Deliciously Obedient

by Julia Kent

  If she’d been back at the cabin, or in her old room at her apartment, or anywhere but this quiet stranger’s apartment, where nothing was hers, and she was accountable to no one, she would have missed the imperceptible shift that took place in the silence after his words. A very large boulder in the foundation they were building in this relationship just clicked into place, a perfect cornerstone for…

  Whatever this was becoming.

  “What time can we go back for visiting hours?” he mumbled, yawning.

  She checked her phone. “Two hours.”

  “Your mom won’t mind if we’re not back until then?”

  Lydia shook her head, stifling her own yawn. His was contagious. “She’ll just text if she needs me.”

  And they descended into sleep naked and entwined, comfortable exactly as they were.

  Walking down the hallway of his building felt so odd that he might as well have been visiting a residencial in a small South American city, or checking in to a youth hostel in Germany. The lack of sound troubled him, setting him on high alert. A month in the woods made a man aware of everything from the buzz of insects to the crackle of dry leaves under a fox’s paws.

  Here in the city, the sounds were different—horns blaring and construction crews creating the latest skyscraper. Mike didn’t hear voices here so much as the mumbled rumbling of crowds, like the chatter of starlings in the trees, moving in groups so thick they were nearly a solid mass.

  His larger suitcase was still in the car trunk, and he carried a small backpack into the apartment, the key jiggling in the lock, the scent of an abandoned space hitting him. It smelled like time, like fear, like escape. Wanting to rid himself of the scent, he swiftly opened all the windows, accepting the bracing chill as penance for letting himself avoid the emotional landscape that the aroma of his own apartment brought.

  If lonely had a scent, that was it.

  Living room airing out, he paused, exhausted. The daily allotment of coffee was not yet consumed, and he strode into the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboards for little cups he inserted into his machine, to make a quick, hot cup of joe. Deed accomplished, he found a nice, cold spot on the couch right across from an open window and let the cold air smack him in the face, like a chiding mother, light but with intent.

  Mother. He hadn’t called his in days, and he thought of Madge, who wasn’t much older. Mike could imagine Sandy’s agony; from what little interaction he’d had with the family, and a bit more with Lydia, he knew damn well how important the old bat was to all of them.

  And to two or three generations of Bostonians who had experienced so many memories at Jeddy’s.

  Lydia’s pain took over his mind, a keen sense of her struggle permeating him. As the coffee cooled, he began to let himself recalibrate. The woods had been good for decompression, for a refuge from an old life that made no sense.

  The city was where he could craft a new life.

  One that he hoped might—just might—have a touch of Lydia in it.

  The distant sound of rushing water made his ears perk up and turn toward the bedroom. Paper-thin walls. The neighbors must be—

  Mumbles. A woman’s laugh. His neck tensed and he shot to his feet, the coffee piping hot in his hand, threatening to slosh over the mug’s edge. Catching it in time, he lowered it to the coffee table, thighs tight and ready to move with catlike precision.

  Who the hell was here?

  On alert, he reached for a small onyx statue, strong enough to break a skull if need be, and strode to the bedroom door with his blood pounding through his veins like an armory full of men being deployed.

  No warning. He swung the door open, statue raised high, and shouted, “Who the fuck is in my house?”

  Two sets of very familiar eyes met his.

  And then one very familiar set of breasts and hips, and an ass that looked like something out of a Caravaggio original, filled his brain with a zooming want that converted his adrenaline to lust.

  “What the hell are you doing, Mike?” Jeremy shouted, his own voice low and threatening, body moving to cover Lydia’s nude form, the gesture protective and loving, igniting appreciation and thanks from Mike’s beleaguered nervous system. Mike set the statue down carefully on his dresser, willing his heart to stop pounding like an Irish dancer wearing clogs made of titanium.

  He should have been enraged. But he never felt what he was supposed to feel when it involved Jeremy.

  And definitely when it involved Lydia.

  Her eyes were wide with surprise, the whites showing millimeters beyond her eyelid, then narrowing. Breathing hard, she wrangled her neck from where Jeremy had pinned her with his body in case Mike had tried—though he never would—to hurt her.

