Never Say Yes To Your Best Friend (I said Yes)

15. Mont

Chapter fifteen

Mont

A ll week long, I saw Evilla. She seemed to be everywhere all at once. She was always, always in my mind and stamped into my brain. Maybe even a little bit of her has marked my soul. I felt like I belonged in the business world. My companies have always been a happy, secure place for me, but no building has ever felt like this building.

Even when I was in my office, and Evilla was nowhere near because she made it clear that being professional doesn’t include closed-door office interludes or any other interludes that might be construed as closed door even if the door was partially open, I knew she was in the building, and it brought a sense of comfort.

It also made me hard as hell. It’s definitely an inconvenience in a suit, but I spent all week learning how to live with it.

We tried not to be sneaky. Our fingers brushed a few times throughout the week, and we shared smoldering looks when no one else was around. Then, on Wednesday, she passed me a note at the end of a meeting.

I’m free on Saturday or Sunday. Take me to your favorite place in the world.

I’ve spent the rest of the week trying to figure out what that should be. The arcade? Silly. The lake? Probably too far for a short date. She didn’t specify that she wanted to spend the whole weekend away. She did write one or the other. There are special spots in this city, but I know they’re touristy and too crowded. The rose gardens, which I like, are always so busy. It’s also my mom’s favorite spot, and I’m not sure that sends the right message. It’s pretty, but does Evilla even like flowers or gardening? I could afford to literally take her anywhere in the world, but would she see it as me flexing my wealth? I don’t think she’d consider that as anything but low-level gross. It might only highlight the disparity she sees existing between us. She’s mentioned it before.

I want to do something special, not make her uncomfortable.

In the end, I decide on something she might think is ultra childish, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. She picks the date and time, and when I offer to pick her up, she lets me.

Saturday at seven, she slides into the car smelling like chocolate, coconut, and flowers. The scents mingle perfectly on her.

“My favorite place.” It’s my deepest hope that this doesn’t backfire. “Coming right up.”

Half an hour later, we pull up outside my warehouse. “Oh.” She blinks. “You forgot your wallet? Phone? No, you texted me when you got to my building.”

“I didn’t forget anything,” I say to her.

“Your favorite place is your condo?” She could be pissed, but she’s intrigued.

“It’s not my favorite place, but this activity can be done anywhere. It was my favorite thing as a little kid and as a big kid. I thought about so many places. All over the city, all over the world. I just didn’t know what would be right.”

She leans over and puts her hand on my knee. “I’m so sorry, Mont. I didn’t mean for this to be stressful. I was just trying to be playful. I thought this would be fun.”

I didn’t give her any hints about this. I didn’t tell her how to dress, and she brought a backpack that she put in the backseat of the car when she got in. I now wonder if she packed other clothing in there, just in case. She’s dressed sporty right now—white sneakers, black athletic leggings, and a fitted T-shirt with a huge green alien cat that’s eating planets.

“I had fun wracking my brain and worrying that it would be the wrong thing no matter what I picked.”

She chuckles, but her hand strokes my knee tenderly. “Are you nervous about this?”

“I am,” I answer honestly. “You?”

“Yup. So nervous.”

“This isn’t the best place in the world. I’m not even sure where that is. I love this city. It’s been good to me, it’s been good to my family, and I have lots of memories here. We’ve had vacations in other countries, in some great spots, and one day, if you want, we can go there. I just wasn’t sure today was the right day.”

“It’s hard to pack that much activity into a period of just a few hours. I have zero expectations about this, and it was all just for fun. I’m excited to be here with you.”

“Even if it’s just my condo?”

“It was fun and eventful last time,” she replies and grins.

“I promise this time will involve less sheep’s butt.”

“Will it involve you eating my pussy again?” she asks saucily.

All that sass makes my mouth drop open, but then I can’t not laugh. She laughs, too. Yeah, it was clear what we were both thinking about all week. It’s nice to know she was on the same page as me. It was near torture not being able to touch her. We should have arranged a mid-week date, but we waited, and now we’re here, and for the next however many hours Evilla wants to give me, we get to share them together.

