Bullshit.
“I think you need to put that aside, JJ,” he instructed, removing the tablet from her fingers to put it on the table.
She frowned at him, wishing she had the courage to ask what was going on with them. “I need to—”
He shook his head, that unnerving light she couldn’t decipher in his eyes again. “No. You need to do what you’re told. I know you’re an independent woman, I know you’re capable of dealing with your own shit—I know you raised yourself and your sister all alone—but right now, you need to do what I’m telling you to do.”
The dominating control in his voice sent a hot lick of excitement into her very core. He was right, of course. She could look after herself. After her father abandoned his family for a younger woman a year after moving them from Denmark to Australia, her mother went into an emotional decline, a decline that spiralled into depression and ended with suicide when he married that younger woman a year later.
Jorja had only been nineteen when she stood at her mother’s graveside, her sister fourteen. When it came to looking after herself, Jorja was an expert.
Of course, looking after oneself was one thing; knowing what was going on in one’s relationship was a completely different matter.
If charting the chaos of being in love with a pro-footballer was as easy as raising a young teenage girl in a country you still didn’t call your home, she wouldn’t be in this unsettled emotional state now, would she?
Or be wondering if her relationship with Mud, the man she loved with all her heart, was coming to an end.
God, please don’t let it be coming to an end. Please don’t let him be bored with—
He threaded his fingers through hers and tugged her from the stool. “C’mon.”
She searched for a hint of what was going on in his eyes. “Where are we going?”
“The gym.”
It wasn’t the answer she expected. In all honesty, she had no idea what she’d expected. “Yours? Or another one?”
Mud chuckled. “Mine.”
He led her to his personal workout room, past the treadmill he’d been running on less than an hour ago, to a long padded bench situated in the middle of the room.
Jorja recognised it for what it was straight away: a massage table. At some point in the last thirty minutes, he’d set it up, complete with fluffy white towels on which to lie.
Delighted warmth flooded through her.
She couldn’t stop her smile stretching her lips as she turned to face him. “You’re going to give me a massage?”
His jaw bunched. “Strip off your bikini, JJ, and climb onto the table, face down.”
Something about his response set off a horde of butterflies in her belly. She studied him, catching her bottom lip with her teeth.
With a growl, Mud hooked his fingers in the sides of her bikini bottoms and yanked them down her legs.
A hitching gasp burst past Jorja’s lips. Her nipples pinched tight. Her pussy grew warm. “Mud,” she whispered.
For an answer, he rose to his feet, skimming his palms up the inside of her thighs and brushed his thumbs over her folds. His stare found hers. His nostrils flared.
She swallowed. “Mud,” she repeated, aching for him. Aching for sexual release. For him to take her body and use it for his pleasure. “Please…”
The muscles in his jaw bunched. His Adam’s apple slid up and down. “I…” He drew a slow breath, his eyes ablaze with desire and that same indecipherable emotion. “You know I love you, JJ?”
She nodded again. The proclamation—rarely uttered by him, even when he was at his most romantic, and never during moments of sexual pleasure—unnerved her. “I do. As I love you.”
“You know I will…you know you are…oh fuck, JJ, you know I will give you everything you want, right? No matter what that is? Even if…even…” He stopped. Shook his head. Muttered something under his breath.
His uncharacteristic fluster made Jorja’s belly tighten. She frowned. “I do.”
He held her gaze, as if seeking out an answer in her eyes. An answer to what, she didn’t know.
“What’s wrong, Daniel?” she asked. “What’s going on? Tell me. Please?”
He drew a deep breath.
“I am in control of your pleasure, JJ,” he proclaimed. “Say it.”
It was a routine they’d followed before. A part of their foreplay. It made Jorja wet every time.
“You are in control of my pleasure,” she said, standing motionless even as he thumbed the tiny hood of her clit. Shards of liquid pleasure shot through her. “I can never get enough.”
Mud’s nostrils flared at her declaration. A low groan rumbled in his chest. “Enough what, JJ?”