  The trio stared at one another in disbelief.

  And then, in a voice so sultry, so cynical, that luscious mouth he remembered so fiercely taking said to him, “What? No camera crew, Mike? You’re slipping.”

  Chapter Seven

  This was way worse than setting the cat on fire. Between that, and “Lydia Chlamydia,” she had a way of measuring humiliating, horrifying situations. Set the cat on fire, be compared to a cervical infection, be videotaped in the heat of passion—these were benchmarks on the continuum of HOLY SHIT MY LIFE IS FUCKED UP.

  So being walked in on, naked, after raunchy sex by the man who haunted her dreams was, now, another notch on a belt she wished she didn’t own.

  The Lydia Fucked Up Yet Again belt.

  “A what?” Those sapphire eyes flashed in confusion, then simmered in anger, nostrils flared, his fury focused entirely on her. Naked and completely on display, she fought the instinct to cover up. Jeremy was trying to be be a bedspread in human form, but it wasn’t working.

  Besides, Mike had seen it all.

  And she’d been more vulnerable than naked with him, so why did this little formality matter?

  Because you just fucked his best friend in the man’s bed, a voice that sounded annoyingly like Krysta’s reminded her.

  Oh. Yeah. That.

  “Can you blame her?” Jeremy asked, his tone neutral, as if he were chatting about the latest episode of Sons of Anarchy or a new crêpe at Jeddy’s. “You do tend to bring a camera crew along for those moments when she’s naked.”

  Lydia’s sharp inhale was the only sound in the room.

  Mike and Jeremy locked eyes.

  Electricity swarmed in the air, the atoms circling faster, a steady, thrumming charge growing stronger. She didn’t feel tension, nor anger. This was no grudge match.

  This was a good old-fashioned contest of unintended rivals.

  But what was the prize? Mike’s distraction with the naked man resting beside her gave her a chance to look Mike over, her eyes taking him in. Deeply worn jeans, the kind that cupped a man’s muscled ass in all the right places, topped with a lightweight Henley, the top two buttons open, covered with an insulated flannel shirt. Work boots. Hell, he might have stepped right off the campground, she thought.

  The thought made her snort.

  Both men turned to her with identical expressions: eyebrows raised, eyes piercing. The contrast between Jeremy’s warm brown eyes and darker, thicker eyebrows with Mike’s ice-blue gaze, his light brow arched, and short, spiked hair a stark difference from his style as Matt.

  Heat poured through her as she met Mike’s look, his features softening with each second of contact—however limited—between them. A longing in his expression, so nuanced she couldn’t quite believe it was there, matched the selfsame feeling that spiraled through her.

  And then Jeremy shifted, reeling her back in, making her look down at their bared skin and bark out a harsh laugh.

  “Can you blame me?” she said, catching Mike’s eye again, now turning to snake the bottom sheet out from under the bedspread, wrapping it about her like a toga. Her hair caught in the spun sheet between her shoulder blade and two warm, big hands pulled it out, letting it sweep back against her like a palm frond.

&nbs
p; Turning around, she looked into eyes as intense as Mike’s, but without the longing. “Thank you,” she said to Jeremy. Wanting to kiss him, but holding back, the air still charged, she tried to ignore the flailing wings of anxiety that flapped helplessly against her ribcage, her skin on fire with every look Mike gave her, so exceptionally aware of every movement in the room—each breath, every shift—she seemed to be walking and breathing through corn syrup.

  “I blame myself,” Mike finally said, the words jagged and reproachful. He spoke just as she reached the bathroom doorway, and his words made her clutch the threshold for support. Without looking back—for if she did she would surely turn to a pillar of Lydia-flavored salt—she entered the bathroom, shut the door quietly and collapsed on the toilet seat.

  “Here, Jeremy? Really?” she heard Mike hiss, imagining his clenched jaw, teeth so tightly ground together they could break a steel rod.

