“Smell the leather?” he asked, continuing his bizarre tour.
I did smell it, though. It was rich and inviting.
“Look up. See the pattern on the ceiling?”
I tipped my head, expecting to see flimsy ceiling panels. Instead, flecks of gold twinkled across the dark gray.
Constellations in the night’s sky.
He kept going like that, pointing out inane details around us until it alleviated some of the pressure, but not the tears.
“Thank you for trying this, baby, but we don’t have to do it again. I promise.”
In all the rushing emotions charging forward to take me out, his words made panic take the lead. “No!”
There was no guilt-trip, forced acceptance, or resentment in his soft expression. He was fine with never doing it again.
I wasn’t.
“Greer—”
“It’s not the pain. I…” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but you were right.”
I must’ve looked worse than I felt—which was already pretty damn bad—because he didn’t tease me at my phrasing.
Still, I amended, “I did like the pain. A lot. I just wasn’t prepared for… There’s all this… I’m…”
My words were just as chaotically disheveled as the rest of me.
Tripp’s handsome face hardened. Not with anger, but with dominance. His voice held the same firm authority when he demanded, “Tell me what’s going on in your head. What happened at my father’s?”
That was something I didnotwant to do.
But the words spilled out almost as freely as my unwanted tears did. “Both of my parents called. My dad left a million messages wanting to see me, and I had just decided that I would put aside my anger and allow it because… You know. He’s my dad. But then I talked to my mom, and she drunkenly let it slip that he used our girls’ nights as an opportunity to cheat on her with the worst LA stereotype around. I was just so mad and betrayed, yet I still feel guilty because of the wholeit’s-my-dadthing. I am usually so good at compartmentalizing everything, but it was a lot. The pain helped. It cleared my head. I liked it. I truly did. But once we were done, it all came back. I felt too much at once. I wasn’t expecting it.”
Finally, I pressed my lips closed before I released any of the other inner thoughts from Pandora’s box.
I added an eye scrunch to my pinched expression. “That made things weird, especially since we just…” I sighed. “You didn’t need to know any of that.”
“The hell I didn’t.” Roughly grabbing my chin, he tilted it so I had no choice but to look at him. “Greer, Iaskedyou. And I appreciate you telling me because I want to know every-fucking-thing about you.”
I wanted to melt at that. To sink into him. Into the moment. Into the connection that was forming beyond fuck buddies.
And definitely well beyond boss and employee.
But I didn’t.
Maybe I was a coward. Maybe I was smart.
Likely I was both.
When Tripp looked like he was going to push me to share more—to expose my vulnerabilities as bare as my body—I let out a yawn that wasn’t the least bit forced. “Can we go home?”
He held the intense eye contact until I thought he would say no. But instead, he reached for my shoes and put them on me before shifting me off his lap so he could redress. Once he was done, he helped me to my feet.
And gravity did what it always did to popped bubbles and to sticky cum.
As the slickness dripped down my leg, I became acutely aware that I wasn’t wearing underwear.
