Page 13

Wrong Yet Again

H ave a wonderful time with Anna and Avril,” Tess said, holding him in a loving embrace as he prepared to depart her home. It was a little later than he might have intended to head out, but he’d been exhausted. They’d both been exhausted. It’d been nearly ten-thirty when Tess had awoken, and she’d thankfully roused him. Even if he remained slightly sleepy, it was for the best. The second of his Valentine’s Days was waiting for him. Anna was waiting for him.

“She still hasn’t replied,” Liam noted. He’d rechecked his phone upon waking up and multiple other times while he’d rushed through getting dressed and ready to depart. Breakfast had come in the form of two of Tess’s protein bars.

“She knows she’ll have you today, so I wasn’t expecting her to,” Tess said. “In Avril’s typical fashion, she’ll make her attack when it’s least expected. Probably when she has you in a defenseless state later tonight.”

Try as he might to dodge it, a blush slapped itself onto his face. Reacting to a simple callout of his relationship with Avril felt silly. He’d fucked both women at the same time; they knew about each other. It wasn’t a secret, and Tess had escalated things yesterday. Yet, this was still kind of the first time that Tess had so openly addressed that he and Avril were sleeping together.

“You know what you can do though, don’t you?” Tess asked, not addressing his red face.

“What’s that?”

Tess smiled and set her lips to his right ear. “See to it that she’s in a defenseless state all night, instead.”

His ears burned like a lit fireplace, but Tess didn’t relent. She hovered there, waiting for his response.

“Any… professor-ly advice for how I could go about doing that?”

“She has her weak spots, doesn’t she?”

Liam swallowed, then nodded. “Her neck.”

“Then attack it. Again, and again, and again.”

Tess’s voice grew breathier and more sensual with each “again.” He trembled, heart racing. He felt like an indecisive double agent in a spy thriller. It was as if he were trading state secrets with a femme fatale by sharing what he knew about Avril’s weaknesses. As if he knew that Tess herself would eventually make use of this knowledge.

God, he hoped she would.

“I need to go, or I’m not going to be able to,” Liam whispered, and it was an admittance to himself as much as it was to Tess.

Beaming, Tess withdrew her mouth from his ear. “If it was just Avril, I might be tempted to give her a taste of her own medicine. But Anna deserves her time with you too. I’ll see you again next weekend, Liam.”

For more.

Nodding, he kissed Tess goodbye, then escaped like Odysseus fleeing Calypso. Probably with far more regret in his heart than Homer’s hero, though.

Avril wasn’t home when he reached her and Anna’s shared apartment in Ashgrove Apartments. As Anna would explain it, they’d decided to vacate the place during the other’s allotted time with him. It was a sensible enough decision, though it further delayed any chance of him figuring out how Avril would respond to the text in the group chat. At this point, he was sure she’d concocted something big for her response. Her reprisal, more like.

“So, do you want to stay here?” he asked, handing over her box of chocolates with a smile. He’d been thinking of giving them their separate boxes at the same time, but Avril’s absence squashed that hope. And he’d already given Victora hers.

The buxom professor had seemed surprised to see him, even though he’d messaged her before getting on the road that he would. She must have missed it or something. Standing in the cold, he’d knocked on her door, then waited, then accepted the slight widening of her eyes as an acceptable payment for the box’s expense.

“Liam?” she’d asked, then noticed the heart-shaped box under his arm. With it apparent that she hadn’t been expecting him, least of all with a gift like that, he’d momentarily fretted that she might appear displeased. Instead of leaping to assumptions, she’d merely lifted her eyes back to his and awaited an explanation.

After he’d given it, Victoria Moreno had been willing to accept a platonic, heart-shaped box of chocolates from the young man who’d fucked her colleague yesterday and who would—hopefully, Avril’s antics notwithstanding—fuck the sister of the man she’d nearly married later that day.

“I’m afraid I didn’t think to get you any gift,” Victoria had said, examining the box’s contents. This one consisted of white and dark chocolate, which he believed she liked. He remembered her indulging in both at last year’s Christmas Eve party.

“It’s okay; I didn’t expect anything in return. Happy belated Valentine’s Day, Victoria.”

“Do you want to come in?”

But he’d shook his head, even though he would have gleefully spent another few hours with Victoria any other day. “I slept in a little too much, so I’m pressed for time.”

