Not that she can hear me over the music. I’ve been working a ton of weekends on extra projects for the legal department, going in early and staying late most nights to prove to Kevin that I’ve got what it takes to do this paralegal job. That means we barely get to spend any time together these days. It also means we haven’t had sex in weeks. Not days—weeks. But now Amber’s saying she needs alone time?
I’m trying not to feel pussy hurt. I get that it’s hot and she’s cranky and worried about money, even more so now that she’s fully committed to working for herself. And I’m supposed to have changed into a new guy these days. I mean, I never did take that app off my phone, but I haven’t used it in over six months. I’m a better man. One who can back off when his wife asks for some space. One who doesn’t act like a fucking obsessive psycho when it comes to Amber Reynolds.
But nonetheless…
I pull out my phone and put in the order at our favorite Thai place while she finishes washing out the pan. And when she tries to turn on the burner, I squeeze in behind her, reach around her waist and turn it right back off. “Alexa!” I yell over the music. “Stop.”
Both the singer and the guitars stop snarling death, leaving me with enough quiet to say, “Alexa, play ‘Somethin’ Stupid’ by Frank Sinatra.”
“Luca…” she says.
“Mrs. Ferraro,” I answer, even though she never changed her name. Then I turn her around to tell her, “We’ve got twenty minutes before the food gets here. Let me apologize…”
Her eyebrows immediately draw in, worried and confused. “Wait, you ordered out? But why—”
“Is it so fucking hot outside?” I finish for her. “I have no idea. That global warming stuff was, like, the one thing I wasn’t lying about when we first hooked up.”
Her lips clamp, and though she still looks worried, I can see she’s holding back a smile now. “C’mon, baby, you’ve had a hard day,” I say, reaching up to cup her beautiful face. “And I’m thinking twenty minutes will be enough time for me to make it up to you for not cleaning that pan and putting it back in the right place.”
Then, before she can agree or disagree, I sweep the package of pork chops and the spice bottles she set out into the sink and get to work. For the next twenty minutes, I do stuff to her, which, thanks to Professor Cluce, I know for a fact would be breaking several public health laws if we were in a commercial kitchen.
Soon Amber melts under my mouth, her legs loosening and falling open as if their owner forgot how to be mad at her husband. Her hands are in my hair, her fingers massaging my scalp, in a way I’ve become used to. Amber likes her skin on my skin, even if it’s just her fingertips on my scalp. But I love it. Love her, and though this is supposed to be an apology, I’ve suddenly got to stand up, get inside of her, reconnect in the oldest way known to woman and man.
But I pause because damn, the sight of her like this: breast swollen, pussy glistening, mouth panting, and her eyes glassed over with more than blindness. She’s gained some weight since she started her own law practice and I like the way the extra pounds have softened up her curves, making her body that much more lush and inviting.
But apparently, she’s doesn’t appreciate my appreciation. “Luca,” she moans, pulling me in impatiently and running her hands up under my shirt.
She needs me inside of her, just like I need to be there. I pull myself out of my pants. It feels like I’m answering both our prayers when I push in and start taking her on top of the kitchen counter in hard controlled thrusts with my pants around my ankle.
Not days…weeks. The grip of her around my cock feels like a welcome home. This is what they don’t tell you about marriage sex, how good it feels to push inside your wife, to have her contract around you like her pussy was molded just for you. I spent so long avoiding relationships and the kind of intimacy that might lead to more than a few nights of fun. But Amber, she’s a gift that belongs to me now. Me and only me.
And my control doesn’t last long. Nearly a year of marriage, and I’m still not immune to the way she grabs on to me with what feels like every part of her body when we fuck. Her thumbs circle my nipples, and her legs squeeze around my waist, while her pussy pulls on my dick, tight as a fist. She’s also licking and biting along my shoulder and neck. Consuming me while I fuck her. It’s too much stimulation, and when she cries out with the beginning of her climax, my controlled thrusts devolve into sloppy pounds as I finish claiming what’s become mine.
The orgasm shoots up my back without warning, and I release without any kind of restraint. My hips pump wild and rough until I’m done spilling everything I have into her. I could blame it on the sex drought, but I know that would just be an excuse. One year of marriage and she still undoes me faster than any woman who came before her. Hell, I don’t remember anyone before her. Those names and faces blurred, and now I can only see, smell, and taste my Amber.
Her hands are on my chest now. Flat and unmoving. And I look down at her, because I learned early on in the honest iteration of our relationship that her touching me this way is her equivalent of holding my gaze.
“What you thinking about, Mrs. Ferraro?” I ask.
And her mouth quirks, like it always does when I call her by the old-fashioned name she refuses to take. Then she says, “You’re not my father. We’re not my parents.”
Weird fucking observation to make after sex. But I get it. I do.
And I push my forehead into hers to assure her, “No, we’re something brand new.”
“Okay…” she says. “I love you.”
For some reason, those four words sound like, feels like a decision. Even though we pretty much established how we felt when we got married against all advice.
But before I can inquire about her tone, she pulls me in closer, and her mouth brushes my ear, as she huskily murmurs, “Apology accepted.”
