“What else is in the box?” She dips her head, but she can’t hide her reaction from me. I know Lily better than I know myself. I have felt her pain and loneliness over the last year. Countless nights I wanted to reach across the bed and pull her into my arms, but I haven’t felt worthy of her comfort, and I have nothing to give. If not for my failings, she wouldn’t have had to take a second job, we wouldn’t have had to remortgage the house, and we would have started the family we had always dreamed of having. Is it any wonder didn’t she like the gift I gave her for her birthday? Who wants a reminder of our past when there is little hope for our future?
“Have a look.”
She pushes the tissue aside and pulls out a lingerie set on a pink padded hanger.
I whistle long and low. “How am I going to get my teeth cleaned again when I know he’s into all this?” It’s not exactly a lie. I’ve known what Aiden is into since the day took me into his basement and outlined his plans for the BDSM dungeon he wanted me to build.
Disappointment flickers across her face. “Teeth cleaning is the last thing a man should be thinking about when looking at a white corset trimmed in red lace, a matching garter belt and panties, and a white hat with a red cross on it.” She studies the outfit and her lips quiver with a smile. “It’s a naughty nurse costume.”
It’s everything I can do not to strip off her clothes and dress her up myself. “Looks to be about the right size for you now.”
“You noticed I lost weight?” Her voice wavers and I feel like even more of a heel. After she started a second job working as a waitress at ReTox, Revival’s biggest bar, she joined a local gym to kill time between shifts. Between that, the extra hours of work, and just picking at her dinner every night, the extra pounds that had always been the bane of her existence melted away. I’d never seen those pounds on her. I loved her curves, but I did notice when she lost weight, and now I regret not saying anything about it.
“Of course I did. You’re my Lily.”
She lifts an eyebrow and gives me a cheeky smile. “Nurse Lily.”
I slide my hand over her hip and squeeze her ass. “Naughty Nurse Lily. I think we should get you dressed up and see how naughty you can be.”
Her eyes light up like it’s Christmas morning, and she grinds her hips against me. “I don’t think you’ve ever met a nurse as naughty as me.”
I slide my hands under her shirt, all my blood pooling in my groin when I imagine her wearing that outfit, her hands restrained with the cuffs . . .
Lily moans softly when I cup her breasts in my hands. “There are a few more things in the box. Maybe they’re part of the outfit. You wouldn’t want your naughty nurse to be unequipped for emergencies.”
“You seem very equipped to deal with the emergency I’ve got going on right now.” I rub my thumbs over her nipples until they peak beneath her bra.
“Down, boy.” She laughs and pulls my hands away. For a moment I feel like we are back to the way we were and the last year never happened.
“‘Down’ isn’t the problem I need you to treat.” I put her hand over my shaft and she squeezes me hard through my jeans.
“How about I rub it better while I find my . . .” She trails off when she pulls a bright red rabbit vibrator from the box. “Rabbit.” Her face flames and I chuckle. I can’t remember the last time I felt such lightness in my soul.
“I think you’d better call in sick tomorrow. You won’t be getting any sleep tonight.” I study the vibrator, secure in its cartoon rabbit packaging, and my mind races with the possibilities. The outfit. The handcuffs. The vibrator. My Lily on the bed coming so loudly she wakes the neighbors. We’ll definitely not make it to work on time.
“Promises, promises.” She opens the package and flicks the switch. The shaft twirls slowly in the air, and the rabbit’s ears vibrate back and forth.
“When you scream tonight, I want to hear my name.”
Lily turns the vibrator off and lays it on the table. “I’m not going to scream.”
“Sweetheart, when I get you on the bed in that sexy lingerie, your hands cuffed over your head, and that rabbit in my hand, you aren’t just going to scream my name; you’re going to beg me to make you scream it again.”
“Someone’s living in a fantasy world,” she teases, but I don’t miss the hitch in her breath or the tremor in her hand as she reaches into the box again.
