23

tabby

 

“There she is,” Jess announced my arrival the moment I walked through the door. She pressed a cup of coffee into my hands on my way to my office. “How was your relaxing weekend off? With Thor?”

“Oh, it was nice,” I mentioned lightly, heading toward my desk and sitting down.

Alex and Jess stood on either side of the doorway, arms crossed and eyeing me skeptically.

“Nice?” Alex scoffed, slowly blinking his disbelief. “That’s a word people use when they don’t want to get into it.”

“Yeah, girl,” Jess agreed. “We need more details than that.”

If they were asking me for a more descriptive word explaining the goings-on of my weekend, they weren’t going to get it from me. I didn’t even know how to describe it to myself, let alone them. Fun? Scandalous? 

“At least tell us how Thor was,” Alex begged, pressing his palms together. “Pretty please?”

How he was. My eyes snapped open and I shot them with a steely glare. “What? What do you mean?”

Alex shrugged. “How was his house? Did he look just as delicious in his pajamas as he does in those jeans? Does he cook?”

“Oh,” I breathed with relief, shaking my head. “His house is nice, and he cooks really well. He was, um … surprising, actually.”

Jess stepped toward the desk. “Wait, what did you think he was talking about?”

I swallowed against the anxiety tightening around my throat. “I thought you were going to bring up—”

“You mean the kiss?” she asked, planting a hand against her hip. “You said you were drunk and it wasn’t going to happen again, so we figured it wasn’t a big deal. Unless …”

“No, you’re right,” I brushed her off hastily, opening my briefcase and sipping at my coffee. “Now, I need to get back into the swing of things here, guys. So, if you could just—”

Alex raised his hands into the air and shook his head. “Oh no, honey. Hold up just a second. You came back to work a new woman. I don’t know why I didn’t notice this the second you walked through the door. Jessica, will you please assess our fearless leader and tell me what’s different about her?” He walked to stand beside my desk, gesturing his hands toward me like he was a model on a gameshow.

I told myself there was no way they could tell I had indulged in an uncharacteristic night of meaningless sex. It had been over twenty-four hours since I’d shared a bed with Sebastian. I’d had two showers since then, four spritzes of perfume, and a whole night of sleep separate from him. And still, I found myself afraid they could tell, afraid they’d want details, afraid they’d see me differently.

“It’s her hair,” Jess nodded after a moment of assessing. “You never wear your hair completely down like that.”

“Bingo.” Alex ran his long fingers through the lengths of my hair, humming with delight. “God, lady, your hair is gorgeous. That weekend must’ve done you some good, because this is a new, free you. I love it.”

Relief lifted a massive weight from my shoulders and I sat up a little higher, smiling. “It really was great. Sebastian has one of those waterfall showerheads in his bathroom, and it really is as luxurious at it sounds. I should have one installed in my place, but who has the time for that?”

I sighed, remembering the shower we had taken after fully waking up on Sunday. The way he had insisted on washing my hair, which seemed like such a silly thing at the time. I was a grown woman fully capable of washing my own hair, thank you very much, and that’s exactly what I had told him. But he wanted to, and although I rolled my eyes and felt ridiculous, I found that it was one of the simplest joys I’d experienced in recent history. Just having someone else wash my hair.

I had smelled like him all day, at his parents’ house and even driving home. I had avoided showering again until I woke up this morning, just to keep his scent around me a little longer. I’d told myself that the one and only reason for my hesitation, was simply that he smelled good. Nothing more.

“What’s that face for?” Jess accused, tipping her head and jutting her hip.

“What?” I asked, focusing my eyes onto the papers on my desk. “What face?”

“You disappeared for a second,” she mentioned gently, nodding. “You had this little smile on your face. You looked the way my dog did the day he got his paws on a dead squirrel in the yard.” Jess and her husband had adopted a Lab puppy a year ago who had a penchant for retrieving everything he could, including the occasional deceased animal. Can’t take the Retriever out of the Labrador, they always said, and they were right.

“Oh, I, uh, was just thinking about how crappy my shower is in comparison,” and that wasn’t entirely a lie. “You really wouldn’t think it’d make that much of a difference, but it actually does.”