A dry joke. Amber’s back, and that almost argument was just a blip.
One note sung wrong in an otherwise perfect Frank Sinatra song. Amber and I are still a very good year. A very, very good, in fact, incredible as fuck good year.
That’s what I tell myself as she goes to the bathroom to clean herself up and I take care of the kitchen counter and the stuff I pushed into the sink.
I consider throwing away the pork chops since they expire today, but put them back in the fridge just so I won’t have to hear any more jokes about how I’m the worst at living on a budget.
The buzzer, letting us know the food is downstairs, goes off just as I’m closing the fridge. Loud and garish, and nothing like the gentle beeps from the intercom system at my old apartment on the Upper East side.
“So why was it a weird day,” I ask after we’ve got all the food spread out on the little IKEA table just off the kitchen.
For some reason, Amber looks startled by the question. But she recovers, and with an irritated huff, she tells me about her latest case. An IEP meeting with a school district that thinks to send in a semi-competent rotation of assistants is enough to meet their requirement to give Amber’s school-age client a free and appropriate public education.
“It’s going to take a ton of research, and it pisses me off even more than usual, because, I was talking to Peter today, and he was telling me that his judge just sided with the district on a case almost exactly like mine. So basically this IEP team I’m meeting know they can get away with…”
I’m not sure what she says after that, because the rest of her rant fades at the mention of her brother, Peter. The one working for the judge that loves to hand out life sentences to mafiosos. I’m a new man, with a clean record and no reason to fear the judge’s gavel like I used to.
And really with the few family options Amber has, I probably shouldn’t blame her for big brother-figuring Peter. Technically, I shouldn’t out-and-out hate that Amber’s still in contact with that asshole. It’s just that he didn’t even show up for her at her own wedding, and he still hasn’t acknowledged to anybody that she’s his siste
r.
But now, she’s suddenly consulting with him on cases out of the blue?
The old obsession claws at me. Telling me to charge that old burner phone and check the app as soon as her back is turned—
“This is boring, right?” she says, her voice yanking out of my dark thoughts.
“No, no it isn’t,” I answer. “Sorry, Ambs. Guess, I kind of had a long day, too.”
“Well, I told you about mine. Why don’t you tell me about yours?”
I do, but it feels…I don’t know, forced. Like we’re playacting at being a happy couple even though she’s calmed down and we’re eating the food I ordered. I can still feel this distance between us.
Along with her worry.
Not only does she box half the food up for lunch the next day, but I wake up alone in the middle of the night to the smell of garlic and meat and the sound of the cast iron pan sizzling.
Amber’s right. I’m kind of the worst at living on a budget. I still eat lunch out most days, even if there are leftovers in the fridge. Rather than downgrading to work casual khakis and a button up like some of the other young guys in my office, I’m still dropping over five hundy a month for delivery and pickup from Andre’s, the only Manhattan dry cleaner I trust with my bespoke babies. I’m also still taking taxis and Ubers everywhere I go, even though Amber keeps on telling me about this amazing new invention called a subway that would cost me less in a month than what I spend getting ferried around every week.
But even though Amber’s right about me being clueless when it comes to living below our current means, I recognize what she’s doing. Cooking the pork chops, so we’ll have them to eat tomorrow. Getting up in the middle of the night to do it, because she’s so worried about money.
I love her. If I had to do it all over again, I’d still choose Amber. Even faster this time, because I never knew what real happiness felt like until this year of wedded bliss. But she’s been beyond stressed since signing that lease, and maybe even worse than that, she doesn’t think I can take care of her. She doesn’t trust me to provide for her. So, she’s cooking pork chops for us to eat tomorrow.
Pork chops I already know I’m going to have to choke down because, in this middle of the night moment, I’ve never felt like less of a man.
16
Old Devil Moon
I don’t check the app, but I do end up in Kevin’s office the next afternoon, asking a lot politer than I feel about the Paralegal position they still haven’t filled.
“No, we won’t be giving you that position, sorry,” Kevin says on the other side of the glass desk.
Da fuck…?
His voice is so brusque, it doesn’t sound like he even considered me for the position for a minute. But I don’t give up. I need this raise, more than I need my pride right now.
“Kevin, I know you’re worried about this last name I’m lugging around with me, but I guarantee you, I’m done with that life now. And I don’t know who else you’re looking at for this paralegal job, but I guarantee you, no one you hire will work harder than me—I don’t care what kind of experience they have. I’m the person for this job.”
Kevin tilts his head and readjust in his seat. “But the thing is, you’re not the best fit for the paralegal position, Ferraro.”
Okay, so even after a year of impeccable work, he’s not going to let my family connections go? I shake my head, refusing to let him pigeonhole me into this bullshit coordinator job corner. That paralegal job is a 20K raise. Something I’ll be able to point to when Ambs decides she just must make clearance pork chops in the middle of the night, instead of me lying there, feeling like a helpless idiot. Then pretending to still be asleep when she crawls back into our bed.
“Kevin, you’ve got to reconsider—”
“No, I won’t,” he says, cutting me off with a stern look. “Because I’ve already made up my mind. We’re making the announcement on Monday. Denton’s getting promoted to a General Attorney slot, and you’ll be taking over his position, so sorry we’re going to have to go with someone else for the paralegal job.”
