The Imperfections: A Forbidden Romance

by Sam Mariano

  “Oh, God. Brant hired you to work our wedding reception?”

  Laughing a little, Dirk nods his head. “Yeah. Well, he told me he’d pay me time and a half if I helped out with a party at his house. He neglected to mention the wedding part.”

  I cover my face to hide my embarrassment. “Of course he did.”

  “Yeah. Gotta give the asshole credit, though—he has one hell of a way of letting a guy know, ‘Hey, buddy, she’s not gonna call you back.’”

  Uncovering my face and grimacing, I tell him, “Ugh. Sorry about that.”

  He’s picking on me, but judging from the charming smirk on his face and the twinkle in his eyes, he’s clearly not sobbing into his pillow over me every night. “It’s all right. Hey, congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” I say, offering a less pained smile.

  “You look pretty,” he adds, letting his gaze travel over my body a lot more slowly than mine did when I was checking him out.

  Brant’s husband senses must have started tingling, because all of a sudden he’s at my side, commanding attention.

  Dirk’s gaze drifts from my cleavage to Brant’s face and he smirks. “Hey, boss.”

  “Don’t you have work to be doing?” Brant asks him as he settles a possessive arm around my waist.

  “Sure do.” Dirk lets his gaze slide to me again, intentionally giving me a quick onceover, then he offers Brant a sarcastic one-finger salute and saunters off to make trouble elsewhere.

  As soon as he’s out of earshot, I sigh. “Great. Now you chased off my food source.”

  Brant’s hand tightens around my waist. “Are you hungry?” he asks, looking over at me. “We can get you a plate.”

  “It’s not time to eat yet.”

  “It’s our wedding—we can do whatever the hell we want,” he says dismissively.

  “I guess that’s true,” I murmur, looking longingly at the cake.

  “Like, for example, I’m gonna murder Dirk.” He shrugs. “Wasn’t on the schedule. Just improvised it. It’s our party, so we can go wild.”

  I grin, leaning into his chest and running my hand over the lapel of his jacket. “You’re not allowed to murder Dirk. I like him.”

  “Hence… why I’m going to murder him,” Brant says, looking down at me as if doubting my intelligence. “Man, we do need to get some food in you.”

  I shove his broad shoulder, but then I wrap my arms around his chest and hug him tightly. “I love you, husband.”

  With a tender smile that’s just for me, Brant curves his arm around my back to hold me close, bends just enough to kiss the crown of my head, and tells me, “I love you, too, wife.”

  28

  Alyssa

  Life as Mrs. Brantley Morrison is pretty damn great.

  Following our wedding, Brant and I don’t take a traditional honeymoon where we go somewhere on vacation, but he does take the whole week off to spend with me.

  We spend our time well, too.

  Every morning I convince him to linger a little longer in bed so we can snuggle. Every night he possesses my body until we’re both seeing stars. Some days we spend inside with him introducing me to his record collection and dancing with me in our bedroom, or we cook together and watch movies. Other days we spend outside where I can admire the raw strength and power of my incredibly sexy husband while he chops wood and rakes leaves and does everyday tasks he thinks nothing of, but God, do I love watching him do them.

  Every hour of every day is spent together over the course of that week, replacing all the awful distance that was between us before the wedding with intimacy and closeness.

  I should probably get sick of him at some point, but I don’t. He should probably start to miss the solitude he was used to before I came around, but he doesn’t seem to.

  Everything is perfect.

  I finally start to show in mid-October, and my bump seems to pop all at once. One day my tummy is flat, the next day I go to button my jeans and they won’t close.

  Brant is amazing with the baby, and she’s not even here yet.

  We found out we were having a girl during our second ultrasound. She was moving all over the place on the monitor, so I asked the doctor why I couldn’t feel her yet. As he was explaining, our daughter flashed him her little lady bits. He stopped midsentence then turned to us and asked if we wanted to find out the gender, or if we wanted to be surprised. We both felt there had been enough surprises associated with this pregnancy, and Brant wanted to know what colors to paint the nursery, so we told him we’d like to know.