I cleansed my mind and body with a deep inhale and a full exhale, tapping my fingers against my desk. “Okay, guys, seriously. I need to get to work in here. I need to call Mrs. Worthington and Roman and get the ball rolling on these sales.”

With an exaggerated yawn, Alex excused himself from the room and Jess stepped toward the desk. “What’s the plan with that?”

Pulling out a stack of paperwork and shuffling it into neat piles, I replied, “Well, I could technically make the sale on the Worthington house now. Roman could move in right away, while I sell his Manhattan house remotely.”

“But?” Jess offered expectantly, pinching her lips.

“But, I want him to meet with Mrs. Worthington before I make any decisions. She has approved or disapproved all potential buyers thus far, and I want her to be as involved as humanly possible. Roman can be in the area, he says, in a few weeks, so they’ll be able to meet then. Unfortunately, that means I’ll be sitting on this deal for at least that long, but there isn’t much else I can do in the meantime.” I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know why he can’t be here sooner than that. It could be a day trip for him, just to meet the old woman for a few minutes.”

Jess hummed, bobbing her head. “He’s a busy guy.”

“Yes, he really is,” I agreed.

I was disappointed when Jess grabbed the chair across from me and pulled it close to the desk. I really did have work to do, things to think about, but I knew her gossip face when I saw it, and I braced myself.

“What’s he like?” she whispered, leaning forward over the desk.

“Who, Roman?” She nodded eagerly, and I instantly felt my cheeks flush. “He’s actually kind of amazing, honestly.”

“Oh God, is he one of those men that oozes wealth? Because I just got this feeling, and with a name like that? Roman Dolecki …” She released a groan that would’ve been inappropriate had it not been the two of us in my office. “Yes, please.”

“Pretty much,” I laughed, shaking my head and taking another sip of coffee. “And he’s so nice,” I added.

Edging closer over the desk, Jess asked, “Is he hot?”

And because the conversation was distracting her, and myself, from any thoughts about the weekend or Sebastian, I nodded. “Uh, yes. Incredibly.”

 

***

 

“How was your drive home?” Roman asked, his deep voice caressing my ear through the speakerphone in my office.

Jess was in the doorway, dramatically fanning herself, and I rolled my eyes. “It was good,” I nodded, pulling out my planner from my briefcase and flipping it open to this week. “We didn’t head back until late last night, so there was almost nobody else on the road.”

“Ah, those are my favorite times to drive.” I could picture him, cocking his head and rubbing one manicured hand against his stubbled chin. “I should take you out in my Ferrari sometime. There’s really something about driving at night with the top down.”

My eyes lifted to Jess, who had already tipped her head to one side like a confused dog. “Oh, um, I’m sure that’d be lovely.”

I wasn’t sure how to take the comment. Was he being nice? Was it flirtatious? Or was he simply showing off? It was too vague to tell.

Clearing my throat, I tapped the little box marked Saturday in my planner. “So, Roman, I have this weekend free to come out to see your home. I know it’s such short notice, but does that work for you?”

I listened to the tune of mouse-clicking and keyboard-tapping until he hummed thoughtfully. The sound could’ve made a nun’s toes curl. “I would need to shuffle a few things around, but I should be able to make it work. Saturday, you said? What time?”

“Around noon?”

Another hum and my cheeks flushed. “Noon it is. I’ll let my assistant know.”

I jotted Roman into the box. “Excellent.”

“Indeed,” he agreed. “Can’t wait to see you again, Tabitha.”

“I’m looking forward to it as well.” I made sure my smile was wide as I said goodbye to him, leaving him with a good impression, even if he could only hear it. Jess was nearly a puddle when I looked back to her and chuckled, shaking my head. “You are absolutely ridiculous, you know that?”

“I’m sorry if thirteen years of marriage has made me hot for any guy with a deep voice and a laugh that could melt butter,” she shot back with a flip of her hair before heading back to her desk.

 

***

 

Monday rolled into Tuesday, and then Wednesday brought a surprise visit from Sebastian. He stopped by my office and requested my house keys while I was still processing the fact of him being there at all.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” I demanded to know, fishing the keyring from my purse and pulling off the spare key to the house that I’d given to my ex once upon a time.

