She was shaking her head before I even finished talking. “You don’t need to make up for anything, Elle. If that’s what the experiences are—one for him, one for you—then they won’t work. He needs to be into watching you be pleased as much as he’s into getting pleased.”
“I think he is.” I flushed and took a small bite of the egg, which was too runny for me. I chewed. “I mean, we’d never talked about being with a girl, until we had that conversation at your house and all… you know. All that happened.”
“Personally, I’m very selfish in our sex life,” she confided. “It’s why Brad doesn’t fuck other women.”
My thoughts stalled around the statement. “You don’t?”
She shook her head, and another big square of fluffy pancake disappeared between her glossy lips. She chewed, taking her time, while my heart sprinted around my chest in equal parts joy and despair. Brad doesn’t fuck other women. She swallowed, then continued. “We used to do it in the past and had a really bad experience with this one girl.” She wrinkled her face, as if she’d smelled something rotten. “She was the one who pretty much told half of Miami our sexual business. It took me a while to recover from her, and we stopped doing anything with anyone for a while.” She picked up her milk and I thought of our three-month break, the one that was going to start right after I slept with Brad. Ha. We were such cocky idiots.
“So, you just meet with men? Single men? Or…” I tried to think of another scenario.
“Pretty much. Or a couple, and we have same room sex, or Brad does some stuff with the wife and she pleasures me. It turns me on to have him make them come, I’m just not down with him actually fucking them. At least right now.” She peered down at her plate. “Wasn’t this supposed to come with bacon?” She twisted in her seat, looking for our waiter. “Sir?” She lifted her hand and the man all but tripped over a family of four to get to our table. She explained the bacon predicament as I struggled to pierce a wobbly piece of sausage in half with the edge of my fork.
“But, anyway, mostly just threesomes with a guy. That’s my favorite, and then you don’t deal with the egos and relationship dynamics of a couple.” She picked up a strawberry with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. “But, you know, every couple is different. I know wives who love to watch their husbands fuck. Love it.” She shrugged, as if we were talking about whether to get a minivan or sedan, or what yoga class to choose. “You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. Try different stuff and be honest with each other.”
She fell silent and I felt the need to say something, anything, to contribute to the conversation. “We, uh, think we’re going to take a break. For a few months. After our next one.”
She nodded. “Not a bad idea. Who’s your next one going to be with?”
I hesitated. The question felt deeply personal, even though it wasn’t, not considering we had no “next one” lined up, no confidences to break. “I’m not sure. We, ugh, met someone from SwingLife but he was really weird. And the other guys on the site—”
“Suck so bad,” Julia chimed in, giving me a pained look. “Close that account. Trust me. And pull off any photos that you have on there as soon as possible. You can’t control who downloads and does what with that content. Brad had a legal conniption when he read their terms and conditions.” She laughed. “I’m pretty sure he’s the only person who’s ever read that encyclopedia of crap.”
Yeah, I’d scrolled through the fine print with a flick of the wrist, then agreed to it all. Which, in hindsight, seemed incredibly stupid, since I was trusting them with my most private thoughts, communications, and photos. I gave up on cutting the sausage and just stuck it in between my back incisors and ripped it in half. “So…” I chewed through the piece, then swallowed. “Where am I supposed to find these people then? I know there’s a club, over by the airport…” My words trailed off at Julia’s emphatic head shake.
“Don’t go there. Again, that’s an uncontrolled environment. Cameras. IDs at the door. There’s too much exposure possibilities.”
It was starting to feel helpless, and I felt an irrational irritation toward Julia, who was really great at hogging her husband and shooting down ideas, but horrible at actually providing solutions. I stuck the remaining piece of sausage in my mouth and realized exactly how ridiculous I was being. Julia De Luca wasn’t my personal sexual concierge service. She was my seller. I should be focused on selling her house, not drilling her for tips on picking up strange men for group sex.
