“You think so highly of yourself,” I said, voice dripping with the sneer on my face.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” he replied.
My heart was pumping wildly. He was right. Arguing with him felt so fucking good. And seeing him… seeing himwasterrifying.
I couldn’t answer, and he fucking knew it.
His tongue darted out over his lips, and he leaned in closer. I stilled, unsure of what he was about to do. But his lips brushed my jaw, his hand grazing mine, and he whispered, “See you on Monday, Chloe.”
He kissed my cheek and pulled back, causing my heart to somersault. Those eyes lingered on me a moment, a smirk on his lips, and then he turned to head down the sidewalk.
I was so fucked.
CHAPTER EIGHT - GAVIN
I DON’T THINK I’ve ever been as happy and then as devastated as I was at the dinner social.
Seeing Chloe again, feeling everything I’d felt for her that night come to the surface. Touching her, seeing her smile, smelling her hair, it all made my insides scream to take her home just to make sure she never disappeared from my sight again.
I was prepared to play whatever game she wanted when she’d acted as though she didn’t know me during the introduction from her partner. If she’d wanted to sneak around in her office or not let her colleagues know what had happened between us for the next few weeks, I could deal with that. I could have even handled her not wanting to be with me initially.
But finding out that she was engaged and being touched by another man had nearly made me hurl, nearly made me relapse into the horribly mischievous being I’d once been. I’d never been more jealous of someone or wanted to make them disappear so badly in my life.
But when she came running outside after I left…
That gave me hope.
Our encounter outside, those few minutes, had reminded me of how much I enjoyed being around her. How easy it was to talk and be free to say whatever I wanted. That temper and that cute little way she’d glared at me made me want to throw her over my knees and spank her perfect ass. I wanted her to tell me how much she hated me while I sucked on her clit or I shoved my cock down her throat.
Most of all, though, I wanted to make up for the time we’d missed out on.
I sank my hips against the front of my desk and looked through the papers I’d printed earlier. I liked having documents in my hands when doing research or reading through a contract. These papers, however, were for pleasure, not work.
A knock sounded on my door, and my assistant stuck her head inside. “Gavin, there’s a ‘Stef’ here to see you,” she said.
I didn’t know aStef.
“Stef? Where from?” I asked.
“Let me in, C,” a woman’s voice said on the other side of the door.
I may not have known aStef, but I knew that voice. I hadn’t heard from her in five years, not since I’d gone to her after that night with Chloe. I had begun having visions of a life I’d forgotten—a life with Psyche, my once wife. I still hadn’t figured out how the memories had faded, how I’d somehow forgotten my own fucking wife, but the feelings—her smell, her touch… they were all still there.
I had felt all that again last night when I’d seen Chloe.
I had gone to her to find out what she knew, and at first, she’d been just as bewildered as me, except a week later, she’d shown up on my doorstep with a wild look on her face.
“Someone has been tampering with memory,” she said, bursting through my door.
“Hello to you too, Seph—“
“No, Eros, you’re not hearing me,” she said as she rounded on me. “The woman you described, your wife. I told you I didn’t remember you having a wife. I even searched for her in some forgotten texts, only I found nothing. So, I asked Hades, and it was like a bell went off in his head. Like he was remembering something so simple, and he told me everything he could. He beat himself up at the fact that his memory had been tampered with as well” She stepped up to me, her pupils blown. “Someone erased her,” she said. “That’s why none of us remember.”
“Let her in, Mads,” I said.
Maddi opened the door wider, and in walked the Goddess of Spring herself.
Persephone was wearing high-waisted khaki jogger slacks, combat boots, and a black lace crop top. Her loose pastel pink curls fell softly around her bright face, accentuating her bronze skin, and she was eyeing me with a smirk on her dark plum-stained lips.
