Page 48 of Mine to Promise
“Night,” I say to Avery, kissing her neck, “I’m going to put on a little light.” I walk toward the side of the room and turn off the lights, but then the twinkle lights come on as if they’re stars in the sky.
“Jesus,” Addison says, looking around, “do those lights stay on all night?”
“They’re sort of motion censored,” I say, and she shakes her head.
“Of course they are,” she mumbles as we walk out of the bedroom.
“Where do you want to stay?” I ask her when we are standing in the hallway, and she shrugs. “You can sleep in the guest room.” I point at the room on the left. “Or you can stay in my bed.” I smirk at her, winking one eye, and I can see her try to hide her smile. She pushes my shoulder, moving to the side to walk away from me. I grab her hand before she walks away from me, turning to pull her to me. I don’t think about anything else but kissing her. My lips crash down on hers. She gasps right before my lips touch hers, giving my tongue the access it needs to slide into her mouth. My hand drops hers to wrap around her waist and pull her to me. Her chest crushes on mine as our tongues go around and around in circles. I kiss her now like I wanted to kiss her this morning, our tongues fight with each other but this time she doesn’t push me away. Her hands go to my hips, and my cock fights to get out of the wet shorts. I deepen the kiss for a minute before she steps away from me. “Okay, Stefano.” She looks at me, her eyes darker than before. Her head pulls back a bit. “I’ll go out with you.”
addison
Iwatch the clock turn to four before I get up from my desk, smoothing down my skirt. My hands are all clammy with nerves as I walk to the back of the house where I know everyone is in their office. Every single step toward the chattering of voices gets my heart beating faster and faster as it echoes in my ears. My hands nervously shake as I get closer and closer. I know they were supposed to have a little meeting this afternoon about possibly bringing in someone else to help. I stick my head into the conference room, seeing the four of them sitting around the table going through the applicants who have been applying all week long. “I’m headed out,” I say, avoiding eye contact with each of them, smiling quickly before hightailing it out of there.
“Okay,” Clarabella says, leaning back in her chair looking at me.
“Have a great night,” Presley calls, and I can hear her snicker right before she adds in, “On your date.”
“You guys know?” I shriek, walking into the room, putting my hands on my hips, and looking at all of them as they all roll their eyes at me. This last week has been me dodging them and their questions. Every single time they walked in the room, I picked up the phone and pretended I was talking to clients. It did help I was also very busy this week seeing new clients. I managed to book four of the five I saw, so deflecting was easy. But I guess I wasn’t that good at deflecting.
“How can we not know?” Sofia crosses her hands on the papers in front of her. “I’m babysitting.”
“Who said it’s a date?” I fold my arms over my chest. “It could be the two of us going out to discuss co-parenting.”
“Is it?” Clarabella asks, her eyebrows going up. “How did he phrase it?”
“Well,” I start to say, trying to think of a lie, but I’m the worst when it comes to lying. I can’t do it to save my life. “He said, let’s get together to talk.” I avoid looking at everyone as I glance at the ceiling and around.
“Did he?” Shelby asks, and when I look at her, I see her folding her lips. “Is that what he said?”
“Well, more or less,” I finally stutter and Clarabella shakes her head.
“So he didn’t ask you to go on a date with him?” Presley accuses as she taps her pen on the desk.
“Ugh,” I say, throwing up my hands. “Yes, yes, he did.”
The four of them clap their hands together to cheer. “So are you going to wear sexy panties, in case?”
Yes!my head screams, but I shake my head from side to side. “In case what?”
“Oh, come on,” Clarabella chides, “you have to ask yourself if it is as good as you thought it was.”
“I might have, maybe,” I admit to them, “but I just can’t sleep with him.”
“Why not?” Shelby asks me, her eyebrows pinching together. “You are both single adults.”
“Yes, but it’s more complicated now.” I spit out the words I’ve been telling myself since last week when he kissed me.
“You sleep over at his house almost every night,” Sofia states, shocked. “Are you telling me that you sleep in separate beds?”
I gasp. “How do you know?” The words are a whisper. Ever since my place lost power, we have been spending quite a few nights there. The next night, we somehow still didn’t have electricity because a tree fell in the middle of the road and knocked down a pole, so I took his offer up to sleep at his place. Then when the power did come back on, the house was an oven. Even being in it for a couple of minutes, we had sweat pouring down our faces, so again we slept over. I even did my class there last night in the office, and when I finished, Avery was already asleep, so I caved to staying again. But tonight, I am going back to my place.
“We live around the block,” Sofia reminds me. “We went out on a date two days ago, got home after one, and your car was in his driveway.”
“I didn’t have power,” I defend quickly, “and he offered.”
“What else did he offer?” Clarabella winks at me.
“I’m leaving.” I turn around. “I’ll see you when I drop off Avery.”