He groaned, kissing her shoulder before moving his lips to the back of her neck. "I'll make any sort of dossier you want, Lurielle. Whatever happens is going to happen, and it's not gonna make a bit of difference."
She turned her head, catching his lips, his heat, and his steadiness. "It had better not," she said seriously. "I sure hope you grabbed a towel. Otherwise, you're going to have to flip me upside down and carry me to the bathroom. I have a party to pack for, I can't be worried about having the carpet cleaned."
She didn't like the assumption that she was somehow worth more to society now that she was in a relationship, didn't like all of the things she had achieved on her own somehow being negated for the far less impressive skill of opening her legs, but the one thing she knew with absolute certainty was that her therapist was wrong. She was sure she would never be happy again if anything happened to him, happened tothem, and it didn't matter how many affirmations she said in the mirror.
♥ ♥ ♥
Silva
The invitation hadcome in the same vague, roundabout way in which Tate delivered everything that wasn't business-related, she'd come to learn.
Silva had never considered herself especially needy. Selfish, perhaps . . . spoiled, most assuredly, but notneedyin the way she thought of the word. She didn’t expect constant attention; didn’t need to be showered with presents or be told she was beautiful several times a day, and she certainly wasn’t holding her breath for Tate to show up at her office on a random weekday, insisting on taking her to lunch at the little cafe she loved that had kittens roaming the dining room floor.
If anything, she told herself, she was theoppositeof needy! She refrained from calling and texting him constantly, knowing he was busy. She almost always alerted him to her incoming presence on the weekends she visited, giving him the opportunity to demure, and she appreciated all of the little things he did. A phone charger had recently appeared on her side of the bed in his apartment, along with a brand of toothpaste designed for delicate Elvish teeth in his bathroom cabinet. The cardigan she’d forgotten one weekend had been neatly hung in the closet beside his own clothes, rather than folded near the front door as a reminder of her temporary, transient presence in his life. Little, inconsequential things that made her feel treasured and valued and seen . . . but none of that changed the fact that if he were posed with a question about a beer delivery or the staff schedule or the most expeditious way to cut ticket times in Clover’s kitchen by two and a half minutes, Tate was forthright and unambiguous. Everything else received a willy-nilly wave of the hand with no hint of commitment to be found, and like the needy little kittens at the cafe she loved, the more he withheld his total attention, the more desperately she craved it, her imagination working overtime without a firm hand to ground her.
The first time she'd been on the receiving end of one of his anxiety-inducing texts had been nearly two months prior, when the last leaves of autumn still shivered on the ends of branches, piles of golden and brown and orange, crunching underfoot.
I'm going away for a few days
The text had come on a Thursday afternoon. It had been an aggravating week, full of minor disappointments and small indignities, and she'd been counting the minutes until she left the office on Friday, when she would make the drive from Cambric Creek to the little resort hamlet to feel his sharp teeth at her throat and his hands in her hair. There would be no reason to go home after work, her overnight bag would already be in the backseat, and she would drive straight through, arriving just before dark.
She had slumped in disappointment when she'd read the message at her desk, viciously stabbing at her salad on her lunch break, imagining him at some beachside resort for the weekend, frolicking in the ocean with a scantily-clad cervitaur. When the marketing department had come together for their daily team meeting that afternoon, she’d been dismissively asked to get the coffee, adding to the day’s indignation.You're a junior associate,Silva reminded herself, silently seething as she bundled up in her quilted winter coat to make the trek to the other side of the parking lot, where the Black Sheep Beanery parked their food truck, half a dozen orders in hand.This is your first real job out of university, you’re supposed to get the grunt work.By then, her imagination had Tate sitting at some sidewalk bistro, sipping wine with the same giggling cervitaur and enjoying time away from his hectic life, peaceful and content with nary a single thought of her. The buzz of her phone could be felt in the pocket of her cardigan once she’d rejoined the table, but she didn’t dare peek at it throughout the meeting and had nearly forgotten about it until she’d returned to her desk.
Fancy coming with me?
It had been nearly two hours since his original message, she’d realized. Two hours of leaving her twisting, two hours of being disappointed and frustrated, two hours of torturing herself over absolutely nothing. Anxiety and jealousy had a way of outracing her common sense and obliterating her good judgment when it came to Tate, but when she forced herself to think rationally, Silva was able to remember the long hours he worked, the way he focused on little outside of his businesses.
He’d probably sent her the first text and then been ambushed by his girls at the bistro, circling him to complain about their schedules or lament their tips. He might have been waylaid by the ancient dishwasher at the Pixie, had probably been standing over Rukh as the grizzled old bartender fixed it for the hundredth time, offering encouragement and threats in equal turn, as she’d witnessed him do several times before. She could easily envision him — pinching the bridge of his slim nose, a wayward pen shoved into his messy bun, which would droop lower and lower throughout the day, pen forgotten; turning away to tap out the rest of his message to her hours after he’d started the thought, no wide-eyed cervitaur in sight, despite her overactive imagination.
The trip had been to another small town, several hours away, where Tate planned to hustle pool for two evenings in a row at a small tournament hosted by a seedy bar that made the Pixie seem like a formal gentlemen's club.
"We should pretend to be strangers, right?" she’d called out from where she’d sat cross-legged in the big upholstered chair in their hotel room, eating vegetarian room-service pizza in her lacy bra and panties as he hogged the bathroom mirror. "I don’t want to blow your cover . . . you can buy me a drink and try to pick me up!"
The notion of pretending to be someone she wasn’t — someone other than responsible, good little Silva — was wildly exciting, and she’d bounced in her seat in anticipation at the thought.
"I think I should be concerned at how willingly you’re embracing this," he’d quipped lightly from the bathroom doorway, pulling his sleek hair into a topknot. "Next you’ll be wanting to rob a bank."