The question seemed tormented.
“Pleasure,” she supplied, thrumming with elemental need. It’s what he wanted to hear. It was what she wanted more than anything: pleasure from him.
Mud’s eyes closed. A conflict she couldn’t understand pulled at his forehead. His jaw knotted once more. “Oh Jorja,” he whispered her name, her full name, like a sigh spilling from his lips. “I wish you’d said—”
The doorbell chimed.
Jorja bit back a scream. Not again.
She stared at Mud, waiting for his expletive.
Instead, he drew a deep breath and held her gaze. “Get undressed, JJ, and climb onto the table. Face down.”
He left before she could beg him not to. Before she could beg him to ignore the door, to ignore the world and tell him what was going on with him. With them.
Chewing on her lip some more, she turned back to the massage table.
Studied its plush towel-covered surface.
Thought of Mud’s hands smoothing over her oil-slick skin, kneading the knot in the back of her neck before sliding down her spine, her hips, over the curve of her naked backside, down her legs, and back up again to the junction of her thighs.
Her pussy throbbed at the thought of him slipping his fingers into her wet slit as she lay on her belly, face down, waiting for him. His for the taking.
Closing her eyes, she reached up behind her head and pulled the string of her bikini top.
The twin triangles of material fell from her breasts, kissing her bare feet.
With a deep breath, she released the loose chignon of her hair, letting the long black strands cascade down her back before she climbed up onto the massage table.
The luxurious Egyptian cotton towel caressed her breasts, belly and hairless mons as she stretched out flat on her stomach. She pressed her cheeks and forehead to the face opening, letting her hands rest loosely on the arm supports below it.
For a few heartbeats, she kept her thighs together, one ankle crossing the other. The room’s cool air played with her heated skin, licking at the crevice of her butt. The contact sent a delicious tingle through her and, growing hotter with excited anticipation, she allowed the muscle in her legs to relax, parting her thighs a little until cool air played with her pussy as well.
When Mud returned—
A rustling sound at the entry to his gym alerted her to his arrival.
She heard a swift intake of breath, followed by feet shuffling on the polished floorboards.
Forcing herself to stay motionless, she pulled her own deep breath. “I’m yours,” she said, keeping her face buried in the hollow opening of her massage table’s headrest.
A second passed without sound. Jorja’s pulse pounded in her throat. Her tummy tightened.
“Mud?” she said.
“I’m here,” his deep voice, spoken from her far right, played with her senses, barely a second before warm, strong hands began smoothing up her back. From the base of her spine to her shoulders.
Hands that couldn’t belong to Mud.
“And so is Brett.”
Jorja froze at her boyfriend’s statement.
The hands on her shoulders began to knead at her muscles. A scent of unfamiliar cologne and maleness slipped into her breath.
“Mud’s asked me to help,” the Australian Rugby League’s professional masseur said directly above her head. His voice was strained, as if every word was uttered past a throat choked with need.
A dark pulse of heat throbbed in Jorja’s core, wrapped in a shameful vice. Oh God, Brett Bartowski was there. Touching her. Seeing her naked.
Brett Bartowski, who had told her in no uncertain terms at the last Kangaroos team social event—a dinner to farewell the outgoing manager—that he thought she was incredible and if Mud ever “dropped the ball” on treating her like the goddess she was, he would gladly pick it up.
Brett Bartowski, a man who knew exactly what to do with his hands to make a person feel…
A low groan slipped from Jorja as the masseur’s fingers worked the aggravated muscles in her neck; the sound part pain, part pleasure.
Christ, the guy knew how to touch.
“There is a lot of congestion in her splenius cervicis muscle,” he said, no doubt to Mud. “How did you say she hurt it?”
“Foreplay,” Mud answered, still to Jorja’s far right. That he was in the room, watching another man touch her naked body, sent an unsettling wanton flush through her. That he was sharing with Brett something so private and intimate as their sexual activity only heightened that carnal reaction.
