She was relieved that one of them had finally broached the subject, although fear and anxiety were already seeping in and threatening to overpower her relief. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you, but I can’t make you my girlfriend in the traditional sense of the role, you pointed that out to me, but I would expect you to behave like my girlfriend. What about you?”
“I don’t know really. It seems odd to me, have an ongoing casual relationship and presumably it would be a discreet, secret arrangement we would have.”
“I think it would have to be to some extent, for us both. It could be professionally damaging for you to be viewed as the girl screwing the boss, but to be screwing the boss on a casual basis? Not good, although it may not be that casual.”
“What happens if we thrash out the details and then after one night one of us decides it’s not our thing?” Steph couldn’t imagine anything about one night with Jon not being her thing.
He laughed at her. “You mean if one of us turns out to be really crap in the sack?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I might have put it more that we weren’t compatible but I suppose your summing up is accurate too.”
“I’m not crap and I have a feeling that you will be anything but. However, if either of us changes their mind, then so be it. It’s not a legal contract we’re entering into, Steph, it’s a verbal agreement where both of us will know what to expect. Does that sound reasonable?”
“Yes.” she said a little too quickly.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying to me again, Stephanie. That will be one of my requirements, honesty,” he said with a slightly serious tone to his voice. “What?”
“I don’t even know what I am agreeing to here. I just know that I can’t get you out of my head. I like you and under different circumstances this would be easy, but then I keep reminding myself that there are no different circumstances for you, for us.”
“No,” was all he said with a dark and almost sad expression on his face.
“I don’t know anything about you and your wife.” She sighed the last word wondering how she found herself in this position. Was she really knowingly considering the option of becoming a married man’s mistress? Every word she spoke seemed to suggest that she was.
“Do you need to? Want to?” Jon asked her. “I am not ready to bear my soul, Steph. I might never be, but my advice to you would be to ask me anything you want. I won’t guarantee I’ll share it all but I will try and answer your questions honestly.”
Steph nodded. “That’s kind of the problem. I don’t think I want to know about her. I don’t want her to be real to me and I don’t want to know what her favourite flowers or chocolates are or the date of your anniversary or where you’re going on holiday. That might just make it too real and force me into really facing up to what this is and what I am within it.”
“Okay,” was his single word response this time.
“Okay,” she repeated.
“I don’t want you to feel pressured into making a decision. If you need more time . . .”
“For what? To keep swinging from yes to no and back again. I think we both know that this is a yes . . . if it was a no it would have been a no sooner without so much deliberation.”
“So, it’s a yes?” He edged closer, close enough to slide a hand along her jaw, into her hair to cup her head preparing for a kiss.
“What if this is the biggest mistake of our lives?” Steph suddenly asked.
“And what if it’s not?” Jon replied before sealing the deal with a kiss that quickly saw them lost in a tangle of arms and legs and sounds of breathing and gasping.
Steph quickly found herself lying back on the sofa with Jon over her, their lips still worshipping the other’s mouth. Jon had one hand cupping her head and the other was snaking beneath the skirt of her dress while her hands were beginning to tug at his shirt so she could run her hands across his abdomen and then his chest.
A low hiss left Jon’s lips causing him to pull back slightly as Steph’s nails began to graze across the taut skin of his belly.
“Maybe we should have sex,” she announced making him smile and arch his brows simultaneously. “What I mean is that we should have sex first, see how it is and I think that as we both want it there is nothing to lose. If it works for us both, we can decide how we move forward, and if it’s not right, we draw a line under it and walk away from the idea and never mention it again.”
She looked at him studying her and wondered whether she had just pissed him off by potentially offering him a one-night-stand with her after protesting that she didn’t want that.
“Let me take you home,” he suddenly said.
Shit! She really had pissed him off and potentially the whole thing was off now and she really did like him and she was desperate to have sex, full stop, but specifically with Jon.
