AlexanderIt’s gone ten when I get home to poor Brutus. A cunty move that takes me completely by surprise.
I wasn’t lying – I don’t sleep. Only I did fucking sleep. I slept like a fucking log for four fucking hours straight, tangled in the limbs of a stranger with her pretty face against my shoulder, as though I was in the arms of a fucking angel.
Yes, it’s that fucking ridiculous.
I feel grimy in yesterday’s suit, my shirt crumpled to fuck and my hair fresh from fucking bed in my haste to get back for him.
My grumpy black beast pads nonchalantly through from the conservatory as though he’s hardly noticed I’ve gone as I deactivate the alarm. I love how he plays it cool.
He’s left me a couple of parcels by the back door, and looks surprisingly pleased with himself as I busy myself cleaning up.
“I’m a prick,” I tell him. “I fell asleep. Who’d have fucking thought it, hey?” I ruffle his ears when I’m done. “A dick move, boy. It won’t happen again.”
He grunts as though he understands me, and I think all is forgiven as I dish up his breakfast.
I’ll have to be more fucking careful next time.
Oversleeping. Racing through spa foyers like a dirty stop-out on my way home. Sharing a bed.
None of this is me. Not even close.
But I feel strangely sated. More relaxed than I can remember in years.
My balls are well and truly fucking empty, my cock sleeping the dead kind of sleep that fucking all night long gifts to you, and my mind is quiet.
Free.
I slump down in the armchair I haven’t enjoyed for an age, breathing in the scent of orchids, and I feel fucking amazing.
I could sleep again, right here right now, with a smile on my face and the smell of Amy’s gorgeous pussy still on my fingers, but Brutus has other plans.
He nudges my elbow, glaring up at me with his overbite in full gruesome splendour.
“You want out?” I ask, and he gruffs at me. Yes, he wants fucking out.
No rest for the wicked, but that’s okay. I can live with that.
I grab his leash.MelissaJoe calls Saa at me happily when I step in through the front door, bouncing along to his favourite TV show as Dean tries to give him lunch.
Dean doesn’t look quite so impressed. He drops Joe’s little train fork in the bowl.
“Jeez,” he snaps. “Where the hell have you been?”
He’s worried, of course he is, and he has every right to be. I tell him so.
And then I tell him how I slept in Alexander Henley’s arms and he slept too. I tell him how he smiled at me as he left this morning, taking a moment to kiss my lips before he shot out through the door in a cloud of expletives.
“You could’ve phoned!” he tells me, but I couldn’t have. How could I? How could I have possibly explained a call to a male friend at home taking care of my baby brother?
I explain my logic and Dean shrugs. “So what are you gonna tell him?”
I stare blankly. “What do you mean?”
“You are gonna have to tell him something, Lissa, You can’t keep this act up forever.”
“Just for six months…” I say, and I realise how stupid that sounds.
I don’t need Dean to spell out the obvious, but he does it anyway. “Six months is a long time. One day you hardly know the guy, the next he’s sleeping next to you, signing up to pay you crazy cash every weekend for half a year straight. This is crazy, Lissa. It can’t work. You have to tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
He shrugs. “The truth?”
I laugh out loud. “That’s crazy.”
“No,” he says. “This is crazy. He’s gonna find out, sooner or later. He’s gonna find out and he’s gonna be pissed. Fess up now, get it over with.”
My stomach lurches. “He wouldn’t want to know me… not if he knew…”
He shrugs again. “You don’t know that. Guy seems pretty keen to me.”
But I do know that. Of course I know it.
I feel Dean’s glare. “Stop it now,” he says. “Before you get in too deep to get out. I’m serious, Lissa, this ain’t gonna end well, not unless you fess up and iron this crap out before it gets out of hand.”
I’m already in too deep to get out, and my face says it all.
He shakes his head. “This is so messed up,” he says, and I don’t argue. I couldn’t argue.
So I don’t.
I get him to count my money instead.AlexanderI order Brenda to summon Janet Yorkley to my office first thing on Monday morning.
She’s dithery as she presents herself at my door. I wave her in, and silence her as she starts gabbling on about how she hopes the new cleaner is doing a good job.