“A busy day ahead?”

“Hopefully,” he’d said, smiling.

Victoria had spent a handful of seconds examining him in her inscrutable way, then had ultimately wished him goodbye. The last he’d seen of her, right before she finished shutting her door as he jogged back to his car, which he’d left running, she was staring down at the chocolates he’d given her.

But now he was here, with Anna, so he gave her his full attention. And waited for her answer.

“At least for a little while,” Anna said. “I don’t mind if we go out, but I wanted to cook us lunch.”

“Is that what I’m smelling?” Liam asked, finally focusing on the herbaceous scents wafting from the direction of the kitchen.

Anna blushed. “Erm, no, that was my trial run. I got up early this morning and made sure I had everything correct. Avril ate that portion a little before she left.”

It was a very Annabelle Royce measure, to go through with a trial run like that. And it seemed, assuming all had gone well, that Avril had profited from it.

“Well, the old scents smell delicious, so I’m sure I’m in for a treat when the real deal is in front of me.”

Breaking out into a smile, Anna nodded and guided him to get comfortable in the living room. Unlike Tess had yesterday, she wouldn’t let him into the kitchen while she cooked. It was clear she wanted to make sure that lunch came out perfectly, and he wouldn’t begrudge her for banning him from potentially distracting her—possibly in the way he had Tess yesterday—while she cooked. So, while he waited, Liam lounged about in the living room, listening to a skillet sizzle, smelling the compelling aromas of garlic and smoked paprika as they were added to Anna’s dish.

Again, he checked to see if Avril had replied to him or the group text. She hadn’t. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, he had no idea. The silence was starting to get to him, he realized. Like the quiet on a battlefield, where you were so used to hearing gunfire and artillery pieces booming in the distance, it seemed to herald that some dangerous tactic was in the works.

Don’t get unnerved; that’s how she’ll get you, he told himself.

Shaking away thoughts of Avril, he focused on relaxing. Soon, he’d receive a homecooked meal from Anna. He had no reason to throw a spoiling spice—worry—into the mix. What was coming would be fantastic. He was sure of it.

And yet he still ended up leaving the couch, pacing an apartment that, while upscale to ninety-nine percent of the population, was in no way the kind of place he would have imagined the daughters of muti-millionaires would elect to live. Of course, he didn’t know all that many children of multi-millionaires, so maybe his sample size was too small.

He knew a few; his upbringing had been anything but middle-class. With a pair of accomplished dentists as parents, he’d rubbed shoulders with the upper crust far more than he’d experienced what it was like to live a median-style American lifestyle. He’d lived his entire life in an affluent neighborhood, not a house in sight likely to go for less than a million dollars on the market. He’d received a nice car at sixteen, had never wanted for much of anything, and was used to winter vacations in lavish ski resorts, overlooking mountain peaks buried in snow when he woke up every morning.

He was hardly capable of claiming that the spoon in his mouth wasn’t a silver one. That wasn’t to say his parents had let him grow up spoiled and pampered, or at least unappreciative of what he had, so he felt fine in avoiding lumping himself in with people like Trent Alden and his ilk. But the living spaces he was used to were like this, where the furniture and amenities were top of the line.

He wondered who had suggested this apartment as their living space. Anna, who wanted a reasonable apartment, not an extravagant penthouse suite, or Avril, who…

Liam rubbed his jaw, trying to envision why Avril would have picked this place. He struggled to come up with an idea that fit. From their Christmas shopping experience and the ridiculously expensive prizes at her New Year’s Eve party, he knew Avril wasn’t gun-shy about flaunting her wealth. So… he supposed that it must have been Anna who’d gotten them this place, then convinced her best friend to lower her standards. That made the most sense.

Somehow, it did, but it didn’t.

“Could I bother you for a second?” Liam soon asked Anna, breaking his intention to let her cook peacefully. The nagging thought hadn’t abated, and he’d eventually felt compelled to swing his head into the kitchen in search of the answer.

Anna looked up from her work, minty green eyes wavering as she emerged from her focused trance. Liam felt a little bad about that; he hoped he didn’t cause her to make any mistakes because his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Fortunately, she was staring at a timer counting down on the oven, so at least she seemed to be waiting on the next step, not in the middle of something intensive.

“Of course, what is it?”

“This apartment: which of you was the one to find and suggest it?”

