19. Drake
CHAPTER 19
Drake
I pull Mimosa closer to me and kiss her neck. I’m still groggy, and with the curtains fully closed, it’d be easy to pretend that there are days left of my vacation instead of a short couple of hours.
I can’t believe how fast these two weeks went by.
I wish we were still on the yacht, and that there was nobody else in the world except for the two of us. I sure as fucking hell don’t want to get out of bed now and go into the office. I’d peeked at my emails last night, and there are three hundred new messages.
At least Caroline did take care of most of them, as she’d promised, but there’s a mountain of work waiting for me.
Mimosa makes an adorable little sound and rolls her shoulders.
I kiss her bare shoulder and place my hand over her breast.
Maybe there’s time for a quickie, or I can just blow off work entirely, or?—
“What time is it?” Mimosa asks. “Don’t you have work today?”
“Way to be a buzzkill, Mimi,” I mutter sourly, but I still massage her breast with my hand. Maybe she’ll forget about work, or she’ll think about something else entirely. I haven’t been forcing her to do anything she doesn’t want to do — which means we aren’t having sex as often as I’d like — but she’s not refusing me either.
Mimosa rolls over so she’s facing me, and I take the opportunity to kiss her. I can’t get enough of her lips… or her eyes, or her adorable nose, or the way her blue hair falls across her face, or…
She kisses back, and I sigh happily, pushing unpleasant thoughts aside.
Until she breaks the kiss and gives me that piercing look of hers. “What time is it? Just so we know how late you’re going to be, and how many people you’re pissing off.”
“I’m going to piss them off no matter what I do,” I mutter, but I know she’s right. I can’t afford to annoy anyone else, not when I’ve already pushed them this far. Caroline had made herself pretty fucking clear when she’d said the shareholders weren’t thrilled with me, but I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day without Patrick’s drugs.
Fuck.
I might have a few left, though.
I get out of bed, going to my safe and punching in the code.
“What’s the combination?” Mimosa asks from the bed.
I startle, looking up at her. “Why?” I ask, feeling self-conscious as I input the last digit. “You don’t need to get in here.”
She shrugs. “Just wondering if you’d give it to me.” She gets out of bed and pulls on my robe, which has been hanging on the clothing stand next to the bathroom for probably the past year. Then she walks over to the window and pulls the curtain open, letting in the morning light.
The sun is only just beginning to rise, which means it’s not as late as I thought it was.
We could definitely fuck around for a little bit. It’d be nice to start the day like that.
I reach into the safe, but the bottle is empty. I curse, but I realize I haven’t been needing it, which is… strange. Something about Mimi has a calming effect on me.
Too bad I can’t bring her into the office for damage control.
I shut the door to the safe, ignoring the harder drugs, then go to her, wrapping my arms around her from behind. I nuzzle her neck, murmuring, “We have a little bit before I have to go…” I hint.
Mimosa cranes her neck to look at me. “Enough time for a leisurely breakfast and so we can have that conversation you put off for the past few days.”
The conversation.
My mood sours again. I don’t want to talk about “stuff.” I don’t want to hear her tell me that she’s leaving, or that she wants her own apartment, or whatever demands she has.
Demands I’m going to give into because I somehow can’t say no to her.
I sigh. “Yeah, I guess.” I run my hand through my hair, then kiss her neck again, but I know she’s in that unyielding sort of mood. I turn, putting on my boxer briefs before heading to the kitchen. “You can cut up some fruit or whatever,” I tell her when she follows me.
“If I cut it into pretty shapes, will you eat it?” Mimosa teases. “I might even throw a vegetable in there.”
I shudder. “Don’t threaten me,” I tell her, joking half-heartedly as I pull the carton of eggs and slab of bacon out of the fridge. “You’re the one who wants to eat that crap.”
She takes the eggs and bacon from me—and places the bacon back in the fridge. “I’ll make omelets. With vegetables in them. We’ll have the fruits as a side.” She smiles at me. “You can handle that, right?”
