Chapter 12
"Miss Aria Longbottom," drawled out Orlando tauntingly. I could see the brains behind his beady eyes doing overtime, taking in my apparel and the lack thereof. He no doubt put two and two together and found a lot wanting.
"Hi," I said feebly.
"Fancy finding you here," he murmured, his tone sardonic.
"Where else would I be but joining my fiancé for lunch?" I muttered shortly. I saw his gaze drop to take in my attire.
"The pasta spilled over her clothes. I was just taking her back for a change, but since my next appointment is here, take my car, Aria. You can fetch me after work."
I reached out automatically to grab the keys he tossed at me.
Turning to smile up pathetically at my two bosses, I shifted my bag more comfortably on my shoulder and all but ran out his door. I sped down the blasted stairs, doing my best not to stumble over the bottom of his pants and tumble head over heels the rest of the way.
I left Justin to do his magic. Wheeling and dealing was his forte. Although I had to admit it was mine too.
I was so fired.
Despite Justin's best efforts, I sort of knew that outcome was inevitable. But as it ain't over until the fat lady sings, I still had to make the mad dash across the city and save my ass so to speak.
I drove through crazy traffic then dived into the first vacant spot I found a bloody block away from mine. Then, I hoisted my bag, grabbed my drooping waistline, and scrambled ahead at breakneck speeds for the block that housed my little unit.
A swift change and another mad dash later, and I was back behind my desk, starving and trembling as I bent my head studiously over my work. I called it a day after nightfall. Dinner demanded my attention like nothing else. I snuck out of the building successfully without triggering any alarm. The place was deserted, devoid of the rabble rousers who wanted my head on a platter for various reasons and most, importantly devoid, of the bosses themselves.
I made my way to the lonely car parked on the curb and drove to the nearest restaurant to grab an order for two. I couldn't face cooking that night, and I knew Justin was bound to be hungry too.
I tapped him a message that I would be there in ten then moved out onto the streets devoid of traffic. It was a relief to have the whole street to myself. I blasted some music and rocked to the beat, lip syncing the words so that I didn't ruin the music. This was the first time I could actually enjoy myself behind the wheels of Justin's Evoque. Then, I was pulling up along the curb beside a patiently waiting Justin. He was swift to open the door and get in.
"Drive," he instructed.
I drove.
"Take a left."
I gave him a startled look as I approached the intersection but didn't question him. I took the turn as he'd demanded. Soon, I was pulling up in a car park beneath his block. I got out of the car and followed his swift strides, making for the lift. I could see he was preoccupied, but then, I kind of was too. Only I didn't quite know what about.
He tugged loose his tie and undid his cufflinks. Pocketing the little-bejewelled trinkets, he folded his arms and leaned back against the elevator walls impatiently. I shifted on my feet, hunger pangs causing me to alternate between glancing down at the packed food and then back up at Justin. Both enticements were too irresistible to deny.
The door slid open to our floor, and I fell into step behind him, my eyes trained on his delectable ass as I followed him out. We were in his spacious apartment, elegantly furnished and filled with luxury. I made straight for the dining area and laid my goodies to rest there. Then, I went to get the plates and wine glasses.
Justin was already discarding his shirt. Unbuttoned and half off, he moved on to disappear into his bedroom. The shower could be heard a short while later.
Then, as soon as I had the dinner warmed up and ready to go, he was back clad in his pj's. He tossed me an old t-shirt. I left to go have my own shower. I emerged a short while later clad only in his shirt, and we settled down to dinner.
I sipped at the wine he poured me and stared up at him. I realized then that I could get used to this. Starting my day and ending it sleeping in Justin's arms.
That was exactly what I did a short while later. Snuggling close within the warm clasp of his embrace, I dived into the oblivion of deep, contented sleep. But I woke up in the middle of the night, frantic and with a pounding heart. I laid there, eyes open wide, staring into pitch darkness. It hadn't been a nasty dream. Anxiety?
I turned and tossed restlessly, trying more to rouse Justin out of his own deep slumber rather than to get myself back to sleep.
But like a man, he slept the sleep of the dead.
