Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-three
Bhanu
“Do you want me to light the way with my phone’s flashlight app?” I suggested. If only I could get to my purse without falling off.
“No.”
“Don’t drop me.”
“I’d never do that.”
“I dunno…seems like great payback for all those times I got to you at work.”
“You’re delirious from too much cake; you never get to me.”
I took a deep breath, inhaling the lingering scent of Sunny’s shampoo and hair product and sandalwood cologne. I leaned down and licked his ear, whispering, “Are you sure?”
His hold on my thighs tightened, sending a screaming sensation of pleasure to my core.
He turned his head and muttered, “If you keep that up, I might drop you.”
I cherished the feel of him. “This is fun. By the way…Diya isn’t coming over tonight…”
His fingers pressed into my thighs, and I swore he moved faster.
Ahead, villa lights and sidewalks appeared. Waves crashed against the shore and rocks to the left.
“You can let me down,” I said, worried about hurting his back.
“Not here.”
Even though we’d made it to the sidewalks.
“Okay, now you can let me down,” I said.
“Not here.”
Even though he was unlocking the front door.
“Here?” I croaked.
He shook his head, even though we were inside and he’d flipped on the lights. The place had been dark, quiet, and obviously empty.
“What’s that?” I pointed at the small basket on the counter.
Sunny walked me over and turned, sliding me onto a barstool like it was nothing, graceful and fluid.
He turned into me as I pulled out items from the basket, saying, “It’s a gift from Diya. For both of us.”
“That’s nice of her.” He examined the box of decadent local macnut chocolates with appreciation.
I riffled through the other items. Local rum cake that was very tasty and quite strong. The small size packed a mighty punch. And underneath that? I picked up the foiled packages before realizing what they were. I hid them behind my back the second Sunny saw.
“What’s that?” he asked, peering around me.
“Nothing.”
“Obviously something.”
“Nah.”
“Something so good you don’t want to share?”
One hand zipped around my waist, and I twisted away, but his other hand was already behind me in preparation. I held on to the tiny packages. Tightly. My sister was going to kill me with her “gifts.”
“Babe. What is it?”
I couldn’t help simultaneously melting and chortling at his use of the endearment that still reminded me of Barbie. He couldn’t have gone with “sweetie,” huh?
With that minute execution of lowering my guard, he tugged on the packages, but I clamped down until my fingers were sore.
“You’re so nosy.”
Sunny stopped. He stood in front of me, taking up all the space with his legs touching my knees. Then, while keeping this wildly intense eye contact, he nudged my knees apart with his thigh. Slowly. I felt the gentle caress of my dress shifting higher up, his leg sliding in between mine. A tantalizing shiver ran through me.
“Okay,” he said with that sensual Denzel voice.
Damn him. I wasn’t even trying to fight him.
“Could you do me a favor, though?”
I nodded, unable to form one coherent sentence.
“No wonder I don’t wear ties. This thing is getting on my damn nerves.” He slipped a finger into the knot, keeping his eyes hard on mine. Piercing. Intense. A challenge. “Seem to have trouble untying this knot.”
I swallowed. “Oh…do you…need help?”
“I think I might.” His lips twitched, like he was holding back. Like maybe he wanted to rip that tie off and that shirt and then my clothes.
“You’re just trying to get my hands busy so you can see what’s behind my back.”
“Maybe a little of a lot of things.”
I shoved the foil packages into the basket, beneath the rum cake. Sunny side-eyed the basket. A corner stuck out and his lips twitched again. He knew what those were, and by the smoldering fervor in his eyes, he intended to use them tonight.
A tiny voice sounded in the back of my thoughts of how this was a bad idea. We were taking the fantasy vacation too far, but we’d gotten pretty close to too far already.
I took hold of one end of his tie, my other hand at the knot. His fingers moved down my hand and arm, falling to his side. His touch was so light, yet burning.
I slowly pulled down the knot.
Tie off.
He tilted his head to the side, his eyes never leaving mine. “Should we stop there?”
“No.”
He edged closer to the seat. His hands slid up my legs, beneath the dress, his mouth on mine to nip and suck on my bottom lip. Then a kiss. And his tongue. His masterful, decadent tongue.
“You taste like cake,” I mumbled.
“You taste even better than cake.”
I scowled. “What’s better than cake?”
“You. The taste of you.”
My arms draped over his broad, firm shoulders as he moved one hand to cup my face, kissing my jaw, my neck, my clavicle, down my chest. His other hand went underneath my thigh, gliding back down and lifting my leg up. My other leg followed suit; my ankles crossed behind his waist in the most indecent, depraved way.
He hooked a finger beneath my panties, tugging, teasing. His hand at my neck skimmed lower, his thumb leaving a hot trail. Hot trails all over. So much sensation that I couldn’t focus on any one thing. He was doing so much, all at once, some parts slow and agonizing, some parts faster.
His palm sprawled over my chest.
