by Amelia Wilde
“Damn right, I’m looking.” She’s getting wetter, right before my eyes.
“So embarrassing,” she whispers, her legs trembling.
I crawl over her and lean down next to her ears. “You love to feel ashamed like this.”
“I do,” she admits, and her voice cracks like the tail end of a sob. “I do. Please. Please let me…”
I reach down between her legs and circle her clit with two fingertips. “You want to come already?”
“I want to come all night,” she says desperately. “Please touch me.”
I do. Oh, fuck, I do.
I make Leta come on my fingers, and then I make her come with my fingers inside her, and only then do I line my crown up with her entrance and take her.
Inch. By. Inch.
I make her look at me the entire time so I can see her mouth open and close with every sound she makes it.
“Hand,” she begs, and I oblige her, my hand wrapped firmly around her jaw.
“How long have you been waiting for this?” Our faces are inches apart and she’s panting, wet and writhing beneath me, her muscles clenching on my cock in a torturous perfect rhythm.
“Since the day I left.” She forces the words through gritted teeth.
“Come.”
She does, with a cry that echoes in my ears the rest of the night.
12
Leta
Was it a mistake?
That’s the question I ask myself while I sit in the shade of the tent, sorting through the contents of the bookshelf.
“Was it a mistake?” I sing out loud, then laugh. Was what a mistake, exactly? In order to answer that question, I’d have to get specific.
So, I’ll get specific. I’ll press my legs together on my folding chair and get really specific.
I had sex with Charlie last night.
No—Charlie fucked me last night. He spread me out on that bed and he had his way with me. He made me come six separate times, until tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. Not sad tears, either. Hell, no. Tears of exhaustion from sheer pleasure. Nobody has been able to give that to me—not even a high-quality vibrator I ordered online. Not even my favorite kind of porn. Not any number of attractive men from California’s art scene. Nobody.
I still feel it, aching in my muscles today.
Was it a mistake?
No, no, no.
It was a decision. That’s how I’ll categorize it. It was a decision, not a mistake. Maybe, if I were super analytical about it, I could gather data points and use them to inform my next move. But I have never been accused of being analytical. If part of me thought that going to bed with Charlie was going to get him out of my system, that part was very, very wrong.
He’s not out of my system.
Nope.
Nope.
I take a deep breath, pull my mind out of the gutter, and go back to the task at hand.
The bookshelf, it turns out, was huge. There are a lot of books, but there’s also a pretty big collection of journals and letters and notebooks. When it comes to blank notebooks, I am set for life.
I put another stack on my lap and move through it. Book. Book. Blank notebook for the blank notebook pile—this one is red, embossed with gold. “Pretty,” I tell it before I put it on top of the pile. A journal, blue with a flower on the front. I flip through the pages quickly so I don’t get drawn in. If I let myself get drawn in by Mari’s handwriting, I’ll spend all day reading her stuff and never finish this.
It might take more than two weeks, honestly. If I’m going to sort through everything in the house—which is my intention—then it has to be done thoughtfully. Half of my thoughts are now consumed with what we did last night. With Charlie’s lips on my neck. With his hand on my jaw. With his powerful muscles working between my legs. Jesus Christ, I did not hold back. Neither did he. Heat spreads across my cheeks.
“Hey, there.”
I flip the book in my lap onto the nearest pile like it might have a collection of photos from last night in it. “H—hey, Pete.” For a tall guy, Pete can be pretty sneaky. Or else I was replaying my own memory reel of last night and didn’t hear him come out through the front door. I wipe my hands on the front of my leggings and stand up to talk to him. “How’s everything going?”
He gives me a wide smile. “Right on track. In fact, you’re good to go.”
“You’re done already?”
Pete laughs. “Oh, no. We’re not done. But if you wanted to stay the nights here, you could. As long as you set up camp in the living room. The second floor doesn’t have a total floor yet, if you know what I mean.”
I assume it means that there are pieces still missing. “I sure do.”
“Hey, Pete.”
Charlie’s voice floats up on the breeze, and we both turn to face him. My breath catches in my throat. He wears pressed shorts and a white button-down, the sleeves pushed up above his elbows. I’ve always thought he looked like royalty, with fine features and those piercing blue eyes, but the September sun on his skin does things for me.
“Hey, Mr. Bliss,” calls Pete. Mr. Bliss indeed. I’ve showered, but that Bliss still clings to my skin. “I was telling Leta here she can move back in.”
Charlie stops right outside the tent and shakes Pete’s hand. “You’re working wonders. What’s that about moving in?”
“It’s not completely finished,” Pete tells him. “We’ve still got floor work to do on the second level, so the bedrooms are out. But the living room is perfectly livable for evenings and overnights. I can have my guys cut back on those hours.”
Relief. Sweet, sweet relief. “Oh, no, don’t do that,” I cut in. “I don’t want to get in your way.”
“It’s your house,” Pete says. “You wouldn’t be in the way. It might take us a few extra days, since I’ve got guys in there until nine or ten, but—”
“No.” I catch Charlie’s eye. “I’ll stay with you, if that’s okay.”
