AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m wondering if he’s going to say anything at all, when he finally wafts his hand around and speaks.
“I meant what I said, Mirabelle. My marriage is a sham. It’s about appearing to do the right thing and get the money, blah, blah, blah.”
I pretend like I’ve only just cottoned on to it being about money. “You mean, you get some sort of inheritance upon marriage and such?”
“Yes,” he exclaims, happy that he thinks I believe him. “Exactly!”
“Oh, I see.”
“I admit my conduct has been not good, but there’s something you should know.” He looks around to check nobody’s listening, then looks at me with hooded eyes. “I think you’re about the only woman I’ve ever really liked. My wife is someone my mother always foisted on me when I went back home, and well, I wasn’t the one who put holes in the condoms, was I? At least, that’s what I’m imagining she did.”
My eyes widen at that. Given how many times he nearly plunged inside me without a rubber on, I highly doubt his wife to be the only guilty party. Not if she’s in love with him. I’ve always made him wear a rubber because I don’t know him well enough to go there.
“And when I started working for Chrissy, she was really hard to say no to.”
I’d prepared myself to have to work really hard to get this out of him, but here we go, he’s just going to spill it, isn’t he? Because he knows I already know something, and he thinks he’s being clever now. Covering his butt.
“How old were you when you started at HypoChrissy?” I ask, sipping my drink.
“I’ve been there twelve years, Mira. I was twenty-two.”
I’m trying to seem ever so sympathetic, but a bloke with a sex drive like his doesn’t suddenly become promiscuous at twenty-two. He’ll have been legal for six years prior to working for her. Living in the country with all that freedom and all those randy country girls at his disposal…
No doubt when he began working for her, they recognised in each other a high sex drive. Though it’d not be seemly for it to become common knowledge that he was shagging the boss on the side, a woman fifteen years his senior, who was already married with two kids.
She merely encouraged him in his exploits so if anything like this ever happened, she could claim innocence. After all, he’s the one with all the notches. Nobody knows she’s been bedding him. Except for me and Lila, of course. Perhaps Lila borrows him occasionally when she needs a good tonguing.
I can tell from the way he’s giving me puppy-dog eyes over the rim of his pint glass, he’s expecting me to feel sorry for him.
“She groomed you then? And wanted to know which other girls you were fucking and how you were fucking them and that sort of thing?”
He holds his hands up. “She’s been in on it the whole time. I wouldn’t say I’m innocent, but as for me being clever enough to conceal the truth from her all this time, well… you’re intelligent, Mira. You work it out.”
Kallie was right. The whole thing is toxic. Deep down, everyone’s known what’s been going on, even the other girls he’s been shagging. They know he’s not the faithful type at all.
“She’s not happy that I’ve not been into it lately,” he says, “and my wife has noticed, too. Because all I can think about right now is you, Mira.”
He reaches over and touches my hand, smiling as I allow him to touch me.
“I said it before and I’ll say it again, Miles. You’re not the monogamous type. And I’m not interested in being with anyone. Not like that. I don’t feel the same way.”
He nods his head acceptingly, because he knew that already. “That’s fine, but I want you to know, and this is all I really want you to know, by the way.” He takes my hand again. “I’ve had a lot of women. And it’s just been sex. And I’ve not cared about them at all. But I know I care about you, and I also know, this wasn’t just sex. I know that because I’ve had a lot to compare it to, and I know it, all right?”
I know he wishes me to reciprocate, but I’m in the unenviable position of being the bad guy here. I don’t feel the same way and therefore, I have nothing to comfort him with.
“If I can change, then maybe you’ll like me back, right?”
There are things I like about him already, but he doesn’t see that when a woman is in love with someone else… there’s nothing that can be done about it. I’m cold to everything else. I can’t help that.
“Maybe,” I agree, just for the purpose of this exercise, even though I know I won’t be able to unlove Albie anytime soon.
“I can deal with maybe,” he says, with some relief. “Now, can we go back to yours so I can tongue you into oblivion? Because I don’t even care about myself at this stage, I just want to pleasure you.”
“Okay.”
He wasn’t expecting me to say that, so when I do, he throws the rest of that pint down his neck and yanks me out of the place.
Chapter Twelve
