I closed my eyes and let myself float in the beautiful, exhausting… but beautiful, moment for a few seconds. I loved being around him, I loved how he made me feel like some kind of sexy badass chick instead of the timid wallflower I’d tried to be my whole life. Most of all, I loved him.
“Me too.”
“I was thinking. You wanna move in with me? Like, officially?”
My mouth dropped open and I must have looked like some kind of stunned idiot. My first inclination was to squeal like a schoolgirl, kiss him again and say yes. Then I thought of my uncle.
Sure, I was already spending most of my time at Austin’s house, but I was still using my uncle’s apartment as a kind of home base for myself. It was closer to the campus, for a start, and I kept most of my stuff there, because I had this idea that guys didn’t like it when their girlfriends… or wives I supposed… started leaving toothbrushes in the bathroom and doing laundry in their houses.
I was surprised at just how much I wanted for us to have a place that was ours, instead of feeling like a visitor there. My heart ached for the chance to build a home.
The only thing holding me back was the fact that if I gave up on my uncle’s apartment, packed away all his things and moved out, well, that would be like giving up hope on him ever coming back. Could I do that?
It had been over a year now, and the police had basically pulled the plug on the investigation. They’d framed it as a “reallocation of human resources,” but giving up was what it boiled down to.
What would he want me to do, under the circumstances? He’d put his neck out for me, defying his brother, my dad, and vouching for me at NHBFC, all so I could make a life for myself. Given how much effort he’d spent trying to help me escape the past, would he want me stuck in it?
“You don’t have to, you know…” said Austin, after waiting as long as he could for an answer.
“No… I mean, yes. Yes, I’ll move in,” I said as fast as I could before I changed my mind.
Austin took a stab at the source of my reluctance. “If your uncle turns up, we can get him a better place than that apartment. OK?”
I gave a tight-lipped smile and nodded.
“OK?” Austin repeated, and tickled me just below the ribcage.
I giggled and squirmed, fighting the impossible fight against the submission specialist. “Ahhh! OK! Stop! OK! OK!”
My husband pulled me close and whispered in my ear. “Now, the first thing you do when you move in, is you get down on your knees and you suck. My. Cock.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
My facial expression wavered between scandalized and ecstatic as he gave some very specific instructions. It sure sounded like the first steps to a happy home to me.
Austin
Fucking Bertolini cocksuckers.
I was driving around a heavy industrial district of New Ashby I wasn’t overly familiar with, looking for the depot of some shitty construction company that nobody, least of all me, gave a fuck about. Why? Because Enrico Bertolini had called me in for a meeting.
This should have been all settled the last time they visited Ross’ gym. I knocked out Sanchez in the third for free, and they were supposed to back me to win against Brenton Southgate. Having another talk could mean only one thing: they were fucking around with the arrangement again.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a dark cloud hovering over my car as I drove along. Bending down to look up at the street sign, I spotted the one I was looking for and turned the steering wheel to the right.
“At fucking last,” I said to nobody, because Ross wasn’t invited to this little get-together.
There was no obvious parking lot near the gates of Bulgarelli and Sons Construction. I pulled up in a clear space in the stock yard near a few other cars. They were all parked at odd angles near a little building that announced itself as ‘Office’ via an old sign with peeling paint that looked about as shitty as the rest of the place.
Two guys who looked like they couldn’t build a sandcastle, let alone any kind of large-scale project, sat on a stack of prize-winning rust-farms that used to be heavy steel I-beams, eating their lunch. One of them would probably win employee of the month, because I couldn’t see anybody else doing anything.
As I stepped out of my car, a mob guy in a suit that looked completely out of place in a dump like this came out of the office. He held the door open as I approached. Somehow, I resisted the urge to run my keys along the immaculate black paint of the car parked next to mine.
I gave the guy a dirty look as I passed. To his credit, he seemed unfazed despite the massive size difference between us, and piled as much contempt as he could into his own expression. He was obviously old school mafia who had seen a lot in his time.