Chapter 3
THREE
Ethan
I was left wounded by her admission. Wounded because she thought I was capable of betraying her.
Wounded because she thought I didn’t have more self-control, but most of all I was fucking devastated that she couldn’t feel about me the way I felt about her—not if she thought that I could ever want anyone else.
If she thought that sex with another woman could compare to her, she didn’t get it.
The idea of some random hook-up made my skin crawl.
Apart from the fact that Anna did things to my body that no one else did.
I wasn’t convinced those things were entirely legal, they felt so good.
The fucking was in a whole different category of sex that I hadn’t realized existed.
But it wasn’t just fucking, it was connection, it was understanding.
Or so I’d thought. But maybe it wasn’t like that for her.
Maybe she’d had this before. Maybe this was good, but nothing special to her.
She didn’t get how I felt about her. She couldn’t feel what I felt for her because if she did, she’d understand it wasn’t a possibility that I would even look at another woman.
There would never be room in my brain, my heart or my soul for anyone else.
“Ethan,” she breathed.
“What can I do?” I asked. “To make it better, to reassure you that there will never be anyone else?”
It was her turn at silence now.
That gave me every answer I needed. There was nothing I could do. Nothing to show her how she wasn’t just another woman. I knew that she, and what we had, was different. She didn’t feel it and there was nothing I could do to show her. Especially from three thousand miles away.
The grip around my heart tightened.
I would lose her.
Maybe I’d never had her to begin with.
“Tell me about your day,” she said.
I didn’t know if I should force the issue, make her talk about it. It was my natural instinct but I’d lost confidence in our magic formula of no bullshit. It didn’t seem to be enough.
I started telling her in minute detail about everything that had happened.
For some reason, it was important to get the details right.
To be clear. To tell her everything. Time was ticking away.
Eight was approaching, but I didn’t want to end our conversation.
She should be sleeping now. Was she trying to stay awake?
“How did you make it home so early?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“On your first day back? You must have left the office at six-thirty to be home now.”
“I brought some work home. I wanted to speak to you. You . . . us. It’s my priority.”
More silence.
“I’m sorry I ruined it,” she said.
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“But it wasn’t what you had planned.”
“You weren’t what I had planned, and look how lucky I got. I love giving you pleasure, I love getting you off, but it’s not the only thing between us, beautiful. Not for me.”
“Me either. But I want you to . . . you know.”
I laughed. “What?”
“You know, to, er, be satisfied.”
I could feel the warmth in her cheeks from here. “All the things we’ve done and you can’t tell me you want me to come?”
“Ethan.”
“What? It’s pretty funny.”
I loved the sound of her laugh.
“I promise to jerk off in the shower.”
“Promise to think of me.”
“Beautiful, I can think of nothing else any time of the day or night.” It was true, she totally owned me, and I wanted her to know it. “We’re going to make this work, you know.”
“Should it have to be an effort?” The giggle was gone. She sounded serious.
Every part of her was having doubts. She was dripping in them. And I didn’t know how to stem the flow.
“I don’t know about ‘should’,” I replied. “I’ve got nothing I can compare us to. All I know is that I want you and me to work more than I want anything else.”
She sighed. Was I pushing too hard? “But you’ve got to talk to me, I’m not there to see it in your face, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re thinking.”
I could almost hear her brain whirring at the other end of the phone. “It’s all jumbled up in my head. I’m not sure I have the words,” she responded.
“They don’t have to be in a particular order, just talk.
” Jesus, I was desperate for her just to spit it out, to talk to me.
I could deal with anything if I understood what was going on in her head.
I wasn’t sure I’d understood what anxious meant before I’d met her.
I guess because she had the power to hurt me—the power to walk away.
I couldn’t, didn’t want to control her, I wanted her to choose me.
“I just wish you were here is all.”
“I wish I was there, too. Or that you were here. Or that we were somewhere together. Anywhere.”
“Careful, you’re turning into a romantic.”
“Nu-uh. I just don’t bullshit and that’s how it is.”
“I know,” she said.
“You know?”
