18. Wentworth
EIGHTEEN
Wentworth
2019
NO SOONER DO I MAKE WHAT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE the biggest mistake of my life, does Tess give me a wide, I knew my plan would work kind of grin. Kait, on the other hand, isn’t quite ready to give up, just yet.
“I didn’t realize how late it was.” Giving me a quick, nervous smile, she shakes her head. “I need to get home to Mook. He’s probably eaten every sock I have by now.”
Tess gives her an are you serious kind of smile. “Isn’t Friday night Mook’s sleep over night with Molly?”
“Oh yeah…” Kait, chews on her bottom lip for a moment before she nods. “I forgot.”
“Between Con, Went, and me, Lydia is already having a fit over how many tattoos are about to be exposed to the New York elite next weekend,” she reminds us both with a wry smile. “I think a half finished… whatever that is, would probably send her over the edge. As much as I’d like to see that?—”
“No.” Kait gives her a brief smile, along with a head nod. “You’re right. I’ll stay and let him finish.”
“Perfect.” Aiming that shit-eating grin of hers over my shoulder, she gives Kait a wink. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Before either one of us can even blink, Tess has Henley and Maeve—who were conveniently stationed at the front of the shop and ready to go—out the door, making a show of locking the bottom lock, before shutting it behind her.
For a moment, neither of us can do anything more than breathe. Because we’re alone and alone is something we both agreed was not a healthy place for us to be.
This can’t be healthy…how much I want to fuck you. It’s all I can think about. The feel of your tight, pretty pussy stretched around my cock while I fill it full of cum…
Jesus Christ.
This is bad.
Really, really fucking bad.
If it’s so bad, why the hell did you do it? Why did you let Tess walk out of here and leave Kait behind? You all but jumped at the chance to keep Kait here with you when what you should’ve done is snap off your gloves, tell them you were done for the night and send her home with the rest of them.
“I’ll call an Uber,” she says behind me, sliding off the edge of my tattoo table to land on the floor behind me. Spinning around on my stool, I watch while she pulls her phone from her back pocket and starts scrolling through her apps.
“Your tattoo is still half done,” I remind her. Even though getting Kait away from me as fast as possible is the smart thing, it’s suddenly the last thing I want to do.
“It’s alright,” she tells me, thumbs tapping against her cellphone screen. “I’ll just?—”
Standing, I close what little distance there is between us. Towering over her, I pluck her phone out of her grasp. Looking at its screen, I feel my forehead crumple.
The Uber is ordered. Kevin will be here in his dark blue, 2018 Nissan Armata to pick her up in seven minutes.
The fuck he will.
I cancel the ride without thinking twice.
“ Hey .” She doesn’t sound pissed when she says it. She sounds scared. Not of me. She’s not afraid of me. She’s afraid of us . What happens when we’re alone. Because even though we agreed that alone is an unhealthy place for us to be, we can’t seem to make it stick. Lifting herself on her tiptoes, Kait makes a grab for her phone. When I just lift it higher and out of reach, she sighs before dropping herself back onto flat feet. “Went, please. Just let me?—”
“You can’t leave.” I shake my head, trying to rationalize what I’m doing. Justify the mess I’m making. The damage I’m about to cause. “Next time you see Tess—which I’m guessing will be tomorrow—she’s going to ask to see the tattoo. The tattoo that is still half done. She’ll know you left as soon as she did and she’ll want to know why.”
“I’ll tell her the truth,” she tells me in that snippy tone of hers that never fails to make my cock ache. “I’ll tell her that being alone with you made me uncomfortable and that I?—”
“Uncomfortable?” I take a half step toward her and she counters, trying to keep some distance between us. “Is that what you’re feeling right now?” I move again, close enough that I can feel the heat of her against my skin. “ Uncomfortable ?”
Staring up at me with those big, blue eyes of hers, Kait gives me a slow blink, mouth open slightly while she tries to force out a lie. Finally finding her voice, all she manages to say is my name. “Went?—”
“Do you want to leave?” The answer is no. I know it is. I know what she wants. She wants the same thing I do. She wants me to get her naked. Bend her over my tattoo table, face turned toward the wall of mirrors in front of her so she can watch us while I fuck her from behind.
Like she can read my mind, Kait shakes her head while shifting uncomfortably on her feet. “It’s not about what either of us want ,” she reminds me quietly, chin tipped, eyes pinned to the tattoo on the side of my neck. “It’s about what’s smart. We agreed that it would be best for everyone if we?—”
Why?
