CHAPTER 28

Three Years Ago—Being Lazy

Charis: What time of day do you think human beings are adapted to waking up?

Asher: Who? Wha? You doin' a crossword puzzle? What's going on?

Charis: Oh, were you asleep, Sir Asher? Nah, I was just wondering. Maybe it's dawn. Or maybe it's a set time that persists trans-seasonally.

Asher: Jesus, Sloane. Why do you need to call me and torture me at—hell, four-thirty in the morning with crazy-ass questions?

Charis: Because, sleepyhead, you asked me to do you the favor of calling you so you could finish your paper since you and your girlfriend chronically sleep through alarm clocks. But if you want to just be lazy and go back to bed, feel free…

Asher: Fuck, I forgot. Thanks, girl, what would I do without you?

Asher

YESTERDAY WAS FANTASTIC. EXCEPT fantastic isn't word enough. Try…perfection.

As far as the fitting room incident goes, I only have three sentences. Wait, four.

Charis's mouth.

Four minutes.

She deep throats.

Holy fuck.

That's all I have to say about that.

Then while I was recovering, gasping and coughing and opening my shirt to let the sweat dry, she tried on a few of the dresses. By the third, an alluring ice blue skimming deal that made her look like a fine piece of art, I was hard again from watching her get in and out of dresses.

So we got that one—actually, I paid for it, ignoring her protests—I mean it was always my intention; the place was a fucking ripoff—and got the hell out of there.

I didn't let her see the total. We smelled like sex, and there was no way the clerk didn't know what we were up to. So I bribed—er, tipped—the woman to keep a lid on that.

Then we swung by the supermarket, picked up enough food to make me glad I had an extra large refrigerator, and came home and fucked.

And fucked.

And cuddled and fucked.

And cooked and ate and talked and watched movies and fucked some more.

Somewhere in there, exercise equipment and more furniture got delivered. A moving service came to take Aura's boxes away. But we didn't bother ourselves with it. Because, busy fucking.

A little showering.

Fucking in the shower.

Then cuddling and snacking in the bed.

In case it's not obvious…

I love. That girl.

Best. Fucking. Day. Ever.

I think it was pretty good for her, too.

I fell asleep with her taste in my mouth, holding her. Woke up similar.

I'm not lying. We'd changed positions, but we were still entwined together, and my lips were so close it was instinctive to nuzzle her as I came to full consciousness. I bumped her a little with my hips. This was serious. I mean, I'd slept with Aura a gazillion times and it was wonderful and intimate and shit.

But not like being part of another person. Like you can't get close enough. I don't remember ever wanting Aura to wake up faster so I could talk to her.

And I'm not even exaggerating about yesterday and all the fucking and snuggling. If this is what my parents have, they deserve a prize for keeping it down to six.

So you can see how Friday was a comedown.

Oh, the first part was almost as good as the day before. But I couldn't ignore work anymore. I had to make some calls and send some emails. I'd been lazy about work this week, pawning all the stuff I could off on my people in Boulder.

(Why do you have a business location in Boulder, you ask? Because I'm sure you want to know this. Karl happened to be working in Colorado the year I set up my offices. He never has any money, but he has connections and hooked me up with a neat little crew that had just been laid off due to corporate cutbacks. They set up shop in a coworking space and a couple of them got married and moved to Tucson, so I actually have a presence in three states now. I'd been honest with Sloane, I could live anywhere and still keep operations going. My devices are made in Thailand, so that's a possibility, too.)

We installed the exercise equipment in the gym room. Charis guessed I'd ordered it for her and seemed flabbergasted that I'd go to such lengths just so she'd have something to do. I was amused by how stoked she got over it. It was like the equipment was more serious than my going down on her how many times yesterday?

"Well it is serious," she said when I mentioned it. "You weren't in the heat of passion when you ordered it."

"Wrong. I've been in the heat of passion since the night we got drunk together, Sloane."

While I worked, she tried out some of the equipment, showered, lounged around, and asked me irrelevant questions.

I fucked her only once before evening came, when she walked by my desk, carrying the scent of oranges. I turned, grabbed her, pulled her onto my lap, and before I knew it I was pulsing inside her, staring into her eyes intently.

"You," I said in that stupid way I did.

"No, you," she said, looking happy and scared and worried all at once.

"I want to invent a way to stay inside you all day," I announced.

"Oh, fuck, Asher. Oh, fuck!"—in a different tone—"Winnow's party!"

"Yeah, we have to get ready for that." I found her clit with my thumb, feeling her passage clench around me. "Come for me first, Sloane."

Watching, feeling her orgasm try to squeeze me to death was the ultimate. Feeling her surrender to me over and over again.

That's right, I said surrender. Like swooning heroines did in those magic pussy books.

Because there's nothing like having a woman who'll give it all up to you.

