Paul smiled. “I haven’t been working out. But I did change my cologne. I’m glad you like it.”
He moved to the bed. She closed her eyes when she felt his hands on her body. His hands were so gentle. Sierra let all thought leave her mind. She let her body feel what it wanted to feel and that was the caress of the man that she loved. Her feelings for him hadn’t changed and they never would. Pain didn’t make them any less real. She would always love Paul, in the same way that she would always love Luke, but in a different way too. Paul was meant to be hers, while Luke had been a man that she had been lucky enough to hold onto for a fleeting moment before he had to fly away and find the woman he was meant to be with.
Paul kissed the back of her neck and she shivered. “Sierra?”
“Yes?”
“Will you look at me sweetheart?”
Sierra turned.
“I have to know that you want this as much as I do.”
Sierra laughed. “Honey, I am so hot right now, I’m surprised we both haven’t gone up in flames. Kiss me Paul.”
His kiss was hungry. She brought her hand to his manhood and stroked it lightly. He groaned. “Oh Sierra.”
She brought her mouth back to his and gave him her tongue. He pulled back several minutes later and stilled her hand.
“Honey, let me please you. If this is our last night together, I want to make it memorable for you. It kills me to think that this is the last time I’ll ever make love to you, but I want you to feel everything that I feel for you in my touch, in my kiss. Let me love you Sierra, the way that you deserve to be loved.”
She offered him a half smile. “If you insist.”
He went to work with his hands and his mouth on her neck and her breasts. He took his time and then kissed his way down her stomach and arrived between her legs. She came to orgasm quickly because Paul had always been very talented at oral sex, but he wasn’t satisfied and didn’t remove his face from between her thighs until she had flowed into his mouth a second time.
She was feeling a little dazed when he looked up at her. “Sierra?”
“Yes?”
“Do you have a condom?”
She wanted to laugh. It had been forever since they had used a condom, and they were still married, weren’t even technically legally separated. But then she figured that he was worried that she might get pregnant. She pondered the idea for a minute. She loved Nathan and knew that there would definitely come a time when she wanted another baby. But it certainly didn’t seem like the right thing to do to bring a child into what might turn into a divorce by the time it was born.
But she also wanted to feel him inside of her, in the way that she had never been able to feel him when he wore a condom. She bit her lip. She wanted him so badly, but she knew that she couldn’t let her hormones screw everything up yet again. She sighed and turned to the night stand where she knew there should be a condom.
There was one and she handed it to him. He gave her a look as he accepted it. “You okay? Are you sure you want this?”
She did laugh then. “Dumb question Paul. My sex drive is screaming at me and saying that you don’t need to put that thing on because I want to feel you in every way possible. Then my brain stepped in and threw logic in. Sometimes, I really hate it when it does that. But I want you to know that if we do get back together, you are never using one of those damned things again. I will get any form of birth control possible to prevent you from having to use a rubber.”
Paul chuckled. “I love you Sierra.”
“I love you too Paul. Now love me and make it good.”
Her eyes drifted closed as he entered her. She sighed, but it was a sigh of utter contentment. She opened her eyes and looked into his. His emotion was almost too much for her, but she made herself keep her eyes locked on his as he moved above her.
Their bodies were joined together in a moment that felt like forever but was all too short at the same time. She wasn’t sure how long it took him to come to orgasm. She felt like she had been transported to another world when he was inside of her. He’d already made her come again, but he didn’t withdraw from her until he had made her come yet again with his fingers.
When he moved off of her, she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She wanted a cigarette like she hadn’t wanted one in months. She still had a pack hidden, but she hadn’t smoked since the day he had left her when he had found her trying on the engagement ring that Luke had bought her.
He brushed his hand across her cheek. “Sierra are you okay?”
She laughed. “Baby, you just blew my mind four times over. I think you’ve certainly given me a night to remember. I’m fine, I’m more than fine. I hope that this isn’t our last night together, but if it was it was worth it. And if it wasn’t I wouldn’t mind if you blew my mind like that on many more nights.” She winked at him.
He chuckled. “Do you mind if I check on Nathan before we shower? Or I guess you can take a shower by yourself if you want to.”
“Our shower’s always been big enough for two. Go. I’ll be right here.”
She watched him walk away. It hurt to think about losing him, but she knew that she couldn’t be the wife that he deserved if Kimber’s baby was his.
He returned a few minutes later. “He is so perfect.”
Sierra smiled. “Isn’t it weird that all these imperfect people create perfect children?”
“Yes. If we get through this, do you think that you might be ready to talk about having another baby?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I want to be pregnant with your baby again. You might decide you don’t like sex again, and all teasing aside Paul, I can’t take that.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I know babe. You were so gorgeous when you were pregnant, but I never wanted to make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry that I made you think that I didn’t want you anymore. I’ve always wanted you so much that it scares me.”
Sierra laughed. “Honey that’s called your hormones and it’s normal. Sometimes I feel like I married a woman.”
Paul made a face at her. “Thank you Sierra.”
