After a few minutes, the bed shifted and I watched as Preston walked his naked self into his attached bathroom. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to move my head at all to watch his entire trip as his gloriously chiseled body gracefully left me. He was exactly what God had envisioned when he created man; I was sure of it. Every muscle moved in accordance with the others; long and lean muscles in his legs complemented the bulkier muscles in his chest and arms. I knew I’d never be able to look at him in his leather jacket and jeans again without picturing him like this, naked and strutting through his house.
Then I was treated to the front view when he came back out and walked to me. I swallowed hard and tried not to stare, but the man was so goddamned beautiful. He stopped at the edge of the bed and leaned down, placing both hands on the mattress.
“Wanna shower with me?”
I lifted my head once more from the pillow and felt my hair fall in a mess around my face. “I would love to shower with you, but I’m afraid I’m not ready to walk yet. So, go on without me.” Just after I’d dramatically flopped my head down onto my pillow once more, I yelped as I felt his arms slide under me, flip me over, and then lift me from the soft heaven that was his mattress. I squealed as I wrapped my arms around his neck.
He walked to the bathroom, carrying me in his arms, a stupidly handsome smile across his face. He plunked me down in the shower, which was the most gorgeous walk-in shower I’d ever seen, right in the middle of a steaming hot stream of water. It was even more heavenly than his mattress.
I sighed as I let the water run over me and moved to wet my hair, closing my eyes, enjoying the moment.
“This is like every wet dream I’ve ever had combined into one.”
I opened my eyes. Preston was obviously ogling me, watching every part of my body as the water cascaded over it. Then he moved into me, his arms coming to rest at my hips, and his mouth moving in toward mine. He kissed me gently, the beast I’d met earlier that morning apparently sleeping. This Preston was warm, sweet, and tender. If someone forced me to pick which Preston I liked better, I’d never be able to choose. Each one was sexy in their own right.
We kissed in the shower until I was wrinkled and then he washed me. Neither one of us tried anything besides stealing a couple of kisses, which I was thankful for. I didn’t think I could take another round with him if the beast made an encore appearance. I wasn’t too tired, however, to take in his glorious form as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. Everything I’d admired about him the night before and even this morning, was only magnified and amplified by the water. The man looked good wet.
He led me out of the shower and handed me a towel.
“Is everything you own soft and fluffy?” I asked as I wrapped the towel around my shoulders. It might have been the softest towel I’d ever felt.
He chuckled. “I hope not.”
“Seriously. Your pillows are like clouds and your mattress is the most comfortable one I’ve ever been on. And now the towels.” I looked at him and smiled. “You like nice things.” My smile grew wider at my realization. I thought about it for a moment and then other things started popping into my mind. His car—perhaps the nicest car I’d ever seen. His fancy leather jacket. The scotch. It all made sense. What single, thirty-something man had towels this nice? I brought it up to my nose and grinned when I smelled the fabric softener. He either hired someone who furnished his house with nice things and a maid who used fabric softener, or he totally enjoyed all this stuff. “Did you buy these towels? And the pillows?”
“Yeah,” he said, wiping his towel through his hair, flinging water droplets everywhere.
“So, it’s true. You like nice things?”
He thought about it for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I guess. Who wants scratchy towels?”
I shrugged back at him, smiling. Walking back into the bedroom, I looked around for my clothes, trying to remember which way they had been flung the night before.
“What are you looking for?” Preston asked as he walked back to the bed and climbed in.
“My clothes,” I said as I walked around his bed.
“No clothes. Today, we lay around like naked, lazy people.” He threw the comforter down, opening up the side of the bed he wasn’t in, and then nodded me toward it.
“You want to spend an entire day naked in bed?” I didn’t move from my spot, feet away from the bed. I knew if I got in I probably wouldn’t get back out.
“Give me one good reason why not?”
“Well, I should go home, for one.” I watched as his smile fell away and the muscle in the side of his jaw tightened.
