Page 23 of Edged
“Would you want to get married there?”
I scoffed. “I wouldn’t want to get married anywhere.”
“You say that now,” Mandy teased quietly, “but that feeling doesn’t last forever. Once you meet the right person.”
I didn’t want to burst her bubble, but she was wrong. There was no right person for me. There had been once, but…not now. I was so glad Mandy had been able to get over her heartbreak about what Archer had done, but I didn’t know if I ever could. The fact that I let him corner me against an alley wall and make me come had no bearing on the way I felt about him.
“Sure, Mandy.”
We’d had the same conversation for years and I was tired of it. How my sister hadn’t given up on the idea of me finding love and getting married would never cease to amaze me. Then again, it was probably her determination and stubbornness that had gotten her through Archer’s abandonment in the first place.
“Will you get me a contract then for the place you like this most?” she asked.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come out and see it for yourself? It makes me a little nervous being the deciding factor for you.”
“I know you wouldn’t let me down, Owen.”
I could hear the smile in her voice, and the fresh memories of Archer only served to remind me of just how wrong Mandy was with her assumption.
“Right.” I cleared my throat.
“So, what are your plans for the rest of the night? It’s early there, isn’t it?”
The sun hadn’t even set below the horizon and my stomach grumbled for dinner. The business card propped on my knee spoke to a different kind of hunger entirely, though.
“It’s early,” I confirmed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. There’s some leftovers from earlier today I might pick at.”
“And you’re home tomorrow?”
“Yep.” I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “My flight is pretty early.”
“I know. Early for you, not us. I’ll pick you up like we planned.”
“Alright.”
“Don’t forget to have them send me a contract,” she said.
“Yeah. I won’t.”
“Love you for this.” Mandy blew me a kiss, the sound loud and jarring in my ear.
“Love you too.”
I ended the call and dropped the phone into my lap, the business card slid down my knee and landed on top of the screen just as it went dark. My sister’s face disappeared from view, leaving Archer’s name in glaringly sharp black letters in its place.
Archie.
What a prick.
What had I been thinking? No, what hadhebeen thinking. Shoving his hands down my pants and saying those things. He might have been the first to tease rolling orgasms out of me, but up until the night before, he definitely hadn’t been the last. I didn’t know anything about sex the first time I had it with him, but the way he handled me and the words he used had sparked interests that I’d never even dreamed of before that night.
I wasn’t a glutton for punishment, but I was a fan of delayed—and then extended—gratification. Whether it came from someone else’s hand or my own, there was a specific kind of pleasure I found in the self-control those kinds of games required. A quick internet search after learning about Rapture the day before had proven the club to be the kind of place where I could probably find what I was after. The man who’d sucked me off before Archer found me didn’t drag it out, which I appreciated, even though I’d planned to find someone else for later in the night. He’d taken the edge off, so to speak, so I could climb back on it again later.
After Archer had gotten me off, I left. I took a car straight back to the hotel where I locked myself in the bathroom and took a scalding hot bath, like I could wash the feel of him off of my body, which…I couldn’t. Then I’d drank a bottle of wine and watched the goriest movies I could find on pay-per-view. Literally doing anything and everything I could to erase the thought of him again from my mind.
Predictably, I’d failed.
Then I’d spent the whole day at wedding venues for my sister with the very tight grip of Archer’s hand burned around my cock. A reminder of what a horrible person—and brother—I was.
