That decision made, I return to folding laundry.
But Rhys doesn’t join me this time. Instead, he asks, “Why did your father refer to me as Mr. I Don’t Know.”
Considering what we were talking about, the question feels so out of left field. But I answer this question honestly, too. “Because I told him I didn’t know what we were when he asked about you.”
“You didn’t know.” He puts his thumb under my chin and tips my head up. His eyes are blazing with anger. “Are you serious?”
I glance to the side, then back at him, not understanding. “Why are you so mad? We never had any discussions. And it was only six months—”
The laundry basket goes flying, and he flips me over on the bed before I can finish that sentence. The next thing I hear is the slide of the nightstand drawer with the condoms coming open and the next thing I feel is his hand on my back, pressing down.
“So you’re saying that six months meant nothing to you? You were a star in my universe and I was merely a shrug in yours?”
My heart jolts painfully. A star in his universe? Why would he say that? I told him…I told him from the start that things would end badly with me. I should have been a shrug in his universe too.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask him, something ugly and mean rising up inside of me. I’m three years older now but that angry defense instinct hasn’t aged a day. “That you got under my skin, the way I got under yours? That no way are you a psycho for firing me from my job over a fling that happened three years ago?”
I know I’m being mean. Like, everything he’s made me out to be. But there’s some vicious in me that won’t let me stop. “Maybe you want me to say I left my Dansko at your apartment on purpose. Because deep down inside where no one but you can see it, I’m really just one of those basic girls who wants to worship at the altar of your dick.”
There’s a moment of dangerous silence.
And then comes the rip of the foil package he took out of the nightstand.
“Turn over,” he commands, his voice clipped.
I do as he says and the sight of him stops my heart. He’s stroking his dick and looking down at me, his gaze heavy-lidded. And intense.
“Do you like what you do to me?” he asks, his voice flat and cold.
Sounds like a trick question, but I’m feeling brave. And reckless.
“I don’t dislike it,” I confess in that cheeky tone he didn’t miss. I glance down at his arousal. Then back up at him.
He lets go of himself and grabs a hold of the shorts I’m wearing. One yank. That’s all it takes and I’m naked from the bottom down.
He steps closer to the bed, and I brace myself to receive him. I’m not wet yet, but I know my body will adjust. Especially for The Real Prince.
But instead of thrusting into me, he rests a hand heavy on my thigh and rubs the hood of his erection into my slit. And I draw in a sharp breath when The Real Prince finds my clit…and begins a slow circular massage. Deliberate and not at all playful. Every time the shiny head of his cock touched my clit a little jolt went through me. Soon I’m moaning and working my hips up and down as we both watch my core go from dry to wet under his manipulations. His expression stays calm and unaffected. But I start breathing harder, then moaning.
What’s he’s doing is both torture and pleasure.
“Do you like how hard you still make me? How crazy you make me?”
That’s two questions. “Yes, and I’m not trying to.”
“So when you dumped me and blocked my number….”
I can’t decide what’s more disturbing. This conversation or the fact that I’m close to coming, just from the way his dick is massaging my clit.
“I’m sorry!” I cry out either way.
“What are you sorry for?” he demands. “Are you sorry for how coldly you cut me loose? Are you sorry for all the pathetic messages I left you, begging for another chance before I realized you had blocked me? Are you sorry that crossing me cost you your job?”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry for all of it.”
He abruptly stops manipulating my clit. And then there’s nothing but silence.
The silence goes on for so long, I open my eyes to look at him.
And immediately wish I hadn’t.
His jaw is tight and unforgiving, and his eyes are a cold blank, devoid of any emotion whatsoever.
“Wrong answer,” he says.
Then he crashes down on top of me and thrust himself into me at the same time.
He bands my wrists together over my head with one hand. There should be fear. There should be denial and resentment of my own.
But my body sighs with relief when he starts moving on top of me. His expression…it’s no longer vacant. And there’s nothing cold about the way he takes me with savage thrusts. Like an animal, wounded and enraged.
I crave this. Crave his punishment. If I’m the witch he’s put on trial, he’s the fire set underneath me. And I’m happy to burn.
I cry out when the orgasm overtakes me. It’s as brutal and unforgiving as his thrusts. And all I can do is gasp and hold on to him as it does what it wants with me.
He shoves his face into my neck, his hips hammering between my thighs. Until suddenly his entire body goes rigid and he buries himself deep.
The anger seems to fade out of him. And then it’s just the two of us, exhaling fast as we try to recover our breath.
He’s way fitter than me, but I get to the part where I can speak again faster than he does.
“So you’re just going to stay mad at me forever?” I ask. My voice is half-wry and half-tired.
He rolls off of me. Lies there, still breathing hard. But not hard due to physical exertion I suspect. He’d always been a little commanding in bed. But he’d never been this rough. I think he surprised himself even more than he did me.
“My revenge is my revenge and I don’t really care how unhinged it makes me appear. I won’t apologize. For anything,” he says, his voice firm and resolute. But then he pulls me close, and says, “However, I am trying…I’m trying to figure out how to simply forgive you and let go of this.”
