Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
I laugh. “Thanks. Looking back, I probably could have empathized more with how hard it was for Angela to be at home alone with the baby on nights when I had class until nine or ten, but no, I didn’t do anything worth having glass thrown at my head. We were just…volatile together. If Adrian hadn’t come along, I doubt our relationship would have lasted through our senior year of high school.” I frown at my phone. “I wonder what she’s up to.”
“Hopefully there’s a note with the flowers that will give you a clue,” Sydney says. “Either way, I say you should keep them. Flowers are always nice. I prefer them in a heath at the edge of the ocean, but a vase is nice, too.”
“You’re missing Maine,” I say as I text Derrick to go ahead and take the flowers up to my place.
Sydney sighs. “I am. Life is just so much simpler there.”
“I get it,” I say. “That’s how I feel about Vermont. And in Maine, you’re so close to the ocean. If I lived there, I might truly never come back to New York again. Except to see a certain woman.”
Her lips curve. “A certain woman who is me?”
“Who else?” I ask, blood pumping faster as she leans in, brushing a kiss on my cheek. It pumps even faster when she whispers in my ear, “Is it bad that I’d rather be alone at your place right now than out on the town?”
“Is it wrong that I want to take you home and make you come on my cock?” I ask, the organ in question already thickening behind my fly. “And hire someone else to help your friend pack up her hamster clothes?”
Sydney pulls back, her eyes glittering. “We could do that, couldn’t we? I don’t think Noelle would mind. She already warned me that she wouldn’t be able to talk while we work anyway. She’s going to be sewing all night and she can’t talk over the sound of the machine.”
“I have the Task it Out app on my phone. I can have someone over there in thirty minutes.”
She grins. “Me, too. Let me text her and make sure it’s okay. Then, I can hire someone while you get us a car back to your place?”
“Let’s do it,” I say, picking my drink up and draining the last of the brown liquid.
Smith is already off duty for the day, so I pull up a ride-share app and order a car.
Ten minutes later a Task It Out worker with a hundred five-star reviews is on her way to help Noelle, and Sydney and I are kissing in the car back to my place. We stop making out long enough to breeze through the entryway, thanking Derrick for taking care of the flowers on our way past, and then we’re all over each other in the elevator.
I know I’m acting like a kid with his first crush, but I can’t help it. I can’t keep my hands off Sydney. I crave her body like a drug. When we’re finally alone behind closed doors, it’s all I can do not to fuck her against the wall in the foyer.
The need to be close to her is that intense.
“I missed you,” she murmurs against my lips as I half carry her through the entryway, my hands everywhere they’ve been dying to be.
I squeeze her ass, loving the way she wiggles her hips closer to where I’m hard for her. “Missed you, too. I don’t like spending the night away from you.”
“Me, either,” she says, moaning as I cup her breast through her sheath dress. “I wake up wet and dying to feel you inside me.”
I curse as we bump into the couch. I’m so desperate to have her naked and under me, I’ve lost all sense of spatial awareness. I pull back, guiding her thin green sweater off her shoulders and ripping it down her arms. She reaches for the buttons on my shirt, but I’m already jerking the stretchy material of her black dress down her arms, revealing a delicate lace bra that sends another jolt of need straight to my dick.
“Zipper,” she murmurs, her arms now trapped by her sides. “In the back.”
“Turn,” I say, spinning her around. I drag my teeth over her bare shoulder as I find the zipper and pull it down. “How do you smell so good after a day running around the city?”
“I don’t think it’s me,” she says, her voice breathy. “I think it’s the flowers. Look at them. They’re enormous.”
I glance up, grunting at the obscene display of fall blooms on the kitchen island, everything from pansies and asters to violets and pale pink roses, topped off by giant fake butterflies made of tissue paper and clay. It’s beautiful, unique, and expensive—all the things Angela values most—and appears to be a genuine effort at making amends.