I blink, because Sean Denton’s an associate attorney, and he worked for another law firm for seven years before he landed that job. As Holt explained when he came back with the offer of a crappy coordinator job after I asked him to help me out, “CalMart is a practical business, not some white-glove law firm, and we aren’t in the habit of hiring unseasoned lawyers, just because they graduated from Columbia.”
“You’ve passed the bar now, and we like the way you’ve taken charge of a relatively lowly position,” Kevin’s saying as I sit there, stunned. “And though it’s true, you don’t have the years of experience we usually require, quite a few of my colleagues and I have noticed that you’re uniquely talented in a room.”
Uniquely talented in a room…I think that’s his way of saying, despite the titanium wedding ring on my left hand, I have a way of rendering lady lawyers and a few men, unable to concentrate the few times Kevin’s taken me to negotiation meetings instead of Donna. And yeah, when they didn’t know I was still in my cubicle, working late, I overheard a trio of paralegals calling me “pretty Luca” in the breakroom and gossiping about how they couldn’t believe I had a blind wife. “I mean, does she even know what she’s missing out on? It feels cruel.”
But I still can’t believe Kevin’s promoting me straight to Associate Attorney.
Granted, it’s not the first time, I’ve gotten rewarded for my good looks. But this feels outsized. I mean, this isn’t just a 20K raise we’re talking about here. With this promotion, I’ll be adding a whole ‘nother zero to my monthly paycheck and a sixth figure to my annual income. I can only imagine what kind of sarcastic shit Amber will have to say about the white male patriarchy when she finds out about this.
But I thank Kevin with a wide grin. And for the first time since I started here, I cut out of work at five on the d. o.t, so I can get home to Amber. Just because it doesn’t feel like the sort of news I can tell over the phone. We’ve got to celebrate, I decide as I run up the stairs of our walk up, taking them two at a time.
“No pork chops tonight, baby,” I call out as I come through the door. “I’m taking you to La Mira—”
I stop when I see the apartment’s empty. Unlike most days, she hasn’t made it home before me, even though her office is only a few blocks away.
“CALL ME RIGHT NOW,” I text her in all caps. “Or better yet come home.”
Ten minutes pass, and no answer.
So I try calling. No answer. On her cell. Or on her office phone.
And you know, she could be with a client. Or maybe that IEP meeting she was talking about. She never did say where or when it was. There are a thousand reasons she might not be answering her phone.
Then I go to my nightstand in our bedroom and pull out that Samsung burner anyway. Connect it to a wall and hit the home button as soon as the power indicator appears.
My thumb hovers above the icon I haven’t tapped in over a half a year. Hesitating…but only for a few short moments before pressing down and killing my six-month streak.
It takes a while for the app to update. It starts off with a congratulations from Talia on Amber’s new office. And then there’s a text from Naima about a pro bono cafeteria accessibility case for one of her high school clients, that I know Ambs already handled back in March. I scroll as fast as the struggling to sync app will let me.
Nothing…
Nothing…
Then suddenly a short text to Naima: “Can you meet up? Need to talk.”
There’s not much more detail than that, but the message is marked three months ago, around the same time I started noticing the shift in Amber’s general attitude. Also, around the time our sex life took a sudden nosedive from one to two times a day to once a week if I was lucky and it wasn’t her time of the month.
I keep scrolling until I get to one from Amber to Naima, “I had to lie to him, so he wouldn’t get suspicious. I feel so gu
ilty. And awful. Tell me I’m not awful.”
“You’re not awful,” Naima assured her. “I mean I might be feeling the same kind of way as you about not telling him, especially considering his history. This is why I wanted you to live with him for a while longer before you got married…”
I have a feeling what they’re talking about now. A bad one.
Amber technically knows that she’s beautiful. Enough people, including me, have described her face situation in detail. But being homeschooled and blinded before she ever had any kind of social life, I still don’t think she truly gets it.
But I do.
Everyone at work thinks I’m the catch, but that’s just because they haven’t met her. I see the way guys look at her when we go out, and that’s before they even know how smart and dedicated she is. I can just imagine one of those bleeding-heart lawyers at Legal Aid hitting on her, luring her in because they have way more in common with her, than her barely legit husband. Or maybe it was one of her clients. Somebody who thinks he can do better by her, take care of her like her loser husband can’t.
I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t want to know the details. I’m pretty sure something will crack inside my mind as soon as I find out. But I keep scrolling, curious the way you get at a horror movie.
“Have you made a decision yet?” Naima asked about a month ago.
“Not yet. I keep on going back and forth with myself because he’s going to freak out when I tell him. This could seriously destroy our relationship.”
Okay, that’s it. I break off reading. Try to call Amber again. No fucking answer. But this time I leave a message. “Amber, where are you. Call me as soon as you fucking get this.”
I stab the red phone icon, feeling the fucking opposite of satisfied with my message. Then cursing myself for taking the tracking device out of Amber’s mobility cane, I call Rock.
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 55