“I didn’t mean it like that Paul. It’s just frustrating that you don’t seem to enjoy sex as much as I do. You’re a fantastic lover when you let go. Tonight, you did blow my mind. But to think that you had hot sex with Kimber pisses me off.”
“Sierra.”
“Don’t try to lie to me and say that you didn’t. I’ve talked to Luke.”
Paul sighed. “Do I have to worry about you two?”
“Don’t. Just don’t. If you can’t understand the way I feel for Luke, stop trying. I don’t think of him when we have sex. I’m not going to say that I’ve never thought of another man when you were on top of me, or that I’ve never thought of him when we made love. But when you came back home the last time, I realized that even if I had been dumb enough to run away with Luke, that I would have come crawling back to you on my hands and knees within weeks, if not days. When I was all wrapped up in this fantasy with Luke during our affair, there were times that I wished it was his child that I carried. I think that he probably did too. But Luke and I were not meant to be together forever. We were meant to be together at that time. He enriched my life, and opened me up to the beautiful possibilities of how absolutely fantastic sex can be. Even if I had said yes when he proposed, we would have been divorced long before now. So stop with the bullshit. He called me a while back and we were both horny so we had phone sex. But I haven’t seen him and even if we get a divorce and he and Kimber do the same we will not end up back together. Luke and I left our relationship unfinished. We messed around and we shouldn’t have, but we finished it.”
“You had phone sex with Luke?”
Sierra rolled her eyes. “He was drunk, I was drunk. We both whined about you and Kimber for a while. I opened my big mouth and said that I was horny. He said he was horny too. One thing led to another. But it sure as hell wasn’t his hand that was touching
my body.”
“You could have called me.”
“I was depressed and pissed at you. You had Nathan and I missed both my baby and my man. It’s easy to admit that I miss our son. Missing you comes with a lot of hurt and a bunch of mixed up emotions. Even if I had called you, we would not have had phone sex. I would have yelled at you and just made things worse. So I think that it was a lot better that I had phone sex with Luke.”
“It drives me crazy to think that you still love him.”
“Get over it. If you had some woman in your past that you still loved I wouldn’t torture myself thinking about living up to your memory of her. If the baby isn’t yours, and we do get back together, we are going to get all of this shit dealt with. We are going to talk about any doubts that we have and anything that makes either of us feel like our marriage isn’t what it should be. And we are definitely going to have more sex. Our sex life had been a lot better before all this crap came up and you truly floored me with what you did to me tonight, but I like sex. I like lots of sex. I like different positions and doing it in interesting places. That’s harder when you have a child, but I think I can come up with plenty of ways to keep our sex life interesting.”
“Why can’t we do all of that now? Why waste time? We can start counseling.”
Sierra sighed. “I don’t want you to waste your money on counseling now when I’m almost positive that I can’t stay married to you if Kimber’s baby is yours.”
“But if we talked about it, then maybe you would change your mind.”
“Babe, I love you and I’m truly sorry, but I don’t think that any amount of talking could convince me to remain your wife if the baby is yours.”
Paul took her into his arms. “I’m so sorry Sierra.”
“I know Paul.”
He held her for several minutes, and then he took her hand and led her to the shower. Their shower was very intimate but he refused to penetrate her without a condom so they retired to the bedroom and made love a second time.
Sierra pushed everything out of her head when she went to sleep that night besides the feeling of being in her husband’s arms, because she knew that it wouldn’t last.
Kimber
Kimber felt amazing having Luke home. Alexis was also much happier. But Kimber still felt like she carried the weight of her betrayal with her everywhere she went, and since her betrayal had to do with the child that she carried, in a way she did.
Their first therapy session did not go well or at least Kimber didn’t think that it did. The woman was kind. They all sat down. She asked Alexis a few questions and then gave her crayons and a coloring book. Then she turned to Luke and Kimber.
“I do have some background information, but I like clarity with my patients. Would one of you please explain what it is that brought you here?”
Luke cleared his throat. “We both cheated. I had an affair with an old lover and Kimber had a one night stand with Sierra’s, she’s my ex; husband. The main reason that we’re here is because my wife is pregnant and she had unprotected sex with this man, Paul. There’s a chance that he may be the father of her child.”
The woman kept her face a careful blank. “I see. So Mr. Stone, you said that you had an affair with your ex, this Sierra. Was there some sort of problem in your marriage that you feel led you to have that affair?”
“You can call me Luke. There was no problem in our marriage. Sierra was having problems in her marriage at the time. It was a shock when I saw her after so long. She and Paul moved here and she was a teacher at Alexis’s school. Things had always felt kind of unfinished between us. I proposed to her and she turned me down, but it still felt like there was something between us. I met Kimber a few years later and I fell in love with her almost at first sight, but I still love Sierra. I’m not in love with her, but I’ll always love her.”
“Okay. Did you tell Kimber about your relationship with Sierra when you were dating or earlier on in your marriage?”
“Um, no I didn’t. It felt strange. I know that it bugs some women a lot when guys do that, you know, talking about other women that they’ve been with. I never wanted her to think that I compared her to Sierra, or that Sierra was the one I really wanted to be with. I should have told her and I feel like this whole mess if my fault since I called Sierra.”