“Only if you want me to,” I reply with a smirk.

She shakes her head. “Nope. I was hoping this would be the most anti-pussy eating night of my life.” She can’t keep it together. She bursts out laughing.

I’m laughing right along with her.

We go up the metal stairs at the side of the building. This time is more relaxed. We’re making dirty jokes this time, we’re excited to be here, and her nipple isn’t falling off. I’m also not carrying a hundred crab containers and worrying about her nipple falling off and becoming a medical emergency while beating myself up for not getting her to a hospital. This isn’t the unpredictable ending to an unpredictable night.

This is our night, and it’s going to be great.

Inside, I made sure the surprise was complete. I watch Evilla as she steps into the living room. You can’t miss the pile of camping equipment that looks like it’s been dumped there by someone planning a six-month-long backpacking trip through a foreign country.

“Oh,” she breathes. This could go either way. “Camping!”

“Indoor camping.”

“Indoor camping?” She reaches for my hand this time, like she did in the car with my knee, and takes it. My fingers officially belong to her. She can have every part of me if she wants.

I make sure I keep my eyes locked on the camping gear after that thought, though, because there’s no use frightening her away by being way too intense all over again. We’ve already gone down that road. It almost led to an all-out war and her quitting her job.

“Indoor camping. Remember how I said I never slept as a baby? It’s been pretty much a lifelong thing. Some people just suck at sleeping, and I’m one of those. Some nights are great, while others don’t involve the word sleep. I do a lot of what my mom calls night walking, which includes everything from real walking to sitting and watching TV, listening to music, reading books, gaming, to—”

“Anything that’s not sleeping?”

“That’s right. When I was younger, we’d do family camping in the outdoors. When I was older, too, but less often with family and more with friends, at least after I was sixteen and got my license. We still did family stuff, but I saved the tenting for friends. My parents were bigger fans of cabins and resorts anyway.”

“Honestly, who isn’t if it’s an option?” There’s no city-slicker accusation in her tone. I’m still staring at the pile of sleeping gear, even though I’m going way back to the deep cuts of my childhood here.

“I used to get up when I couldn’t sleep, and I’d beg my mom to set up the tent in the backyard. I wanted to see the stars. She’d have to remind me that stars can’t be seen through nylon, but she’d set it up for me anyway. Inevitably, I’d watch the stars for a few minutes, sit in the tent for the next few, and then get scared and want to come inside. Eventually, it progressed to the point where my mom would set up the tent in the basement. She didn’t keep it up all the time, just when I asked for it.”

“She didn’t want the experience to get old.”

“That’s right. She got a few star projectors, and we’d lay there on top of sleeping bags and watch them. Other times, I’d just want to read a book in the tent with the lights off and my flashlight on, like real camping in the dark. We still did the backyard thing on and off. If my mom thought there was a chance in hell of getting me to sleep, she’d be right out there with me, spending the night with me so I didn’t get scared. Also, no matter how safe the neighborhood or how fenced the backyard, she was out there for safety, and when she wasn’t, I know now that she was glued to the windows, watching.”

Evilla walks over to the mountain of stuff and starts to sort things out all on her own. Sleeping bags, the tent, the blow-up air mattresses, the huge old rug I have rolled up to keep the floor from getting scratched… I’m protective of my old hardwood. Her fingers graze a closed-up small cardboard box and then stop. It’s a question I’ll answer soon.

“That’s love,” she whispers. “I wouldn’t know what to do in that position. You always love your kids, but no offense, you sound like you were a real hair ripper.”

I give her one of those you’re a hundred percent right shrugs. “Periodically, I might have been.”

“Do you take medication now for sleeping?”