So I rounded on him instead, flattening myself against his long frame. I swept my arms about him and clung hard.
But he only slept on.
My sigh was heavy and exasperated as it left my lips in a hot puff only to slam uselessly against his sculpted back. I laid my temple against his skin and groaned painfully at my own stupidity.
I had been anxious in my sleep. Worried about my job. Having missed the bosses the afternoon before, I didn't know what to expect. But I should have known better than to turn to Justin—a man—in the middle of the night for some consolation.
But I must have done something right, for the sound of mumbled words rumbled out from him.
"What?" I whispered out in the dark. I didn't know why I kept my voice hushed; there was only us around.
"R ye well?" he slurred sleepily at me as Justin rolled over in my arms to settle down on his back.
"Perfectly well," I muttered out shortly. Daftness did not constitute an illness. I was apparently suffering from an intense variety of the former. I watched as my sarcasm misfired, and Justin puffed out a breath to sink back into deep sleep once more.
I gritted my teeth and barred a grrr of dissatisfaction. Instead, I reached out for my phone. Finding it was only four in the morning, I muffled a groan then bit back a curse to find a message from my mother blinking on the screen. We were to attend dinner tonight at my aunt's place. My dad's eldest sister was ten years his senior and positively senile. I closed my eyes and shoved my phone away at the vision of what a dinner with her would constitute.
One thing was for certain: if Justin could survive Aunt Penny, then he must really love me. Really, really ... love me. I closed my eyes and rolled to my side, feeling sleep once more weigh heavily down on me.
But just as I was sinking back down into deep sleep, Justin rolled beside me. Turning to press his morning staff to the plump curve of my ass, I wiggled my hip, unwilling for him to mistakenly lunge up the wrong hole. Jerking my hip back, he slid home with too much ease. I couldn't help it; just being near him had me perpetually wet and horny. His hot lips fell to the curve of my shoulders, moving up to nuzzle hungrily at my neck. I turned my torso awkwardly, willing him to take my offer of a teat instead.
The position was wild, one that gave me a muscle spasm, which I decidedly ignored. The pain was a small price to pay for the pleasure. And it was a pleasure that I was after. His hand slid up from his firm grasp of my hip to curve about a weighty breast as he obligingly leaned over to take in an aching tit. Mauling my nipple with his wet mouth, I reveled in his slobbering as his hips continued to hammer consistently into mine.
"Oh fuck, Justin," I moaned out pitifully, as the position I was in reduced me to helplessly receive his ministrations. I grasped blindly at his overgrown blonde locks, willing him to take my desperate lips in a wildly consuming kiss, but his attentions remained fixated on my ravaged blossoms. I whimpered and whined as his not so tender assault continued. But then, the pumping of his hips grew stronger, turning wilder with a flurry of rapid jabs, alternating with slow, languid thrust as his need grew to match the frantic pace of mine. I was no longer merely receiving his attentions but tossing my ass back into his thrust and rudely taking as much as I could in a quest to achieve completion. His lips left my breasts then to breathe raggedly into my ear as his hips continued to slam up into me. My face was buried now, muffling my cries into my pillow, and his grunts were deep and erotic, a vibrant echo in my ear that trembled down my blood into my pumping heart.
Then, completion came. Sweet and exquisite. Slamming our hips, we held together, straining into each other as he roughly pumped out the last of his essence deep within me. I was breathless and fainting before his weight relented enough to allow me up for air.
"God, I love your pussy," he murmured hoarsely through ragged breaths of his own. I jolted against him as his husky words dragged out the last of my spasms. "I love you—everything about you. Every part of you," he continued murmuring, almost worshipfully.
"I love you, too," I muttered fitfully. Tears soaked my eyes, wanting to pour out a torrent for no other reason than to express my mindless happiness.
"Hush," he murmured huskily. Reaching out, his skilful lips rained kisses over the side of my face. I was still lying on my front, pressed into the mattress by his weight. But I didn't want to dislodge him yet. "You love my cock, don't you? You love having me take your pussy, pounding in you ... hard."
