Direct hit.
I see him stiffen before he stomps into the bathroom and slams the door with definite force.
“Jesus, that was fast,” Chris giggles, and I laugh silently when I hear the shower go on amidst a lot of very voluble cursing.
“I know, right? He almost shit a brick this morning when I didn’t make a big deal of his birthday.”
“Oh no! Han, you absolutely can’t flake on his birthday!” Lena insists, almost yelling at me to the point that I’m forced to move the phone away a bit.
“What? But I thought you said the idea is to show him how little I’m capable of caring,” I hiss, lowering my voice when the shower turns off.
“In normal circumstances, but this is his birthday. He’s weird about it because his parents are those people who don’t celebrate birthdays. When he left home he made a point of doing something great even if he had to get his own gift. This is super important, Han.”
Dammit. I hate that it makes me happy that I don’t have to flake on a day I’ve been dying to celebrate as much as he has. I’m not impressed with him right now, but I love the guy, and I’m grateful that he was born.
“Crap, I don’t have much time to get this planned. His birthday is next Friday,” I mutter, keeping an eye on the door.
“Call me tomorrow.”
“Me too!” Chris yells. “I also wanna help with douchebag’s party.”
“Fine, I’ll go out for lunch and you can meet me,” I whisper into the phone. “Be careful, though, I don’t want him finding out about this. You know how he can be.”
I hang up quickly and look up to see him lazing against the doorjamb, a towel slung low across his hips.
“The ‘sexmergency’ crisis taken care of, darlin’?”
Why’s he looking at me so weirdly?
“Uh, yeah?”
I am possibly a worse liar than Bill Clinton, and that’s saying something because I would have been impeached after the first three questions. Greg takes a few slow steps closer and drops the towel with a smirk.
“You don’t seem all that tired anymore, darlin’.”
My mouth goes dry when I lower my eyes and get a good look at the extent of his arousal. No, I think, with a huge smirk of my own, I don’t feel all that tired anymore after all.
“You just gonna stand around and look pretty all night, Mr Lucas?” I purr, flinging the sheets back and exposing the tiny shorts I’ve worn to bed.
His eyes go lighter and he growls, leaping for me in a fluid motion that reminds me of a sleek jungle cat. He kisses me with a passion that leaves me reeling, and I do what I promised myself I wouldn’t: I give him everything I have, putting myself into every touch, every kiss.
I hold nothing of myself back as I love him.
I just don’t give him the words.
Chapter Thirty Four
Things have been a little weird in the last four days. Like, alien abduction weird. You know how people have an accident and go into a coma and wake up different, almost as if they aren’t the person they were before?
I watched a documentary on coma patients once, and while not all of them wake up changed, the ones that do swear they can’t understand why they all of a sudden like different things or start liking things they always hated.
I feel a little like one of them at the moment, because I went to bed with a definite plan in mind, and now I just don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing.
Greg is…being odd. There’s no other way to say it. I’d woken up the morning after an amazing sexathon to find my work clothes put out and him in the kitchen cooking pancakes, of all things.
I felt a little sorry for Rose-the-tyrant, seeing the awful mess he’d made, but I’d eaten every bite, despite my hatred of syrupy pancakes — okay, and my crazy OCD about the kitchen being that dirty — and watched him the whole time, half expecting a little green worm to slither out of his nose and crawl away, freeing my Greg from its terrible mind control.
I’m still waiting on it and still watching my husband act so out of character I can barely breathe for anticipating his next move. Which is another thing: the man has been dogging my steps like a mad person.
I’d come out of the bathroom at work yesterday to find him waiting. Waiting for me to finish peeing just so that he could walk me back to my desk and give me the sandwich he’d gotten me for lunch.
With his newfound stalking abilities I’ve found it exceptionally difficult to duck and dive him long enough to arrange his party. And here comes the super painful part of this experience: I’d been forced to call his mom for help because apparently I can’t even go potty without him there.