“Who are you wanting to meet up with next? A single guy or a girl? A couple?” She pushed the pancake plate to one side and took her side of bacon from the food runner who approached. “Thank you so much.”
I waited until the man had left. “A guy.”
“Okay, a guy.” She nodded, but her focus wasn’t on me. She stared off into the other side of the restaurant, and I watched as her fingertips tapped absentmindedly along the table. “I might…” Her gaze came back to me and she hesitated. “I mean, I don’t want to get all in your business or anything…”
I leaned forward and waited.
“But, I might have a guy for you. Someone I’d feel really comfortable recommending. He’s single and totally professional. No drama. No bullshit. Shows up, does the job and leaves.” She wiped her palms off with each hand and then showed me her palms, as if to demonstrate his clean performance.
“He’s, umm…” I cleared my throat and straightened my knife beside my spoon. “Good?”
Her smile widened. “He’s very good. And big.” A playful gleam appeared in her eyes. “Like your husband. Who, by the way, is ridiculous eye candy. Is he a good fuck?”
A blush heated my cheeks, one that was paired with a surge of arousal and pride. “He’s an incredible fuck,” I admitted.
“The cocky ones normally are.” She grinned, then snapped back to business. “Now, I don’t want to push this guy on you, but if you’re interested, just let me know. I can have Brad text his number to Easton.”
“That would be great, if you could. We don’t really know what we’re doing,” I confessed.
She snorted. “None of us do. We just learn really quickly what not to do. And I’m not trying to preach at you, but Easton needs to be the one who does all the communication with the guy. And if you hook up with a single woman, you do all the communication with the girl. Otherwise, it gets messy and starts feeling sketchy.” She reached across the table and gripped my arm, making sure I was listening.
I was. I was soaking in all of it, terrified that I would forget something crucial and screw it all up later.
“You have to vigilantly protect your relationship at all costs.” She held my gaze. “Do you understand?”
“I think so.” But no… not really. There were so many rules. So many dynamics. I was supposed to vigilantly protect my relationship—but diving deeper into this world seemed like the opposite of that. Look at the night we hooked up with them and the subsequent fight we’d had. Granted, maybe that tension had come from the event with Nicole, but still.
She smiled, and the intensity faded from her giant brown eyes. “It’ll be fine. Oh, and, Elle?”
“Yes?” I asked nervously.
“Tell Easton to tell him you want the doctor’s experience. He’ll know what that means.” She winked at me, then reached for her purse and signaled for the check.
30
“Okay, let’s walk through the plan. E?” I turned to E, who was trying to get a chunk of gum off the bottom of his shoe. “E, pay attention.”
“What asshole spits their gum out on the sidewalk?” He scraped his Nike across the pavement. “Jesus.”
“Don’t say Jesus.” I returned my focus to Aaron, who looked despondent. “Aaron. Try not to look like your dog just died.”
His glum look turned into something more of a glare, but that was okay. I’d take mad over mopey all day long.
“Okay, whatever. Look pissed. I’m trying to help true love find its way and
you guys aren’t helping.”
“True love?” Easton groaned. “Stop labeling this. The man just got through a divorce.”
“Okay,” I countered. “I’m trying to help two friends who are physically attracted to each other but are afraid to admit their connection because they’re stubborn and freaked out about the teensy-tiny threesome we had.” I glared at E. “Happy? True love was a helluva lot shorter.”
“Let’s not use the word teensy-tiny in any sexual activity that involved me.” Easton rubbed his pec with a scowl.
“Or me,” Aaron chimed in.
I inhaled for three counts, then exhaled for three counts. Maybe Aaron and Chelsea didn’t need a matchmaker. They were already living together, if you ignored the pool and yard between them. Surely they could figure out their way through this snafu and onto the Happily Ever After side.
Except… it had been thirteen days and Chelsea was still ignoring my calls and texts. Aaron had tried to get into the main house to talk to her, only to find that his personal passcode had been deleted and his number blocked from her phone. We needed a grand gesture, something to get her to forgive all three of us while falling back into her crush with Aaron.