  Every night since that appointment, Brant curls up on the couch with me and rests his hand on my tummy, waiting to feel her kick. I’ve felt little twitches and blips that might be movement, but it’s too faint to tell. I don’t want Brant to be disappointed that she never kicks for him, so I point out that if I can hardly feel it inside, there’s little chance he will be able to feel her from the outside.

  Still, he waits for her every night, not wanting to miss her first little kick.

  He’s already a great daddy, and it makes me fall that much more in love with him.

  My head is so heavy as I try to wait for Brant to get home. He doesn’t close the bar much anymore, but tonight the manager had to go home sick, so Brant had to go in.

  It’s the first night in a while he hasn’t been here to rub my tummy and wait for Mackenzie to kick him, even though she never does. I miss him, and he’s only been away from home for a few hours.

  I think pregnancy is starting to make me needier and more sentimental than I usually am. I miss Brant all the time when he’s not around lately, even if he’s just downstairs when I’m still upstairs.

  Right now I’m desperate to give up the good fight and let my eyes drift closed, but I don’t want to go to sleep without him.

  My whole body suddenly jerks at the sound of my phone vibrating on the end table beside me. I shake off the sleep and blink a few times, then I reach for the phone to see what the notification was and notice the time.

  I dozed off for about a half-hour, but that’s good—it means Brant should be almost home.

  Well, I think that until I see that the notification I got was a text message from Brant that reads, Gonna be a little late getting home. Don’t wait up.

  Heaving a heavy sigh of disappointment, I haul my legs off the couch and push myself up. I’m so tired I wobble a little, then I cover my mouth as I yawn and stretch out.

  “Scout,” I call softly, looking around for him.

  He opens his eyes when he hears me calling for him, but he’s curled up in his dog bed in the living room. He’s grown a lot since I met him and he’s starting to get too big for it. We’ll have to get him a new, bigger bed soon.

  “Are you gonna sleep down here tonight?” I ask him.

  He must be, because rather than get up and follow me upstairs to bed, he keeps his head on his paws and just looks up at me.

  He probably wants to wait for Brant to get home. Once his whole family is here, he might follow Brant up to our room.

  I turn out the lights and leave him be for now.

  In our bedroom, I consider stripping off my clothes and waiting for Brant naked, but I’m so sleepy, I decide against it. If my husband wants sex when he gets home, he’ll just have to wake me up and convince me to leave the warmth of my soft, cozy nightie.

  Not that he should have a problem convincing me of that, but he can work for it, at least a little.

  I drift off to sleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and I don’t stir until the movement of Brant climbing into the bed jostles me awake. My eyes burn too much to open them, but just knowing he’s near brings a little smile to my face.

  “Hi, baby,” I murmur almost unintelligibly as I roll over and reach for him.

  He doesn’t reach over and pull me against him like he normally does, and when I secure my arm around his waist, several things register all at once.

  First, he’s still wearing a coat. Why
is he wearing his coat in bed?

  Second, that’s not what Brant smells like. The scent of him does smell faintly familiar, but it’s not one I’ve picked up recently.

  Lastly and most alarmingly of all, it doesn’t feel like Brant’s body my arms are wrapped around.

  My eyes pop open and horror explodes in my chest as they land on Theo’s face, darkened by shadows. “Hey, Alyssa.”

  I gasp and scramble back away from him, my heart racing and my stomach falling. “What the hell?” I cry out.

  Laughing, Theo watches me lose my shit without moving. “Not who you were expecting?” he asks.

  I sit up quickly, pushing myself back on the bed so I can climb off. “You have to leave. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, but you have to leave.”

  Theo turns and climbs off the bed only a second after I do. He moves to the door before I can, blocking the only exit. “Bri and I had a big fight tonight,” he tells me. “A bad one.”

  “I don’t care,” I tell him, wide-eyed.