Then his tongue dipped into the bodice. And I nearly jumped out of my skin. An embarrassingly high whimper came out of me.
Sunny smiled against my skin before his tongue darted back inside my bodice. My legs clenched around him. My fingers dug through his hair. I wanted his lips all over me. Everywhere, at once, fast and slow, light and hard, delicate and passionate.
My nerves were coming undone. My body unraveling. And we hadn’t even undressed.
That tiny voice in the back of my head tried to shout a demand for me to stop. We were coworkers, going after the same promotion. We bickered all the time. This wasn’t real. We were fake. This was a fantasy with a timer ticking down to our last hours and seconds. Like every project I’d ever worked on, there was a deadline, a hard end. It loomed on the horizon. The last of the kanban cards was moving into archives. No extensions permitted.
But that voice of reason was too small, deflating into an echo, overpowered by the intoxication of this man.
Somewhere in between my gasps and his groans—I mean wow —I managed to locate the packages beneath the rum cake, hoping they’d fit.
He smirked. “More cake, huh?”
“Is that what you’re looking at?” I said, fighting for air.
He took the package, read it, then handed them to me. “I don’t know how she knew my size, but hats off to your sister.”
Ah, yes. Diya won the competition guessing the size for anything. She was truly gifted.
Without another second to spare, Sunny hoisted me onto his hips, his hands firm beneath my butt underneath the dress, and sprinkled kisses across my chest and throat.
He took a step when I gasped, reaching past him to the counter.
“You’re bringing the cake, aren’t you?” He nipped my neck.
“I only came for the cake, remember?”
And with that, Sunny took me into the bedroom, closed the door behind us, and tossed me onto the bed, which smelled of him and me and us.
He looked down at me as he unbuttoned his shirt in a way no other man had ever looked at me before. If heated desire could start fires, then this entire villa would be in flames. He looked at me like I was an ethereal queen and there was no other person in existence. Like he would ride or die for me, like he would protect me and uplift me, like he would make love to me in the most euphoric ways…like he would bring me ube in the Tacoma rain.
This was a look I’d wanted for so long, but never thought it would ever happen.
No matter what happened tonight, or where we’d return to in a few days, his look, how he melted me, the way his kisses shattered me…the bar had been set higher than I’d ever imagined it could get.
There was no coming back from this.
Sunny had ruined me.
I’d fallen asleep content and safe and adored.
And I awoke aroused and hungry and desired.
My back was against Sunny’s chest when he lifted my hair to kiss the nape of my neck, tugging the sheets lower and lower as his mouth skimmed across my shoulder and down my spine, to my hip and across my waist. I rolled beneath him and immediately face-planted into the mattress because his body weight had created a depression and accelerated my turning over toward him.
He laughed into my stomach. “Are you okay?”
I covered my face because of course that would happen. “I should probably shower.”
“Don’t you mean ‘we’?”
Sunny took my hand and pulled me up and out of bed, leading me into the bathroom. He trailed kisses across my neck and shoulder as we fumbled to get into the shower beneath warm, flowing water.
Skin on skin. Very slippery.
Suds. Lots of them.
Hands. All over each other.
Kisses. Everywhere.
Wrinkled as a prune but squeaky clean, I leaned against the kitchen counter, perusing menus, trying to figure out what I wanted. I was in short black shorts and a striped tank top, my damp hair flowing down my back to air dry.
Hmm. An a?aí bowl sounded pretty good. Oh! Better yet, a pitaya bowl. The vibrant pink flesh of dragon fruit, as tart and sweet as a?aí, turned into a smoothie with macnut milk, honey, and bananas, plopped into a bowl and covered in granola, banana slices, dried goji berries, and a drizzle of honey.
And cassava fritters because carbs were needed after last night, and this morning (forget the fact that I’d had way too much cake).
As per usual, and from heinous habit, I checked my phone. I wasn’t sure why, as nothing happened on Sundays. I finally cleaned out an inundated spam folder, only to realize there was a misplaced email.
My company’s name, attached to a few extra letters (including HR), glared back at me. Was this the PM results I’d been waiting for? Must’ve been bad news if they sent an email instead of calling.
Relinquishing any hope and accepting fate, I opened the email. My heart did a little flip as I read and reread the message to make sure I’d understood correctly. A smile crept across my lips. They’d offered me the position. With a significant pay increase compared to what I’d been told. Apparently, they’d held off on making the offer because of a budget increase. They hadn’t called because they knew I was on vacation but would be reaching out upon my return.
I laughed. Of course I’d get it, I’d always known! What had I been so worried about?
PM was a lot of responsibility, and I might miss actual UX work. That seemed to be the biggest complaint of PMs. Oftentimes they just wanted to be UXers.
With shaky hands, I reached out to the recruiter at Google with an email about updates, tossing in the fact that I had another offer to at least get a response from them before I made such a big decision. Sometimes, these nudges led to a quick pass, but sometimes they led to action.
