She looks at me like she’s surprised I’m not chasing her up the stairs.
“I’ll get changed down here.” I gesture to the pile of clean, folded laundry on my kitchen table. “And I’ll stick the kettle on. You hungry?”
She cants her head. “I might be snackish.”
Ifight a grin. If there’s something I’ve learned about Rhiannon Morrigan in the last month, it’s that she’s always down for a feed. She’s a good grubber.
“I’ll see what I can rustle up.”
She pauses.
“What’s up?”
“I was thinking, we should take a quick drowned-rat selfie for the socials. People will eat that up.” She’s not wrong.
I point at myself. “I look pretty bedraggled.”
She rolls her eyes. “Like I’m much better.” She gives me an elbow as she turns to stand next to me. We’ve got selfies down to a fine art. I know which side of her to stand on, which part of the phone to look at so I’m actually looking at the camera and don’t look disturbed, and where to poke her side to make her smile my favorite smile.
It’s over in a second, and when she steps away, her absence rolls through my body, and my arms twitch, aching to pull her back to me. The woman is under my skin, in my blood. I know she’s here of her own choice but wanting to sleep with someone isn’t the same as wanting a real relationship with them.
She can’t get laid while we’re together, so maybe she’s simply here to scratch the same itch I helped her scratch a few weeks ago. I’m not sure that’s enough for me, I’m not sure I can be so close to her sunshine and not drink in her warmth.
Can I sleep with her tonight and go back to following the rules tomorrow?
My chest tightens. That familiar flutter in my ribs, the one that usually shows up when I miss a deadline or fuck up a quote. I’ve been pretending it’s nothing—caffeine, nerves, whatever—but it’s not. It’s the start of the spiral. The one that ends with me sitting in the dark, not answering calls, not eating, telling myself I’ve ruined everything. Again.
I push it down, focusing on the beautiful woman in frontof me. Am I willing to find out if we can go back to normal tomorrow?
As though she’s thinking the same thing, she pauses, her eyes lingering eagerly on my face. She nods again, fights with her shoes until they clatter onto the tiled floor and takes my stairs two at a time.
After I get changed into some clean, comfortable, and most importantlydryclothes, I stick the kettle on. My laptop’s still open on the counter from earlier like a beacon. Notes, quotes, the so-close-to-finished new draft staring back at me through the blank screen like an accusation. It’s easier to focus on cheese and crackers than the email from Pete asking if it’s go time.
I haven’t replied. I don’t know how.
Not when the story’s her. Not when I already crossed that ethical line. Not when my boss is so close to drop-kicking me out the door. I can’t pretend it needs tweaking for much longer.
As I potter about the kitchen, I’m struck with a sense of satisfaction about the details I know about Rhiannon.
She likes strong tea with a dash of milk and one sugar. She likes mature cheese, extra mature is too strong, and medium is too weak. And her favorite crackers are garlic and rosemary from the local supermarket. She also hates olives.
I catalogue people for a living—quotes, habits, contradictions—but with Rhiannon, it stopped being research weeks ago. It’s obsession now, the kind that keeps me from sleeping, from writing, from functioning like a normal human.
By the time she gets back downstairs, I’m on the sofa cradling a cuppa, my prosthesis is propped against the end of the coffee table, and a feast fit for my rugby queen is laid out in front of me.
“It’s not egg and onion sandwiches and Tayto, but it’ll do in a pinch.” I wink at her as she puts together a plate from theofferings, picks up her cup of tea and settles next to me on the settee.
“It’s perfect, thank you.”
One thing I love about Rhiannon is that she’s never self-conscious about eating. She shovels every meal into her mouth like it might be her last, and there’s no airs and graces as she does.
By the time she’s finished with her plate, there are cracker crumbs all over the front of my rugby t-shirt she’s wearing. My dick twitches at the acknowledgement that she’s wrapped in something I own. I can’t argue that it looks good on her, really good. So good that I want her to never take it off. Except I do want her to take it off because her tits are under there, and I want to do things to them as well.
I shift my weight on the sofa. It’s not my leg making me uncomfortable, but the growing chubby between my legs. It’s uncontrollable at the best of times, the nature of the male telegraph-pole beast. It just pops up at inconvenient times demanding attention, but more so around her.
My dick doesn’t care that there’s a whole page of rules saying I can’t touch her, or flirt with her, orbewith her.
My dick doesn’t care that our relationship is fake.
