Then she shook her head.
Embarrassed.
But really embarrassed? Or was the flush on her cheek a flush of excitement?
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said quietly.
But there was a little smile on her lips, barely noticeable but there.
“What’s there to be embarrassed about?” Craig said. “You look great.”
Leigh pushed a nonexistent stray lock of hair from her forehead. She shrugged. “I guess I just didn’t… think of myself as a… um… erotic… person.”
Craig edged a little closer to her. “Maybe that’s what’s so erotic about it,” he said.
She looked up at him. He met her eyes, and there was no doubt that his magic was working, he could almost feel her insides quivering from where he was sitting. He pointed a finger at her. “That right there,” he said. “That look you have. Like you’re not quite sure.”
Leigh’s eyes flicked away from his face, over his shoulder, to where Jeremy was sitting.
Craig waited. This would be a real test of how easy or hard it would be to lure the pretty Miss Leigh to indulge in her dark side.
Her eyes came back to his. “Not quite sure about what?” she said.
Bingo.
“About how bad you want to be,” Craig said, in a low voice.
Leigh’s mouth fell open a little bit again, and she pulled her feet up and under the bench. She smoothed her flawless hair again, her mouth open to say something, though it was clear she couldn’t exactly find the words.
“I don’t…” Leigh’s eyes went back to Jeremy.
Craig followed her gaze.
Jeremy had evidently decided to pretend he wasn’t watching them. He had reflective sunglasses on and his head was turned slightly to the side. But Craig knew his eyes were actually on them.
He turned back to look at Jeremy’s pretty wife. But what did she think? And why was she looking over there? Was it because she secretly wanted to get away with something? OR was it because she wanted him to watch? Or was it because she felt guilty?
Oh, any possibility was delightful.
Leigh placed her hand on the back of her neck and looked down at the ground again.
“Okay, we have a lot of things for S’mores, coming through,” Billie’s voice said, cutting through the tension that was building up.
Which was for the best. Let it sit with her.
*
Leigh’s head was spinning.
She’d had far, far too much to drink. So much that she had lost track of it, and the calories, and she would have to plan out a few days of eating practically nothing to make sure to make up for it.
And then Billie had come out with those damned S’mores.
But that wasn’t really why her head was spinning. Not the booze, not the S’mores.
It was Craig.
He was being so… utterly inappropriate. Right there, in front of everyone. His wife was in the kitchen, Jeremy was right there, and he was saying things like…
Like what? What, exactly had he said? He had flustered her so much it had flown right out of her head.
She felt like she should probably tell Jeremy. Or someone. Or do something.
The guy was hitting on her. He had to be. The way he was looking at her, and that low drawl as he purred: it depends on how bad you want to be, or whatever it was he had said. And talking about her pictures.
“Here,” Billie was saying, handing her a S’more.
She took it, her long fingers resting on it delicately like it was a fragile piece of glass.
She bit into the S’more, and the graham cracker split open, crumbled, and let a river of oozing hot chocolate and marshmallow gush from the center. To her horror, the hot liquid dropped from her fingers and onto her chest, missing her dress by just a centimeter. She could feel the heat of it as it snaked toward the collar, along the ample curve of her breast.
She held the S’more away from her awkwardly and looked down at the chocolate drop, making a “mmfff,” sound.
Before she could even think about what was happening, Billie’s finger was on her chest, and she swiped up the drop of chocolate. She did it in a very swift, fun movement, a grin on her face.
“Whoops,” she said casually, and for a second there was nothing to it.
But then, she brought her finger to her mouth and sucked it off.
It wasn’t overtly sexual. She went right back to the fire, and whatever she was doing there.
Leigh turned to look at Craig. His eyes were locked on her, and he had a pleased smile on his face, like he had seen the whole thing, and liked it very much.
Leigh’s stomach felt like it was on a boat in the ocean. She stared at Craig, no idea how to react to him.
He was hitting on her, wasn’t he?
Leigh stood up. “I.. uh… I’m going to go...” she pointed helplessly in the direction of the house. She set her S’more down on a plate.
Craig kept looking at her, and he smiled. “First door on the right after the kitchen,” he said.
She felt like she was floating above her own legs as she walked to the bathroom. She locked herself in and sat down on the toilet lid, smoothing out her dress before she did. She brought her hand to her mouth and looked up at her reflection in the mirror.
What was wrong with her?
Her wedding band glinted and reminded her of her marriage vows. Which had never come into question for even a moment -
-even a moment, Leigh? What about Dmitry?-
until this guy, Craig, had shown up.
She knew the right thing to do would be to tell Jeremy. That they should probably go home, now, and maybe stop seeing the Oswalds altogether. It was all just so… inappropriate.
She looked into her own brown eyes in the mirror.
It would be too bad, though, to lose the friends they had finally made in the neighborhood.
And how inappropriate was it, really?
What had he even said?
He was probably just drunk.
She was probably reading more into it than there was.
Leigh stood up and lifted the toilet seat and her dress to actually use the bathroom.
