Page 80

Chapter Twenty-Six

Anita

O ver the next week, work was manic and Nuni and I didn’t have time to meet up.

Meet up purely for sex. Because that was all it’d be. And it wasn’t like I was dying to have sex with him again. Our

encounter at Carnelians had tided me over, though I found myself thinking about it far too often. Not just about the orgasm he’d given me, or the pride and satisfaction I’d gotten from making him come as well. I kept remembering how good he’d smelled, the feel of his body pressed against mine, the way he’d kissed my neck. But that was only because my neck was sensitive—one of the quickest ways to turn me into a shivering mess was by kissing my neck. I kind of hoped he didn’t figure that out and use it to his advantage. I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.

I also kept remembering the way he’d kissed me after I sucked him off. Soft and slow, but still deep. Carnal. A confusing blend of lust and sweet, sated passion. Almost like it had meant something to him.

Which was ridiculous, I reminded myself as I went over the checklist on my tablet once again. It didn’t mean anything. As he’d told me on Sunday, I just made his dick hard. Which was perfectly fine since I liked his hard dick. I liked it a lot.

The NADC gala was upon us, which meant Hustin and I had been roped in to help Corva finalise everything, triple-confirm all the suppliers, meticulously go over the order of events on the night, and ensure we were at the venue bright and early on Friday morning. I’d been working late to make headway on the planning for the Rorik + Stimis event around it all, so I’d been going home exhausted every night.

Nuni and I had been texting on and off all week, but I hadn’t spoken to him much today. It had been a whirlwind of chasing up the furniture hire company when they didn’t show up on time, running out to pick up the seating plan and place cards from the printer because there’d been a last-minute mix-up, and hurriedly helping to dress the tables as Corva dealt with an issue with the sound system.

Corva was always organised, but some problems were unavoidable when it came to planning events, and certain things were out of our hands. Like when a young demiurgus in the waitstaff came up to me and nervously said that a crate of champagne bottles had arrived smashed, but two employees were running out to get more. I’d given her an easy smile and thanked her for letting me know. I tried to never, ever be the person who took their frustration out on the staff. She would probably, unfortunately, get enough of that from the snooty guests arriving later.

Then it was double-checking any dietary requirements of the guests with the kitchen while Hustin helped the two smartly dressed staff members behind the bar load up trays with champagne flutes. Corva and I circled the room, triple-checking the place names against the seating plan, straightening up the dark blue tablecloths, and ensuring the smoky glass vases of white flowers were placed precisely in the centres of the tables, while a staff member trailed behind us lighting all the candles in the stained-glass lanterns.

By 7 p.m., the room was twinkling with fairy lights and candles, the string quartet was playing softly in the corner of the bar area and the first guests had started to arrive—humans and demiurgus dressed in black tuxedos and long, slinky dresses, with fur stoles and gleaming jewels dripping from necks, wrists and earlobes.

I straightened my fitted grey blazer as Hustin and I stood at the side of the room and watched the guests trickle in, waitstaff ready to offer them champagne. After about ten minutes of everything going smoothly, we both relaxed.

“God, this has been a long week,” Hustin muttered, eyeing up the champagne flutes on a passing waiter’s tray longingly.

“It has,” I agreed. I hadn’t even told him about what had happened last weekend, or that Nuni and I were going to be… meeting up on a regular basis. I kind of didn’t want to. Part of me wanted to keep it between us—myself and Nuni. Now that we’d actually agreed to do it, officially, it felt a little odd to share all the details with Hustin.

He’d stopped asking me about Nuni when I told him about our phone call a few weeks ago—when we’d agreed that it would never happen again. He’d just given me a small smile and said, “If that’s what you want, sweets,” and hadn’t brought it up since.

But I knew he’d noticed the marked shift in my mood over the last week since I’d seen Nuni at Carnelians. As we stood and smiled politely at any guests who happened to look our way, there was a pointed edge to Hustin’s voice as he asked, “So, doing anything fun this weekend?”

Hopefully spending the entirety of it naked with Nuni var Rorik.

“No plans,” I answered shortly, because it was true. We hadn’t made any plans, and I wondered if it was because we both felt a little awkward bringing it up. How did one ask, ‘So when do you want to fuck again?’ in a casual, inoffensive manner?

I’d half expected Nuni to text me at two in the morning one night with the standard, U up? But he hadn’t. He’d been respectful in all our conversations, though still flirtatious and, of course, completely charming in his cocky frat-bro way.

He was surprisingly easy to talk to, maybe because he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. He asked me about my family, about how work was going, about how swimming or spin class or pilates had been that morning.

He was actually a nice guy. Why did he have to be so nice? Why couldn’t he have been a complete tool like I’d initially assumed, so it would be easy to have sex with him but feel nothing?

But no. He had to be funny and charming and good to talk to. He had to be a nice brother to his siblings and a loving son who doted on his mother. He talked about them a lot—about how his brother Sorin was going to be opening his own bakery later this year, and how his sibling Laki was his best friend even though they were all zen and anti-consumerist, whereas Nuni was a big fan of buying expensive stuff.

He clearly adored his family. He’d told me his parents had dissolved their matehood when they were all young, and his mum had suddenly had nine mouths to feed on her own. He said none of them had seen their dad since he took off without a look back.

I realised this was probably not the kind of stuff people usually shared with their fuck buddy—actual important, personal stuff, but I didn’t try to stop it. I liked finding out more about him. I wanted to find out about the cocky, successful demiurgus under the expensive suits and away from his big, corporate office.

I found myself telling him stuff too. About my childhood in London. About coming out as bisexual to my parents in my twenties. About my sister—how close we were despite the age gap between us, and how much I admired her ability to be a wonderful mother and work a tough, demanding high-powered job at the same time. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle both. I was too stressy. Too concerned with doing everything perfectly and exactly right to be able to take on so much in my life without worrying about failing at it all.

Nuni understood that. He was equally determined to be the best, to knuckle down and work hard without any distractions. And through our conversations, I started to get a sense of what drove him. The urge to provide for his family and help his mum out. The desire to prove that he hadn’t needed his absent, deadbeat father to succeed in life.

It was official. I admired him. I liked him.

But this thing between us was still only going to be sex. That was all it could be.

At least for now.