His lips settled into a flat line, his face going hard. “My phone’s dead. I’ll give it to you later.”
“Figures,” I mumbled. Either it was to piss me off or it was because he really thought I wanted to hook up with Clarence.
And if Weston thought I wanted to hook up with my ex, wasn’t it logical to assume that it was because he wanted to hook up with his?
Or because he already had.
I came around the kitchen island and crossed my arms over my chest. Unless we had a date to be seen together at some event, this was usually the time of night that I slunk off to my bedroom. It was where I should be headed now, but the tension between us was particularly taut, and I felt especially unsettled with our evening’s conversation.
He stared at me, drinking his beer, and I swore he could see into me, could see how crazy he made me. He stared as if he knew I needed something, and he was just waiting to hear me say it. He kept staring until I began to shift my weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.
“Go ahead. Ask what you want to ask,” he said, finally.
Do you want me? echoed through my mind. It hadn’t been what I was thinking, but now that I had, I couldn’t stop. My arousal hummed up a pitch. My nipples furled into tight beads.
I leaned forward slightly at my torso, wishing, wondering—if I asked him that, what would he say? Would I be satisfied with his answer or would it feel like another rejection?
I didn’t dare take the risk.
“What happened at the meeting with Sabrina?” I asked instead, hating myself as I did.
“What happened with Sabrina?” he asked with a sharp mocking tone, as if to say, how dare you even ask but also I’m so glad that you did. “Let me tell you.”
I didn’t want him to, not really. How could I enjoy this, hearing about the woman I was in a silent competition with? How could I not? I had this sick compulsion to know everything about what they’d done together, to somehow make her pleasure mine.
He set his finished beer down on the coffee table and took a step toward me. “She came into my office after everyone else was gone, when it was dark, so we were alone. She had that look on her face, you know what look I’m talking about. The look that said she was thinking about my cock. Remembering the way that I’d been with her. Remembering how good I’d been to her. She was biting her lip, kind of like you’re biting your lip now.”
I let go of my lip, and felt my face redden, having been completely unaware that I’d been biting it in the first place.
“She was probably remembering that ride in the taxi. We’d gone to dinner and she wasn’t wearing any panties so I put my fingers up her skirt, played with her. Stroked her until her clit was nice and plump and she was writhing in the seat. I could tell she was about to explode. The way she kept gasping, moaning, and begging, calling my name. But I wouldn’t let her come. Not during the car ride. We got to my apartment, somehow made it across the lobby and into the elevator. When the doors closed. I lifted her up against the wall, and put my mouth to her pussy. It only took a couple strokes of my tongue before she was coming all over my face. The look on her face said that’s what she was thinking about as she came over to my desk and leaned over with those nice tits of hers showing.”
I was breathing so hard, enraptured with his sexy, dirty story. A story that I shouldn’t want to hear at all, and I didn’t, yet I couldn’t stop listening, needing to hear every detail of his past, and of what happened next. Even though I knew when I thought about it later, it was going to hurt like hell. But right now all I could feel was the buzz between my legs, my panties going damp, the thrum of my want pulsing through my veins.
“She looked up at me with those big doe eyes,” Weston continued, taking another step toward me. “Fluttered those eyelashes, licked her luscious lips. And said, ‘Weston, can you please help me go over this report one more time before you present it to Phoenix tomorrow?’”
I swallowed as an odd form of betrayal started to rise up inside me, double-crossed by both Weston and my own body, which leaned forward and heated with his coarse words.
Weston let out a laugh. “You should see your face.”
“Fuck you.”
“I know, right? It was a good time we had back there in May, Sabrina and I. I’m hard just recalling it.” He rubbed at the crotch of his pants, and I could see that he was at least semi-aroused.
The want that was simmering inside, just barely staying tethered, pulled and strained, screaming to be released. I took a shaky breath. I could feel his eyes on me, could feel them watching my throat and my mouth and the movement of my eyes.
He took another step toward me, and I wanted to walk away and toward him all at once. “You want to help me with this, Elizabeth?” And I couldn’t tell anymore if he was taunting me or inviting me. Couldn’t remember if I should be offended either way.
An alarm bell rang in my head, a warning that this was wrong for some reason or every reason or maybe there was no reason at all, but I was scared, and so I repeated what I’d said before. “Fuck you. I’m going to bed.”
I managed to restrain myself so that I walked rather than ran to my bedroom and quietly shut the door behind me.
Forty-five minutes later I was still tossing and turning, still twisted inside from my interaction with Weston. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. About Sabrina and him, and me and him, and his cock, the way he rubbed at his pants, the way it felt underneath me all those weeks and weeks ago now at The Sky Launch. He was such a player that even when he wasn’t playing with other women, he was playing with me. Even if he didn’t mean to, even if he didn’t know he was doing it, I felt like I was always part of his game, always being shuffled around, never knowing which side of the deck I was on.
The apartment was quiet and I was sure he’d gone to bed too, but I needed to get out of my room. Just needed to be free for a moment, escape from the oppression of that closed door, anything to free myself from my thoughts. I opened the door and slipped into the darkness, quietly heading into the living room and then stopped short when I realized that I wasn’t alone.