She repeated her justifications to herself.
A casing of guilt still enclosed her heart, no matter what she told herself. And that was because, deep down inside, Leigh knew that the reason she wasn’t going to go home right this instant, or probably even tell Jeremy, is because she secretly hoped to get another little thrill like the one she had had out there next to Billie’s fire pit.
The kind of thrill that traveled all over her skin, and pooled in her lower abdomen.
The kind of thrill she got when she read Julia’s Big Boss.
There was nothing wrong with a little thrill, right?
She folded the squares of toilet paper neatly over one another as she unrolled them, and she was so lost in her thoughts that she had piled up about half of the roll by the time she stopped.
She rolled it back on as neatly as possible, used a little to wipe, and washed her hands, in a hurry to get back to the barbecue.
She dried her hands on the neat towel – Billie, she had noticed, was curiously neat and tidy in her housekeeping practices, which Leigh approved of wholeheartedly – and then put her hand on the door.
The whole of the doorframe was taken up by him, and for a moment Leigh lost her sense of balance. A montage of things swarmed in front of her eyes. His grin; the stubble on his jaw very lightly peppered with a precise amount of gray to make him look lion-like and not old; his tanned and muscled arms, the tattoos wrapping over them and moving sexually with every motion he made. The musky scent of him, mingling with the vague smoky flavor of the fire.
He didn’t move.
The bathroom was small – a half bath of the sort plunked into any suburban home to ratchet up the home value. It seemed to Leigh that Craig was actually moving closer to her.
But there was nowhere for her to go. His hand was stretc
hed up and over the doorframe, his shirt pulled tight against his muscular frame, and he was everywhere. There was nowhere for her to look, and when she looked down she found her eyes falling – purely accidentally – on the bulge in his jeans where…
Leigh took a breath in.
Craig didn’t budge. He just kept looking at her.
She felt a part of her mind break free and engage in a fantasy, a fantasy in which Craig did actually move toward her, his eyes locked on hers the way they were right now, pushing her hard into the wall behind her and pulling the door closed behind them. “I can’t,” the Leigh beneath the weight of his muscles whispered breathlessly.
Leigh shuddered a little and regained control of her thoughts. “Uh…” she said. She smiled and squished her arms together, pointing them at the hole under his arm.
Universal language for: I need to get by.
Craig didn’t budge. He just continued to hold her there with his gaze, his charcoal-green eyes, for another moment.
What a jerk, Leigh tried to tell herself. I mean, seriously, effectively, a jerk. Who the hell did he think he was, trapping her in the bathroom like that, and looking at her salaciously, where anybody might see?
Craig brought his hand down from the doorframe. “I thought you’d be in there forever,” he said.
Trying to be oh-so-charming.
Leigh pushed back hard on the way his voice was working its way through her mind. Meanwhile, she stared, horrified and excited, as his fingers drifted down from the doorframe, closer and closer to her skin. Closer to her chest.
She was suddenly keenly aware of her exposed chest – hardly a burlesque outfit but quite risque for her, in ordinary life. She could feel every inch of her exposed skin burning out here in the open, and it was almost as if an electrical spark formed between her skin and his fingertips as they came closer and closer.
Move, Leigh, she remembered thinking.
But she didn’t. She just let his fingers fall onto her chest, about three inches away from her hardening nipple, on her right breast.
The pads of his fingertips were a little rough. Hot. They scratched but they stroked her lightly, sending sparks of heat through her skin. They electricity traveled down her spine, through her core, and – undeniably – made her pussy throb. She could feel a damp stain spreading on her nice, new, white cotton panties.
“You still have a little bit of chocolate here,” Craig said, and he pushed against her chest with his fingertips. The push was light as a feather but it forced Leigh to step back, because there was a kind of forceful command to it, a steeliness underneath it.
Maybe it came from his eyes.
With his free hand, Craig swiped the hand towel from the hanger and got it wet under the sink.
Then he slid the wet towel over Leigh’s chest. Once, twice. The ice-cold of the towel over the still-burning embers of his touch made Leigh quiver from head to toe, but she managed to keep it together.
Her mouth opened to say something, again, but what?
What was she doing?
React.
She fell, very suddenly, from the place where she was floating.
Just who the hell did this guy think he was?
She grabbed the towel from his hand, meaning to pull it away from him and wipe her own skin off. As she did, she tried to push to the side and past him, out of the bathroom.
But Craig caught her hand in his, and so she did nothing of the sort.
She found herself instead breathing: “I’m married.”
The words left her mouth much, much more deflated than she had envisioned them. Almost whispery, almost… seductive-sounding. The sound of her own voice angered her a little but she also found it almost alluring.
Caving in… she was acting like some helpless tart. She squeezed up against the doorframe and tried to leave.
Craig smiled at her as she did, moving his body so that it didn’t so much block her, as press against her. She could feel the shape of him – the muscles of his pecs, the skin of his forearm, the bulge between his legs.
“You know,” he said. And then he leaned close to her, far too close for a man who was not her husband to be leaning toward her.
