she drew half-moons from my cheekbones to my lips. And then she gifted me a slow, sweet kiss that turned everything else off. It didn't alleviate my desire to rip that skirt up the back or bite her clit through her panties but it picked up the pieces of my frantic need and put them away in a manageable order.
When she broke the kiss, she leaned back, her fingers pressed to my lips. "I'm going to get you some cookies now. When I come back, you're going to work on that audit and I'm going to make sense of all the little fires around here. Then you're going to Abe & Louie's and I'm going back to the apartment on my own, and I won't be informing you about my mode of transportation because I'll tolerate only this much"—she held her hand up beside her shoulder—"insanity from you. Not an inch more. When you return from your meeting, you're welcome to be a filthy, filthy sex monster all you want. I'll look forward to it." She granted me a brief kiss before sliding off my lap. "Now tell me. What kind of cookies do you want, boss?"
This dinner meeting was running three bottles of Malbec too long.
Not that I'd enjoyed much of the heady red. Why would I when I could nod and laugh along with my clients while waiting for an opening to step away and check my phone for an update from Zelda confirming she'd arrived home without incident? Or better yet, why imbibe when I could replay the strangled sob I'd forced from her lips when I'd pushed inside her last night? Why, indeed.
Her message landed shortly after the appetizer plates were cleared, a one-word note of "home" accompanied by a photo of her outside my building. I'd thought about telling her she wasn't home until she was behind the closed doors of the apartment, that god-awful shirt in the trash and her feet bare while she lounged on the sofa in my boxer shorts, but I had to get through this evening without my dick throbbing. I replied with a stiff "thank you" and made a note to scrub my calendar of dinner meetings wherever possible.
While I wasn't one to cram my weeknights with these gatherings, I'd never understood why some of my clients were in such a rush to get home. I could give a pass to the ones with small kids but when it came to the dual income, no kids crowd, I didn't get it. Didn't those people have enough time with their partners? Couldn't they manage an evening apart without sighing into their gin and tonics? Why did anyone need to sprint home for a couple of minutes with their partner when there were deals to be made and hours to bill? I'd never been able to make sense of it.
Until tonight.
I understood it all and that understanding came with a dose of resentment for know-nothing fools such as myself who insisted on finalizing agreements after hours.
I didn't want to be here, didn't want to do this. Nothing mattered besides getting back home where I could set down my troubles and simply be with her. And inside her.
Though it wasn't all about the sex. The sex was a fine bonus but it was everything else, all the pieces of her I'd discovered and claimed as my own. Plus all the pieces I'd yet to collect, the ones I didn't know but required nonetheless.
As soon as the business conversation gave way to the well-traveled paths of golf handicaps and vacation destinations, I excused myself to settle the bill—another bottle of Malbec tossed on for good measure—and made my exit. I didn't need to be here for the rest of this. Not when it was the same pointless chatter that always populated the tail end of these gatherings. Sports, industry gossip, political grousing. I hadn't noticed the rigid three-point waltz of it before but now that I saw, there was no missing it.
While waiting on the curb for the car service to arrive, I snapped a photo of the receipt and uploaded it to the Ferryman Brothers' expense file. I could've walked back to my place and on any other night, I would have. Get in some steps, burn off the wine, think through tomorrow's work. It was time well spent. Yet I didn't give a single fuck about tomorrow because I had a strange, beautiful woman at home and tomorrow would arrive whether