“I do. I feel it. The same. I just . . .”
“What? You’ve been here before and you’ve been hurt before?”
“God no. No. Never. I’ve never been here before. Not like this. I think maybe that’s it. It’s because this is different.” Her voice was quieter as she spoke. As if she almost didn’t want to utter the words. “I’d never recover.”
Her admission reassured me a little. It didn’t seem to be lack of feeling that was creating the doubt—if what she was saying was the truth.
“You’ll never have to.”
“I thought you didn’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“That’s right.”
“Ethan.”
“I mean it. It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it.” But she was right. I couldn’t control it. She had her part to play as I did, and perhaps we’d need some good luck in there somewhere as well.
“You’re going to have to be sure enough for the both of us sometimes.” Her voice dipped a little, thickened with something.
“I can do that,” I assured her.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”
“But I wish I could have, you know.”
Fuck she was adorable—she still couldn’t say that she wanted to make me come.
“Oh you will. And as you know, I don’t make promises I don’t keep.”
She laughed again and I started to relax.
But only slightly. I checked my watch. Fuck, it was coming up to my conference call.
I wanted to stay on the phone to her. All night.
Especially now. I didn’t want to have to hang up on her while the uncertainties were still so close to the surface.
I wanted to soothe her for just a few minutes longer.
“It’s late. I should sleep. And you have to work. Tomorrow will be better,” she said.
Tomorrow would be better. I would make sure of it.
We hung up a few minutes past eight and I quickly dialed into the call while powering up my laptop.
I’d planned to send her various gifts throughout our time apart.
I wanted to make her smile, and make her realize how I was thinking of her all the time, even if I wasn’t with her.
When I’d bought her the scarves, I’d enjoyed real pleasure from thinking what she might like.
I loved it when I got it right and her eyes lit up as she unwrapped the one I’d chosen to go with her hair, or that would look so beautiful against her skin or that would go with the new suit she bought.
It was an extension of the sex between us.
I got pleasure from giving her pleasure.
It was a revelation to me. I hadn’t realized I could be happy because someone else was happy.
I wondered if Andrew felt like this about Mandy, or if James felt this way about Jessica.
I’d tried to stay awake so I could speak to her before she was properly awake. I loved the sound of her drowsy, half-awake voice. I couldn’t get enough of it.
At some point I must have fallen asleep because I woke to horns, my laptop and papers still spread across my bed.
I was at least sleeping back in the master bedroom now.
Feeling her around me, seeing her in my apartment was exactly what I wanted.
It was tortuous, but it was necessary. When I left for London I did everything to avoid memories of her in my apartment. Now it was exactly the opposite.
I checked my phone. She’d be at work. I could get a head start on my day, maybe even hit the gym.
I started to check my messages and found several texts from Anna.
More than several. Almost a dozen. Shit, I hoped something wasn’t wrong.
I opened them. As the realization of what I was seeing hit me, a heat crossed my body and I was aware of the blood in my veins.
Pictures. Lots of pictures. Close up.
I scrolled through them—her lips, slightly parted, just as they were when she came. The juncture of her upper thigh, her magnificent tits pushed together, with a hint of her hand. The curve of her ass. Her fingers, where I wanted mine.
Jesus, I was hard. I wanted her with me, but this was the next best thing. She was beautiful. That skin, what those fingers could do to me, what that ass could do for me.
She answered on the first ring. I grinned. She’d been expecting my call.
“You’re up early.”
“And you’re trying to kill me.”
“That wasn’t the intention. Just a little reminder of what you’ve got back in London—and of who is visiting you in three weeks.”
I groaned and reached down to my rock hard cock.
Anna
I loved that sound he made as if he were half-crazed with lust. I must have taken about a hundred pictures and sent him about ten. I wanted to try and make them so they weren’t sleazy, that they just suggested something.
“Ethan,” I whispered as I closed my office door.
“I want you on my cock, right now.”
“Ethan,” I whispered again.
“I need you.”
“You have me.”
