Chapter 49
Sophia
Ethan braces on one arm, staring deeply into my eyes as he tenderly rakes my hair off my face. Being the focus of this man’s attention is always quite something, but being the focus of his attention when he’s buried deep inside your body is a whole other level.
We’re in his bed. His bags are packed and standing by the front door. Tomorrow morning, he’ll grab Jamie from Elena’s and they’ll fly halfway around the world.
‘Fuck.’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to walk away from this.’
‘You mean you can’t believe you’re about to walk away from me.’
He grins. ’That too.’
‘Some things are more important than getting your rocks off, babe. Like making amazing memories with your son. And if he can do without his new PC for three months, you can do without me.’
‘Tell that to my dick,’ he groans, and I laugh.
‘It’s not about the sex.’ He eases slowly out of me, and my fingers flex on his shoulders, willing him to get back inside me.
‘I know.’ I whisper it.
‘I’ll miss you so much. You light me up.’
He pushes back in, and my eyes fill with tears. There’s nothing like knowing he’ll soon be ten thousand miles away to add a serious emotional punch to what is already excellent sex.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ I manage brokenly. ‘But you’ll find a million things to light you up over there. I know you will.’
‘God, please don’t cry, sweetheart.’ He lowers himself fully down, wrapping his arms around me and pressing all that delicious weight onto me. ‘I can’t bear it. I love you so much.’
I respond by holding on for dear life and rolling my hips as much as I can as he thrusts into me.
He’s already made me come with slow, beautiful licks of his tongue, but the second orgasm is igniting inside me, driven as much by my love for him as by his magical dick.
He’s above me, inside me, all around me, blotting out everything that isn’t him.
He kisses me as he makes love to me, slowly, languorously. He’s not edging himself or me like he used to; instead it feels as if he’s savouring every moment. Committing it all to memory.
I’m not scared about Ethan going off and changing his mind about us. I’m not scared that our relationship won’t survive three months apart.
I’m just scared of spending ninety days and nights away from him.
He’s apologised a million times for the fact that he won’t be inviting me out to join him and Jamie at any point, but the truth is that I’d push back if he did.
He needs this. Jamie needs this. Elena is due to meet them for a week halfway through, a move I’m more than on board with.
I can’t imagine how much she’ll miss her son, and I honestly applaud her for giving Ethan her blessing.
It can’t have been easy for her, and it definitely wasn’t something she was obliged by the custody agreement to do. Quite the opposite.
I pull Ethan’s head down and find his mouth. There’s something so intimate about having his tongue inside my mouth at the same time as his dick. I can’t get enough; I want him to consume me completely.
Finally, when I can’t withstand the onslaught a second more, I fall apart around him.
And I sob the whole way through it.
After a month of enduring my moping, Athena drags me out for a heart-to-heart. It’s an early dinner in Victoria, because tonight she’s dragging Gabe to watch her favourite show, Hamilton, at the Palace.
‘I can’t believe you’re going to see it again,’ is how I greet her. She looks fucking amazing as always, in a long, olive green silk dress that offsets her gorgeous hazel eyes and auburn hair. She really is one of the most genetically blessed people I’ve ever encountered.
She shrugs. ‘It makes me feel seen.’
‘Because Alexander Hamilton was the biggest raging Three who ever Three’d.’ If Athena personifies The Achiever Enneagram type, then that particular Founding Father blows the stereotype out of the park.
‘Exactly. I find it inspiring.’
I laugh at that. ‘Babe, you know it’s supposed to be a cautionary tale, right? Like, he lost everything.’
Her expression is mulish. ‘But he achieved so much. He was willing to pay the price, although the real tragedy is that he never got to achieve everything he wanted to before he died.’
Clearly, Athena’s work on herself is not done if she thinks Threes ever get to achieve all the things they want before they inconveniently die.
No wonder Hamilton wrote like he was running out of time.
But I’ll leave that to her executive coach and her therapist to work through with her.
In fact, she should probably play Billy Joel’s Vienna first thing every morning just to calm herself the hell down.
‘I don’t know why you’re dragging poor Gabe along,’ I say instead. ‘You’ll just complain the whole way through that Hamilton married the wrong Schuyler sister. Although you know Gabe is the real-life version of Eliza, right?’
‘I love my saintly Two fiancé.’ She shakes out her napkin crossly. ‘But you’re right, he should have married Angelica. At least then they could have been unsatisfied together. She said it herself—theirs was a meeting of wits.’
I sigh and pick up the cocktail menu. We both know she’ll go and hate-watch it the whole way through and have an absolute blast.
‘So, how are you coping without Eight?’ she asks with a sly look at me. ‘You still have a job, right?’
‘For the moment. Miles and the deal are keeping me busy, thank fuck.’
It’s true. Ethan stuck around for the board meeting that voted Miles in (they were one person short of getting a unanimous vote, funnily enough) and attended key handover meetings with the top investors of both companies.
The conversations weren’t easy, but it seems the market’s faith in Miles’ capabilities is high, and the entire issue has turned out to be less of a crisis and more of a wobble for the deal.
Since he left, I’ve been working mainly on helping Miles and his team with everything from liaising with various financial PR firms on communicating his hastily drawn-up vision for the merged entity to working with our finance and strategy teams on delivering endlessly crunched numbers to the Montague side.
Quite honestly, it’s been incredibly stimulating.
Gone is most of the ill-feeling between the two companies, too.
While there are a great deal of nerves at the Kingsley team’s end over what it will mean for their jobs to have the Montagues running things, Miles tells me that his people feel like the executioner’s axe is no longer hanging over them.
Even Theo admitted to me that Ethan’s stunt was the sickest fucking stunt I’ve ever seen.
‘Have you had any time to work on your app?’
‘A bit. Having no one to shag in the evenings frees up quite a lot of time. And I’ve got my doctorate all lined up for September at UCL.’
University College London is one of the best places in the country to do a clinical psychology qualification, and, while it will take me three or so years to complete, I absolutely intend to both launch my app and achieve my IFS Institute qualifications at the same time.
I guess I have a major Three part after all.
Athena nods approvingly. ‘Excellent. And Ethan will help you with the app?’
‘He wants to. He seems really excited about it, but I’ve forbidden him from committing to anything until he gets back from Oz. I want him to keep an open mind.’
‘Who would have known that Ethan Kingsley, ice-cold tyrant and destroyer of seraphim, would end up in IFS therapy, of all things? By his standards, he’s practically singing Kumbaya. You’ve done well with that one, girl.’
‘He’s done all the hard work himself,’ I say defensively, and she smiles.
‘So, does he call you for phone sex a lot?’
‘Sometimes. The time difference is pretty rough. They’re surfing in Noosa at the moment, so I get hurried calls from him when Jamie’s down at the beach, begging me to show him my tits so he can jerk off to them.
But mainly he just sends me silly presents from wherever they are and calls to tell me how much he loves me and how much he misses me.
He’ll go dark next week when they’re on K’gari, though. ’
I trail off, a little embarrassed at how sentimental it all makes me feel. Still, knowing that Ethan is all the way over there, thinking about me—or my tits—is really something, even if I’ll have a couple of weeks of no contact.
But Athena doesn’t tease me. Instead, she raises her glass.
‘So my favourite Seven has finally found a man she feels safe to settle down with. And the glorious irony is that she would have avoided him like the plague if he hadn’t suggested at the outset, with every single word out of that lovely mouth of his, that he was the ultimate walking red flag.
It’s a stealth attack worthy of the history books, darling. ’
I pick up my glass and clink hers. ‘The man has moves. I’ll give him that.’