"I want to build something that will outlast me, something that will leave a mark." She ran her fingers through her hair, her lips pursed and her eyes unfocused on the horizon. "I want to get better, more accessible math and science and coding instruction in public schools. I want to make it more attractive to build technology that improves quality of life rather than that objective being secondary to profit and IPO valuations. I want to build windmill farms in developing countries and solar arrays in the desert, and I want to fund midwives and nurse practitioners in every small, impoverished town in this country. And it's not because philanthropy calls to my soul or I feel a need to give back after years of raking in exorbitant corporate profit. It's not about nurturing or any other maternal bullshit that gets pinned on women who put their energy into these endeavors. We need math instruction because we need talent. We need quality of life tech because the population of many developed nations is aging faster than the greater population is growing, and younger generations can't carry that burden alone. We need wind and solar and midwives because those developing countries and small towns represent talent pipelines and untapped markets. We need to create the world we want to do business in if we want to keep seeing those profits. And I want"—she shook her head as if this one was the true impossibility—"I want to make decisions rather than executing on someone's decisions."
"Then why don't you?"
"Because"—she slapped her palms against the stone—"because Cole needs me."
"I don't know shit about the internet—"
"Your Instagram engagement says otherwise," she quipped. "You know how to save the best moments for your followers."
I didn't know what I'd done wrong, but I knew it was something and I wanted to fix it right now. I glanced down at myself, considering my shirt. I pulled it over my head, rubbed a charcoal-darkened hand over my chest, and asked, "Better?"
She tipped her chin down. Her eyes answered for her. Yes, this was better. But she still frowned, asking, "Do you plan on posting a pic of this for your fans?"
"Only if I can also tell them this charcoal is a result of sketching the woman I'd like to call mine all morning. I haven't mentioned it to them yet because we haven't had the conversation and I'm not about to make announcements on social media without your prior knowledge."
"I—you—what?"
"I don't have to tag you if you don't want," I continued. "Business and pleasure can live separately for now."
"For now?" she repeated.
"Until it's professionally convenient for you. Until I'm no longer working under you—in the organizational structure sense, that is. Until you get to work on building some windmills." I turned the page. "Until you let the world see you, Neera."
"And you?" she asked. "Should I allow you to see me, Mr. Guillmand?"
"You should allow me to join you on your voyage, wherever it takes you. I'm a fine traveling companion, as I believe you've noticed."
She considered this, inclining her head in agreement. "You do pack more paintbrushes than pants."
"You say this as if it's a problem," I replied.
She didn't acknowledge my comment, only gazing back at the sunrise piercing the horizon. "We don't even know each other."
"Can you really say that after my cock has been in your ass?"
She ran her hand down her face, groaning. Now, that made for a beautiful picture. My hand could barely keep up with my mind. "Gus."
"Neera," I replied.
"We don't know each other," she repeated. "What if we—if we don't have compatible values?"
"I think we do," I said, my gaze still fixed on the page. "And if we don't, we'll adjust. We'll learn."
"You make it seem as though we have a long history of compromise," she murmured. "Which we do not."
"No, we don't," I agreed. "But we have a long history of yelling at each other and being obscene, and that has to count for something."
"It might," she conceded. "I'm not convinced it counts enough."
"Then I'll just love you harder," I said.
"You do not love me," she said. "I'm sorry, no. Not yet."
"But I will," I replied. "And you will too."
She stared at me as if she didn't understand the language I was speaking—which was possible. I'd been known to slip into Portuguese on occasion. French when I was very, very drunk. But I didn't think that was the issue here. No, I was making bold statements and backing them up with nothing more than a foggy belief that this might be it.
Eventually, she said, "Your residency—"
"I will complete it," I said with a sigh. I did not want to think about the Valley until absolutely necessary. "I imagine it will take you that long to find a suitable replacement. Rather, ten replacements who will deign to fill your shoes and struggle mightily."
"It will take that long to transition Cole," she said, mostly to herself.
"On that count, we agree."
"And then, what?" she demanded, setting her stare toward me. "You follow me from place to place while I—whatever it is I do in this fictional rendition of the future?"
I jerked a shoulder up, continued sketching. "Perhaps." Turned the page. "Perhaps I stay here."
"And what will you do here, Mr. Guillmand? You enjoy the forests and the shore and the dinners filled with dogs and babies now, but what happens after a few months? When you want to get lost somewhere new?"
"I don't imagine I will," I replied. I stuffed the charcoal in my pocket and tucked the book under my arm. "I think I'd like to build us a nest, sparrow."
Epilogue
Neera
Sinking in: a condition in which the paint medium absorbs into the underlying paint layer.
Three years later
There was a bird waiting for me when I arrived home this morning.
I leaned a hip against the kitchen counter as I studied the newest addition to my flock. This one was stone, probably quartz or granite, and no bigger than an egg. This one had required time.
By now, I had more than a hundred of them and always a new one to welcome me home when I've been away.
Birds and a happy beagle we called Matilde.
"Hello there," I said as she tap danced at my feet. "Have you been good?"
She let out an indignant howl and I crouched down to receive my ration of kisses and irritable where have you been? yips.