I could feel his length still in me he was semi hard and was looking more and more pumped up by the minute. I could see he was getting preoccupied with a second round.
"I do. I love you inside me," I found myself saying, oddly shy. I batted away the tears and then felt him ease out of me. He turned me to face him before nudging my legs apart again and settling his length back inside me. We were linked once more, together as one. I wrapped my arms and legs around him. Holding him to me even as he simply laid there, burrowing his face into the crook of my neck and breathing me in.
"I can't ever go on without you," he said suddenly. His words stilled my beating heart. I slid a rough hand straight into his hair to haul him back. My other hand moved firmly to cup his cheek.
"Don't you talk like that! I am yours. I will always be," I said firmly. There was no possibility of him ever being without me. He needed to know that. "I am your leech. I am stuck on you for life, sucking your lifeblood to live at all. Without you, ... I am dead."
I stared up at him seriously. There was no way he could ever be without me, and the sooner he realized that, the better. His chuckle was husky and deep, sending a sensuous thrill from where he was still connected deep within me.
"Only you could make such a romantic declaration sound so god damn awful. A leech? Really?"
I grinned unrepentantly up at him. Shrugging my shoulders, I said, "If the shoe fits and all. The leech was totally apt. I couldn't imagine anything else that could be so apart of you that it would appear you've grown a second limb. That's how close I see you with me."
"Can't I be the leech in your analogy then?" he asked sweetly.
"You can," I murmured before shifting my hips up to pump on him pointedly. "You're already stuck with me."
His chuckle was now wicked and matching the naughty smirk on his delightful face.
"I love you," he murmured.
"I love you, too."
"No," he said, his face tightening as his hips started to jam hard into me again. "I mean I really, really love you."
I grinned. "I really, really love you, too."
We were up to the peal of his alarm only a short while later. Feeling pleasantly bruised and battered, I gingerly climbed out of bed and made straight for the bathroom. We bumped into each other along the way, stopping only to mesh our lips and rub each other's bottoms with roving hands. I shoved Justin away as he made to follow me in. I drew the line at pooing in his company. Even though he insisted shitting was completely natural, and I shouldn't feel ashamed about it. I told him to go fuck himself and slammed the door in his face.
We stopped by my place along the way for a quick breakfast and a change of clothes for me. Then, he dropped me off at my office and left me to my fate with an uncaring wave and almost evil smirk that I longed to kiss away. He was awful. I didn't know why I loved him. It made no sense whatsoever.
I hunkered underneath my jacket and hunched over to sneak into the building undetected. I soon found my efforts were unnecessary. The office was determined to ignore me as much as I was determined to hide from them. That made for one decidedly awkward ride up in a crowded lift. We all poured out onto our respective floors and went our own ways. Not a word of greeting was exchanged with me. I was blatantly shunned. I didn't see why. It wasn't as if I had been a genuine tattletale. The report had been more factual than anything else, but the grapevine had its own way of twisting things out of proportion.
I decided to set the cold shoulders aside and focus on the mountain of lava that was expected from the two bosses. I seriously doubted they would set aside yesterday's blatant misconduct without some sort of set down. Still, my conduct had been clearly out of their jurisdiction. It had been over lunch break and at my fiancé's office too.
But I sort of knew logic like that would not really matter. Not to the bosses anyhow. Two hours later, I discovered reprieve was the order of the day. The bosses were away, interstate attending client meetings. I yipped with joy and spent my day blissfully doing my work in unexpected peace and serenity. But all good things must come to an end, and the end of that day saw me heading home alone to get ready and then Justin dropping by to fetch me off to my aunt's for dinner.
Half an hour later, and Justin Kay was happy basking in altogether too much feminine attention.
"Oh, don't you think his smile is absolutely devastating? I can hear feminine hearts breaking all over the place," gushed Justin's new adoring aunt-in-law. Justin's incorrigible grin only widened further at my elderly aunts' endorsement.
I didn't know about mass destruction, but I knew his sensual smirk was capable of mass distraction. That he blatantly blasted it about the room at the poor unsuspecting women within was nothing short of shameless.
But I accepted his mischievous wink with a helplessly adoring grin of my own.
