The second one, a remote role for a software company, had been promising though; the woman on the call was much nicer than the previous interviewer about my lack of experience, focusing instead on what I liked about design and what kinds of projects I’d tried. I knew by the end of the call that they were moving me onto the next stage, and she gave me a small design assignment to complete. Did I like designing fake social posts as much as I liked drawing D&D characters or illustrating a logo? No, of course not. But did I like it better than planning events and cold calling donors? Hell yes.
I sent off the designs just three days after my interview – I’d finished them on the same day, but I didn’t want it to seem like I hadn’t put time into them, even though I hadn’t really – and within a couple of hours, I’d been invited back for another video interview.
I promised myself that I would tell Jack about it before I spoke to them again, but I kept putting it off. Every time I thought it might be a good moment, I flashed back to the night I’d told him I wanted to find a design job, and how he’d shut down. It wasn’t fair to keep it from him; he’d apologised, and he’d been the one to send me the listings to begin with. There was no reason for him to be upset, right?
But for some reason, the second interview came and went, and I kept it to myself.
Chapter32
Jack
Making Morgan Matthews come was my new life’s purpose.
I’d never been a particularly horny boyfriend with Aria. We’d been teenagers when we’d got together, so of course we’d had sex a lot, but it was always quick and singularly focused. Even as we got older and I had to work harder to make things good for her, it was always about a release of tension.
But with Morgan, even after four years of not being with anyone, I could have spent all my time with my tongue between her legs and never got bored. I’d done it enough over the last month that I knew exactly what to do to bring her to the edge, but that was only half the fun. The other half was just exploring her, and that exploration inevitably brought the first half with it, too.
For example, if I hadn’t taken the time to explore, I wouldn’t have been feeling her squirm around me as I rotated my fingers inside her and stroked her from a new angle, the rhythm of my tongue steady the whole time. Well, almost steady – it broke slightly as I couldn’t help but grin.
“Fuck, Jack,” she said, her legs pressing against the sides of my head as she tensed.
“That’s the idea,” I said, and she moaned as I stopped to speak.
I pressed my tongue flat to her clit and closed my mouth around it, creating suction and friction at once, and she writhed for me again, squeezing her legs harder this time, sitting up off the bed to run her fingers through my hair. Fuck, I loved how she tugged at it. But I used my free hand to press her firmly back down, and she let out a groan as she hit the mattress.
“Please, Jack,” she said, then gasped as I changed the angle of my fingers again to stroke where I knew, from careful study of course, her G spot was. Her panting grew harder, as did I.
“Please,” she moaned again.
“Hmmm?” I asked, not daring to actually speak and break the suction I’d created over her, instead looking up her body to meet her hungry, desperate gaze. Not that she was making it easy, her hips starting to buck slightly as she sought more.
So I gave her more. I pressed up slightly so I could increase the pace of my fingers inside her – not too fast, but upping the friction just enough.
“F-fuck!” she yelled, and I could tell she was close again; I supposed it was time for me to let her come. So I used the tip of my tongue to flick at her clit, almost directly this time, keeping my rhythm steady. She sat up slightly as she arrived at the edge, then collapsed backwards as I felt her tighten again and again around my fingers.
I kept stroking her for a moment, and then, even once I’d removed my fingers, I kissed gently at her swollen vulva, bringing her down from her climax gently.
“Was that good?” I asked, crawling to the top of the bed whilst she lay there, breathing hard. I scooped her up against me, resting her head on my chest, smelling her citrusy shampoo as I kissed her curls.
She batted at me weakly. “Shut up. I think we both know it was. You don’t need a gold star from me.”
I laughed. Post-orgasm Morgan could be feisty, but I loved it.
In fact, I was beginning to think I lovedher. It was still way too early to say it, but I’d been feeling it more and more.
As she slunk off to my bathroom and I heard the shower start, I lay back and immediately came down from the high. I had a long workday ahead of me – Dad had been making me do all the paperwork for a new job so I could learn the admin ropes, and I hated it with every fibre of my being – but being with Morgan made everything better. Genuinely. Even the idea of taking over the family business was less of a drag when I realised it would be a solid foundation on which we could build a life together.
I’d even been thinking we could build a literal house together at some point. Whether it was how much time she spent drawing or talking about design, or the fact that she just brought out that side of me, I’d been spending more time than ever on my own sketches. Lately I’d been drawing the same thing in different iterations: a family home, with a sun-filled art studio for Morgan, and plenty of space for a dog. We could find a south-facing hill, and maybe build a home into the side of it. There were plenty of farmers looking to sell up these days; hell, Uncle John was probably only a few years off it himself.
I pulled out the notebook I kept in my bedside table and opened to the next blank page, sketching roughly the same home as I had yesterday, but this time on a specific hill on the other side of Uncle John’s land. I knew the contours like the back of my hand from having grown up on them, and it was amazing how just a slight curve this way or that way completely changed the optimal layout of the house. And if we incorporated some local birch into the materials, maybe the flooring, it would feel like we were sat outside when the sun filtered through the windows…
The shower turned off, and I stashed the journal away. I wasn’t embarrassed of the sketches, but it felt a bit intense to tell her I’d been drawing our future home, and I knew she would have loads of questions. She was always so curious; I loved that about her.
I knew I’d show them to her someday. I just wanted to double- and triple-check that we were on the same page before I did.
* * *
Morganand I hadn’t yet “burst the bubble”, as we’d been saying. In other words, our friends still didn’t know we were dating. Phil obviously knew we’d hooked up, but given that Morgan had snuck back to her own room in the early hours of the morning at Chloe’s party, we were pretty sure Phil was the only one who suspected anything. This meant all the hand-holding, the calling each other “babe”, and the copious snogging was just between the two of us. When we were at game night, or out with our friends, we acted as we always had.