"She's been hunting badgers again," Gus called as he shuffled down the stairs. From my position on the floor, I couldn't see him but I loved the sleepy drawl in his voice and the lazy way he thudded from one riser to the next. Sleepy, lazy Gus was one of my favorite iterations of this man. "She thinks it's her duty to thin the local population."
I gifted Matilde a meaningful stare. "Again?" She replied by nestling her head against my belly and frantically wagging her whole tail end. It was never just the tail. Always the whole back half of her body, wagging like it was making a wide turn.
"I tried to reason with her, particularly with respect to her commitment to leaving her trophies under the deck," he continued, stepping into the kitchen with both palms pressed to his eyes, "but she wasn't having it. She said it was her life's work and who am I to argue with that?"
I took Matilde's face in my hands, melting at her contagiously joyful grin. "We're not getting the hunter out of you, are we?"
"Owen appreciates it," Gus said, stopping behind me. "When I dropped by for dinner last night, he told me the badgers were gnawing on some of his nets last month. Digging up some of his cucumber plants too. Cole told me a long story about the Canadian fur trade. I don't remember the specifics. I was busy drinking his gin."
I gained my feet and stepped into his space, my arms closing around his lean—and delightfully bare—torso. He was still busy waking up, his skin warm and hair sticking in every direction, and he was mine.
"It seems I should ask whether you've been good?" I pressed my lips to my husband's neck. Husband. And I was his wife. Even after two years of marriage, that title stil
l caught me like a blast of blinding sunshine after a week of dreary darkness. Of all the titles I'd collected in my life, wife wasn't one I'd expected. But now, I couldn't imagine living without it.
We'd stumbled into the nuptial conversation around the time Gus was finishing his residency back in Silicon Valley. Nothing about that year had been easy on us. I still couldn't believe we'd made it out intact. He'd moved himself into my apartment immediately following our return from Talbott's Cove, though neither of us were skilled at the art of cohabitation. We argued—a lot—and gradually learned the difference between disagreeing about issues of importance and instigating in the name of foreplay. Very, very gradually.
Once I'd announced my intention to step away from the company, my business travel schedule quadrupled as I was busy transitioning projects and management tasks at locations all over the globe. Even when I was in the office, my days started before sunrise and ended long past sunset, leaving us little time for both disagreement and instigation. Save for the weeks scheduled for visiting Talbott's Cove, I saw more of Gus's carved birds than I did of him during that period.
Thankfully, he'd discovered life beyond the stiff boundaries of the Valley and spent most of his time exploring everything from Big Sur to Half Dome. He'd stayed as far away from the campus as possible and, in that time, managed to create several spectacular sculptures which were now on display in the campus's flagship building. He'd claimed they were the worst thing he'd made since primary school. I disagreed but I loved him enough to know when to argue, when to instigate, and when to let him be wrong without telling him about it.
In addition to all the drama and exhaustion of that year, and our plan to move into a renovated farmhouse on the other side of the country, we'd decided to get married. The idea had first come up when Gus mentioned his O1-B visa was expiring and he was due to apply for an extension unless I'd rather save him the time and marry him.
We'd laughed for a minute because he hadn't meant to propose. He hadn't. Not after the year of constant bickering and separation and frustration over one thing or another. There were days when we barely tolerated each other and required some angry sex in semi-public locations to break through the tension. There were days when we doubted our plan to build a new life together in Maine because how could we do that when we couldn't agree on whether to run the ceiling fan all night, regardless of the weather. But I stopped laughing and I set all those issues aside, and I said, "Yes, I'd like that very much."
Two weeks later, we flew to Talbott's Cove. Owen conducted a brief ceremony in the forest which ended with, "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now adopt a dog."
None of these things were part of our plans but now, a little more than two years after our impromptu wedding, I couldn't imagine life without my husband and our heart-of-a-killer dog. The learning curve was steep but we'd scaled it together.
We still argued, still instigated. Still engaged in angry sex in semi-public places. But our world was different now and we didn't need the same things.
"I've never once been good." Gus slipped his hand down my back to squeeze my ass. He smelled like oil paint and pine needles, which meant he'd been painting in the barn. Unlike his former studio back in California, the barn was nothing more than a barn. Wooden beams, dirt floors, a single string of lightbulbs running down the center. The ocean-facing front was almost always bathed in bright sun, the forest-facing back was almost always shaded under the branches of old pines. It was uncomfortably simple and exactly the way he preferred to work. "How could I possibly start now? I wouldn't know where to begin."
"An excellent point." I dropped my cheek to his chest and inhaled. "Was the late night courtesy of the gin or the paint?"
"Gin, then paint," he replied, bringing his hand to the back of my neck and kneading the tense muscles there. Leaving Silicon Valley and launching a strategic philanthropy venture was exciting—and stressful as hell. Making the decisions and executing them kept my days busy and my hands full, though I savored this stress. I'd chosen it and I was the one to plot the course. "How was Cape Town?"
"Intense, but good." I hummed as his thumb found an especially tough knot. "More of that, please."
"More you shall receive," he murmured. "Tired, sparrow?"
