Easton took the ramp for the 441. “What do you think he’s telling Keri about us?”
“No idea.” He glanced over at me. “You worried about it?”
I chewed on the end of one fingernail. “Not really. I probably should be.” I could remember a time when my social heartbeat rose and fell around what Keri thought of me. Now, with everything going on, the concept that Kurt might tell her something… I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to handle another concern. Maybe that was why I hadn’t been hyper-focused on a baby. Not enough time or energy.
He pulled my hand into his lap and squeezed it. “I’m glad you weren’t interested in him. The thought of you doing anything with him…” He shook his head. “It didn’t do anything for me.”
“Why not?” I turned my hand over in his, curling my fingers around his.
“I don’t know. I’m still working it out. But when we were sitting there, talking to him—I was bored. Also, freaked out by his science project of a penis, but literally fucking bored at the thought of you doing anything with him. And I think it’s because I didn’t see him as competition.”
“Did you see Aaron as competition?”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes on the road. “Not really, no. But I think I needed the comfort level I had with Aaron. I don’t think I would have been okay with what happened otherwise.”
“Well, I’m not sure you’re going to consider any of the other guys on the site as competition,” I said, thinking back through the hundreds of messages we had received. Kurt had been the only one who hadn’t been too old, too ugly, too young, or too creepy to consider. “I can keep looking.”
“Or we can go back to the De Lucas.” The suggestion was quiet but deadly, each word shooting over and hitting me in the chest. A stab of hope. Arousal. Trepidation. Fear. Too many emotions to properly sort out.
“What do you mean?” I asked carefully, my finger halting in its caress of his palm.
“I don’t know.” He came to a stop at the light and looked over at me, his profile lit red by the signal, his face devastatingly handsome against the shadows. “You liked them, right?”
Brad’s touch . . . each brush electric against my skin. Hands skimming up and down, around my nipples. The heat. His fingers flexing, lifting, cupping . . . Possessive. Confident. Exhilarating. His warm breath against my neck, my breasts. “Ask your husband if I can touch you.”
“Ummm… yeah.” A lot. An ocean’s worth of arousal.
“So, maybe we do something with them again. Something more.”
I thought of my lunch, scheduled for this Tuesday with Julia, and warred over how to respond. Our post-De Luca fight was still fresh in my mind, plus there was the issue that Brad and Julia may not want to hook up with us. “I don’t know.” I reached down and undid my first heel, flexing and stretching the foot as soon as it was free. “I felt like that ended badly with you and me.”
“It ended badly because I was insecure.” He sighed. “I need to get over that.”
“Are you over that? I mean, it’s only been a week.” And it wasn’t like anything had changed. I still hadn’t fully forgiven him—if that was the right word—for the Nicole debacle. Not that it was his fault, but still. A wasted trip to Los Angeles. Countless calls with her. Hours of research and wining and dining and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit—only to have her make a big investment and cut Easton out of the payday. Well, Easton cut himself out of the payday but STILL. A fresh bloom of anger erupted in my chest. I yanked on the other heel and tried to smother the emotion.
“I could be over it. I think”—he paused, and I could see the indecision on his face before I heard it in his voice—“I think I need you to fuck him.”
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking it over. I feel like I’m running from it if you don’t. I need to know how I compare. And look, if he pleases you better than I do, then I’ll learn how to fuck you better.”
He gripped on the steering wheel, the veins along the back of his hand bulging. I looked away as the radio softly played the strands of a Dave Matthews song. “That’s crazy. I’m not judging a contest between you two. And he’s a person. A married person. He’s not a ride at the fair that I can hop on because you want to know how I like it.”
“Look, I wasn’t worried about Aaron. And at FSU, half those guys had drunk dick or came in a few minutes. I’ve never had much competition.” He glanced at me. “Maybe I’m sloppy. Maybe I’ve relied on my dick too much and never really learned my stuff. But that prick?” He shook his head as if in disbelief of Brad De Luca. “He knows his shit. I was fucking intimidated just sitting across from him. And when he had his hands on you, his mouth on you?” He swore. “I felt you, Elle. I had my mouth on you. You responded. And you came so hard. You were damn near quaking against my mouth.”
