“I’ve fucked you in every room of this house, but tonight, Gabby, I want to make love to you, like you’re mine.” One hand gently caresses my breast and my insides tighten with need.

  “I... I suppose I could get on board with that idea.” His hand drops to my slit and a quiver runs up my spine. “I can definitely try that idea out for size.”

  “Oh, I think you’re going to like the size of it just fine,” he whispers in my ear and I can feel his length throbbing against my tummy, hard and begging for entry.

  “Hmm. Uh huh. Yep. It’s a good size, that’s for sure.”

  “Just good?” He teases at my entrance. My insides water and contract.

  “Very good. Like amazingly good,” I murmur. He’s teasing my breast with his fingers and mouth, and I’m finding multitasking between breathing and thinking difficult.

  “Amazingly good? I think you can do better than that.” He glides into my entrance, though just an inch, then retreats, building this slow pace until I’m bucking against him like a deranged cat in heat.

  “Magnificent. You have a magnificent cock. Now give it to me!”

  “Not so fast sweetheart, I want to savour this moment. The moment you became mine and I became yours.” He rocks gently at my entrance, giving me a taste but not enough to satisfy. My core is humming with electricity and my fingernails are gripping his shoulders with anticipation.

  His forehead rests on mine, his eyes looking into mine through thick dark lashes, and then it hits me. I do love him. I love him and I want to make love to him. To get closer to him than I ever have before.

  I buck against him again, my eyes fluttering as he enters me only slightly deeper. “Gabby! Fuck. You feel so good.” His voice is raspy, gruff. I can tell he wants me badly too.

  “I love you,” I moan as the rocking intensifies. On hearing my confession, Dan drives into me and I let out a guttural groan of appreciation. “I love you. I love your cock. I love fucking you. I love being fucked by you. I. Love. You.” My voice is sharp pants and sighs. Dan quickens the pace, rocking into me, lathering a delicious friction into my slit and against my soft spot.

  “Fuck, I love you too, sweetheart. Probably since I first saw your perfect, sexy and naked butt in my bathtub.” I buck against him harder. Hearing him say the words that I didn’t know I needed to hear have me soaking wet and my body begging for relief. “You’re going to have to slow down.” I couldn’t slow down now if I tried. I’m full steam ahead on the love train, going Gabby gung-ho on his cock and enjoying the sheer look of lust and love on Dan’s face. “You’re going to make me—” He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, but it doesn’t matter because my thoughts are taken over by more important matters than inconsequential things like words, and breathing, and life. Pleasure shoots through me in waves. Starting at my core, it radiates through every muscle and nerve until I’m clinging to Dan and watching his beautiful face as he comes undone while I’m riding my own rollercoaster of desire.

  When our breathing has returned to normal and we’re both coated in a soft sheen of sweat and contentment, Dan says, “I guess I finally got to experience Gung-Ho Gabby?’”

  I laugh into his shoulder. “Yeah. I was waiting to break her out but, I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  Dan’s face lights up and his tongue darts into my mouth for a ferocious kiss. “It seems neither could I.”

  My fingers trail a path down his shoulder, across his hard chest and down to the dips between his abs. “It’s a good job we have plenty of time, then.” My eyes widen as I watch his cock harden. Dan catches my hand before I reach the promised land to stop me, and he asks, “Is this really us now? A legitimate couple?”

  I can’t keep the smile from creeping across my face as my eyes leave his length and travel up to his beautiful face. His eyes are sparkly and warm. His scent surrounds me. And I realise it wasn’t the building that made this place feel like home, it was Dan. All along. It was Dan. I twine my fingers through his.

  “We’re a couple.” My grin widens. “Officially. It was supposed to be a quick flip, that turned into a few quick fucks, but what the flip, it turned into something real.”

  “Something permanent,” Dan says through seductive lips then he nuzzles the soft spot on my neck.

  “Permanent,” I repeat, tasting its flavour in my mouth. “That’s definitely something I can get onboard with.”

