Three nights later, after another grueling workout, I cut across the basketball court in the glow of a seven o’clock sunset. It was getting darker sooner each night, the crisp of fall in the air. I didn’t like the progression of the seasons. It meant going home, back to the life I’d left in Seattle, so starkly different from here. Away from Winona, a woman I wanted to drink like whiskey, despite what my brother thought.
A woman who hated me enough she literally ran away from me. Blocked my number.
I dove into the pool to ease the ache in my arms, and the painful feeling in my chest that Conrad, fuck him, was right. I was about to head to the pool house to shower as usual. But when I picked up the clothes I’d been wearing, I cringed. Theywere several feet from my nose, and still, the reek was untenable. The cleaner had been by today, so I didn’t have anything in the pool house. I headed up to my never-used bedroom, which I’d been avoiding.
The shampoo in the pool house shower didn’t smell like her. Here, she was fucking everywhere. I got in and out as quickly as possible, and after getting dressed, gathered a stack of clean clothing to bring back downstairs. But as I was leaving the closet, my eye caught something on the floor. A glimpse of white under the chair by the window.
I crouched down and pulled the thing out, my stomach twisting as I realized what it was.
Winona’s bra. She’d run out so fast she’d left her bra here.
Fuck.
She probably thought I was a pervert who’d hung onto it instead of getting it back to her. Or would having it sent back to her be weirder? I should have gotten rid of it right away. I guess I was a pervert, though, because I couldn’t let go of it. I couldn’t do anything except hold it in my hand, every logical thought my brain lobbed at me dissolving into mush.
For a week, I’d taken Conrad’s words seriously. I’d forced myself not think of Winona. He was right. It wasn’t healthy, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her with my obsession. I needed to move on, finish the book, and get back to real life.
But even before the call from Conrad, I’d been measured in that obsession, at least in one way: I’d kept my hands off myself when thinking about her. I’d been austere as a fucking monk, because I didn’t want to bethatguy. I didn’t want that interaction I had with her to only be about the way she looked, or the way she'd felt in my arms. But here, gripping the lacy scrap of fabric Winona used to hold up those perfect wineglass tits? I was still a man. And she was still, I knew now, the sexiest woman I’d ever known. By a nautical fucking mile.
I groaned, rolling around so my back was pressed against the glass. And goddammit, goddammit, I couldn’t stop myself from bringing the thing to my face. The bra smelled faintly of chlorine. But it smelled of her, too. It set every hair on my body to standing, a ripple of goosebumps traveling over my skin until the sensation transformed into a raw, virulent need. I ripped the zipper down on my pants, releasing my throbbing dick.
With the garment in my hand, I dropped into the chair and allowed myself a stroke. Then another. The soft scratch of the lace on my sensitive flesh was torture. The loose slack of the fabric cups was worse. All I could see was those voluminous tits. I wanted them in my face; in reach of my tongue and greedy hands. I’d bury myself in them as I bounced her on my cock. I’d do it right here, too, in the dark of this room, with a view to where everything changed.
I switched the bra to my other hand, some last logical shred of my brain not wanting to sully it. Instead, I held it to my face like the pervert I was, while I pumped my fist in long, languid strokes, working myself until my balls tightened.
It didn’t take long.
I was just on the edge, Winona’s name in my throat, on my tongue, when I abruptly stopped.
Panting hard, I jerked my hand away, clapping it on the arm of the chair.
I made myself calm the fuck down. I thought of software and limp salad and icy ocean water until my dick deflated enough to zip up my pants. Then I got up, stuffed the bra in my pocket, and jogged downstairs.
I couldn’t do the smart thing with Winona. From the very beginning, I’d acted like a man who’d never met another human before around her.
Why stop now?
I punched the speed dial on my phone as I backed out of the massive garage at the back of the house.
“Mitchell, thank God you called me back,” Sal said, the phone not even ringing once.
“Not now,” I snapped. Sal had been calling me incessantly for the past two days. Whatever it was could wait. “I need my plumber’s address.”
A beat passed. “Mitchell, I think you’re going to want to?—”
“Is it about the merger?”
“No, but?—”
“Is anyone dead?”
She paused, and my heart hitched.
“No, no one’s dead. But I really think?—”
“Then not fucking now, Sal. Whatever it is, I trust you to figure it out.”
I could sense her frustration. She had a right to be frustrated, hell to lose her shit on me, though she’d never do that. But she knew better than to argue when I got like this. I was grateful for my assistant’s discretion and brains. I had faith in her abilities. Plus, it was never as big an emergency as she thought it was. She’d once cost me ten million dollars by missing a phone call, and still couldn’t forgive herself, no matter how many times I told her I didn’t give a flying shit. She always acted in my best interests. Sometimes it went that way.
