He ran his hand from my left breast to my hip. He helped me up, and then he led me to the staircase. I turned and gave him a kiss.

He was such an amazing kisser. He knew just when to add tongue and when to nip at my bottom lip. Nothing was sexier than this man.

The doorbell sounded and Austin took off. I peeked around the wall to see how he handled his nudity. He was wearing a trench coat he must have found in the front closet.

He thanked the first delivery person, and then the second. He turned and set a huge fruit bouquet onto the coffee table and then a huge brown bag next to it.

The doorbell sounded through the house one more time, and then we had a cake and flower delivery.

When all was clear and the delivery people were gone, I inched back into the room.

“No kidding. You get shit done.”

I opened the brown bag and saw the artistic looking sushi packaged with chopsticks.

He indicated the beautiful flowers. “For you. To celebrate orgasms.”

I touched the irises and the azaleas. They were a stunning arrangement of ombre colors.

“Thank you. For the flowers and for everything else.”

We carried the food and the flowers upstairs and opened up the balcony doors. We could hear the ocean and the huge, full moon provided the light.

Austin pulled the comforter from the bed and spread it on the hardwood in the bedroom.

We both laid out all the things we had to munch on now. We started with the sushi, and then moved on to samples of everything else. When we were overfull, Austin and I stood and stretched.

This was the perfect getaway. The perfect weekend. We cleaned up our mess, him naked and me mostly so, and then we crawled back into bed. I laid my head on his chest as we both pulled out our phones for a scroll.

Austin tensed first, and I got a message that caused the same reaction in me.

The cracks started. Perfect was only perfect for a little while.

22

AUSTIN

Well, shit. This was not what I had in mind. I had an email from Stars Unlimited, that their ad campaign featuring Taylor was doing great. The one problem they had was a very effective spam account that kept commenting that Taylor was dating a “lady man.” The offender(s) were emailing, calling, and even had somehow figured out how to send fax messages to the main office, all while constantly responding on Twitter. I felt Taylor tense next to me.

“Teddi is messaging me. Apparently, the “lady man” thing is going sort of viral.”

I gave her an eye roll. “What do you think this is about? Do you think this is Endgame? That wouldn’t make any sense, I don’t think. But he does bizarre stuff when he’s hurting.”