12. Callum
CALLUM
I stop at the elevator, but I don’t enter the key code to call it back up. Scrubbing a hand over the back of my neck, I weigh my choices. I’ve done this every single night.
Ever since that night.
On the one hand, I could turn around, rap on her door, and crush her in a kiss that would turn into everything we want it to be. Into her spread out on the bed, bound and begging.
And the corollary to all that too—me staying the night. Because I would. I absolutely would. That’s the problem with the first choice. It doesn’t end at sex. It can’t end at sex. I want her deep in my bones, down to the marrow, and I want her with my soul too.
I wouldn’t leave her after sex this time.
I’d stay.
I draw a frustrated breath, curling my hands into fists. The tension reminds me to stay the course.
And I choose the same choice I’ve made every night since then.
Resist.
It’s what I have to do.
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting off the images of Ivy behind that door. Opening them again, I enter the code, and I leave.
Once I’m gone, I go to the gym, work the weights for an hour, then do cardio, and as the clock ticks past midnight, I’m as spent as I can be.
Maybe spent enough to go to sleep without thoughts of her tempting me all night long.
A man can dream.
Trouble is, Ivy is under my skin. She’s in my head.
She’s in my goddamn heart. And, for all intents and purposes, once I’m home, she’s there with me in the shower after I strip out of my clothes and turn the water to scalding.
I tip my head back under the stream, and imagine what I’d do to her here.
What she’d want me to do.
I’ve gotten off to Ivy every night for the last year.
But now that I know what she tastes like, how she feels under my hands, the fantasies are different.
They’re hotter, more specific. They’re all about her wishes.
I take my length in my hand, sliding my palm down, squeezing it over the head.
She’d be on her knees before me, mouth open, begging for a taste.
I’d run my thumb over her lips, tease her, listen to her moan as she tasted that first drop of arousal.
I curl my fist tighter, gripping harder.
She’d stare at me with those wide, lust-drunk eyes and parted lips, water from the shower sluicing down her face.
I’d rub the head of my dick over her lips, watch her eager mouth draw me in.
Fuuuuck.
I close my eyes, shuttle my hand faster, stroking harder. I swear I can hear her moans as she wraps those lush lips around my length, as she draws me to the back of her throat. I can see her shoving her hand between her legs, rubbing herself, faster and faster still, seeking that blissful release.
A jolt of pleasure rushes down my spine, and I grunt out loud.
A sound I know she’d want to hear. A sound that’d make her hotter, wetter, needier.
I pump faster, seeing my woman on her knees, sucking me hard, relentlessly, all while stroking her sweet, perfect clit.
I’m close , I’d tell her.
And I am so damn close.
So close that she’d let go of my shaft, part her lips, and ask for it.
Sparks run roughshod over my skin, my balls tingle, and pleasure blasts through me as I come all over Ivy’s lips, watching her lick every last drop.
I shudder, slamming a hand against the tiled wall, breathing hard, wishing this relief got her out of my system.
But nothing has extradited that woman from my thoughts.
Nothing whatsoever.
And I’m going to need to figure out what the hell to do about it.
I read the summary of activities from all our current clients. I meet with new ones. I sign deals for my firm.
I work out. I practice martial arts. I see my father.
And I work by Ivy’s side every damn night.
I want to say it’s getting easier, but that’d be a terrible lie.
Especially when we meet with the security team to discuss the staffing needs for Stone’s upcoming show.
The entire time I keep thinking of thirty days ago when he was in town.
What that fateful meeting at Speakeasy led to. To Ivy kissing me, and me kissing Ivy, and to us finally having each other.
To all the admissions of our desires.
I flashback to that night, the things I confessed. How I told her she’s the one I think of. How she told me the same.
When the meeting ends, I’m off for the rest of the day before my personal shift with Ivy, so I head to meet my father for his favorite thing.
Mini-golf.
“Some men look forward to golf courses during retirement. I look forward to windmills and clowns on the final hole,” he says, handing me a club.
“I, for one, approve of your choice,” I tell him. “Plus, it doesn’t take all day. I can get back to work sooner.”
“All work and no play,” he chides as he sets down an orange ball on the first hole.
“I play plenty.”
He turns to me, laughing. “Bullshit.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Fine, you’re right. But tell me what’s up with you.”
