Then she kisses me again before I can spiral about it any further, and my brain finally goes quiet.
Chapter Fourteen
Remy
Sometime later, I jolt awake with Owen’s arms wrapped around me. After the incident in the kitchen, we watched a movie together. We’re still on his couch so we must have dozed off. What did we justdo?
Mechanically, the answer is obvious: I had a mind-blowing orgasm while riding my client’s face. The afterglow settled hours ago, and my head is comfortably resting on Owen’s shoulder. Like we’re any normal couple. And that’s part of the problem. If this had only been physical, maybe I could have compartmentalized it. Instead, I feel soft in places I normally keep locked down tight. I ache all over, but in that slow, sweet way that follows coming that hard.
And it truly was fantastic. It was also a terrible idea that can never, ever happen again.
Owen’s chest rises and falls. One of his hands is tucked under his head. The other is tangled in my hair, in what would be a sweet gesture if the circumstances were different. Right now, the contact feels damning. Not because it feels wrong. Because it feels dangerously right.
I ease my head off his shoulder. At first, Owen’s brows furrow, and I worry that I’m going to wake him. To my relief, he shifts against the cushion and falls into a deeper sleep. He looks younger like this. Softer. Nothing like the version of him the internet thinks it knows.
I check my phone. It’s past midnight. Sliding off Owen, I tiptoe around the room to collect my panties and shoes. My hands shake as I put myself back together. Every movementkeeps dragging me backward into flashes of last night. His mouth. His voice. The way he looked at me like pleasing me mattered more than anything else in the room. This is bad. What the hell was I thinking? Owen’s hot, but he’s not hot enough to risk my career and reputation over. That’s not the real issue, and I know it.
A little voice in my head, which sounds a bit like Cara, whispers,The problem isn’t that he’s attractive. The problem is that you actually like him as a person.
True enough. But it’s not like I can actually imagine myself dating Owen. Unless…
Unless this wasn’t just… whatever this was. Unless the reason I’m panicking this hard is that I already know that.
Nope, nope, I can have a personal crisis later. Now, I need to focus on getting out of here as fast as possible.
I tiptoe past the kitchen toward the powder room as if I’m fleeing the scene of a crime. I’ve already summoned an Uber by the time I reach the front door. Shutout gets up from the floor and comes over to whine at me and nudge my hand with his nose.
“Sorry, buddy, you have to stay here.”
The guilt that hits me is wildly disproportionate for disappointing a dog, which probably says something unfortunate about my current emotional state.
Shutout whines, even when I slip through the door and close it firmly behind me. I feel guilty, but that’s nothing compared to the emotional firestorm that is my walk of shame. What am I going to do if Dante finds out about this? What ifEzrafinds out? My firm’s reputation. My career. Every code of ethics on the books. Oh, God, the power dynamics. Owen may have every physical advantage over me, but the power imbalance here is a mess. And somehow, last night, I still felt completely safe with him. Everything about this is a nightmare.
When the Uber finally arrives, I haul myself into the rear seat and press the heels of my palms against my eyes.
“Everything okay, miss?” the driver asks.
“Huh?” I raise my head and meet my driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror. She offers a sad smile in return.
“Rough night?” she asks.
Emotionally catastrophic, sexually life-altering. Hard to summarize cleanly.
It’s just after one in the morning, and I’ve asked her to drive me to the otherwise abandoned ramp of the arena. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that my night could be going better, but I appreciate her concern. “Could have been worse. Just, you know. Not my best decision.”
“Mm.” She gives the knowing nod of a gig worker who’s seen some shit. “Loverboy wasn’t as good in bed as you’d hoped?”
“What?” I nearly choke on my own tongue. “No, he was—”Gentle. Careful. Completely devastating.I shut my mouth so fast my teeth snap, but I can’t stop the heat rising in my cheeks. My damned Irish complexion gives me away every time.
“Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “He lived up to the hype.”
I let out a groan and hide my face in my hands. I would have said that I was perfectly satisfied, but at the memory of Owen’s touch, I clench around empty air. I shouldnothave let him do that to me last night, all while asking for nothing in return. My clit doesn’t get the message as it demands a repeat performance, throbbing with a mixture of overstimulation and lingering desire.
“Damn, girl.” At a red light, my driver reaches into the front passenger seat to retrieve a bottle of water for me. “I’m a little jealous. He dicked you down that good?”
The bottle nearly slips from my fingers. “Um, what?”
“I mean.” The driver widens her eyes in the rearview mirror. “You definitely, you know…”
