Page 37 of Lovestrung

I felt like a fraud, a liar, when my side job needed me to focus on another woman. On make-believe and fantasies to cater both men and women. Thank fuck that part of my life would be over in a few months. I hadn’t taken another woman to bed since I’d kissed Penelope, and to say that it felt like my balls and dick were weeping from the lack of female attention it was getting would be an understatement.

It had been torture.

Now, there was only one month left until, I hoped, my suffering was over.

Thirty days and nights left to endure until she was home.

Seven-hundred-and-twenty hours – not that I was counting or anything.

I worried if she’d changed a lot while she was away. I hoped to fuck she hadn’t, but I’d learned early in my life to always expect the unexpected and to never get my hopes up about anything.

Hoping was for the weak, like my old man used to say.

It wasn’t often I thought about what my life had been like before I’d been taken into foster care and then came to live with the Montgomerys, but lately, my thoughts had been plagued by him – about what he’d done to my mom. The grief had never disappeared over the years, but I’d managed to compartmentalize my memories so that when I allowed myself to think of her, I remembered the good things. I never thought about the night she’d been taken away from me; if I did, I feared I’d bury myself into a black hole so deep I’d never get out of it again. The sorry excuse of a man was still alive, so maybe that was why my mind couldn’t find the rest it so clearly needed. Knowing that he was behind bars, never to be released, was a small win, but a victory nonetheless.

But what I couldn’t push away were the letters he kept sending me. Every year, without fail, I would receive one on my birthday. They’d started the year I turned thirteen, and I’d learned to expect them – but I’d never opened one of them. He didn’t deserve my time or attention, and whenever another year passed, and I saw the gray envelope with the prison’s name stamped on the back taunting me when I opened my mailbox, I’d tear it to pieces at once and either throw the scraps away or burn them. It was my silent way of saying Fuck you to him. I might share his DNA, but he would never be anything but filth to me.

A letter shouldn’t hold that much power over someone, but to me, it represented a noose that was being tied around my neck, slowly choking me to death.

I forced the unwelcome memories away and turned off the light before I locked the door to the animal shelter I still worked at from time to time. Even though I was only months away from becoming a veterinarian, I loved working there so much that I knew it would be difficult to quit. As I went to my truck to drive home to my loft, I thought only about Penelope.

Yes. I could handle the next thirty days. Soon, she’d be home, and then I’d make my move.

And that was to make her mine forever.

I wouldn’t give up, no matter what rocky road was in our future.

* * *

Astrid was a gorgeous woman, and one of the best to work with at Privé. A tall, voluptuous brunette who owned up to her curves and I usually enjoyed posing with her.

Just not today.

“Ethan,” she purred, her lips grazing my ear, “don’t be such a spoilsport.”

She was leaning against me, her back to the photographer, her arms around my neck and tits pressed tight to my chest. Naked from the waist down, her bare crotch was on full display, her ass cheeks spread by my big hands. Completely on display, and very much getting off on being watched while doing the shoot with me. And not just when she was with me – being watched when she did a shoot, or a film, was her kink. I wasn’t an exhibitionist, but I didn’t mind having a couple spectators once in a while. When I first started working here two years ago, I’d been invited to watch some scenes, so I went. It was important to get a feeling of what the company, and the concept, was really about, after all.

I’d been trying to deflect her advances all day.

“I’m not,” I moved my head to bare my neck, keeping most of my face hidden from the camera. “I’m just not in the mood, that’s all.”

“You’re always in the mood.”

I gritted my teeth when she sighed, rubbing against my dick. My mind screamed ‘no’, but my dick had other ideas.

“Cut it out, Astrid,” I grunted.

“Oooh, I like it when you get prissy with me,” she chuckled and licked my earlobe. “It’s hot…means you’ll give me a good ride.”

We’d hooked up before in the past, but now I regretted ever laying my hands on her outside business hours.

“Why don’t you ask Callum?” I turned my head and jerked my chin at our photographer. “I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to oblige. He’s just your type.”

She tsked. “Maybe. He’s fucking hot – I love his Scottish accent and that man bun is way sexy – but he’s too sweet. I want rough…dirty…filthy.”

Fucking hell, when is this shoot going to be over?

“All done, guys,” Callum spoke up, almost making me sigh in gratitude that he’d heard my silent plea for help.