Exposed (Ethan Frost 3)

Sebastian’s orders? I wonder, as I reach for the small card sitting there. Then smile when I open it and realize, no, this is Tori’s doing. Knowing Chloe will be touched, I leave the card on the table for her to read before popping open the bottle of champagne.

I can hear the shower running now, and for a moment I think about climbing in with Chloe. Making love to her in the shower is one of my favorite activities in the world. It comes right after making love to her on the beach, making love to her on my patio, making love to her in my bed…

And yes, I am completely single-minded when it comes to my wife.

Deciding to let her have her time in the shower so as not to ruin the surprise of the lingerie she’s got planned, I grab the bottle of champagne and wander into the bedroom with some vague idea of turning down the bed. But the hotel’s turndown service has already done that—no big surprise. What is a surprise, however, is the large, black box sitting on the pillow on my side of the bed.

It has a sparkly blue bow and a small card on it and I can’t help wondering if this is another wedding present from Tori. But as I get closer, I realize it’s addressed To My Husband. Chloe. I can’t stop the smile that stretches across my face.

I gave her my gift earlier, a pair of flawless, two-carat, emerald cut diamond earrings that perfectly match the five-carat diamond engagement ring I slipped on her finger during the plane ride here. I bought them this morning when I was getting the ring because I couldn’t resist the thought of seeing her wearing them and nothing else, but I didn’t expect her to get me anything—after all, the wedding was about as short notice as we could get.

I strip off my jacket and ruined dress shirt before kicking off my shoes and settling on the bed with the bottle of champagne on the nightstand next to me and Chloe’s present on my stomach. I don’t open it—I’ll wait for her for that—but I do shake it a little. Unlike my wife of three and a half hours, I love surprises. Especially when they come from her.

Whatever’s in the box shifts and moves, piquing my curiosity. In the bathroom, the shower cuts off, and a couple minutes later, Chloe pokes her head out of the bathroom door. Her face is scrubbed clean, her hair piled on top of her head in a haphazard topknot, and she’s dressed in nothing but a white hotel towel.

She’s never looked more beautiful.

“Well?” she asks with a mischievous grin. “Are you going to open it?”

“I was waiting for you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Excuse me, but when I come to bed, I expect to be the only present you open for quite a while.” She nods toward the box. “Go ahead. Look inside.”

And with that, she closes the bathroom door with a loud crack that echoes through the suite.

It’s stupid, but my hands are shaking as I follow her orders, tugging at the ribbon that is the only thing keeping the lid on the box. Except it’s not stupid, is it? Because it isn’t nerves that have me trembling—Chloe is my wife and nothing can change that now. It’s relief. Overwhelming, all-encompassing relief that we made it through all the bullshit to end up here. No matter what happens, no matter what the future brings, she’s mine now. She’ll always be mine.

With that thought running through my head on a loop, I open the box. And laugh in delight. Because this is just one more piece of evidence proving that Chloe knows me better than anyone else on earth. It’s a cookbook, one devoted exclusively to smoothie recipes.

I lift it out of the box and find there are a bunch of other little things beneath it. Because, when I’m not going for the grand gesture, that’s what Chloe and I do. We collect little things that remind us of each other and send them to each other just because. I started it with a Vitamix and a bunch of strawberries—hence the smoothie cookbook—but after a not-so-brief power struggle over the blender, Chloe went with it. Because she gets me. Because she knows what the wacky collections of odds and ends she sends mean to me.

I start with the cookbook, opening the front cover to find Chloe has written, “To Ethan: If I’m going to be waking up to a smoothie every morning for the rest of my life, I figure you need a few new recipes. Xoxo, Chloe

I’m still grinning as I flip through the book, noting a couple recipes (sans blueberries, of course) that I think my wife might like. Then I move on to the rest of the treasures at the bottom of the box, and impossibly, I grow even happier. Because the collection of mismatched things proves that Chloe has been thinking about me a lot, even in the time we were broken up. There’s no way all of the things here came from high-end boutiques in Vegas. Which means she brought some of them with her from California. Which means she was collecting them for me even when we weren’t together.

The knowledge warms me because I’ve been doing the same thing. Even as I told myself to let her go, even as I swore that it would be better for her not to have to look at me every day and be reminded of what my brother did to her, I’d been picking up little things I thought she would like. Odds and ends that I hoped would make her smile. That she was doing the same—that she’d been as unwilling to let go of what we had as I’d been—means more than I can even wrap my head around.

The first thing I pick up from the bottom of the box is a piece of sea glass the same bright, verdant green as Chloe’s eyes. It’s smooth and shiny and cold, rounded at the edges from years of being tossed around in the ocean, of being beaten against the shore. Instinctively, I close my eyes and make a wish as I turn the glass between my thumb and forefinger again and again and again. It’s something Chloe taught me to do weeks ago, when we first found a piece of sea glass—red that time—on the private beach near my house in La Jolla. She’d insisted our wishes be frivolous then. Tonight, I’m hard-pressed to keep my wish light. Not when I now have so much to lose.

I slip the now warm glass into my pants pocket for safekeeping, then pick up the small box of salted caramels from Whole Foods that she’s also given me. I mentioned once, in passing, that they were my favorite. I can’t believe she remembered.

Next comes a small, strawberry-scented candle from Mr. Zog’s. Again, it blows me away that she remembered strawberry’s my favorite sex wax scent—she’s only seen me surf a few times, seen me wax my surfboard even less, and yet she still manages to get the scent right.

The fourth item I pick up is a heavy keychain in silver and gold. It’s a compass, beautifully crafted and totally functional—I can’t stop myself from holding it up and checking to see if it can find due north. It can, and as I admire it some more, I notice that the back is just a little rougher than I expect it to be. Turning it over, I read the words Chloe had engraved for me.

For Ethan, the man who will always be my home.

A wave of love swamps me, so overwhelming that my heart stutters in my chest and I can’t help wondering if, by the time morning creeps across the sky, there will be any part of my soul that she doesn’t own. Any portion that still belongs to me. Or if I’ll miss the loss…or even notice it.

I gently put the compass aside, then reach for the last thing in the box—a small piece of translucent paper, folded several times. I pull it out, unfold it slowly, then read the words scrawled across it in Chloe’s flowing script.

I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours—the kisses—the hotness—the wetness—all melting together—the being held so tight that it hurts—the strangle and the struggle.

—From a love letter by Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz

Fuck.

My cock grows hard at the words, at the darkness and the power and the need revealed by every syllable. I’ve had Chloe half a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours and still it doesn’t seem to matter. I want her with everything I have, everything I am. I always will.