Deliciously Obedient (26 page)

“
This
isn’t some deal you get to negotiate at the head of the big fucking
executive’s table, Mike. You can’t maneuver and persuade and
cajole and outplan. Her emotions matter. Who she is matters.”
Jeremy nodded politely when the waitress brought the second beers,
Mike taking a moment to chug his down, the splash of thick Guinness
against his throat so rich it was like drinking unsweetened chocolate
mixed with iron, which tasted far better than it sounded.

“
You
think I don’t know that?” Mike growled.

“
You
act like you don’t.”

Mike’s
temper rose. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now, Jeremy? She
doesn’t believe that any of the video was unplanned. She can’t
let herself believe—even for a moment—that I really did lose
myself in that time with her, and I forgot about the cameras.
Unchecked passion isn’t exactly my forte.”

Jeremy
frowned. Mike continued.

“
I
lost myself in her and found, for those shining minutes, the real me.
Not the Michael Bournham I’d spent ten years creating, but good old
Mike. The tinkerer. The thinker. The doer. Not the dealmaker or the
playboy or the image creator, schemer of mergers of major companies
and destroyer of anyone who created obstacles.

“
She
gave me a sense of authenticity that I didn’t know existed. And
then—poof!—I sabotaged it before we’d even gotten started.”
Mike banged his fist on the table. “You know how much I beat myself
up for that? How every day I wake up in frustration not having her
next to me, not being able to tell her how I feel, not seeing those
eyes, not kissing those lips, not admiring that ass, not…not…not.”
His voice began to shake with pure rage. “So don’t tell me I’m
unaware of how she feels. It’s all I’ve thought about since the
moment I met her, two years ago.”

The
words bounced between them. “Two years?” Jeremy asked, clearly
puzzled.

Mike
waved his hand dismissively. “We met at a corporate thing.”

Jeremy’s
eyebrows went up. “You carried a torch the entire time?”

“
I
carried a fucking bonfire.”

Appearing
to mull that over, Jeremy drank more of his beer and took a deep
breath. “She isn’t just something you want to win.” The
statement came out flat, without affect.

“
No.”

“
You
really love her.”

A
bolt of energy infused his limbs, making his hands and feet tingle.
“Yes,” he answered simply.

“
Me
too.”

“
Have
you said that to her?”

Jeremy
snorted. “I can barely admit it to myself.”

Mike
joined him, chuckling. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? Sitting here
arguing over a woman whose feelings we don’t even know.”

“
I
know she still wants you.”

Jeremy’s
words made the blood pump faster to Mike’s heart. Why did that make
his abs ache? “And you…she clearly has something going on with
you that’s working.”

“
Until
today, I thought so.”

“
I
ruined it?”

Jeremy
tipped his glass at him in a gesture of a toast: “To walking in on
your best friend after he’s just had anal with the woman a billion
people watched you have sex with.”

“
Anal?”
Lydia was more adventurous than he’d given her credit for. His cock
came to life just thinking about it.

‘
Maybe
I shouldn’t have shared that,” Jeremy said, instantly troubled
with a deepening frown. “Pretend I never said that.”

“
That’s
a hell of a thing to forget.”

They
laughed, tension lifting, both drinking until their second beers were
gone. A floating, diffuse feeling took over, making him
simultaneously more determined than ever to have Lydia, and caring
less about competition with Jeremy.

“
How
do we proceed?” he asked.

“
You’re
the one who’s always barking orders. You tell me.”

“
Let’s
get the secrets out on the table. You first.”

“
Me?”
Jeremy pointed to his chest. “You figured out my only secret.
Diane.” He paused. “How about you?”

Do
or die. Shit or get off the pot, right? Bad metaphor. “You want to
know where I’ve been for nearly a month?”

Jeremy
shrugged. “Sure.”

“
Living
at the Escape Shores Campground.”

A
fine mist of dark beer sprayed Mike in the face as Jeremy reacted,
instinct far stronger than manners. Hacking through a series of
painful coughs as the beer tinged and ripped into his windpipe, he
waved his hands and sputtered an ineffective
Sorry
.

As
he gathered his bearings, Jeremy’s eyes bugged out of his head and
he ran a shaky hand through his hair, which the waitress mistook for
an order of another round.

“
No,
I—ah, what the hell. A third won’t kill us.” He peered at Mike
with a new respect in his eyes. “In fact, I have a feeling we’ll
need that third one.”

Mike
nodded. “Just don’t spray me with it.”

Jeremy
banged his chest, willing his throat to stop spasming. “So
you
spill.”

Mike
did.

“
You
had buttsex with a guy and less than an hour later you were
tongue-fucking another one in front of Mr. Buttsex? Lydia! You’re
like something out of a sex-positive Reid Mihalko video!”

Krysta’s
voice carried a tone that Lydia couldn’t pinpoint, as if she were
impressed and revolted at the same time, like watching a Farrelly
Brothers movie and being mortified that you were laughing.

