Page 14 of Begin Again Again

He said it so quietly, Beth barely heard him. She pressed her head back into his chest. “Yeah. Can we go back to your place?”

“That what you want?”

“Yeah. Can you get us an Uber?”

“Sure,” he said and she could hear his smile. “I might need my hands though.”

Beth got to her feet, feeling like a newborn lamb.

He pulled out his phone. “You need the bathroom?”

No, Beth needed him to kiss her. Toeat her. To force her over the table and fuck her until she screamed. She shook her head.

“Good. Bethany?”

“Yeah?”

Byron jerked his head at the door. “I’ll get this. Head out front. I’ll meet you there.”

Beth’s insides squirmed.Yes fucking sir.

She was halfway there when doubt caught her. She turned. “Are you sure you don’t want me to…?”

Byron didn’t so much as glance up. “Out front.”

A nearby couple looked over. The man looked offended. The woman… Beth was pretty sure the woman knew exactly how Beth felt. It could be an act, the bossy hypermasculine tone. It could just be how he behaved when he knew he had a sure thing, but Beth didn’t care. It was hot, and if he was half the authoritarian in bed, hewouldbe the best sex she’d ever had. Beth pushed open the glass door and headed into the night to wait for Byron Thomas.

Chapter 3

“This is your place?”

“Yeah.”

Beth stared at the three-story white rendered mansion. This was not where she pictured a young bachelor tradie hanging his hat. Was he rich? Hewascalled Byron… but that was because of the bay. Beth’s stomach swooped; did he live with his parents? No. He’d mentioned a roommate in the Uber. D-something. Derek? Beth hoped not. At school, guys had hollered ‘Derek’ whenever they wedged a thumb into each other’s buttcracks through their shorts. Which was often. Catholic school was odd.

“Hey.” Byron wrapped his rough hand around hers. “We don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to.”

Beth’s insides fluttered. “Thanks, but I promise I want to be here. Lead the way.”

The house smelled like boys, but in a nice way—aftershave and lamb chops and woodsmoke. She stared down the dimly lit hallway. Byron’s place looked even bigger from the inside, wide and sparsely designed in a way that screamed money. Even if Byron and the unfortunately named Derek were renting, the house would cost a bomb.

So—gorgeous, tall, young, intelligent, mature, and now rich.Beth bared her teeth to the dark. She was punching with this one. She was punching so fucking high. She felt Byron watching her and rearranged her face into a smile. “Nice place.”

“Thanks.” He pulled her gently toward the hall. “Let’s have a drink on the porch.”

Beth’s stomach dropped. As nervous as she was of going directly to Byron’s room, she didn’t know if she could handle another beverage. When you didn’t drink, constantly consuming liquid was as needless as shelling and eating peanuts throughout an evening. But something in Byron’s face made her bite her tongue. Not nerves exactly, more an animal awareness she was also a stranger, and she wasn’t the only one who needed to be comfortable going to his room.

“Sure,” she said, smiling at him. “A drink sounds good.”

He brightened, leading her through the hall and into a huge white marble kitchen. An entire glass-fronted cabinet was dedicated to liquor bottles. Beth spotted all her old favourites, familiar as Disney princesses—Jameson, Cointreau, 1801 tequila…

“I’m gonna have a whiskey.” Byron opened the cabinet and grabbed a bottle of Laphroaig and a crystal tumbler. “What do you want to drink?”

It was a question that always split Beth’s new life from her old like a banana peel. Once upon a time, it would have been tequila on the rocks. Or she’d have offered to mix them both dirty gin martinis, a fuckstrat that allowed her to show off her skills and tell a few flirty stories from her time bartending at Code, Auckland’s stickiest nightclub.

As she watched Byron pour his whiskey, Beth could almost see that future—the smell of gin, Byron grinning as she charmed him. People thought men didn’t need to be charmed, but it was Beth’s experience that guys liked being bought drinks and asked about themselves as much as women did. It made them open up, laugh with you. It made sex better. You could always talk more freely about what you wanted in bed once you’d laughed together. She’d been so good at that once, building intimacy with strangers. Because what was alcohol except an intimacy accelerator?

A Class A carcinogen.

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