The Mix-Up (Southern Hearts Club #3) - Melanie Munton Page 0,84

finish?”

“Good?” His voice is laced with genuine disgust. “That’s your expectation of me? Fucking good? Duchess, I’m insulted.”

I hadn’t meant that as a challenge, but I’m sure as hell not going to complain about the results I get.

The next few minutes are straight-up animal.

My hips undulate over him so hard my thigh muscles burn. My skin is slicked with sweat, my hair a tangled mess. He jackknifes off the bed with a ferocious bellow as he spurts inside me. When he pinches my clit between his fingers, it sets off my own orgasm. I throw my head back in pure ecstasy and scream out my pleasure. Tugging on my hair, he surges upward and groans the rest of his release into my mouth.

We stay like that for a long time. Naked chests pressed together, mouths eating from one another, every inch of our bodies connected in the most intimate way. Possibly the most beautiful moment of my life, and it has to be shattered by the remembrance of how things are…and how they’re not.

Just like the countdown at Times Square, there is a countdown on my time with Ryder.

Moments like these are numbered.

And it’s hard to say when it’s all going to time out.

“I don’t want to stop,” Ryder says later as we’re lying in bed.

He’s spooning me from behind. I’m running my fingers over the hair on his forearm. He’s drawing circles across my stomach. I’ve been fighting my sleep because I’m too afraid this will all disappear the second I close my eyes. I’ve just been lying here silently, committing this feeling to memory, and suspending it as long as I can. I’ve been wracking my brain for an outcome that works in everyone’s favor. One everyone will be happy with.

And I’m terrified beyond belief that none exists.

“You don’t want to stop what?” I ask obtusely.

“This. When we get back to Charleston, I want it to continue. I want to be with you.”

I swallow back tears. Actual tears. In case it wasn’t already obvious, I never cry. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Why?” he bites out. “Just because I’m the boss? I own the company, Gretchen. If anyone has anything to say about it, I’ll just fire them.”

“There’s more to it than that. Everything would change between us. We have a great working relationship, as unorthodox as it might be. I don’t think it would be good for the company if we altered that.”

He grunts in frustration. “And I think you’re running out of excuses. You’re really going to try to treat this like some bullshit fling over Spring Break?”

I sigh, squeezing my eyes shut. “You knew the score before we started this, Ryder. And I laid it out for you again on the plane.”

“Uh, I think that whole ‘business only’ spiel went out the window a long fucking time ago.” His body stiffens. “Unless…you just don’t want to be with me, and you don’t know how to say that you don’t feel the same way.”

This is all going to shit. I didn’t want the night to end this way. There’s supposed to be a few more hours of heaven left before I go plummeting back to hell.

“It’s complicated—”

“Why are you so afraid of being in a real relationship?” he cuts me off. “Why do you treat even the possibility of happiness like an infectious disease?”

Because it eventually fades.

People change. Life changes. Love changes. Or maybe it’s never real in the first place. It’s all just a projection of what you want, not what actually is. People fool themselves every day into thinking they’re happy because it’s easier to lie to yourself than to be alone. It’s like conditioning your brain to believe whatever is in your best interest in the name of self-preservation.

Take my parents.

They’re a shining example of what getting married too young with dreamy notions in your head looks like. Because those dreams usually remain just that: dreams. Enough time passes, kids happen, jobs happen, and you console yourself with the faux happiness because frankly, there are no other options at that point.

Unhappiness is the fruit of naïveté.

And I’m not naïve.

In our case, jobs are already interfering with a potential relationship. Not only do I work for the man—right away, a disaster just waaaiiiting to happen—now, I’ve been offered an extremely attractive position five hours away. To me, that screams of incompatibility. Just one sign of many more surely to come that we’re not meant to be.

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?” Now is the time