BOOK TWO in the STEAMY FORBIDDEN ROMANCE series -- please read BOOK ONE, Illicit, before proceeding with this novel!
Coralie Watson, now living in NYC to focus on her singer/songwriter career, has landed herself in quite the predicament. Stuck in a...
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♫ And now you have only made me miss you Come get me Come love me, baby come love me ♪ (BANKS—Lovesick)
Except Coralie did tell someone about her extra-curricular affairs. She informed the one person who often judged though she shouldn't, and yet who always provided advice and support—Delilah.
But Delilah was in no mood to advise or support that day, despite being curious and beseeching Coralie for all the details.
"So you're cheating on Michael with Ryan." Coralie shrugged, and Delilah blinked. "And now you're cheating on Ryan with Chester? Phew, girl, I can't keep up with this."
"Not cheating." Coralie groaned. "Cheating implies it's an ongoing thing and it'll happen again, which it won't. I cheated. It was one kiss in the elevator... and I might have masturbated a few times thinking of him, too." She recalled the occasion in her office, then the quick session in her shower an hour prior, and envisioned the long, drawn-out spell she'd surely have in the middle of the night. "But that's it. It won't happen again. I can't let it."
"Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that." Delilah scoffed and returned to the stove, where she'd been stirring a pot of homemade spaghetti sauce. The smell—herbs and tomatoes and spices—flurried into Coralie's nostrils, and almost replaced her lustful hunger with a real hunger for food.
But though she was famished, nothing seemed to drown out her desire for Chester. Not the pasta boiling in another pot, not the wine she'd chugged after her shower, and not the text message she'd received from Michael telling her they needed to talk ASAP. She'd responded to the latter with an "okay, I'll be available," and shoved her phone into her jeans pocket.
"Am I hallucinating?" She took another swig of wine, and felt her phone buzzing, but ignored it. "Did he actually do it? Pin me up against an elevator wall not once but twice, and on the second time make-out with me as if we were drunk in the back of some shitty bar? And then ditch me without a word?"
Delilah grunted. "Yeah, he did, and worst of all? You let him."
"I wanted to shove him off," said Coralie, sniffing in the delicious aroma emanating from the pots. "But... I mean... I'd been picturing it all morning. For days, even." She unleashed a breath so heavy, so deep, that she felt herself deflating like a balloon popping and releasing air. "But I have no clue what it meant, nor what he wants, nor what I should want. Or what I should do. And yet... I had to get it out of my system, right? Yeah, I should have stopped him, but..."
"But you're a filthy, thirsty, greedy little bitch and you can't help yourself." Coming from anyone else, such a sentence would have stung; but Coralie knew Delilah's chiding came from the heart. And in any case, Delilah's demeanor shifted as she giggled; any trace of her earlier disgust—or was it jealousy? Coralie hadn't been able to tell—had dissipated. She strained the pasta and tossed it into a large, bright green bowl. "Look, you do you, babe, I've told you this. I won't judge, not too harshly, at least. But sooner or later, you will have to face the facts and bite the bullet and all the other dumb clichés. Because you'll have to end things with one... ugh, now two of them before you all get hurt."
