Married To Her Ex (a standalone novel)

by Kat Cantrell

  His control was about to snap.

  She threw her head back, swishing brilliant hair over the pillow behind her, and shoved a hand down between her legs, working her panties aside to show him her secrets. One finger trailed along her slit and then disappeared inside her body. In and out she pumped with little cries.

  He pulsed once and almost came right then, still fully clothed. He couldn’t stand it a second longer.

  In one move, he snared the waistband of her thong and yanked it down, then knelt to swirl his tongue right where she tasted the most delicious. Her scent drove him out of his mind and he fumbled with his pants, shedding them as fast as he could because this wasn’t going to last as long as he’d have liked.

  “I need you to come,” he muttered through a lick, plunging his own fingers into her slick channel.

  She cried out, bowing up and shoving her wet center deeper against his tongue. She was killing him. His other hand strayed to his erection because God, he needed to come too, and he couldn’t keep his fist away from his aching shaft.

  His teeth scraped across her swollen nub, and she bucked, moaning his name as he stroked himself. He watched her shatter and the taste of her orgasm flooding his tongue yanked his own release from the base of his spine. They came in tandem and it was the hottest thing they’d ever done.

  He sat back on his knees, and she rolled onto her side to look at him through gorgeously sated eyes, skirt still bunched up, and legs a sinful distance apart. He nearly shoved his face back into that valley, ready, willing and eager to do it all over again.

  “Did I do it?” she asked eagerly.

  “You’ve always done it for me,” he growled. “Do what?”

  “Make you lose control.” She squealed as he grabbed her legs and flipped her onto her back.

  He wanted her under him, naked and writhing, in less than ten seconds. Her flirty shirt hit the floor, followed immediately by the skirt. All the lace—gone. Her eager hands stripped his shirt off and finally they were both naked.

  Skin to skin, he covered her, reveling in the silky softness against his body. He settled in, nudging a knee between her legs. Indulged in the desire to just touch, skimming light fingers up her sides and down her arms.

  It only took about a minute of that for him to get hard again.

  He had a schedule. Naked, check. Next—writhing. He fingered on a condom in record time.

  With a hand under her rounded bottom, he lifted her and plunged into the still slick heat. It was perfection. Ecstasy. Alexia made him feel invincible, as if he’d been handed the world on a platter. As long as they were together, anything was possible, even fixing their marriage. His brain flicked to sensation mode and he rode it out as he snatched another climax out of his gorgeous wife.

  Two strokes and he blasted apart in another release that put the first one to shame. His head snapped backward, and a guttural cry flew from his mouth. His legs shook, and tingly sparks prickled across his fingertips.

  It had taken a few more seconds than ten. But not many.

  With a groan, he collapsed onto his forearms, careful not to crush the delicate woman underneath him. “That,” he panted, “was me losing control. Happy?”

  He never let himself go like that. But it wasn’t a chore to give her something she’d used such a cunning method to get.

  “Extremely.” She shut her eyes and heaved a contented sigh.

  Jesse rolled and took her with him, nestling her close, and enjoyed the whoosh of her breath against his overheated skin as they lay there, torso to torso, legs intertwined.

  “I love you,” she whispered, softly.

  Shocked, he looked down. The late-afternoon sunlight dappled her hair as it beamed through the open balcony doors. Sharp, startling pain lanced through his chest.

  Say something. But he was so unbalanced, all he could do was nod. He cleared his throat. “I know. It’s your only flaw.”

  She smiled. “At last, we agree.”

  His lips found the hollow of her throat and rested there in an unending kiss as he held her close, so close the beat of her pulse vibrated against his skin. He loved her too, and it was only compounded by the fact that she never cared if he actually said the words.

  Relief pounded through his blood. He’d won. The desperate, idiotic patent deal had worked.

  And he’d won far more than a shot at reconciliation. She’d given him a prize he hadn’t dared hope for—her heart. Now that he had it, he latched on to her love greedily. This time, he wouldn’t take it for granted. The possibility of losing the Sattlewhite acquisition to Holloway had been worth it.

  He only wished it meant smooth sailing ahead. But he had the worst feeling they still had a long way to go.

  For the rest of the trip, they spent an equal amount of time in bed as they did out of it. They laughed over everything as they drank margaritas at a seaside tiki-hut bar and held hands on a private yacht while gliding through the ocean in endless romance. It stopped being a last-ditch effort and became the second chance Jesse had asked for.

  Late one evening, as they strolled the beach, he pulled at their joined hands to get her to stop so they could talk. Really talk. A couple of things were prickling at him, riding on the edge of his consciousness. Things he’d rather resolve now than back at home.

  He cupped her chin with one hand and kissed her slow and deep. Man, he needed to get on his knees and thank God he got to touch her anytime he pleased. When their lips parted, he asked, “This isn’t going to disappear when we get home, is it?”

  “Well, there’s no beach on any of the three lakes, but knowing you, you’ve probably already ordered one,” she said and leaned forward as if about to dive right back into another scorching kiss.