“But I don’t want veggies in my omelet,” I half-joke, half-whine. “Fine, fine. But I still get my damn bacon. Jesus Christ, woman. Are you trying to completely shock my system?” I grab the bacon again, eyeing her.
Mimosa shrugs, and the robe slips halfway down one of her shoulders. “Okay. I can’t actually dictate what you eat.” She goes to grab the vegetables she’d ordered yesterday and begins chopping them. There are tomatoes and bell peppers and even mushrooms.
“Yeah.” I watch her for a moment, wishing I could just distract her. But I need to man up. “So. This… conversation,” I say, the words tasting bitter. “What are we talking about? I mean, if it’s just about fruits and veggies, it’s done, yeah?”
“We’re not just talking about fruits and vegetables,” Mimosa says. Her hands are quick with the knife, in a way that implies she actually knows how to cook. I’ll have to ask her about that later. “We’re going to talk about me, and about us. ”
My heart drops into my stomach. “You can just use the knife on me, you know,” I say, trying for another joke but failing miserably. “That would probably be less painful.”
Mimosa pauses in her chopping. “Less painful for you, but a lot messier for me. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of fabric?”
I do, actually, but I don’t think I should say that. “Okay,” I say, sitting down at the table to watch her be all domestic in my kitchen. Will this be the last time? “So,” I start again. “What?”
She turns on the stove and pours oil onto the pan. As it begins to sizzle, she asks, “Am I still your sex slave?”
“Jesus,” I mutter, burying my face in my hands. “I don’t fucking know. No?” In truth, I don’t think she has been since…
Since the day at Mer d’Or.
Since the yacht, when we’d fought but she’d fucked me senseless.
Since the salon, when she’d hold my hand to keep me from getting too fancy.
Since the casino, when she hadn’t run off.
Mimosa doesn’t react. She just throws the vegetables into the pan and begins to stir them.
“In that case, do I get to leave the apartment? Do I get to have a life? Or do I have to stay here, a toy that you put away when I’m not in use?” Mimosa gives me a brief glance. “Just to make sure we’re on the same page, I’m a human being, not a toy.”
I glare at her. “I’m aware of that,” I retort. “And I’ve been treating you like one.” I hesitate. “Haven’t I?”
She gives me one of her slight smiles that almost feel better than the big ones. It’s a secret smile. A smile for me.
“You have. I’m impressed. But I wouldn’t want you to backslide now when you’re going to be interacting with the kind of people who work at your Fortune 500 company.”
“Fortune 100,” I correct automatically. “But who’s counting?”
Me. Definitely me.
“I don’t want you to get bored. I don’t know how housebroken you are,” I try to joke. “You might get on the furniture or some shit.”
The look she gives me is not impressed.
I sigh. “I thought I’d give you a credit card. I want you to be home by the time I get home, but I don’t always know when that’s going to be. I can get you access to my work calendar…” I get up. “Hang on.”
I head to the bedroom, and I open the safe again, pulling out the box with the phone I’d bought for her.
I bring it to her, setting it down on the counter like it’s going to bite me if I don’t get rid of it. “Here.”
Mimosa stops cooking to look at it. Her eyes widen, and for a fraction of a second, she looks vulnerable. “I…” She stops, clears her throat, and says, “Thanks. I’m glad we can agree on a few things.”
She doesn’t open the box, instead going back to the omelets. They smell good, and when she plates them and sets one down in front of me, I can even admit that it looks good.
“You won’t leave, right?” I ask, and I hate how uneven my voice is. How fragile.
Mimosa sits down next to me at the kitchen island. “I don’t know. You’ll have to trust me.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really do ‘trust’ very well,” I say, but I look down at the omelet instead of up at her. I take a bite, and it’s surprisingly good.
Different.
Not that I’m going to admit that to her.
“Not my problem,” Mimosa answers. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I will. Not today, anyway.” She sighs and looks at me. “You’re kind of terrible, but you’re growing on me—if you can continue to shape up.”