“What is this?” She holds up a package containing a rubber ring with a bullet on top.
“Dunno.” I take it and read the label. “Vibrating cock ring.”
“It’s for you.”
“I don’t need any help to pleasure my girl.”
Lily’s head jerks up and it takes me a moment to realize it is the last two words that have made her eyes glitter.
My girl. I haven’t called her that in forever, but I feel the words in my heart. She will always be my girl. My Lily.
“There’s one more thing.” She pulls out a long white coat and a stethoscope. “They must go with the nurse costume. I guess it’s a role-play thing. Try it on.”
I pull my T-shirt over my head and Lily makes a choking noise.
“You okay?” I toss the shirt over a chair.
“I haven’t seen you without your shirt for a long time. You’re always gone in the morning when I get up, and you change while I’m making dinner. You look . . . good.”
I am definitely more fit. A few months after I started working with Mike, I realized my love handles were gone, my shoulders were less rounded, and I was sporting a six-pack between the deep V cuts leading below my belt. Physical labor suits me better than a professional job, but I can’t shake the feeling that it brands me a failure. If carpentry is my calling, why did I spend four years in college? All that potential gone to waste, my mother said when I told her I was working with Mike. We haven’t spoken since.
“How do I look?” I pull on the lab coat and stethoscope and pose beside the chair.
“Very sexy. Go take a look.”
My stomach knots as I stare at myself in the mirror, seeing the loss of yet another dream.
Lily’s brow wrinkles in a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“I never told you this, but my mother wanted me to be a doctor.” I watch her in the mirror as I talk, unable for some reason to turn around. “She made me stop helping out at my dad’s construction company so I could study for med school. She was devastated when I didn’t get in, and very angry when I told her there was no point trying again. I wasn’t smart enough. I went to college to study business instead so I could help my dad. He was good with his hands, not so good with the money. She never forgave me for giving up. When my dad passed away, she sold his business without telling me. I guess it was her way of making sure I didn’t wind up like him. Or maybe it was just spite.”
“Baby . . . ” Lily’s hands fist by her sides. She and my mother never got along, likely because they are total opposites. Where Lily is warm, kind, tolerant, and understanding, my mother is vain, selfish, narrow-minded, and opinionated. She refused to attend our wedding because she didn’t think Lily was good enough for me. She said I had failed her yet again by marrying a woman without any money, society connections, or even a college degree.
“You have a college degree. You were a successful accountant. It wasn’t your fault the company downsized.” Her eyes flash fire. “Now, you’re doing something that you enjoy, building beautiful things just like your dad. You have his gift. Mike wouldn’t have offered you a job if he didn’t think you had talent.”
Damn. This coat . . . Thinking of my mother . . . The humiliation of having to admit I couldn’t provide for my wife . . . Asking Mike for a job because we’d run through our savings and couldn’t pay the mortgage . . . It hits me all at once.
Yanked out of the fantasy, I tear off the coat and stethoscope and throw them on the floor. “Your brother had to give me a fucking job because I couldn’t support you. What kind of man has to rely on handouts? My mother was
right. I failed her. I failed you. I’m almost glad my dad isn’t alive to see me now.”
I expect her to shut down as she has time and again over the last year, but something is different tonight. Something changed when we opened that box. Lily folds her arms and glares at me. “I’ve never once felt like you let me down, and I’ve never thought of you as less of a man because of something that isn’t your fault. Your dad would have been proud of you no matter what you did. Your mother has messed you up almost as badly as my dad messed me up, but she was right about one thing. Accounting wasn’t your calling. You’re happy working with your hands. You just can’t accept it.”
“You don’t understand anything.” I pull on my T-shirt, regretting my decision to let Aiden get involved. “Pack that stuff up and give it back to Aiden. We’re never going to use it.”
I slipped up with the name—he has only ever been Dr. Steadman to us—but Lily doesn’t seem to notice. Her face falls, and I regret taking her down this road to nowhere. Feeling hope and then losing it all again is the worst kind of pain.