That distracts him for a few holes as he shares the latest on his friends, guys he’s known his whole life, but by the fifth one, he shoots me a knowing look. “What’s going on? You’re out of sorts. You never chat this much.”
“So chatting means something is wrong?”
He nods. “With you it does.”
I heave a sigh, drag a hand over my hair, and decide the last thirty days of denial are catching up with me. Besides, my dad worked in this business before me. He knows the demands better than anyone. “There’s a woman . . .”
“Ah,” he says with a nod. “There’s always a woman when a man is out of sorts.”
“Generally speaking.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“I work with her. And you know the golden rule. If you can’t do a job at one hundred percent, don’t do it at all. There is too much risk. ”
“That does sound like something I’d say,” he says lightly. Then his smile erases itself, and his lips are ruler-straight. “Are you doing your job at less than one hundred percent?”
“No, sir,” I say, since old habits die hard. Calling him “sir” when he goes deadly serious is one of those habits.
“Then maybe you’re looking at the risk the wrong way,” he says, and places the ball on the green, then delivers a hole in one, leaving me to ponder the real risks.
A little over a week later, Stone calls as I finish a workout.
“You ready for me to blow your mind this weekend?” he asks when I answer on my way out of the gym in my building.
“You’re blowing my mind? I guess I missed that memo,” I say, deadpan.
“Please. I blow everyone’s mind. Sometimes I blow other things too,” he says offhand.
I laugh as I head down the hall to the stairwell.
“Yes, you’ve told me that on many occasions,” I say dryly.
Stone’s preferences are not secret. Not to anyone.
He came out to me as bisexual in high school, then to his fans way back when he was playing in indie clubs in the Bay Area.
The man has always been down the middle as far as I can tell, picking whoever or whatever suits him in the moment.
He’s had as many boyfriends as girlfriends, and both men and women make him happy.
“Anyway, don’t distract me from my reason for calling.”
“Hello? I think you were distracting yourself,” I say, laughing at my friend.
“True, true. I was. I do that sometimes.” He takes a long breath. “So, the good news is my album is done, done, done. Finito. It’s insanely amazing.”
“That is excellent news. I’m stoked for you, man.”
“And the other good news is . . . I want to take you and Ivy out to say thank you. You up for that? A night on the town after the show?”
I tense, my muscles going tight. “I don’t know. I can ask her though.”
“Oh, shit ,” he says, lingering on that four-letter word like it has ten syllables. “You messed up, didn’t you?”
“What?” I ask as I head up the first set of stairs to my condo.
“You messed it all the way up.”
“I did not.”
“You slept with her, but you’re not with her?”
He’s like an oracle. He knows everything.
“I can’t be with her, Stone.”
“Ooh, then how about I take her out without you? Bet I could show her a good time.”
I burn with jealousy. “Do not take her out without me.”
He cackles. “You asshole. You’re, like, in love with her a million ways to Sunday. You have never gone so gaga over a woman as you have with her.”
I grit my teeth, biting out a reply. “I work for her. I have to do my job.”
“Job, schmob. You love her, and it ain’t getting easier working for her.”
I stop on the landing, leaning against the concrete wall.
“Look, Stone. My feelings for her don’t matter.
This is a black-and-white situation. I have to protect her, and I can’t make a mistake,” I say, but even as the words come out, I wonder if I have already made one.
If I made the mistake the night I left her place and said we couldn’t go there again.
If I’ve assumed the wrong risks, like my dad said.
“Your feelings for her are the only things that matter,” Stone says, then a voice calls out to him.
“Be right there, Candi Kane.” Then to me, he adds, “Listen, I need to go. My publicist wants to talk about the show and all sorts of cool placements she’s getting.
And you, my man—you better make yourself available to hang.
Because I am taking you and your woman out after the show.
Now, go get your shit together. K, thanks. Bye.”
He hangs up, and I’m left staring at the empty screen, wondering what the hell to do next.
The answer is a little more clear the next night when I escort Ivy through the casino on her way to a final meeting with the event staff in thirty minutes. Along the way, her attention snags on Speakeasy.
The couple she spotted the night Stone was in town are there again. The redhead and her men.
And Ivy can’t look away.
“Let’s get a drink,” she says, mesmerized.
And I say yes.
Because I need to get to the bottom of her fascination with those three.