Page 5 of A Sip of Sherry

It had been a month since the Halloween party, three weeks since I officially started at Vine Valley Vineyard, and four weeks of absolute hell.Once I’d tasted heaven, everything else felt like punishment, and Sherry was heaven.

Instead of revisiting the absolute euphoria that was Sherry’s body and mind, it was nothing more than professional niceties when she was forced to coordinate with me for her events.There were no stolen glances or kisses.Sherry acted as if our night together never happened.

Maybe I should have been relieved that she was blowing me off.Screwing a Grasso was not part of my plan, and I shouldn’t have pursued her that night.I should have walked away.I fucked up like I always did, and now I was too deep on two ends of conflicting sides.

How could I have walked away?She was literally the Alice to my Mad Hatter.She was beautiful and adorably klutzy.Her smile lit up my soul in a way I didn’t think was possible.

And now… she moved through the day like she hadn’t dug her nails into my shoulders, cried out my name in breathless desperation, and drenched my cock as her orgasm sent her into convulsions.My dick jumped at the vivid memory that played on a constant reel in my mind.

That night, I thought it would be one and done, get her out of my system and continue with the plan, but one time wasn’t enough.The craving grew with each day that she ignored me, making me as mad as the hatter I’d dressed as.

My hand was tired of jerking me off, and my brain craved a new reel to play.Yet Sherry was completely immune to my charm, as if fucking me hadn’t wrecked her in the way it wrecked me.

She had a Thanksgiving party for a local company and set up a meeting with me through the company calendar to discuss logistics.

No call.No email.Just a calendar invite with a subject line so sterile it might as well have been sent by a stranger.Still, I showed up five minutes early like a goddamn idiot, hoping maybe she was ready to talk about something other than table set ups and inventory.

I walked into the barn where the event was going to take place, and she was already there with a tablet in hand.Her brown hair was pulled into some kind of messy twist at the nape of her neck, a few strands escaping to frame her face.Her deep green sweater was tucked into dark jeans that molded to her ass to perfection.

The overhead lights highlighted her delicate features, and a calm confidence radiated from her.

“All set to go over storage layout for the rentals?”she asked without even looking up from the tablet.

I always pacified her and went along with the act as if I didn’t have my cock inside her only a month ago, but maybe she just needed me to be the one who cracked first.“Sure,” I said, stepping closer to her.She sucked in a breath, and it was so sudden and so understated, if I wasn’t so close to her, I would have missed it.“Maybe before we get to the rentals, you could look at me.”

Her fingers paused over the tablet and slowly, if not reluctantly, she lifted her gaze to mine.Those light brown eyes that had been filled with joy and desire were now cold and unreadable.

“Are you through?”she asked.“I have somewhere I have to be in twenty minutes, and I need to get this done.”

“Is this how it’s going to be from now on?You pretend like nothing happened between us.”I didn’t want to sound like a fucking wounded bird, but it’s how I felt, even though I had no right to feel anything at all when it came to Sherry.Not when she didn’t know the truth about who I was and what actually brought me here.

“I don’t date coworkers,” she said as if she had rehearsed it.“At the time, you weren’t my coworker.Now you are, and as far as I’m concerned, nothing happened between us.Now the rentals.”

She turned the tablet toward me as if it was an exclamation point at the end of our conversation.I didn’t look at the screen.I looked at her.

Because fuck that.

“You don’t kiss someone like that and walk away clean.”

If it was that fucking easy, I would have.It was the out I needed to put distance between us and eliminate any distractions, focus on why I was here, but I couldn’t forget, no matter how hard I’d tried.

She didn’t as much as flinch, but her grip tightened on the tablet.It was the tiniest of signs, but after a month of nothing, it was all I had.

“You still think about that night too, don’t you?”

Her jaw clenched, shoulders straightened.“Of course I do,” she hissed.“It was… nice, but circumstances have changed.You’re already making things awkward, and the last thing I want is my personal life affecting the vineyard.”

Guilt slammed into me.“I didn’t mean to make it awkward.”

She rubbed the back of her neck like the tension of the conversation settled there.“You didn’t.It’s not you.Forget I said that.Can we just please finish here?”

It was more than I had gotten out of her in weeks, so I put my tail between my legs.“Sure.”

A slight smile touched the edge of her mouth, her light brown eyes softening.“Thank you.Now.”She turned the tablet back to me and went right into work mode, as if her confession didn’t throw my world off kilter.

She moved toward the back, her heel sinking into the space between floorboards.She stumbled and my hand shot out, grabbing her waist and hauling her to me before she could face plant into the wood.Her floral scent wrapped around me, her warmth seeping into my skin.

“I got you,” I said against her ear.

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