“Helps that I mean every word …”
I locate the master suite and load my suitcase onto the plush king bed, digging out my toiletry bag and tucking into the bathroom to get cleaned up. When I emerge, Trey is perched on the mattress, resting against a stack of propped pillows, shoes kicked off and hands behind his head. With eyes closed and his brows furrowed, I can only imagine how heavy his mind is. Everything he’s worked for is riding on this weekend.
He deserve a respite.
And I need a distraction.
I climb up, settling across his lap, the hem of my dress tugging up to expose my thighs. Peering at me through a squinted gaze the color of an autumn sunset, he grips my hips, pushing me onto him as his cock pulses, growing firm between my legs.
“I’ve been waiting for this all day,” he says.
I wasn’t in the mood for anything remotely physical after the car ride here nor was I in a mindset to fantasize about screwing Trey while I was drinking margaritas with Nolan and his wife, but now … losing myself in his wanton gaze, I’m transported somewhere else completely.
Nothing outside that door exists—I’m ready to surrender myself in his arms.
Leaning in, I graze my mouth against his, breathing in his familiar, comforting scent as he works the back zipper of my dress and pulls it over my head. Next, he unfastens my bra, tossing it aside, and I work the buttons of his dress shirt until his smooth, muscled chest fills my palms.
I’m still not used to making love in daylight, but I push the nagging thought from my mind, refusing to let it harden my body and steal my breath.
Flipping me to my back, Trey slides my panties down to my ankles using his teeth, and when he returns to my middle, he kisses my C-section scar before working lower to my mound and then dragging his tongue down the length of my slit.
He spreads my thighs wide, tasting me with generous strokes, and I melt into the mattress, all but dissolving as I give myself to him on this bed in Nolan’s guest house.
It’s the sweetest revenge. Poetic almost.
But I turn my focus to the man who makes me forget who I am, who I was, to the man who adores me exactly as I am, even when I’m not quite sure of that myself.
I grip his thick, dark hair and close my eyes.
And for the first time in a long time, I bask in the familiar bloom of warmth that fills my heart.
I never thought I could love again.
But maybe … just maybe … I could love him.
Forty-Six
Nolan
Present
“They’re lovely, aren’t they?” My wife massages organic chamomile lotion into her hands before climbing beneath the covers Friday night. She sidles up to me, the way she does on the nights she’s willing to get “frisky” (as she likes to call it). “Reminds me of us when we were young.”
When we were in college, we couldn’t keep our fucking hands off each other.
During our twenties, medical school stole most of her time, attention, and energy. And I was constantly fending off competition. Never mind my last name or the zeroes in my back account, it’s impossible to compete with a dashing man in scrubs who can carry on an intelligent conversation about medicine without yawning.
“Christ, Anabelle. We’re not that old,” I say, and then I slip my arm over her shoulders because I shouldn’t have snapped. She did nothing wrong. She’s never done anything wrong.
I don’t deserve Anabelle—which is why I’ll stop at nothing to protect what we have.
The TV flickers across the room as her fingertips trail down my chest and stomach and travel below the comforter. In the dim bedroom light, I count her ribs beneath her silk pajama top.
One … two … three … four …
She’s skin and bones. And it’s no surprise. She never sits still. She’s always doting on me, the kids, our guests …
She even dotes on the help for crying out loud.
The other day Margaux had a mild cough and Ana ordered her to bed, personally delivering her two Sudafed pills and a cup of lavender tea.
“You think they enjoyed themselves tonight?” Anabelle draws in an exhausted breath as she pumps my length in her hand.
“Of course.” I offer a reassuring nod. “You’re a world class hostess.”
I can’t recall the last time my wife actually let me inside of her. A year ago? Maybe two? And it was on my birthday, so it was obviously a pity fuck.
That’s the thing no one ever tells you about marriage and kids—if you’re not careful, they suck all the passion out of your relationship and leave a shell in its place that no amount of couples counseling or sex therapy can ever fill.