I Like Being Watched

"I'll check it out," I said, exhaling hard.

"You need to relax," Blake declared. "Maybe have that pretty house manager of yours get you an at-home massage. Maybe she'd give you one herself."

"No."

"Maybe I can get one from—"

"No," I snapped. I hadn't meant for it to come out as ferocious as it had. Blake even looked a bit taken aback. "I've gone through, what, five, house managers this year. This one is sticking. Don't fuck her," I ordered.

"Sounds like I'm not the one who needs to get fucked," Blake said, pulling his legs off my desk, standing, shooting me a raised brow look, then walking out.

He wasn't wrong.

That was the most annoying thing about my brother. He had this irritating trait of being right a lot of the time when it came to me.

I did need to get laid.

And I would.

As soon as the merger was final.

I would walk out of that boardroom, right into the closest bar, find a woman who was interested, and get out all these months of frustration with her.

Not Wynn.

It could never be Wynn.

With a sigh, I stood up from my desk, rolling my neck, and making my way through the house, ready to check out the damage to the pool room, so I could get new furniture ordered.

The room was at the back of the house, a giant room of windows from the walls to the ceiling. It was dominated by a large indoor pool with a dark liner. The floors were a brown so deep it was almost black, and the furniture was a mix of wooden tables and chairs and wicker conversation sets with dark cushions.

I liked to start most of my workdays with some laps in the pool before I showered. I found that exercise in the morning chased away the sleep tugging at my ever-tired eyes and brain. It gave me the energy I needed to get through my long days.

It would piss me off to go there every morning and see broken furniture all around.

It wasn't as bad as Blake had made it sound. Someone had clearly tried to stand on one of the wicker chairs, and had promptly fallen through it. One of the tables had been knocked over, and a hunk of wood had been chipped off it. But that was the extent of it.

On a relieved sigh, I dropped down on one of the wicker chairs in the corner near some giant ass plant that I was pretty damn sure hadn't been there the last time I'd swam laps on Friday morning.

But who would bring plants into the house?

Even as I thought that, though, the person in question came walking in with another massive, but different, plant, half-dragging it over to the other corner of the pool room, setting it up near the windowed wall closest to the sprawling backyard.

The view was something I took a few precious moments to soak in every morning. Chest heaving from the laps, I would fully surface, and move to the side of the pool, resting my arms on the tile, and watching as the sun started to get brighter and brighter, giving me a view of the seemingly endless grounds, made a little stark by winter, sure, but beautiful when it snowed, and would soon be green and colorful again as spring rolled in to chase the cold away.

I let my mind wander then, as well, for a few moments.

I pictured one day watching kids running around that yard, squealing, happy, looking a little bit like me, and a little bit like whoever their mom would end up being.

Someday, I would assure myself.

Someday after the merger, after life got back to normal, after I had some time to find the right woman, spend some time getting to know her, then committing my future to her.

My father had done so with my mom, though she'd died tragically young, leaving him a bitter workaholic who screwed around without strings, which, eventually, resulted in Blake.

I didn't want that.

I wanted the real thing, like what he had with my mother.

Someday.

I watched as Wynn twisted and turned the oversized pot until she got the plant how she wanted it, then took a step back, hands going to her hips, surveying the scene, giving me one stolen moment of privacy to get to look at her.

I'd been starved for so long.

I feasted on her.

She had on what I'd come to call her "usual uniform." Meaning a skin-tight pencil skirt, this time in plain black. Her top was an almost see-through white with black trim. It tucked into the skirt, but the buttons had been mostly left open in the front, letting me see a sliver of skin from her neck, between her breasts, and part of her belly before it cut off.

Her long blonde hair was pulled up into a careless clip, and I had an almost overwhelming urge to get up, walk over, remove the clip, and run my fingers through the soft-looking strands.