CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: CHLOE

The next few days passed by at what felt like the speed of light.

The opening of Adair Travel’s flagship letting office was in one little day, and Theodore and I spent most of the working week up to our eyeballs in paperwork, phone calls, and errands.

Well, he was mostly the phone calls, I was mostly the errands, and the paperwork was a good split of the two.

Auntie Pat came in and out of the cottage without so much as a whisper. Often the only sign of her having been here was the absence of toast crumbs on the kitchen counter and a hot meal stewing away in the slow cooker.

I still wasn’t comfortable allowing her to do my laundry or any other personal chores for me, but I’d come to accept the food she cooked and the fact she always made time to hoover my bedroom floor and put fresh flowers on top of the drawers.

I was going to miss those flowers when I went home.

The food was especially welcome amidst the chaos of our work. I spent half my days going back and forth between the store on the high street to co-ordinate with the assistant manager, Lennon, and the sales associate, Sarah, who was helping him oversee everything.

When I wasn’t driving back and forth across Buckley Heath, I was running around after Theodore in the office. Given how busy we were, we’d decided to go half-business, half-casual for our office work wardrobe. For me, that was slippers, leggings instead of pencil skirts or real trousers, and t-shirts that could either be smart or casual.

For Theodore, his business-casual was a shirt and tie on top and sweatpants on the bottom. If it weren’t already a weird combination, I’d discovered what was perhaps his one true vice: patterned socks.

And I wasn’t talking about spots or stripes, either.

I was talking hot dogs. Seashells. Pizza. Cats. Footballs and other various sports paraphernalia. One pair was even covered with mini faces of the Grinch.

Never had anything been as baffling as seeing him yell at someone for their incompetence over a video chat while wearing socks covered with little cat faces.

I knew I’d seen several sides of him that I hadn’t known existed until now, but the socks were a bit jarring.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to them. Not on his feet, anyway.

Which was why when Thursday came around and I’d returned from spending most of my afternoon at the Adair Travel store, I handled whatever he needed in the office and left him and his stupid-arse hot dog socks to his video call with his dad.

Nobody would ever take him seriously if they saw his socks.

I said that, but there was something strangely endearing about him being a collector of crazy socks.

At least I knew what to get him for Christmas this year.

Huh.

Christmas.

Right. It didn’t matter.

He wasn’t the boss I’d be buying a Christmas present for this year.

Why did that make my chest hurt a little bit?

I shook off those feelings and rolled out my yoga mat on the living room floor. There was no time to contemplate such matters when I had so little of it as it was.

I had a love-hate relationship with yoga. I loved the quiet peace I found while doing it, but I hated that I pushed myself so hard every time. That said, it was definitely preferable to cardio, so there was no way I would stop doing it.

It was one of the few true enjoyments I had to escape into in my life.

Yoga and Korean food.

If I could have those, I was a happy Chloe.

I adjusted my right earbud until it was properly wedged in place and hit play on the lo-fi playlist I had set aside for my workouts. My ears were filled with the calming music as I played the workout video on the TV and got started. I wouldn’t normally do yoga with earbuds in, but since Theodore was on a call with his father, I didn’t want to accidentally interrupt it with my music. Even the workout video itself was muted with subtitles on, although I didn’t need them. I’d done this one so many times I could do it with my eyes closed, but it was nice to feel as though there was someone else in the room with me.

I moved through the positions one by one, only slightly off from the timing of the video. Even with all the furniture moved back I didn’t have a perfect view of the TV, but it was no big deal.

I needed this time before the chaos of the letting office opening tomorrow.

I opened my eyes as I moved into the plank position and found myself right in front of a pair of socked feet. I gritted my teeth as those feet moved and Theodore bent down, barely in my line of sight, saying something.

I had no idea what he was saying. I only knew he was talking because I could see his mouth moving.

What kind of idiot talked to someone torturing themself in the plank position? Didn’t he know I was already dying? What made him think I could reply right now?

