Page 61 of Scandalous Lover

I scroll back down to the images I just took of myself, alone in my hotel room.

Most of them have my face cut off, but a few show my full expression. I zoom in on one and inhale sharply. There’s no fake happiness. No pretending to be someone or somewhere that I’m not.

It’s just Naomi. Real and raw and completely unfiltered.

Sam’s face comes to mind as I’m looking at myself. I close my eyes and remember how it felt when he was looking at me. When he was touching me. I open them again, and the girl I see on the screen is exactly her.

I finally have words for how I felt when I was alone with that man.

Purely and completely in the moment.

It’s how Sam lives his life, and when I’m with him, I feel like I could learn to do the same—if he would only let me.

The text conversation this morning went better than I expected after Sam’s radio silence since the night before. When his line went dark after we’d both gotten off, I thought for sure I’d lost him.

Now I don’t know what to think.

He’s on my mind even more than he was in the weeks after he left Austin, and back then I was getting off to that video on the daily. Now that I’m here, and he’s in on my little secret, the whole thing feels bigger. Meatier. Not like something shameful that hovers over my head, but something alive and growing.

Does he feel it, too?

I know I probably shouldn't send him topless pictures of myself while he’s at an important meeting with Dom, Fran, and the wedding couple, but somehow the idea of him looking atme, thinking of me, in such an inappropriate setting makes it even hotter.

He doesn’t have to look if he’s too busy.

I literally have nothing to lose anymore.

I choose the best, most anonymous of the bunch and toss it into our message feed, biting my lip in nervous anticipation as its status shifts to sent.

When it changes to read mere seconds later, I’m unable to contain my squeal of excitement. He’s looking at me with Dom sitting right there. Maybe sitting next to him.

I shouldn’t have sent it.

I could get us both in big trouble.

Why does that feel like the best part?

Chapter Nineteen

Sam

“And then we’ll do the scallop course, paired with the Krug Clos,” Fran is saying, gesturing to the artfully plated dishes of seafood, vegetables, and sauce Dom sets in front of the wedding couple.

The two smile up at him, eyes wide with delight.

This tasting has gone a lot smoother than I expected. Often, when you get people who are spending the kind of money these two are, they come with a lot of expectations and demands.

Not this couple.

They’ve been nothing but polite and gracious throughout the whole process. They have requests, sure, but they are happy to let Dom and his crew work their magic in the kitchen.

I’ve sat through enough tastings with picky couples, or worse, picky parents of young couples, to appreciate these two smiling faces.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I slip it out enough to peek at the screen, already anticipating what I'm going to find.

But she surprises me. It’s not a text, it’s an image.

I used a how-to on the internet to change my phone settingsso message previews don’t show on my lock screen anymore, so I can’t see what the picture is, but I can imagine.

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