Weston was still out there, sitting on his modern armchair by the windows that ran floor-to-ceiling like they did in his office, like they did in the bubble room. He hadn’t seen me, because he was facing out, looking into the city night. The lights were off, but the moonlight was streaming in, and I could see him clearly, could see the bottle of lube on the table next to him.
And, in his hand, was his fully erect cock.
His pants were open just enough so that he could hold it, and he was stroking himself, not too slow, not too fast. Just fast enough that he could enjoy it. And I could tell that he was enjoying it because his face screwed up into an expression of tension and release, tension and release, with each stroke. I could hear it, too. Hear the sound of his hand moving quickly over the thick shaft. The sound as the lube spread up and down underneath the palm of his hand. I could hear him grunt. The fall between the fast breaths while he worked to bring himself to climax.
I was fascinated and mortified. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to watch him, wanted to imagine that it was my hand rubbing along with his, my hand brushing across the top of his crown and down the other side of his shaft, up again and across the top and down and faster, faster, and faster. I wanted it to be my mouth. I wanted it to be my body. I wanted to be riding him. Wanted him to make those moans and grunts. While my thighs slapped against his.
I could imagine it so clearly that I felt my pussy clench on the verge of an orgasm. What would he do if I joined him now? He couldn’t turn me away, could he?
I took a hesitant step forward.
Just then, his breathing changed, his body stiffened. His hand froze and he shook as liquid squirted from the top of his dick all over his hand and glistened in the moonlight. A long guttural low sound escaped from his throat, accompanying his release. A sound that ended in a single word. A name. “Sabrina.”
I turned around and ran back to my room and closed the door. I crawled under the covers and pulled them up high, pulled my knees up to my chest, pressed my legs together, hoping it would calm the buzz between my thighs. I could put my hand between them and rub it away, like I had so many times thinking about him in the last several months. It would ease the ache between my legs.
But nothing I could do would rub away the ache in my heart.
Chapter Eleven
I woke up the next morning with a hangover of shame and regret.
I’d been so angry, so irritated, so annoyed.
The worst part was that I hadn’t just been upset with Elizabeth—I’d also been upset with myself. Because as every terrible thing had come out of her mouth, with every word she’d said, all I could think about was her pretty lips and her curved hips and wonder what the feel of her skin was like at the base of her spine. Wonder what sounds she’d make if she was under me.
Of all the women I could fantasize about, why did it have to be her that turned me on? It was bad enough to be celibate, bad enough to have to go months without getting my dick wet. But then for her to be the object of my horny daydreams, with her gorgeous face and her curvy body and her tight ass—even her arrogant personality showed up in my fantasies, as she argued with me and tried to boss me around while I made her come over and over again around my cock.
Whatever I’d done to piss off the universe, karma was a cruel bitch.
So when I’d finally found myself alone, I couldn’t take it anymore. All that stress and tension between us left me wound tight and needing a release in the worst way. In hindsight, I should have gone to my room to, uh, work out my frustration, but I was tired and lazy and still adjusting to living with another person. Maybe part of me even liked the idea of whacking it while she was next door sleeping. It felt defiant and provocative.
And, damn, was it a turn-on to feel like I was provoking Elizabeth.
I was already thinking about her, imagining what it would be like to sink between her creamy thighs and slip inside her, wondering if she was as hot and fiery inside as she was outside when I looked up and caught movement in the glass in front of me.
When I realized it was her reflection in the window, that she was watching me, I almost came right then.
I’d thought I was an expert in what’s-hot-to-spank-to. Nothing I’d ever thought up was as erotic as that moment. Not even close.
I’d quickened my strokes, and I could feel her shock across the room. I could feel her fascination. I could feel her want, her desire, just as heavy and untamed as my own.
But she hadn’t been willing to reveal herself or join in like I prayed she would while I focused on her image in the glass.
And that drove me fucking mad. Lunatic mad.
It wasn’t like I could make the next move. I couldn’t invite her to come sit on my lap without coming off as a perverted bastard. It had to be her. My cock was in my hand, but the cards were definitely in hers.
So as erotic as it was having her watch, as mind-blowing as it felt knowing that the woman I was thinking of was turned on at the sight of me hard and exposed, I was too pissed to give her any hint that she was the reason I was out there furiously beating off.
And, instead, I was an asshole. An asshole that refused to say her name—the name that had burst like fireworks in my head while I’d stroked myself, up and down—and instead chose to say another name. The one that I knew would make her turn around and walk away.
Afterward, sitting in the dark with my Elizabeth-inspired orgasm fading into memory, I’d felt like shit.
I’d wanted to run after her to tell her I was sorry for the lie, and for all the rest too—for the fighting and the pushing. I’d wanted to tell her how crazy she made me, and how crazy she was for pursuing this dream of hers, but also how fucking much I admired her for not giving up and for actively trying to be a better person than the person her father had been. Wanted to tell her how inspiring it was to know someone with integrity these days, especially in this fast-paced, rat race business world where it seemed like no one had integrity.