I'd guessed both right and wrong about Charis's sexual inexperience. When I remarked on the fact that nothing we did seemed to shock her—a disappointment, I'll admit—she told me her ex had taught her some pretty extreme positions. Her matter-of-fact attitude about some things—like when I had her sit on my face—was almost comical.

But every orgasm seemed to blow her away.

Knowing now that she'd kept her attraction to me a secret, that she'd worked hard not to let me know what a horny girl she was, I understood that each orgasm she let me give her was a gift.

Of affection.

Of faith.

Of trust.

So, yeah, it's fair to say surrender.

The ultimate was making her come.

But the penultimate—by a narrow margin—was the way she threw herself into touching me.

My girl must have released herself from some kind of mental leash, because now she touched me with breathtaking enthusiasm.

I was left in no doubt that she loved handling me. And by me, I mean my cock, my back, my front, my legs, my ass, my hands, my face, my hair…I think only my elbows had been spared from her eager, dare I say loving explorations by the time we fucked on my office chair.

I'd done the same to her, naturally. I learned, shit, maybe eighty to eighty-five percent of her body? It would have been a hundred percent but I was too on fire for her to really take the time to explore all her nooks and crannies.

Aura's freckles used to have me besotted, but Sloane's skin…it's how smooth it was I guess. Or maybe its sensitivity. Or, fuck, it's probably just that it's hers. It's like I find myself having to know every bit about her physically so I can put it together with everything else and come up somehow with the whole woman.

A perfect example: I've discovered her issues with her body are reflected in the way she underestimates her own potential. She thinks her only career choice is to be a professor. I happen to know a dude, one of the Wethers brothers, actually, whose business, ConnectEdU, would be right up her alley. But she just sees this one path for herself in academia. I never thought of her as lacking self-confidence, but with my new perspective on her, on how she really sees herself, I know I'm gonna bring it up with her eventually.

Speaking of Aura…much as I was over her, much as I avoided thinking about her, I felt uneasy. Her imprint remained on my life. I'd trained myself into certain behaviors that revolved around her. Like the condom thing. She was still part of my habits, habits I needed to break.

Like, what if I acted the douche and randomly called Charis by Aura's name in the heat of the moment? Half jokingly, I told Sloane if I ever did that, she had my permission to break my face.

"It's your testicles I'll aim for," she said. I do think she was serious.

"Just leave me able to bear children," I begged.

"Better yet, don't call out Aura's name."

"I have no plans to, trust me. I just don't want to screw up with you, Sloane," I told her bluntly. "Punish me, make me suffer, but don't get it into your head I'm hankering after her. So please the fuck just tell me if I say anything in my sleep."

"And how would that help exactly?"

"Hell if I know. I'll drink celery juice every time I think of her. I'll move in with you. Change my schedule. Something. Whatever works."

"Maybe we should wait until you're completely over—"

"No," I cut her off. "I am over her. I'm fully into you. A few weeks, tops, and we'll overwrite any lingering traces of the old girlfriend program."

She sputtered. "Asher Norrell, you're…"

"Genius? Brilliant? Sensitive and considerate?"

"Stubborn."

"Damn right, if stubborn means not letting you weasel out of us," I said smugly.

IT WAS THE PARTY MORE THAN anything that put a damper on the day. We argued about it again. The closer we got to zero hour, the more annoyed I got that, with all that had happened between us, Charis still insisted on keeping our relationship a secret.

"We're involved. They'll all have to know about it sooner or later."

"But there's no hurry, is there?"

"What is the big deal, Char?"

"I don't know! Mel…everything's happened so fast. It could all go away just as fast."

"Oh, yeah? Tell me, how does that play out in your mind?"

"I don't. Know. I heard what you said about being over Aura, and I believe it, I do believe it, but I just…Asher, look, if you don't want to do it, we'll just stay home."

Stay home. She called my place home and the idiotic woman thought we were on the cusp of ending.

That I might not be over Aura after all.

Was she still insecure? After what we'd done? Shit. What else was I supposed to do?

Maybe I should back off. Do what she said and pretend we weren't involved.

See if she could deal without having an Aura-class meltdown.

If Karl showed up with Aura—and he'd be just prick enough to do it, and I was just prick enough not to ask him about it—Charis would be watching me, testing me.

Great. So I'd test her back.

Yeah. As I said, pissed.

"We'll go," I stated.

"And you won't tell them we're involved?"

"You're not getting a blood oath."

"Don't tell them just for tonight. If things go well, we'll say something soon."

"Don't tell them…so you're saying I can't say anything, but I'm free to openly grope your ass?"

She huffed out a breath. "All right, let's just forget the—"

"Kidding, Sloane. Geez, lighten up. This whole thing was your idea, don't forget."

"Believe me, I wish I could." She raised her hand in the air. "Can I go back in time?"

"No. We're going. It's do or die now."

I knew how she took that, but I didn't reassure her. Legacy of Aura again. Even though underneath my anger was something that was all on Charis. This was her game. Her behaving badly for once.

And it hurt.