I kicked my shoes off, shook my head. "Not right now. I took a nap on the flight."
"Good thinking." He edged my feet apart as he kneaded his thumbs down my back. I heard the rustle of fabric and felt his pajama bottoms drop to the floor. His hard cock slapped my belly, hot and hungry for attention. He dragged his stubbled chin over my neck, between the open collar of my blouse. "But you'll be tired when I'm finished with you."
Matilde slunk off to the sunny guest bedroom she'd claimed as her own while Gus freed me from my clothing. His fingertips drew patterns up and down my spine, and then lower, over my ass, slipping inside me.
"Miz Malik," he growled. "Oh, my beautiful girl. You are wet like the ocean."
"I have been away for nineteen days," I replied.
He offered another growl as he turned me, wrapping his arms around my waist, and walked me toward the living room, his cock nestled between my ass cheeks. A two-story wall of windows showcased all of Talbott's Cove and Penobscot Bay. He gathered several pillows from the sofa as we passed, tossing them to the floor in front of the window.
"Down," he ordered with a gentle shove.
I dropped to the floor and settled my knees on the pillows I'd selected for this precise purpose—but no one else had to know that. Gus joined me, an arm tight around my waist as he layered his body over mine. His erection slid through my slit and the early spasms of release danced up my legs, circled my ribs, prickled my scalp. I am so ready for this. When he finally thrust inside me, his cock gloriously thick and heavy, our cries echoed in the cavernous space.
"Your cunt missed me something fierce." He fisted my hair, angling my head to drag his teeth over my neck. "Did you play with it while you were gone? Did you open the curtains in your suite and spread your legs and tease this little clit until you came?"
"Once or twice," I replied.
Gus released my hair and reached down, slapping my mound as he slammed into me. "More than that," he said. Slapped again, and again. His chest tightened against my back, his muscles pulled taut, his breaths coming fast, his control eroding with each measured stroke. "More than that, sparrow."
"Did you miss me?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away, only delivering another fast, sharp slap between my legs. Then, "The next time you're alone in a hotel room with your legs spread, I expect a phone call. I want to hear it happening."
Gus pumped into me, his fingers swirling around my clit as he sucked my neck. "That can be arranged."
"Neera," he said, groaning. "Oh, fuck, I—fuuuuck."
"Yes," I panted. "Tell me."
"You should've woken me up by sitting on my face."
"Next time," I promised.
"I fucking love you," he snarled. He came with a hoarse shout and his teeth on my shoulder, and I followed. We stayed there, quaking, panting, and I wanted this little moment to last forever.
"I love you too," I whispered.
He pulled out, and slapped my ass. "Welcome home, sparrow."
Thank you for reading Rough Sketch! I hope you enjoyed Neera and Gus. Keep reading for a sneak peek of JJ and Brooke’s story—Far Cry!
"My tavern isn't your hookup pool."
She cast her gaze from one end of the bar to the other. "I wouldn't call it much of a pool."
"Why can't you use Tinder like everyone else? Come on, sweetheart. Get yourself some apps and get the hell outta here."
"I hate apps," she replied.
"And I hate cilantro, but you don't see me passing on the tacos, do you?"
"No, I mean I hate apps," she said, holding up her phone. "I hate them so much that I don't have any." I snatched the device away from her and peered at the screen. "Look. No social media. No news or weather. N
o food delivery."
"The only delivery around here is DiLorenzo's and it's only when Denny's in the mood."
She sliced her hands through the air. "Irrelevant. I didn't have delivery apps when I lived in New York."
I hit her with a glare. "If you really wanted something, you'd download an app for it."
"And that's where you're wrong, Jed. If I really wanted something, I'd go out and get it." She waved her hands. "That's what I was attempting to do earlier."
I set her phone on the bar top. "You have the newest iPhone and you use it for what? Phone calls? Texting Annette?"
She tilted her head, schooling me with an expression that said I should know better. "Not that I owe you any kind of explanation but until recently, when my previous phone met with an unlikely end, I had one of the earliest models." She pursed her lips. I looked away to keep from staring at her there. "And yes, Jed, I use it to make phone calls and text my bloodless sister."
I blew out a breath as I reached for towel. All the glassware was dry, but goddamn, I needed something to keep my hands busy. "You come out with a lot of strange shit, BamBam, but that's the strangest."
"It's so great that you have opinions," she mused. "Even better that I don't give a single fuck what you think." She leaned forward, folded her arms on the lip of the bar. "Then again, I can't give a single fuck because I don't have any. Literally. I have no fucks because you cockblocked me."
"What d'you want from me, Brooke? An apology? You're not getting one. I kicked the guy out because he annoyed me. When you own the joint, you can do that."
"You kicked him out while also cockblocking me," she replied.
"Not that it'd matter to you, but I'm pretty sure he's married."
"'Not that it'd matter to you,'" she repeated. "Your dick isn't big enough to use that tone of voice with me. Check yourself, Jed."
"Sweetheart, you don't know the first thing about my dick."
Her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders as she leaned forward. "Oh, I know more than enough."
Rough Sketch Page 9