  “You know what I mean.” He pecked her on the lips as compensation and bounced on the heel of one foot, at a loss and not sure why. “We’re enjoying each other’s company. We’re having fun, great sex. Really great, the kind I’d like to continue. If this peace between us is merely the magic of vacation, I’d rather know now.”

  “It’s not the atmosphere.” She circled in his arms and stared out over the water, fixating on the bobbing lights of the ships out in the harbor. “I decided to give you a chance. For real.”

  “Why? What changed?” He searched her face, normally expressive and open, and found nothing but a blank wall. A tickle in the back of his throat spread.

  “I forgave you.”

  “For which part?”

  She gripped the railing instead of him and held on. “For leaving me.”

  Words he’d longed to hear, and critical for allowing the process of forgiving himself to begin. But he couldn’t start anything until he understood why this conversation set off big, flashing, warning lights in his head.

  “Something changed after the miscarriage,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “A fundamental fiber of our relationship, but I can’t describe it or quantify it. Is it fixed?”

  The last trace of easiness between them evaporated when she went stiff. He cursed his nonexistent Irish luck, his compulsion to analyze everything to the nth degree, and most of all, he cursed himself for bringing it up. But it was as necessary as it was difficult.

  “No. It’s not fixed. We have to talk about the miscarriage.”

  “Okay.” He pried her hands off the railing cautiously and rubbed the color back into her white knuckles. If he rubbed hard enough, maybe he could erase the tension too. “What about it?”

  “I didn’t get pregnant on purpose.” Her hands turned to ice, and she yanked them out of his grasp. “You’ve accused me of it time and time again. It was an accident. I need to know you believe me when I say that. I need to know you didn’t leave me because of the pregnancy. That you won’t leave me again if, God forbid, it happens a second time.”

  Haunted shadows sprang up under her eyes, and he couldn’t look away. The tide rushed around them, but he and Alexia were frozen in a moment of clarity.

  She was t
elling the truth. The pregnancy had been an accident. Not design. He’d been so sure she was lying—

  Oh, God, no.

  He’d put the shadows there, embedded in her fragile skin, because his stupid head was too far up his rear end. He’d hurt her, much more so than he’d ever imagined. Stubbornness hadn’t been keeping them apart—he’d broken her heart and more than once. He’d thought all he had to atone for was leaving.

  But he saw now that his sins extended as far back as the moment she’d shown him the positive pregnancy test, and he’d accused her of something vile. Mistakenly.

  Yet she’d stuck around and agreed to come on this trip with him. Let him touch her, laughed with him, told him she loved him. What had he done to earn that love? Nothing.

  She fisted a wad of his shirt and held on. “You hurt me Jesse. Tell me what I need to hear.”

  Such a simple request. She’d given a lot of ground and surrendered gracefully. He owed her a response in kind. The truth. It was the least he could do.

  “I’m sorry, honey. So sorry. I believe you.”

  Her confusion was evident, as was the sudden caution, like she’d walked out on a frozen pond and realized all at once the ice was within a second of cracking. “What?”

  How had they gotten to this point, where an apology warranted such disbelief?

  “I made a mistake, and I was wrong. It’s an event.” The joke got a tiny, encouraging laugh from her.

  He smiled, and she smiled back. A small, watery one, but it lightened the weight on his chest. A lock of hair slipped from her shoulder and fell into her face. He tucked it behind her back, using it as an excuse to put his arm around her. He left it there, and she didn’t move away.

  Through seeping tears, she looked at him. Straight at him for the first time since the conversation started. “I hate crying in front of you. It makes me feel weak.”

  “Are you kidding? I actually enjoy the occasional reminder you have a softer side. Your independent streak is as much a pain in the butt as it is attractive.”

  “Yeah, I could say the same about you.”

  They smiled at each other, and the tension finally eased. “So we’re good now?”

  “Better. Much better.”

  They’d turned a corner. This trip had done the impossible—gotten them past all the land mines and to a place where they could start again, crazy in love, with only greater things to come in their relationship. He took the first easy breath in forever.

  “I can’t wait to get home,” he murmured and pulled her into his arms for another kiss. “Move into my bedroom. Make it our bedroom.”

  Instead of snuggling in and kissing him back, she pecked his lips, then searched his face, her gaze earnest and troubled. “I forgive you for leaving. You apologized, and you’re really trying this time. I get that. But everything is not awesome. We still have so much to work through.”

  That put him back a step. What happened to things being better? “Like what?”

  Her hazel gaze sharpened and skewered him. “I love you. I never stopped. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve become different people than we were when we got married.”

  That wasn’t true, or at least it wasn’t true about him. Was she talking about the panic attacks?

  Before he could ask for qualification, she continued. “I have no power and zero control in our relationship, and Jesse, that’s what really turns you on. Much more than watching me pleasure myself.”

  Something was very off here. He shook his head. No power? This was a partnership.

  Before he could spit out one of the hundred thoughts zinging around in his head, she started talking again.

  “When I got pregnant, something fundamental shifted inside. I was a mom, for however brief of a period. And I wanted that. I never thought in a million years that would happen.”

  He shook his head, hard. “What are you saying? You wanted the baby?”