I think about his words. Think about the emotions swirling in my chest. The ones that make me feel weak like I’m on the brink of heart failure when I give them too much attention.
Then I put on my easiest breeziest tone to say, “Okay…I hope you figure it out. But if you don’t, I guess that’s okay too. It’s nice keeping company with another adult who was born in the 20th century. And messed up as it is, I gotta say that punishment sex is off the chain.”
He makes a sound between a laugh and a grunt.
Then he gives me a surprisingly tender kiss on the forehead.
Chapter Sixteen
“Rhys!” I yell from inside the house a couple days later. “Could you come out here?”
“What is it?” he calls back from outside. He’s been working outside at the picnic table since, like Day 3 of our quarantine. Apparently being inside with me is too much of a distraction from whatever work he’s doing on his laptop. And going somewhere, anywhere gives him a sense of normalcy.
“I’ll tell you when you come in.”
“Could you tell me now. I’m in the middle of something important and unless it’s an emergency—”
“Okay, it’s an emergency,” I yell back. “It’s a total emergency. Like, a matter of life or death.”
Several beats. Then: “I don’t believe you’re telling the truth.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
More beats of silence. And I wonder if I’ll have to go out there and physically pull him inside.
But then he suddenly comes crashing through the door. “I swear to Christ, Cynda, if this is your idea of a joke—”
He stops short when he sees me on the couch…sitting in front of a TV filled with computer-animated men in cricket uniforms.
He looks from me to the TV. “Is that…is that Cri
cket 19?”
“Sure is,” I answer, holding out one of the game controllers. “It took me half the morning to set this up even with A giving me step-by-step directions over the phone. Happy Birthday, Dr. Prince. You ready to play this life or death cricket game with me?”
There’s not even a beat of hesitation this time. Rhys practically leaps on to the couch, and we spend the rest of the afternoon playing video game cricket.
It’s more fun than I’m expecting it to be, especially considering how steep my learning curve is. Rhys wallops me at most of the games, but by the time my usual cooking hour rolls around, I think I’ve got the rules of the game figured out.
At least enough to talk trash over the special fish and chips I make him for dinner.
“Give me til the end of this mini-quarantine. I bet I’ll beat you! You’ll be on the phone crying about how an American totally kicked your ass.”
He laughs. “I highly doubt that. But I look forward to you trying. I haven’t allowed myself a whole afternoon of gaming since I was in boarding school. Thank you, Cynda. It was delightful. And these fish and chips are delicious.”
“You like them?” I ask, weirdly pleased. “The recipe promised this was super authentic to England. But I wasn’t sure I got it right….”
“These are honestly the best fish and chips I’ve ever had.”
“Not better than your mom’s though, right?” I remember Rhys telling me once that his mother was a fantastic cook and that she used to make him a special meal whenever he came home from boarding school.
He tilts his head to the side. “Well my mother is Welsh, so she’s more of a shepherd’s pie for dinner kind of woman. She never made fish and chips that I know of, but this was one of my favorite dishes when I was in boarding school.”
I preen. “Then I totally picked right.”
He laughs again. “You did. You really did.”
But then he sobers. “Cynda?”
“Hmm?” I ask, lowering my fork for another bite of haddock.
“Why did you do this?”
“Because it’s your birthday,” I answer.
“So you’ve done this before? For all the other men who came after me? This is simply protocol?”
His eyes are still shining with amusement, but his questions feel…dangerous.
Like little grenades casually placed on the table between us.
And it feels like I’m pulling the pins when I answer, “Actually there haven’t been any men after you.”
He stills on the other side of the little table, his face turning to stone. “Cynda, if you’re lying….”
“Why would I lie about that?” I ask before he can finish that threat. “And it’s not like it had anything to do with you. I was just busy taking care of the twins. I didn’t have time for guys. Not like you apparently had time for all the girls.”
A smile spreads across his lips. “Are you jealous of the other women, Cynda?”
Yes. Sort of. “No,” I answer out loud in a very firm voice because this mini-quarantine relationship is already confusing enough as it.
A moment of silence. Then: “You know, I only slept with them to get over you. If it had worked, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
I have no idea what to do with that information. No idea how to respond to it or what to feel about it.
So I do what I always do when things get too intimate to bear. Change the subject. “Anyway, I’ve got one more gift. But I’m not sure about the execution on this one because I had to practice silently when you were outside working.”
Without waiting for him to answer, I go to the piano where I’ve got the sheet music I’ve been practicing pulled up on my iPad.
After getting situated, I take a big breath, just like I used to before every pageant performance. Then I begin playing “Remember September,” the only Death Buddha song that isn’t hard, fast, and screechy.
Muscle memory is a hell of a thing. Other than falling a little off-tempo in the careful beginning, the song comes out perfectly. And after a few bars, Rhys crosses the room and starts quietly singing along.
