Page 92 of Some Like It Hot

Physically? We haven’t even kissed again.

For two torturous weeks I’ve been waiting to see if he will try to get me naked, and he hasn’t. I’ve bounced between disappointment and total gratitude.

I know if we share the intimacy of sex, I’m not going to be able to resist my deeper feelings for him. Then when he heads back to London, I’ll be emotionally fucked. Devastated.

But I also know that Simon isn’t holding back because he doesn’t want me that way. He wants to have sex with me. He’s holding back because I’m holding back.

For a guy who always has a smile and a charming comeback, who can navigate any social situation, he’s very intuitive. It’s what makes him so capable of talking to anyone and making them feel like a million bucks. He understands people.

He sees me.

And he’s giving me space to sort out my head all on my own.

I think he grasps the reality of it—if he rips my shirt off and slips a hand down my pants, we’re having sex.

But he wants me to be sure.

It makes me care about him even more.

Blake is out of town playing hockey.

Elise is working tonight, finishing up a custom order for a client.

Simon asked me to join him at this corporate fundraiser event for cancer research and so here I am, dressed in a suit that makes me feel ridiculous, gripping a beer bottle like it’s a life raft, and watching him work the crowd.

He makes every person he speaks to feel special. He remembers names, spouse’s names, whose family member had cancer, and asks pointed questions about how they’re doing. His assistant is hovering, trying to give him facts and stats to use as talking points, but he waves her off repeatedly.

“I may be shit at keeping my desk clean, but I’ve got this,” he tells her.

He makes me feel special too.

My suit is off-the-rack and yet twice he’s told me how good I look and how much he appreciates me being here.

He also leaned in and murmured, “Though I really appreciate you wearing nothing at all when we’re fucking our gorgeous girl.”

He introduces me as his date, “a firefighter who saved me from going up in veritable flames.”

I don’t know how he can say shit like “veritable flames” with a straight face, but that’s Simon Armstrong.

His voice, with that sexy-as-hell accent, has started popping up in my dreams nightly.

I’m getting better and more plentiful sex than I have in my entire life with Elise, yet I’m waking up every morning with a throbbing erection because of the British billionaire’s voice.

It’s driving me up the damn wall.

When Simon shakes a man’s hand and tells him, “I knew you had this beat, William, never doubted it for a minute,” and the guy in his thirties holding hands with a crying woman, I know there is no use denying what I’m feeling.

I’m falling in love with Simon.

If we never touch each other ever again, I’m going to be heartbroken when he returns to London. There’s no denying it. That’s the outcome, because it’s already too late.

We both clearly want to have sex, and I figure there’s no reason to deny either of us that pleasure.

I’m going to be devastated either way when he leaves. So I can be heartbroken without ever having had the chance to share all of myself with him, or I can be heartbroken and have no regrets.

I choose no regrets every damn time.

No holding back, no more stilted dates, no fighting it.

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