I couldn't believe him. Watching Justin turn my relations into putty in his hands was downright insulting. Surely someone in my family could withstand his obvious charms. Not me certainly, but someone else surely.
But nope. Not that I could see. I watched them all, men and women, succumb to his easy ways and grunted with more than a little jealousy.
The party finally progressed from intoxicating cocktails to dinner. It was just before that, my elusive cousin showed her face. Hers and Dale's.
I should have known better than to expect a meal without the indigestion that these two turning up brought in their wake. I honestly didn't know why I cared anymore. It had been ages since they'd betrayed my trust. Yet still, it stung as if it happened just yesterday. I hated their unintentional power over me.
My spine stiffened automatically as the pair moved around the old-fashioned furnished room, making their way slowly across as they greeted every and anyone that claimed the remotest blood relations along the way.
"Aria!"
Finally, they reached me with wide, beaming smiles as fake as them. I widened my own in paltry imitation. I was no good with false affection. Mine was always the real deal or none at all.
My wide beam wavered then faded. I stood there frowning instead.
"A week and a half left until the big day," gushed my cousin with false enthusiasm. I grimaced before turning to look at her. Where was Justin when you needed him?
"I bet you're just counting the days," said Dale, chuckling softly.
"Oh, I am sure this one won't run out on her. After all, he has made it past the engagement," reassured his wife. I stared at my cousin and Dale with unconcealed hate. Fuck them and their stupid asses.
"Look," I said simply, provoked beyond reason. "I realize I never actually said it. But all these years, I have been thinking about it, and I can't restrain myself any longer."
Dale and my cousin, Linda, watched me with some anticipation. I could clearly see the glimmer of unconcealed glee in the depths of their shallow eyes.
"Thank you," I said earnestly to Linda. "Thank you both." I turned to encompass Dale too.
Then, at their continued baffled looks, I sighed and explained further, "Thank you for saving me from the biggest mistake of my life. Marrying Dale would have been right up there alongside Hitler, Osama, ISIS, and the atomic bomb."
I didn't wait for their response. Instead, I scurried off in search of my recalcitrant husband-to-be, only to find him lurking behind an array of fronds, doubled over and laughing his hide off at what he had clearly heard me say.
I stared fumingly down at him before I glanced at my watch and decided to forgo dinner altogether and attend that elusive Zumba class instead. I was certain there was one scheduled to begin in the next twenty odd minutes or so. I spun on my heels and simply left. Justin could do the honors of excusing my abrupt departure. It was not as if I had a choice. I was too freaking furious to do much else.
I was almost at the taxi stop when Justin caught up with me. Still heaving with soundless laughter, he took one look at my disgruntled face and set off again in a spat of unbridled hilarity.
"I can't believe you walked out on your own party," he managed finally to get out between bouts of mirth. I stomped my foot down at him.
"My party? No one even acknowledged I was there. Everyone was busy gushing over Justin Kay!"
"God, I love your jealousy!"
"I am not jealous!"
His wide smile said clearly that he didn't believe me.
"I am not!" I insisted.
His grin didn't waver, but this time, he moved to wrap his arms around me in a comforting embrace ... like I was a retard!
I moved to shove him off. My face contorted in my vile temper, but his face was contorted too, still in avid laughter. I shoved uselessly at his shoulders then hammered harmlessly at his back. My limbs felt strangely too weak to do him much damage. Being in his arms had that weird effect. I was reduced to mush without even his trying. It was all so unfair.
"You're impossible," I muttered faintly.
"I know," he chuckled huskily before drawing me tighter within his embrace. We stood there for some time, at the taxi stop, wrapped in a bear hug that promised to liquefy my bones altogether.
I was pure Jell-O when he finally deigned to release me. Wobbling like a top where I stood, I accepted his arm offered for support and clung onto him like a limpet.
He just brought out that weak feminism in me, making me want to bask in his strength and adoring gaze. I easily forgot my ire and forgot even that I was fuming at all.