“You told me I could come whenever I wanted,” he reminded me, slipping his sunglasses off and dropping into the chair on the other side of my desk. “Also, I kinda feel like I’m wasting even more time just sitting around at home.”

“Wasting time?” I slid the key across the desk. Giving it to him was tied to a commitment and I was shocked by how easily I gave it away.

Nodding, he grabbed the shiny piece of metal and put it onto his own key ring. It felt symbolic and oddly permanent, until three little words popped into my mind: It just is.

“Yeah, I mean, haven’t I wasted enough already?”

“You mean with Greyson?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian said simply, continuing to bob his head as he dropped his keys on my desk. “I got to thinking last night that I’ve been robbed. Of time, you know?”

I gave him a small sympathetic smile. “Yeah,” I nodded, “I can understand that.”

He gazed at me across the desk, his deep brown eyes taking me back to moments when we were both naked. With a flicker of recognition, he leaned back in his seat, reached behind and gave the door a nudge. It drifted shut, not quite clicking in place, but for one moment, I hardly cared as he stood up and rounded my desk. Pressing both hands to the arms of my chair, he caged me in, lowering his mouth not to my lips but to my neck. There, he kissed me with closed lips, filling his lungs with my scent and sighing with what I only knew as relief.

“Work Tabby smells different from Weekend Tabby,” he muttered against my sensitive skin.

“It’s a different perfume,” I replied in a whisper, and he kissed my neck again, this time with his tongue. “I have two,” I kept talking. “One for work, and one for—”

His tongue traced the curve of my ear, flipping every earring in its wake, and I shuddered with a flutter of my eyelids.

“You have too many rules,” he assessed, speaking between kisses against my jaw and my lips.

“You don’t have enough,” I countered, allowing myself the smallest of smiles while my body wanted to lean back and spread my legs. He called me a witch, but what did that make him?

“I have plenty of rules, thank you very much.” He chuckled, peppering my lips with a series of small kisses and nuzzling his nose against mine.

There was an affection in the way he kissed me now. It wasn’t the urgent slip of a tongue—my own fault on Friday night—and it wasn’t the desperate need to fuck that we’d experienced on Saturday. This was Sunday Morning Sebastian. He who declared we should be a regular thing. He who washed my hair.

“Oh really?” I challenged. “Name three.”

“Okay,” he smirked and pressed his lips to mine. “One, I don’t give women my number. Used to, not anymore.” He kissed my chin. “Two, I never spend the night with a woman I’ve been with.” Slowly and holding my gaze, he lowered to his knees. “And three, I never sleep with the same woman twice.”

Hooking his hands behind my calves, he pulled me to the edge of my chair. “Just because I’m breaking them all for you, Tabby, doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

 

***

 

After dinner, Sebastian and Greyson hung out in Greyson’s room, playing with his drums while I cleaned up. Sebastian had made enchiladas, enough that we’d have leftovers for the next night or two.

This is nice, I found myself thinking as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom. But what about this was nice, exactly? Was it having Sebastian here for Greyson? Was it having someone else to rely on? Was it simply him? Maybe it was all of the above, and choosing felt like choosing a favorite pair of Chucks. They were all comfortable, and they all felt good. Not for any particular reason, other than they just were.

I took the time to take a long, hot shower, fantasizing about our afternoon tryst in my office. We were never caught, Alex had been out of the office and Jess was on her lunch break, but the risk had still been there. I’d never done something like that before. Not even close. The most daring I’d ever been was making love to my ex in my parents’ house, one night when he was staying in town. However many rules Sebastian was breaking for me, I was breaking so many more for him, and I smiled to myself, remembering every touch of his tongue and lips as though it were happening again right there in my shower.

After slipping my arms into my robe and tying the sash, I left the bathroom to tell Greyson it was almost time for bed. When I entered the room, Sebastian was tuning his drums.

“You guys having fun?” I asked, leaning my hip against the doorframe.

Sebastian glanced up at me, his eyes feeding on what he knew to be naked under the robe, and I unsuccessfully hid my coy grin.

“If you consider twisting lugs for hours and hours on end, then sure, having a blast,” he grumbled, shifting his glare to Greyson, who threw himself back against his bed.

