Thirteen

by Scarlett Finn

  “Mm?” she asked, clenching her fingers in his hair when he looked down at her. “What, baby?”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  Arousal and joy fueled each other and she grinned. “Yes, it is… no work.”

  “No plans,” he said. “Just us.”

  “Yes,” she said, smoothing her fingers over his jaw. “Just us.”

  There was sex and sleeping… more sex… more sleeping…

  It was almost noon and they were still in bed.

  Oakley stretched and rolled away from her, but Evie grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. “No, don’t get up,” she said, climbing over to lay flat on top of him. He laughed and ran his hands down her bare back. “Please, stay in bed with me, I have to say sorry.”

  “Sweet, you’ve said sorry a lot this morning; so much that you’ve built up credit,” he said, squeezing her ass.

  “Does that give me permission to be bad?” she asked, caressing and kissing the redness on his jaw that wasn’t quite a bruise, but was obvious to her because she knew to look for it.

  “As long as you’re being bad with me,” he said, turning his mouth to hers.

  “I’ll never be bad with anyone else ever again, I promise. And I think I’ll lay off the speed-dating thing for a while.”

  While pushing her hair from her face, he looked blissful and sleepy. This would be a perfect moment, if only he hadn’t been injured for her. “I think that sounds like a good idea.”

  In her mind, she kept replaying everything that had happened last night. It wouldn’t stop going around and around. “Do you think those security guys will tell anyone about what they saw?”

  Oak wasn’t concerned. “About us? Probably not, they left without giving us any crap. But I can go over there and talk to them later.”

  That would mean leaving her alone in his bed; her lips quirked. “Tomorrow,” she said, resting her mouth on his.

  He understood she was telling him she didn’t want him going anywhere. “Yes, tomorrow,” he said and pulled her legs apart over his hips. “Did I tell you how proud and honored I am that you came to visit me?”

  It was sweet and flattering that he was so awed by her effort. “Oh, only a million times,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep and I… all I wanted to do was be in your arms, to tell you how sorry I was for…”

  “It’s ok, Sweet,” he said, his voice so gentle that she believed he meant it. “I expected a freak out. And I’m kinda happy that it happened now, and that I was there to protect you.”

  “You’re happy that it happened?” she asked, sitting up, still straddling him though she hooked her feet over his thighs behind her ass.

  “I’m not happy that you dumped me or went off with another guy,” he said, stroking her torso and her breasts. “But we got over it and I know you, Evie.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ve experienced it, you didn’t like it, so you won’t do it again.”

  That made sense, and she couldn’t argue because he was right. “It taught me something,” she said, pinching his chest. “It taught me that you’re persistent.”

  Placing a hand over the spot she’d pinched, he gave it a rub. Evie pushed his hand away and bowed to kiss it, she didn’t want to hurt him anymore. “You should’ve known that about me already,” he said, stroking her hair. “And I wonder if there wasn’t some part of your subconscious that wanted to push me, to make me mad enough that I might want to…”

  Shit.

  Sitting up again, she opened her hands on his chest. “Hurt me,” she said, clarity made her gasp. “Damn, Oh, what if that’s what I was doing? I wanted you to beat me…”

  “I would never—”

  “I know that,” she said, sinking down over him to lick his lips. “Oh, my Oh. I thought if I was a pain in the ass enough that you’d say to hell with me.”

  Honesty like this, so raw and transparent was liberating. Evie liked it and didn’t feel judged or that Oak expected her to be ashamed. He was letting her be her without punishing her for it; even though she’d been so unreasonable.

  “Just like you did in Washington,” he said. “You nearly walked away.”

  “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk out of that hotel room. I… I still don’t know why I broke down like that.”

  Pulling her into his arms, Oak put her onto her back and kissed her. “I’m so happy that you did, Thirteen.”

  After another long kiss, she was so relaxed that she thought she might melt. She didn’t even want to open her eyes. “This feels so weird and so wonderful,” she exhaled.

