AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A handful of work emails littered my home screen, along with one text from my son’s nanny.Lucas is in bed. Assuming you’re out for the night.
A pang of guilt hit me. The good thing about having a live-in nanny for my eight-year-old was that I didn’t need to worry about someone being there if I wasn’t, but I still hadn’tbeenthere. He knew I’d been on a date last night due to our no-lying policy, but I really didn’t want him questioning if I was there when he woke up. I’d never stayed out all night before, unless it was for work reasons, andthosehe understood. But this? I couldn’t imagine trying to explain it to him.
I still had at least an hour and a half, but I needed to get going fairly soon.
And that meant the true ending of whatever the hell this was.
Gently, I moved the strands of auburn hair that had fallen from her bun out of her face, dragging my fingers along her skin.Why did it have to be her?
If she was anyone else, anyone other than David’s daughter, I might have genuinely considered seeing her again. That wasn’t something I did, but whatever the fuck last night was seemed worth the trouble that repeating the interaction would normally bring. But not when that trouble wasDavid.
Her eyes fluttered open in the darkness, and there was that pang of guilt this time, but it wasn’t for leaving my son overnight.
“Is it morning?” she mumbled, her arm reaching across my hips and practically hugging my thighs.
“It’s just after five,” I sighed.
“Why are you up?” Her eyes opened, and she turned her head to look up at me sleepily in the darkness, a little smile pulling her lips up. “You look cute in glasses.”
I chuckled. “I’ve got a meeting at seven,” I lied, dragging my thumb across her cheek, back and forth. “I need to leave soon so I can go home and change.”
Her smile faded almost instantly as she lifted herself up onto one elbow. My hand fell from her as the blankets pooled around her waist, her bare upper body looking fucking sinful in the low light. I had half a mind to take her again right now—my concealed morning wood would have certainly come in useful for the first time in years if I had. But I didn’t want to risk turning up after Lucas woke, and I cursed my body’s clock for not running slightly earlier.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t particularly want to go,” I offered.
Her hand hesitated before reaching out to me, hooking around the very edge of my jaw and under my ear, pulling me down toward her. “Then stay,” Ava whispered. “Tell them you’re sick.”
I let my hand drift to her waist and wrap around it, stopping her pull in its tracks as I lifted her up to me instead. She practically crawled into my lap beneath the sheets, her completely bare form slotting against mine so easily as she settled in astride me. “Fuck,” I groaned as she pressed her warmth against the underside of my straining cock.
Her lips found mine in the low light. She kissed me slowly, exhaustedly, as if it took everything in her to be awake at this hour, and I just wanted to stay, wanted to stay like this even if it amounted to nothing, wanted to stay like this with her body on mine, wanted to talk to her for hours upon hours and forget that anything existed outside of this godforsaken room.
I wanted to take her again. But I couldn’t, and this had to be the end.
“You are atemptation,” I rasped, pulling my lips from hers and tightening my hold around her waist.
She giggled softly, her mouth moving to my jaw, my neck, my collarbones. “Is it working?”
I pressed a single kiss against the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, but no.”
Dejected and defeated, she leaned back, putting a bit of space between us even as her hips stayed in place. I could feel the dampness of her pooling against the underside of my length, andfuck, I just wanted to be inside of her again. “You genuinely have to go?”
I slipped my glasses off and deposited them back into the little drawer. “I do.”
She pressed her lips together as the reality began to dawn on her. For a moment, I hoped she knew who I was, hoped sheunderstood that this was the inevitable end to what we had done. I hoped she didn’t have lingering hope. But then she spoke, and the gears in my head suddenly stopped. “Do you want my number?”
What?
I had known there was a minuscule chance that I was wrong about who she was up until the moment I’d seen the back of her right arm last night. Even in the low light, the small port wine stain birthmark across the skin was evident and solidified every suspicion I’d had. I’d seen it a handful of times back in Boston. The possibility of her not knowing who I was seemed even more implausible. I looked almost exactly the same as I had back then. Had she genuinely forgotten what I looked like?
I picked my phone back up from my nightstand and unlocked it, hiding the lock screen’s image of Lucas from her, before passing it across the short distance between us. “Yeah,” I said.
I watched in confusion as she stared unmoving at the phone for a few seconds before glancing at me, typing in a number, and saving it asLily.
“What time is it?” I asked, but just as the words left my lips, she turned off the screen. On instinct, she hit the button again to answer my question—but Lucas’s grinning face in front of the Statue of Liberty filled the screen, and if I tried to reach for the phone, my attempt to conceal my concern would be glaringly obvious.Fuck.
She stared at the phone.
“Lily?” I swallowed.