I could hear him, his breaths shortening. I imagined what he was doing and I felt my underwear dampen. The thought of him, naked, in his bed. God, I was going to have to take a cold shower.
“Stay on the phone.”
“I’m here.” For some reason, I liked the fact he wanted me on the phone. I hoped it would make up for last night a little. I didn’t want to screw this up. I didn’t want to screw us up.
“The picture of your lips. That’s my favorite.” He was panting now. I could hear a rhythm in his voice. “It’s the shape they make when you come.”
“When you make me come,” I whispered.
He groaned again.
“Yes, when I make you. That’s what you look like. And I can’t get enough. It’s like I’m addicted.” His voice was wavering now. “I can’t get enough of your body, your mind, your soul.”
“It’s all yours.”
His breathing was heavy now, the grunts more consistent. I could imagine his neck strained as he gave into his orgasm. He was there and hearing him was the sexiest, most erotically intimate thing I’d ever heard. I wished I was back at the flat, somewhere where I could try again.
But I wasn’t back at the flat and a knock at the door pulled me back to my surroundings.
Paul Adams, the partner I did most of my work for, put his head round my door and saw I was on the phone and silently indicated I should call him.
I was sure he could tell that I’d just got my boyfriend off at the other end of the phone.
It must have shown in my face, surely. I nodded and he closed the door behind him.
“Are you okay?” Ethan asked me.
I laughed. “I am, it was Paul. I feel like we’ve been caught doing something we shouldn’t be.”
“Well, it’s a good job we weren’t on Skype.”
“Yeah, I think that would be a slam-dunk breach of the anti-frat.”
The rest of the day was better. I loved to hear him undone like that and even though we were three thousand miles apart, it felt like this morning had brought us closer somehow.
Sometime after lunch, I came back to my office after a meeting to find two pieces of post on my desk.
The first was a courier package, the second a hand written envelope marked ‘private and confidential’.
I opened the courier package first, expecting some documents from a client but instead I found a book.
But not just a book. It was a book titled “Pumpkin Carving in New England”.
But before the word “Pumpkin” someone had handwritten the word “naked”.
Lucy chose that exact moment to make her entrance, and it was always an entrance.
“What have you got there?” She asked seeing me with a book in my hand and a grin on my face. Not that my grin lasted long.
“What do you want Lucy?” I didn’t want anything spoiling my mood.
“Just coming to say hi, that’s all. What’s this?” She asked picking up the book.
“Nothing.” I snatched it from her fingers. I hadn’t had time to enjoy it yet. To think how thoughtful and silly and perfect a gift it was. I hugged it to my chest.
“Jeez, someone’s touchy. You still pissed you’re not working with Sexy Scott?”
“He’s back in the US.”
“Yeah, but I’m still working with him. He emails me all the time. Can’t keep away. He’s such a flirt.”
If I could have kneed her in the groin without anyone finding out I would have done. I wasn’t one for physical violence but it was like she was trying to wind me up. Did she know about Ethan and me? Maybe she suspected?
“Okay, well enjoy that.” I snapped. “I’ve got a lot to do, Lucy.” I stood up and moved towards the door. She couldn’t keep talking to me if I wasn’t in my office. She got the hint and I went to the loo.
When I got back to my desk I grinned inanely at the book Ethan had sent to me.
As I flipped through the book I saw that he’d annotated it so that every time ‘pumpkin carving’ was written he’d added the word ‘naked’.
The book was full of beautiful photographs of intricately carved pumpkins set against typical New England homes and landscapes.
It was sweet and thoughtful and I loved it.
I texted a quick message.
A: I love my gift. And I love your obsession with nakedness. Oh, yeah, and I love you.
Still grinning, I turned my attention to the handwritten envelope that had been on my desk with the courier package. It wasn’t Ethan’s writing and I couldn’t think who it could be from.
Inside was a handwritten letter. It started “Dear Anna” but I still didn’t recognize the writing, so I skipped to the end.
It was from Ben. Ben the Biker. Ben the Bastard. My ex-boyfriend who had been responsible for my flat being broken into, putting me in danger. What on earth was he writing to me for?