“You’re not going home. There’s no reason for you to be there.”
“It’s my home. And Derrek is probably already wondering where I am.”
“He’s not,” he said firmly.
“Preston,” I tried to reason with him.
“I want you here, with me. Fuck, Lena. I was inside you not two hours ago and now you’re just going to go running back to that life where you’re unhappy and unsafe?”
“I’m not unsafe and Derrek can’t know that I didn’t go home last—”
“HE DOESN’T CARE IF YOU CAME HOME OR NOT, LENA!” Preston was out of his bed and yelling as he stalked toward me. “He couldn’t care less what you do or whether you slept in your bed last night. He. Doesn’t. Care. But don’t let me stop you from running home to him.” He was right in front of me, loud and angry, but I didn’t feel threatened by his outburst. I was, however, confused by this new Preston.
“I’m not running home to him. I’m simply trying to manage the situation. You know what’s at stake for me, Preston. You and me. We’re the only ones who know what happens if he finds out I’ve been with you. But the only person it will affect is me. I thought we were on the same team.”
“This isn’t a team. This is some sick and fucked-up game you signed up for seven years ago that you can’t imagine not winning.”
“What would you do if you were me, huh? You’d let your wife fuck some other guy and then walk away with nothing? I highly doubt it. I didn’t sign up for this. I was forced to play this game, and I’ll be damned if your ego is going to cause me to start my life over from scratch. I’m entitled to what’s mine.”
“And what about me? Aren’t I entitled to what’s mine?” He closed the distance between us and his strong hands wrapped around my shoulders as he hauled me to his chest. “You’re mine, remember?” He brought his face so close to mine our noses lightly touched. “You made that decision. You gave yourself to me, and now you’re mine and I’ll be damned if I let what’s mine walk out the door.”
In the matter of a millisecond, his lips were on mine and my hands were on his chest, trying to push him away, but one of his hands wrapped around my waist and the other cupped my cheek and even though the kiss started urgently, it melted slowly into desperation.
His hands pulled at me as if he was afraid I was going to float away. So I did the only thing I could think of and held on to him. I held on to him just as hard as he held on to me and eventually we found ourselves in that bed again, only this time we weren’t fucking each other, or even having sex; I was simply letting him hold me.
I fell asleep on top of him, still naked, only covered by the soft blanket, one of his hands cupped around the back of my neck.
I woke up to his kiss pressed against my forehead.
“Hey,” he whispered when my eyes looked up to his.
“Hey,” I said, laying both my hands on his chest under my chin. “Are you still mad at me?”
“I was never mad at you,” he said as he tucked a lock of wayward hair behind my ear.
“Well, all the yelling gave me a different impression.”
His eyes bored into mine for a moment and then he sighed heavily. “Listen, I didn’t mean to snap like that. I’ve just watched him ignore you, treat you poorly, undervalue you, and when you were just going to walk out to go back to him, well, it rubbed me the wrong way.
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled and I definitely shouldn’t have yelled at you, but I couldn’t let you leave.”
“I wasn’t going back to him. Nothing about my marriage has changed in the last twenty-four hours, Preston, but I am still married and I can’t let him know what’s happened.”
“He’s not at your house. He didn’t go back to your house last night, either. Your alibi is still intact.”
“Maybe I should hire someone else to handle the investigation,” I said softly. I watched as that muscle in his jaw started twitching, and I braced myself for angry Preston again.
“Not happening.”
“I feel like you’re too involved, like whatever is going on between us is going to cloud your judgment and make things difficult.” I pushed up off his chest and rolled to his side, pulling the blanket with me, keeping myself covered. “There are two very drastically different components to my life at the moment, and I feel like it might be better to keep them separated.”
“I’m in this, baby, whether you like it or not. You can hire someone else if it makes you feel better, but I’m going to get you the proof you need, and I’ll get it faster than anyone else you can find on Google.”