“Speaking of,” says Charlie. “There’s something I need to check on back at the house.”
“Let me just…” I step out of the tent and tug at the sides to close it up.
“I’ve got it. You two head out. We’ll get back to work.” Pete steps forward and takes the tent side from my hands.
“Thank you so much,” I tell him. Charlie’s already making his way down the sidewalk, and I run to catch up, my sandals flip-flopping on the ground.
“Is it urgent?” I say when I get level with him.
He slides an arm around my waist. “You were there last night, weren’t you? That wasn’t a body double?”
Heat. From the top of my head to the tips of my toes. “Yeah. I was there. I was really, really there.”
“We need to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.” He’s so dead serious about it that the meaning of the words doesn’t sink in for a full several heartbeats.
“Oh. Oh. Then let’s walk faster.” I break out of his arm and run ahead. “Faster, Charlie. Let’s. Go.”
13
Charlie
I balance the laptop on my lap, poring over everything. Again.
This is my new least favorite thing to be doing. No—not new. It was already my least favorite thing, having an unsolvable problem. Now I’ve been over the information so many times that I’ve lost perspective, and I can feel it.
It’s fucking frustrating.
The dishwasher clicks shut in the kitchen, and Leta’s footsteps approach. She leans over the back of the sofa and loops her arms easily around my neck. God, it feels just like it used to. That might be a siren song, something dangerous as hell. Might be? It is. It’s dangerous. But I want it anyway. Sleeping with her has only made me want it more.
“Are you doing some sleuthing?” she murmurs into my ear.
“I’m trying.”
In a few weeks, all the pre-set transfers are going to be made from account to account, both inside and outside the resort. All kinds of payments are going to be made. Payroll de
posits. Insurance premiums. Everything. I’d shut all of it down—I have that capability, in the event of a true emergency—but starting all over would disrupt everything. There are people relying on their paychecks. Even if I stopped it all right now I’m not sure that would be fast enough to replace it with a paper system.
I don’t want to do that.
“Show me.”
“Are you sure about that?” I turn into Leta’s scent. She always smells fresh, and the scent of her skin never gets old. There’s also the small matter that she does not know anything about financial system of this scale, unless she’s been studying in secret. “It’s very boring. And complicated.”
“Show me anyway.”
“Okay.”
I bring up the simplest file I can—a graphic schematic of the way the resort’s finances are set up and all the links between them. Everything should be here, but it’s not. There is no explanation for how these numbers keep shifting, changing.
“This is it.” I’ve been running all of this through a specialized program built for this purpose. “Here’s the money coming in. Here’s the money going out.” My temples throb. “Someone is stealing from the resort. They have to be. And somehow they’ve managed to automate it.” I have the sick, sinking feeling that it was my dad. Or one of my brothers. I don’t know which would be worse.
“Someone in your family, then,” Leta says softly.
“I don’t know who else.”
The books don’t balance. They just don’t balance.
“What’s this, over here?” Leta points to a greyed-out area represented with several little boxes.
“That’s where the resort finances interact with the trust.”
“So money comes in and out of there.”
“It only goes in. The trust doesn’t pay out.”
Leta draws in a short breath. “Are you sure about that?”
Something shimmers at the back of my mind. “Actually, no. I’m not.”
“There’s your answer, then.”
I laugh out loud. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“How do you know it’s not the answer?”
“I guess I don’t,” I admit, feeling like a fucking idiot.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Charlie, but how do you not know? You know pretty much everything about this.”
I rub at my forehead. “Because in order to review all the details of the trust, all the members have to be present.”
“Okay, so call a meeting with your brothers. They’re all here, aren’t they?”
“Not Asher.”
What if it’s Asher?
“Anyway, the amounts don’t match. They just don’t match up. I’ve been trying to reconcile them for weeks. Months. Somewhere, we’re bleeding money, and I can't figure out why, or where it’s going. There’s no way to even calculate…” I shake my head. “I thought it was the same amount each time, but it’s based on something else. And I can’t figure it out.”
Leta is silent for a long moment.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. I’ve added them up a hundred times. The amount that’s missing doesn’t match any of our regular payments or investments.”
“Maybe this is stupid.”
“The finances?”
“No, what I’m about to tell you.”
“Go on.”
Leta laughs. “It is stupid, but I have this app on my phone.”
“An app that can fix this?”
No, it’s this app that rounds up to the nearest dollar and then puts it into a savings account. And then, I guess, you’re supposed to invest it, but I’ve never invested it, because I never know what kinds of companies to invest in.”
My head explodes. I mean, it just explodes. I’m pretty sure my entire consciousness winks out, then comes back online.
“Are you suggesting…” What the hell is she suggesting? “Are you suggesting that someone’s doing a rounding thing and investing the money? No, that can’t be right. That can’t be how the number is generated. We’re losing money, not rounding up and saving it.”
So much for that flash of inspiration.