  “You were gone,” Jeremy answered in a tone of voice Lydia didn’t know he was capable of. It made her nipples tighten and her neck straighten. Jeremy didn’t do anger.

  Apparently, she had a lot to learn about Jeremy.

  “And you had fun.” Against her better judgment, she slid herself across the bathroom floor and put her ear to the door, needing to know what they were saying.

  “You told me to go after her and take care of her,” Jeremy said. She heard the swish of cloth, and assumed he was dressing. Take care of her? What did that mean?

  “I didn’t tell you to fuck her in my own bed.”

  Was this jealousy? Her ears didn’t know how to interpret their conversation. Shouldn’t one of them be punching the other by now? Men who fought over women were supposed to yell and fight and do macho shit that made everything worse in the end, right?

  They sounded like Niles and Frasier arguing over which one got the better seat in an opera box.

  Silence.

  And then: “You’re right. That was low.” Jeremy sounded sheepish. “But to be fair, I use your apartment all the time, and there’s only one bed, and those texts you sent were cryptic. I figured you’d joined some Ashram in India and were learning to become a Breatharian.”

  “A what?”

  “To live on air.”

  A snort. “Where do you come up with this shit?”

  “One of the girls in India told me about it.”

  One of the girls. Their conversation had descended into guarded banter, and Jeremy’s words hovered in her ear like a gnat on a humid day. One of the girls. Was that what she was to him, too? Someday, would he describe her as “one of the girls in Boston”? Her ass pulsed, cheeks red, and her lips felt parched. What they’d just done together had been amazing. He wasn’t just using her for cheap thrills, was he?

  Take care of her.

  Guys who wanted just a good fuck didn’t go to her parents’ campground with her. Drive her and her mom to the hospital for her grandma’s health crisis. Didn’t…

  Didn’t what?

  How well did she really know Jeremy?

  “I told you I was closer than you think.”

  Jeremy made a sound she couldn’t interpret. “No shit. Get an eyeful?”

  Whatever Mike’s nonverbal response was, it made Jeremy’s next words come out with a tension she felt in the base of her spine.

  And then mumbled words between the two of them that were so quiet she wished she had hyperacusis.

  Damn normal hearing.

  As she shifted, one ass cheek peeled off the cold tile with a snick, and she took a second to look down. Naked, sticky and with a case of bed head, she wondered how soon her mom would text.

  Shower. She needed to look presentable for the hospital, even as the two men who plagued her threesome dreams conversed about her just feet away.

  And then there was Mike. Standing, she leaned in to turn the shower on, the cold jets spraying her bare breasts as she pulled the shower doors back. What the hell? Looking up, she understood why.

  Six different jets in the tiled shower, all pointed toward the center.

  Steam drifted over the door as she slid it back, waiting for the water to calibrate, and a glance in the mirror showed her that her concerns about her appearance were valid. Dark circles under her eyes made her look “rode hard and put back wet”, but it wasn’t exhaustion—those circles were traced with worry and with the feeling of being overwhelmed and well fucked. As her ass throbbed with the memory of having Jeremy stroke her from the inside, riding her with a gentle, persistent touch that made her break boundaries left, right and upside down, she felt her heart stop in her throat.

  Would Mike have made love to her like that? She was absolutely exhausted and yet…a part of her remained unsatisfied. This shower should have been for two (three?), a chance to soak in the heat and to enjoy the sudsy, wet warmth of washing with Jeremy (and Mike?). Stepping into the shower, the hot needles of water made her tip her head back and let her long hair graze against her ass, the hair soon soaked, hands making quick work of shampooing and soaping up, then rinsing.

  Imagining Jeremy’s hands on hers, a hot, steamy shower, more than enough room in here for…three.

  Her fantasy. Her choice.

  A sick dread settled in the space between her navel and her hipbones, a nauseating churning as she played through the last ten minutes in her mind. Mike. This was Mike’s apartment. Jeremy had brought her here, knowing it was Mike’s, yet he’d said nothing. Not one word.

  Was this a set-up? Had the men colluded to make this happen? No. Impossible. Jeremy would never…

  How well do you really know Jeremy?