Enter Nicole Fagnani. Nicole Fagnani, who—thanks to her new alliance with MGM Entertainment—now had enough pull with Miami Stadium to get Aaron sixty seconds on stage, during Taylor Swift’s set change.
Sixty seconds that was going to start as soon as she finished White Horse and hustled that cute little booty off stage.
I listened as she sang and if there was a worst song to preface Aaron with, I’d have to search Spotify for hours to find it. The entire thing seemed to be about a man who fucked up and how it was too late for him to come and apologize now. I turned to E, who was already engaged in a level-one bromance with the sound guy. I pulled on his arm. “Are you listening to these words? This is horrible.”
He shrugged and I paced over to Aaron, who was leaning against a wall, watching the audience. “I can’t see her,” he said, speaking loudly in an attempt to be heard over the giant speakers.
“You know Chelsea. She’s in the front row somewhere.” That’s where our tickets had been. She’d probably given mine to her assistant, or the gay trainer at her gym, or the barista at Starbucks who gave her extra whipped cream.
All sub-par choices when compared to me but none of whom slept with her crush, and I could concede that that did knock a friendship a little off-kilter.
“Okay.” A short and stocky man wearing a giant headpiece strode up to Easton. “You miked and ready?”
“Yep.” Aaron straightened. “Good to go.”
“Here’s a microphone. It works in conjunction with your earpiece, so it’s not necessary, but a lot of people feel better having something in their hands.”
Aaron took it and nodded. “Okay.”
“Remember. Only sixty seconds. Now, let’s go.” The man headed toward the brightly lit stage and gestured for Aaron to follow him. As the pair passed me, I met Aaron’s eyes and gave him a quick smile. Gripping the brim of his baseball cap, he tipped it at me.
The lights on the stage extinguished, and I saw a glimpse of Taylor running off stage, a trio of attendants offering her water and fanning at her face as if they were a pit crew. A spotlight activated and Aaron stepped into it, the roars of the crowd settling into a hushed silence.
When he lifted the microphone to speak, every single eye in the stadium was on him. I clutched Easton’s arm and wondered what Chelsea was thinking.
“They told me I have sixty seconds,” Aaron drawled. “Which doesn’t seem like enough time to make a woman fall in love with me.”
There was uneasy movement in the crowd and a mumble of what seemed to be approval from the thousands of women before him. Easton pointed to a monitor and I moved over, focusing on the close-up view it afforded.
“But that’s okay, ’cause I don’t need Chelsea Pedicant to fall in love with me. I only need her to forgive me. I’m a guy. We do stupid things, and what I did didn’t have anything to do with her. I wasn’t even thinking about her because, to be honest, I never thought I had a chance with her. And maybe I don’t, but if I do, then, Chelsea, I’d like to take you on a date. I’d like to pick you up and take you to dinner and treat you the way you deserve to be treated. Like a lady. Like, maybe…” He glanced down at the floor for a moment, then shyly back up. “Like maybe my lady.”
“Oh my God, he’s running over time.” Some bitch with a side mohawk turned away from the monitor and wildly gestured to a grip. “We need someone to pull him off.”
“Are you kidding me?” The stocky guy who had escorted Aaron on stage shot the woman a glare. “The audience is eating this up.”
And they were. There was a ripple of sighs and awwws and several crude comments screamed out from various corners of the civic center. Then, so close to the stage that I could see the reflection of sequins on her shirt, I heard a loud and unmistakable voice. “Aaron Talbot, I will go on a date with you.”
On the monitor, Aaron’s face widened into an ear-to-ear grin. “You will?”
“Hell yes!” The monitor view changed, focusing in on Chelsea, who was in the process of trying to crawl over a lighting rig to get to the stage. Aaron bent over, offering her his hand, and when he lifted her up and onto the stage, the stadium erupted into cheers.
