Page 73 of One Filthy Kiss

He knew.

I turn back to the video footage from the cabin in Stowe and smile.

Amber is helping Meggie make cakes. She’s standing on a low plastic booster-step, stirring a bowl filled with melted chocolate, and I can smell the sweetness from here. Meggie lines a tray with greaseproof paper, then she dips a finger into the bowl to test it and licks chocolate from her finger. As she does so, she glances up at the camera and freezes with her finger between her lips suggestively.

My cock instinctively swells inside my pants, and I rub it to ease the ache that I know isn’t going away any time soon.

As if she knows that I’m watching, Meggie aims a quick glance at the top of Amber’s head, slides her finger out of her mouth, and licks her lips, staring directly at the camera the entire time.

I groan out loud. She has no idea what she does to me.

Meggie raises her finger in front of her face and licks it slowly, dragging her tongue up to her fingertip, then curling it around the side, until she haslicked it clean.

I’m drooling. Pre-cum oozes from my cock. How, in the history of time, has melting chocolate ever been this fucking sexy?

Then Amber says something to her sister, and Meggie helps her tip the chocolate out of the bowl, smoothing it across the tray with a spatula. I can imagine the heat in Meggie’s cheeks at almost getting caught out by her kid sister, and I’m overwhelmed by the bone-shaking desire I feel for this woman.

I watch as they mix up more frosting and add food coloring, which makes it look a slightly darker shade of grey on my screen. Meggie gives her sister a wooden spoon, and Amber adds random dollops of the frosting to the tray, licking the spoon when she isn’t being watched.

Then, tongue poking out of the side of her mouth in concentration, Meggie draws a metal skewer through the lighter frosting, creating heart shapes as if by magic. She says something to Amber as she opens a small tub and hands it over.

“This is the fun part,” I imagine her saying, as Amber scatters tiny sprinkles over the tray.

Meggie stands back and examines their creation. Then, she peers up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling and smiles.

My heart fills with love for them. She made this for me. She knew all along that I was watching her, and she wanted to give me a sign that she’s thinking of me too.

Can she forgive me for not telling her about Lucia?

I have to hope that she can.

Don Calderone asked me if I could imagine life without her, and the answer will always be no. I feel her absence in NewYork as if the ground has opened up and swallowed her whole. I want her back. I want her beside me, and I’ll go anywhere in the world to make that happen, because wherever Meggie is, that’s where I belong.

With one last glance at the screen, I slide my chair away from my desk and stand up.

I have a favor to call in, and a fish to hook.

Nikki blinks and peers behind me when she opens the door of her tiny, rented apartment in LA. She looks different without the makeup and the waitress outfit. Fresh. Natural. The kind of woman Meggie would choose as a best friend.

“Can I come in?”

She blinks hard several times, open-mouthed. “You want to come in?” She tries to look around me again as if Meggie might suddenly jump out and surprise her. “Where’s Meg?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

She stands aside, still clinging to the edge of the door as if it’s the only thing keeping her upright.

The apartment is tiny, the entire floor space barely larger than the kennel in which we found Bella at the rescue center. It looks as if a tornado just tore straight through the middle, spewing clothes, takeout cartons, used coffee cups, and scripts in its wake.

“Yeah, sorry about the mess,” she says, the familiar British accent driving home my longing for Meggie. “I’ve not had a chance to tidy up.”

She picks up a T-shirt and hairclip from the floor, realizes that it’s not going to make a dent in the mess, and puts them back down again on the arm of the grubby gray sofa, the only seating in the place.

“So…” She smiles and shrugs and rubs her arms like this is the most awkward situation she has ever found herself in, when she literally pretends to be other people for a living. “What have you done with my best friend?”

“She’s … safe.” When she furrows her brow, I quickly add, “Don’t worry, she isn’t alone. She and Amber have a team of bodyguards with them.”

She scrunches up her nose and perches on the sofa arm. “Does this have anything to do with the fucking asshole who killed their mom?”