  His kiss moved to her jaw and down to her neck. “I hope one outweighs the other.”

  “It does… I might consider sneaking over here again.”

  “Use your keys next time,” he said. “You have them for a reason. You won’t scare me. I want you in my bed.”

  She laughed. “You’re not worried about me walking in and seeing something you don’t want me to?”

  “Like what?” he asked and stopped kissing her to frown like he was thinking about what that might be. “The worst thing you’d ever see is me jerking off, and if you walk in on that… you know what to do…”

  “Jump aboard?” she asked, coiling her limbs around him.

  He laughed. “Exactly,” he said. “Now will you let me cook you something?”

  Pushing him aside, she sat up. “After you let me give you a massage. If you don’t work out that shoulder you’re going to be sore tomorrow.”

  He hugged a pillow and moved onto his front so she could straddle his back. “After all the exercise we’ve had today, I think we’ll both be sore tomorrow.”

  “I want you to be happy sore,” she said, bowing over him to kiss the back of his neck before she got to work massaging his shoulders. “You put yourself between us.”

  Evie got the sense he was sick of hearing her repeat the phrase. But that just betrayed to her that he didn’t realize the gravity of what it meant to her.

  “Say it again and I’ll tickle you,” he said, his mouth half in the pillow.

  Squeezing her legs tighter around him, she objected. “I’m not ticklish.”

  Lifting his head from the pillow, his eyes opened. “Yes, you fucking are. Say it again and I’ll prove it.” Sealing her lips, she kept her laugh to herself, she would say it again and she would let him prove it, just as soon as she did her duty as his girlfriend. “Yeah, see, that’s what I thought.”

  He relaxed again, and she admired how handsome he was there lying on his chest beneath her. Everyone had expected her to freak out, but she hadn’t recognized that was what she was doing until it was too late.

  The speculation had been right. All of her paranoias had come together to make her act in the way she had. But one thing she knew for certain was that she was never going to put Oak in that position again.

  Never again.

  twenty-three

  Sunday’s became their thing.

  Every week Evie would travel to Oak’s as early as she could. Sometimes, if she slept, it was as late as eight AM, but she’d managed just after four once. She’d been proud of forcing herself outside at an hour that early.

  They’d be coming into the winter months soon and she didn’t know how he would handle that time of year because with the longer nights, she spent more time in her apartment alone.

  Seven weeks after spending her first Sunday here, Evie was back in Oak’s apartment.

  Alone at the kitchen island, she was sipping fresh coffee and reading back what she’d just typed when a yawning Oakley came into view from the bedroom through the living room.

  “You’re up early,” he said, coming over to sink one hand onto the back of her stool and the other onto the island, so he could bow to kiss her. “Good morning.”

  Eleven-thirty was early for them on a Sunday. He pushed away after their kiss and shuffled around the island to head for the coffee machine. “I have a kind of important report due this week.”
<
br />   “You’re working? On our Sunday?” he asked like she was committing a sin.

  Taking a drink from the mug he’d just filled with coffee, Oak came to the other side of the island and reached across it to try closing her laptop.

  Evie caught the lid and edged her computer aside to open it and type some more. “I want to be thorough.”

  He yawned. “Put that away, Thirteen, come back to bed.”

  “You’re not in bed,” she said.

  He drank more coffee before putting the mug down and heading to the fridge. “You want me to make breakfast? What do we have?”

  “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said, her eyes moving over the words on her screen. “I had yogurt when I got up… and I finished the rest of my fruit.”

  “I thought I tasted peach,” he said, licking his lips. “They’re really sweet.”

  “Just the way I like them… they were past ripe,” she said, typing some more then pausing to read something from her handwritten notes.

  Oak rattled around in the kitchen for a minute, pouring cereal into a bowl then seeking out the milk. “How is it coming?”

