Since the gala two weeks ago we’ve been seeing each other on the regular. I’d stopped by her office a couple of times to chat with Chris—or pretending to need to chat with Chris—and we’d end up in the storage cupboards, or the bathrooms for a quickie. I’d have a late one at the office, and when I knocked on her door, she’d pull me in by my tie and have me naked and panting, sometimes begging her, within a matter of moments. And while sex with her is possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever done, it’s the talking afterward that has me addicted to her. She’s funny and intelligent and so, so incredibly driven. Her new position has her exhausted, but with the same type of happy fatigue I get from my own job. Run off her feet but can’t wait to wake up and do it again. Though, she never openly engages in conversation, not straight away—I can see the deliberate wall she puts up. It’s after orgasm five or six, when she’s at the point of begging, her whimpers delirious with tears of need that leak from her eyes, after that? She’s an open book, and I don’t even think she realizes it.
I learned that she feels lost in her culture. Having grown up in a family so obsessed with image and money and status, they lost sight of their history and what it means to be connected to your roots. Her nanny, orniñera, Carmela, she called her, taught her to speak Spanish so she could understand and talkback to her parents. Considering they saw her as more of an inconvenience than a daughter, they never bothered to speak to her or teach her much of anything. This, I learned, is why she slips into Spanish when she’s swearing. It was what she heard the most growing up.
My heart aches at the light that winks out of her eyes anytime she talks about her family, about growing up. I know my own childhood wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, but I could at least talk to my dad when it mattered. Knew that when it came down to it, that he loved me and would always be there for me. Even if we butted heads for the most part.
I also learned more about this family thing she told me about that happens in September, theFiestas Patrias,which my own googling told me all about the two-day celebration, and it sounded nothing like the formal, stick-up-the-ass dinner that Rosie said her family was doing. So I’ve made plans…I plan to surprise her…but I am stuck on still being a nonexclusive fuck, and I want to transition out of that without ruining what we currently have, before my plans are put into action.
She has owned every single part of me since that night she finally gave into our little friends-with-benefits agreement, and I wasn’t sorry. But it’s starting to eat away at me, being the secret and wondering who or if another man is touching what I am starting to think of as mine.
I still can’t tell the guys who the hypothetical mystery woman is who is turning the elusive noncommitted playboy into wanting to become aboyfriendof all things, because she’s still keeping us as her dirty little secret. It has been two weeks of almost daily sex, and I am anything but sated. She isn’t leaving my system, she is embedding herself deeper. Into my mind, my soul?—
“Caleb?” The sound of my name repeated, followed by the jolt of my shoulder from Lucas, has me yanked from the spiral ofRosie I was descending down.See what I mean?This shit keeps happening.
“Huh?”
“Asking what you were doing for the Fourth?” Jesus, I really missed a lot of conversation.
“Oh, heading home to see the old man. Might hang with Addy and Noah for a bit too.”
“And Rosie.” I nearly snap my neck when I turn to look at Noah.
“Rosie?”
“Yeah, she talked to Addy, said she wanted to crash the Karvelases’ Fourth of July celebrations because she has nothing else on.” I fight with excruciating effort to keep the wide smile from spreading across my face.
“Oh.” I clear my throat, downing the rest of my drink. “Nice.” Yeah, I am failing at hiding anything.
Jessie smiles at me through narrowed, knowing eyes as he hides his own chuckle, and I give him a look to keep his trap shut. Dude sees more than he lets on, and Imayhave been ordering black coffee from his café ever since I learned of Rosie’s order.
“Mom said she’s happy to have all of us, there will of course be more than enough food. Your dad and Viv can come, too, if they aren’t busy.”
I wave him off. “I’ll pop in and see Dad, but I’ll come alone, I don’t know that I need to bring the Debbie Downers to the Karvelas household.” Noah grunts agreement, already aware of what my dad is like, and that his wife’s melancholy can be an added weight to my father’s already pessimistic outlook on life. Two peas in a pod they are.
