Chapter 22
O kay.
So.
I was going to just need a moment. I’d just woken up and I was lying flat on my back, blinking at the ceiling, trying to figure out if last night was a fever dream, a spiritual event, or the morning after being eaten alive.
Because I’m ninety percent sure that Fitzgerald Prescott Whitmore III came into the kitchen last night, told me he wanted to eat me, lifted me onto the marble island like a caveman with monogrammed cufflinks, and then proceeded to absolutely devour me with the appetite of a man who’d just been released from prison and handed a five-star tasting menu.
No foreplay. No kissing. No “hey, I just broke up with my girlfriend so maybe we should talk first.”
Just custard, cunnilingus, and chaos.
And then that seductive motherfucker walked away. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t look back. Just...stood up, licked his fingers like I was a fucking dessert course, and left, vanishing like a ghost who eats pussy.
So here I was, lying in my bed, blankets kicked down to my ankles, panties MIA, and my thighs still a little sticky because I apparently had been too emotionally deranged to shower after.
I genuinely couldn’t bring myself to rinse him off last night, so I had climbed into bed, my thighs still damp and a little sticky.
I guess that moment deserved a twelve-hour sacred marination period.
Also, I’m sorry , but no man has any business giving an orgasm that good. I blacked out for a second. I saw God.
And now I was completely mind fucked. My brain kept running laps trying to decide if last night was a declaration of desire, a drunken mistake, or just a really vivid hallucination triggered by lemon zest and sexual frustration.
He didn’t even kiss me. Not once.
He put his face between my thighs and made me come like he was trying to exorcise a demon, but he didn’t actually kiss me. Didn’t whisper anything filthy or tender or confusing afterward. That had to mean something.
Okay, wait. That logic might be backward. Or sideways. Or just melting into the part of my brain where all thoughts got scrambled by the memory of Fitz’s jaw flexing while he was eating lemon custard off my?—
Nope. No. Can’t go there again.
Who the fuck licks your pussy without kissing you? I guess that was his way of telling me it meant nothing . If it had meant something to him, he would have kissed me, right?
I sat up, slowly, legs still jelly-soft.
My knees were genuinely wobbly when I stood, like I’d been.
..well, thoroughly dined upon. I made it to the bathroom on autopilot.
Avoided my reflection. Avoided looking down at my thighs.
Definitely avoided thinking about the fact that if I reached between them, I’d still feel wet for him.
The point is, I needed to reset. To regain control of my body, my dignity, my ability to function like a human woman and not a girl who had her brain short-circuited by a man with a law degree and the mouth of a god.
So I started the bath; I just needed some hot water, lavender oil—maybe I’d drown myself in bubbles and pretend I wasn’t waiting to hear his footsteps upstairs.
Because I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I just wanted to relax—and maybe shave.
In case, you know. We talked. Or kissed.
Or round two happened and I didn’t want to look like I’d been raised by wolves.
Definitely not because I was hoping. Not because I was desperate to know if it meant something.
Not because I’d been lying here for an hour, replaying every lick and breath and wordless walkaway in hi-def, wondering if he’d felt what I felt?—
Nope. Not spiraling. Just bathing.
Totally fine.
Absolutely not falling for a man who ate me like I was his favorite meal and then vanished into the night like a slutty dude version of Cinderella.
Everything would be fine.
B y the time lunch rolled around, I had my game face on.
I was showered, dressed, and fully functional.
Hell, I’d even curled my hair. Not for anyone; just for my own dignity, you know, as one does after getting eaten like a one-woman tasting menu and then abandoned on a slab of cold marble.
No one needed to know that I’d spent the morning soaking in a lavender bath trying not to get myself off just to feel his mouth again.
Fitz hadn’t come downstairs all morning.
Not for coffee, not for breakfast. I only knew he was alive because I heard the shower running around eleven and Jazz said she saw him walk through the hallway quote “looking like death but still hot, which is honestly rude.” Only time would tell whether he would join us on the patio for lunch.
My parents were leaving shortly, so I imagined their second son would make an appearance.
So that’s how we found ourselves an hour later out on the patio, sitting awkwardly across from each other—me, eternally grateful for the excuse to wear sunglasses at the table.
Lunch was casual. Simple sandwiches. A big salad Jazz threw together.
Chips. Sparkling water. Domestic summer bliss.
Except, you know, for the walking ghost of last night’s orgasm sitting across the table in a linen button-up looking like he wanted to die.
Jack had made a whole show of greeting him with a cold beer at lunch. “Hair of the dog?” Jack said, brandishing the bottle like a weapon. “Or is that not how the Yale boys recover from a bender?”
Fitz just shook his head, grimaced, and muttered, “Still seeing double.” That was the only thing he said for the next twenty minutes.
Meanwhile I was doing my best not to catch his eye.
Or breathe too loud. Or even think about the lemon custard that my mom said she was dying to taste.
Because yeah. That custard. It wasn’t even dirty custard.
Not technically. It had never touched my body.
There had been no contact transfer. He didn’t double dip .
But it was dirty. I knew it was dirty. He knew it was dirty. And now I was serving it to my family.
Jesus Christ.