Chapter Four
Lily
“What was in the box? I’ve been dying to find out.” Alexis hangs up her jacket in the staff room as I finish taping up Dr. Steadman’s box. I have no idea how I’m going to return it without dying of embarrassment, but keeping it isn’t an option.
“Kinky sex stuff.” I push the box into a corner and pick up my tea, now lukewarm after my struggles with the tape. “Handcuffs, vibrator, naughty nurse and doctor costumes . . .”
Silence.
“Alexis?”
“The dog.” Alexis breathes out a sigh. “I’d heard rumors about Dr. Steadman. Like he’s into threesomes and he’s got a sex room in his basement . . .”
“Well, from the contents of the package, I’d say some of them are true. But it’s crazy that he would give this stuff to us. Who does that? He barely knows us. Chris has seen him twice, and I’ve seen him once. Until he gave me the package, we’d never had a conversation about anything other than teeth. It’s weird. Maybe I should call the police.”
“Are you kidding me?” Alexis’s voice rises in pitch. “He could obviously tell you guys are having marital difficulties, and he’s trying to help in his own special kinky way.”
“Well, it totally backfired. We were having fun with it until Chris put on the doctor coat and then all this stuff came out about his mom and how he feels like a failure. A few minutes later he was back in the living room watching TV like it never happened.”
“But it did happen,” Alexis says. “It happened and something changed. Chris opened up a little bit.”
“I guess. But so what?” I gesture to the box. “He wants me to return it.”
“What do you want?”
I want my Chris back. I want our marriage and our laughter. I want us to be happy and looking forward to the future we had planned together. I want sexy times and cuddle times and his strong arms wrapped around me.
“I want to keep it.” I bite my lip when my eyes start to water. “I don’t think we would have ever gone to a store and bought that kind of stuff. And it was fun to pull it out and be shocked and surprised together. He laughed, Alexis. Like he used to do. And he joked around. For a while there I thought he might suggest we go upstairs and try it out.”
“Then keep it,” she says. “There are two people in your marriage. It’s been all about him for over a year. You’ve tiptoed around him and made a comfortable place for him to hide away from the world at the cost of your happiness. It’s time to stop being a martyr. You’re a good person. A good wife. Now it’s time to be naughty. Put yourself out there. Take a risk. Let him know what you want. If he rejects you, so what? He’s rejected you every night since he got laid off. If you don’t try, nothing will change. But if you do try, maybe something will, like it did when he opened up to you.”
I sip my tea, letting the bitter liquid wash over my tongue. I started drinking my tea black when money was tight, and I’ve grown accustomed to the taste. “What am I supposed to do? Turn on the vibrator and wave it in front of the TV?”
“Try the role play. Be someone else for a night and let him do the same. Maybe a naughty nurse is what he needs to get over his doctor issues.”
I give up on my tea and fill the kettle. “What if he says no?”
“Honey. Looking the way you look, dressed up in some kind of naughty outfit, I can guarantee that his ass will not be staying in his chair for long. And if it does, you might as well pack your bags, because you’ll know he no longer has a dick.”
Laughter bubbles up in my chest. “You’re a good friend. Did I ever tell you that?”
“I’m a horny friend.” She pulls out her phone. “And I think I might have a cavity. There’s more than one doctor who might be getting some loving tonight.”
I rinse out my cup as she skims through her address book. “You are not booking another appointment with Dr. Steadman.”
“Oh yes, I am. Life is too short not to take a risk.”
“Like dressing up as a naughty nurse?”
“Yes, just like that.” Her smile fades. “It kills me to see you putting so much energy into trying to save your marriage and getting nothing back. I like Chris. I think you guys are good together. But it’s time that dude gets his head out of his ass, and if he doesn’t do it tonight, I’m fixing you up with Rex Morgan.”
My breath catches in my throat. “You talked to Rex?”