“Oh my God, man, I told you, you don’t have to do it,” he groused, flipping his arms above his head. “And it hasn’t been hours. You’ve only been doing it for like, fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes of my life that I’m never getting back, my friend,” Sebastian teased, lifting his lips into a half-smile as he tapped a drumstick against a tom. “I’m just glad you don’t have a sixteen-piece kit, or I’d be jumping off a bridge right now.”

“I said you don’t have to do it,” Greyson mumbled with a shrug.

“No kid of mine is playing drums that sound the way these just did,” Sebastian replied, and Greyson groaned, rolling over on his bed to face him, watching.

I observed them for a couple of minutes in silence. Sebastian, making sure his son’s drums sounded as good as they could. Greyson, studying his every movement the way a kid might watch his dad change the oil in a car. It was quiet, but it was bonding, and it was happening quicker than I expected it to.

“You have any drum keys?” Sebastian asked Greyson, setting the last drum back on its stand.

Greyson shook his head. “I lost the one I had.”

“What do you tune with, then?” Sebastian sat up straight on the stool.

“I found a socket wrench and I use that.” Greyson sat up and opened the drawer in his night stand, producing a small wrench and handing it to Sebastian.

“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have one?” I asked him, mildly irritated. “I would’ve gotten you, um, keys.” I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

Greyson only shrugged before looking back to Sebastian as he turned the wrench over in his hands.

“This is fine. It’s the right size to use without messing up the heads, assuming you know what you’re doing. But here,” Sebastian stood up and fished something out of his pocket, producing his fist to Greyson, “open your hand.” Greyson complied, and Sebastian dropped two silver tools into his open palm. Use those, and if you lose them or you need help, let me know. Okay?”

Greyson nodded, looking at the keys in his hand. “These are DW,” he commented, examining them closely. “Do you get like, five-thousand of these?”

Sebastian chuckled warmly, reaching up to set his hair free from the elastic. Golden strands spilled out over his shoulders and one hand smoothed it all out. Was this a mating dance, I wondered? Because, with every rake of his hand through the thick mane, I felt my knees growing weaker and the fire between my legs burning brighter, stronger.

“Since the endorsements started, it kinda feels that way, yeah,” he answered Greyson.

“Endorsements?” I asked, allowing myself a selfish moment of wanting to be included.

Sebastian turned his head with a little lift to his lips, as though suddenly reminded I was still there. “In a nutshell, I’m paid to advertise for specific brands. So, for example, my drums are DW and my cymbals are Zildjian. I’d be using this shit regardless, because it’s what I love, but when they approached and asked to endorse me, I was like, fuck yes. Now, I’m always set until the contract runs out or they sign me on again.”

I nodded, genuinely intrigued. “So, that must mean you’re pretty good, right?”

Greyson scoffed. “Oh my God, Aunt Tabs,” he groaned, shaking his head.

“What?” I asked, darting my eyes between him and Sebastian.

Sebastian only smiled, tipping his head and looking at me as though I was the most adorable thing to walk the planet. “Yeah, I’m pretty good.”

Greyson sat up abruptly. “That’s basically the biggest understatement ever,” he groused before looking to me. “He was voted as one of the top ten greatest drummers of our time in Drum Planet.”

“Oh, so that’s really good then?”

“Aunt Tabs!” Greyson groaned with blatant embarrassment, flopping against his pillows. “I can’t even with you.”

“Good,” I shot back, laughing, “because you need to get ready for bed. It’s already ten and you have to wake up in seven hours.”

“Uh-huh. Get out of my room then,” he grumbled, then turned to Sebastian. “You gonna be here in the morning?”

Sebastian nodded, sliding his gaze toward me. “Yeah, I’ll be here.”

“Cool.” Greyson nodded, sitting up and finding his pajamas on the bed. “Night.”

“Night, kid,” Sebastian said, reaching out to maybe touch Greyson on the shoulder, maybe the head or arm, but he pulled back abruptly and turned to leave the room.

“Goodnight, Grey,” I said softly, pulling the door closed and turning to Sebastian, luring him to my room with my eyes. Once the door was shut behind us, I warned him immediately, “You can’t sleep in here tonight.”

Sebastian threw his head back and whined, “Tabby! Why not?”

