“I hear you. I can see you’re a cutting-edge person. Look how you found social media before everyone else did.”
I was dipping a shrimp in cocktail sauce when he said this, and I almost dropped the expensive piece of shellfish. “I can’t believe you remember that.” My response came out breathless. Thank God, I stopped myself before explaining that even Tommy didn’t understand that part of my career.
“I remember everything,” Mick said quietly, his hand ghosting my wrist. It wasn’t sore anymore, and his touch lit up my whole body rather than make me cringe.
“I like an underdog. Someone who is trying something new and different,” I said, trying to explain myself, and then decided it was better to pop a shrimp in my mouth and shut up.
Mick hadn’t eaten anything yet. He kept his gaze on me, bringing his thumb up to wipe a drop of cocktail sauce from the corner of my mouth.
Like in the movies, my body wentkaboomas if fireworks were exploding in my belly. I felt like a college girl in love at first sight, attempting to extinguish them. Instead, I took a healthy slug of wine, hoping it would douse the fire starting to burn inside me.
“Looks like we have something in common. That’s why I love what I do. I take failing enterprises no one else believes in and make them work.”
I nodded, thinking how proud and earnest Mick was about his work. It wasn’t a power trip or a tool to overpower those less successful than him.
“As a writer, we’re always trying to show something nobody believes in, except us.”
“I can see that,” he said, taking a shrimp.
From that moment, I lost track of how long we sat in that corner. Long enough, I started to think about it as ours.
“I like this,” Mick said, pulling me from my thoughts.
“It’s nice. Easy.”
“Good. Good times should be easy.”
“I’ve never had something like this.”
“How about we don’t talk about that, but how you’ll have a lot more of this.”
When we left, it didn’t take much more than Mick saying, “Want to go back to my place for a drink?” to get a yes out of me.
For the first time ... ever ... I’m living my life for me.
At that thought, guilt skittered up my spine.
I knew it was wrong, but I also knew the way Tommy treated me was wrong. Rather than believing two wrongs don’t make a right, I convinced myself they canceled each other out.
Much later, the noises coming from me were absolutely shocking and unlike any sounds I’d ever made before in my life.
“Mick, oh God,” I whispered on a moan as he took my foot in his hand and gently brushed his fingers over the sole. His palm stopped on a pressure point and pressed hard, and I couldn’t help what came out of my mouth. “I may orgasm, seriously.”
I sat up and stared into his eyes, feeling equally uncertain and safe. I should have left then, but I lay back and enjoyed the foot rub Mick was giving me.
“Only you,” he said, smirking.
I pushed up again so I could take all of him in. The crinkles around his eyes, the tiny furrow in his brow, and his messy hair. Mick teased me like he’d known me for years.
Continuing to take his time with my foot, he said, “It kills me when you call me Mick. I don’t know why, but for the first time in my life, I want to be called McKenzie. By you. It could be just for us. You may be the only person I’ve ever wanted to call me by my formal name.”
His voice caused a rash of shivers to run up and down my spine, while his hands worked some secret voodoo on my feet.
“Ah, this feels so good. Please don’t stop, McKenzie,” I said, giving Mick what he wanted.
We were lying in front of the fireplace in his penthouse, sprawled on the couch. Mostly naked, we lay with our heads at opposite ends, my feet in his gentle hands. It was an intimate moment, much like between two people who had lived together for a decade. Yet here we were, one week after meeting in a bar, committing the worst transgression a woman and man could commit.
Adultery.