I could see in his eyes he wasn’t listening to me, that he wasn’t going to just let things lie and let me take care of my own business. “I just think maybe you’re too close to it.”
“I’ve never been so close to anything in my life and I’m not about to let someone else handle what’s mine. I’ve got this, Lena.”
I sighed, exasperated, not entirely sure where to go from there or what to expect. So instead of stressing myself out about things I couldn’t control, like Preston, I decided to curl into his side and let him figure out what the next step would be.
Chapter Four
Turned out, the next step was actually pretty amazing. We stayed in bed and naked all of Saturday and then all of Sunday.
I’d never felt more cherished or taken care of. I was treated to breakfast in bed both days and many hours of the most incredible sex I’d ever experienced. Preston was a sensational lover. He was generous but needy, intense but soft, domineering yet giving. He was the yin and yang of sex and I reveled in every minute of it. I could never be completely sure which side of him I was going to get, but I wanted to experience them all, so I followed his lead and let him take me wherever he wanted to go.
Part of me letting him take control was giving in to him when he insisted. He’d requested I not sleep at my house any longer and instead was to stay with him. I compromised by saying I’d only come over late at night after I was sure Derrek wouldn’t be coming back to the house. This compromise was accepted after I agreed to let Preston pick me up and be my escort.
On Monday morning, Preston had me pressed against the tiles in his walk-in shower, gliding in and out of me at a ridiculously slow and leisurely pace, as if we had the rest of our lives to be with each other. The water was raining down on the wall next to us, its warmth cascading down the wall and flowing around me, keeping me warm even as Preston’s mouth moved over every inch of my skin.
His finger found my clit and the slow pace at which he pumped in and out of me coupled with the fast flicks of his finger brought on a quick and powerful orgasm. My cries echoed throughout the shower, only to be joined by his groan as he followed me into climax.
This had been my life for the last forty-eight hours – Preston finding any way he could to make me come, whether it be fast, slow, sweet, or dirty. He could do it all and he did it well. This time, though, his leisurely pace wasn’t a sexual maneuver, wasn’t a calculated move. He was literally trying to stretch our time together, trying to delay the inevitable. Trying to suspend reality and pause the day. Soon, he’d be driving me back to my house and we’d both have to work. Even though we’d found a new reality together, it didn’t change the reality that we both had jobs to get back to.
Even as the Lotus pulled up to the curb a few houses down from mine, I felt his tension. He didn’t like dropping me off at the house I shared with Derrek and he hated the fact that he had to let me walk from this distance. But we both knew he couldn’t just pull up in my driveway. Not yet, at least.
“I’ll be here tonight. Eleven.” His words sounded harsh, but I knew he was just unhappy with the situation. “If you hear from him, anything at all, I want to know about it.”
I nodded, looking at him, watching his jaw muscle twitch. I leaned over and placed my hand against his cheek, trying to soothe him. I kissed his jaw tenderly, then moved to his lips, trying to tell him with a kiss that I was just as upset to walk away from him as he would be watching me walk away. I was grateful for the darkly tinted windows in that moment, knowing none of the neighbors could see our exchange. When I pulled away, he looked less tense, so I considered my tactics a success. I gave him a smile I hoped wasn’t too sad, then reached for the door handle. Before I got the door all the way open, his hand was on my arm, turning me toward him.
“Lena, remember, trust me,” he said, his tone serious and worried.
I nodded. “I trust you,” I replied, trying to convince him. Because, truly, I did.
“I regret nothing about what’s happening between us,” he said, his sentiment catching me off guard.
I thought about his comment for just a moment and then smiled – a real smile this time – and said, “Neither do I.” I got out of his car and walked to my house, wondering what anyone would think if they could see me in that moment.
