Chapter 3
ALEX
505 | Arctic Monkeys
Post-shower, Alex collapsed onto his bed with a heavy sigh.
When Abby finally strong-armed him into dinner with her flatmate, he hadn’t been expecting her . If he’d known, he might have made time for it when she’d first started bugging him two months before.
Sarah.
There wasn’t much spare room in his overactive brain, but what little there was had been occupied since that night. Her confidence in walking up to a stranger and asking for a kiss. The way her body had moved against his on the dance floor, her perfect thighs squeezing around one of his. The give of her soft skin under his mouth and fingertips. He’d felt her moment of pause when he’d begun pushing her dress up, so he’d stopped to check she wanted it. Her snarky response had cemented her charm for him, but her breathy yes seconds later had almost ruined him. His favourite thing though? The bitten off little sounds she’d tried to hide as he made her come.
What had started as a petty display to make some guy—an ex?—jealous, had become solely about the two of them by the time she’d let him drag her to the bathroom, a moment of connection and pleasure between strangers.
And she had made it clear it was for the night. He’d paused for a moment after, bracing himself for the awkward conversation where he had to remind a poor girl that a quick fuck in a dingy bathroom was hardly the origin of a great love story. Even if her wide, dark eyes and full lips had made her utterly irresistible to him. Even if quick, messy sex with her on a surface that probably hadn’t been cleaned in months was the best he’d had in a long, long time. But he hadn’t needed to say anything. In contrast to his usual experiences, she had dismissed him , and his fascination had grown.
And then his hook-up had walked into his fucking house. Wearing imitation leather trousers that looked painted onto her generous thighs and a slightly sheer shirt that had left him remembering the taste of her skin on the swells of her breasts. But when she’d looked stricken at the sight of him, he’d assumed that—for whatever reason—she wanted to keep their prior meeting a secret. The relief on her face when he’d pretended not to know her was unmistakable. Despite revealing himself to her at the end of the evening, he could keep up the pretence if that was what she wanted.
But he assumed they’d be seeing each other plenty in the short buildup to the wedding. And if Sarah was open to a repeat, he wouldn’t say no.
Spending time with her had done little to tamp his interest. Definitely not once he’d seen how fucking talented she was. He pulled up the Instagram account she’d shown him. Clicked through to the website she’d linked. He immediately found the first piece that had stood out to him on her account—an abstract mass of colours and lines that scratched his brain into submission as he unravelled it, finding calm in the chaos.
And when he moved on to the commissions listing, he was astounded by her talent all over again. He’d meant what he said. It was a shame that her livelihood was coming from that, rather than the pieces she seemed more passionate about. But it was astonishing, the way she somehow managed to imbue even ridiculous paintings of pampered pets with a range of emotion.
Speaking of…
Alex gave a long, low whistle. Heavy paws padded towards his bedroom, and Celine’s snout pushed the door open. The Rottweiler pup had suffered terrible abuse at the hands of her first owner. It was a wonder she had survived the first two months of her life, being starved and beaten. As such, she was skittish around new women. Thanks to regular exposure, she’d warmed to his housekeeper, Maggie, within a few weeks, and she was becoming increasingly comfortable with Abby, but he hadn’t wanted to risk Sarah’s presence sending her into a panic, so he’d put her on the small mattress he kept for her in his office.
Despite the stern warnings in all the puppy training guides that said not to let her sleep in his room, she was too damn cute when she curled up at the foot of his bed, and her light snores had become the equivalent of a white noise machine for him, helping him shut off his brain to prepare for sleep. The closest he could get to drawing a boundary was not allowing her in there until bedtime, so he made sure she had plenty of comfortable spots around the house.
A grunt escaped him as she leapt towards the bed and landed with her cold paws on his bare chest. They were still working on her aim. And just shy of her first birthday, her weight was becoming significant.
‘You need to stop trying to crush me,’ he wheezed, rolling her gently off him. ‘If I suffocate, who will give you treats?’
She licked his face in response to the word treats . And he couldn’t leave her high and dry after he’d said one of her trigger words. So he reached for his bedside drawers, where he kept a stash of high-quality, organic dried meat snacks that cost more than most people spent on dinners in a week, because his girl deserved only the best. And Alex liked having someone to spoil, even if it felt slightly pathetic for that someone to be his dog.
Still keyed up from the night of socialising—from seeing her—he was never going to get to sleep unless he could tire his brain, or at least his body, out.
‘Come on, girl. Let’s go for a walk.’