7. Cassie
7
CASSIE
The moment Vito’s lips touch mine, all my bones go to jelly. I never realised a kiss would be like this, or I’d have tried it earlier. His mouth is warm and firm, and sending little zings in all directions. Up into my overwhelmed mind, and down to my fluttery belly. And beyond. Between my legs a coil slowly, slowly tightens.
He holds my neck, caressing it gently and probably holding me up, too, because I’ve melted into him. His tongue plunders my mouth, stroking, invading. It’s carnal and hot and I hang onto him, trying to look like I’m doing something I’ve done a million times as my world turns inside out from one fake kiss.
Dancing with Mr Blackwood was magic.
Kissing him is a portal to another realm. I’ve never had a vivid imagination, I did accounting, after all. Boring. But I’ve read spicy books and assumed that the women who wrote them had extraordinary minds, because I hadn’t noticed frissons of excitement from glances with men. And now I have to admit, they aren’t making it up. Being kissed by Vito Blackwood, my gorgeous, powerful boss, really is that good.
And he’s kissing me in front of my housemates who laugh at me, making me feel desirable and beautiful and not just included, but important.
The centre of his world.
He’s an outstanding actor, I vaguely think as he holds my head to tilt it as his mouth slides over mine. He’s a surprise. A classy and dominant dancer, making it feel effortless with two-left-feet me, and after all these days being surly, a charming if brusque, fake boyfriend.
“Alright, you made your point,” Mr Blackwood says, and I stiffen out of instinct to not upset the man I want to impress so much. It takes my brain a moment to recognise his accent is wrong. Too much Britain, not enough Italy. It’s not my Mr Blackwood, but the other Mr Blackwood. My Mr Blackwood is still kissing me, one hand clasped on my waist and the other in my hair.
Oh no.
My Mr Blackwood? I’m a goner. This will break me. I cannot think of my boss as being mine .
He draws back and gives me a long, slow smile that turns my knickers to liquid butter.
“Let’s go somewhere more private,” he says in a voice that’s pure sex. It sounds like he really wants to take me back to his house and fuck me until I can’t walk.
“Yes,” I reply breathlessly.
“Don’t you have a bar bill to settle?” Julie snips, and through the fog of arousal Vito—it’s so deliciously forbidden to think of my boss as Vito—I recognise she’s jealous. Of me .
The sensation is as foreign as it is delicious.
“I’ll cover it,” Mr Blackwood says smoothly.
“No, no.” I’ll pay for my own mistakes, and I’m proud of making a good salary. I approach the bar, and the barman comes over immediately. Nothing like the power of being with a mafia boss.
Dragging my purse off my shoulder and rifling through it, I try to find the credit card I know is there somewhere. I shove aside a clean pair of knickers and a stick of lip salve. I can feel Mr Blackwood watching me intently and my neck prickles with heat and embarrassment and something else that’s not unlike pleasure in their weirdest way.
Then—ah!—I spy the glint of plastic. “There it is!” I burrow deeper into my purse and carefully keep the knickers stuffed down as I pull out the card.
I wave it triumphantly at the barman who has wandered off to serve someone else while I had my little purse drama.
“You dropped something,” Mr Blackwood says.
“I found…” But the words die in my throat as Mr Blackwood picks up one of the condoms I bought earlier between two fingers and examines it with an expression of distaste.
“What’s this?” His voice is dangerously soft.
“I don’t know,” I squeak, the card suddenly tight in my hand. My emotional support bank card. Proof that I am an adult with a bank account and a job—currently—and sensible things like an overdraft I pay off every month and good financial sense as well as a very dusty V-card.
Because oh god. This is so bad.
The wrapper is bright pink, with a pair of red lips on it. It proudly proclaims that it is strawberry flavoured. Extra strong. Ribbed for her pleasure.
And glow in the dark .
Pink. And glow in the dark.
What was I thinking ?
