"Yeah, you do," I growled. "You're going full cowgirl next."
She ducked her head, laughing. "No, I mean," she started, her hands warm on my flanks, "I want more than tonight."
"It was never tonight," I replied, the words quick and rough. "You didn't come here for tonight."
She nodded once. "I know. I know." Another nod. "But this"—she wagged a finger at the bathroom—"definitely confirmed it."
It did. It definitely did.
23
Stella
"All I'm saying isthis doesn't require an expert," Flinn said, both hands held up in condescending surrender.
"But you're the one person who can do it," Tatum replied.
"I don't want anyone else fucking up my systems," he argued. "I don't want to hand over my documents and spreadsheets to some idiot without the common sense to preserve my formulas. I'd end up fixing it and spending twice as long as I would've if I'd done it myself." He wagged his hands, one last burst of surrender, before slapping them down on the arms of the chair. "But it doesn't require an expert."
"Not an expert but not an idiot," Tatum snarked. "Got it."
I blinked at them, not sure I knew what they were arguing about this time. Not sure I cared. More often than not, Tatum and Flinn debated everything down to the time of day and color of the sky. They were also the best support staff I could find and I'd looked. They got the job done, they did it well. Who was I to complain if they also sparred every free minute of the day?
"Stella, I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this," Flinn said. That was the corporate-speak version of "Mom! Tatum's being mean to me!"
"I don't have thoughts on the matter," I replied. "If you're electing to add work to your plate, that's your choice. As long as that choice doesn't interfere with our team and our priorities, I don't care."
I reached for my phone, turning my attention to the screen as Tatum launched another attack on…something about Flinn's time management that she considered relevant. Devoting this much of our morning huddle to winless, fruitless debate wasn't great time management either but we'd handled the essentials and I had a ton of new messages and alerts flashing at me.
McKendrick wanted scrambled egg whites and felt the best way to meet that need was a group text to—basically—everyone he knew. Awesome.
My boss Rebecca wanted a status report on two other clients but made the entire email about McKendrick and my promotion and how nothing was definite until my client was back on the field. Fabulous.
A sports news (but mostly gossip) blog wanted me to know they planned to run photos of me and McKendrick looking "cozy" at a number of public events last week.Cool cool cool.
It wasn't entirely unexpected after avoiding the world for a weekend. Save for handling a few calls and texts, I barely got out of bed. Not that Cal gave me many opportunities.
That man, he wasn't like the rest of them.
And I was gradually walking myself around to the realization that I liked it that way. Cal was a species all his own—genusman-brick—and while I'd known that from the very start, I embraced it now. I wanted him this way, rumbly-grumbly and demanding as fuck and obscene. My god, was he obscene. I knew some filthy guys but Cal was running some multi-dimensional dirty talk game.
But the biggest thing—bigger than everything else—was the complete lack of chaos. Right or wrong, I believed the world would turn upside down if I deviated from my carefully curated sex-only lifestyle. So far, the earth hadn't flipped on its axis and I wasn't driving any struggle buses.
I was sitting on a pillow again but that was a small price to pay for the best weekend I'd had in years.
It was also the first weekend I'd spent with one man in years. The first bed I'd shared for sleepandsex. The first time I wasn't thinking about getting dressed and going home the minute he pulled out. The first time I didn't rush to enforce the boundaries when he inquired about seeing me next.
Cal was all my firsts. All the ones that mattered.
"Did you want to weigh in on this, Stella?" Flinn asked.
I looked up. "No," I replied. I didn't know what they wanted but I did know they had to handle more issues on their own. "I'm sure you have it covered."
"Mostly, yes," Flinn drawled. "This situation really does require your stamp of approval though. We wouldn't want to rush to action."
"Please," I said with an expansive wave. "Rush. Act."
Tatum winged a folded paper at me. "We're talking about lunch."
