Turning his phone off had been smart. It felt a bit surreal to not have his hip or his upper thigh, or wherever the phone rested, buzzing nearly nonstop. The flood of calls, texts, and email notifications that filled his life so readily, so palpably against his body, had halted, giving him the ability to focus solely on Lydia. If only he had had this awareness back at the office, there were so many ways he could have prevented it happening—and now, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, he realized that what he was doing with her was scrambling to get the last little bit of normalcy that he could possibly have.
Claiming a small amount of intimacy with her, carving it out of the remains of the day, would have to fulfill him for the rest of his life, because once she found out what he had done, there was no turning back. He had no way of explaining what had happened. Vicious scenario after vicious scenario whipped through his racing brain. This wasn’t going to be a surprise, for him at least, but for her, it could destroy her, and the idea that he could destroy the woman whom, he had to admit to himself, he was falling in love with, made him sick.
Taking a deep breath, he kept himself calm. Where was the focused, centered, unflappable Michael Bournham who had built an empire? He lay ruined in that office back there. Drained, and ridden, and driven out of his own mind by his love and lust for Lydia. Pressing his lips together, he suppressed a very sour smile, too many emotions churning inside him and bobbing up for brief glimpses from an ocean of emotion, whipped up by the perfect storm. Lydia would hate his guts in the morning.
Right now, though, she wanted him. She enjoyed him. The look on her face told him that she was enraptured by all this. Goddammit, so was he. Like a death row inmate, ready for his final meal, he turned the corner to what he assumed was her road, and she pointed to a small, nondescript building like plenty of others in Cambridge that housed multiple apartments. Parking was a bitch, but he finally found a place where he could nudge the rental in. Still playing the Matt Jones game, the junky little Toyota got him where he needed to go, and he parked it—inexpertly, but managed nonetheless.
They climbed out of the car and she reached for his hand, a bounce in her step that made her ass so much more appealing that he ever imagined a woman’s could be. Her whole body was fluid, and excited, and enticing in a way that he knew he had no choice but to relish. In the morning their relationship would be a clusterfuck of unimaginable proportions. While he didn’t have a crystal ball, he wasn’t stupid—he knew how this would play out.
For now, though, it wasn’t morning, and the warmth of her fingers entwined in his, the brush of her upper thigh against his leg, all of it was his final meal. Lydia would be the appetizer and the entree, and most importantly, the dessert. As they entered the apartment, all he could think was that he needed to bury himself in her, in her scent, in the touch of her soft skin, their bodies melting together so that he could drive the thrumming fear and pain out of him.
As Lydia flipped lights on in the small apartment, he noticed a Morris chair, a fine antique with a giant tie-dyed blanket that looked like something out of a Woodstock festival slung over it. She led him to the kitchen, which looked like something out of the Midwest, with rows of geese and a country feel to it. This was not your typical Cambridge apartment, where generally the decor ran from sleek Scandinavian down to a festive look at the past four decades of varying decorative styles, where the average seemed to be late ’70s to early ’80s, cheap Formica, and paneling.
“Have a seat,” Lydia said, as she pulled out a couple of bottles from the cabinet. He spotted tequila and then some sort of mixer, and then she reached into the refrigerator to pull out a jar of orange juice. “Something simple?” she asked and he nodded, admiring her body and her casualness. Something in her had moved closer to comfort and to the assumption that the two of them were together. He liked that. Watching the rhythm of her chest as it rose and fell through breath after breath, her hands competent and efficient in pouring the drinks. She turned, her cheeks pink and face bright and hopeful, and nodded back toward the living room. “Let’s sit in there,” she said.
He stood and took his glass from her. The first sip was a bit of a shock. It was tequila, sours, and orange juice. It was good, however, surprising him. “What is this?” he asked.
She grinned. “It’s nothing. Just something I make. No name to it.”
“I’ll call it the Lydia-tini.”
She chuckled, looking down at her body. “I’m anything but teeny.”
“You’re lush,” he said seriously, taking this as an invitation to begin touching her body once more, sliding his left hand around her waist, his hands covering the curves of her body, as if he were memorizing them to call upon them in the future, a map of her. His other hand was hampered by the drink, and so he drank it all down in one gulp, the sting of alcohol almost making him cough. He bent at the knees to set the drink down on an end table.
Her eyes were wide with surprise. “That good?”
“You’re that good.” Now that he had both hands available, he sank them into the soft flesh of her ass, grabbing her and pulling her close, a little rough, though she seemed to like it. Her lips touched his briefly, and then she imitated him, slinging back the drink like a coed at her first frat party. As she licked her lips he stopped her, the ferocity of his kiss mingling with the sweet taste of citrus. Tongues dancing and hands roaming, they stood in her barely lit living room, the air a bit stuffy, the room on fire. He gently turned her around and then sat on the multicolored Morris chair, pulling her into his lap. She hiked her skirt up and straddled him, just as they had in the office. He broke away from a sultry kiss. “Wait,” he said, “isn’t this déjà vu?”
“I think we’ve been here before.”
“Not here,” he said, looking around her living room.