The hands kneading the base of her neck paused for a moment. Silence hung in the air. Jorja wanted to lift her head. To look at the man she loved. To see what was in his eyes.
A strangled laugh sounded above her head as Brett began to massage her neck and shoulders again. “Did you get to finish?”
“No,” Mud answered. “That’s why you’re here.”
Jorja’s head spun. Her belly clenched. Her pussy pulsed. Oh God, was Mud inviting Brett to fuck her? Was this his way of telling her their relationship had run its course? Their sex life had never been boring, but it had always been consistent. Was this break with the norm his way of showing her he was ready to move on?
And if it was, what did she do?
Pushing her palms to the arm supports beneath her head, she raised her head, seeking out the man she loved, only to find herself staring straight at Brett’s crotch—the massive bulge in his khaki chinos directly at her eye level, letting her know exactly how the surreal situation affected him.
“Mud?” she said. If she moved any more her breasts would no longer be pressed to the massage table. Was she ready for another man to see her that way? No matter the unexpected curl of arousal licking between her thighs right now?
Was her boyfriend?
“Let him make you feel better, JJ,” Mud’s low voice came from the right, a strained tension in it she’d never heard before.
Her belly knotted again. Closing her eyes, she pulled a slow breath and lowered her face to the table again.
Another beat of silence hung on the air above her.
“Are you sure?” Brett asked. There was no denying the unmistakable desire in his question.
If Mud answered, Jorja didn’t hear it.
Brett’s fingers began working her flesh again, massaging the muscles of her shoulders, first the right and then the left, before moving up into the base of her skull.
Another groan slipped from her as his fingers found the tender spot. She stiffened, and then moaned as he melted it away with hands she could only describe as magic.
The pulse of dark pleasure between her thighs throbbed harder. The primitive sexual hunger simmering in her—ignited by Mud’s earlier passion—flared hot again. She pressed her thighs together, her clit a nub of concentrated need, and let out a soft whimper.
From the far right, she heard Mud’s swift intake of breath.
The hands on her shoulder paused—for a heartbeat—and then began to work their way down her back. Slowly.
Fingertips brushed the side swell of her compressed breasts, barely a feathering caress, before moving towards her hips.
She closed her eyes, the liquid pool of want in her core churning with uncertainty. Did she really want this? Even if Mud did? Did she?
Brett smoothed his palms over the base of her spine, the tips of his fingers skimming the curve of her arse with every incredible stroke over her muscles.
And then he was kneading her backside, his fingers spreading her cheeks gently, massaging them with a touch less therapeutic and way more…sexual.
Jorja bit back her moan. Closed her eyes. Thought of Mud watching…
Brett’s hands travelled lower, to the backs of her thighs. High. Close enough his thumbs brushed the folds of her pussy.
She gasped.
Brett groaned. “Fuck,” he murmured, his thumbs touching her pussy lips again, his palms pressing against her thighs to part them wider, to grant his thumbs greater access to her sex. “I’ve wanted to do this to you from the second I—”
“No.” Mud’s deep growl tore the air.
Brett’s hands stilled.
Jorja raised her head, desperate to see her boyfriend, her heart a sledgehammer in her throat. “Mud?”
“What—” Brett began, a second before Mud grabbed his arm and pulled him back from the table.
He didn’t look at her. His stare—burning with an intensity beyond Jorja’s comprehension—stayed fixed on Brett’s face. “I’m sorry, Bartowski, I thought I could. I thought… No, it’s time for you to go.”
And with that, the muscles in his biceps and shoulder coiled and he dragged the masseur further from the table.
Jorja watched, laying on her tummy in an awkward position so as to not expose her breasts, stunned and confused and…and…
Brett flicked her a look, the open hunger on his face tempered by the fear that filled his eyes when he turned back to Mud. He nodded, slid his gaze to Jorja once more and then back to Mud.
“Now would be good, mate.” Simmering danger laced Mud’s low suggestion. “Before I—”
Brett turned and hurried from the room.
