The Secret (Winslow Brothers 3)

And yet, I can’t seem to stop myself. The push and the pull, the thickness of tension between us—they drive an ache between my legs that threatens to never end.

I push myself up and out of the water with a whoosh, slicking my hair back out of my eyes and blinking the droplets away.

Matilda sits on the bath rug next to the tub, staring at me with kitty judgment in her eyes. Apparently, even a cat can sense when a person is in the rock-bottom spiral of using no sense at all.

“I know, Matilda. I know,” I tell her, sinking back into the water until my chin rests at its surface. “But you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how it’s been!” I argue with the silent feline, sealing my mental health diagnosis even further.

“He’s…he’s like a rash. You know you’re not supposed to scratch it, know it’ll probably leave you with all sorts of scars if you do. But it feels so good in the moment, you know? Just to get that little bit of relief to the unbelievable nagging itch.”

I shift in the water as the ache between my legs flares again. “Nagging, clawing, relentless itch,” I breathe, sliding my hand between my legs and just barely stroking myself. It feels good, so fucking good that I know the possibility of stopping my little trip to fantasy town zoomed by two train stops ago, but Matilda is still sitting at the side of the tub, watching me.

“I don’t need an audience for this,” I plead with her. “Trust me, my shame is potent enough without witnesses.”

She pauses briefly, before plopping down on the rug and lifting her leg to lick herself. Perhaps it’s a showing of solidarity, or perhaps she just likes the sandpapery tongue on her sensitive bits, but I decide to hell with it. If the cat wants to watch, she can. Considering just mere hours ago, I was flashing my underwear toward Ty in the middle of his lecture, it’ll be the least questionable thing I’ve done all day.

And that’s not even counting the whole, you-almost-fucked-him-in-his-office thing either.

It’s true. I was seconds away from telling Ty to take my panties off and slide inside me.

Visuals of his face, the way he looked the moment before he kissed me, start to fill my head. And then I’m remembering how it felt to have his hand up my skirt, his fingers touching me, sliding inside me.

A moan escapes my lips, and with one hand clenched around the rounded tub edge to stabilize myself, I put my fingers back to my clit and start to make them dance. I close my eyes and imagine this is the encore to Ty’s scant, brief touch. His hands, the warmth of his body, the feel of his lips at my throat—every detail from his office this afternoon consumes me.

“Oh God,” I moan again, my head falling back over the rim and my legs opening salaciously. So what if I’m throwing my life into a tailspin, my imagination screams. Have you seen the fucking ass on this guy?

No question, Ty Winslow is one of the sexiest men I’ve ever seen walking this planet. His easy smile, his toned body, his unapologetic embrace of his personality. It’s all an incredible turn-on, and if he weren’t also the world’s most annoying human and my direct boss, I probably would have already slept with him at this point.

There’s a reason he’s the guy I chose at Orchid. There’s a reason I let him play with my panties for a month without reporting him to HR. There’s a reason I’m here now, trying to rationalize masturbating to the thought of him.

And there’s a reason I feel like I could be on the brink of coming, just after a touch or two.

He’s the epitome of everything I could have built in a man if I’d picked out all his pieces in the MAN Store catalog.

I add a second finger to my stroking and circle them around my clit softly. I imagine, though, that Ty might be more aggressive—might shove two fingers inside me just to stuff me full. Eyes closed and lost in the fantasy, I do just that, gasping at the intrusion. It feels good—too good if you consider all the consequences. Dangerously good.

I shake my head to clear it because touching-yourself-in-the-tub time shouldn’t align with finding-your-moral-compass time. No, quite the opposite, in fact. The two shall never meet. I refuse to let that lesson on Wuthering Heights mess with my self-pleasure-focused head.

I glance over to Matilda’s spot briefly to find she’s moved on and left the room, and the last tension in my body finally leaves. I sink deeper, throw both of my ankles up and over the edges of the tub to give myself room to work, and put my fingers back to my sweet spot.