Hell.
Maybe he could talk her into using condoms as extra protection. Because this abstinence thing was going to kill him.
Chapter Two
She should have slammed the door in his face, but she hadn’t wanted to wake the kids. Instead, she’d closed it softly but firmly. Shutting him out.
Ooh, she was mad. She’d almost had him. She could have mopped the floor with his drool and hung the laundry on his erection. Mitchie wanted her. Bad.
But not badly enough to wipe thoughts of birth control out of his mind. Who did he think he was, checking up on her? Okay, so she had forgotten to take a pill a couple of months ago. She hadn’t discovered it until it was too late, until she’d already attacked him after the barbecue. She’d planned the attack, getting Evelyn to take the kids, but really, she hadn’t planned to forget her pill. She wouldn’t do that. They were a team. As much as she wanted a baby, she wouldn’t do that to him.
And Mitch should know it.
Ooh, she was so mad. Not to mention horny. Yes, flat out horny like an ovulating bunny. Hot, wet, and wanting, she needed an orgasm. She wanted it now. And why shouldn’t she have it? So what if she was alone in the bed? Who needed a man anyway? Maybe he’d hear her, know what she was doing, and come back begging. She should have left the door open.
She’d ripped her pretty lace teddy when she yanked it off, but at least she was naked beneath the sheet. Connie spread her legs, slid her hands over her breasts, down her abdomen, then into the thatch of hair at her apex. She was wet, dripping.
“See what you’re missing, Mitchie,” she whispered.
Her clitoris was already a throbbing nub when she put her finger to it. Almost on its own, her pelvis moved in tandem. She groaned without meaning to, then dipped her finger inside. It was good, but Mitch’s penis would have felt so much better. She went back to her clitoris, using fast circles. Faster, harder, her hips rising off the bed for extra pressure. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip as heat and sensation shot straight to the sensitive bead and threw her up into starlight. Collapsing back into the mattress, delicious quivers traveled through her body as her breathing returned to normal.
Hmm. The springs squeaked. She hoped they squeaked loudly enough for Mitch to hear out in the living room.
* * * * *
What was that noise? A rhythmic squeak, then finally what sounded like a moan. Connie’s moan. He knew it well, a soft, throaty exhalation of pleasure. Very soft, because of the kids.
Man, she wasn’t...no, she wouldn’t. Sometimes she did, when he was buried deep in her. Sometimes he asked her to because he liked the thought of her working herself from the outside while he worked her inside.
But she didn’t do it without him.
Did she?
Oh man. The thought of watching her pleasure herself made him close to explosive. He needed a cold shower. He needed his wife’s mouth on his cock.
And he really had to stop thinking about it. He had bills to pay and family responsibilities, and those were much more dire than the fact that he hadn’t gotten any nookie.
If only he could get over his debilitating anxiety. Even he realized it was unrealistic given the fact that he was surrounded by a family who would do anything for Connie and the kids. But he kept remembering Lou.
In the end, he slept less than an hour, trapped between the image of astronomical grocery-store receipts and the sweet scent of Connie’s skin.
* * * * *
“I’m sorry, honey, I acted like a jerk last night.” If not for the kids, Connie would have used the word bitch to describe last night’s tirade. She had to admit she’d overreacted.
Mitch jerked his head up, his cereal going soggy.
“I acted childishly.”
Mitch stared at her as if she’d brandished a pair of pinking shears on a crowded plane. And still he didn’t say a word.
“Rina, finish your cereal before it gets mushy,” she said, eyeing Mitch’s cereal bowl with a message light in her eyes. “And Peter, don’t forget to put your Van Helsing monsters in your backpack.”
With his cereal sucked down as if he were a vacuum, Peter hopped off his chair and dashed to his room. Their son moved on only two speeds, slow as a garden slug when he didn’t want to do something or Warp Eight when he did.
“Can I get my Barbie pack, Mom?”
