Chapter 18
“Fire Up the Night” - New Medicine
Pierce
I can’t tell what Maeve is thinking, because she’s locked her thoughts behind that icy mask of hostility she wears to keep people at bay. I’ve rarely seen her lower it, but every time she does, it hits me like a punch to the gut.
The second someone knocks on the conference room door, I know I’ve lost her. She shoots me a lethal glare, as if it’s my fault we were interrupted, and marches out of the room. I can still picture those tall black boots thrown over my shoulders long after she leaves.
Visions of taking her in a million different ways haunt me wherever I go. I can’t enter a room without picturing the way she’d look splayed on the desk or pressed up against the wall. I hit the gym early after work, but even there I imagine fucking her in front of the floor-length mirror.
I don’t hear from her for two whole days, which isn’t exactly surprising, since I’m under no illusion that she’s actually considering my suggestion.
But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.
It’s not even that I need sex so badly—it’s the fact that she thinks she can just ignore me after everything.
She even blew off poker night, blaming the same virus she used to get out of the Tokyo trip. While that may have fooled the rest of the gang, she’s not even trying to hide her true reasons for bailing from me, since she was alive and healthy that same afternoon.
But on the third day, after I’ve fully given up hope that she will ever call, she sends a text. Are you free tonight?
Instead of answering her question, I ask one of my own. Where are you?
I’m at work, but I turn everything over to my assistant and am taking the elevator to the car park within four minutes of getting Maeve’s message.
Her response comes while I’m driving down Twenty-Fifth. Just got home. Why?
I’m already halfway to her house, that’s why. She’s as predictable as the sunrise, and I know her schedule almost as well as my own. Fridays she has lunch downtown with Lux, Walker, and Saylor, before doing a little shopping. She’s home by early afternoon to freshen up for dinner at her parents’.
She frowns at me when she opens the door, then glances down at her phone like she’s looking for something she missed.
“Hey,” I say, pushing my way inside. Rather than allow her to waste precious time telling me to leave, I grab her and kiss her soundly, stopping all arguments before they can form. It only takes seconds for her to relax fully in my arms so I can press her up against the foyer wall.
We don’t even make it to the bedroom, at least not the first time. I take her against the wall, and she climaxes like a champ. We get a little further into the house the next time—the living room sofa—and finally, the last time we strip down and do it on the bed.
After her fourth climax—I gave her two on the couch—Maeve lays her head on the pillow and falls asleep. I watch her for a few minutes, but sex makes me ravenous, so I slip out to the kitchen for some food.
While I’m rummaging through the drawers, I come across a small tray filled with keys. Each one is labeled with a name. Todd, Wesley, Ethan. There are around two dozen of them, and it takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at. Then it hits me.
These are the duplicate house keys she has made every time she dates a guy, in case she ever needs to break into his flat to do some damage. They’ve come in handy a few times when she’s won the revenge pot during poker, but mother of god—the woman is positively diabolical.
I dump the entire collection of keys into the trash. She won’t be needing them, and I don’t fancy her having mementos of the stupid-ass blokes who dated her and let her go.
When she wakes up, we have another round in the shower before she rushes around her bedroom, lamenting how she’s going to be late to dinner.
I hint around about going with her, but she blows me off.
Probably a good thing. I wouldn’t want anyone—including her—getting ideas about us. Shit like that just makes you weak.
* * *
I expected her to wait a week before calling again, so I’m completely unprepared for the message waiting for me when I check my phone during poker on Tuesday night.
Bathroom?
I can’t help the way my eyes instantly lift and find her across the table. Things have gotten tight in here now that both Lux and Rhett started bringing their significant others, but there could be a hundred people in this room and I’d still know immediately where Maeve is.
She’s in the middle of an argument with Rhett—seriously, those two fight like brother and sister—but she flicks her eyes in my direction as if she can feel my gaze on her. We’re meant to be planning another revenge plot on Deirdre Cox, but as you can see, it’s not going well.
I don’t bother replying to her message, just stand and stretch my arms. “I’m going to fetch fresh drinks,” I say, before walking out.
Maeve meets me in the restroom several minutes later, and I finally get the opportunity to set her ass on the vanity and fuck her with our friends in the other room.
We’re done before anyone gets suspicious, and she wipes a smudge of her lipstick from my neck without a word.
I guess that’s what we do now—fuck secretly and silently, then go back to our normal lives like nothing’s happened.
The trend continues throughout the next two weeks.
In addition to both our houses, we make use of a small closet at the Wilson Foundation headquarters, a hotel stairwell during a charity event, the back of a town car, and the bathroom at Heath and Walker’s, until I start to lose track of all the places we’ve debased.
I’ve let her initiate everything up until this point, afraid she’ll be scared off if I send the first text.
But now it’s been several days since I’ve seen her, and I’m starting to get antsy.
I’ve gotten used to having sex every day, and going without for more than forty-eight hours is getting uncomfortable.
After pouring myself a glass of bourbon, I send her a text.
Me: Tonight?
I wait an agonizing ten minutes before she finally replies.
Maeve: Can’t tonight. Sorry.
What the fuck?
Me: What’s going on?
Is she sick? On her period? A thousand possibilities swirl through my head as I wait another eternity for her next message.
Maeve: I’m busy.
Me: No, you’re not. Tell me what’s up.
She sends me the middle finger emoji.
Me: Fine. I’m coming over.
Her response is instantaneous.
Maeve: No!
The best way to handle her is to sit back and let her make a mess of things, which is exactly what I intend to do.
Maeve: Do NOT come over.
Maeve: Promise me.
Maeve: Pierce.
Maeve: PIERCE
If she’s really worried, she’ll call me if I don’t respond.
Except she doesn’t. My phone stays quiet. The longer I wait, the tighter my jaw clenches. I know exactly what’s going on. She has shown her hand by not calling.
Me: You’re with him, aren’t you?
She doesn’t reply. I’ve been sitting on this damn sofa for thirty minutes waiting for her to give me the green light to come over, and this whole time she’s been with him. Fucking Preston Ansley.
Yeah, I know I have no right to feel this way, but I’m going to tear that idiot’s head from his shoulders anyway. Just watch me.