“In other words,” he said under his breath. “Yes, you are aware that she’s already named your children and decided where you’ll live out your golden years.”
“And what?” I asked, my arm flailing in his direction. “It would have killed you to jump in and help me out?”
“Sure, I could have done that.” He shrugged and reshuffled the bluelines. “But ask yourself this—why didn’tyou?Not ready to let Gigi off the hook?”
“She was neveronthe hook,” I yelled.
I wasn’t doing that. No, that was like having my finger on the self-destruct button, and pressing it just to see what happened. I’d been finding creative ways to destroy myself for years, but I wasn’t there anymore. Well, not in the past eleven days. Longer if we excused the momentary lapse in judgment at Alibi.
“You’re blind if you think the girl who wants tohandle some pipeisn’t on your hook,” he said.
“She’s a nice girl and I don’t want to embarrass her.” I grabbed the designs from him, again placing them in the correct order. I didn’t know what the hell he was thinking, putting the civil page above hazmat, or mechanical behind electrical. “Do me a favor next time and intercept,” I said.
My day couldn’t end fast enough. I needed to go to Tiel and get lost in her, and fuck away every shadow that developed around the edges.
Nothing I did made the time move more quickly. I raced through my late afternoon meetings and delegated some walk-throughs to Riley with the hope he wouldn’t fuck things up, and worked myself into a good fit of fury while I inched through traffic on the Longfellow Bridge.
The only benefit to this misery was I had plenty of time to plan what I intended to do when I reached Tiel’s apartment.
Unfortunately, I forgot all of it when she opened the door.
“Hey,” she said. Grinning, she looked me up and down as she leaned against the door. I knew my hair was a fucking disaster from dragging my hands through it in traffic, my tie and collar were wrenched open, my glasses were off kilter, and I probably looked a little wild.
I felt a little wild.
I stepped toward her and said, “I have been thinking about you. All. Day.”
“Sounds unproductive.” She gave me a displeased look but moved closer. Her fingers walked down my tie, stopping to study the tiny blue shells against the pink background. She played at being unhurried but her wide, eager eyes gave it all away.
“Get over here,” I said. Her hands were in my hair and my lips were on her before the words were out of my mouth, and somehow I managed to kick the door shut behind us in the process. “Bedroom.”
“Sofa,” she murmured against my lips. Her hand wrapped around my tie, she yanked me into the living room. She was a little fireball, all rowdy and starved for this brand of affection.
“Bedroom,” I growled, steering her toward the hallway.
“It’s like nine feet away,” she said. “Sofa’s right here.”
“I will be fucking you in the bedroom,” I said. “I will also be spanking the shit out of you in there, so unless you’d like to sit on the sofa alone, I recommend you take your sweet ass down that hallway.”
Tiel released my tie and broke out of my hold. I was certain this was the moment she’d be punching me in the face for being a prick, but she bit her bottom lip, gave me a wicked grin, and scampered down the hall while tossing her clothes off behind her.
Then I realized she wanted me like this, raw and demanding and prowling for her, and in that place I knew I wasn’t keeping anyone on the hook. I was all in for this girl, and every time her body bowed under my hands, I started to believe she was all in for me, too.
SOME ORGASMS WERE like fender benders. Quick, generally harmless, forgettable.
Others were more like backing into a bus. More damage, more memories.
And a select few were like a fucking train wreck. Blacked out, body-splitting. They turned you inside out and back again.
As I lay face down on my bed, Sam’s hand caressing my tender backside, I knew I’d never been so still before. There were tunes in my head—always—but I wasn’t fidgeting, nodding, tapping, fiddling, swaying. Just my breath, in and out, and the occasional shuddering aftershock from that train-wreck orgasm.
“What are you doing next week?” he asked.
Chewing my lip, I tried to remember my schedule. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Without calling up the calendar on my phone, I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to be at any point in time. Too many details.
“Oh, next week is the holiday. Yeah. The college closes at one on Wednesday, but of course I’m teaching at noon. I’ve been going back and forth on whether I let those poor souls off easy and cancel class.”
“And then?” he asked. “The rest of the week?”