  “After you’ve gotten onboard this.” Dan flips me over and suddenly I’m straddling the asshole landlord who flipped my home and my heart, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

  Epilogue

  Sebastian

  2 weeks later

  I don’t usually have the time to attend parties, unless they’re work related and my presence is required to secure a deal. But when my old buddy Dan called me up and said he was having a house warming party to celebrate his partnership with his new girlfriend, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go. After all, it’s not every day you get to witness some poor fucker so utterly under the thumb and in love with his girl first-hand.

  “Glad you could come, man!” Dan slaps a beer in my hand and gives me a tour of the house he just flipped. Of course, flipping implies he’s going to sell it and make a handsome profit, but not this schmuck. No, Dan has decided he’s setting up house with his woman, and no doubt they’ll have 2.4 children in no time. Probably get themselves a cat and a budgie and resemble something out of a romcom sitcom by the end of the year. I wipe away my pity for him and plaster on a smile. If this is the life he’s choosing, then I support him, but it’s not for me.

  “Wow. There’s a lot of green stuff in here, since when were you into growing shit, and I don’t mean the herbs we smoked in high school?” I give Dan a nudge as he escorts me back downstairs into the kitchen. We were wild back in high school, but since I went to work for the family company I have been all work and no play.

  “It’s Gabby. She likes things that are alive. She says it makes a house a home.” Dan’s eyes are lit up and the smile hasn’t left his face since I got here. Every time he mentions her name, I swear it gets wider. Whatever it is that he has going on with Gabby, it sure must be some special shit, since he used to be a grumpy, work-obsessed bastard, much like myself.

  “It’s... nice. I like it. Homey. Looks like you’re in love.” I sing the love bit to tease him but Dan stands up straighter, prouder and replies. “I am, man. It’s the best feeling. I swear she popped up in my life and now, well, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.” He watches Gabby from across the kitchen, refilling their guests glasses.

  “I’m happy for you, man. It suits you, being this happy.” I’m even more surprised that there’s truth in my words. He does look happy. Content even. I even heard he’s slowing his goal to flip a dozen properties this year so that he and Gabby can work on some projects together while she’s at college learning landscaping. Whereas I’ve never entertained so much as a day off for a woman, it makes me curious which one of us has got it all wrong.

  I leave Dan to go catch up with Gabby and grab another beer. The crowd for the housewarming is mostly local people, a few people from the bar and some guys who work for Dan. When we’re ushered to the garden where a huge central firepit has been installed, I see an old sofa that looks like it’s seen better days in the centre of the firepit.

  Dan and Gabby look on with delight as the match he flings into the centre causes it to go up in flames. I start to wonder if this some kind of hedonistic, swingers party as I notice most of the people look like couples, and Gabby and Dan have installed some kind of swing-bed in the upper corner of the garden that looks like it would make an opulent sex swing. With the garden all lit up with fairy lights, it has a romantic, sexual vibe, or maybe that’s just because I haven’t gotten any in a long time. Anyway, I decide I must be wrong, it’s not a swingers’ party. Gabby invited my gramps, and he just isn’t the type to swing anything except a golf club, having been widowed from his one true love for the better part of thirty-five years. Not that I know the type. I’ve only ever been involved in one threesome, and that was fake news in the press.

  “Thank you for coming, everyone.” Dan tinkles his glass against Gabby’s and wraps his arm around her. It’s May but the evening breeze still has an icy bite to it. “We wanted you all to come celebrate my... our,” he looks at Gabby, mouths an apology and then kisses her temple, “new venture. From this day forwards, when you are looking for a new quality-built home and garden,” he kisses Gabby’s head again, and even I can appreciate how sickly in love they are with each other, “you won’t need to look further than Sweetheart Construction...” Dan’s voice is drowned out as my grandfather speaks into my ear.

  “I get that they’re happy and in love, even naming their business something romantically soppy, but why are they burning a perfectly good piece of furniture? Is it some new craze the young people are into on Snappy Chat?”

  I shrug my shoulder and tsk under my breath. My gramps is a romantic at heart, but his knowledge of modern technology is non-existent.

