The Pretend Boyfriend novel Chapter 39

"I'll promise not to tell you where that finger has been if you promise not to tell anyone I can't play."

She laughs. "I guess I'd better ask you to promise to point me the way to the bathroom."

"The swimming pool is out there just in case you need a larger body of water."

She gives him a knowing look and disappears in the direction of the guest bathroom.

He shrugs his tuxedo jacket off and goes to the bar. An array of liquor bottles greets him. He wonders what she would like. Something hard? Or maybe a little wine? He picks up a shot glass and pours himself some bourbon.

She reappears - in his white silk bathrobe. Her cleavage is pronounced in between the lapels, and she has the sash loosely tied around her waist. He can see that she has an amazing body under the robe. Her red hair falls prettily around her shoulders. She carries her partially wet green dress.

"Bourbon?" he asks her.

"No, I think I will have myself some vodka."

"I'm Brian Morton, by the way."

"Delilah."

Fetching name, he thinks.

He puts down his drink on the bar. "Well, Delilah, if you don't mind, I think I will change into something more comfortable before I get bourbon all over my dress suit."

"Do you have a tumble dryer?"

"It's over that way in the laundry room, which is behind the kitchen." He points her in the direction. "Make yourself at home."

When he comes back to the lounge, in jeans and a grey sleeveless tee which shows off his shoulder muscles to maximal effect, she is seated on his black leather sofa, sipping vodka. She pushes an identical glass towards him.

"I don't like to drink alone," she says.

Her eyelashes bat suggestively at him. So she's also a predator. He likes that. He wonders what she would be in bed with her hair all mussed up and sprawled gloriously upon the pillow.

A fleeting image of Sam graces the top of his mind, but he pushes it away. This was their deal, after all. They are just 'hanging out'. No obligations, no commitments, no regrets. The way they both like it.

He blinks to clear the daze and kisses her with climbing fervor. His hands grow bolder. He gropes her waist, her buttocks, her thighs. He doesn't come up for air as his tongue probes her mouth.

He feels her hands go around his head, gripping bunches of his hair, and then down his back.

The rest of the evening spirals away into blackness. A blackness that he will try very hard to remember for a long time ... but can't.

There's a pounding in his head that he can't get away from. Someone is hammering nails into the base of his skull. A splitting headache like a hundred hangovers rolled into one comes charging through the noise, breaking through the barriers of murkiness and haze and dreams filled with shadowy figures that are wraiths and yet not wraiths.

He claws through the murk and tries to open his sleep-encrusted eyes. Shapes swim into being. A vivid red and gold pattern assails his vision, and he realizes that he is face down on his own lounge carpet. To be precise, his one hundred thousand Persian weave. The house-warming present from his billionaire uncle's wife.

He raises his head. There is a persistent knocking on his front door. He groans. His body feels as though a steamroller has flattened it. He raises himself to his elbows.

The door bursts open and feet clatter into his apartment. Black boots, regulation style.

"Mr. Morton?" says an unfamiliar voice.

Brian squints into the light, dazed. Outside, the sun is streaming through the ceiling-to-floor glass windows. He holds a hand up to block out the light. He thought he had drawn the fucking curtains.