Connie leaned over to look at her daughter’s bowl. Not completely empty, but better than usual. “Okay, sweetie.”
With the children getting themselves ready, she turned back to Mitch to find him still staring as if she were one of Peter’s space aliens.
“Finish your cereal like a good boy, honey.” She’d flummoxed him. Good. “I mean it, I’m really sorry I blew up last night.”
Last night had given her a wealth of new insights. A really good orgasm could do that. Even if she’d given it to herself.
First, she had been a bit hasty in accusing him of not trusting her. After all, that reminder about her birth control pills was just a question, and she couldn’t blame him for being worried. He’d always been a worrier. Evelyn said it was because he was always trying to play catch-up with his big brothers, trying to prove he was good enough. But after Lou’s death, he’d gone haywire, examining every little expenditure she made. She’d wanted to help by getting a job, but he’d vetoed that idea. Then she’d hinted he should to talk to someone, a professional. Grief counseling. Oh boy, that argument had been ugly. Even she, who never backed down from a good fight, had to let that one go. They’d sidestepped Lou’s death ever since.
She needed a different plan of attack, though attack was the absolutely wrong word. She didn’t want to start a war. She wanted to start some loving in the bedroom, get them back on the track they’d fallen off of.
“We’ve been fighting too much lately, and I’ve decided I’m not going to fight anymore. I’ll give you a calm household to come home to every night, where you don’t have to fret about a thing. Where you can relax and shrug off the day’s worries.”
He tilted his head, first one way, then the other. Like a dog who couldn’t figure out whether the steak in front of him was laced with rat poison.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Oh, honey. Nothing’s wrong.” She smiled. She’d make everything just right. She was going to keep his house, watch his kids, and match his socks. And when they turned the lights out she was going to blow his mind.
The plan had come to her in that expansive, lethargic state right after orgasm where genius took root.
“Now, I’m dropping Rina off at day care.” Which she did twice a week to keep Rina used to being away from home during the day. It was a friend’s day care, and they swapped favors so it didn’t cost Mitch a cent. Kindergarten had been a big adjustment for Rina—not to mention herself—and she didn’t want the same problems with first grade.
“Peter’s spending the day with the Daigle boy, they’re going to play Van Helsing, so I’ll see you tonight. Anything special you want for dinner?”
Mitch choked on his soggy cereal. At least that’s what the noise coming from his throat sounded like. He didn’t turn blue or anything, and finally managed, “Anything’s fine with me.”
She called the kids to heel, though it took another ten minutes to get them ready. Mitch was still seated at the kitchen table, a cold cup of coffee clutched in his fingers. She dropped a kiss on his head, then scooted her gaggle out the door.
Oh yeah, she’d blow his matched socks off tonight after lights out.
* * * * *
“She acted like a Stepford wife, I tell you. She even asked me what I wanted for dinner.”
“She asked instead of telling?” David repeated, jiggling his ear as if he couldn’t have heard correctly.
Mitch threw another small stump on the heap and nodded. “She never asks. She knows whatever she makes is fine with me.”
“Interesting.”
“It was scary, David. Damn scary.”
Connie’s act this morning was almost...creepy. Definitely like a Stepford wife, especially after the way they’d gone to bed. Separately. Didn’t the wives turn on their husbands in the end and kill them? He’d never seen the movie. Now he was terrified to.
“She’s planning something, I know it, and it can’t be good.”
They stopped jawing a bit to work on the last stump. Damn, he hated removing stumps. That part of the job took longer than cutting down the whole damn tree.
“Holy Hell.”
“What?”
“She said she’s getting rid of the kids for the day. What if she’s planning to...”
He stopped. He hadn’t told his brother about his money woes. He didn’t need anyone else telling him he was a freak. But fear was now busting his gut. “What if she’s planning to buy a new washing machine? Or a car?” God forbid.
David leaned on the end of his pickax. “She wouldn’t do that. Not behind your back.”
