by Hannah Ford
“Then why do you even deal with her?”
“I don’t honestly know anymore,” he said, thinking about it. “I try to limit the contact. Like I said, she’s close with my brother, and I don’t want to strain my relationship with Jeb.”
“Okay, then,” Nicole said, moving closer to him and putting her hands on his arms. “So why make trouble for yourself now? Let’s just get through a few more hours and be done with it.”
Red smiled at her. “What did I do right in a past life to deserve you?”
“Maybe you did something right in the present.”
“Maybe I’m just the luckiest guy in the universe.”
“Damn right.” She grinned. “I need to hop in the shower before dinner.”
Red continued getting ready as Nicole started the water, disrobed, and stepped into the enormous glass encased shower area that was large and steamy and luxurious, with black tiles along the floor and walls.
Closing her eyes, she let the hot water run all over her body, releasing the pent-up stress that had been there since the morning. This life with Red was so confusing, alternating between states of bliss and ecstasy and moments of total fear and anxiety. It was a high-stress, fast-paced world that he lived in, and Nicole was still trying to wrap her mind around it.
Just as she was starting to decompress, she heard the shower door creaking. Startled, her eyes popped open and she spun around, instinctively covering breasts and crotch.
She found Red standing there, completely naked, smiling with glee at her shock. “Did I surprise you?” he asked, stepping into the shower and shutting the glass door behind him.
“You scared me!”
“I couldn’t let you out of my sight so easily,” he said, his voice low and sexy smooth.
“I need to get ready for dinner,” she said, trying to hide her building excitement at Red’s bold nudity. His body was like something a painter would study, a sculptor would take months to mold and carve out of marble. He was so strong, and as he reached out to touch her, every nerve ending danced in anticipation of his skin against hers.
“Dinner can wait,” he said.
Now they were both under the stream of hot water, and Red’s mouth was pressing against hers, he was taking her in his strong, capable arms. She felt protected and wanted and desired all at once.
His hands ran up her torso, stopping to play with her hardened nipples, then down to her thighs and hips. As he continued to kiss her passionately, one hand grabbed her buttock while the other gently massaged the inside of her leg, straying towards her hot, wet nether regions.
Their kissing became more intense, the excitement building as their tongues locked together. It was as if both of them wanted to devour each other, to somehow become attached, so close that nothing could ever fit between them.
Their bodies were touching, as were their lips, and the hot water pounded against them and the steam got even steamier.
Nicole’s inner thighs were soaked and Red’s finger delicately caressed her entrance, sending shivers of delight up her stomach and waves of pleasure through her entire body.
She reached out for his hardness, ready for him to enter her and make him almost a part of her, if just for a little while. He gasped when she touched his erection, stroked his shaft.
“I want to be inside of you right now,” he told her.
Nicole turned around and planted her hands against the slick black tiles of the shower and arched her back, spreading her legs wide to give him access.
She was so ready for him, so willing and excited by everything he was doing to her and everything she knew he’d be doing to her in a moment.
Soon, she felt the head of his cock pressing at her folds, beginning to slowly penetrate the wet softness of her. Each movement sent ripples of joy and sexual energy through her lower half. He was so hard and so big, yet she was completely taking him inside of her with ease.
The waves of her pleasure were intense and overwhelming. Combined with the heat and the steam and the water and his kisses along the back of her neck—Nicole was truly in bliss.
None of the other stuff mattered right now. Red’s business problems, the surprising news that his company was struggling financially, the fact that Nicole still needed to tell her parents that her and Red were back together, his mother’s visit causing upheaval and stress—Nicole couldn’t possibly have cared less about any of it at that moment.
All she could concentrate on was how she felt as he entered her, filling her up with his manhood, plunging deeper inside of her until she almost couldn’t take it anymore. The sensation of everything just about to spill over, the passion, the excitement, becoming almost too much…and then it would ebb just enough that she’d catch her breath, ready to ride the next wave.
Red moved inside of her, he knew exactly how to thrust, how to slide and hit that exact spot to make her cry out in abandon. His hands cupped her breasts fully now, and she could feel his pelvis grinding against her, his strong chest pressed to her back as he slid deeper still into her hole.
She was so slick and dripping wet, contracting herself so that he fit snugly into her, and every millimeter that he went in or out was sending shockwaves through both of them.
Nicole turned her head so that he could kiss her from behind, their tongues tangling as his hand moved down from her breast, trailing down her abdomen and pressing into her. There, he instantly found her clitoris and stroked it masterfully as he continued to pump himself into her.
“I can’t take it,” she whispered. “I’m going to come, Red.”
“Go on. I’m going to finish with you,” he told her.
And then it happened. She exploded into an orgasm so intense that she nearly lost control of her entire body. His hand was rapidly manipulating her clitoris as he came inside of her. Everything was going at once and Nicole had never experienced anything like it.
She cried out over and over again, her vocalizations echoing and bouncing around the master bathroom.
Red finished, telling her how beautiful she was the whole time.
