you, really?”
Simone leaned forward, phone held between her hands. “Yes, honey. Yes. I am.”
“I meant what I said at the restaurant. Don’t ever go away like that again.”
“I don’t like it when we don’t talk,” she admitted, and snuck another peek at her phone, even though it hadn’t done so much as buzz to indicate a new message.
“So. Who is he?”
She looked up, feigning innocence. “Who?”
“The guy who’s not texting you.”
She frowned. “Is it that obvious?”
“I know you, that’s all. So, who is he?”
“Elliott Anderson,” Simone said in a low voice.
Aidan put his feet down with a thump. “No shit. No shit, no way. Office exhibitionist guy?”
“He’s not … you can’t say he’s an exhibitionist,” Simone said. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know anyone can see him.”
“But it’s the guy you’ve been watching. The one you had a crush on since you started working in that building? No. Shit.” Aidan sat back with a stunned expression.
Simone hesitated, looking him over. “Now who’s jealous?”
“You’re with him? I mean, with him, with him?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? Simone looked at her phone again. She held it up, showing him the lack of incoming texts. Then she put it back in her purse.
Corrina, wearing a tiny lace bra and matching panties and carrying a tray with steaming cups of coffee, came into the living room. Gracefully, she put down the tray on the coffee table and then knelt in front of it to take the lid off a sugar bowl so she could spoon sweetness into one cup. Then cream. On her knees, she crossed to Aidan and handed him the cup.
“Tell her how you take yours,” Aidan said.
All that time together as lovers, a much longer time together as friends, and he still didn’t know. It didn’t matter. “I’ll make my own, thanks.”
“You sure?” He passed a hand over Corrina’s hair, unbound now and trailing to her waist in rippling golden waves. “She’ll do whatever I ask her to do.”
Of course she would, and of course Simone was not about to let her. “I’ll do it.”
“So independent.” Aidan smoothed his hand over Corrina’s hair again.
Simone had tried that a few times. Sitting at Aidan’s feet. Playing the part of the sweet submissive. She’d been terrible at it.
Aidan must’ve known what she was thinking, because he laughed. “You’d have spilled the coffee on purpose in order to get a spanking.”
Simone fixed herself a cup of coffee and sat back on the couch. “It was the spanking that I liked best. Not the other stuff.”
“So, what about this guy? Anderson? Does he spank you?”
Simone glanced at Corrina, but the other woman sat serenely at Aidan’s feet with her hands folded, one inside the other, her gaze on him. Attending him like a handmaiden. Simone would never have been able to pull that off, not in a million years … but watching it, seeing her adoration of Aidan and his clear delight in it, Simone couldn’t help feeling a flutter of heat inside her.
She was a voyeur, after all.
Aidan’s gaze got a little darker when she didn’t answer right away. He leaned forward. “Simone. Does he spank you?”
“Not the way you did.”
“What the hell’s wrong with him?” He laughed, but looked pleased.
Simone shrugged. “He won’t really talk about it. We’ve only been together a few times. He’s into pinching. A little slapping. Hair pulling.That sort of thing. He’s good at it. He gets off on it.”
“But he doesn’t text you back.”
Simone sighed. “We’re not dating. We’re just … fucking.”
“Oh, babe. When did you start to settle?”
Simone grimaced, sitting back against the couch. “When did you start getting so judgmental about my sex life?”
“Does he give you what you need?” This came from Corrina, who spoke quietly and respectfully, but it still surprised Simone she’d spoken at all. “You said he gets off. Do you?”
“I do.”
“You like