“With you?”
“No. On your own, Cal. So I can get a head start on tomorrow’s dusting.” Annie’s sarcasm settles into an affectionate smile. “Yeah, with me.”
“Yes. I would like that very much.” I reach for her hands to help her sit up, and then she’s pulling me between her legs again, kissing me deeply. Her tongue caresses mine, and the thought of her tasting herself there makes my cock twitch. I let out what I’d like to call a groan but I fear is more of a whimper.
Annie grins against my mouth in response, a playful taunt that’s both vexing and enticing—and isn’t that my experience of her in a nutshell? She hops off the counter and slides her bra straps and the sleeves of her dress back over her shoulders. I want to protest her covering herself up, hiding away all that skinas creamy and smooth as faïence fine, but I know she’s probably getting cold now that the action has paused. I want her comfortable fractionally more than I want her naked.
“You’re very hard,” she says, stroking my erection again.
My kneecaps feel like they’ve been replaced with jelly in response to her touch. “Gee, I wonder why.”
“A mystery for sure.”
I take her hands—mostly as a form of self-preservation since I’m not going to last much longer if she keeps touching me—and set my sights on the stairs. But before I can take more than a single step, my phone audibly vibrates against the floorboards.
“Oh. I thought I heard that earlier. Is someone trying to reach you?” she asks.
“If they are, they’re going to have to wait at least another hour.”
Except it keeps buzzing and buzzing, as if someone is calling repeatedly. I let out a muttered curse as I reach down and pull the phone out of my coat pocket to see what’s going on and find three missed calls from Harold in the last two minutes. “It’s your uncle,” I tell her with an irritated sigh.
Annie wraps her arms around my waist and rests her chin on my shoulder. “Is it important?”
“Ah, hard to say with him.” My heartbeats come too close together at the memory of the multiple missed calls that night three years ago when Harold was trying to tell me Graham had suffered a massive heart attack and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Then again, he’s also called ten times in a row before just to ask if I remembered the name of a restaurant in Canton we went to in 2018. “It could be literally anything.”
Though, with the time difference, it’s nearing 1:00 a.m. in Italy…
“You’re worried. You should take it,” Annie says.
“But, we were going to—”
She cuts me off with a light squeeze of my arm. “It’s okay,” she says. “See what he wants.”
WhatIwant is to ignore my business partner, throw Annie over my shoulder, and carry her up the damn stairs so that I can take that dress off her again. She’s right, though. I am worried, and I’ll keep being worried until I know for sure why Harold is calling. Maybe, for once, this won’t take an absolute eternity.
My phone vibrates again and this time I answer it immediately.
“Harold?”
“Oh, Callahan,” he says, sounding almost surprised as if he hadn’t expected to actually reach me despite his multiple back-to-back attempts. “How are things at Virtu?”
“Uh…” I glance at his niece, still slightly flushed from me going down on her atop our checkout counter. “Things are…good. How are you and Inés? Everything all right?”
“Everything is wonderful. Just wonderful. We are now man and wife, married in a beautiful old stone chapel overlooking Lake Trasimeno yesterday afternoon. And then after, we went to a restaurant in the nearby town and I had the most remarkable cacio e pepe…”
“Congratulations, that sounds great, but—” I let out a heavy sigh as he continues to tell me about each course and component of their meals so far in minute detail, including the exact origins of every wine they’ve sampled in the last week. When Harold is feeling chatty, he goes on and on and on. It’s impossible to stop him or get a word in edgewise. I’m annoyed enough that he’s interrupted us just to check on the shop and fill me in on their epicurean adventures that I consider simply hanging up. But Iknow that will just result in him calling back, assuming the call dropped. Which is, I suppose, better than him knowing that I’m desperate to get back to ravishing Annie.
Instead, I cover the part of my phone where the microphone is and whisper to her, “Sorry. I think this is going to take a while. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
She shrugs with one shoulder, then leans in and kisses me. I somehow manage to make the requisite “mhm”s and “uh-huh”s into the phone in response to Harold’s meandering description of a particularly fine cup of espresso he enjoyed at breakfast, even as her lips travel down my throat. When she sinks to her knees in front of me, though, I have to put the phone on mute.
“Annie,” I say. It comes out like a warning but is followed by a much less severe “You shouldn’t…”
“Shouldn’t I?” She glances up at me with a mischievous grin as she unbuckles my belt. Harold is still droning on and on—something about a sculpture?—but I can’t even pretend I’m paying attention to anything except the fact that the gorgeous woman kneeling in front of me is unzipping my pants, lowering the waistband of my boxer briefs until my erection springs free. She’s somehow managed not to touch me directly throughout the whole process, and it’s only made me even harder.
“Do you want me to, Cal?” she whispers up at me. And she doesn’t have to be more specific, because her intentions are quite clear.
It would be best to say no. Probably. I mean, wouldn’t it? I’m on the phone with my business partner—her uncle! And that’s…that’s really weird. Right?