But I didn’t.
Instead I’d tucked myself away and went to bed like the good fiancé she wanted me to be.
I hadn’t expected that I would still feel so shitty in the morning. It wasn’t the first or fiftieth time I’d woken regretful after having been a jerk since the beginning of our courtship. It wasn’t the first morning after I’d jerked off to her, even, but it was the first morning I’d woken up and truly wished things were different between us.
Most days, we hit the building’s gym together first thing, and not because I tried to go at the same time she did on purpose. It just worked out that way. Today, however, I couldn’t stand to see her. If I did, the guilt would double and the knot in my stomach would tighten with the terribleness of the lie I’d told, mixed with the weight of the want I had for her.
So I skipped my workout and waited until I heard her leave the apartment before making my way out to the front room. I made my breakfast quietly and alone, drank my coffee, staring out the window at the street below, hating how silent the apartment was without her. Hating how used to her movements and noises I’d gotten in the last several weeks. She’d left a coffee mug and a spoon in the sink. Normally I’d leave those, but today I washed them out and put them away. Then I unloaded the dishwasher, thinking it might help unload some of the regret weighing on my spine.
All it did was make me late enough to still be there when she walked in after her workout. So much for slipping out without seeing her.
I picked up my briefcase and brushed past her heading toward the door. “Slept in,” I said gruffly. “Running late.” I couldn’t even bring myself to talk in full sentences to her.
Her voice came casually from behind me. “I need a copy of your health records. Can you get that for me?”
The request was out of the blue and her tone flippant. As though she hadn’t seen something so intimate the night before, as though she hadn’t participated by staying in the room to watch.
I turned my body toward her and tried not to stare at the vee of her sports bra’s neckline. “I don’t see why you would need that.”
She wiped at the sweat on her forehead with her towel then draped it around her neck. “I need to know if you’re clean. A woman would want to know this about the man she was marrying.”
The tension that had stretched taut between us the night before pulled tighter, as though any moment it would snap.
Shit. She was pissed.
Well, so was I. “Did you forget we are not actually sleeping together?” It hurt in my gut to say it. More than it likely hurt her to hear.
“I don’t want any STDs biting me in the ass later. If someone else found out you had something and leaked it to the media and then Darrell found out, I’d be screwed.” A single rivulet of sweat drew down her gorgeous neck and over her collarbone. “Besides, I should have some insurance that you aren’t fucking around.”
I took a step toward her, my empty hand opening and closing reflexively at my side. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to wring her throat or swipe the drop of sweat off of it with my thumb and suck it off. Or watch her suck it off. “No one’s finding out anything, because I’m fucking clean.”
She didn’t budge. “Then it will say so in your medical records.”
Goddamn, I wanted to bend her over. Wanted to pull down those tight Lycra yoga pants and show her all the things that she’d likely imagined while she watched me last night.
It was because of what she’d seen last night that she was demanding this now. It was because of what I’d said. I was sure of it. I considered confronting her. She couldn’t deny it—I’d seen her, and God, it would be so vindicating to hear from her own lips how much she’d liked it. I’d make her admit how chickenshit she’d been not to have joined me.
But I was chickenshit too.
And stubborn.
“I’m not getting you my me
dical files, sweetheart,” I said, staring at her one last long second. I straightened my tie, opened the door and, with more strength than I knew I had, walked out.
I hadn’t forgotten about her at the office. How could I? She was foremost on my mind as I tried to dig myself through the hectic morning.
But when Nate suggested the plan for the evening, I decided to pretend everything was cool at home and I texted Elizabeth, hoping that she’d forgotten our latest fight.
The office is going to Red Farm to celebrate landing Phoenix. Significant others invited. Meet at eight.
I was slammed on all sides with the new contract. Things were coming at me nonstop, but she responded immediately, so I was still holding the phone when the text came in.
No.
Goddammit. I really didn’t have time for this. I shot her a quick text back. Everyone’s going. You need to go.
Wasn’t that what our whole scam was supposed to be about anyway? Being seen together?
I dropped my phone on my desk and tried to catch up on the emails I was frantically sorting through. The phone buzzed less than five minutes later. Are you going to get me what I asked for? the message read.
Obviously she hadn’t forgotten anything.
I’m not getting you shit, I typed back, instantly fired up.
I’m not going anywhere, she replied.
I stood up from my desk quickly, wanting to flip it. Or kick something. Or at least throw some darts, but I didn’t have time for that because we had an emergency morning meeting to celebrate landing such a big account and to announce it to the staff. I gathered my things and went downstairs to the conference room.
Thankfully Nate was making the announcement to the team, so I didn’t have to be friendly and boisterous. While he did his stuff, I tried once again to get Elizabeth to come with us.
It’s going to seem weird if my fiancée isn’t at the celebration, don’t you think? I typed.
I made sure my phone was on silent so as not to interrupt the meeting, then stared at it, waiting for her reply. Seconds ticked by feeling like hours, but she replied not too much later. At this short notice, I don’t give a fuck. I’m not at your beck and call.
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