by Jewel E. Ann
He leaned forward in the white, wingback chair by the window in their bedroom, resting his arms on his knees. His eyes squinted against the light; he’d sat there for two hours waiting for her to come home.
“I figured you wouldn’t come up if you saw the light on.”
She unzipped the side of her black dress while walking into the closet. “Don’t be ridiculous. You make it sound like I’m avoiding you.”
Gus rubbed the long day and two agonizing weeks out of his eyes. “Are you?”
She came out of the closet in a black nightie, rolled her eyes at him, then rounded the corner into the bathroom. “And I thought I had a lot to drink tonight. You’re paranoid, August.”
He stood, cocking his stiff neck to one side and then the other. Sabrina’s designer chair was not made for comfort. “You’ve been gone for five days and when you get home the first thing you do is turn around and leave again to be with your friends.” Gus leaned against the bathroom door frame, arms crossed over his bare chest, shorts low on his hips.
“And your point?” She tugged on her hair tie sending long blond waves spilling over her shoulders and down her back.
Abe was right—Gus had a wife that most men would kill to have as theirs.
“I remember a time when being apart for a mere eight hours had us ripping off each other’s clothes and fucking like rabbits on the stairs or kitchen counter because we couldn’t even make it to the bedroom.”
“Sex. It’s always about sex,” Sabrina mumbled over her toothbrush and a mouthful of foam.
He moved behind her. When she bent over to spit, he slid his hands up her sides, pressing his erection against her ass.
“Gus …” she only called him that when they had sex, and she said it like a moan with a name.
“I miss my wife,” he whispered in her ear as she set her toothbrush aside before pressing her hands flat to the granite.
“It’s … late …” Her words were breathy as his hands cupped her breasts.
“Tell me you don’t want this.” He sucked and bit at her earlobe while rocking his pelvis into her.
“Gus …” Her eyes drifted shut.
He snaked his right hand up her silk nightie and down into the front of her lace panties. “If you’re not wet for me, then I’ll stop.”
“I’m not … fuck … Gus …” Sabrina dropped her chin and moaned again as two of his fingers slid across her clit.
“Feels like I’m not stopping.” He buried his nose into her hair then bit the back of her neck at the same time he thrust his fingers into her.
“I …” She panted as he fingered her. “I’m … tired.”
Gus chuckled against her skin. She wasn’t too tired to move her hips in rhythm to him fucking her with his fingers. His dick felt like it could explode, a lethal combination of needing a release and thoughts of Parker and the way she tasted.
“Please …”
When he removed his fingers and spun her around, he couldn’t tell if her plea was to keep going or stop. Her tense face and drunken eyes conveyed both pain and desire. The proof of her arousal on his fingers prevented him from stopping to ask questions.
He shoved down his shorts and briefs and kicked them to the side as he curled his fingers around her panties, sliding them down her legs. Their eyes met for a brief moment when he lifted her up. Before he had time to analyze the stranger looking back at him, he guided her legs around his waist and slid his cock inside of her.
They locked mouths, desperate and angry. She tasted like caramel and oak of her favorite chardonnay, and a hint of perfume lingered on her skin. He walked them to the bed where he pinned her beneath him. Gus’s body made love to his wife while his mind fucked the girl next door.
*
“Good morning.” Gus kissed his wife on the forehead as he set a tray of food by the bed. The previous night wasn’t about sex. Sex was just the only way he knew how to get her out of her obsessive mind long enough to listen to him.
Sabrina squinted open her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Five-thirty.”
“I’m going to be late.” She sat up, brushing her hair out of her face.
“You have fifteen minutes before your alarm will go off. I’m claiming these fifteen minutes with you.”
She sighed and a sad smile accompanied her sleepy eyes. “August, what’s going on?”
He handed her a cup of coffee. “I feel like I’m competing with your career and I’m failing.”
“Aug—”
“No. Let me finish.”
She nodded, baring a flash of vulnerability as she brought the mug to her mouth, steam swirling above it.
“I won’t ask you to take a vacation until you’re ready. I won’t ask you to be home for dinner every night. But I need something from you even if it’s only fifteen minutes at the ass crack of dawn. And I need these fifteen minutes to feel like fifteen days—unhurried and uninterrupted. I want to feel like your husband, not your job.”
He hated the conflict in her eyes.
“I think I gave you a lot longer than fifteen minutes last night.” She playfully cocked an eyebrow, but Gus felt it was more like a distraction from the things he’d said than an actual compliment to what they shared the previous night.
Taking her coffee, he took a sip then set it back on the tray. “The sex was good.” His hand slid up her thigh but stopped before reaching the top.
She tensed under his touch and rested her hand on his as if to make sure it wasn’t going any farther. “The sex was good.”
Gus nodded. “But the sex is always good.” He wasn’t an idiot. Gus knew how to please his wife, and he knew when her orgasms started and when they ended. He also knew that she was silently fighting him the previous night. She was turned on and it pissed her off. Why? He didn’t know.
“You need your ego stroked this morning, August?”
He returned a half smile. Desperate to connect with the playful woman he married five years earlier. “I’ll never say no to you stroking me.”
The alarm clock on her phone chimed. “Your fifteen minutes is up.” She threw off the covers and stood.
He grabbed her wrist as she began to walk off. She turned, confusion etched on her face.
“Are you happy?”
She scoffed. “Are you dying, August? Why the sudden sentimentality? The incessant I love you’s. The neediness?”
“Incessant I love you’s? Sorry, I’ll tone that down.” He released her wrist, grabbed the tray of uneaten food, and took it back to the kitchen.