“But that wasn’t just him. She—” I took a deep breath and tried to sort through the emotions I’d felt. “You made this sound when she took you in her mouth. It’s a sound you make with me sometimes, when you really like what I’m doing. And it triggered something in me. I thought I would hate it. I thought I would be furious and insecure and jealous. But instead, it was like a fire, one that made me crazy turned on. It made everything else—his touch, your mouth, the experience… more. And it was watching them together, her reaction, knowing they could see us—it was everything, and experiencing it with you—that’s what I loved.”
I looked at him. “What happened with Aaron was more than a normal night between me and you. But that wasn’t him. It was you—you trusting me to do that. You giving that to me. Us sharing that together. And if you have sex with Julia, I think it would be hot even if she sucked in bed. I think just the experience of you having two girls instead of one—it would be more. And…” I faltered as I suddenly realized that the idea of that no longer scared me. Our night with Aaron had been one of the hottest of my life, but I’d never attributed that to Aaron. I had immediately filed it in its own category in our sex life. I pulled on the seatbelt and tried to find my way back to our conversation. “Does any of that make any sense?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I felt that—all of that—when I watched you with Aaron. And maybe it’ll be the same with this guy. But I need to know. And… if Brad doesn’t want to fuck you, or they don’t do that, then fine. But right now, I’m fucking intimidated, and I hate feeling like I’m not good enough.” He drove faster, and the Rover’s left tire shuddered over the center line before he brought it back. “You want him. I know you do, and I can’t give you a nice house, or a secure life, but I can give him to you.”
It sounded like the biggest, most fucked-up risk in the world. I sank back into the seat, and I tried to figure out which stick of dynamite to grab first.
“You already give me what I need. Okay? So stop all the bullshit about that. If I needed to fuck him, I’d tell you that I needed to fuck him. But I don’t. Would I like to? Sure. I’m sure you’d like to bend over Julia and take her for a ride too. We’re human. We want pretty things and you and I are pleasers. We like to please and we like to have someone fawn over our shit while we do it. But this moment isn’t when we need to throw Brad Fucking De Luca into the mix. You were right, what you said last night. They have their shit together. They know what they’re doing. We are lost damn ducklings, wandering around sex city unescorted and Kurt is a perfect example of why we need to just chill out for a moment and regroup.” I held out my hands in a calm-down gesture. “Why don’t we take a break and just… step back from everything. Go back to normal for a few months.”
He pulled into our driveway and parked, leaving the engine on. “Is that what you want?”
“I have no idea what I want,” I replied honestly. “I’d really like you to just make an executive decision so I can go back to scrolling through Pinterest and bitching about your dirty clothes being left on the floor.”
His grin appeared for a brief moment, then he sobered. “Okay. Are you ready for the executi
ve decision?”
“I’m ready. Wait.” I reached forward and flipped off the radio, killing the background noise. “Now I’m ready.”
“We’ll take three months off. No visiting swinger sites, no dirty talk about threesomes, no bringing up anything about any of it.”
“Three months,” I confirmed, my heart sinking a little at the prospect, which had seemed like such a great idea, just seconds before.
“Three months. Starting right after you have sex with Brad De Luca.”
28
The tequila, I decided, was entirely to blame. That, and Chelsea’s continued refusal to answer my calls. Plus, the fact that I was eighteen hours away from lunch with my biggest client, one where I planned to ask to have sex with her husband. Tack on the accepted offer now on file on the De Luca house, and I was feeling a dangerous combination of drunk, lonely, cocky, and panicked.
Would confronting Nicole Fagnani help any of the above? Here was three tequila shots worth of let’s-find-out.
“Stay close,” I tore a twenty-dollar bill in half and passed one side of it to the taxi driver. “I’ll give you the other half when I come out.”