He looked down, his arms still around her, and when she spoke, it was captured clearly by his mic.
“I think you’re supposed to kiss me now.”
“Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!” The chant rolled through the crowd. Aaron glanced at the audience, then dipped her back, true Hollywood-style, and kissed her squarely on the mouth.
My jaw dropped. Between the kiss and the speech, I’m not sure why we were even here. Aaron seemed to have the swoony romance act down pat.
“This is going to go viral,” the gaffer beside us mused.
“Okay, we’re rolling RIGHT NOW with Taylor,” the mohawk screeched. “We need lights and start the music. Three, two, one, GO!”
The beat started and I heard the opening lines of “I knew you were trouble” bursting out of Taylor as she swept onto the stage, her smile big, her hand raised. The crowd turned their attention to her, and Aaron and Chelsea faded into the background to everyone except Easton and me.
“You did good,” Easton whispered in my ear, wrapping his arms around me and hugging my back to his chest. “Really good.”
I watched as Chelsea pulled Aaron down off the stage and toward her seat and hoped it was good enough for her to forgive me too.
31
“Mr. and Mrs. North?” The receptionist peered at us from the far end of the cramped waiting room. “You’re up.”
I glanced at Easton, then stood, smoothing the front of my white cotton sundress into place. Underneath it, I wore my sexiest bra and panty set, the thong already beginning to stick in between my legs.
Easton waited for me to go and I walked through the crowded area, apologizing as I bumped into an older woman’s knee, then high-stepping as I moved over a toddler sprawled out on the carpet. I reached the desk and smiled at the receptionist, who waved a bored hand in the direction of the double doors. “Go through there and to suite 4A.”
I pulled on the handle of the double door and entered a wide hall, reassured by the familiar smell of antiseptic and bleach. There were medical suites on both sides, some blinds open, their secondary waiting rooms exposed. I walked past a rheumatologist, a podiatrist, a psychiatrist, and stopped at the door to Suite 4A. The blinds were closed, the suite missing the name plaque that had adorned the other doors. Easton rapped on the door, then tried the handle. It swung open and he stepped inside. I hesitated.
“Coming?” He lifted one brow.
“Yes. I just…” I glanced back down the hall.
He smiled. “Come on.” He held out his hand, and I took it. When the door shut behind us, a bell tinkled through the small intake area. I hesitated, looking
over the plastic chair, scales, and blood pressure cuff. Past that, a room through which I could see an examination table. A side desk with a computer. A man in green scrubs and a white coat who spun on his stool and stood.
The doctor. Older. Mid-fifties, if I had to guess. He reached out, pumping some antibacterial gel into his palm and I could see the salt and pepper of his hair, the clean-shaven jaw, the rugged cut to his features. He waved us forward with a wedding-ring-free hand. “Come on in.”
Easton led the way, moving into the exam room and glancing around quickly before tilting his head at me to come on in. All clear.
“Elle, I’m Dr. Loutin. I’ll be performing your exam today. Please, take a seat.” He gestured to two plastic chairs set against the wall. “Before we begin, I need both you and your husband to sign some paperwork.”
He held out two clipboards, and I took mine, sliding a black pen out from the clasp. I glanced at E, who was already signing the bottom, then at the doctor. The man was studying me, his eyes a pale shade of blue, and gave a pleasant smile. “Read over all of it,” he urged. “Please. Take your time.”
I sat down next to E, and took an inventory of the space. A round jar of long Q-tips on the counter. Another with cotton balls. A box of surgical masks. A package of latex gloves, size large. From a speaker in the ceiling, melodic ocean sounds played. I looked down at the form.
I’d expected a HIPPA statement or release of medical documents form, something fitting with the role-play, but this was a legitimate contract, one that appeared to be created specifically for us.
I, Elle North, understand that Dr. James Loutin is not a medical doctor, and any medical advice that he gives will be ignored.
Twisted Marriage (Filthy Vows Book 2) Page 19
