Page 75 of Between Love and Loathing
“Well, I’m fake yours,” she corrected, as if she could stop the blurring of lines between us at this point.
“Tell me.” I thrust my cock against her stomach. “That feel like my dick thinks this is fake to you? You’re here for three more months. You’re exclusively mine for all of them.”
“You’re counting down?” she whispered, then she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. If you want me to be exclusive, are you going to be also?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions. Of course the same goes for me. I’m not in the business of sleeping with a woman I’m not attracted to and it seems theonlyone I am attracted to right now is you. I woke up thinking about you in my study, and I’ll go to bed thinking about you coming on my cock with your pretty hair draped over your tits in my bed. Want to go fulfill my fantasy now or later?”
She chewed on her bottom lip. “I’ve got only a few weeks left until this opening. And you do too. We need to work, not mess around. Plus, being professional is—”
“Overrated when I know how you taste.”
She stepped away from me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dominic. You’re probably smarter than most when it comes to toxic relationships. Ours would be a whole keg of poison if we kept indulging the way we are now.” She breathed out fast and then looked at me with those big green eyes. “Right?”
Fuck, my dick wanted me to say wrong. But my mind knew she was right. My ex had stirred up a pot of poison and fed it to me. I was lost to love and relationships and the hope that they would ever end well.
I stepped back and whispered, “Right.”
She echoed it back again, her face falling, and her walls flying up. She took a deep breath before she excused herself to go unpack. Somehow, that one word of confirmation restructured our relationship.
We let the days tick by as we passed one another by in the hallways without touching. Without eye contact. With only soft hellos and small talk. Still, if she stayed late at the bakery, I made sure my driver went back for her, and I paced in front of her room half the time. I also wandered into it once or twice and saw she’d set up the pictures she’d had in her apartment on the dressers here.
Something about her having other people—even Evie, Declan, and my nephew Atticus—in a picture without her frustrated the hell out of me.
Her disruption to my everyday life shouldn’t have been huge with how quiet she was and how she moved around me. She even thanked me for having my assistant set up her bright rug in her room and move her small amount of furniture and pillows in there. She didn’t ask to have it in the living room. She just walled herself off with all her belongings every day in that room when we got home. But Clara couldn’t contain that she was brilliantly alive or that my attention was always drawn to her, even if she didn’t want it to be.
Every day, I’d offer to take her to work and she’d quietly worry her hands in the car. She kept her nails short but always painted in red or a pink to match what she was wearing. They matched the walls of that bakery, too, and her poppy cupcakes I was having a fucking hard time avoiding.
When I worked late in my study, I heard her tiptoe out to the kitchen to get water every night at some random point, never the same time, like she just remembered she needed it rather than planned for it.
When I met her footsteps with mine one night, I saw her taking pills with the water. “What are those for?”
She spun around fast, probably shocked that she hadn’t heard me sneak up on her. “Just birth control?”
The woman literally couldn’t tell a lie without about five movements that gave her away. Not only did she blush, she looked anywhere but my eyes, fidgeted on her feet, picked at a nail, and then combed her hand through her hair.
“Try again, little fighter. This time, no lies.”
She curled in on herself when she said softly, “I get joint pain sometimes. I have medication to help with it.”
“Joint pain—”
She shook her head and didn’t wait around to explain herself more. She just rushed past me with a softgood night.Suddenly, I couldn’t think of anything else. Did she wake up with the pain? Go to bed with it? Was it something more? Every question felt too intrusive for a woman that was living in my home but not sleeping with me. For a woman that barely talked with me now that we’d drawn some fucked-up line in the imaginary sand.
Every night after, she rushed past my doors like I wouldn’t see the deep-green or blue or red flurry of silk pajamas she was wearing. She was quiet, but the disruption was huge. All I thought about was her on my desk, how she tasted, how she’d wanted everything I gave her.
When she cooked in that kitchen, I ate copious amounts of little chocolates to try to curb the addiction I had to her. That very night, I’d shooed the cats out of my study and actually closed the doors, hoping to bar off the temptation of Clara Milton and get back to my work.
And when I heard clanging around from my study, I should have let it be. Instead, I sighed and ended a call with colleagues. Something was missing from the damn resort, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t reopen it without it being perfect either. The Hardy name was stamped on it.
It was also the resort I’d finally given my all to after the incident within the workplace, after Natya lied to me over and over again. I couldn’t let my family or anyone down this time.
The last thing I needed was to be bothering my fake girlfriend about whatever racket she was making in my kitchen. Still, I went. There, on her tiptoes on top of the counter, trying to reach the highest cupboard shelf stood my tiny fighter. And around her was the biggest mess I’d ever seen.
“What the fuck?” I whispered. Every one of my dishes had been pulled from the shelves, all my spices, all the food.
“I’m going to clean it up,” she responded loudly before she hopped and grabbed the bowl, and then landed with skill like she did this all the time.
Fuck. Had I invited this into my home? “Clara,” I warned.