Without missing a beat at the randomness of his inquiry, Anna said, “Avril did. Why do you ask?”

“It was just one of those brain worms, I guess. I started thinking about it, and then I couldn’t get it out of my head. What made her pick this place?”

“She wanted to find a spacious place, but not overly so. She…” Anna briefly paused, appearing to chew on something difficult. “Well, I think she’d be fine if I said this. She didn’t want us to end up in a place where there was more than what we needed. It’s something about her family home that she strongly dislikes, and when I found out, I was happy to look at places like this one. Originally, when she finally seemed adamant about getting a place of her own and invited me along, I assumed she’d pick out only… extravagant living spaces. She very quickly proved me wrong.”

Huh, Liam thought. Wrong about Avril yet again.

It seemed to be a habit that he just couldn’t break. Whenever he assumed something about her, especially when he tried to box her into the classical rich-girl archetype, it seemed to turn out wrong. He realized that was the feeling he’d been experiencing in the living room. His subconscious had caught onto the trend, even if his conscious mind hadn’t yet.

“Avril’s family, what are they like? I… heard a little about them from Victoria on Christmas Eve. I got the sense that it’s probably a strained relationship.”

Anna fought another silent battle with herself, but this one didn’t work out in his favor. “I’m afraid I shouldn’t say too much. Not unlike my own, it’s caused her a lot of grief over the years, but at least I have my mother. If you’re genuinely interested, you should bring it up with Avril… eventually.

“Eventually,” he repeated, understanding her insinuation. “Not today.”

Anna nodded, and the timer on the oven moved into its final minute. “That’d be for the best, given what day it is—what day we’re acting like it is.”

Accepting the wisdom in Anna’s words, Liam nodded and retreated to the living room. Only for Anna to join him on the couch about ten minutes later, informing him that there’d be about a twenty-minute wait before she’d need to return to the kitchen.

Twenty minutes well spent, in which Anna allowed their passion to reach its own simmering point. If not for the literal timer hanging over their heads, things might have progressed past just making out and touching one another over the clothes. Indeed, Anna seemed more aggressive today than he’d ever seen her, and he didn’t even need to lift her onto his lap for her to end up there.

As his mouth worked its way across her neck, he inhaled the soft citrus scent of Anna’s perfume. He absorbed the racing of her pulse as his lips traveled over it, then lingered right above her collarbone. The quickening of Anna’s quiet breathing informed him that he’d made the right choice.

“Liam,” the beautiful heiress sighed, leaning into his touch. She gripped his shirt for steadiness, fingertips wound tight through the fabric. Her dark hair curtained much of his sight, so he instead relied on his sensation of touch. Based on every subtle—and a few that weren’t so subtle—move she made on his lap, she seemed pleased with his attention.

“You feel so nice, smell so nice, too,” he whispered, gently guiding the hand he’d set on her waist higher.

“Thank you,” his girlfriend—the one he was allowed to present to the world—whispered. She placed her hand on the back of his before it reached the soft curvature of her breast. Rather than slowing him down or stopping him, she helped his hand make its much-desired journey.

Feeling one of Anna’s wonderful breasts through her pleated top, he could feel the hardness of its nipple through the fabric of it and her bra. Because of how sensitive her breasts were, Anna practically seemed to ache for his touch, for his attention. They remembered what had transpired in his dorm room and craved another instance of the bliss they’d finally realized they could experience. As such, more seemed inevitable, yet her oven decided now was the time to interrupt their licentious fun.

A blaring set of beeps practically launched Anna up from his lap, her eyes widening as if she were coming to consciousness in an unexpected location. Drowsiness dispelled, she took a step toward its whine but stopped herself. Glancing at him, she wore a visibly pained expression, and one of her hands rested over her breasts.

“I’m sorry. We’ll… continue this in a bit?”

“That’s a silly question,” he said, rising and giving Anna a gentle but motivating pat on her butt, then a quick and relatively chaste kiss on her luscious lips. “Only the excitement about trying your cooking is enough for me to stay away from you. For a little while longer.”

Blushing fiercely, Anna’s beautiful eyes shone with relief that he wasn’t upset about the abruptness of their separation. She smiled warmly and hurried back to the oven’s side, finally silencing its incessant cries.

Just a little longer, he told his grumbling body. Both parts. The hunger in his belly and the lust in his groin.