn all this. Thomas didn’t care about this stuff normally, he had no reason to know the different terminologies.
There was no way I could bring Thomas with me to the next meeting, something I had practically promised to the three potential business partners. They wanted to know who they were getting into bed with, so to speak. I had a hard time convincing them not to stop the car outside A Game of Scones and go in to meet Thomas when I was giving them a tour of the town.
Ugh, now I can’t get the idea of those old men trying to sleep with Thomas, my Thomas, out of my head.
Gross intrusive thoughts aside, there was only one solution to the problem. I couldn’t help but grin at the thought of it.
I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “How would you like a crash course in business consultancy and finance?”
Thomas had his turn enlightening me about cooking and baking, now it was my turn.
8
Thomas
My head was spinning. I had never been much of a guy for numbers. Basic math and algebra, sure. But once things got into abstract numbers, percentages, and tables with scaling differentials I was lost.
Claire, bless her soul, was impossibly patient with me and fielded every question I had to throw at her with aplomb. It reminded me just how smart she was and the fact that she was willing to take time to explain everything to me was more than I could have asked for.
A lot of the things Claire used to tell me about the business I merely nodded along with and tried to look thoughtful.
Half the time I didn’t fully understand, and when I told her she smacked me on the arm and said, “Don’t you ever pretend you understand something like that again. If you don’t know, even if you are surrounded by other people, ask. Ask me if you can but never be afraid to ask for clarification.”
It was kind of hot being scolded by Claire.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes at me and continued with the lecture, moving onto a cursory overview of tax laws. I did my best not to make my eyes glaze over but it was a losing battle.
Around midnight Claire decided to pack it in.
“You did much better than I did my first lecture,” she said sitting down next to me on the couch and putting her legs over mine. “You are a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for. Please don’t think you aren’t smart because you don’t understand something.”
I leaned toward her and pecked a kiss on her cheek. “Anything for you Claire-bear.” She blushed furiously and picked up a small pillow to hide her face as if that would do anything.
With a laugh, I lifted her legs up and levered them up to dump her onto her back on the couch. She let out an undignified squeal and I was on her a second later, ripping the pillow out of her hands and caging her on either side of the couch with my arms.
A predatory grin took over my face. I kissed her hard and deep. My tongue parting her lips gently.
Claire breathed a sigh of want and parted them more. Her tongue came out to play. She matched me stroke for stroke, her hands exploring my body until she found my jeans and began to unbutton them.
I bit her lip gently and tugged, eliciting a throaty moan from her. She worked my pants off with renewed vigor and I shimmied out of them to help her.
Leaning back onto my knees I pulled up the skirt she was wearing, tracing my fingertips along the inner curve of her thigh. Claire squirmed beneath my touch.
“I’ve wanted this all day,” she groaned. “All the time I was giving a presentation I just couldn’t help thinking about you on top of me. Me riding you and feeling you fill me up, Thomas.”
I was already rock hard but hearing her voice her desires so plainly sent a wave of shivering pleasure through me. I wanted her so badly. I knew she loved me, knew she wanted me too but there was no comparing to hearing it out loud.
There was nobody else like my Claire.
My fingers found the lacy thong she wore and hooked into the band, pulling it tantalizingly slow down her legs and tossing it across the room.
Before I could do anything else, Claire lifted herself up and onto my lap, grinding her core against my bare thigh. The heat and slickness of it drove me wild. She moaned my name, wrapping her arms around my neck.
I had never felt so jealous of my own body before.
With as much care as I could muster, I lifted her off my thigh and onto my throbbing cock. We both sighed in pleasure as I filled her up inch by inch. Claire was so tight and hot it took nearly a full minute to penetrate her completely. I groaned with the pulsing heat of her around me, enveloping me.
I gripped her tight at the waist, at first it was to ease her down but now it was to hold her there. I pressed her down on top of me. I burned with want and hunger but I needed this. There was something deliciously magical about feeling myself thrust so deep inside her.
Claire started to squirm. I looked up into her glittering green eyes and saw the dark depths of her pupils. Deep pools of want that threatened to swallow me whole. I wanted them to. God, help me, I wanted it so badly.
I let go of her hips. She didn’t wait more than a heartbeat before she was riding me like I was a wild stallion about to buck her off.
There was a sharp need in her for more friction and I gladly obliged by sliding my hand down and rubbing her nub as she rode me.
I pushed up into her with each downward thrust she made, our hips met with an explosion of pleasure that had me gasping. Claire wrapped her arms around my neck, dragging her fingers through my hair.
With each thrust she slammed down harder, her arms pulled tighter, her fingers curled in my hair. “Oh, Thomas. Just like that, don’t you dare stop.”
She was so tight and hot. It was like my cock was gripped in a silken vice. I groaned and held her against me with my spare hand while I rubbed in delicate circles on her clit.
I could feel the way she tightened on me until the pleasure was so intense it was almost painful. Her thighs clamped down on the sides of my h
ips. Our pace quickened. “I want you to come with me,” I said to her, trailing kisses up and down her tender neck. “Come with me, Claire.”
She let loose a deep moan and bit hard into the muscular meat of my shoulder. I loved it when she did that.
There was something about being apart that made me need her so much more. It was like the first time again. I could feel myself slipping. Claire would push me over the edge into blissful oblivion if I didn’t get her off first.
I pressed harder with my hand at her bundle of nerves in just the way she liked. Every thrust our hips pounded together and my hand pressed harder into her clit for good measure.
“I’m close, Thomas,” she panted against my shoulder. “Don’t stop.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Harder and harder I went, pushing up into her with such force that she was nearly thrown off me. She slammed down onto me and was nearly bounced off again with the force of my thrusting.
She let out a strangled cry. Words failed me. I grunted and groaned like a beast. The way her pussy strangled my cock with its rhythmic waves felt like I was being milked.
There was nothing quite like it.
“Claire I’m-” I only got the two words out before something bestial in me took over.
I grabbed her hips and clamped my hands onto them pulling her down as far as she could go. Some primal hunger within me needed to be as deep inside her as possible when I came inside her.
Claire clung to me like a drowning victim moaning and grinding against me as we rode the wave of our joined orgasms into a blissfully deep state of relaxation.
We were both panting by the end of it. Claire laid her head on my shoulder. She gently kissed the bite marks she’d made. Both of us were afraid to move. I didn’t want to break the spell. So we sat there, joined, our breathing evened out and we still we didn’t move.
Slowly we came back to our senses. Lovemaking with Claire was unbelievable. It felt like we were connected on a deep, spiritual level. It was so much more than any physical feeling.
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