I moved from person to person like a gracious little host, spooning generous helpings of sunshine-colored custard into small glass dishes. My hands were steady. My smile was polite. No one had any idea that I was committing a low-grade sex crime with every dollop.
Then Thatcher walked in. Because of course he did.
“Thought I’d stop by,” he said, breezy and casual and tanned within an inch of his life. “Hope I’m not crashing the party.” Jack clapped him on the shoulder like they were old college roommates. Jazz waved. Fitz didn’t look up.
I gave Thatcher a small dish of the custard. He winked as he took it. “This looks incredible,” he said, digging in. “Seriously, Charlie. This is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. It’s so creamy.”
I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but then?—
“It really is,” Fitz said. His voice was low. Even. Perfectly calm. It was the first thing he’d said in twenty minutes.
Thatcher paused. Blinked. “Right? I mean, it’s got that bright flavor, but it’s also super silky. What is that? Egg yolks?”
Fitz didn’t answer. Didn’t look at him, but his eyes flicked to mine. Just for half a second. There was no emotion in his face. No smirk. No expression at all. Just...heat. Memory. Possession.
I froze. Swallowed hard, but it stuck halfway down. My spoon trembled slightly in the dish.
Jazz made a comment about the basil in the salad.
Jack asked if anyone wanted another drink.
My parents chatted about their drive back to the Blue Ridge.
But it all blurred at the edges. Because he’d just sat there, silent and hungover and composed as hell—until that one bite. That one comment. That one look.
He’d only said three words, but I felt them between my legs.
B y late afternoon, the house was quiet again.
My parents had packed up and left Lemondrop Lane, already talking about garden projects and stopping for barbecue and soft-serve on the road.
I’d hugged them both on the porch, kissed my mom’s cheek, and I let my dad squeeze me tight in a bear hug.
And then they were gone, leaving nothing but nostalgia and that sweet lump of emotion you get when you’re saying bye to people you love.
“We’ll be back in a few short weeks, Charlie girl,” my mom said with a beaming smile.
“ We can’t wait to celebrate your grand opening. ”
“We’re proud of you, cupcake,” my dad had said, his words coming out gruff but sincere.
And now, all I wanted was time alone to chill.
Read my book. Let a few hours pass me by without having to deal with the messy reality of it all.
Jack, apparently feeling productive in the wake of an emotional family send-off, announced he was running into town.
“Need anything? I’m going to pick up some groceries, and Jazz needs a few things from the drugstore. ”
“Yeah,” I said, fishing in my purse. I pulled out the little bronze key I kept looped on a carabiner in my bag.
“Since you’ll be down there, can you stop by the post office and check my PO box?
Bakery stuff.” I handed it to him and gave the most basic instructions possible because Jack, for all his corporate IQ points and Excel wizardry, somehow managed to fuck up the simplest errands if left unsupervised too long in small-town environments.
He gave me a salute, promised not to get distracted by the candy aisle at the drugstore, and left.
Jazz was already in her room FaceTiming one of her bridesmaids about bouquet options, Fitz had disappeared again—probably upstairs, probably hiding from all of us. Which left me with Thatcher.
I stood at the sliding door, looking out toward the dunes, book in one hand, beach blanket in the other.
I didn’t want company. I didn’t want noise.
I didn’t want to pretend. I just wanted to read a romance novel in peace and not obsess about whether Fitz was upstairs remembering the taste of my body the way I couldn’t stop replaying his tongue on my clit like it had burned a sigil into my skin.
So I turned to Thatcher and said, with my best I-swear-this-isn’t-a-blowoff tone, “I’m gonna go chill on the beach for a bit with my book. Feel free to stay here or hang with Jazz if she comes out. I just need a quiet kind of day.”
He grinned, all easy charm and sun-bleached boy-next-door energy, the kind that never quite reached his eyes. “Mind if I join you down there? I’ll give you your reading time, I promise. I could use some sun.” Which would’ve been fine if he’d actually meant it.
Instead, ten minutes later, we were both stretched out on towels in the sand, me flipping pages and trying to escape into fictional sexual tension that didn’t remind me of my actual life, and Thatcher.
..well, he just scrolled. Endlessly. Thumb sliding up, up, up.
Occasionally he’d chuckle at a reel or mutter something about a tweet and once, truly unforgivably, tried to show me a meme that I didn’t even look at.
I gave a polite hum and pretended I was too deep in the book to care.
Every now and then, I could hear the breeze shift.
I’d look up toward the house, half-expecting Fitz to appear on the deck, shirtless and smug and impossible.
But he never came out. Not that I cared.
Not that I was waiting. Not that I was reading the same sentence on page 147 over and over again because my brain had melted sometime around last night’s “ Don’t say anything unless it’s yes . ”
I lay back on the blanket, the pages of my book shading my face, the ocean in my ears, and Thatcher beside me, completely oblivious, humming along to whatever playlist he was listening to since he’d popped in one AirPod.
He was a distraction I’d already grown bored of, and the worst part was I didn’t even want to replace him.
I just wanted to be left alone with the memory of last night—hot, obscene, unspoken—and the question that kept chewing at the edge of my sanity: did he just want a taste—to satisfy curiosity—or did it make him want the whole fucking meal?