The Life You Stole (Life Duet 2)

After sleeping with Lila for nearly four hours … I eased my arm out from underneath her and sat up on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t normal to sleep that long during the day unless you were exhausted.

“The chemo is draining you.”

She didn’t respond, but it was the only logical explanation.

“You felt me … you felt what I felt, didn’t you,” she whispered.

The desire …

I nodded without looking back at her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Nothing happened.”

Something happened. However, my Lila-high prevented me from making more of it. Worrying about it. And our time together did something to her as well. I felt her sense of peace too. Maybe we should have felt more regret. There were a lot of maybes.

Maybe I should have died.

Maybe Lila should have died.

Maybe life was far more complicated than anyone could fully comprehend.

I stood. “Thank you.”

Just as I reached the bedroom door, Lila whispered, “You’re welcome.”

I messaged Evie before pulling out of the Porter estate, letting her know I’d be home in time for dinner. While I had no right to feel good, not after what happened with Lila, I couldn’t help it. I had a high and I wanted to ride it until I crashed to the earth again.

Just as I pulled into the city limits of Aspen, Evie messaged me. I veered off the road to read it.

Evie: Broken shipment arrived today. Sophie’s at our house watching the kids while I figure out what to salvage. I’ll be home in about an hour. Tell Sophie thanks and that I’ll see her Monday.

Fate winked at me, and some greater power—a need—steered my car in the direction of Clean Art. I dug out my key since it was after closing time and let myself inside, locking the door behind me.

Music played from the back room. Twenty-one Pilots “My Blood.”

Evie glanced up at me, wiping the outside of an amber glass bottle. Something—maybe lemon or grapefruit—hung heavily in the air.

“Hey! What are you doing—”

I grabbed her head and kissed her hard, making her stumble back into the opposing stainless-steel bench. Until I tasted the recesses of her mouth, I didn’t fully understand how badly I needed my wife. All of her.

Evie could right wrongs, even if she didn’t fully understand it. And from the way she gasped for breath when my mouth gave her a short second of reprieve, she didn’t understand anything happening at that moment.

“Roe … what the… Roe …” I had her sweatpants and panties at her ankles in under two seconds and my mouth between her legs.

“Jesus … Roe …”

Evie clenched my hair in her hands to steady herself as we shared drunken gazes. Maybe she didn’t know why I drove to her shop, why it couldn’t wait, but no words questioned my intentions in that moment. She didn’t question my need to fill her, fucking her from behind, on the table, and one more time just for good measure against the bathroom sink after she cleaned herself up.

“Ronin …” She finally relinquished a concerned expression as I wordlessly put back on my clothes and fished my keys out of my pocket.

“See you at home.” I winked, leaving her with a half-sorted shipment of broken products and a million questions. I also left her with three pretty spectacular orgasms.

Evie wouldn’t find a bottle of Lila in my pocket, but she knew something wasn’t normal. Normal felt like an unreachable goal by that point in our marriage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Evelyn

After the sex ambush at my shop, I arrived home to dinner on the table and the kids ready for bed. That meant one thing … I wasn’t going to get much sleep that night. Ronin sang his karaoke heart out in the shower while I put the kids in bed.

“I think you have some explaining to do.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the side of the bathroom doorframe as Ronin toweled off.

“About what?” He smirked, sauntering in my direction.

“You know about what.”

“Oh, that? Well, we can talk about that later.” He hung his towel on the hook before bending down to whisper in my ear, “Because I’m not done yet.”

I followed his naked body into the closet, knowing the only thing keeping him from ripping off my clothes was the fact that Franz had only been in bed for ten minutes.

“At the risk of sounding forty, is there a reason why we can’t have normal sex three or four times a week, instead of Tarzan and Jane sex every couple of weeks for like … seven hours straight?”

Ronin slid on a pair of boxer briefs. “Is there something wrong with Tarzan and Jane sex? I like it … a lot.”

I liked it too. Although, by the time he lifted me onto the bathroom vanity at my shop and rammed into me for round two, like a robot with an endless battery supply, I longed for the days of quiet, slow, missionary sex with a child in our bed sleeping and oblivious to our actions.