  “I think it’s symbolic. Now that they’re together, life will never be comfortable again.” I’m goading my grandfather. He hates the fact that I am thirty-years-old and I haven’t settled down, got married and given him some grandbabies yet.

  Gramps sighs. “Look how in love they are. How happy they are. That could be you, if you’d only take life seriously and start looking.”

  As the flames take hold, I watch Dan pick up his love and pull her down into a kiss. From here, it doesn’t look so bad, but what my gramps doesn’t get is that I don’t have time for that kind of commitment.

  Still, I appease the old man because I know there is nothing more important to him than family values. “I’ll see what I can do.” I wink at the old man and then leave the party. All this mentioning of love and romance has got me in need of a stiff bourbon.

  “DIDN’T THINK YOU’D show,” my brother Luke says, passing me two-fingers of bourbon.

  “Wouldn’t miss a summons from Grandpa,” I reply giving him a jovial wink. Luke and I complain about the old man and his old-fashioned ways, but it’s done with a certain amount of acceptance. He’s raised us since our parents died when we were only little kids, and we both respect and admire him. I shoulder nudge Luke and slurp the warm liquid, letting out a sigh as the liquor hits the spot. “Thank you, it’s been a bourbon kind of day.”

  “That bad, huh?” Luke smiles knowingly.

  My eyes narrow. “What’s the old man told you?”

  Luke shrugs, and a look of pure mischief coats his features.

  “You know he’s following me on Instagram now, and he doesn’t approve of what he sees. My Insta account is not a reflection of the way I conduct business.” Grandpa might be looking eighty square in the face but nothing, and I mean nothing, escapes him.

  “He’s got old-fashioned values, and he has every right to check up on you.”

  “I’m thirty years old, Luke. I don’t need checking up on and besides, he doesn’t check up on you. In fact, you live in the same small town and speak to him less than I do. Seven emails I received from him yesterday. Seven. It’s like he doesn’t trust me.”

  “Seb, you know he trusts you or he wouldn’t have made you an executive. He doesn’t check on me because I chose not to join the family business. Being an ultra-smooth cop is much more my style. But you, you brought this all on yourself, following in his footsteps, and offering yourself up as a young protégé since you were old enough to piss standing up. He’s handing you his empire; he’d be mad not to check up on you.”

  I down the last of my bourbon. He’s right, and it sucks.

  “Please join us in the dining hall,” Betty, my grandpa’s maid says, putting on her most proper accent, which is odd to hear, since this is the same woman who sang us lullabies and called us dirty rotten scallywags when we stole her baked cakes right out the oven.

  I take a seat at the huge, oval mahogany dining table, opposite Grandpa. Luke flanks me to one side, and it’s like I’m four years old all over again and Gramps caught me doodling on the wallpaper.

  “Sebastian, you came.” My grandpa nods, like he thinks I wouldn’t show up today despite never missing family dinner on the last Sunday of every month. Even when I was in college, he’d send the helicopter first thing Sunday morning, no matter how hung over to shit I was, and have me here in time for dinner. “And my dear Luke, I trust you had no difficulty swapping your shift to attend family Sunday? Is it easier now you’re a detective on the force?”

  “Sure is, Gramps. Got my team now, and I write my own hours,” Luke responds energetically, like all his Christmases came around at once.

  “And I bet all the women in town are going bonkers over the new detective.” I wink at Luke and he gives me a subtle smirk and nods his head from behind his wine glass.

  “Always thinking with your privates, Sebastian.” My grandfather shakes his head and pulls his napkin onto his lap.

  “And what exactly is the problem with a grown man enjoying healthy, consensual sex?”

  “There is nothing wrong with the union between a couple in love. Nothing at all. But you’re infatuated with your penis, always have been, ever since you learned to use your hands. In fact, I seem to remember a young Sebastian using his best efforts as a toddler to stretch it right into his mouth. It worried your poor mother you’d end up with a neck injury. I’m sure there’s even a photograph in an album somewhere. But alas, I digress. Don’t you think it’s time you grew up?” Gramps looks smug at the mention of the childhood tale that never fails to embarrass me. I shake off his needling. I’m about to argue that I am grown up, he just hasn’t noticed, but Gramps doesn’t give me a chance. “Now, now, that’s quite enough of the trailer-park talk. Tell me about Milan.”

