“As soon as I can move again, I want to do something I haven’t done yet, but I’ve been fantasizing about for a while now,” I told her.
“What?”
“Eat you out.”
I felt a little tremor moving through her body.
“Well hurry up and recover,” she finally said. “I want to see what you can do.”
As my brain re-engaged I felt a rush of conflicting emotions. This was good, too good, and I knew it was because my emotions were involved. I was feeling something for Grace, something more than passion, more than lust. Something that felt a lot like love.
And that would be a huge mistake. This thing had a time limit, and I was only going to get hurt if I lost sight of that. But as I moved between her legs and tasted the sweetness of her arousal, I couldn’t find it in me to care.
Grace
After a long night of increasingly intimate passion, Nicole and I woke up tangled in each other’s arms. If I was hoping for a repeat of last night – which I totally was – I was wrong. As soon as she woke up, Nicole gave me a quick kiss, then headed into the shower. She didn’t invite me to join her, so I stayed in bed reading emails on my phone until she was finished in the bathroom.
“When are we heading out?” she asked, avoiding my gaze.
I looked at her, trying to figure out what was wrong.
“Is everything okay?” I asked gently. “You seem kind of distant this morning.”
Her gaze pinned to mine for a long, pregnant moment before she looked away again.
“Things got a little… uh, intense last night. I think I’m feeling kind of, I don’t know, tender.”
I hopped out of bed and walked closer, pleased when she didn’t move away, placing my hands on her shoulders.
“It was a lot for me too,” I said softly. “I know we said we were going to keep things casual, but last night didn’t feel casual. It felt the opposite of casual.”
“Yeah.”
“Where do we go from here?” I asked, wanting to let her have the control that I knew she needed.
“Well, we didn’t get any work done this weekend, what with all the fucking and all, so maybe we should head home.”
It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. I did my best to keep my face neutral though.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Let me take a quick shower and then I’ll make the travel arrangements.”
We’d just settled on the private plane when the message came in. Our environmental engineer had discovered an issue while doing a survey of the Grant Park College site, and we needed tofigure out how to mitigate it without substantially increasing the cost.
As soon as we reached cruising altitude we were on conference calls with several of our partners, discussing options. Even though it was Sunday, we received promises to come back to us with ideas. By the time we got back to Chicago I’d made two pages of notes and my ‘to do’ list was extensive. So much for my restful getaway.
“I’m going to start working up our options when I get home,” Nicole told me as we exited the plane.
We slid into the back of the waiting limousine, sitting much closer to each other than we did two days ago.
“I’ll drop you off at your place, but I won’t be able to do anything on this until later tonight. I have to get some work done for AGM,” I told her regretfully. “Otherwise my partners are going to fire me.”
Nicole turned in her seat to face me.
“Why do you do both jobs?” she asked. “You’re basically working full time for yourself and your parents simultaneously. You can’t keep that up forever, not with how demanding this work is.”
The fact that she looked concerned about me warmed my heart.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “My parents were insistent that I stay with the family company, partly because I’m an only child and need to…” I made air quotes, “uphold the family legacy.But also I’m pretty sure they assumed that Ariel and Maeve and I would fail spectacularly. But the joke’s on them because we’ve succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. No one’s happy that I’m doing both jobs though, even me, but I can’t seem to disentangle myself from either one.”