“Okay,” I said, hoping it was the right answer to whatever it was he’d said.

I couldn’t hear a thing.

I used noise-cancelling buds for a reason.

Whatever it was, I must have given the correct response, because both his stupid handsome face and idiotic hot dog socks disappeared.

Honestly, if everyone at the office knew he wore funky socks at home, he’d never live it down, especially with Daniel and Melody. I really needed to sneak a picture of him wearing them to use as blackmail.

I was sure I’d need it for something or another.

I worked through the rest of the video, finishing with some slow breathing, and closed my eyes on the yoga mat for a second. Thank God that was done. I’d worked out some of my stress and gotten my muscles moving.

If only it hadn’t been a week since I’d been able to work out.

I was going to be sore tomorrow if I didn’t take care now. I had nothing left to do for today until my promised call with Heidi later, and I needed to at least rinse my body off after the yoga, so I would do my usual and jump in the bath.

I switched the noise in my ears from the lo-fi music to a murder mystery podcast on Spotify and cleared up my mess in the living room, even scooting the sofas and chair back into place. Theodore would probably yell at me for moving it all by myself again, but he’d get over it.

It was just a sofa. It wasn’t that hard to scoot along the floor.

My towels were in the tumble dryer, so I stopped by the mudroom to grab them from the machine before heading upstairs. I could faintly hear the sound of a shower running and paused to look in the direction of Theo’s room.

Was that what he’d told me? That he was done with his call and taking a shower?

Hm. Whatever. I’d be lying if I said the thought of him naked in the same house no longer bothered me, but at least I wasn’t totally flustered by the prospect of it, either.

He wandered around without a shirt on all the time, after all.

Perhaps I was becoming desensitised to his half-naked body after seeing it twenty times a day.

I nudged open the bathroom door and stepped inside.

The room was steamy.

Why was it steamy?

I stopped and blinked, adjusting my eyes to the faint murkiness, and froze.

It wasn’t the shower in his room I’d heard. It was the shower in this room. He was showering in the main bathroom.

Right in front of me.

And he wasn’t only showering, either.

Theodore stood in the large cubicle under the stream of hot running water with his head lowered. One of his hands was planted flat on the wall in front of him, supporting him, and the other was…

Well.

I swallowed.

The other was wrapped around his cock, stroking it.

Why was he doing that in the middle of the day?

I couldn’t hear anything aside from the podcast and the faintest sound of shower water, nor could I move. This was wrong on so, so many levels, but it was as if my feet were glued against the floor, and I could do nothing but clutch my towel to my chest and stare at him.

My erratic heartbeat thundered through my ears, and the warm rush that came with it pooled between my legs. I clenched my thighs together, desperate to stop the arousal that was threatening to wash over me.

It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

His wet, dark hair partially obscured his face, but it didn’t hide the clenching of his jaw as he pleasured himself. Every dip and curve of his muscular body was visible, from his broad shoulders to his thick thighs, and I could even see his forearm veins popping every time he moved his hand.

Oh, God.

I had to leave.

This was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I had no business standing here watching my boss get himself off in the shower. If he turned and—

He was looking at me with wide eyes. His lips moved, and I vaguely heard him say my name, and I stumbled back into the sink.

“I didn’t see anything!” I shouted, shoving away from the sinks and running out of the bathroom. I dropped my towels on the way into my room and slammed the door behind me, quickly twisting the lock and throwing myself onto the bed as if it’d overwrite what I’d just seen.

Oh, God. Oh, God.

I was in so much trouble.

Why hadn’t I left the moment I’d realised he was in the shower? Why had I stood there watching him touch himself?

Why was he touching himself in that shower? What was wrong with his own bathroom? He knew I always took a bath after doing yoga, so why was he in there?

I curled into a ball, removing my earbuds and clenching my legs together. There was nothing small or dull about the arousal I felt flooding my body, and the aching of my clit was almost unbearable.