“I tried a few things in college, but by then, I was used to having to function during the day even when I was exhausted. My parents didn’t want to medicate me when I was just a kid. They left the decision up to me after I turned fourteen. I was scared of taking something regularly because I thought it would make me less me. And when I got to college, it got bad. Probably, the stress was a trigger. I tried the meds that work for other people, but I never liked any of them. I didn’t feel less like me. I just felt like I couldn’t wake up in the morning, and then it took me half the day to be able to function. I take the natural stuff now. I found a brand that works. And I’ve developed a routine where I work out and have mechanisms to deal with stress. I also meditate regularly. But enough about me. Do you want a drink?”

“Do you have wine?”

Shit. Here I am, admitting that her surprise is indoor camping in my living room, and she’s into it, but I forgot the wine and snacks. “I may have…uh…overlooked the adult drinks thing. But I have water. Sparkling water, flavored water, flavors I can add to water, water I can make sparkling…”

“Mmm, sounds good. I have a secret love for water.” That’s only ninety-eight percent sarcastic.

“Do you really?” I know she doesn’t.

“No, but surprise me,” she says.

“Strawberry or watermelon?”

“Watermelon all the way, baby.”

A fist pump in the air gives me enough confidence to go fab up some water into sparkling gold. No, not really. It’s still water. Just really good, tingly, pop in your mouth, fizz on your tongue, and coat all your tastebuds with fruity greatness water.

When I give it to Evilla, she sips it like it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted. Her eyes close, and a look of pure pleasure passes over her face. In an instant, I’m hard enough to hammer those tent pegs we’re not going to use right through the hardwood floor. Thank you very much, watermelon water.

“T—tent,” I rasp. “Should we set it up?”

“Yes!” The water isn’t the only thing sparkling and fizzing. My blood, her eyes, my whole body, her lips in that wide smile…

My dick isn’t actually a useful tool because it’s in the way. It hurts, trapped in my jeans, and it bashes up against my fly when I bend over and take the tent out of the bag. It’s a small tent. A three-person dome. It just pops up with two poles that thread through the top and bend, but I have a hard time with that. My hands fumble, and I can’t focus.

We get it set up anyway, though it’s all thanks to Evilla and no thanks to me.

Evilla is the one who drags the coffee table out of the way and who spreads the rug out when I say the tent sucks on hardwood, and it’s great on the high pile rug. That way, it won’t move, and it’s extra soft. You know what’s not extra soft, though? My dick. But I don’t say that, obviously. I have the good sense not to make ungentlemanly comments even though the level of blood to my brain is reaching dangerously low levels.

“We hardly did camping as a family,” Evilla says, not noticing how inept I am. “I went camping for a school trip when I was ten, but it was horrible. In hindsight, I feel so sorry for the teachers and chaperones who were trying to keep a bunch of pre-hormonal kids under control. It was pure chaos, all-nighters, and lots of ticks. Oh my god, there were so many ticks. We were freaking covered.”

“That sounds horrific.”

“It was. I had two on the back of my neck, three on my bikini line, one behind my knee, and one in my armpit. They get everywhere. My friend’s mom was there as a chaperone, and she got them off with tweezers. I was freaking out about having to burn them off some seriously sensitive areas, but she just took them, pinched them, and waited until they let go of me. Nothing happened. I thought I would get some horrible disease, but I didn’t even get a mark. As far as I know, everyone was fine.”

“I’ve never had one.”

“Really?” She blows air out of her nose and grabs one of the camping mats. They’re tucked in the bag so tightly that she has to give it a few good shakes to get it to slide out even an inch. The motion makes her breasts jiggle and hips shake, and my dick nearly punches through my jeans.

“Never. I’ve had some run-ins with spiders while camping, though.”

“Hmm, spiders. They’re okay. Unless they’re venomous. Those are not cool.”

“No, they’re not,” I agree.

“I’m afraid of probably ninety-point-seven percent of the wildlife in this country.”

Would it make me sound less manly to say I agree? But instead, I grab the other camping pad and shake it out. “These fill up with air as soon as they hit the ground. They take a second, but they’re great. No blowing required.”