Obviously, not that my boss would ever see it. I bought one of every type of condom from the vending machine in the toilets. With all that has happened, I totally forgot about my mission to get laid.
I’m more likely to get knocked out from sheer bad luck than smuggle the sausage in the pink canal.
“You don’t know.” Mr Blackwood sounds unconvinced, as he has every right to be.
Who do I think I’m kidding? Breathe, Cassie, breathe. You can do this. You are an actual adult.
Behind me, my housemates titter.
“A condom.”
“I can see that,” he says with smoothly exaggerated patience. “Why do you have it in your purse for a night out with the girls, when you have a fiancé ?”
There are plenty of good reasonable answers I could give. Things like, you’re my fake fiancé . And, it’s none of your business since you are my boss, and this is Friday night when most normal people are relaxing, drinking alcopops, dancing, and having casual sex .
Admittedly, I am not like most people, because I have spent the last four Friday nights being grilled by my hot boss about sexy, sexy things like Gantt charts.
Mr Blackwood drops the strawberry condom, gritting his teeth so hard I can almost feel the vibrations of it above the pulse of the bar’s music.
He drags his gaze over the banana-flavoured one, yellow and glow-in-the-dark, obviously.
“You were going to use these, tonight?” His brows are lowered, his blue eyes glittering.
“No! Of course not!”
“But you bought them.” He’s thunder. “You were going to use them. Three of them.”
I don’t know why he’s acting like he’s really my fiancé, and he’s possessive of me, but my brain is mush. There’s no pretending they were for him. Mr Blackwood is not the sort of man who would wear a purple condom. Or glow-in-the-dark pink.
“For balloon animals?”
“Miss Meadows,” he growls.
“Water bombs.”
Next to Vito, his brother snorts with laughter and I die internally.
“Are you a five-year-old, Miss Meadows?” Mr Blackwood asks severely.
“Cut price gloves.” I’m babbling. I’ve lost the plot. All sense of what’s appropriate or not has gone right out the window. After all, I was the one who told my housemates that someone exactly like my boss in every detail was my boyfriend.
“Do I not pay you enough?” There’s a sinister edge to the words.
“Oh, he is her boss!” exclaims Tamara, and I really don’t know how I’m going to explain any of this to anyone. I might just move to Outer Mongolia instead.
“Budget chewing gum.” I press my lips together to prevent myself from saying anything more.
I bet yak farming is really fun. Compared to my hot boss discovering my impulse-buy condoms.
“Cassie.”
Simultaneously, I melt and combust. The way he says my name in that gruff voice gives me the crazed impulse to snuggle into him and lick his neck where his dark stubble gives way to smooth skin.
It’s a physical impossibility—not least because he’s too tall for me to do that—but rather like my interest in sex suddenly bloomed when I met my boss, it’s a force of nature. My libido is one of those plants that blooms only once for one day in like a hundred years and the rest of the time is a plain green thing with nothing interesting at all about it. In fact, don’t those plants die after they bloom for that single day?
Never mind, never mind. That hardly matters, because I will already be deceased from sheer embarrassment. My cheeks are a heating element on an old-fashioned cooker, glowing neon red. You could fry eggs on my face.
Mr Blackwood takes a deep breath.
“Amore mio dolce. It was thoughtful of you to buy condoms, but you must believe me this time. There’s no need for contraception, because I want to get you pregnant.”
My jaw falls open. It’s an even more public claim than the kiss. From the corner of my eye, I see that the smirks are wiped from Julie, Tamara, and Polly’s faces and replaced with an expression that with a jolt I realise is jealousy.
I just watch in shock as Mr Blackwood shakes his head fondly at me, makes some wordless communication with the barman who presumably knows a Blackwood pays his debts, then grabs my purse, and leaving the condoms strewn on the bar, takes my hand in his, and tugs me to his side.
He presses a kiss to my forehead and then announces to the room in general, “I’m taking my fiancée home.”