No.

No.

No.

I could not be this turned on. Not by him.

“Chloe?” He knocked at my door. “What are—”

“Please leave,” I called back, clenching my legs even tighter together like it would stop the ache.

All it did was make it worse thanks to the seam of my yoga pants pressing against my clit.

“I’m embarrassed and need some time,” I said before he could argue. “I didn’t hear anything, and I didn’t see much, so don’t worry.”

He said nothing for a moment before finally, “All right. I’ll finish up and let you know when the bath is free.”

Finish up?

Finish?

What was he going to finish?

Washing his hair? Or his little self-care session?

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I rolled onto my back with my legs still squeezed tightly together and threw my arm over my eyes. Surely, he didn’t mean that he’d finish touching himself, did he? Maybe he did. He’d come in about halfway through my video and if he’d immediately gone to the shower then, perhaps he’d already washed himself, and—

What was I thinking?

This was not solving my downstairs problem. Thinking about him in the shower with the mental image I already had was doing nothing to calm the ache between my legs.

Did I really only have one option here?

It wasn’t like I could walk into the bathroom and be like, “Hey, I caught you touching yourself in the shower and it turned me on, do something about it, you bastard.”

I was pretty open-minded and forward sexually speaking, but there was no way I could say that.

Not to him.

He. Was. My. Boss.

Dealing with this arousal myself wasn’t exactly the best moral outcome here either, but I knew my body well enough to know it wasn’t going to disappear by itself.

Without my earbuds in, I could clearly hear the shower running, even through my closed bedroom door.

Was he really finishing up in there? Was he really finishing off touching himself?

“Shit,” I whispered, sliding my hand down between my legs. My fingers brushed over the outside of my yoga pants, and my muscles clenched when I pressed hard as if it would stem the ache.

I would need more than a hot bath after what I was about to do.

I would need to bathe in bloody holy water.

I slipped my hand beneath the waistband of my yoga pants, parting my legs. Evidence of my arousal was on my underwear as I slid them to the side and touched my fingers to my clit. My fingers moved easily through my wetness, and I bit the inside of my lower lip as I gently pushed one inside myself.

The side of my hand beneath my thumb brushed against my clit, and I adjusted my hips, adding a second finger. I moved them slowly as the shame of what I was doing washed over me.

I was masturbating over my boss.

Over my naked, wet, boss who might have been touching himself in the shower at that very moment.

“Ah,” I breathed, then quickly covered my mouth.

Why was I so turned on by this? By the thought of him stroking his cock in the shower right now as I touched myself?

I was wrong. This was wrong. He was right there, and I was lying here, fucking myself with my fingers at the thought of him getting off.

I needed to finish this.

I slid my fingers out and up towards my clit and quickly found the sensitive spot. I turned my face so my mouth was buried in the crook of my elbow to muffle my quiet moans, then rubbed my clit with my middle finger.

The pleasure that’d built up inside me since the moment I’d laid eyes on Theodore pleasuring himself quickly spilt over, sweeping through me in less than a minute. My clit throbbed beneath my fingertip, and my previously tensed muscles released aside from some light twitching.

What was I doing?

My phone vibrated on the other side of the bed, and I gasped, yanking my hand out from between my legs and wiping my fingers on my yoga pants. They were dirty anyway, and I’d dropped my towel, and I’d already lost my whole fucking mind, so what was a little more stupidity today?

I grabbed my phone with the least sinful of my two hands and typed in my passcode to read the text.

THE BASTARD: The bathroom is empty. I put your towels on the radiator in there.

ME: Thank you.

THE BASTARD: We’ll talk later.

That didn’t sound ominous at all.

But for now… maybe I would just grab my towels and take a shower in my en-suite bathroom.

I wasn’t sure I was in any state to be in the main one right now, and if there was any chance that I could avoid him, I was going to take it.