We both look at each other at the same time. Wow, that was one hundred billion percent dirty-sounding. Evilla just reaches for a sleeping bag, unsheathes it—lord, will the dirtiness never end—and puts it down on the mat. Then, she frowns. “Oh. These probably have to go in the tent.”

“Wait. I have a surprise.”

I reach for the small box that’s been sitting off to the side all this time, and Evilla’s eyebrows shoot up as soon as I open it. “No way! You still have it?”

“Yep, I still have it. All the way from my childhood.”

It’s not fully dark outside yet, but I click the button anyway. The star projector plugs in, or it also runs on batteries. And just this morning, I made sure it had fresh ones. With just that single motion of my finger, the ceiling, with its chunky beams, transforms into a starry wonder. Okay, so it’s not as cool as when I was a kid, and those dots don’t really even resemble stars, but when I turn off all the lights, it will be fun.

“We can lay on the sleeping bags and watch the stars!”

“The one thing I regret about this place is that it doesn’t have rooftop access. The next building I develop, that’s a mistake I’m not going to make. I wanted it with this one, but there was just no room and no way. No one was willing to do it for me because it would have been so unsafe.”

“Hmm. This is the next best thing. Most of the time, in the city, the stars aren’t that visible anyway. Plus, bugs. And what if someone had a telescope and was watching your roof?”

“I think telescopes are more for the sky.”

“Binoculars? Telephoto camera lens?”

“Because someone has a weird fascination with me?” I quip.

“That’s right. You’ve unwittingly attracted the attention of fortune-seeking journalists eager to break the story about the young billionaire who recently acquired the world’s foremost pudding company.”

“I’m not a billionaire. Far from it. And I’m also disputing the rest.”

She laughs. “Better press a button and pull down all those fancy automatic shades, Mr. Montford. Because I’m ready to see stars.”

I laugh, but she’s right. I do have automatic shades, and I control them with an app on my phone, so I pull my phone from my back pocket and swipe the screen. All it takes is a few seconds and some soft whirring, and the place gets a heck of a lot darker. I still have the projector on, and since the lights are also controlled on my phone, I plunge the room into outer space.

“Wow.” Evilla walks toward me, outlined in silver starlight, and puts both hands on my shoulders. My mouth goes dry. Where did I put that water? Right. On the kitchen island or the coffee table, or maybe I set it—

She stands on her tiptoes and kisses my neck. Then, her lips travel up to my jaw and then over. She finds my ear, and just feeling her breath there makes me shiver. I don’t have spots on my neck that I like breathed on or licked, but when she breathes and licks just below my earlobe? I nearly come out of my skin. Her hands smooth across my shoulders and then spread lower, exploring my chest.

“Guess what?” she whispers in a low, seductive voice.

“W—what?”

“My nipple is all healed up.”

I slip my hands around her waist and kiss her with all the pent-up energy I’ve saved all week. All the frustration of being in the same building and not being able to be near her, and all the times I’ve been near her but had to remain utterly professional. She arches against me, her fingers grasping the front of my shirt.

“I wore the right clothing then, after all,” she gasps. I suck on her bottom lip, and she rocks against me. One leg lifts off the floor and curls around mine. “The cat eating the planets. It’s my favorite space shirt.”

“I like it. But I’d like it more if it were off.”

She giggles. “How clever.”

She pretty much tears it off anyway. I match her, mirroring her movements and shedding my shirt as well. She kicks off her shoes, and I wriggle mine off. Then, I help her with her leggings, bushing my fingers over the soft skin of her belly. Her bra is kind of like a sports bra, but it’s also not a sports bra. It’s like a mixture of the two. She catches me looking and unclasps it. At the sight of her bare breasts, my fingers fumble with her leggings, becoming as useless as I was with the tent. She’s right. Her nipples are utterly perfect.

She reaches for the button on my jeans, and oh, right. I was trying to strip her leggings off.

“I’m not wearing any panties with these,” she warns me.