  “Hmm, it’s ok,” she said, trying to decipher her own scrawl.

  “Do I get a sneak preview?” he asked and discarded his bowl to come around and bend over her. Trapping her inside his arms, he propped a hand on the counter on either side of her laptop to read over her shoulder. “MatchMate efficient… blah, blah… hard-working… fresh ideas… and my boyfriend is too nosy to let me work without snooping.” He laughed and kissed her shoulder. “You’re going to take that last part out of the final draft, right?”

  Evie projected innocence. “It doesn’t name you,” she teased. He went back to his cereal. “I could leave it in.”

  “That might raise an ethical dilemma. Anyone outside MatchMate shouldn’t be reading that, right?”

  “So I’d have to admit to sleeping with a MatchMate employee,” she muttered then shrugged and hit backspace. “Yeah, I guess I should take it out.”

  A moment of silence passed before he spoke again. “You know you only have a week left on your contract,” he said, slurping up his cereal.

  “I know.” She gasped and clutched the edge of the island. “What will you do next Sunday?”

  He didn’t laugh, in fact he scowled and caught the milk that trickled from his spoon to his chin. “You have a week left on your contract with the company. Your contract with me lasts another seventy years.”

  Now it was her turn to try restraining a laugh. “You think you’ll live ‘til you’re over a hundred?”

  “Doesn’t matter if I die when I’m forty,” he said. “Your contract with me is forever.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said, seizing an opportunity to tease. “You’re not going to keep your dick in your pants up there in heaven. You think I don’t know you’d be screwing around on me all over? Marilyn Monroe is up there… you think if she says, ‘Come on, big boy!’ You’ll say, ‘No thanks, and when my wife gets here she’ll kick your ass for asking.’”

  As soon as she said the words, Oak stopped chewing and his eyes lit up.

  Oh, shit. Her mouth worked faster than her mind too often. Evie picked up a quick finger to warn him. “Don’t.”

  He was only gentleman enough to let her type for a minute before ignoring her request. “You do that a lot these days, Sweet.”

  It pissed her off. “I know,” she mumbled.

  Her subconscious made her do stupid stuff all the time, but her faux pas in the boardroom this week had been especially difficult to shrug off. She’d managed it… just. There had been talk of opening more MatchMate offices and even relocating HQ. The idea of LA had been floated on a kind of joke, but, like an idiot, Evie had declared to the room that she and Oakley would not be raising their children in California.

  Oops.

  Given that no one at work knew about their relationship, it had taken some fancy talking and sleight of words to get the hell out of that blunder.

  His tone was cautious. “Do you think we should talk about it?”

  Evie was less subtle, but she was annoyed at herself, so it was no surprise. “My stupid mouth? No,” she said and kept typing. “I have to do this.”

  “Your presentation isn’t until Friday and you can have as much of an extension as you want.”

  Oh, a chance to flirt, she did love those, and how they let her redirect the conversation. “I know how you love to extend for me, Oh,” she said, and cast him a quick wink before returning to work.

  Oak ate some more cereal before asking, “Is there anything major I should be worried about? You’ve played this close to your chest. I didn’t expect to be so in the dark… I have no idea what you’ve been doing.”

  Once again, he was cutting her a break and not pursuing what he really wanted to talk about. Evie had struck gold with Oak; he was far more patient than any other man would be. Fair or not, she was happy to take the out. She just wasn’t ready to face it.

  In default mode, she kept playing. “That’s ‘cause I haven’t really done anything. I’ve spent the past eleven weeks getting my nails done and washing my hair,” she muttered, reading her data.

  “And sucking my dick so…”

  Smiling, she wrote another few sentences. Oakley wouldn’t even complain if what she said was true. He loved her so much, that he’d probably pay her the hundred grand anyway, just as a thank you for hanging out with him.

  He loved her so much.