He tried to listen to his brother’s voice of reason. But she’d been so pissed last night when he’d inadvertently let that stupid question slip out of his gullet. She would be royally pissed if she knew he’d sneaked into the bathroom after she left this morning and checked her packet of birth control pills. Hell, he couldn’t even tell if she’d taken her daily dose, not having seen the number the day before. Just how pissed could Connie get? Deviously pissed. Thank God he didn’t incite her wrath often. Although, the make-up sex was pretty damn hot.
“You know, Mitch, if you’re in a bind, you can always come to one of us for help.”
“In a bind?”
“Money. Cash. That’s what family is for. To help out.”
“No. Hell no. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
David put his hands up. “All right. Just checking.”
Did he sound like he needed to beg? He stopped work long enough to pop another antacid. His stomach was roiling. He honestly hadn’t realized he’d let his worries slip that much into his conversation. He’d have to watch that in future.
Right now, he had bigger concerns. Connie. Damage control. He suddenly had the driving need to get home. But they had two more stumps to clear. He feared that when he finally did get home, it would be way too late.
* * * * *
She certainly couldn’t look for what she wanted in Willoughby. Not that she thought she’d find it, but just asking would set the town tongues wagging. This might be California, but small towns were small towns with everybody’s business being everybody else’s.
She’d have to drive into Saint Lucia, which wasn’t much larger than Willoughby, but it wasn’t her town. Besides, she’d heard about that new shop, everyone had heard about it. Surely she’d find what she wanted, no, needed. And she had until two-thirty when she had to pick up Rina.
“Shop till you drop,” she quipped, parking the station wagon in the next block over from the store. The engine knocked and pinged for fifteen seconds after she shut it off. She really had to convince Mitch they needed a replacement.
The store wasn’t obtrusive or garish. Its window displayed a tasteful arrangement of feather masks, which could be used at Halloween two and a half months away, assorted beauty products like lotions and soaps, and a mannequin in a pretty, gauzy summer skirt and spaghetti-strap camisole. Up and Coming, the shop’s name arched in gold letters across the window and front door.
Up and Coming. Connie snickered. It was quite a play on words considering what the shop stocked in the back room.
A bell tinkled overhead as she opened the door. The interior looked like any old Victoria’s Secret at the mall. Lace, satin, and silk hung on gold racks, lotions and sprays sat on glass shelves along the wall, a selection of makeup beneath a counter, flowered curtains adorning dressing rooms. Candles burned, scenting the air with...well, what was that smell?
“Oleander,” came a voice from behind her.
Connie realized she must have been sniffing the aroma.
“It’s good for relaxing all the muscles.”
Gorgeous red hair flowed over the sales woman’s shoulders. Geez, why couldn’t she have hair like that? It didn’t look dyed, with shades of gold and strawberry glittering through it. Her makeup was lightly yet expertly applied, which enhanced the disgustingly perfect features God had given her. Sparkling green eyes, plump, red lips, which weren’t all bubbly with collagen, and full breasts that fit her Marilyn Monroe hourglass figure. Silver ankle bracelets jingled as she crossed the tasteful rose-hued carpet. With the grace of a voluptuous fifties beauty queen, she was no skinny-minnie by any means, but why couldn’t Connie’s pounds fall into perfect place like that?
“Can I help you find something? We have some lovely lingerie.”
Lingerie had not worked, and Connie would have felt inferior with this perfect woman enticing her to buy more frilly stuff that wouldn’t work.
“I’m more interested in what you have in the back room.”
The woman smiled like Eve picking the apple off the tree. “We don’t call it the back room. It’s the boudoir.”
Who was this “we” anyway? There were only the two of them. “The boudoir would be fine.”
The woman held out her hand, indicating the way through a doorway decked with pink and blue beads acting as a curtain.
“May I ask how you heard about us? Since we’re fairly new, I like to get an idea of which promotion worked.”
