I felt so sorry for the guy I told him the truth. “She wants you to feel guilty too.”
His eyes widened. “She feels guilty?”
Duh. “Yes.”
“But … I’m okay with it.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Of course not!” As if it was the stupidest thing anyone could suggest. “We haven’t talked about it at all. She just … does it and I know.”
I looked up at the ceiling and thought—not for the first time in my life—that men were really, really stupid. “She doesn’t know that you know.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” He looked away and I could tell he was tracking through their history, putting pieces together. Then he looked back into my eyes and said, “But how could I not? She said—” He stopped himself then, and over the next ten seconds his face went bright red.
Interesting. I raised an eyebrow. “She said…?”
He swallowed and I wondered if I should just let it drop. But some belligerent part of me wanted to know. They’d put me into the middle of this, damn it. I deserved to know. “She gave it away?”
He shook his head but I wasn’t being put off.
“Spill, buddy,” I demanded, “Or I’ll pester you until you do.”
He gazed at me for another couple of seconds before he sighed. “Why am I worried about embarrassing myself? My wife purchased you for me as if I was some loser who couldn’t get a fuck in a brothel. It doesn’t get more embarrassing than that.”
I smiled. “Sure it does. After what I did last night, I win any embarrassment contest already. You’re safe.”
I could see he was trying to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. I waited him out and at last he said, “She told me she didn’t want me to …” he glanced away, as if searching for the right words. “… perform cunnilingus on her, and I knew it was because she was getting better elsewhere.”
If his formal terminology hadn’t alerted me to his shame about this, the high color on his cheekbones would have. But I was so surprised that that was the lay of the land, I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Wow,” and, “That sucks.”
Shit.
I slapped a hand over my mouth.
But the edges of his lips were twitching. “Is that what you’re supposed to do?” he said deadpan. “No wonder I got it wrong.”
I really liked this guy.
“It’s not like a blow job,” I said, and started puffing as if I was in a Lamaze childbirth class. “You gotta work on your technique.”
Something shifted in his eyes then, and I suddenly realized what I’d suggested. He swallowed again, but he got the words out. “Was that an offer to let me practice?”
Inside my head, the little voice of greed said, heads-up Jilly, here’s your five grand bonus but I ignored it and smiled what I hoped was a mysterious smile. “We’ll see,” I said, and he nodded, then he picked up the spoon and went back to stirring the soup.
I moved in beside him, liking the fact that he was a head taller than me. On the pretence of inspecting the soup, I watched his large hands with their long blunt fingers and clean fingernails, and starting thinking about how those hands would feel on my body.
I made a soft mmm sound in my throat, because I was still half-pissed and not monitoring my behavior. At all, really.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Thinking about you fucking me.” I wasn’t embarrassed to say that, because I felt like we were in a different place now after that conversation. A barrier was down. I was moving into new territory. Well that was my justification. “Have you thought about it yet?” I transferred my attention from his hands to his face.
He grinned, and seriously, sexy dimples appeared beside his mouth. “I’m a man. It’s all we think about. Our brains are wired that way.”
“Really?” I asked, genuinely interested. “I thought that was a myth.”
“Well, not all we think about,” he amended, “but sex keeps jumping in there when we’re trying to work or drive or shop or … cook.”
“Ah! So you were thinking about sex.” With me. I drifted an inch closer and caught a whiff of aftershave. The illicit Morrissey. Good man! “So what was the fantasy?”
“It was …” He kept stirring, but the color was back in his cheeks and he clearly needed prompting.
“Sex against the fridge?” I guessed. “A threesome with Katinka? Cunnilingus!”
I was on a roll, unburdening a few of my own fantasies, but it was clearly too much for Finn. He put down the spoon, stepped away from the stove and put up his hands.
“I can’t do this sober,” he said. “It’s…”
“Hard?” I replied, in full innuendo mode.
He laughed. “Daylight.”
“Oh.” How old fashioned. I looked at him afresh. “You like it dark.”