  Part of her felt so violated. Invaded. Exposed. Of all the times for Mike to re-enter her life, did it have to be right now, literally minutes after she’d chosen to expose herself to a man on a new level, to be more intimate and nuanced?

  Bzzzz.

  Of all the times for her mom to text. Lydia clambered out of the shower and opened her phone, dripping onto the floor and not caring.

  Mom’s rallying. Come back.

  Joy bloomed inside Lydia’s chest, replacing the questioning and second-guessing about Jeremy. She texted back:

  THANK GOD! We’ll be there soon.

  The phone rang seconds after Lydia hit “Send,” startling her. Quick reflexes saved it from taking a swim in the toilet.

  “Lydia?”

  “Mom, that is awesome! What’s going on? Is Grandma awake?”

  “No, but the doctors say she’s far more stable, and now they can do the procedure they weren’t sure about.”

  A huge sigh of relief. “Oh, Mom.” Choking up, Lydia couldn’t complete the sentence.

  “Is that water I hear? Where are you? It’s not raining. Meribeth and I just got back and the skies are clear,” Sandy said, her voice curious.

  “I’m just taking a shower,” she blurted before she realized the implications of that.

  “A shower?”

  “Jeremy has a friend with an apartment nearby, and…uh…” Caught! Lydia had a million words she wanted to say in her defense, but settled on keeping her mouth shut before it got her into any more trouble.

  Sandy made a sound that was half laugh, half disbelief.

  “Mom, I…I’m sorry,” was all Lydia could manage.

  “Oh, honey, I understand.” If the next words out of her mouth were “young love,” Lydia would eat the bar of soap staring at her.

  Sandy continued. “Death makes people reach for whatever makes them feel most alive.”

  “Yes!” Relief washed over her. Being caught by Mike was bad enough. Being found out by her mom…

  “If your father were here we’d be fucking like bunnies right now.”

  “No!” Horror swept over her, the word a scream that poured out of her unexpectedly. “I did not need to hear that! Mooooom!”

  Hysterical laughter was her response.

  “It makes you feel alive. You know, we conceived you after my Uncle Howard died—”

  “Ew! Don’t need to hear
this! Grandma’s not dying!”

  “There was this dark coat room at the funeral home—”

  “Stick to texting from now on, Mom, and I love you.”

  Click.

  Bang bang bang.

  “You okay?” both men shouted in unison.

  “You screamed,” Mike added.

  Lydia held her face in her hands, wet hair looping over her neck, trying to brain-bleach images of Mom and Dad going at it like…

  Her and Jeremy. Or her and Mike.

  Or her and Jeremy and Mike…

  “Fine! I’m fine!” she screeched back, climbing back into the shower. A three-minute quickie rinse and she was back out, towel drying her hair, realizing she had no clothes.

  “Can someone get my clothes?”

  Mumbles and a few sighs, then shuffling sounds. Jeremy opened the door and stepped in, closing it behind him.

  “You okay?” Concern creased his brow, and he looked back behind him at the closed door, nervous and a bit shaken.

  “Never let me go into the coat room at a funeral home.”

  “A funeral home?” Jeremy could feel his voice go up half an octave. “Oh, God, did Madge just die?” Here he was worried about what Mike would think and—deep in the bowels of his worthless heart—that Lydia was about to ditch him and go off into the sunset with perfect Mike, and in the midst of everything her grandmother had just kicked the bucket.

  Shallow Jeremy. Nothing new to see here.

  “She what?” Horror covered Lydia’s face as she dropped her panties, leg in midair over the elastic hole.

  “You said funeral home…”

  Lydia slapped a hand over her heart, her breast red with flushing. “That was a joke!” Smack. Her open palm hit his chest hard, enough to leave a red mark.

  “Why would you joke about funerals at a time like this?”

  “Blame my mother.”

  “Why would Sandy joke about funerals at a time like—”

  Smack. She batted him on the shoulder again, and he yelped, reaching up to touch the spot. It didn’t hurt, but it surprised the hell out of him.