As if it was ever going to end the torment.
Lucie isn’t a meal you eat because you’re hungry. She’s exotically wrapped candy that leaves you hungrier than you started. It’s been less than a day since she was in my bed and I’m already fucking ravenous.
I need weeks, months of her to get full. I need a year of her clenching around me as I drive inside her. I need a decade of that stunned inhale as I bury my head between her legs, a century of her looking up under long lashes as she takes my cock in her mouth.
It’s midnight back home when we land, early evening in Tokyo. I should simply be relieved there was no fall-out from the incident with Robert Underwood, but instead I’m thinking about Lucie, just like I did last night, as I laid awake for hours, trying to make an impossible situation possible.
My host drives me to Nobu for dinner. Fucking Nobu—the exact fucking restaurant that guy plans to take Lucie to. You can’t get out of here for less than a hundred and fifty a person, yet they are going on a first date.
If it doesn’t work out with him, I’m sure Wyatt will offer her the moon in his place. God knows he probably could offer her the moon with as much as I pay him.
I glance at my watch. California is seventeen hours behind. She’s sound asleep by now, and while I’m asleep, she’ll be heading into the office, where another guy has a clear path in my absence.
God, what the hell was I thinking, leaving her there to be wooed by some asshole who’ll tell her anything she wants to hear: I love kids, Lucie. I can’t wait to take mine to Disney. I’d love to take yours to Disney. When can I meet them?
I pick up my phone, ready to text. Don’t go out with Wyatt, Lucie, I’ll say. He’s a dick.
Except...who’s worse? Wyatt, the guy who could potentially give her all the things she wants from life or me, the guy who can’t offer her a single fucking thing, but would gladly take from her until there was nothing left?
I put the phone down. I’m not texting her. I’m not going back early. I’m staying here to do my fucking job and praying that sometime between now and the flight home on Friday, I get my shit straight.
I MAKE IT TO THURSDAY. It’s been nearly a week since I’ve seen her.
A week since she begged for more when I was doing my level best not to come; a week since she deep-throated me as if she was hungry for it, as if there was nothing she wanted more than my cock in her mouth.
Jesus, I’ve heard her say ‘more’ a thousand times in my head now. I’ve relived all of it a thousand times: pushing her dress around her hips, sliding my fingers under the elastic of her panties to discover she was absolutely soaked and...
Fuck.
A week away hasn’t done a goddamn thing. I want her just as much as I did.
I give up and cancel every meeting. To return to a girl I can’t keep for myself.
27
LUCIE
It was hard to breathe when I left Caleb’s room, and a week later—waiting on my lunch at the deli down the street from the office—it’s still hard to breathe.
I knew what I was signing on for when I slept with him, but it’s as if I’ve lost something, and the ache from it is nearly palpable. It’s as if I’ve lost everything, and now the normal bullshit I deal with every day feels as if it’s simply too much. Jeremy’s texts are too much. The downstairs toilet flooding is too much. The twins’ hopeful little faces as they glance toward Caleb’s house are way, way too much.
Molly’s on the other line while I wait for my order, spelling out her latest Michael-focused plan, one she prefaced with “It’s perfect. I just need someone to kidnap me.”
“Molly, don’t you think he’d call the cops if he thought you were locked in a shipping container?” I ask when she concludes.
“Not if time was of the essence. But where am I going to find a kidnapper?”
“Dark web?” I suggest. “That was a joke. For the love of God, do not go on the dark web if that’s something you know how to do.”
“Of course I know how. I’ve got a hundred and sixty IQ, which you would not guess based on my driving ability. I knocked the side-view mirror off my car in the garage this morning, by the way, so can you drive tonight? And wear something sexy. Something that shows a lot of cleavage.”
Molly has insisted that I need to ‘get back out there’ while the twins are celebrating their grandfather’s birthday tonight. I guess it’s better than staying home alone, reliving that afternoon in a hotel room, an afternoon against which nothing could ever compare, but I was sort of hoping she’d cancel.
“Fine, but you’d better be wearing something that shows a lot of—”
There’s a tap on my shoulder and I discover Wyatt standing behind me and not appearing to care that I’m on the phone, which doesn’t win him any points. “Let me call you back,” I tell her.
“It’s cool. I’ll just be over here on the dark web looking up mercenaries.”
I laugh as I drop the phone in my purse and turn to Wyatt.
“I’ve been hoping I’d run into you down here,” he says, “but you never eat lunch out.”
“I don’t, but my kids got in the way this morning, so I couldn’t pack anything. How are you?”
“That depends,” he says with another unmuted grin. “Are you ready to go out with me yet?”
I cancelled on Stuart already because of Caleb, and Wyatt appeals even less. I probably need to move on, but I’m not ready.
He grins. “What if we don’t call it a date? What if it’s, like, the prologue to a date?”
I grab my to-go container as it appears in the window. “That still sounds like a date.”
“Here’s why you should go on a prologue to a date with me,” he says, holding the door. “A. I’m fun. B. I’m very hot. C. I have superior bedroom skills.”
I raise a brow. “Would that matter on a prologue to a date?”
“Just thought I’d try to slide it in there,” he replies, as the building comes into view. “But I promise if you go on the date prologue, I won’t try to slide in anything else.”
I groan. He’s a nice guy, I guess, but even his friendly overtures are a little pushy. I can’t imagine what he’d be like on a date. “I appreciate the reassurance. I’m not sure I’m ready.”
“Then hang out with me as friends,” he says. “We can...shit.”
I follow his gaze. Caleb is just ahead of us, exiting his truck. My stomach drops to my feet. He’s so lovely, even when he’s scowling at me like he is now.
“We’ve poked the bear,” Wyatt says under his breath.
I glance at him. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I get the sense that Caleb is pretty protective of you. After that staff meeting, when I put my arm around your shoulders? I had to watch a video on sexual harassment.”
My mouth falls open. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He gives a short, unhappy laugh. “I wish I was. A hundred bucks says I have to watch a video about fraternization next.”
“Is there a rule against fraternization?”
He glances at Caleb, who’s marching toward the office as if he’s about to lay siege to it. “If there’s not, I bet there’s about to be. I’m so done with this job. Caleb’s had a screw loose ever since his wife left.”
I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t ask. There’s nothing I’m going to learn that will make me feel better. “Did you ever meet her?”
Oops.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “Hard to forget Kate. No idea what she was doing with Caleb.”
The admiration in his voice is like a hard pinch. I should change the subject, because anything I learn will only make me feel worse. “Oh? She was pretty?”
He laughs. “Kate’s a knockout. The guy’s probably a millionaire so that part isn’t surprising, but she’s also fun and fucking brilliant. She could have had anyone, so why him?”
I can think of a thousand reasons why she’d have chosen him, personally.