The Wrong Bond

16

He gripped my hair and slammed into me from behind, catching me off guard. My fingers dug into the duvet as another thrust knocked the air out of my lungs. I could barely hear my own thoughts. The only things I could hear were the sound of my moans and Shawn’s groans.

My third o****m of the night crashed over me, so powerful and all-consuming it drowned out every sound, including my cry of release. Shawn groaned loudly as he came inside of me.

He slumped beside me and cradled me in his arms. Suddenly, being Shawn’s mistress didn’t sound that bad.

“Rise and shine.” I heard Shawn’s voice in my sleep before bright light burned into my eyelids.

I stretched my tired limbs and sank deeper into the duvet, memories from the night before flooding my mind. I couldn’t believe we’d gone that far, and a large chunk of it felt like a dream.

A deliciously appealing dream. A dream I never wanted to wake up from.

“It’s morning,” Shawn said, walking around the room.

“I never pegged you as a morning person,” I mumbled from inside the duvet.

“What did you peg me as?” he asked.

“I really don’t know.”

I had no idea if it was shyness or if I just hadn’t done something like this before, but I couldn’t poke my head out for the life of me.

The memories of my moans and writhing underneath him flooded my mind, and that was all I could think about. I hadn’t exactly handled myself with pride.

I’d been completely myself, because it was hard not to when Shawn Elton was f*****g me into the sheets. The images, somehow blurry but vivid at the same time, ran wild in my brain. And one after the other, they flashed around in my head like a supercut, each one wilder and more wanton than the last.

“We’re going for breakfast,” Shawn said to me. “I want to show you around.”

I frowned underneath the covers. Showing a woman around was something he was supposed to be doing with his girlfriend or his wife. I didn’t think there was any universe where a man showed his mistress around.

That wasn’t the point of this relationship. It would be destroying every single thread of the terms that held it together, and that was the last thing I wanted.

I finally poked my head out of the covers. My hair was definitely sticking out in all directions, and I gently rubbed my eyes and lips to get rid of any sleep crusts that festered there.

Somehow, I was still very self-conscious about how I looked. Because Shawn looked like a freaking supermodel even though he had just woken up about ten minutes earlier.

“Are you sure you want to be seen out with me?” I asked, my eyebrows arching up.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he said, pulling on a shirt.

I felt my mouth water as the hair that trailed from his stomach into his pants disappeared.

“Maybe because you’re insanely popular here and I’m not even an uptown wolf,” I mumbled.

“And?”

I groaned. “Shawn, you know what I mean.”

A small smile played on his lips. “They can only speculate, nothing more. We have nothing to worry about. Now go get ready.”

I brushed my teeth, had a quick shower, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and got dressed before stepping into Shawn’s car. It was very obvious that both of us were not willing to discuss what had happened the night before.

I could still feel the remnants of our heated session on my skin, and it made me tingle with need.

“I hope you’re hungry,” he asked, driving away from his mansion.

“I could eat,” I responded, my stomach growling immediately.

Shawn chuckled. “Yup, I can hear that.”

I laughed and put a hand on my stomach. “That was embarrassing.”

“That told me everything I needed to know.”

I smiled. “Here,” he said as he threw a hoodie at me. “We might need this.”

I frowned at the hoodie. “Why?”

“Just trust me.”

And I did, so I shrugged into the hoodie that smelled like him.

“I’m going to take you to my favorite breakfast place. Their pancakes are to die for.”

“I don’t know if I trust your judgment.”

He shook his head sadly. “Even after I proved to you last night that I make the best pasta in a twenty-mile radius?”

I laughed, but all I could think about was what happened after the pasta. “It was pretty good pasta. So this breakfast place…is it your staple?”

Shawn shrugged. “It was. But I haven’t been there in years.”

“Why not?”

“I have breakfast on the way to work, so I always get something to-go. And this is the first time in a long time that I’ll be taking a day off, so I might just use this time to sit down and enjoy breakfast.”

“Well then, does that mean you’re happy I’m here?” I asked with a small smile.

“Definitely,” he responded.

After zooming through the city, past huge billboards and tarred roads that didn’t have any sign of potholes, we got to a vintage-looking café. It had a retro neon sign in front, but all the letters of the sign were present, unlike the one at Mark’s Bar.

“I didn’t think it would look this way,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

Shawn gestured toward the door. “You’re about to have the best pancakes ever, and I should warn you that there’s no going back once you try them.”

A thrill shot through me, and I tried not to smile at how passionate he was. I stepped through the door, and it was like I’d been teleported to a breakfast place in the eighties.

The cracked linoleum tiles did not look dingy or rough. Instead, they looked like they had been cracked on purpose to serve as decoration for the café. There was a jukebox by the corner. None of the decorations seemed real; they looked like freshly-made replicas.

“This is trying to be like all the rundown cafés downtown,” I said out loud to Shawn.

“In a sick, twisted way, some places uptown are decorated to match the vibe of places downtown,” he said.

“Why?” I asked with a pronounced frown on my face. “It’s like they’re cosplaying poverty. It rubs me the wrong way.”

“Like I said, it’s sick and twisted, but I brought you here to enjoy the food, not rate the decor,” he said, leading me to a booth in the corner of the café.

“You’re really setting the bar high for these pancakes. I’ve had great pancakes before, just so you know.”