“Mags! Fuck, Mags! We’ve got to stop. I’m going to?—”
“I’m there! Oh, God, Jon.” The mother of all orgasms seized her body, screaming and pulsing. Fire. Jonathan shouted a second after her final moan, his body shuddering under hers.
She pulled back. They stared at each other in what must be identical shocked expressions. “That was…”
“Unexpected as fuck,” he finished.
“We just…” she left her scattered thought hanging.
“Came in our pants. Mine probably has more noticeable consequences,” Jonathan said, grimacing as he adjusted his jeans.
Mags couldn’t help it. She started giggling, the crazy interlude something she’d never expected. Her dreams over the years had them in similar positions, but reality had long since been a wet blanket, cold and smothering.
Now, her optimistic self saw only potential.
She showed him to the guest restroom to…clean up. They were now circling each other at the front door. Jonathan needed to get to work. She decided to work from home, having plenty of projects in her bag that had thankfully been completely salvaged after the accident.
Her roommate and the man who kept saving her ass asked her to stay home and rest. She decided it wasn’t a fight worth having and acquiesced.
Finally, Jonathan pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “You won’t regret this, Mags. I swear, I’ll never give you a reason to regret me.”
“You know I can be difficult. I’m not perfect, Jon. If we try this, don’t put me on a pedestal.”
“Not if or try. We are doing this, and you’re perfect to me, for me,” he emphasized. “I hate leaving you, but I still have to stop home and change. Someone helped me make a mess.”
“We got carried away,” she smirked. “My guess it that it won’t be the last time.”
He kissed her chastely once and then twice more. “It can happen a million more times, I just want it to be when we’re both naked, and I’m buried deep inside your body.”
She rested her head on his chest and sighed. “I never thought we’d,” she hesitated, “be here. I thought our first kiss was our last.” She had to bite her lip to stop it from quivering.
“I have a lot to atone for. Just promise me that if pressed, you’ll give the Byrne sisters a glowing report of my efforts.”
She couldn’t stop the burst of laughter. It felt amazing to laugh again with Jonathan.
“I don’t want to ruin this moment, but I also don’t want to get blindsided later,” Jonathan started hesitantly. “You’ve agreed to try…us. Will you please not kiss or do anything with Eze or anyone else?”
She considered letting him sweat, but no matter what happened between her and Jonathan, at the end of it, they would always be in the same circle of friends. Eze was a part of that circle now, and she wanted them to be friends too.
“We matter to each other and have become close, but we’re only good friends. The kiss we shared was to make Nasir jealous.” At his surprise, she added, “They have history.”
“So, you didn’t feel anything when he kissed you? He didn’t feel anything?”
Mags smiled and kissed the corner of his lips. “I never said that.”
twenty-five
MIRREN MÒR MACGREGOR-MORROW CAMPBELL
Mirren was back in Dublin,having given her husband, Finn, and their two children, Dean and Mary, kisses and hugs goodbye. She’d only be gone two days and one night, but she hated being away from her family.
She’d been the manager for the Smiths’ Edinburgh gallery since she was twenty-one. She was in her late thirties now and still managed that gallery, but the Smiths sent her all over the world in search of new talent.
Mirren had a knack for finding the extraordinary. Her husband and his twin sister, Fiona, were two of many over the years.
Anna Wilkes was Mirren’s newest find. As it happened, Mirren and her daughter Mary had been perusing stalls at a Saturday market in Wales, where Finn had taken them for a short weekend of fun away from home. She and her daughter enjoyed looking at the booths with various bits and bobs, handmade trinkets, crocheted hats and mittens, dog collars,farm-grown fruits and vegetables, and, as it happened, Anna’s small table of oil paintings.
Anna had a way with making simple landscapes glow with something unearthly and very fine. She’d struck up a conversation with the artist, who said that she was born in a small coastal town in the south of Ireland but currently lived in Dublin, where she worked a couple of jobs to afford rent and paint.
