Page 45 of The Suit

“I sleep on the right…” was her reply as she stormed past me, and I heard her footsteps stomp up the stairs.

“Door at the end of the corridor!” I hollered after her while I retrieved two bottles of water from the fridge. We’d need it; I didn’t plan for us to sleep for a while.

* * *

Dawn was breaking through the blinds as I woke, feeling out beside to me find an empty bed, though the heat of the mattress told me it hadn’t been long since she’d left it.I was surprised; I thought I’d fucked her into the same coma I’d fallen into, especially after three more orgasm on my hands, tongue and dick. At least it gave me something to aim for next time… and yes, there was going to be a next time.

I had no plans to give this up in a hurry.

I quietly padded down the stairs, having checked my bathroom first but there were no signs of her.I wasn’t surprised, I’d been more surprised when she’d actually stayed.

As I turned to head back up to bed, the light of my computer flashing through the study door, still ajar from when I’d been in last night, caught my eye. I’d been working before Beulah turned up, and must have forgotten to switch it off.

I checked the time; if I was lucky, I could still get another few hours shut eye before I had to deal with the day.

9

Beulah

Maloney Feather once said to me‘guilt is for the weak, Beulah,’something I was beginning to think was total bullshit, because whatever it was that had been gnawing inside me the past two days was enough to take down even the strongest individual.

It had started after I’d left my meeting with him and Maynard on Monday afternoon, an unfamiliar sensation that had only gotten worse as the day went on as my mind flitted between my thigh-clenching Friday night and Feather’s orders, which had my blood boiling worse than anything Rafe had ever managed to elicit.

I got up from the couch where I’d been lying most of the morning in my continued yet failed attempt to ignore it for the fourth day in a row and reached over to answer the intercom as it buzzed. “Yes?”

“Hi, boss, Rafe Latham is on line one for you.”

Before I could stop it, my body flushed red-hot at the mention of his name, right before I was sucker-punched in the gut one more time for good measure, just to remind myself what a terrible individual I really was. If I’d thought the gnawing was bad at the beginning of the week, it had increased a hundred-fold after I’d snuck out of his bed yesterday morning.

It didn’t matter that I could still feel him almost two days later, still feel the burning on every millimeter of my skin where his fingers had touched, along with the delicious ache between my thighs. I didn’t matter that I wouldn’t look in the mirror so I couldn’t see his fingerprints still visible on my body, or remember how he’d put them there.

None of it mattered.

I blamed New York. If I was on my home turf, I would never be in this situation. Chicago would have given me the strength to say no. But this was his city, and I was at a disadvantage.

Something my brain only seemed to be realizing now.

No, there was nothing we had to say to each other outside of the case.

I didn’t know what he wanted, but seeing him would only make it a thousand times worse, because it had become crystal clear that when it came to what he could do to my body, I had no ability to refuse. I hadn’t been able to refuse him on Monday, and I was certain I wouldn’t be able to refuse him now. I needed to stay as far away from him as possible because I had no intention of adding another canister of gasoline to the conflict of interest which was Raferty Latham.

“Can you tell him I’m not here, or busy? In fact, send him to Kimberly,” I requested, mentioning the fourth-year associate on my team who should be running the day to day on the case, but since everything had gone to shit, I’d been doing it. And that was going to stop. Today. I’d just decided. “She needs to deal with anything external on the case moving forward, I’ll be in meetings and will deal with Maynard, but she can have the lawyer.”

“Okay, got it.”

As he hung up, all thoughts of Rafe Latham were replaced by my stomach clenching hard enough again that I considered calling Blake back and sending him to the drug store for a bottle of Pepto Bismol.

I moved back to the couch, praying I’d be lucky enough to remain undisturbed while I tried to figure out the predicament I’d found myself in. Although predicament seemed far too tame a word for something that made me feel like my guts were on the verge of producing enough acid to melt me from the inside out.

Dilemma.

Catastrophe.

Catch-22 of disastrous proportions.

I’d hoped I’d be able to ignore it; that Malony Feather wasn’t actually meaning what I thought he was meaning. And I had; I managed to ignore it for a solid fifteen hours until I’d arrived in work on Tuesday morning to find him waiting in my office - scaring the shit out of me - and once more dropping the not-so-subtle threat that my job – a job I’d dedicated my working life to and hustled my ass off for every single day since I’d started as an associate - depended on the outcome of this case. And this case depended on me extracting as much information as possible, like I’d woken up that day and suddenly worked for the fucking CIA. Or maybe he did, seeing as an hour later one of his four assistants had called Blake with the address of Rafe’s apartment. You know,‘in case you’ll find it helpful, Beulah.’

I’d stared at that piece of paper for the best part of two hours before scrunching it up and throwing it in the trash. Then I’d stared at the trash… so I got up and took it back out.

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