I could only hold my breath now, although I honestly wasn’t expecting much from Google. Either way, my life was moving forward and out of moss’s lethargic reach.
The first person I wanted to tell was Sunny. My smile slipped. Because this meant he hadn’t gotten the promotion he needed. It seemed like a hollow victory when I’d been so set on rubbing it in his face.
What did this mean for us? Would he apply elsewhere and leave the company? Until then, if he could even leave, we wouldn’t be able to keep up our…what were we? Were we nothing? Truly a lie? A fling at best? He’d said what happened here stayed here. But if by some iota of a chance he wanted more, we couldn’t be more. I’d be his boss.
Crap.
I willed my racing heart to calm down. Which was worse? Knowing he had no real feelings for me, at least not enough to pursue a relationship? Or knowing he did, and we couldn’t do a thing about it unless one of us found work elsewhere?
I tamped down my nausea. I didn’t want to know which dead end I was facing.
Diya knocked at the front door and cracked it open like she expected a ghost. Of course, I’d been expecting her as we’d texted that it was safe for her to return.
“Hello?” she called out loudly.
“Hey, weirdo,” I replied, shoving aside all the raw badness churning in my head. I had to stave off anxiety.
She walked in and looked around. “Are you two decent?”
“Yes.” Heat surged across my face.
Diya closed the door and meandered toward the counter with two bags, Kimo right behind her with coffees.
“What’s all this?” I asked, leaning my elbows against the counter as Diya plated up fresh baked goods.
“Sunny is leaving this afternoon, isn’t he?” Kimo said.
“Yes,” I replied, saddened by the fact.
“We had to come by to say goodbye and have one last meal.”
“Aw. You guys. That’s so sweet of you. Most importantly, what did you bring me?” I joked, pushing aside how the truth—or a fake breakup to a fake relationship—would disappoint them.
“I went by your favorite café on the way in.”
“Kimo! You didn’t have to!”
“He really did it for the coffee and to see Sunny.” Diya eyed him. “Bromance in the air.”
Kimo shrugged. “I like making friends.”
Diya cocked her chin at the ravaged basket. “Get to the bottom of that?”
“Thanks for the chocolates and cake!” I grinned.
Her right brow shot up. “Did you see the bottom of the basket?”
“It was dark when we got back. We sort of just headed for bed. Socializing that much and loud parties really wiped me out.” I yawned.
“Uh-huh…” She searched the room. “Where’s—”
Sunny emerged from the bedroom, one towel wrapped low over his waist, exposing a sexy V-cut, while he rubbed another towel on his wet hair. He froze the second he saw Diya and Kimo, streams of water dripping down his neck and chest.
His eyes didn’t linger on Diya, but shifted over to me. I was staring shamelessly because damn! How was I ever going to not mentally undress him during work?
Diya whipped her head back to me, standing in between us, shocked. But only for a millisecond. A giant smile spread across her face as she exclaimed, “Bitch, you did finally get some!”
“Oh my god…”
Then she had the audacity to whip her head toward Sunny. “You apparently got it right!”
He didn’t even respond. No shock or embarrassment or regret. Just a nod, like he knew damn well that he got it right. He backtracked into the bedroom. “I should get dressed.”
Diya took out her phone.
“What are you doing?” I went for her, but she jumped away.
“I have to tell Mummie!”
“ Why? Are you serious?” I ran after her, but that little girl was fast. Always had been.
“She wanted me to call her the second I knew for sure!”
“That we had sex?”
“No! Gross! That you’re serious!”
“You don’t know anything!”
Ugh, this was bad.
“Diya, stop! Please! Don’t tell her anything!”
She scuffled to the other side of the couch.
“Or I will tell her you’re thinking about marrying Kimo,” I spat point-blank, my hands on my hips.
That got her to stop and put away her phone. “You wouldn’t.”
“I absolutely would. You’re trying to tell her something that will make her think I have a solid, long-term serious relationship that could inevitably lead to marriage. That’s a big deal. If you tell her that, about something this new, then you better believe she’s going to know about you and Kimo.”
She shivered like she was shaking off my words. “I’m sure she’s expecting it.”
“Don’t get her hopes up. We don’t know where we are, but we’re definitely not there.”
“Fine. You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just…we’re all so excited,” Diya said.
“I know,” I replied softly, “but everyone needs to calm down.”
Having to eventually tell my family the truth was getting harder by the minute. Seemed like telling them that Sunny and I weren’t going to work out and leaving it at that was the obvious solution. Although who was I kidding? My family was going to hammer me for details, for any indication of what went wrong and how it could be fixed. They would be on me again, tougher than ever, on how I needed to move forward with my life.
But particularly so because they seemed to adore Sunny, even if they’d known him for only a short while. I couldn’t blame them. This Sunny, the real Sunny, was particularly likable. And this Sunny was going to break my heart every time I saw him.