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After being caught by my boss snooping on his laptop, then making out with him, I drove Mallory back to the bar, but I hadn’t gotten out of the car. I’d driven straight home, afraid of anything else happening. She hadn’t complained, probably because she knew I couldn’t handle anything else about the printed sex quizzes.
I’d gone home and gone to bed, although I hadn’t been able to sleep. I tossed and turned, thinking about the kiss. No, that had been full-on making out, the adult version. There was no fumbling like teenagers. That had been hot and… fuck. Insane.
After that, I shifted my thoughts to how Maverick had only wanted to kiss me–and press me against the wall and let me ride his thigh–because the sex quiz had given him permission to break out of the confines of what was office appropriate.
I’d called him on it, but he denied that was the reason for his actions. Or at least his half. I had zero reasons for mine other than I was obscenely attracted to him, and I’d been momentarily crazy.
Then he’d said he’d fix it.
I had no idea how he’d do that because the email had been sent. He’d read it.
Thoughts of how he’d accomplish that lingered until dawn, so I climbed from bed and decided to burn off my frustration and anger on a run. It hadn’t helped. I wasn’t sure what would. He’d said I wasn’t fired. But what would it be like working with him every day after that kiss? With him knowing no man had given me orgasms? What my secret fantasy was.
How could I work with a man–Maverick, especially–who thought my secret fantasy was to suck his dick? Where was my credibility, my integrity, when all he would probably think of was me on my knees? He would never see me as a professional. I’d be demeaned and diminished like I had with my professor. Like Jason, even though he’d never touched me.
What I wrote was, in one context, exactly what I didn’t want. A hard no. A safeword kind of limit. It was why I pushed Maverick away the night before.
“Earth to Bridge,” Lindy said, waving her hand in the air.
I realized I’d thought all of that after she asked me after the coffee, socks dangling from my fingers.
“Sorry. Yes. I didn’t sleep well.”
“Things going okay at work?” The question held concern, but also had the tinge of motherly worry. While Lindy was my sister, she’d been my parent since I was ten when our parents died.
I frowned, tossing the socks into the basket. Tried not to panic that the sex quiz fiasco got back to her. “Why, what did you hear?”
She pushed off the wall and walked into the kitchen. The laundry was in a little hallway between it and the garage. “Nothing. I just assumed that’s why you couldn’t sleep. You’re putting in a lot of hours.”
“You said I could stay here as long as I had a job.” This was a reminder of her tough love approach when I returned from Boston in the winter.
She sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes, you did,” I countered.
“No,” she countered quickly, us falling into our usual pattern of her being disappointed in me and me defending myself. “You dropped out of school. Walked away from a full ride to MIT six months before graduation. It’s school or real life and you made your choice.”
Ouch. Again. I hadn’t told her about what happened. About my professor. I told Mallory, but I knew she’d keep my secret. When I left Boston, my plan was to leave the anger, the heartache, all of it behind. It hadn’t worked as I hoped, but I was getting better. Knowing I wasn’t getting credit for all that work would piss me off forever. That a man was not only being lauded for it but gotten one over on me.
The fucker.
So, no. I hadn’t told Lindy. Pseudo-mom. She was a perfectionist. Always striving. Always pushing. A control freak. Everything had to be just so, including me. Except I’d never be just as she wanted, no matter what I did. Whether I was a kid she was raising or a grownup, it didn’t matter, so me leaving MIT only made me look like the wayward dropout that I officially was.
“Gotcha,” I said, swallowing my pride. “I’ll find an apartment soon.”
She came over and hugged me. “That’s not what I mean. God, I need more coffee. This is your house, too.”
It was the house our parents bought when they got married. When they died, it went to Lindy. And since I’d been ten when the accident happened, I went to her, too.
“As for why I couldn’t sleep, I was out with Mallory,” I said, diverting her away from our usual argument of my off-track life. I grabbed the basket and set it on the kitchen table. “Ladies’ night, remember?”
Lindy had been invited, like usual, but never joined us, telling me she felt too old to go out with my friends. She was thirteen years older and more mother than sister to me, so she had a point. It was probably weird for her to drink with me and Mallory since she had been the one who took us to ski lessons and bra shopping.
Now, I was thrilled that she hadn’t joined us the night before. I didn’t want to know her answers to the sex quiz, and I definitely didn’t want her to know what happened with mine.
She returned to her coffee, grabbing milk from the fridge to top it off. She liked her coffee pale.
“Right.” She took a sip, closed her eyes and sighed. “Maybe I should have gone with you. The guy last night was a disaster.”