  It’s the question I’ve been dreading, and so I’m pleased when Betty rushes through the swing door to the dining hall, pushing her trolley full of homemade goodness. I’m overwhelmed with scents of beef and spices, probably a half a dozen different side courses, and the best gravy either side of the equator. I pull a sip of the pre-poured red wine in front of me and savour the taste as Betty loads the table. I’m glad of the distraction, though it’s too much to hope that Betty’s presence will change Grandpa’s course of questioning.

  When I look up, Grandpa is viewing me curiously. It’s hard to tell if the lines around his face are from age or laughter, but beneath his soft, warm exterior is a hardened businessman who knows how to achieve his goals.

  Betty loads my plate and gives me a warm smile. “Have you been eating enough? Have some extra potatoes, we need to fatten you up.” She loads my plate higher until I hold out a hand to stop her.

  “They frown on carbs in L.A.” I wink and grin at Betty and she shakes her head, moving to load Luke’s plate.

  “I trust carbs are permissible in Milan, though, Sebastian? The home of Italian cuisine, fashion, and beautiful, brown-eyed Mediterranean women?” Grandpa’s brows raise as if accusatory.

  Luke tucks into his meal. He knows he is not the intended recipient of our grandfather’s provocative remarks.

  “They eat carbs just fine in Milan. Except for the runway models; I believe they prefer tomato salad, with good olive oil, of course.” I give Grandpa a courteous grin. If he wants an argument, I won’t rise to it.

  “And yachts. Million-dollar yachts with playboy heirs running around them like they don’t have a care in the world? I believe they’re quite partial to those, if the press reports and Instagram are correct,” he counters without allowing his tone to reflect the acidity of his comments—for that would not be acceptable dinner party conduct.

  I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose.

  “You know I broke the Gino deal while I was there? Fifteen million worldwide followers, all desperate for Gina Gino’s designer couture, and I signed her to work exclusively for Stone Enterprises. Or did that go unnoticed?” I fork more food in my mouth, almost expecting it to taste as sour as the conversation. “Thank you, Betty. This is delicious, as always,” I add, trying in vain to change the subject. Betty sits farther down the table, as she has always done. At sixty years old, she looks smaller than I remember, less imposing, but still no doubt a force to be reckoned with. Much like my grandpa, Arthur Stone, billionaire entrepreneur of everything textiles. Yet somehow—unlike fashions and trends—the man doesn’t age. Okay, so his hair is white, and his face weathered with age. Still, he looks closer to sixty than approaching eighty.

  “Sebastian, you were all over the media. Drinking champagne and partying like some kind of college frat boy. Do you understand how damaging that is to the family brand? The brand I built from scratch. It’s a mockery, that’s what it is.” Okay, so Grandpa looks pissed now, as evidenced by him putting down his cutlery and the stern look he’s throwing me from his grey, almost opaque eyes.

  Luke sighs from the corner of his mouth and turns the conversation to Betty. “Is the beef from the Davenport farm?” he asks. “I’ve sure missed your cooking.”

  While I appreciate my brother’s attempt to deflect the tension, my gramps lack of trust raises my hackles and I wonder, since he still works a sixty-hour week, if he has any intention of handing over the company he’s been promising me since I was fifteen. His eightieth birthday is in just over a month, and I hope that is when he will hand over the reins but he hasn’t even mentioned it.

  Before Betty has a chance to answer, my silver cutlery slam on the mahogany. “The problem with you, old man, is that you don’t understand how things work these days. I have to schmooze with the clients. Offer them advantages they don’t get with other suppliers and investors. If Stone Enterprises is to move with the times, we have to have interests in other avenues. Like my idea for the hospitality industry—”

  Air whooshes against my skin as my grandfather slams his fist on the table. “That idea was cheapening to the brand!”

 

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