“What about the opposite?” Leta asks.
Oh, my god. Rounding down.
I’ll be damned.
It’s the first breakthrough I’ve had in weeks.
I pull Leta’s face to mine and kiss her, hard. When I give her an inch of space her eyes are dark with need and hope. I could say it, right now, because I feel it in every inch of my body, down to the tips of my toes. I love you.
“You’re a genius,” I say instead.
“Not really. All of those spreadsheets look terrible.”
“I didn’t even show you a spreadsheet.”
“Insert joke about spreadsheets here,” she says.
“Did you honestly just say that out loud?”
“Spread. Sheets.” She puts her hands together and spreads them apart. Somehow, it’s unbearably filthy.
“Get into the bedroom.” I stand up, reaching for my belt buckle. Leta’s eyes go wide. “Or else.”
“Or else what?” she breathes.
“Or else people might see me fuck you right here on this sofa.”
“Maybe I’d be into that.”
“Let’s find out.”
“No!” she squeals, sprinting for the stairs.
She’s naked when I get to the top, which seems like a magician’s trick, and I’m on top of her with an animal growl. It feels so right. That’s all I can think about as I push into her. She’s wet, ready, open for me, and it feels so right.
Right, right, right.
How could it be wrong?
14
Leta
One, two, three, four. That’s how many days go by. I’d stay in Charlie’s bed forever if he didn’t insist on going to work. So honorable.
On the fourth day it occurs to me that Charlie has paid an exorbitant fee to the builders. It has been seven days since they started work on the house.
I’m in the living room when Pete comes down the stairs, saying something into his phone that I don’t listen to. It sounds like building instructions, or something else. At the bottom he ends the call.
“Well, that’s a wrap.”
I blink up at him from my spot near the book tables. “What’s a wrap?”
I’ve dragged two of the available tables into the living room and put the piles of books on them. Once Pete was sure about the floors he gave the all-clear to give up on the outside tent, so I’ve been working in the living room for a couple of days. blank slate for me to move back into, the den is fixed, and I don’t have to keep all the books in the living room anymore.
“Repairs are a wrap. You’ve got a fully functioning bathroom, a section of pipes that have been replaced, and bedrooms that aren’t hazard zones from a compromised floor. He looks proud of himself. “Paint’s dry and everything. You can go upstairs whenever you like.”
“That’s—wow. That’s incredible.”
“It normally doesn’t happen this fast,” Pete admits. “Charlie’s been on my ass, pardon my language.” He laughs, loud and hard. “I think he’s trying to impress you.”
Charlie has other ways to impress me, but I blush nonetheless. “I’m sure he’d do the same for anyone else.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.” Pete winks at me, then heads out.
“Thank you,” I call after him. I’ll have to send him a gift basket of some kind.
He hasn’t been gone five minutes when there’s a knock on the door. It’s a confident knock but not obnoxious. I can’t believe Charlie still knocks.
“Pete just left,” I tell him as I open the door. “The upstairs is done.”
“I knew it would be.” Charlie’s eyes are full of satisfaction.
“He said you rushed him a bit.”
He rolls his eyes. “I did not rush him. I encouraged him with adequate compensation.” He steps inside. “And I didn’t want y
our house to be a disaster zone for any longer than necessary.”
“Should we go check it out?”
“You haven’t been up there yet?”
“I saw the den, but not upstairs.” The den is clean and new, all the surviving furniture pushed to the center to be more convenient for painting.
“It would be my pleasure to escort you.”
“So fancy,” I say with a laugh, and take his arm. Charlie leads me upstairs. At the landing it strikes me how much they traffic in understatements. The new floor in the hallway gleams. The hallway walls have been repainted in a fresh white. It tugs at my heart. Mari liked warm, earthy tones. Maybe she would have liked this, too.
Charlie walks next to me down the hall and steps into the master bedroom. It’s the same color white, and he stands in the middle with his hands in his pockets and takes it in.
“How are you going to decorate?” The white picks up the color on the leaves outside and volleys it all through the corners of the room.
“Probably neutrals. It’s better for selling,” I say without thinking.
Charlie pauses. “Are you going to sell?”
I come in behind him and stand near the window. It’s truly a blank slate, all this white. It glitters with possibility, but maybe that’s someone else’s possibility I’m seeing. Being gifted a home doesn’t mean I have to keep it. However…
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I admit.
“Is your mind made up?”
“No.” Charlie’s footsteps echo in the empty room. He steps closer, wrapping his arms around me from behind, and together we look out onto Cherry Street. It’s stupidly beautiful in the September sunshine. A future here flashes into a hazy vision in front of me. “No, my mind isn’t made up at all.”
“Why’s that?” His voice is a low murmur in my ear.
“I’m thinking of staying.”
His arms tighten a fraction of an inch. “Is that what your universe is telling you to do?”
“You know,” I say, leaning back into his chest, “in this moment, it seems like it.” One breath, then another. My breathing matches his. “What do you think about blue for this room?”
