She was my new addiction, and I had no desire to seek an intervention for it.
Over the next two weeks, we were extremely careful. Only Rory knew anything. She became our occasional nighttime babysitter when Alex and I wanted some time alone without the fear of the twins walking in on us.
But we also got creative. There were times we snuck a quickie in the laundry room. Another was in the butler’s pantry as the girls waited in the living room for their cakes to bake. Luckily, they were too involved in their competitive game of Go Fish to notice we were gone for longer than a few minutes.
I had bite and scratch marks on every part of my body. Alex was a screamer, and when she needed to remain quiet, my arm or back usually took the brunt of it, along with my palm over her mouth.
A few nights, we fell asleep in each other’s room, the exhaustion from our projects and the mind-blowing sex taking its toll on us. We both ended up setting alarms on each other’s phone to make sure we would wake up before the twins.
During most days, we focused on our own projects. We wouldn’t get any work done otherwise, because we were insatiable for each other.
My robot was coming along. I had to tweak some of the coding, but the change in moisture control seemed to work. The last test on one of Nash’s fields yielded almost perfect results.
Alex was spending her days trying new recipes to add to her collection. I really enjoyed being her taste-tester. She’d also been working with my assistant on her business plan. Alex was determined to get a small loan for the appliances and construction of the cake shop, and she wanted to do it without her family chipping in. She shut me down twice when I offered to invest. But I was determined to have the check ready with whatever dollar amount she needed if her plans fell through. I was proud of what she was doing, and I had the utmost faith in her skills and talent.
Neither of us had been looking forward to my third weekend in Ashfield. Alex walked around that Friday night in a completely sullen mood. Not even a trip to the ice cream shop with Molly and Eloise could cheer her up.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why.
Autumn and Colton were to return in the morning. Which meant she would no longer be at the bed-and-breakfast on the regular.
Even though we both agreed to the friends-with-benefits label, what happened once she moved out had me questioning if it should continue. I could barely go a few hours without seeing her, touching her, tasting her. And there were many nights I’d woken up to Alex sneaking into my room and telling me what she wanted. Some nights, it was my cock in her mouth. Others, it was her riding me to her climax. And a couple of times, it was simply lying against me with her head resting on my chest and her leg twisted between mine.
I told her repeatedly that I’d see her almost every day. She hoped Autumn would let her continue using the kitchen for her cake experiments until she got her shop up and running, but she always had her parents’ farmhouse as a backup.
It would work in my favor if she was able to keep using the B&B, but I spent enough time on Sunny Brook Farms that I wasn’t too worried.
We could do this. We would do this.
“Come back to bed, baby.” Alex had been pacing back and forth since midnight. She said when her anxiety was high, she would wake up with her heart racing. I told her there was a surefire way to calm her down, but she rolled her eyes and got out of bed.
It was her last full night at the B&B.
The girls pouted the entire day. They’d been absolutely distraught at the thought of Alex moving out of the house. When she set her suitcase and bag by the stairs, they’d gone so far as to hide them. Not well. We found them in the powder room.
Alex sat them down and explained she wasn’t leaving them forever, and she was sure to see them almost every day. They thought she was leaving them like their mother had.
Which opened up an entirely different can of worms.
Sasha’s calls had become even more frequent and frantic. She would dial my number for hours until I let her speak to the girls. It was the same time every day when I’d finally answer, so I could keep the girls on a schedule, but she was upsetting the twins with all her talk of them coming to visit. I hadn’t agreed to anything, but when she mentioned it last, I told her I would think about it.
It wasn’t me saying no, and that appeased her for a short time. Two days went by, then she started up again.
I tried to do some research on the internet about her, to see if she was in trouble, but nothing came up. There were a few images of her at charity events, but that was it. Most were too grainy to make out, but she looked thinner than I remembered. A dress I recalled her wearing once before hung off her already slight frame.
Alex suggested I take them to visit their mother as an early birthday present. That way, she could celebrate with them as well. The idea had merit, and I was still tossing it around.
But most of my time, my mind was preoccupied by the blonde currently wearing a hole in the rug.
“Alex, baby, everything will be fine. You’re worrying over nothing.”
“I just….”
“You just what?”
“I don’t want to say it.” She crossed her arms against her chest and pursed her lips.
“Now you have to tell me.”