He held her close for a long while, the shower still beating a steady rhythm against their bodies.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe how good that felt,” she said. Her voice was a little strained from what she’d been through.
Red squeezed her tighter in his magnificent arms and brushed his cheek against her shoulder. “You are an angel,” he said. “My angel.”
“I’ll always be for you and you alone,” she told him.
His hands cupped her breasts again and somehow she felt stirrings of excitement, amazing to her after the orgasm she’d just had. Red began kissing her shoulders and neck and she lingered in his devotion to her body.
“How can you do that to me?” he asked. She could feel him stiffening again inside of her.
“How can you do it to me?” she replied, moving her hips back, rhythmically hitting his pelvis, taking him all the way into her once more.
“Oh my god,” he said, and she could hear the true sound of disbelief in his voice. “You’re making me hard again already.”
She felt him inside of her—just as hard as he’d been minutes before.
And then they were locked in yet another wonderful embrace, and he was doing it to her all over again, and somehow it was just as amazing and special as it had been the first time.
When they finished once more, the two of them were exhausted. Red rinsed off and then stepped out of the shower—the water had grown cool by now.
“I’ll be out as quickly as I can,” she told him, feeling rushed after spending so much time doing everything but washing. Nicole didn’t mind, she found herself smiling and shaking her head at their adolescent display of lust.
Not to mention the noise that had come from the master bath. She could only hope that with a house this size, his mother had likely not been within range to hear the two of them in action.
She finished showering as quickly as possible, put on a
navy halter-top, white skirt, and a pair of navy and white striped wedge sandals. She quickly towel dried her hair, and finding it still damp, tied it back into a twist.
When Nicole came downstairs, Red and his mother were in the kitchen, drinking glasses of fresh lemonade made by Chef Roland.
“Thirsty?” Red asked.
“I’m okay, thanks,” Nicole said, as Erica’s gaze followed her movements.
“I’d sure be thirsty if I were you,” Erica said, smiling a secretive, knowing smile. She drank deeply from her glass of pink lemonade. Pieces of fruit swirled in the glass.
Nicole decided to ignore the older woman’s jibes, and instead turned to Red. “So, where are we eating today?”
“I thought we could go to The Union League Café,” he said. “I’ve been there once or twice in the last year, and it’s pretty incredible.”
Erica shrugged. “Isn’t it rather dull?”
“What’s that?” he asked, his tone getting that unnatural sharpness that he seemed to acquire when dealing with his mother.
Nicole fidgeted over by one of the islands, watching the two of them as if she were a spectator at a tennis match.
“It just seems dull,” his mother said. “This life you live. Wining and dining women, eating out at fancy restaurants, driving in limousines and fancy jets. Don’t you get bored?”
“Not really,” he said. “And I don’t wine and dine women. Just one woman,” he said, his eyes locking on Nicole’s. She smiled, tried to let him know she didn’t care that his mother made those comments.
The truth was, Erica’s constant little quips were starting to get under her skin a little bit.
Erica grinned knowingly. “Well, I can see why you’ve stuck with her,” she said. “From the sound of it, she lets you do anything and everything you want to her. Regardless of the hour of day, the company you’ve got in your home, or even if she’s in the toilet. She seems to make sure you can satisfy your beastly urges at any given moment.”
Nicole’s eyes narrowed and she felt a chill run up her spine. “I hope you got a good earful,” she said, instantly regretting it when she saw the cold look of triumph cross his mother’s face.
This outburst was exactly what Erica Jameson had been waiting for—what she’d been slowly digging for all morning. And now Nicole had delivered it to her on a silver platter.
“I did get a good earful, as a matter of fact,” Erica said, placing her glass on the breakfast nook and walking to the center of the kitchen like she was on stage for act three of Venus in Fur. “How lovely to come to my son’s home for a visit and be treated to the carnal grunts and cries of what sounded like two dogs in heat.”
Red’s face was pale and he looked sick to his stomach at what she was saying. “I’m sorry if we offended you,” he said to her.
“I never claimed to be offended,” Erica replied, putting one hand on her stomach. “I was just appalled and shaken. At first I thought someone might have been hurt, so I ran upstairs to ask if you needed help. I am a nurse after all.”
Red and Nicole exchanged glances. Both of them were embarrassed, and Nicole suddenly felt like a teenager who’d been caught being naughty under the stairwell at school.
“I’m sorry you heard that,” Nicole said, “but it was an honest mistake—an accident. I don’t think we need to hear a lecture.”
Erica rolled her eyes. “Oh, no, of course not. Far be it for me—a woman in her fifties—to give advice to her thirty-two year old son and his twenty-two year old girlfriend.”
“Fiancé,” Red corrected her.
“I misspoke. I should have said, ‘your twenty-two year old fiancé who seems to be an expert in and out of the bedroom.’ If she’s managed to keep your roving eye still for even a minute, she must have the all the wisdom of an aging prostitute contained in that young body of hers.”
“Get out,” Red said, his voice almost shaking with rage.
“What did you say?” his mother asked, her eyes so wide she looked like a cartoon version of herself.