“I’m used to the dark.” He shrugged. “Katinka prefers…”
He stopped, but I got the picture. She either didn’t want him to see her naked, or she was fantasizing about someone else. And judging by the chutzpah she’d displayed when I met her, I’m guessing it was the latter.
Poor guy.
I knew I wasn’t there to be Suzy Sex-Therapist, but I didn’t want to stand by and see this gorgeous man’s confidence battered any further. “We’re going to eat,” I said, and hastily added, “Lunch,” before he could misconstrue that. “After which I’m going to have a nice long bath and you’re going to tuck me in again for an afternoon nap. In the daylight. And you’re going to kiss me.”
“I am?”
“Yes. I’m psychic.” I waved an airy hand. “I just know these things.”
He smiled at me then, one of those steamy I like you smiles men do, with his dreads falling haphazardly across his shoulders, and his green eyes looking warmly into mine. “Okay,” he said, and nodded. “Okay.”
“Good.” I raised my glass of chilled water to salute our agreement. Then I went over to the dining table and sat down, scraping the chair noisily on the tiles and spilling my water on the coaster. “I’d help you dish up—”
“But we want the soup in the bowls.” He did all the fixings. Then we were sitting across from each other, eating our soup and pulling chunks of bread off the cob loaf he’d warmed in the oven.
“This is fantastic,” I said around a mouthful of soup-soaked bread. And I really meant it. The man could cook.
“And no chicken stock.”
“Excellent.” I glanced up at him through my lashes. “Because I don’t eat chickens.”
He just smiled and finished his soup.
With a stomach full of food, I felt much less woozy, which bode well for the kiss/nap. So I grabbed my toiletries and helped myself to his bathroom, spreading my stuff around and languishing in the spa for a lot longer than I should have, but the cool water made my back feel fabulous, even though the skin behind my knees felt tight while I was getting in and out. When I was done, I toweled myself dry, gently on the back, and put on a white silk kimono that was pretty-much see-through.
Then I padded back into my bedroom and found him there, sitting on the end of the bed.
He stood up and pressed his hands together. “Ready to be tucked in?” he said, in that over-bright voice that screams nervousness. Clearly, I’d left him to think about it for far too long.
“I need moisturizer first,” I said, tossing him a bottle of ylang ylang scented body lotion.
He caught it and simply stood there as I pulled back the quilt, slipped out of my kimono and lay face down on the bed, stark naked.
“Jeez. Ease me into it, why don’t you?” he muttered.
But I simply wriggled around to get comfy and hooked a thumb toward my back. “When you’re ready.”
I heard him sigh, but a second later the bed dipped behind me and I smiled at the window.
“Warm it in your hands first,” I instructed.
“I know what I’m doing,” he replied,
with a hint of grumpiness.
That made me smile more. I was tempted to say, Oh, is that why your wife has a girlfriend? But I didn’t. I just waited for those lovely long hands to start stroking my back, smearing that delicious cream all over me. And when he did, I sighed. He started on my shoulders, which were probably the most burnt. Then he worked his way gently down my back to my waist and below that to the top of my sunburn-line. I wished then that I’d been wearing a g-string when I’d been burnt so he had an excuse to stroke my ass, because exactly as I expected, he bypassed it and moved down to my feet, slathering the cream onto my instep which was far sexier than I’d have imagined it would be.
I lifted my foot up and he obliged by rubbing the cream in with both hands. Then his fingers slid between my toes, and before I knew it, I was making that mmm sound again, but louder. When he’d finished both feet, he started on my ankles and to my surprise he moved around on the bed and pulled my legs apart so he could sit between them. I wasn’t complaining.
His strong fingers slid up and down my calves, and at the other end of the bed my fingers opened and closed like a cat making bread. The mmm turned into a purring sound deep in my throat and I could feel myself getting hot all over. That delicious clutching sensation started between my legs and I knew I was fast approaching critical mass, thinking that after he kissed me and left, I’d be masturbating. Then I realized I didn’t need to wait.