“Thanks, I think,” I say, my voice droll. I take another bite of the omelet. “You’re kind of annoying, but you’re growing on me, too.” I fall silent. “There’s a tracker in the phone,” I say bluntly after a moment. “I’m going to… request that you leave it on. Just because…” I sigh. “Look, my two friends? Their girls both ended up in some shit. I want to be able to find you in case you have a crazy ex or your sister has more debts than you know about.”
I’d put a tracker on her — in her body — if I thought she’d let me, but we’re probably not ready for me to be that level of possessive.
“I might,” Mimosa responds. She takes a few bites of her omelet. “Your friends are Hunter and Chase? And that Patrick guy? ”
“Not Patrick,” I say sourly. I’d tried to text him, but he’d ignored me. Fuck him, and good riddance, to boot. “And Hunter and Chase have been pushing me out of their sphere, so fuck them, too.”
“Pushing you out?” Mimosa pauses to take a sip of coffee. “Hunter interrupted his date to patch me up after you fucked up my feet. And Chase was at the party, wasn’t he?”
I stop for a moment, thinking. She’s right. They hadn’t had to put their own plans aside for me, but they had. I scowl at her in between bites of my food, though. “I don’t like mushrooms, by the way,” I say in lieu of answering.
“When I stayed at a friend’s place one weekend, her mom cooked for us. She made this mushroom stew, and I wanted to refuse to eat it because I thought mushrooms were gross.” Mimosa looks at me. “What do you think I did?”
“Oh, my god,” I lament. “I’m not five. I don’t have to eat shit I don’t like.” I look pointedly at the growing pile of mushrooms on my plate. “Why do you ask about my friends, anyway?” I make a face. “You don’t want to hang out with Stef. And I don’t know about May.”
“I was sixteen, not five, and I ate it anyway. It turned out, mushroom stew was delicious.” Mimosa skewers one of the mushrooms on my plate and eats it. “And I asked about your friends because I wanted to know more about you. How did you meet them?”
This is such a normal conversation that I don’t really know what to make of it at first. “College friends,” I tell her. “I’ve known them forever.” I squint at her. “What about you? You have a lot of friends?”
Jealousy rips through me, even though I try my best to keep it under control.
Mimosa laughs bitterly. “Not really. We moved after my parents died, and I was dealing with all the trauma and grief around that while also being the new kid in class. I had a hard time connecting to people. In university… I had a few people I thought were friends. I have no idea if they’re worried about me right now, though. I hadn’t endeared myself to most of my peers. You’ll be very shocked to hear that most of my male classmates thought I was a stuck-up, feminazi bitch.”
I snort. “Oh yeah. Totally shocked,” I say, deadpan. But I hesitate for a moment before saying slowly, “Maybe you can make friends now. I mean… If you’re not too traumatized now.”
“It would be nice.” She sighs. “Maybe I should try to get to know Stef and May. They seemed all right, I guess.”
“Stef is a little bitch,” I say, “but she could probably use friends. And May… You’d probably get along with her. She’s a painslut. Maybe it’ll wear off on you.”
“It will not wear off on me.” Mimosa takes another mushroom off my plate. “Anyway. I think it might be time for you to shower and get ready for work, if you don’t want to miss your morning meetings.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I drawl, but I can’t quite hide my disappointment. I wanted someone who would take what I could dish out. That was the reason I’d picked someone who couldn’t say no. And now… Now, I’m somehow in a vanilla relationship with someone who doesn’t belong to me and could leave me at any minute.
I get up abruptly enough to make my chair screech on the floor.
“Yeah.” I storm off, going to the bathroom and turning the water on. I shed my boxer briefs and step under the stream, not even waiting for it to warm up first.
Mimosa doesn’t join me, and it makes my resentment grow.
I shower, scrubbing at my skin hard enough for it to turn red, then get out.
She still doesn’t come.
Mechanically, I dry off, taking time to shave and style my hair before getting my suit out. It looks as boring as it always does, but I put it on anyway. Maybe I’ll change the dress code so I can wear something less stifling.
First, I have to get through the day, though.
“I’ll be back by six,” I tell Mimosa, grabbing my keys and wallet.
I don’t wait for her to answer before leaving, hitting the “door close” button on the elevator so I don’t look back at her.