“In that case, I suppose we should start on tomorrow tonight. You know, in the interest of time.”
“That seems logical,” she said with a grin, adjusting her dress and hopping to her feet. She started quickly handing me clothes to put on, and I laughed.
“Excited to get back to my bedroom, are we?”
She tossed her sex-tousled hair over her shoulder and lifted an eyebrow. “I seem to recall someone promising to lick my pussy better.”
Heat flooded back to my groin and I nearly dragged her back down to the sofa right then and there. “That’s right, goddess.”
“Well then. In the interest of time . . .”
In the interest of time, indeed. I dressed in record speed, and we slipped out of the library and ran up the stairs as the party exploded with cheers of Happy New Year!
Chapter 13
Owen
I spent the rest of the night between Tanith’s legs, making up for lost time. I had months to make up for—hell, even years. She had been right there at Pembroke all that time, and I hadn’t even known. If I had . . .
Fuck, if I had, then everything would be different.
At dawn, I crept back to my room, leaving her all melted and sleepy, and took a quick shower before grabbing a couple hours of sleep. I wanted to be fresh and ready to go on the offensive with Tanith before she left. My mother couldn’t know we were fooling around, obviously, but there were so many places in this house where we could sneak off and hide. She would never be the wiser.
But maybe she should be the wiser?
I ignored the thought. While it didn’t matter if my mother knew or not, it was easier for everyone—Tanith included—if she didn’t, so there was no need to make things harder on ourselves. I wasn’t that worried about it anyway.
My mother didn’t matter. Proving to Tanith that we were meant to spend the months before graduation fucking constantly mattered.
But I must have done something right karmically because when I woke up and went down to breakfast, only Tanith and the two other interns were there. No parents or Felix in sight.
“Ms. Preston sends her apologies, but something came up at the Gotham offices,” the housekeeper was telling the interns as I walked in. “She and Mr. Montgomery had to go into the city first thing.”
“A magazine emergency on New Year’s Day?” I asked doubtfully, sitting down next to Tanith and helping myself to a platter of fresh fruit. There hadn’t been any Preston emails in my inbox or texts from my mother demanding my help, so it couldn’t be that important. Then again, my mother wasn’t much for holidays, or rest, in general.
My guess was any excuse to leave the quiet and isolation of Bay House behind and go back to the crowded energy of the city was good enough for her. And, of course, my father went with her—over twenty years of marriage hadn’t made him any less besotted with her—and he hated any amount of time they were apart, no matter how short.
Normally, it was vaguely gross to me—who wanted to think about their dad constantly wanting to shag their mum? But sitting next to Tanith at the breakfast table and having to fight off the urge to tackle her to the floor and mount her was making me reconsider. Maybe my dad had the right idea following my mum around whenever she traveled.
“Where’s Felix?” I asked the housekeeper, letting my fingers trail over Tanith’s knee under the table. She was wearing a short gray dress with colorful tights and a long, trendy scarf. The kind of scarf I could tie her wrists together with later . . .
The housekeeper’s reply interrupted my reverie. “The young Mr. Montgomery left last night during the party. It was your parents’ understanding that he went back to the Manhattan house.”
Probably to spend the rest of the night—and all tonight—getting hammered with that wanker Chad. God, how I loathed that smarmy arsehole, and not only because he was a Croft Wells alum. He brought out the worst in Felix, and Felix didn’t need anyone doing that. He was a twat all on his own.
But I couldn’t regret that he wasn’t here. If I could keep him away from Tanith for the rest of eternity, I would, along with every other male in the world.
“At least the snow means he couldn’t take the helicopter,” I muttered, mostly to myself, but the housekeeper gave me a commiserating grimace. Last time Felix had commandeered the helicopter, he and Chad had been totally sloshed and had demanded the pilot fly them to Boston for chowder and cannoli. The whole episode had ended with a stranded aircraft, a pilot with food poisoning, and Felix and Chad missing for a full twelve hours before they were discovered passed out in a hotel room with a live lobster in the bathtub.
The lobster had been okay, in case you were wondering.
The snow continued to fall outside as we ate, and Tanith valiantly attempted conversation with her new intern friends while I stroked the inside of her thighs under the table. The interns were eyeing the snow and checking their phones, and I had a brilliant and only slightly evil idea.
“I know you were planning on leaving this afternoon, but if the snow is going to get worse, maybe it would be better to leave for the city now?”
I adopted my best “solicitous host” face, and it seemed to work because the two other interns eagerly accepted, pushing back from the table to go pack. No doubt they’d imagined this morning as a chance to slither into my mother’s good graces—she had none—and solidify their imagined lead in the competition for favorite intern—deeply
