“Do it, Annabelle. Are you close?”
“Yes.”
“Then turn around and suck me. Because I’m right fucking there listening to you and tasting you like this. I think it’s time we had a summer redo, don’t you?”
I flipped as he asked and watched him, both of us upside down to the other. He tugged down my bra cups and pinched my nipples between his fingers, sending a throb through me. “Yes.”
With a firm but gentle hand, he pressed me forward and we got to work. He tasted so deeply aroused, and evidence of my pleasure was all over his face, his neck, even his shoulders. It was sexual. Primal. And also, it was so fundamentally us: working together, giving and taking, celebrating the things that made us feel whole. Being open and willing to see the gaps in us and fill them, because that was what we’d become.
Complete in the ways we could give.
And simultaneously being left empty by what we couldn’t give.
Chapter 34
Annie
JANUARY | Balance: $47,376
I was at work, poring over yet another iteration of the same contract for Hudson Romelski. I wasn’t even sure they’d changed a single word of it this time, but just changed the file name and sent it back to me. I wanted them to shorten the term for how longRomelski would have to exclusively drink this amino acid energy drink in public. Who only drinks one thing for six months?
I took off my glasses and rubbed my forehead to ward off the headache that built behind my brows. My phone chimed with a text. I normally wouldn’t let myself get distracted, but my eyes were about to cross from reading the same lines over and over. The message I got was an instant jolt of dopamine.
Nick and I hadn’t seen each other in person since I got back from Christmas, just having a sexy phone call to catch up while he was on the road that week. A phone call that ended in him reading to me again, continuing to shred my poor tender heart.
My heart that needed to mind its business.
Things had gotten a little too serious over the holidays. He called me at midnight on New Year’s to tell me he wanted to kiss me. And why wouldn’t he? I’d acted like a wife for our Christmas celebration. He’d paid all my travel expenses so I could go home and see my family. All of that without knowing the reason why I couldn’t afford to go home in the first place. He wasn’t in my business, but he saw a need, and he fulfilled it. And it didn’t read in an “I buy her stuff to keep her happy” kind of way. It was more like “I see her and what she needs, and I want to help.”
I hadn’t felt seen like that since my law school girlfriend. And even she had ulterior motives. She saw me and used the things she saw to manipulate me. Not a great person, in the end. But I wasn’t sure Nick had a manipulative bone in his body.
We were still playing like we were friends with benefits, but the way I was starting to feel about him scared me. They say, “Don’t do wife work when you’re just a girlfriend,” and I wasn’t even a girlfriend. I was his agent and friend with benefits. And yet, I wanted to do things for him. I wanted to make him feel cared for and valued.
So when his message came through that evening, I couldn’t stop my heart from fluttering, a giddy warmth spreading throughme.
Nick Oberbeck
I’m still lacking in volleyball skills, and someone once promised I would be taught
Funny, that was only if you taught someone to skate. Last I checked, that person still can’t skate
What if I try again? Different skate?
(raised eyebrow emoji)
Venice Beach, Saturday at 3:30? We don’t know many people over there and it’s mostly tourists
That’s during the day tho
Things are finally starting to go well at work
I hear you angel
I just want to hang before we do the stuff
I get it magic man
And I think I might be ready for a really big step