Leigh found herself paralyzed. Instead of squirming away she remained motionless, so that when he finished his sentence his breath was on her neck, and his gray-green eyes were close to hers.
“You might try telling your husband all about this, Leigh. You might be surprised what he would say.”
His fingers traveled down her arm, and sent a wave of gooseflesh over her shoulders. She squirmed away, and Craig grinned at her as she looked back. He closed the door.
Leigh stared at the white door for a moment, and then she looked around jumpily.
The hallways was empty, and the voices from outside indicated that the party had just gone on, with no one the wiser.
What the fuck just happened?
Leigh took a deep breath, and practically ran out to the party.
She was going to get Jeremy, and they were going home, and then she would…
She would what?
Billie was on the other side of the screen door by the time she reached it. “Oh perfect, can you open the door for me?” Billie said, smiling broadly at Leigh.
Leigh felt a plunge through her heart. She really liked Billie. Everything that had just transpired was awful, whether Leigh had gotten off on it or not. Poor Billie.
They weren’t long-time friends, but Leigh couldn’t stand the idea of betraying even an acquaintance.
She opened the screen door for her. Her hand shook as she did.
“What’s gotten in to you?” Billie said. “You like like you found my cat.”
Leigh blinked at her.
Billie set the dishes on the counter. “My cat. Little crazy gray cat. We call her Waybill, because she’s a fucking psychopath.”
Billie grinned as if this was some great joke, and so Leigh laughed. It came out a little maniacal.
Billie made a face.
Leigh cleared her throat.
Get out of here now, she thought. Get home, clear your head and your thoughts, you can decide what to do about this… situation… there.
“I… um, feel a little too… drunk,” Leigh said.
Billie frowned. “You’re still standing,” she argued with a smile.
Leigh heard the bathroom door open.
“I’m… I have to go, I think, I feel… not very well...” she pointed behind her vaguely.
Craig came into the kitchen, and stood behind Billie. He slid his arms over her slender hips and rested his chin on her head.
Leigh smiled. “I think I have to go home,” she concluded.
Craig was still looking at her.
What an ass.
Billie came over and kissed her on the cheek. “Oh, thanks for coming,” she said. Craig followed, and he was there with his arms out for a hug before Leigh could think of any way to get away.
He gave her a hug in a very neighborly, neutral way.
Leigh should have found it smarmy, but if she was being honest?
The cool way he did it only excited her a little bit more.
“Well, bye,” she said.
And then she practically scurried out to get Jeremy and get the hell out of there.
*
Jeremy had followed Craig into the house. He had done it because Craig had practically instructed him to, by looking at him deadpan from across the yard and jerking his head in the direction of the house, where Leigh had disappeared moments before.
Craig got up, and walked calmly toward the house, so Jeremy had followed.
What had he expected to see? As he walked down the slight incline toward the house, it had seemed like an eternity to him. An eternity in which to imagine all sorts of scenarios, all of them painfully delicious.
But had he really expected Craig to make such a bold move on his wife?
Maybe not.
Nothing could have prepared him fo
r the feeling he experienced as he stood there watching them together. For a moment it seemed as though Craig might step into the bathroom and lock the door behind them. That he might get right under Leigh’s sundress with no more than a cool stare from his implacable face.
Jeremy was at the end of the hall, so he couldn’t see much besides Craig as he spoke to Leigh. But it took a long time, as he stood there, blocking her way. And it wasn’t as if Leigh really tried to escape.
He pictured her on the inside of the bathroom: chests heaving, mouth open in disbelief.
Or was she smiling?
He heard her mumble, “I’m married,” and his heart swelled.
And then she turned, trying to slide past Craig.
Craig had caught her up against the doorframe, and she had just wilted for him, plastering herself against the doorframe and waiting with baited breath for his next command.
Jeremy's cock had gotten rock-hard, even as his eyes stung with angry disbelief.
He stared as Craig tilted his head, his lips very close to his wife’s neck. He lifted his eyes and met Jeremy’s stare.
And then he heard him say, very clearly:
“You might try telling your husband all about this, Leigh. You might be surprised what he would say.”
Jeremy had tucked himself back against the hallway, and then, seeing that Billie was headed toward the kitchen, ducked into the laundry room and thankfully found another door to the side of the yard. He popped out and walked back to where he had been sitting, his whole body on fire. His cock was hard and his skin was crawling and his stomach flopped as his heart clamored.
He stared straight ahead, waiting, for as long as he could.
Billie was still in the kitchen.
But had Craig somehow pulled his wife back into the bathroom?
And what if he had?
The possibility burned inside of him, both awful and enticing. They could be in there, right then, their tongues darting in and out of each others’ mouths -
No, that wasn’t Leigh.
They could be in there, Leigh pressed against the wall, that look on her face, the same look from the cover of Julia’s Big Boss, a look of not-wanting-to layered over an expression of lust. Craig could be sliding her dress up her thigh right now, and Leigh would just be letting him go further and further….
Leigh Uncovered: A Wife Sharing Novel Page 8