Why did we agree to that? For the life of me, I can’t remember. I’m sure I could if I were thinking rationally but rational is not something I’ve ever been with Kait. Impulsive. Rash. Horny as fuck. Obsessed. Borderline insane—I’ve been all of those things with her, usually all at the same time, but never rational. Never smart. As a matter of fact, the closer she is, the dumber and crazier I get.
Some things never change.
“In case you missed it—that was Tess playing matchmaker.” Angling myself over her, I give her a shitty smirk. “And if you think the rest of them won’t know that she left you here, alone , with me, before they’ve finished their morning coffee tomorrow, you’re crazier than I am, Sunshine,” I tell her, the old nickname I used to have for her slipping out before I can stop it. I haven’t call her that since…
Promise me you’ll stay, Sunshine. Promise me you’ll be here, waiting, when I get back.
“How could I miss it?” Kait asks with a brief, wobbly smile, her only indication that she caught my slip up and that it affected her as much as it did me. “She blatantly told me that’s what she was doing.”
Of course she did.
Because Tess is about as subtle as a jackhammer.
“And I know how this family works,” she tells me, blanching slightly. “I’ll be surprised if Ryan isn’t posted up at his peephole, right now, waiting for me to get home.”
“So, if we can’t go back to pretending to be strangers,” I tell her, trying to at least sound rational when all I feel is desperate. “Maybe we should try being friends.” I don’t mean it. I don’t want to be her friend. I’ve never wanted to be her friend. I don’t know how. When I’m around her, all I want is to figure out a way to get her naked and when I’m not, all I want to do is hate her for the way she ended things. Neither one of those behaviors are what I’d consider friendly.
“Friends?” She says the word like she’s never heard it before. Like she doesn’t know what it means because she doesn’t. Neither of us do. Not when it comes to us.
“Friends,” I confirm, my tone steady and sure.
“We tried that once, remember?” she reminds me with that wobbly smile of hers. “It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. You and I don’t know how to be friends. It’s why we decided on strangers.”
Is that why?
I’ll have to take her word for it because I can’t fucking remember.
“Well, I’m willing to give it another try if you are.” It’s not a lie. Not exactly. Right now, I’m willing to do anything, say anything, to stop her from leaving—but I know myself. It won’t last. Sooner or later, the hurt over what she did will take over and I’ll lash out. Find a way to punish her for leaving.
And she knows it.
Before she can remind me of that too, I slip her phone into my own back pocket. When her mouth opens in protest, I fit my hands around her waist and lift her up to drop her ass back onto my tattoo table.
You’re doing it wrong. She’s supposed to be naked, remember? And face-down.
“Then we’ll meet in the middle.” My brain tells my hands to let go. To stop touching her but they don’t move an inch. As usual when it comes to Kait Barrett, my hands do whatever the fuck they want. “We’ll pretend to be friends.”
Scowling up at me, Kait shakes her head. “I don’t see how pretending to be friends is meeting in the middle .”
“We’ve got an entire wedding weekend to get through, Sunshine.” It slips out again and this time I don’t even try to stop it. “I say we play nice for the next couple of days—for Conner and Henley’s sake—and then after the wedding, we tell them that we messed around a little but decided we don’t like each other.” The plan forms fast, but it makes sense. “That way we can stop pretending that we don’t know each other but they won’t push it when we go back to avoiding each other.”
“Friends don’t fuck,” she says bluntly. “Or kiss, or?—”
“I can keep it in my pants if you can.” Another lie. We’re going to fuck. It’s only a matter of time. The more we’re around each other, the harder it’ll be for us to keep our clothes on and we both know it. Like she said—it’s why we decided on avoiding each other instead of letting go of the past and trying to move forward.
“You really think that’ll work?” She looks skeptical and I can’t say I blame her. “You believe that we can convince Conner Gilroy that we just messed around a little but ultimately decided we don’t like each other?”
No.
No, I don’t.
Matter of fact, I consider it a miracle that he hasn’t figured it out by now. The only thing working in our favor is that he’s never seen us together in the same room. But that’s about to change.
“Well, Plan B—we can always tell them the truth.” That we’ve known each other for years now. That we were married for five of the best fucking weeks of my life. That I was so stupid crazy in love with you that when you left, I never saw it coming. That coming back to find you gone fucked me up in ways I still don’t understand. That I still don’t know why. That I still don’t know what I did to make you leave. What I should’ve done different to make you stay.
Like I said it all out loud, Kait looks up at me with those wide, blue eyes of hers and shakes her head no. She doesn’t want to tell them the truth any more than I do.
“I didn’t think so.” I give her a wry, crooked smile before I finally manage to force my hands into compliance and away from her hips. “Then, plan A it is.”