“Not yet.” She gives me a sly grin. “Although if things don’t work out with our friendly neighborhood dentist, I might call him up for a little chat.”
No doubt she would. Alexis isn’t the kind of woman who lets anything stand in the way of what she wants. When she caught her husband cheating with his secretary, she booted his ass out the door, and no amount of groveling would bring him back. She has an enviable self-esteem and the kind of confidence I always wish I had.
“He won’t stand a chance,” I say after she makes an emergency end-of-the-day dentist appointment for a toothache she doesn’t have.
“You’re right about that.” She tucks her phone away. “And neither will Chris. If he’s not interested, pack a suitcase and get your ass over to my place. Then Monday morning we’ll take a walk down to the attorney’s office and get you unleashed for the hotness that is Rex Morgan.”
I am not a risk taker. I don’t jaywalk, drive too fast, or jump out of airplanes. After meeting Chris at the bus stop ten years ago, I took a different bus to work for two weeks because I was afraid to see him again. Not because I didn’t like him. I did. Too much. Every night after our meeting, I fantasized about the feel of his body against mine, his deep, gravelly voice, and the warmth in his blue eyes. I dreamed about him—naughty, sexy dreams that left me aching inside. But I didn’t want to ruin it all by seeing him again, feeling all the feels, and having him brush me off like that moment was nothing. Rejection causes pain and I’d had enough in my life. If I’d known he was the kind of guy to show up with a rose every day, hoping to see me again, I would have been there the very next morning.
So now it’s my chance to make it up to him. To be bold. To be brave. To take a risk. To be the kind of person I always wanted to be. In a last-ditch attempt to save my marriage, I am going to open myself up in a way I haven’t done since I learned the pain of rejection for being me. Even during our marriage, I never truly let Chris in.
I fasten the last hook on my naughty nurse corset and tighten the strings so it fits like a glove, but I’ve never felt so exposed in my life. My breasts are pushed up impossibly high and are almost fully exposed to the tops of my nipples. My hips seem rounder with my waist cinched tight, and the red piping on the bottom of the corset dress barely covers the tiny triangle of the white thong with its bold red cross in the center.
After I get over the shock of an almost unrecognizable me, I attach the white stockings to the garters and slip on a pair of red stiletto heels I picked up at the mall on the way home f
rom work. My hair is loose, free from its usual ponytail, and round-brushed into soft waves that cascade over my shoulders. Chris used to love my hair. He would run his fingers through it every chance he got, and when were in bed, he’d grab it tight, pull my head back, and . . .
I give myself a shake, push away the memories of our nights in bed and our hot, sweaty bodies twisted in the sheets. Chris was always very dominant in bed, and I loved it, loved that he could push my boundaries but know when to stop.
A final touch of makeup and the reddest lipstick in my box completes the look. Naughty but nice; sexy but sweet. I hope it’s enough.
“You want a beer?” I call out when I reach the kitchen. I heard him come in when I was changing.
“Yeah.”
Heart pounding, I open his beer and pour it into his favorite glass. I give myself a final check in the microwave and walk into the room.
Here goes nothing.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” Chris doesn’t even look away from the television. My stomach tightens but I take a deep breath. I expected this. Prepared for it.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Dr. Taylor, but there is an emergency in bed seven.” I pluck the remote out of his hand.
“What the—?” His gaze sweeps over me from the old-fashioned nurse’s cap in my hair to the crescents of my breasts bursting over the edge of the corset, down over my waist and the curve of my hips, to the garter straps holding up the white stockings, and finally to the ruby-red heels. “Fuck me,” he mutters.
“I’ll bring it up on the CCTV.” In this case, the CCTV happens to be a baby video monitor I borrowed from Alexis from the days when her kids were young. I’ve hooked it up to the TV so it shows our bedroom, where I’ve changed the linen to white hospital-like sheets and put the rest of Dr. Steadman’s toys on a metal tray beside the bed.
Naughty Desires Page 3