Mud stood motionless as he fled, his back to Jorja, the muscles in it tense. At his side, his hands were loosely curled fists. He didn’t speak. It wasn’t until the faint click of the front door closing sounded in the gym that he moved.
He slumped, his shoulders rolling forward, his head dropping.
Throat thick, her stomach a mess of insane butterflies, Jorja pushed herself upright on the table, covering her breasts with her hands as she stared at her boyfriend’s back. “Mud?”
Nothing. Except for his fists balling tighter for a brief moment.
Jorja swallowed. A numb chill crept through her. She reached out to him, only to halt her hand before her fingers could touch his back’s broad expanse.
“Mud…Daniel,” she whispered, staring up at the back of his head. “Please talk to me.”
He slumped again, a ragged sigh tearing from him as he raked his hands through his hair with an aggression Jorja knew had to cause pain. “I’m sorry, JJ,” he said, his voice a husky growl.
Mouth dry, belly clenching, Jorja studied his back. “For what?”
With another sigh, Mud turned to face her.
Raw torment etched his face. Torment and anger and that same ambiguous emotion he’d worn since kneeling at her feet over an hour ago. “I know you love me.”
He stopped. Jorja’s stomach rolled.
Raking his hands through his hair once more, he shook his head. “I know you love me, Jorja,” he repeated, the words strangled. “And, God knows, I fucking love you more than I ever thought possible. You make me feel…human. You make me want to be better. But I also know I scare you.”
He turned his face from her, eyes squeezing shut. Jorja’s heart hammered harder as she looked at him, a painful beat she felt all the way to her soul.
“I hate that I scare you,” he continued. “I hate that I take out my aggression on you, especially during off-season, even if it makes for the most incredible fucking sex ever. It fucking petrifies me that I’m going to scare you away, and if I lost you, I think…I think I’d lose what make
s me a decent man.”
A wave of prickling heat washed over Jorja. She hugged herself tighter, Mud’s words flaying at her sanity. “Why invite Brett here?” she asked, unable not to. “To fuck me? Why do that?”
Mud’s answering sigh tore up from his chest, a sound far more animalistic than any she’d heard him make before. “Because I wanted to give you something that wasn’t me. Does that make sense?” He returned his stare to her face, wretched torment burning in his eyes. “I wanted to give you something tender and gentle and not scary and not…not… Jesus, something not a fucking caveman, but I couldn’t do it. Watching Bartowski touch you…fuck, I could have killed him right there. I could have torn him apart. And that scares me.”
The heat rushed over Jorja again, a million fire ants razing her body. She stared at him, thought of Brett’s tender hands on her body, the backs of her thighs…
Thought of Mud yanking her bikini top open out on their balcony and taking possession of her breasts with hands not even close to gentle.
Her tummy clenched. Her throat grew thicker.
“Why does it scare you?” she whispered, every fibre of her body on fire.
He barked out a laugh devoid of humour. “Because I want to give you everything you want, and if one day everything you want isn’t me…how do I survive that without becoming a monster?” He paused, scanning the room, his fists white-knuckled at his side. Conflict and hate twisted his face. His jaw bunched. “If you’re what makes me less of a macho prick like my father,” he went on, his voice hoarse, broken, “what happens when the macho prick inside me drives you away?”
A soft breath slipped past Jorja’s lips, lips curling into an equally soft smile. She removed her hands from her breasts and reached for his wrists. Sought his fingers with her own. “Mud, look at me.”
He didn’t, fixing his stare instead on a point beyond her, somewhere out on the waters of Sydney Harbour. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat. His chest rose and fell with deep, ragged breaths.
“Daniel,” Jorja said, smoothing her hands up his arms to his face. She cupped his jaw, exerting small pressure in an attempt to turn his head, an attempt he resisted. “Look. At. Me.”
With a choppy sigh, he did.
Secret Confessions: Sydney Housewives - Extended Edition Page 16