I was wearing Preston’s clothes even though they barely fit. His gray sweatpants and a t-shirt, no bra and no panties, and my flip flops. I’d put his clothes on that morning, wanting to take part of him with me. I held on to the waistband of the sweatpants to keep them from falling down and the neck of the t-shirt kept sliding off my shoulder, but the clothes smelled of Preston, so I was more than happy to wear them. I was anticipating getting into the house, where I could bunch the shirt up around my nose and take in his scent without embarrassing myself in front of him.
As I pushed the front door closed behind me, I heard the unmistakable sound of his Lotus driving away. I frowned slightly before I could stop myself, but then pressed his shirt against my nose and inhaled, loving the spicy scent of him. I made my way up the stairs and walked into the bedroom, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror that hung on the wall near the closet.
The first thing I noticed was that I looked a mess. My hair was wild and crazy and there were dark circles under my eyes. When I moved closer to the mirror to inspect my reflection, I saw that although I looked tired, I looked sated. My eyes were clear, my cheeks rosy, and my lips full and swollen. I looked exactly like someone who had spent the weekend in bed having sex.
Even though I’d taken a shower with Preston that morning, my hair was obviously enraged and it needed a do-over, so I went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. I peeled off Preston’s shirt, smelling it one more time, and then folded it, along with his sweatpants, and laid them neatly in my pajama drawer.
I stepped into the shower and let the water run over me as my mind wandered to the fantastic weekend I’d spent with him. So many images flashed through my mind – some of them sexy, some of them sweet, and some of them downright filthy. Each one made me smile and as I lathered up the shampoo in my hair, I thought of ways I could repay him for such a wonderful weekend.
“Lena?” I heard Derrek’s voice and stilled instantly. I hadn’t heard him come into the house or into the bedroom and was completely caught off guard. There was no hiding from him though; he knew I was here.
“Yes?” I called out.
“Are you almost done? I need to shower before work.”
“Uh, yes. Just give me a moment.” I put my head back under the water to rinse the shampoo out. Suddenly, the shower curtain was thrown aside and Derrek stepped into the stall behind me, completely naked. My hands went immediately to cover myself, my mouth gaping open at him. “What are you doing?” I shrieked, eyes narrowin
g.
“Come on, Lena. It’s not like we haven’t showered together a million times before.”
“Derrek, you know it’s different now,” I said. I went to step out of the shower but felt him grip my upper arm, keeping me where I stood. He pressed me up against the wall of the shower and the chills ran down my spine, fear coursing through my veins. This was the exact opposite of how I felt when Preston had done the same thing not an hour before. “Let me go,” I said, with as much conviction as I could manage, but even I could hear the fear making my voice shake.
“Where did you go when you left the gala?”
“I wasn’t feeling well, so I left.”
“Yes, but where did you go?” His hand squeezed tighter around my arm and I tried to wiggle free from his grasp.
“Derrek, you’re hurting me.”
“I checked the records from the alarm system. It shows someone came home that night and deactivated the alarm, set it again when they left, but then no one came home again all weekend.” His eyes were wild and looking straight into mine. “Where were you?”
“I went to Samantha’s house,” I cried, finding the lie came to me quickly.
“All weekend?”
“I was sick and she didn’t want me alone. She knew you wouldn’t be here.” His grip tightened on my arm and his body pressed into mine. I cringed, looking away, trying not to let my body shiver in revulsion caused by his skin touching mine.
“You should have told me, Lena. I would have come home to take care of you.” His voice dropped low, and in years past it would have turned me on instantly. A month ago, even, had Derrek joined me in the shower, pressing his naked body against mine, I would have welcomed him and a chance to save our marriage, but now it was a lost cause. It took all my strength not to yell and scream at him that I knew the truth, I knew he was cheating and I had moved on as well. I bit my lip to keep the admission inside, but holding Preston’s name inside me hurt almost worse than the grip Derrek had on my arm.
“Where were you all weekend, Derrek? Surely you couldn’t have been at work this whole time?”
The Private Serials Box Set Page 12