“You kidding me?” The man shot me a look like I had just pissed on his seat.
“What? Not good? I thought people do that.” I saw it in a movie once. There, the guy had seemed smooth and smart.
“You think I have scotch tape in my glove box? How’m I supposed to spend this? I gonna give McDonalds two halves of a bill?”
“I don’t know… don’t you have some tape at home?” I glanced at the meter, which had just ticked up in cost. This conversation was getting expensive.
“Do I look like someone that keeps my drawers at home stocked with scotch tape?” It was a valid point. He had a lizard tattooed up his neck, the tongue of it curling along one cheek. From the smell filling the car, I doubted if he even had soap at home.
“Okay, give it back.” I held out my hand.
“I’ll trade you for another one. A whole one.” He held the half bill just out of reach, as if worried I would squelch on the deal.
“If I give you the entire twenty, then what’s to stop you from just leaving?”
“There’s fourteen dollars on the meter. I’m not going anywhere.”
I took back the half of the twenty with a sigh, then reluctantly passed forward an intact bill. I wasn’t entirely sure we had scotch tape at home. “Okay. I won’t be long.”
My phone rang and I fished the slim device out of my back pocket, cringing when I saw Easton’s name on the display. He had been out with Aaron, watching the game and mending the awkward tension that my Chelsea-confession had created. I thought I’d have a few hours of alone time to drown my sorrows in margaritas, maybe catch up on Gossip Girl reruns and that half-tub of Mint Chocolate Chip in the fridge.
Only… the margaritas hadn’t exactly mellowed me out. Instead, they’d fueled my rage at one giant tennis slut. Which was why I was climbing out of the taxi and staring up at Nicole’s giant iron gate, gauging my ability to climb it. Sober, there was at least a five percent chance I’d make it over. Now? My likelihood had fallen into the negative percentile.
I went for the keypad instead, pressing the call button and leaning over, putting my mouth close to the speaker.
“Can I help you?” a sharp male voice crackled through the speaker.
“I’m here to see Nicole.”
“Your name?”
“Elle North. She knows my husband.” It was a gamble. I thought about adding a threatening line, something along the lines of tell her she better talk to me or else, but I’d used up my badass moves with the ripped twenty, and that hadn’t exactly gone smoothly. I wasn’t prepared for this guy to call my bluff when I had nothing else up my sleeve.
The gates, shockingly enough, began to part. I walked unsteadily up to the massive Mediterranean home, and ran through a cliff notes version of my speech, which had sounded really good in front of my bathroom mirror, but was quickly falling apart in my head.
“Elle.” Nicole stood on the front steps, a pink bathrobe wrapped tightly around her large frame. “I’m glad you’re here. Come in.”
I paused, surprised. She was glad I was here?
* * *
“Look.” Nicole spoke before I had a chance to. She closed the ingrained wooden door that would look killer on our house and turned to face me. “I owe Easton and you a massive apology.”
“Yes, you do.” My anger was deflating quickly at the ashamed look in her eyes and I struggled to hold onto it. “What you did—”
“It was criminal, I know. And it’s even worse because I’ve been in that situation. I’ve been that girl.” She looked over her shoulder and I realized there was a woman, standing in the dimly lit foyer. Not quite the security team I had envisioned, unless the security team wore Miami Heat T-shirts and mesh shorts. “This is Jessica, my girlfriend.”
The surprise must have shown on my face, because she pulled the neck of her robe up self-consciously. “Yeah. I screwed up a lot of things on that flight.”
“I’m going to head to the den. Give you two some privacy.” She nodded to Nicole and to me, then left, her lanky frame towering over both of us.
“Wow,” I said quietly. “She’s tall.”
“Tall, and still upset with me.” She gestured toward a low bench tucked into the curve of a grand staircase bigger than Chelsea’s guest house. “This has been hard for her.”
I was surprised she even told her about it. Then again, everything about this visit—her wet hair, make-up free face, crestfallen expression, the girlfriend—all of it was a surprise.
