I smooth my shirt over my stomach, ignoring the way the material is still finding places to stick to my back.
“You have to go,” I say as he hangs up.
“Yeah. A client needs me. Football phone,” he wiggles it toward me, like I should know what that means.
“No problem.” Something stings in my chest, though, that someone else wants his attention when I wasn’t done with him. But I have no right to expect anything else.
He strolls to the small apartment kitchen, and I can’t help but stare at his ass as he opens a cupboard and bends over to throw away the condom. He glances over his shoulder as he straightens, and his smile is wicked as his eyes connect with mine.
“We’ll do this again, though. Right?”
“Yeah,” I say before I can think too much about it.
His grin is soft as he presses his lips to mine. We kiss for a second, the heat between us banked and sated.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” he says, then slides past me, bare feet slapping on the hardwood as he disappears back up the hall.
I’ve been dismissed, and the idea hurts more than it has any right to.
“See you soon,” I say.
13
Brady
Ramona is back from her long weekend on Monday, and I don’t do a very good job of hiding my blush when she asks if anything out of the ordinary happened over the weekend.
“What’s that look for?” she says with a smile as I scrunch down in my chair and suddenly become very interested in my inbox.
“Nothing. DiNardo had a printer crisis yesterday evening.”
“DiNardooo!” she shouts, trailing out the last syllable. He’s a personal injury lawyer with a series of particularly obnoxious radio ads that everyone in the city knows. “And he couldn’t wait until this morning to call you?”
“He was due in court at nine.” No time to wait for normal business hours. I could have killed him, though. Way to spoil a guy’s afterglow.
Nash. Holy fuck. I was not prepared for him in my bed. The way he fought himself and me and been so needy at the same time... He looked completely and utterly wrecked when we were done, and I would have loved to have a few minutes to revel in the mess I had made of him. Instead, the damn football phone ruined it all.
Also, my quilt and pillowcase were crusty and disgusting by the time I got back, which resulted in late night laundry that I would have preferred to tackle before my eyelids were like weights and my whole body was trembling with fatigue. Printers are such a pain in the ass, and it took a dozen tries to find the drivers that would get the damn thing to print. DiNardo’s firewalls are brutal, even if I installed them.
“And that’s all?” Ramona says.
“That’s all what?” I say.
“DiNardo had a printer crisis, but otherwise you spent the weekend with your hands in your pants watchingDrag Raceon Netflix?”
I mean, basically, except for the part where I invited my favourite customer over for a booty call that turned into a truly pornographic fuck fest, and then I offered to make it a standing agreement.
His skin, though. The sounds he made. The way his body coiled tight as he reached for his orgasm before letting me drive the tempo and rhythm completely. I have never met anyone willing to wait so long to get off, even if he sniped and snarled the whole time.
Totally worth a crusty pillow.
“So, listen,” Ramona says. “I’m leaving.”
“Oh, okay.” I don’t remember her having any service calls on the calendar, but to be honest, I don’t check her schedule too closely. Finding Ramona has been the best thing to happen to me in the last year. “Will you be back before lunch? Wanna go get veal sandwiches?” I’ve had the worst craving for one since Friday afternoon but spent most of the weekend too strung out waiting to hear from Nash to follow up on it.
“No,” Ramona says, and her voice is strained in a way I don’t know. Tension frames her mouth and her eyes, and the expression makes my heart stop. We’ve been stressed before. I’ve seen her gut it out while dealing with an angry customer. I’ve listened to her pull herself together while she tells a delinquent payer she can’t help him until he coughs up some cash. But the look on her face right now is...
“When will you be back?” I say, but then I spot the plain white envelope in her hands and I know.