He’s no West Nygard, but I think the lead singer of Death Buddha would appreciate the solemn resonance in his voice. And the fact that Rhys has apparently memorized every word of the sad “life on the road” song that every rock band was required to make back in the 90s. I play and he sings until the last few notes when it’s just a few more bars of bittersweet music until the song is done.
We’re quiet for a long time after I play the last note.
Then I say, “I just wanted to do something nice for you on your birthday. This damn virus. It’s ruined so much, and I figured it was the least I could do.”
“Cynda…” he starts. Then stops. Then he says, “Thank you. Thank you for doing this. I love…”
The possibilities of what he could say next hanging between us, ticking like a bomb. Then he finishes with, “I love everything you did. The game, the food, the song. Truly thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I answer. Then I have to ask. “So am I forgiven yet or what?”
“You’re getting close.” He laughs.
But it doesn’t feel like a joke to me. It feels like a promise.
Chapter Seventeen
A week later, Rhys still hasn’t forgiven me. But we’ve spent a lot of our quarantine time making up. Sex, two to three times a day. On the bed, on the couch (apparently it wasn’t too small after all), in the shower, on the kitchen counter, and against, like all the walls.
Really, I’d be hard put to come up with one surface we haven’t christened. They say you’re supposed to get less interested in sex as you age. But we’re more like a couple of horny teenagers than two medical professionals with degrees and noble intentions.
I blame the off-the-chain horniness on Rhys being off from work and me having almost nothing to do for the first time in my life. Also, the cicadas.
The night of our last day in quarantine, Rhys wakes me up in the middle of the night. “Those damn cicadas,” he explains after kissing me awake. “They woke me up again. Help me fall back asleep.”
I laugh because this wasn’t the first time he’d made this claim. “You’ve been back in Missouri for two months now. You should be used to it.”
I hear the soft knock and rustles of him rooting around for a condom. “Honestly, I didn’t ever get used to those tiny buzz saws you call cicadas during my fellowship year. Fortunately, I lived so high up, I couldn’t hear them at night.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “So how were you getting to sleep before we had to quarantine together.”
“You helped me then, too, actually,” he answers with a droll laugh. “You just didn’t know it.”
It takes a moment for the full meaning of his words to sink in. “Wait, you hated me enough to fire me, but then you’ve been out here masturbating to me?”
“My feelings when it comes to you are very complicated,” he confesses, covering my body. “More complicated than I want them to be.”
He’s rock hard, but his long length settles over my slit as opposed to pushing inside of me. This is a late night version of foreplay I’ve become familiar with over the past week. It basically involves Rhys lazily grinding on me until I’m more than ready for him to come inside.
Usually, I just lie there and enjoy the feeling of my body becoming more and more pliant underneath his. But tonight, his honest tone stirs something inside of me. Something that makes me confess, “Mine too. I think that was our problem from the start. It should have been simple fun, but it kept getting too complicated.”
He stills on top of me. And though we can’t see each other in the pitch black of the back house, it feels like he’s staring down at me.
It feels like he’s making a decision when he rocks up and pushes into me in one long stroke. I moan, wetter than I should be for someone who just woke up.
He fucks me slow and deep. From the front…from the back…then from the side as his finger
s lazily circle my clit. He’s in no rush, but the fire builds anyway, crackling brighter and brighter until an orgasm engulfs the both of us.
For something that took a while to generate, it’s way more intense than I’m expecting. My legs kick out helplessly and he holds me tight against his chest as he empties into the condom. As if he thinks I’ll fly away without anything to anchor me to this reality.
Maybe he’s right.
We’re like the pandemic. Scary and confusing.
What are we doing?
That’s what I asked him two weeks ago. And that’s what I silently ask myself as I fall asleep all tangled up with Rhys. While the cicadas screech their discordant mating song in the background.
Yes, whatever this thing is with Rhys, it’s scary and confusing.
And maybe that’s why my eyes fill with tears the next morning when I see the streak of red on the toilet paper.
I’m not pregnant.
I should feel relieved. Even if my status with Rhys wasn’t a huge-ass “It’s Complicated,” now is the worst time to have a baby on the way.
For one, there’s a pandemic. Also, I have to figure out how to get the twins to Pittsburgh. And I have to find a new job since my current lover fired me from the last one.
Yeah, a baby is the last thing I need right now.
So why do I feel so sad?
“What’s wrong?” Rhys asks when I come out of the bathroom.
I hate that he can see my silly disappointment written across my face.
“Nothing,” I mumble, snatching up my phone. “I just need E to bring me over some tampons.”
“So we’re not pregnant,” Rhys says. His voice is flat. Unreadable.
“Nope,” I answer, back to Cynda as usual. Totally unbothered. “Thank goodness, right?”
I turn back to my phone to finish my text message to E. But my phone vibrates in my hand before I can.
I answer it right away when I see the incoming call is coming from the hospital.
Cynda and the City Doctor: 50 Loving States, Missouri (QUARANTALES Book 1) Page 12