  He frowns at me. “Now, that’s not very nice. You used to care. Remember? When you cared about me?”

  Sighing as my heart starts to settle down from the shock of seeing him, I rake a hand through my hair and shake my head. “That was a long time ago, Theo.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago,” he says, his gaze drifting to my protruding abdomen. “You haven’t had my baby yet, so it can’t have been that long. You just moved on fast, that’s all.”

  I don’t like the way he says that, like it’s a failing of mine. “We were never really together. And you’re married,” I remind him.

  Nodding slowly as he walks toward me, he says, “And now you are, too.”

  I take a wary step back, keeping my gaze locked on him. More firmly, I tell him, “You have to leave, Theo. Right now. The bar’s closed, Brant will be home any minute now, and he can’t find you here.”

  As if I haven’t spoken, he says, “And you’ve got even more to lose than I do now. I mean, Bri might be a bitch sometimes, but your husband? He’s a fucking psycho.”

  “Bri is not a bitch, and Brant will kill you if he catches you here. I’m not kidding, Theo. You have no idea how mad he was last time. If you hadn’t run away, he probably would have strangled the life out of you right there in our barn.”

  “He didn’t hurt you, though,” Theo remarks. “Maybe he’s not as bad as Bri makes him out to be. Maybe her protective big brother is more a legend in her mind than he is in reality.”

  Shaking my head, I tell him, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, I know Brant lost his temper and killed that girl he dated in high school for fucking around on him, so he must not be too fond of faithless women. I know he has trust issues out the ass, and it probably wouldn’t be real hard to make him start suspecting something. Maybe he witnesses a whisper, a little caress between former lovers at a family function. Maybe he catches you locked inside a barn with the man you used to fuck in secret.” Gesturing toward the bed, he says, “Maybe he smells that man on your bed sheets when he comes home late from work one night.”

  Since he takes another step toward me, I take another step back. “Get out of my house,” I tell him, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

  “Maybe it’s clearer than that.” He takes a step a closer to me. “Maybe big, bad Brant comes home to find that another man’s been using his wife’s pussy.”

  I’ve backed myself against a wall, but he’s not Brant and I don’t want to be cornered by him, so I quickly scoot back toward the bed and my nightstand. “Theo, I’m serious. You need to leave right now, before I call the police.”

  “You can’t call the police. How would you explain that to Bri? Face it, Alyssa, that’s nothing but an empty threat. I can stay as long as I want, do whatever I want, and you’re not gonna tell a damn person a damn thing about it.”

  Fear claws at my insides and I shake my head. “You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” he asks, cocking his head. “Then how come you never told Brant I touched you in the barn that day?”

  He’s not listening to me and he keeps moving closer. Rather than argue with him, I turn around as fast as I can and lunge for the nightstand by my bed. If I can just grab my phone, if I can call Brant…

  Theo grabs me around the waist and yanks me back before my fingers can close around it. He pulls so hard on my stomach, I panic and stop fighting. “Okay! Stop! Stop, stop, stop,” I say, each time a little quieter.

  “You gonna behave yourself?” he asks, squeezing since he noticed that was what drained the fight right out of me.

  “Yes. Let me go. Let’s just talk, okay? You said you had a fight with Bri—why don’t you tell me about it?”

  He keeps his arm locked around my waist, but doesn’t apply any additional pressure. He just leaves it there to keep the threat alive, to let me know he’s a heartless monster, and he won’t hesitate to hurt my baby if I piss him off.

  “Apologize for being a bitch,” he says coldly.

  I suck in a breath. “I’m sorry for being a bitch.”

  “There we go,” he says, his voice much more amiable. “Man, you are easy to control, aren’t you? I bet Brant loves that.”

  I couldn’t give fewer fucks what Theo thinks about me; I just need him to let go of my stomach. Slowly and gently, so he doesn’t think I’m fighting him, I wedge my fingers beneath his arm and try to pry it away, but he doesn’t budge.

  “Please, Theo,” I implore as calmly as I can. “We can talk. We can sit down and talk.”

