“If you could have any job ever, what would it be?”
His smile widened. “Okay fine, that’s easy,” he said, and I sat up, anticipating some unexpected insight into him. But then his smile tightened into a smirk. “I’d be a naked butler with exactly one customer.”
“Hmmmm,” I said, playing into his joke even though it hadn’t been what I was after. I could keep it light. “I could think of a few uses for a naked butler.” I reached up and grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him to me. We kissed once, twice, three times, his tongue running gently along my bottom lip in a way that made it tingle. Then he broke away and winked at me.
“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” he said, and I rolled away from him in mock anger. I pressed myself up on my elbows and glared at him.
“Sorry, who is it that’s managed to monopolise my man?”
“Chloe, obviously,” he said, running a finger down my spine like I had run mine down his chest just moments ago. “She’s said she would pay me to clean her flat in the buff once a month.”
“Just once a month? That doesn’t sound like enough to live off.”
“It’s a filthy flat,” he said. “Takes ages.”
“That sounds painfully inefficient.” I arched my back as he walked his fingers back up towards my neck, nuzzling at my ear. “Seems you should take a ‘little and often’ approach if you ask me.”
Jack leaned in to whisper in my ear, his voice dropping into a low rumble that I could feel in my belly. “Oh, is it efficiency you value? Because I can be efficient.”
“I mean, efficiency isn’t everything,” I said, my voice breathy as he hovered over me from behind, pressing a tantalisingly gentle kiss first to the nape of my neck, and then below that, and then below that.
“No, you’re right,” he said, dropping a knee between my legs, then suddenly using it to spread me apart. I audibly gasped as the cold air hit my wetness.
Over the last four weeks, Jack had learned exactly what buttons to press to make me lose myself almost right away. I was almost cross over how easy it was for him, when I’d had to work hard for it my entire adult life.
But as Jack nibbled at my ear, and then my neck, and then my shoulder, I was the furthest from cross. If I’d thought his attention to detail only extended as far as my preferred sandwich, I’d been painfully wrong. No,deliciouslywrong.
And as Jack positioned himself at my entrance, one hand on my hip and the other wrapped in my hair, and pulled me back onto him, I couldn’t remember a single reason I’d ever had to be cross in my entire life.
* * *
Less than an hour later,I was sat at my desk, looking even less put together than my already quite casual standards for work attire. My getting ready time had been … eaten into, so to speak. But I was far too busy to worry about what I looked like.
I scanned my to-do list, which was laughably long; there was actually, literally, no chance of me getting through all of it by the end of the day. And if the past week had been anything to go by, it would be twice as long by the time I went home. I’d even had to push my second interview with the software company to after the gala; there was just no way I would be able to make it happen before.
Aaron came up and set a tea down on my desk. For the person who was, in theory, running the event, he seemed significantly less stressed than me. But he always brought me caffeine, so I didn’t get too angry.
“Simone wants to see us in her office,” he said, and I audibly groaned; Simone was a bit of a micro-manager, and I spent so much time answering to her about what I was doing that it made it difficult to actually, you know,do it. But I shut my laptop and carried it with me after Aaron, not forgetting the mug of tea as I went.
Simone got straight to the point, which I loved about her. “Aaron’s parental leave is starting next week, and he’s just handed in his notice. So that means he won’t be coming back, as we discussed might happen.”
“I see,” I said, nodding along. No wonder he’d been so checked out recently; I hadn’t realised he would be gone so immediately after the event.
“He tells me you’ve been managing the gala pretty much solo,” she said, and I tried not to be shocked at actually being recognised for how hard I’d been working. “So, assuming next week goes well, and we hit our fundraising goal…”
Part of me knew what she was going to say, and I braced myself for it.
“… the promotion we talked about is yours.”
Simone talked me through the next steps she’d initiate the next week, and I tried to look appreciative, but it was all I could do to nod along without checking out. On the way back to my desk, Aaron talked my ear off about all the things I’d need to brush up on. It sounded exhausting. I thanked him again and told him I needed to get to work, and he nodded at me conspiratorially before walking away.
“What was that about?” Chloe stage-whispered.
“Ugh, nothing,” I said. I felt a little bit bad, but then again, there was a lot I hadn’t told her about at the moment. Hell, she didn’t even know I was crashing film night later.
But also, telling Chloe meant telling Jack. Not because she would mention it, though that was a genuine risk. But because he was my boyfriend. My partner, even. He deserved to know. But I was dragging my feet, because part of me knew that if I told him about that job opportunity, I also needed to tell him about the others I’d been going after. And deep down I knew how that conversation would go.
* * *