“
Ms.
Judgmental, aren’t we? You’re the one who had anal sex long
before I did!”

Krysta
blushed.

“
Krysta…”
Lydia drew out her name, hackles up.

“
I
just said that to seem trendy. I’ve never done”—she pointed to
her ass—“that.”

“
What?”
Lydia shrieked.

“
You’re
the one who took it to the Tucker Max level.” She gave Lydia the
evil eye. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll have your own
original Netflix sitcom in a few months.”

“
Because
I had anal sex?”

That
last sentence came out of her mouth just a tad too loud, her words
carrying across the restaurant at a moment when there was a lull in
every conversation in the place, and when the kitchen appeared to
have gone on silent mode. “Anal sex” felt like it echoed a
thousand times, growing progressively louder until folks at the post
office three blocks away could hear it.

“
There
are some things a brother just does not need to know,” Caleb
mumbled as he delivered a hot plate of coconut shrimp to them. Two
women sitting at a booth a few spots down the aisle gave her a look,
one a curvy blonde about to dig into what appeared to be her second
sundae, the other like a petite version of Ellen Page crossed with a
Boston terrier. Both looked away quickly and chowed down, which was
the only appropriate thing to do at Jeddy’s when Caleb was the head
chef.

“
Could
you say ‘anal sex’ a little louder? I don’t think they caught
it on the PA system down at Gillette Stadium,” Krysta said, sharing
a smirk with Lydia’s brother.

“
You’re
the one who told me all about pegging your last boyfriend,” Lydia
said, batting her eyelashes at Krysta as she shoved a piping-hot
shrimp in her mouth, burning the soft skin behind her teeth. Penance.
Sweet penance.

That
made Caleb skedaddle.

“
You
are such a jerk. You know I never pegged anyone!” Krysta stole
three of the remaining four shrimps, defiance in her eyes. Lydia
could almost taste victory.

She
needed the dessert menu for that.

“
Would
you if you could?”

“
What?
Peg someone?” Krysta shuddered.

“
Why
not? If you could fake take it up the ass, you could fake peg my
brother, right?”

“
Conversations
with you are like talking to Dan Savage on acid while being licked by
Miley Cyrus.”

“
That
would actually be kind of cool.”

“
You
are hopeless.” Krysta’s words came through a mouthful of shrimp
dripping in a marmalade garlic aioli.

“
Says
the woman who lied about her brown starfish.”

Wiping
her mouth with her napkin while snorting, Krysta shook her head,
hard, and avoided eye contact. Finally, she choked out, “If you’re
going to lie about something…”

Lydia
pretended to be offended, hand clutching imaginary pearls. “I never
lie about anal. DP, yes, but not anal.”

“
DP?”
Krysta looked genuinely perplexed.

Waiting
a beat as Caleb’s moving form caught her peripheral attention, she
counted in her head.
Three…two…one…

“
Here’s
your pretzel-crust pumpkin cheesecake with Madagascar vanilla caramel
sauce,” he announced.

“
We
didn’t order that,” Krysta said shyly.

“
I
know,” he said, leaning against the back of her side of the booth,
body language shifting from professional to interested. “It’s a
new menu item. Knowing Lydia, you’d be ordering dessert anyhow. I
figured I’d jump the gun.”

The
two shared lovely smiles.

Lydia
ignored him and said to Krysta, “It’s when you have one penis in
your vagina and one up your ass at the same time.”

Caleb
made sounds like a moose being choked to death by an anaconda. He
could have done voice-over for nature shows—he was that good. And
her baby brother turned fifty shades of pink.

“
Why
are you—what are you talking about—don’t answer that—” The
what the fuck?
look he gave Krysta was the stroke of victory.

And
she hadn’t even needed the dessert menu after all.

“
You
may have two guys slobbering all over you,” her friend hissed,
stealing the cheesecake, “but I barely have one. Half of one.”
Stabbing the piece’s peak, she dipped it in the cruet of caramel
sauce and shoved it in her mouth. “So you better—oh my GOD!”
Her eyes rolled as if she were having an orgasm.

Or
three.

“
How
does he do that? How does he make food that is better than sex?”
she groaned, making Lydia ignore her protective arm around the plate
and spear a piece, too.

“
Better
than anal sex?” she asked through a mouthful of pure delight.

“
I
wouldn’t know.”

Lydia
chewed and pretended to think it over, tipping her head to and fro,
making Krysta raise her eyebrows as she chewed, giving her a weirdly
ancient look, as if she were given a glimpse fifty years into the
future. Krysta wouldn’t age well, sadly.

“
Dead
even,” she said with a flourish, as she reached for her tall sundae
spoon and prepared to wash away her anal sin with a few large scoops
of gustatory lasciviousness that didn’t involve a bucket of lube.

Or
a man.

Or
two…