Connie laughed. “You’re kidding, right? This place is the talk of the area. Everybody’s heard about Up and Coming.” Following the woman through the beads, she added, “Did you really intend the name to mean what it sounds like it means?”
The proprietress had a very sexy laugh. Connie wondered if she could imitate it without sounding like a braying donkey. Besides, dealing in...the things she dealt in, the woman probably practiced her walk, her laugh, even her speech modulation. The impression given when a customer entered was everything.
“This isn’t a sex shop you’d find down some filthy big city alley. Up and Coming celebrates femininity in all its forms.”
“But you do have sex toys, right?”
She smiled. “Of course. Quite a variety. My name’s Jensen, by the way.”
Connie gaped. She didn’t have to give her name, did she?
“It’s all right. We don’t deal in brown paper bags here, but everything is confidential.”
Geez, it wasn’t as if she were visiting the doctor for some female complaint. What harm could giving her first name do?
“I’m Connie.”
Jensen lightly touched her arm, subtly directing her deeper into the “boudoir.”
“Do you have a specific toy in mind?”
“Not really. I was just sort of wanting to look around.” She hadn’t been expecting a guided tour, which might end up being a bit embarrassing. But after looking at the sizes, shapes, and colors ornamenting the walls, countertops, and display stands, Connie did need a little explanation. “What’s that?”
Blue and rubbery, it looked like a donut with nubs on it.
“That’s a pleasure ring. It’s placed around a man’s penis. It enhances the man’s pleasure, allows him to maintain an erection longer, and the nubs stimulate the woman’s clitoris during intercourse.”
“Oh.” Connie didn’t have much more to say on the subject.
“You’ll see these on the Internet, but please, never buy stainless steel. Swelling can occur, making it impossible to remove. A man once had to have it cut off with a diamond saw.”
“Umm, gee, guess I’ll skip that then.”
“Perhaps you’d like to try a pair of handcuffs. We carry an assortment from fur-lined to leather to a replica of what the police would use.”
“My husband and I aren’t into S&M.” Connie knew all the appropriate lingo.
“Not to worry, we entertain married couples wanting to spice up their love lives. A little restraint and blindfold can be quite enjoyable.”
Connie considered it. Seri
ously. Would Mitch let her handcuff him to the brass rails of the headboard? She thought about being handcuffed herself and having her eyes covered. She couldn’t wriggle away when his tongue got too intense. The idea sent a thrill between her legs. Which made her feel extremely uncomfortable with company around.
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Perhaps you’d like to look at our selection of vibrators?”
She shook her head. “I want something we can use together.”
The woman laughed again, throaty. “Vibrators aren’t simply a solitary tool. They can be put to good use by both parties.”
“Oh?” Connie quickly held up a hand. “Please don’t tell me. That would be too embarrassing.”
“In that case, we offer a very useful instruction pamphlet to accompany the purchase.” She crinkled her nose. “With some helpful hints for getting the maximum benefit.”
Connie found herself following Jensen to the opposite wall as if she were the Pied Piper.
“This model has dual ends which can be used...” Jensen glanced at Connie, obviously gauging her word choice. “It has dual penetration capabilities.”
Leaning closer, Connie examined the brown device. It was curved and had two heads. Mercy, they looked like penises. Then it dawned on her exactly where one was supposed to insert the two heads. Ewwe.
“No, I don’t think so.” She wasn’t letting anyone use that thing on her, not even Mitch.
“How about something more standard?” Jensen pulled a purple silicon penis-shape from the wall bracket. “This particular model is equipped with three speeds and the ability to rotate and vibrate at the same time. One partner can be in charge of the controls while the other...submits.”
“You mean...” Oh my. She felt another little thrill at the thought of Mitch putting it inside her and...pumping it.
“I think you understand. Manual stimulation can be used in conjunction.”
Somebody's Wife: The Jackson Brothers, Book 3 Page 2