It’s a good thing, too, because I needed that warning. My dick needed that warning. And so did my balls. Right now, we need to all just keep it together.

She grasps my face and drags me back to her for another kiss. She leads it this time, her tongue stroking mine and taking control. My hands work at the waistband of her pants, and holy crab legs , she’s right. She’s not wearing any panties, and she’s perfect and smooth, hot and wet. I work her leggings down slowly like I’m teasing and taking my time, but really, I’m counting sheep’s arses in my head the way people count down Mississippis or ballerinas to mark seconds, just so I can keep focused and in the game.

“You were right. You’re not wearing any panties,” I rasp as her leggings shimmy down her smooth, perfect legs.

“I’m not. I don’t joke about panties. They’re serious business. Speaking of which, can I take yours off?”

“I’m not wearing any either,” I joke.

“Boxers then.” She giggles, her hands working my jeans open. I give her an A for efficiency because jeans are hard to get off.

She unzips my fly, and my dick practically springs right out. He’s so relieved to get the hell out of that confinement. My brain practically fuzzes out, and when I come back online, my jeans are gone and she’s working my boxers down. Now my dick really does spring free. I wasn’t this naked before. I wasn’t even close.

Evilla makes a sound under her breath when her hand closes around my shaft. The same sound pretty much rips out of me, echoing her again.

“You have a really nice manstick,” she purrs.

My dick likes the praise. He even likes being called a manstick. She could pretty much call him anything she wanted, and he’d be guaranteed to like it.

“You have a really nice…well, not a manstick.” Seriously, yes. I just said that.

She laughs. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

The only thing I can say to make it better is nothing at all, so instead, I let my hand slide down her belly to the softest part of her. She’s drenched, and when I meet her folds, she rocks into my fingers and makes a soft keening sound.

“Holy god, yes. More .” Her hand clenches around my dick. Above us, the stars are still shining on the ceiling. “I thought you were such an arse when I first met you. I thought you had to control everything and that you were all vengeance is power, and power is vengeance, and I’ll make you pay, and I’ll ruin your life. I thought you were a bit of a demon. But still, there was something wrong with me because there was some part of me that was turned on. I’d never met anyone like you. I’d never smelled anyone like you. You smelled so good. You still smell so good.”

My fingers pause right near her clit. “Are you serious?”

Her eyes open slowly, and she looks up at me directly. Fearlessly. That’s the part of her I was most struck by the first time we met. How smart she is, and how strong she is. She drew me in, and I needed to see her again.

“Sort of. Maybe. For a little bit, I thought so.”

“No, I wasn’t. I just did the first irrational thing I thought of to see you again,” I mumble.

“You knew my name. You could have just come to my house.”

“I thought you’d go and get an order of protection under the bounds of stalking and harassment.”

“Hmm.” Her hand steals along my shaft, her fingers running over the head. My hips thrust into her hand, and my dick pulses in her palm. “I changed my mind after you were willing to give the shares over to the employees the way you did. I also thought you wanted to make a point. That you were backing me into a corner with the fake dating idea by buying the company. I thought you were a man of extreme extremes.”

“It was all wrapped up together. But really, I just wanted to see you again,” I tell her honestly.

“Then you really are crazy, Bergamont.”

“Do you like that brand of crazy?” I ask.

“I didn’t understand that brand of crazy, and I’m still not sure I understand everything. It didn’t even occur to me to think about it that way until that night with Connor and Gen. What he said.”

“I couldn’t just come out and tell you. You’d think I was a man of extreme extremes, and you wouldn’t want to work for me anymore. Or with me.”

“Hmm. I think I could make pudding with you.’

“Is that a euphemism?”

She answers by tightening her fist around my dick. My eyes slam shut, but I still see all the stars as her hand pumps me slowly.

“I’m not sure,” she purrs. “I think I’d like to make pudding with you well into the future. All the flavors. And speaking of pudding, I just thought of a new one. Camping under the stars .”