I’m saved from answering (thank fuck, because I have no idea what to say) when my phone buzzes with a text. Like a teenager with a crush, my stomach flips. Then like an adult male who had lots of time to dwell on his inappropriate behavior last night, I push the excitement away.
I hope everything went okay with Lavender. Mimi x
This is the second time she’s texted me, but it will be the first time I’ve answered.Because I’m a dick.
She got a caution. They didn’t press charges, and we’re home now. Sorry I didn’t return your text last night. It was hectic.
No sign off. No kiss. No admissions ofyou’re all I can think of.
As well as a dick, I’m a fucking coward.
I feel like such a shit.
I should at least apologize for the way I left her. For not being there to take her home myself. I might also apologize for my cockblocking sister’s terrible timing.
Or maybe I should look at Lavender’s timing as perfect.
God knows I’d tried to resist her, but in that illicit dark space, I’d caved. I was moments away from dropping to my knees to bury my face in her sweet-smelling heat. My mouth watered as I’d anticipated the slide of my tongue through her soaked slit. I had fully intended on eating her out until her throat became hoarse and her legs weak. Until pleasure coated her thighs, my chin, and cheeks. I would’ve fucked her then, blind to consequences, blind to everything.
Is it relief I’m feeling or is it regret?
By the time I’d finished the call, Mimi had pulled herself together as best as she could.Kiss-swollen lips, wet knickers, and a torn skirt.I was the one leaving, yet she was the one consoling me.
“It’s fine. I’m okay. I get it. Go! Family comes first.”
I’d asked her to wait in the copy room, then ducked into my office, grabbed my jacket, and made a call. She’d looked shaken as I burst back through the door.
“It’s just me,” I’d said, shaking out my jacket for her to slip on.
She’d laughed as she’d slid her arms into the sleeves, and I’d murmured something about her growing into it. She’d turned and I’d pulled on the lapels, bringing her body flush against mine.
“I look silly, right?”She’d looked up at me, her gray eyes suddenly shy.
“You’d look gorgeous in a burlap sack,” I’d replied before pressing a kiss to her head. “Take the executive elevator down to the basement. George, the driver, is waiting to take you home.”
I wanted to squeeze her so tight one last time. In the moments we’d been apart, regular programming had resumed. I think she felt it, too. She’d protested, said there was no need to make a fuss. But there was no way I was letting her take the Tube home. I’d slid my hands into my pockets against the notion of squeezing her tight one last time, then she’d left me in that tiny room.
Fucking her would’ve been the pinnacle of my year. But it would’ve been wrong.
“Are you listening to me?” Lavender’s petulance pierces my unhappy musings.
“Not really,” I admit, putting down my phone and continuing with my email.
“You’re such an arsehole sometimes.”
“Yep. I’m the arsehole who bails you out of scrape after scrape. I’m the arsehole who also keeps vegan fucking yogurts in my fridge.” The arsehole who dropped everything, including the hottest yet most perplexing woman he’s ever encountered to bail his troublesome little sister out of shit again. Despite what they might think, I do like having my siblings around. I just wish they’d have a bit of consideration sometimes.
“They’re nice, the yogurts,” she qualifies. “Thank you for buying them.”
“You’re welcome.”
Honestly, I still don’t know whether to consider Lavender’s phone call a blessing or a curse. As much as I want to fuck Mimi, something tells me it would’ve been one night of pleasure followed by many more of grief because more and more lately, I keep remembering the last time I was with Connor.
I’d been in the States on business but had made time to catch up with him. On a whim, we’d headed to Utah to climb in Moab. If there’s anything that’ll get you thinking about the smallness of your existence, it’s spending a couple of days in a red rock canyon, hanging from a piece of sandstone sculpted by millennia of rain and wind. You want to contemplate your mortality? Be sure to rappel down a couple of vertical cliff faces while you’re there. Want to kick back after finding joy in surviving? Head from Utah to Vegas, which is exactly what we did.
Our weekend of debauchery began with a steak followed by a few drinks, which had then turned to getting laid, the peacocks that we were. Needless to say, neither of us had gone to our hotel rooms alone. But at breakfast the following morning, Connor had seemed unusually pensive.
“If anything happens to me, look after Mimi, would you?” he asked out of the blue.