  Glancing up, she saw him scraping his cereal together in the bowl and scooping it up into his mouth. How could watching a man eat cereal be a turn on? Was it the cereal or was it just being here with him doing something so… normal?

  It had been nine weeks since they’d first slept together. Since she’d dumped him that once, she hadn’t done it again. Yeah, she freaked out sometimes, and they had fights… oh, boy did they fight. But, she’d never considered trying to rile Oak or pushing him away in the same way she’d done that weekend.

  The reason she’d broken up with him was because she wasn’t sure she could give him what he wanted. They spent a lot of time talking, learning about each other. But it was about time she cut him a break instead of him always being the one to relent for her.

  Evie was terrified but determined. “Ok,” she said, slapping her pen on the island and turning her stool toward the empty one beside her. “Let’s do it.”

  His confused eyes went side to side. “Can I finish my cereal first? I hate soggy cereal. And you’ll have to go on top; I’ll get indigestion if you make me do the work this soon after eating.” But she didn’t laugh despite his attempt to make her. “I’m sorry, Thirteen. Do what?”

  “Talk about our future.”

  Just saying the words made her stomach flip and she considered backing out until he threw his bowl into the sink, cereal and all, and darted around the island like she’d just said anal was on the agenda if he stuck it in within the next five seconds.

  “Ok,” he said, jumping onto the stool she was facing to grab up her hands and pull her closer. “Talk.”

  Right. She could do this. Except… “You go first,” she said. “Tell me what you want from me.”

  “All I want is the obvious,” he said. “I want you at MatchMate full-time, permanently. I want us under the same roof, marriage, kids… simple pleasures.”

  Simple. Yeah, maybe for anyone else, but the bitter taste of adrenaline flavored her tongue. “Simple.”

  He must have heard her anxiety because he slipped a hand onto her cheek. “I don’t need it all tomorrow… We’re talking long-term.”

  “We can’t do kids until we can live together, and marriage is… complicated.”

  “Marriage is actually the easiest part of what I said,” he said, smoothing his thumb across her cheek. “We have people on staff who can perform marriages. We get a license and could be married twenty-four hours later.”

  “Ok,” she said. Even though he should know that because
it was part of the MatchMate service, it was still a bit freaky that he could recite the details. “Let’s put a pin in that for a second. You know we can’t have kids if I can’t…”

  “Live with me,” he said. Dropping his hands to her bare thighs, he stroked up to the hem of the tee-shirt she was wearing and down to her knees again. “I know.”

  “I would drive them insane and I’d drive you insane… If I’m this paranoid about my own safety, imagine how I’d be with theirs?”

  “Sweet, I would love to have children with you,” he said, but carried on fast when she tensed. “But if it doesn’t happen, I’ll get over it.” Shaking her head, Evie couldn’t imagine him foregoing having offspring because of her hang-ups. “We don’t even know if we can have kids. We could find out my swimmers aren’t up to speed. Would you leave me if that happened?”

  “No!” she exclaimed and grabbed for him. “Geez, Oak, nothing could make me leave you now. I’m so in lo—” The expectation of his raised brows made her exhale and after a second, she conceded, “Yes, Oakley Orion, I fucking love you, ok?” Raising his arms, he balled his fists and held them high like he’d just scored the winning goal. “Don’t be a dork.”

  When he brought one elbow to his chest and hissed in a “Yes” she grabbed the back of his neck and yanked him forward to match their foreheads.

  “I can love you and not have sex with you for a month, you know,” she said, like she’d consider punishing him for forcing her to make the admission.

  But he hadn’t forced her, it was well overdue, and he hadn’t pushed for it, hadn’t demanded she say anything, even in their weekly sessions with Noel.

  “No, you can’t,” he said, cocky as he lifted her thighs over his before sinking his hands around to her ass and pulling her from her stool over onto his lap. “You can’t resist riding me.”

  “So we’re done talking about the future?” she asked, kissing him.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew her pelvis higher to line up with his.