Page 37 of Secrets in Love
Pushing my chair away from my desk, I sipped my water, wiped the sweat from my brow, and high-fived myself. I wouldn’t win any literary awards, but I had typed cock and pussy, and that was a big step toward freeing the prudish beast lurking inside me. Unfortunately, and possibly expectedly, I had not rid myself of desire.
There was only one thing for it.
I ran a bath. Filled it with the most expensive oils I could steal from Jocelyn’s bathroom, then soaked, touched, and brought myself undone to thoughts of Nathan and Stevie and with the knowledge that Nate was coming too…just in a slightly different way.
Nate
Unfolding my body from the pretzel-like form it had taken during my fifteen-or-so-hour flight was not easy. Neither was navigating the shopping center within Dallas airport, though everything else had gone smoothly since landing. Customs and Immigration were done with minimal fuss. I had time to kill before my connecting flight. Hell, I’d even been hit on by a hot couple of Singapore Airlines stewardesses while we all waited for our coffees. They were cute as fuck and flirted with me incessantly, but I was too distracted, checking my phone and stressing over the zero messages from Evie, to give them my full attention.
A vaguely familiar scent hit me as I wandered aimlessly. I was passing L’Occitane, and on taking a second breath, one of Evie’s squeals of delight burst into my mind. Finn had given her a luxurious gift pack for her birthday last Christmas, and the way she’d aggressively ripped open the packaging and tantalizingly applied the lotion to her toned, bronzed legs had tortured me on many a long and horny night.
Suddenly, my credit card began burning a hole in my pocket. It was time for its first US workout.
The name of the fragrance slipped my mind, so I smelled each until I found the right one along with a massive headache. “This is it! Neroli and Orchidee.” A second long and deep inhale had me imagining the clean, fruity, and floral scent enveloping every inch of her skin and willing away a hard-on. I may have even moaned a little.
Before I could disgrace myself further, I scooped the full range into my hands, paid, and made a hasty exit. Chanel was next door, so afterrelaxinga little, I wandered in and out twenty minutes and a few hundred dollars later.
Next in my—IhavenoideawhatI’mdoing.Whyiseverythingsoexpensive?—shopping was Michael Kors. Fate and the sexy, skin-tight dresses displayed in the window lured me inside, and I was barely two steps in the door when I ran into my friendly little airline hotties. They’d clearly paid more attention to our conversation at Starbucks than I had, as they not only remembered my name—which I couldn’t even remember supplying—but where I was headed too.
“Who in New York are you shopping for, Nate? You don’t have a ring on that finger, so I don’t think it’s your wife,” asked Jada while holding my hand and suggestively stroking my ring finger.
“Pftt, like that’s ever stopped you, Jada,” inserted Leia.
I freed myself from Jada’s grip and answered before they scratched each other’s eyes out. “No, you’re right. I don’t have a wife, but I hope to one day…shit. I’ve never said that out loud before. I want to marry her. I want to marry Evie Austen!”
I thought my declaration may have put the girls off, but no, Jada and Leia seemed keener than ever. Had I been up for it, I believe my shearing-shed three-way would have been up for some stiff—pardon the pun—competition. But I wasn’t even tempted, and that shocked the shit out of me.
I could still put them to good use, though. “I want to take Evie somewhere really fancy…the ballet, maybe. Would you help me pick her a dress? And she never spends money on herself, so it has to be really special.”
“OMG! Nate, you are so cute! What size is she?”
“Hmm. I dunno.”
“Well, do you know how tall she is?”
“Yeah, nah. ‘Bout this height, maybe.” I uselessly held my hand up, and the girls looked at each other and smiled. Jada moved first, grabbing my hands, placing them on her shoulders, then running them down the length of her body, stopping as my fingers passed the curve of her ass and then back up again. The return trip only varied by taking my hands closer to her breasts.
“Does she feel about my size?”
“Or more mine?” Leia smiled. She then repeated the horrible, horrible ordeal over her tight little body. Had this happened to me at any other point in adulthood, I would have banged those girls so fucking hard. But again, I didn’t.
It was a big deal.
“Uhh, I think she is about your size, Leia. But to be honest, I can’t be sure. I’ve now touched more of your body than I ever have of hers.”
“What?” they shrieked in unison.
Poor Jada looked like she might faint and left the questioning to Leia.
“You’re telling us you’ve flown across the world for a woman you’ve never slept with?”
“Yep. Never kissed her either.”
“What the fuck! Are you real?” Their squeals of disbelief and accompanying poking of my body like I was some kind of science experiment caught the attention of Alexa, a tightly coiffed, terrifying-looking assistant. She glanced at my jeans, CONS, and Rip Curl t-shirt with utter contempt and shuddered.
“Is there anything I canquietlyhelp you with?”
My new friends then explained my situation to the ice queen, and she defrosted before my eyes.