We walked arm in arm back to the car where he opened the door to the passenger side with a flourish and swept me a bow in welcoming me in. I giggled and then dived inelegantly in. The door slammed gently shut on my still upraised rump so that I moved swiftly to settle myself in my seat. Buckling up, I sunk back in the comfy seat and gazed stupidly at Justin. I watched his every move with a besotted intensity as he did nothing more than buckle himself in.
This was getting purely ridiculous. I wet my lips sometime later, still staring at Justin staring lazily back at me. His gaze, not unlike mine, drifted over my curves, lingering at his favorite spots but otherwise not touching. My own hands were clenched in a fist as I tried very hard to do the same. The grit of my teeth was a dead giveaway. But his chuckle this time was not as light-hearted as before. Instead, the sounds that came out were almost hoarse.
The car was swamped with the sexual tension of two mating dogs. Only we weren't mating yet.
And the opportunity to do so melted completely away at his next choice of words.
"Mother wants us to spend the weekend at the farmhouse with her. Can you take Friday off?"
I stared up at him mutely. I didn't say that I might have forever off when I get back to work tomorrow. I couldn't dodge the bosses forever and the reprimand that was surely heading my way. Even so, that wasn't entirely the mood killer.
"A weekend with your mother?"
"Three days. We leave Thursday night."
I nodded my head tiredly, knowing that I had to. There was no way I could avoid getting to know Mrs. Kay. That I tentatively knew her already didn't matter. I didn't yet know her as my would-be mother-in-law.
She would surely lay down the law, not to mention a heap of her expectations along the way. I was, after all, marrying into the Kay family.
I took a deep breath and offered up a wide, beaming smile, determined to let Justin see that I was o-Kay about it.
Justin Kay was uncharacteristically merry all the way backm and since he was happy-go-lucky by nature, that was seriously saying something. It wasn't his odd, seemingly unprovoked occasional chuckle that gave him away. It was the whistling while he drove, off tune and somewhat shrill, that told the tale.
We returned to Justin's unit from the failed dinner engagement. Home-fed on measly slapped together peanut butter sandwiches and bathed; then, we were ready for bed. As always, I dived in headfirst and minded the consequences later.
Now, I watched surreptitiously as Justin meticulously tucked in every corner, determined to imprison me beneath the confines of his silky bed covering. My earlier attempts at seduction had gone awry. In fact, Justin had leaped up, dragging his pants up, shouting uncle before I even got in a satisfactory taste.
He was up to something. All that merry laughter and now denying me sex had to mean something. Was he over me already? Or did he just plan a more salacious torment? It was sometimes hard to tell what Justin was really thinking.
"Justin!" I whined pitifully. If he was balking on us soon, I wanted all I could get before he bailed out. Reneging on our deals was my forte. I didn't appreciate him getting the better of me. But I was pathetic. I would take what I could get while I got it. Who knows? It could take five more years of celibacy before he allowed me into the touching distance again.
"Uh...uh," said Justin, mildly shaking his head with an unrepentant grin.
"What are you doing?"
I watched with keen interest as his hips started to rock to some imaginary music. Then, his lips parted, and I recognized the husky strains of the music he hummed before his sensuous lips actually formed those erotically haunting words. His tone deep and husky, the wealth of his emotions was clear in the enunciation of each word.
'Kiss Me' by Ed Sheeran could never sound better than the way it fell from Justin Kay's lips.
I now knew why he had me bodily restrained like this. But he should think again if he actually thought this would hold me.
I had never had anyone sing to me before other than my mom and dad when I was a kid, but this. ... this had my heart sobbing. I struggled out of the fabric holding me and scrambled up onto my knees. My gaze was fixated on him as he moved about the room, hips swaying to the imaginary music and expression taut as his words built up to a climax. I rode the wave of his song, strained along its strains and stretched against his highs, and then, we crested the peak together. With me trembling alone on the bed and he shaking where he stood.
"That was ... that was, ..." I choked off, beyond words to describe something so beautiful. He was just so blindingly beautiful.
I sat there, simply staring, drenching myself with thick droplets spilling over from my wet eyes to splash down my wet cheeks.
I hated crying.
But I loved him. I so heartbreakingly loved Justin Kay.