  “Not past tense, Jesse. It’s still there, deep inside. I want something different than I did when we got married. A baby. To be a mom. The deal we made over the patent isn’t going to work to fix our problems.”

  Jagged pain sliced through his chest as he internalized what she was telling him. She’d changed the rules, and instantly, everything fell apart. All the progress, everything they’d been working toward, all his concessions—for nothing.

  “So this is the new deal you’re offering?” he asked a little more harshly than he intended. “If I want you back, I have to agree to having a baby?”

  The syllables barely cleared his mouth before his tongue strangled over it. The fear, the sheer certainty that having a kid would be the worst thing for everyone involved—especially the poor kid—slicked the back of his throat.

  He wasn’t ready to be a father. Didn’t know if he ever would be. This was not what he’d signed up for.

  “That’s not what I said. Stop freaking out and listen. If I stay with you, it feels like I’m giving up any control in our relationship because everything has to be your way. Including whether we have a family. I don’t know how to move forward. That’s what we have to work through.”

  Control—that’s what it was going to come down to. That’s why she’d gotten so caught up in making him lose it the other day. She was scared, vulnerable, and grasping for some measure of power to beat it back. How could he have missed that?

  He’d missed it because the stakes had changed when he wasn’t looking. This wasn’t about putting the pieces of his life in order, with his wife back in place by his side, because he willed it to be so. It wasn’t about making a couple of superficial changes or potentially giving up the acquisition so she’d forgive him for the boneheaded move of leaving. Not anymore. It was about equalizing their relationship and figuring out how to balance changing priorities.

  It was about Alexia wanting to be a mom and him figuring out how he’d deal with that.

  Bottom line—she wanted to reinvent their marriage.

  The warning sirens had been screaming through his head because he’d won the battle. Not the war.

  He shut his eyes for a beat, and when he opened them, there was really only one thing he could possibly say. “We can’t give up. Let’s go home and figure it out.”

  Return to real life looked a lot like their vacation in the Bahamas. Alexia moved into Jesse’s bedroom and began making it theirs. Useless learned to sleep at the foot of Jesse’s bed. Moki grinned all the time. It was a bonus in her mind to have gained his approval simply by sleeping with Jesse.

  For his part, he came home early some days and seemed committed to spending time with her. Some days he didn’t, but she kept her mouth shut.

  She swam naked in the pool late at night with her equally naked husband and encouraged him to do wicked things when they shut off all the landscape lights. Okay, and she did a couple of wicked things back, including one with strawberries and Jesse’s Celtic knot tattoo. Access to regular sex topped the list of perks due her, beating foreign coffee by a mile. She relished experimenting with new ways to get those sexy moans out of Jesse. The ones which signaled his complete loss of control.

  It was the only time he gave up any.

  The three-month term was more than a third over. Tres Lagos had slowly become comfortable and familiar, and the thought of staying there indefinitely didn’t seem as awful as it once had. Jesse hadn’t asked her what she would do when the deal was over. In fact, they didn’t talk about the deal or the patent or dates at all. Or the huge, blinding relationship issues she’d brought up their last night of vacation, to which he had yet to provide any sort of a response.

  When was he going to prove his love for her by agreeing to talk about having a baby?

  So she didn’t focus on the question marks and instead threw every ounce of energy into figuring out a way to get a business loan for the Thigh Thing. It should have been a good distraction. But it wasn’t.

  A blurry, watercolor-type image with dark shapes and no soundtrack took ove
r for the dream she’d developed of having children. If Jesse would at least give her a time frame, a clue when they’d “figure it out,” the image might crystallize. The unexpected pregnancy had set an internal timer into countdown mode, and she couldn’t shut it off.

  She was waiting for something, for things to be more decided or feel permanent. Waiting to not feel like she’d given Jesse her heart and he’d put it in a box to take out on a whim, whenever he was bored or in the mood for sex.

  On a bright, hot Tuesday, waiting screeched to a halt. When the phone rang, Moki answered and then handed it to Alexia. Who would call on the house line? No one other than Shannon and their parents knew she was here, and they would have dialed her cell.

  She took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Hennessy?”

  The no-nonsense tone—the one people reserved for conversations they dreaded—bristled the hairs on the back of her neck. No, Ms. Ford. She couldn’t correct him because the knot in her tongue wouldn’t form any sounds. Because she knew deep down inside what he was about to say.

  “There’s been an accident. Your husband is in critical condition.”

  More words. Hospital. CareFlight. Very sorry.

  The phone slipped out of her hand and hit the hardwood floor. Under the circumstances, a dramatic crash would have been fitting, to match the shattering of her heart. The handset simply bounced and lay on its side.

  “Mrs. Hennessy?” buzzed from the receiver.

  Whatever she mumbled to Moki must have been coherent enough to have him press keys into her hand. The drive to the hospital was a blur. She should have called Shannon to take her but refused to wait for her sister to show up.

  In a rare stroke of luck, she rolled into the visitor’s parking lot at the hospital without getting lost once. How very surreal to be here, at the same place she would have given birth, if she hadn’t miscarried. The due date would have been right around now. Mercifully, she hadn’t remembered until this minute.

  She couldn’t do any more death.