“There’s absolutely no excuse for what I did.” She settled onto the bench beside me and the robe gaped at the knee, revealing blue pajama pants and bare feet. “I was drinking, and afraid of the opportunity and feeling…” She tilted her head. “Feeling like a little girl in a man’s world. Everyone we’d met with that weekend had been men. My agent. Easton. The MGM rep. The game designers. And all of them—including Easton—had spoken to me as if I was made of glass. Or… like I was twelve and dressing in my big sister’s clothes and makeup, pretending to be grown-up and they were going along with it to be nice to me. I didn’t feel like anyone there really cared about me. What I wanted. What I thought. I started in this world when I was fourteen, and my manager and agents and parents made all of my decisions. I was this commodity—a brand—and other than being told where to go, and when to practice, and who to play… they didn’t have use for me. None of them looked at me as anything other than a cash register until my coach put his hand up my shirt one day and really looked at me. Wanted me. And for something that had nothing to do with tennis.”
My stomach twisted and I could feel the third margarita revolting at the thought. “Nicole, you—”
“On the plane,” she said quietly, “I was drinking and I had this really weird moment where I felt like it was happening all over again. My life being controlled. My self-worth reduced to just a commodity. My future and money being decided for me. And I had this ridiculous craving for my coach. I needed someone to look at me as someone other than Nicole Fagnani, the tennis player. I needed to be seen as a woman. Desired as a woman. Craved.” She let out a helpless laugh. “And he was right there. And I just… I just wanted to feel a reaction from him. Proof that I wasn’t just a paycheck. It was so, so stupid of me.” She brushed a hand over her cheek, wiping away a tear that had fallen.
“Easton doesn’t look at you as a cash register,” I said quietly. “But, to be honest, part of my anger is over the lost commission. Commission he lost just because he’s a good guy. He’s still new in wealth management and has had some trouble getting his foot in the door. You—you were a big deal to him. And I know he wouldn’t have pushed you for this deal if he didn’t think it was the right thing for you. And…” I groaned.
“Whatever. It’s done. It just hurt him—in more ways than one.”
“You’re right.
He is a good guy.
I knew that the minute he pushed my hand off of him. And when he walked away from the commission and turned me over to his boss.” She met my eyes. “I know he doesn’t want anything to do with me, but I can’t let what I did slide. I’ve been calling him but he won’t answer. Please, Elle. Help me.”
As much as I wanted to take a check from Nicole for the commission, I couldn’t. That was something between her and Easton, and I’d stand by whatever decision he made with it. But I did think he needed to hear what she had just told me. It was up to him whether he wanted to give her a second chance.
“I’ll have him call you tomorrow,” I promised. “But… there is one thing that you can do for me.”
She raised her brows. “Anything.”
29
I was still hungover from the margaritas, my stomach flipping in protest as I sat across from Julia De Luca the next day. She looked stunning in a bright green sundress, one that showed off her olive skin and dark hair. I watched as she delicately cut into a giant blueberry pancake, then shoved a wedge of it into her mouth with the gusto of a linebacker.
The new sushi restaurant had been closed, so we’d ended up at IHOP—a transition she had enthusiastically accepted. Upon arrival, she’d grilled the waitress about their syrup brands and distributor, then ordered enough food for two.
She noticed me watching and gestured to her plate with her fork. “Want some? I have plenty.”
“Oh, no. But thank you. I’m trying to do keto.” I gave an apologetic smile.
“Yeah, Brad’s doing that. Except that he cheats and drinks Coke, which I’m pretty sure throws the ketosis thing completely out of whack.” She blew at a strand of hair that had fallen into her face. “So, how’s everything?”
I tried not to stare at the giant diamond that screamed at me from her ring finger. “Good. I have the buyer’s inspections scheduled for Friday. I’m coordinating it with Martha, she’s prepared and is working with the security.”
Twisted Marriage: Filthy Vows Sequel Page 18