“Get. Out.” He stared at her with so much controlled hate that for a brief second, Nicole was afraid of what he might do.
Erica seemed unsure, as if the rules of the game she was winning had suddenly and mysteriously changed. She was playing tennis and now Red had declared it a boxing match.
“My flight back isn’t until the morning,” she whined.
“I’m going to have a car come and pick you up,” Red replied, regaining some of his composure. “It will bring you to a beautiful hotel suite near the airport. You can stay there tonight.”
Erica’s eyes shined brightly, with an insane alertness that turned Nicole’s stomach. “What a lovely way for a son to treat his mother. First, a loud pornographic display of his sex life delivered via echo chamber. And then a swift kick in the rear when she has the nerve to question his hospitality.”
“You didn’t question my hospitality,” he said. “You called my fiancé a prostitute and that I will never accept. Now get the hell out of my house before I have you thrown out.”
Erica gave a strange, snakelike grin and then moved out of the room quickly.
Red stood in the kitchen, not looking after her, his fists clenched at his sides, chest heaving. “That woman is a monster.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicole whispered. “I shouldn’t have taken the bait.”
“It’s impossible not to, she makes sure of that. If you turn the other cheek when my mother slaps you, she’ll make sure to pull out a knife for the next assault.”
“Are you angry with me?” Nicole asked him, afraid that this awful visit might have sent him into a psychological tailspin.
He looked up at her and now his eyes were soft, concerned. “Angry with you? My angel? Never.” He walked to her and took her in his arms, his face pressed to her hair, whispering in her ear. “I love you, Nicole, and I’ll protect you above anyone or anything else in this world. No matter what.”
A few minutes later, Red was on the phone arranging for car service to drive his mother to the hotel, and Nicole thought she should at least try to make one last effort at smoothing things over. So she decided to see if Erica needed help with her bags.
But when she went to the guest room where Red’s mother was staying, she found the room empty and the suitcases still lying on the floor, one of them opened with clothes hanging out of it.
And the door to the bathroom was wide open, so Erica wasn’t in there either.
Puzzled, but with a slightly uneasy feeling in her gut, Nicole walked out of the guest room and started for the master bedroom upstairs. As she went, it occurred to her that it really would have been nearly impossible for Red’s mother to have overheard their lovemaking unless she’d been in the master bedroom snooping around.
This mansion was enormous, and despite how loud they’d been, Nicole felt confident that Erica must have already been creeping around the house, listening to them, and eventually even going so far as to intrude on their privacy by entering the bedroom while they were in the bathroom together.
What else was she doing in the bedroom? Nicole thought, her heart starting to race. Her gut told her that the woman was angry, offended at having been kicked out—god only knew what she’d do next.
The truth was, Erica Jameson was mentally unhinged.
Climbing the stairs to the master bedroom, Nicole was surprised but also vindicated to find that her suspicions were correct. She bumped into Erica as Erica was exiting the master bedroom, her eyes downcast, as she seemed to be rummaging through her purse.
“Can I help you with something?” Nicole said loudly.
Erica glanced up, her expression betraying her guilt as she fumbled with closing her purse.
She’s got something in there, Nicole thought. She stole something from the bedroom.
“You know what?” Erica said. “I wanted to apologize to Red for this misunderstanding, and I thought he’d gone up to his room. I was wrong, he wasn’t there.” She sm
iled briefly and continued walking past Nicole and down the stairs.
“What were you doing in our bedroom?” Nicole said, turning and looking after her.
Erica looked up and made a face. “What do you think I’d be doing in your bedroom, for god’s sake? What on earth do you take me for? For your information young lady, some people still have a sense of class and dignity in this world.”
Yes, and you’re not one of those people, Nicole wanted to shout after her. But she bit her tongue and watched as the older woman made her way back to her guest room, presumably to gather her things and leave.
Good riddance, Nicole thought. But she couldn’t shake the terrible suspicion that Red’s mother had found whatever she’d been looking for in the master bedroom.
***
After Red’s mother left, Red finally took a business call, and when he was done, his mood had gone south. His eyes were set, grim, and his mouth downturned.
They took a walk around the estate, because Red told her he wanted some fresh air and a different perspective. As they walked along the beautiful property, she saw some of the caretakers mowing the lawn and clipping hedges.
Red waved and tried to appear happy, but it was probably only convincing from a few dozen yards away.
He wasn’t speaking much to Nicole, so she tried to stay quiet and just be with him. Occasionally he pointed out one of the more subtle qualities of the land, or explained why the bridge over the pond was designed the way it was.
Other than that, there was little real conversation about everything that was happening. Nicole desperately wanted to tell him her suspicions about his mother taking something from their bedroom, but she didn’t think it was a good time to further burden him. Especially since there was no proof, just a hunch she had.
Finally, as they made their way back over the bridge and toward the house, Red stopped and turned to her. “I’ve been thinking about the wedding,” he said, his face still deadly serious.
Her stomach did a double backflip. Was he going to break off their engagement for some reason?