“Uh huh. Mrs. Stone, how did you learn of your husband’s affair?”
Kimber cleared her throat. “You can call me Kimber. Uh, Paul walked into my bookstore one night and he told me. He said that he’d come home early from work and found his wife trying on the engagement ring that Luke had bought for her and that she’d confessed to their affair.”
“And how did you feel when you heard that Kimber?”
“I was devastated. I realize that my husband is a very attractive man and I had experienced problems with men that I’d been with previously cheating when other women found them so desirable as well, but I had never thought that I’d have to worry about that with Luke. Up until that point, I had felt like our marriage was strong.”
“And after that?”
“I no longer felt like our marriage was strong. I felt like I had been living a lie. I confronted him and I made him leave our home. I feel bad because I lied to Alexis and said that he was away on a trip.” She glanced at their daughter, who wasn’t paying attention to the adults. Her tongue was sticking out of the corner of her mouth like it sometimes did when she was concentrating hard. “She’s so young and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.”
“We’ll help you come up with better ways to communicate with your daughter from here on out. She is young, but it can certainly be hurtful to lie to children. Luke, how did you explain your indiscretion to your wife? Had your affair ended by that point?”
“It had. There are some things that I feel like I need to say about the affair. I don’t know if they’re relevant and I’m in no way justifying what I did, but I feel like it needs to be said.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, before I was with Sierra I was a playboy. I messed around. When I became involved with her. . .” He cleared his throat and glanced at Alexis, who was still in the world of imagination. “It was just um. . . I’m sorry. I know that this is family counseling, but I don’t feel comfortable discussing this in front of our daughter.”
“Yes. Alexis, we’re going to take your coloring book and your crayons and you can go sit with Arliss okay? Mommy and Daddy will be with you in a few minutes.”
Alexis nodded. She gathered the crayons and the coloring book, waved goodbye to her parents and then followed the therapist out of the room.
Once the woman had returned and sat back down, she said “Your daughter is in the very capable hands of my receptionist. She has eight children and nineteen grandchildren. Go ahead Luke.”
He glanced quickly at Kimber and then looked away. “Well, my relationship with Sierra was just sexual at first. I wasn’t sleeping with other women the way I’d always done before, but I felt differently towards her than I’d ever felt towards a woman. I loved her and being with her made me feel like I wanted to settle down. She wasn’t ready. She was four years younger than me and going off to school. Even though I told her that we didn’t have to get married right away when I proposed, she still couldn’t tell me yes. It hurt. I left the town we had lived in and came here. I stayed away from women for a while. Then I walked into the bookstore and saw Kimber. She was so beautiful. I looked at her and thought that she could be the woman I needed to replace Sierra in my heart. No, that came out wrong. I didn’t exactly want her to replace Sierra. Maybe I wanted her to fill the hole that it felt like Sierra had left. I don’t know. But anyway, Kimber and I started dating. We fell in love, got married and had Alexis. Back then, she was still running her book store pretty much by herself and I was taking care of Alexis full time since I work from home. I’m a song writer and it never bothered me to take care of Alexis. She distracted me sometimes of course, but I love her so much and she’s this hug
e inspiration for me too. After Alexis turned three, we agreed that she could use more interaction with other kids her age, so we enrolled her in a local preschool. I took her to school the first day and saw Sierra.”
“Okay. So you said that Sierra was a teacher at your daughter’s school. How did you feel when you saw her again?”
Luke looked at Kimber again and then looked away. “She was so beautiful. It was like time had stopped. I felt like I was walking in a dream until Alexis said something and it kind of broke me out of my stupor. I looked at my daughter and down at my wedding ring and realized that the beautiful woman I was looking at was no longer mine.”
“I see. How did your affair start?”
“Sierra was pregnant at the time and had to go on bed rest so she quit working of course. We hadn’t really talked and I was worried about her. So I made a dumb move and called her. I guess it was pretty dumb to think that we could be friends with what we’d had together, but I felt at the time like I really wanted to finish things. I never planned on sleeping with her, or even kissing her. She was pregnant and married to another man, and I had a wife and child that I adored. But I still shouldn’t have called her, or at least asked her to meet me.”
“Hmm. Where did you two meet?”
“At my house. Or the house that I used to live in before I moved in with Kimber since her house was bigger. Do I need to go into how it happened? Kimber and I already talked about it some and I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have.”
“It’s perfectly normal not to want to discuss the actual intimate details Luke. So you said that your marriage was good, no problems. But you mentioned that Sierra was having problems in her marriage-is that correct?”
“Yes. Um, her sex life with her husband wasn’t the greatest. I think that’s what caused her to make the first move. She felt like she wasn’t attractive anymore and it only made it worse because she was pregnant. I still found her attractive. I should have told her that instead of demonstrating it. I should have talked her into talking it out with Paul. But I didn’t. We had sex two or three times a week while Alexis was at school from the time she was six months along until she had the baby. I was with her when she went into the labor.”
Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set Page 23