  “No,” he murmurs, releasing his locked hold on my waist, but only so he can slide his hand lower, frighteningly, over my swollen tummy. “I don’t want to talk anymore, Alyssa.”

  I feel like my soul is melting inside me and trickling down into a disgusting puddle in my lower gut. My skin crawls as his hand stops on my abdomen in the same spot Brant rubs every night, waiting for Mackenzie’s kick. “What do you want, Theo?”

  “Just a little relief.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut as his hands travel up and he grabs one of my breasts.

  “One more fuck, Alyssa. Just one more.”

  I shake my head, keeping my eyes squeezed shut and my lips sealed.

  “There’s something about you belonging to Brant now that makes it more exciting,” he tells me, leaning his face so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. “Finding the meanest guy in the room and then fucking his wife—that’s fun, right?”

  He is the fucking worst. “Doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me,” I fling back. “It’s not like I want to fuck you. Any coward can threaten a defenseless baby to get her mom to do what he wants.”

  “Her?” he questions, as if this is news to him. “It’s a girl?”

  “Bri didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” he murmurs. “Well, that’s probably good. I haven’t had a daughter yet… maybe yours won’t take on quite so many of my features.”

  One can hope. I don’t want to further escalate his anger if I can help it, so I don’t say anything, but it’s never been so hard to bite my tongue.

  “Well, good for you. I guess it doesn’t matter much to me anymore.”

  Frowning as he pulls me back toward the bed, I ask, “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t it matter to you?”

  Before he answers, Theo turns me around and pushes me back onto the mattress. He’s blocking me on this side anyway, so I let him—but then I try to scoot back so I can fly off Brant’s side of the bed.

  Theo pounces before I can, yanking me sideways so my head is where Brant’s body normally lies. I try to roll away, but he climbs on top of me before I can, then he shoves my arms down against the bed and pins them.

  I’m breathing hard from the struggle and my own fear, but he’s not even winded as he sits on my hips and looks down at me. “I’m sick to death of the fighting and being unhappy. I was so mad at her when I left tonight, I told her I was leaving—like
really leaving, and it felt good. It felt damn good.”

  Momentarily distracted, I stare up at him. “You left her?”

  He nods slowly. “I’ve said it before when I was pissed so she probably didn’t believe me, but I meant it this time. I’m done with this shit.”

  Logically, I know it’s absurd to care; Theo is a terrible husband. Bri would be better off if he left and freed her up to find someone better, but now that I’m closer to her, all I can think about is how heartbroken she will be if he leaves.

  I’m mulling over the state of Theo’s marriage, but he seems to have already moved on, because then he leans down until his core is pressed against me and reaches between my legs.

  “Theo!” I try to kick at him, newly outraged. “What the hell are you doing? No. We need to talk about this.”

  “We don’t. It’s done. It’s over. Hey, look on the bright side—you might never even see me again after this. Not unless you want to, anyway.”

  I can’t help curling my lips up in disgust. “I’ll pass.”

  His eyes narrow with annoyance. “I was fucking kidding, Alyssa. Like I want to fuck around with another baby mama. Like I said, just once, that’s all I want. I want to see if you’re as good as I remember.”

  “Get off,” I say, doing my best to raise my hips. I can’t, though. He has me pinned here as well as Brant did that first night he pounced on me in my room—and that night I didn’t have a visible baby bump to protect.

  I swallow and fix my gaze on the ceiling, trying to get my bearings as Theo’s fingers dig into my thigh. He’s trying to pry it open with one hand since the other is holding my wrists down, and I must need to do more leg work, because he manages it.

  My stomach twists and twists until I think I’m going to be sick. I almost never wear panties to bed, and unfortunately, tonight is no exception. It’s not like the day in the barn when there was at least a thin barrier. Tonight there’s nothing, no protection whatsoever, so his blunt finger carelessly breaches my entrance and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I try to squeeze my other thigh and dislodge his hand, but it only aggravates him and he turns me over.