Chapter 22
Koen~
Not one to give up, after lunch, I had suggested that Rya and I go back to my place once again, and to my surprise, she had agreed, and it’d had me wondering what my mother had told her. For the past two weeks, Rya had been happy to pretend as if my money didn’t exist, so this was new.
Now, while I didn’t live in a penthouse, I did live in a very upscale condo, and it was on the more expensive side of town, but that was only because it made the commute to Wilder Tech easier.
Traffic was a bitch in the morning, and though I usually got into the office around six, if I wanted to stop for coffee or anything like that, then it was easy to get stuck in the morning rush.
Rya also hadn’t said much on the way over, but with lunch turning out to be a disaster, I wasn’t sure what I had expected from her.
Granted, when she and my mother had come back to the table after their walk, Rya had seemed in better spirits, but it was clear that the country club was no longer an option for us, which wasn’t all that of a loss, truth be told.
When we finally reached my building, I parked in the underground parking garage, and as I opened the door to help Rya out of the car, I said, “The code to the gate, garage, and elevator are all the same.”
“Why would I need to know that?” she asked warily, and I really wanted to go back to the country club and burn the place down.
“Because it’s something that you need to know, baby,” I told her as I led her to the elevators. “Should be able to come and go from my place as you please.”
“Oh, okay,” she muttered quietly.
The rest of the way up to my condo was in complete silence, but since Rya was letting me hold her in the elevator, I was okay with that.
I wanted her to be comfortable around me, and I wanted the same for myself.
Again, even though we were making progress, we still had moments when Rya was unsure of me, herself, and what we were doing together.
Once we finally got to my condo, I unlocked the door, then ushered her inside, and luckily for me, my condo wasn’t decked out in expensive furniture or whatnot. Yeah, my place was definitely nicer than most, but it wasn’t ostentatious in the least.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “A water is fine.”
Rya made herself comfortable on the couch as I grabbed us something to drink, and it was crazy how much I loved having her here.
In fact, it was crazy how fast and how hard I’d fallen in only a couple of weeks.
Maybe it was because all of Rya’s emotions were pure.
Whether she was happy, sad, wary, vulnerable, or whatever, she was open about it when it was just me and her.
Handing her the bottle of water, I sat down next to her as I asked, “Do you want a tour?”
She immediately shook her head. “No, I’m good.”
“Baby, talk to me,” I said as I set my unopened water on the coffee table. “I know lunch sucked, but...but I can’t help make it better if you don’t talk to me.”
Rya placed her water next to mine, then turned to face me.
“I overheard some girls talking about you when I went to the restroom,” she finally informed me, surprising me.
“They were talking about what an embarrassment I was, and that if I really cared about you, then I’d leave you in order to save you from being talked about for dating me. ”
“Are you fucking serious?” I asked, my blood getting heated again.
“It’s okay, Koen,” she sighed tiredly. “I mean...it sucked to hear them talking like that, but...but when I spoke with Leandra, she made some very good points-”
“Wait, what?” I had to shake my head a bit. “You...you called Leandra, instead of coming and getting me?”
She gave me a pointed look. “She’s one of my best friends, Koen. I’ve only known you for two weeks. So, in the event of an emotional crisis, my first instinct is to do what I’ve been doing for the past few years, and that’s to call Dalton or Leandra first.”
“While that makes total sense, I still don’t like it,” I told her honestly.
Ignoring that, she said, “Well, you’ll get over it.”
“I might not,” I argued.
“Anyway, she pointed out how people were going to talk about us dating, no matter what,” she went on. “There’s no escaping it.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied evenly. “People are hateful, and they’re going to talk about us both.”
“You don’t find that exhausting?” she asked. “You don’t think that you’ll get tired of defending our relationship?”
“Fuck no,” I scoffed. “Mainly because I won’t be. People can say whatever they want behind our backs, Rya. It only becomes a problem if they dare say anything to our faces, and at that time, I’ll be more than happy to defend what we have together.”
Then she said the one thing that made me hate the world. “I don’t want to embarrass you, Koen.”
I reached for her, grabbed her hips, then sat her on my lap. “Baby, you’re out of your goddamn mind if you think that I’d ever be embarrassed to call you mine.”
“I’ve got to be honest with you, it’s going to take me a long time to get there, Koen,” she said, dismissing my declaration in favor of transparency. “And I don’t know how fair that is to you.”
“It’s not up to you to decide that, Rya,” I informed her. “If you want to talk about what’s not fair, making decisions for me like I’m not a grown man is what’s not fair.”
After a few seconds of silence she said, “You know, there are times when I’m fine and everything is going well, and then there are times when you scare the hell out of me.”
I pushed her hair back from her shoulders. “Well, you’re a lot better off than I am, because you scare me all the damn time, baby.”
She gave me a sweet smile as she said, “Well, what’s crazier than that is how your hands on my body seem to make it all go away.”
My hands immediately slid from her hips to underneath her shirt. “Oh, yeah?”
Rya nodded. “Yeah.”
“Tell me what else my hands do for you,” I ordered, my fingers dancing across her skin.
“They make me forget about everything but what they’re doing to me,” she whispered.
“And do they make you feel good?” I asked, my dick already hard underneath her ass.
“Everything you do to me makes me feel good,” she replied, and she sounded so serious that it made my heart hurt.
Grabbing Rya by her hips again, I held her tight as I stood up, and being the good girl that she was, she immediately wrapped her legs around my waist, and her arms were secured around my neck as I walked us back to my bedroom.
“If you keep talking like that, I may never let you leave here, baby,” I told her honestly. “We can both find jobs where we can work remote from home, and we’ll work in the bedroom.”
Rya let out a sincere laugh, and the simple sound made it so easy to breathe again, which solved one of the greatest mysteries of all time for me.
Growing up, I used to always wonder why my father’s happiness had depended on my mother’s, and now I understood why.
Making Rya happy felt more important than anything else that I’d ever done in my life, and if that wasn’t love, then I didn’t know what was, and after only two weeks.
Luckily for me, the door to my bedroom had been left open this morning, so I was able to walk Rya right on in, and as soon as I approached the bed, I laid her on the mattress, and when she smiled up at me, my entire chest felt like it was too tight for whatever I felt for this girl.
“You look perfect on my bed,” I said, meaning every fucking word.
“Good,” she replied, sounding a bit more confident than she’d had earlier.
Then, just as I was about to undress her to remind her of all the reasons why this was worth it, Rya sat up, then slid off the bed until she was on her knees in front of me, and all I could do was let out a low moan.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’d come to learn that Rya knew how to weaken my knees whenever she had my dick in her mouth, and whatever could be said about Rya Harlow, it couldn’t be said that she wasn’t passionate.
“Baby...” I groaned as her hands went to my jeans, my dick already hard and waiting for her.
Rya looked up at me as she unzipped me, and those emerald-colored eyes of hers were always going to be able to see right through me, but it was that goddamn hair of hers that had me hard for her damn near all the time.
Not only was it such a startling shade of gorgeousness, but it was as soft as it looked, and there was nothing like having a fistful of it in my hand while I fucked that sweet cunt of hers.
As soon as Rya wrapped her hand around the base of my dick, I closed my eyes, sunk my hands into her hair, then braced myself for what was about to come.
In a matter of seconds, her hot mouth was going to be swallowing my cock, and every single time that we were together like this, I became more addicted to what she made me feel, but I was perfectly okay with that.