“Oh, God,” I groaned, pulling back the comforter on my bed. “You know why.”

“Nope,” he shook his head, dropping his hands to the button at his waist, “I really don’t. Because all I’m thinking right now is how badly I need to fuck you. I’m not thinking at all about what’s happening after that.”

“Okay, well, first of all, you’re going to put the brakes on that until we know Greyson is sleeping,” I stated pointedly, sitting on the edge of my bed and crossing my legs.

Ignoring my demands, Sebastian unzipped his fly and eyed me questioningly. “And how exactly are we supposed to know if he’s sleeping? You gonna go in there and check? Because, babe, let me tell you something. My mom made that mistake with me once and she never opened my door again.”

Wiping my hand over my eyes, I released a controlled exhale. “He falls asleep pretty quickly, but it takes him about fifteen minutes to get ready for bed.”

“Wow, you have everything down to a fucking science, don’t you?” He kicked his sneakers off and let his jeans drop. “Okay, Father Time, as you were saying, why can’t I enjoy the pleasure of sleeping with you?”

“For a guy who’d never gone to sleep with a woman before, you certainly like doing it a lot,” I grumbled, smirking and shaking my head, and forcing myself from lowering my gaze to his blatant arousal.

“Let’s just say I didn’t realize what I was missing out on, okay?” He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it unceremoniously to the jeans at his feet.

I couldn’t say what was more impressive about his physique, his upper body strength, or lower. His calves and thighs were all sculpted by the same artist as his shoulders, chest, back, and arms—his music. It felt like a sin to have him there in my room, nearly naked and jumping to my bed with his arms outstretched, but it was a blessing to watch him and know that, even for a fragment of time, he was mine to enjoy.  

“Greyson can’t know about us, and if he sees you leaving my room in the morning …” I shook my head as he reached for my waist, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me to him. “That would be so wrong.”

“There you go with that shit again,” he mumbled into the fluff of my robe, his voice lilting with his smile as a callused hand slid up over my naked thigh, slipping closer and closer to the part of me that wanted him the most. “You weren’t saying anything about it being wrong when I had my face buried between your thighs this afternoon.”

I swallowed and licked my dry lips. “Well, whatever it is,” I pressed between shallow breaths, “I don’t want him knowing about it. Is that wrong?”

His hand stopped just at the juncture between thigh and groin, the very tips of his fingers brushing against my most sensitive of parts, sending my nerve endings into a fucking frenzy. It took every last bit of my willpower to not grab his hand and demand he do things I would’ve been ashamed of just a week ago.

“Yeah,” he finally agreed, nodding his head against my back. “You’re right. He shouldn’t know. That’d probably be confusing as hell for him.”

“It’s not … not that,” I sighed, moving his hand from my legs and turning to face him. He looked up at me from the bed, and I wondered if I’d ever again see someone this beautiful lying beside me, when we were done with whatever this is. “I mean, it is, but I also don’t want to make things more awkward when this inevitably ends. Bad enough you and I will have to know each other for the rest of our lives, because of him, but we don’t need to make it awkward for him.”

Sebastian nodded, sincerity searing his gaze. “No, you’re right. I get it. But you know what that means, right?”

“What?” I asked, unable to stop myself from touching his face and pushing my fingertips into all that hair.

“You’ll just have to find a reason to stay at my place all the time, and we’ll lock him in the basement.” He grinned, pulling himself up and tackling me.

“Great plan,” I giggled. “Speaking of which, I need to stay over this weekend, if that’s okay—”

“Lucky me,” he uttered around a moan, clasping a hand at the nape of my neck and pressing his lips to mine. “Business meeting?”

“Mm-hmm,” I hummed against his lips. “Meeting Roman at his house.”

As his tongue slid deftly into my mouth, I almost missed the hesitation in the otherwise fluid movement. But I didn’t. He had faltered for half a second, his tongue frozen at the precipice between his mouth and mine, at the mention of the other name. Was he jealous? He had no reason to be, none whatsoever. We weren’t together, and Roman was only a client—but what other explanation was there?

I tugged my tongue from his hold on me. “Sebas—”

“Has it been enough time yet?” he whispered before snagging my bottom lip between his teeth and opening my robe.