“How’s the Chicago office?” Ethan asks, directed at Noah, and I’m grateful. I’d been meaning to talk to Noah more about the transition to the new office, but he’s been so busy back andforth between the two I didn’t want to add to his plate. I may also have been distracted of late…
“Great. Getting through some interviews, the construction crew has been great, everything is on track. Just need to work out if I can actually get Addy to move out there, make it home base. But I think we might be here a while yet. I still need to keep this office afloat. I can’t be in two places at once.” I duck my head at his explanation, feeling a slight sting that he hasn’t offered and mentioned me holding down the fort for him. I know this place is his baby, I know he hasn’t always been the best at delegating, but I thought I had been proving myself. The sales as a whole were on a 10 percent increase in the last month since he’s been predominantly in Chicago. I had made a couple of transition notes on staff that could be relocated to help with the training in the new location if he needed that, depending on the hires he could find. I even got Ava to give me a list of her designer connections in Chicago so we could reach out to them. Noah had weekly performance reports and sales budgets that were the best they’d been since we opened. It only pointed to the fact I needed to work that much harder, or maybe it was time Noah and I had a conversation about my future at the company.
The conversation moved on and became mostly about what everyone else was up to, but I tuned out and plotted internally, trying to find a way to slip out of the secret zone and enter my exclusive era with Rosie. But I know she is skittish—she clenched up so tight when I had embraced her in the bath, it felt like she was in flight or fight mode. I haven’t approached a hug since then, haven’t pushed her on her no-sleepover rule, and I guess we are both ignoring the way I’d lost my head at her after she dismissed me for the hundredth time. Perhaps I really was getting sick of being a dirty little secret.
Knowing that I would be seeing Rosie for the long weekend in Chicago made the rest of the week drag like you wouldn’t believe.
Most of the work for Andersen Schulz and Meyers was wrapped up, just some final billing and other housekeeping things, but that was officially with the admin and design teams. Which meant I had no more excuses to turn up to their office. No reason to just wander in and entice my little Rosebud into some midday shenanigans. Which is fine, her playful texts are enough to get me through the day in anticipation of our nighttime games. And if I thought I was ravenous, Rosie is borderline insatiable. We have practically come together in explosive chemistry every night this week.
There was one night, though, when I brought up that we’d both be in Chicago for the holiday weekend, and she shut down the conversation so fast it shocked me silent. A quick,Addy and Noah will be around, so we don’t exist.And then her lips wrapped around my cock and sucked like her life depended on it. I could barely remember my own name let alone remember to press her about the conversation.
But now, it’s Thursday night and I’m on the plane to my dad’s. I’m kicking myself for not having bigger balls and forcing some sort of conversation about what we’re doing.
I am just going with it, seeing what happens, hoping that my stupid brain and my lust-sick cock aren’t going to prove my brain right; that I’m not worth the effort. The little voice in my head, screaming not to bother, to leave Rosie be. Get this fucking out of my system or find someone else to take away the sting, because there is no way in hell Rosie Garcia is calling off her nonexclusive deal forme.
Yeah, my cock isn’t getting the message, neither is that insistent pain in my chest. I put my headphones in, load up theRenaissancealbum, and hit Shuffle. I try to picture Rosie sittingat her desk working, listening to this album, but I end up just picturing her in all her spicy lingerie and dancing for me.
The sounds of the pilot announcing our arrival, the seat belt signs going on, and the flight attendants scoping for rubbish, pull me from my thoughts.
I barely pay attention to anything on the disembarking. I take my overhead luggage and head straight for the taxi bay. On my way out the doors, though, I see a hint of familiar dark curls and nearly snap my neck to get a second glance. Sure enough, standing in front of a man in a dark suit holding a sign that readsRosita Garciain front of a blacked-out Rolls-Royce is the object of my never-ending distractions.
I jog the final distance between us before the man with the sign takes her luggage and I reach forward and grab it.
“Rosebud. Fancy seeing you here,” I tease as I round in front of her and pull the luggage from the man’s hand. He is polite enough to give us some privacy but hovers, waiting for Rosie’s instruction, I assume.