So while he massaged more cream onto my thighs, running his thumbs up the inside to tease me, I tilted my ass up and snuck a hand down between my legs to stroke the slickness that had formed there. Instantly liquid pleasure sent tendrils out, snaking up my spine and making my breasts ache to be touched.
I was starting to pant. “Don’t stop doing that, okay?” I whispered.
“Wow,” he said, and I could hear a catch in his voice but he didn’t stop stroking me, and just when I was starting to feel the rhythm moving me into pre-orgasm trembling, his hands slid up past my thighs onto my ass, his thumbs sliding along the crack, pushing me closer. Then I was making that Oh, oh, oh sound and he was kneading and stroking, and there was something about the combination of the sunburn pain and the feel of his hands and the naughtiness of masturbating in front of a stranger that pushed me over the edge into the fastest orgasm I’d ever had. He gripped my ass tight while I shuddered against my fingers and God, oh God, Oh God! felt the blood-pounding thrill of it racing around the spasms under my hand.
“Dear God!” I breathed as I slumped down onto the bed. “That was fucking fantastic.”
Behind me, Finn was silent. I breathed into the cool white sheet, wondering what he was thinking.
A long sixty seconds passed before he said, “That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
So clearly, Katinka was saving her best work for her girlfriend.
“Do you have a hard-on?” I asked. Rhetorical question.
“Well, you won’t be winning rock, paper, scissors unless you’ve got paper. Put it that way.”
I grinned. “I’m bought and paid for,” I said. “And she wants you to do it.”
“I want to do it.” After a couple of seconds, he added, “In fact, I’m so desperate to fuck you right now, I think I’d do it, even if she didn’t want me to.”
“That’s my boy!”
He was sure to feel guilty about it later, but that was exactly what Katinka wanted.
I retrieved my sticky hand and levered myself up into doggy-ready position. “I’m not lying on my back,” I said, and tried to look at him between my legs, but dropping my head so low brought the hangover wooziness back so I tilted it up and rested my forehead on the cool sheet.
Then I wriggled my ass. “Come and get it.”
CHAPTER THREE: Is Finn In?
There was complete silence in the bedroom for the longest ten seconds of my life. Then Finn said, “I can’t do this.”
What?
I wavered but didn’t slump out of my doggy-ready position. A part of me knew this would happen. It was way too soon, but instead of feeling relief that my morals weren’t stretched, I was disappointed.
“Fine. Suit yourself,” I said, not exactly snippy, but I wasn’t sweetness and light either. And I certainly didn’t want a discussion about it, so I slid onto my belly as gracefully as I could and pretended to be going to sleep while I listened to another long swathe of silence behind me. At last my bedroom door opened and closed.
I should have been full of orgasm endorphins and feel-good sexiness—I’d given him a hard-on, and he did want to fuck me. Instead, I felt vaguely grumpy as I closed my eyes and prepared myself for sleep, wondering what the afternoon would bring.
Avoidance, actually.
I woke up mid-afternoon and Finn was out. He’d left a note on the kitchen table saying Home by 7 pm, bringing dinner. He’d also left his cell phone number in case I needed to contact him prior to his return. That was thoughtful, and considering the state he must have been in before he left, it was telling of his character. I wanted to stay cranky, but he was so damned kind, he made that difficult.
I took a coffee out to the table by the pool, thinking that hot men should be avoided at all cost—because they scrambled your brain and gave off mixed-signals—feeling you up one minute and then turning you down the next. That train of thought, however, was just to distract myself from the fact that I’d scrambled his brain by telling him we’d only be kissing, and then on a whim I’d tried to turn our tucking-in session into sex.
Which wasn’t fair.
I should have been thinking about the big picture of what I was doing, not just freewheeling into whatever felt good at the time. Finn deserved better than that. When I’d taken the job, he’d just been a generic “hot guy”. But now that I was living in his house and he’d been patient with me when I was drunk, and caring when I was hungover, I could see he was a real person, a sweet guy, actually, who appeared to be trying hard to be faithful to his wife.
So why had I greedily tried to seduce him? Was I that selfish? Or was it because his wife was cheating and he should too—some bizarre peer-pressure deal? Or… was this about my own self-esteem?
A pang of discomfort opened up in my chest and I forced myself to look at it. Had my relationship with Doug made me feel boring and not-sexy? Was that why I was so keen to have sex with Finn? Was I trying to prove to myself that I still ‘had it’? And if so, what exactly had I proved? That masturbating naked can give a man a hard-on? That didn’t mean Finn was attracted to me. It only meant he was heterosexual and awake. I could have been porn on the teev and he would have had the same reaction.
I was supposed to be acting like a mature businesswoman, not a needy schoolgirl offering sex in exchange for approval. That was embarrassing. I really had to change my behavior, and I could start with easing-up on Finn. There would be husbands who wanted to cheat. And if building my sexual self-esteem was important, I could make sex part of my Must Have list so I didn’t get into the situation of being available and unwanted again. That felt like rejection.
For now, however, I was contracted to say in Katinka’s house for a month, and I was going to do that. If Finn wanted us to pretend to be housemates, fine. I wouldn’t earn my five grand bonus, but my conscience would be clear.
So I decided to start as I meant to go on, by being a grown-up. I went inside and grabbed my phone to text Finn that I’d be making dinner. Then I set to work on clearing left-over veggies from the bottom of the refrigerator and turning them into a vat of risotto which I planned to serve with a mellow Lambrusco I’d found at the back of the bar. Dinner was still warm on the stovetop when I heard the garage roller-door grind up at two minutes to seven.
He’d clearly stayed away as long as he could, and I felt bad about that. But I planned to make the rest of my stay as easy as possible, so I remained where I was, at the table by the pool, pretending to work on my laptop. When I saw him in the kitchen, I called out, “Hey, I’m out here!” and I waved at him through the b
ig glass sliding doors. Then I went back to typing, as though I was finishing a sentence.
He came out onto the back patio and said, “You’re working.” The sun was setting and it covered him in gold, making his green eyes look luminous. A treacherous part of me said You do want to fuck that guy. Admit it.
“Writing a book,” I lied casually. Then I winked at him. “Potential best seller. About a woman who can’t get a fuck in a brothel.”
His eyes widened, but a second later, he realized I was teasing him and he smiled, his shoulders relaxing inside the very nice casual jacket he wore over jeans and a tee-shirt. “Some guys are crazy, right?”
I nodded, but we were smiling at each other. “In any case,” I went on, “I’ve decided my character has secret literary ambitions, so I’m giving her the month off sex to create a novella, and then I’ll let her get back to some erotic adventures.”
He tilted his head to the side and his dreads slid over the shoulder of his jacket. The lingering way he looked at me made my celibacy resolve waver.
“So…dinner?” I said brightly.
He nodded. “Have I got time for a quick shower?”
I had an instant visualization of the two of us in his overlarge ensuite shower, all slippery and naked, but I pushed that aside to say, “Sure. I’ll pack up my work.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t seem in a hurry to leave the pretty terracotta patio with its drapery of fragrant jasmine scenting the cool evening air. At last he said, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “My bad, actually.”
“No.” He shook his head, to reinforce the point. “I should never have agreed to this. I was attracted to you from the moment you walked into my house.”
Oh. So it wasn’t about porn-come-to-life. “I didn’t realize.”
He frowned, as if to say How could you not? But what he said was, “I imagine she’s doing this to punish me. She knows I’m attracted to you.”
That only made me frown. “Punish you? But she’s the one cheating—”
“With a girl. This is different.” He pointed between the two of us. “I think she’s testing me to see if she can trust me.” He nodded to himself a few times. “I’m not doing well.”
Husband Sit (Husband #1) Page 5