Thirty minutes later, her heels clicked along the tile as she came into the kitchen. “Tell Parker if you see her that I’ll have Brock send her a shopping list before noon. In the meantime, ask her to wash our bedsheets.”
“She washed them yesterday morning per your request.” Gus focused on his phone screen because he didn’t even want to look at his wife by that point.
Sabrina flung her brown Gucci handbag over her shoulder. “Yes, but now they’re dirty from all the … sweat and whatnot from last night.”
“Wow … when did we start changing the sheets every time we had sex and whatnot?”
“Stop being so argumentative. Just pass along the message. And don’t wait up, I’m taking a client to dinner tonight. Bye, baby.” She blew Rags a kiss as she walked out the door.
*
“Hey, demon dog!”
Gus chuckled at Parker’s greeting for Rags. Apparently, she hadn’t forgiven him for the previous day’s incidents.
“Oh …” She stopped inside the door. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”
Gus grabbed an apple from the wire basket on the counter and tossed it into the lunch sack by his Cubs hat. “As in gone to work or kicked to the curb?”
Parker frowned. “Work. How could you get kicked to the curb when I haven’t said anything?”
“Good point. So no, I haven’t gone to work yet. I have a meeting with a builder at nine.”
“
I see.” She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “That’s not for an hour and a half. Want me to make you some breakfast?”
“Already ate … before six this morning.”
“Early riser.” Parker scooped out a cupful of food for Rags and filled his bowl with fresh water. “I’ve always envied morning people. I get up early, but it’s never easy.” She opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of orange juice, which seemed fair since she was the one who freshly squeezed it for Sabrina the previous afternoon, yet Sabrina didn’t drink a drop.
“Actually, I’m not really a morning person, but someone told me to ‘fight for my wife,’ so I made her breakfast in bed this morning.”
“That was nice.” Parker took a sip.
Gus returned a tight-lipped smile. “Yes, it really was. I also fucked my wife long and hard last night and so she’s requested you change the sweat-stained, dirty sheets again.”
Crash!
The glass shattered on the tile, splattering orange juice everywhere. Parker stood idle for a few seconds as if it hadn’t yet registered that it was she who dropped it.
“Rags, get back.” Gus ushered him into the mudroom and blocked the door so he couldn’t get into the kitchen.
“Shit!” Parker jumped into action like her delayed brain finally caught up to what she had done. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get this cleaned up. You go to work.”
“It’s fine.” He grabbed a new roll of paper towels, a hand broom, and a dustpan.
She used the towels to absorb the juice as he swept the glass into a pile.
“What happened?” Gus asked.
“What does it look like? I dropped the glass of juice.” She wouldn’t look at him.
“No shit, Sherlock. I mean, why did you turn as white as that roll of paper towels two seconds before the glass slipped from your grip?”
“Wow! Really?” Still refusing to give him so much as a glance, she threw away the dirty towels and grabbed the mop from the mudroom while he finished sweeping up the glass.
“You’re upset?” Gus dumped the glass into the trash and removed the bag from the bin, tying it at the top.
“No. Yes … I don’t know.” Parker’s brow furrowed as she focused on cleaning the sticky floor with hot water and the mop.
“You’re jealous.” He tried not to grin like it pleased him, but he failed.
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
“You told me to ‘show’ my wife how much I still loved her. So I—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it! Jeez, I don’t need the details. I’m not even going to be here that much longer. As soon as Sabrina gives me more than two seconds of her time, I’m going to quit.”
“You moving too?”
“What? No. Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re quitting a good paying job for what? To get away from me? Yet your front door will still be a hundred yards from mine. My wife’s dog will still find a way to get your attention, and I will still have to come rescue him—or you—depending on how you look at it.”
Parker frowned, finally giving Gus a quick glance. Then she rinsed the mop out in the mudroom sink. “So you’re saying the only way I can avoid you is to move?”
Gus peeked around the corner at her. “Yes.”
“You move. Why should I have to move? My house has been here longer than yours.”
He loved her sassy rationale and the way her spine straightened with confidence that wasn’t entirely believable.
“You’ve lived there a couple of weeks.” He chuckled.
She turned toward him but her furrowed brow did nothing to hide the glimmer in her eyes. As much as she wanted to be pissed off at him, her body wouldn’t cooperate. “The house has been in my family for generations. My grandparents lived there, and so did their parents.”
“I paid over three hundred thousand for my land alone.”
Her head jerked back. “Are you insane?”
“I did it for love. To ‘show’ my wife how much I loved her.”
Parker shoved him out of her way—not a brush by but an actual shove—even though he wasn’t blocking her. “I pity the poor man who doesn’t have three hundred thousand dollars to express his love to a woman.” She laughed. “Or maybe I pity the woman whose man thinks three hundred thousand dollars can buy her love. I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you on that.”
“Will you? That would be great.”
Sarcasm seemed to be the theme that morning.
“And while you’re at it, would you mind telling me why you’re so pissed off?”
“I’m not pissed off.” Parker leaned against the counter, messing with her phone.
“You’re pissed that I had sex with my wife.”
She grunted. “Yeah, sure, that’s it. I’m pissed that a guy that I’ve known for two weeks had sex with his wife. Makes total sense. How did you guess?”
“Because I’m pissed off too.”
The muscles in her jaw tensed as she swallowed hard. “I was being sarcastic,” she whispered without looking up.
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“I don’t care.”
Gus stepped closer. “Ask me why.”
“I don’t care.”
Another step.
“I made love to my wife last night while thinking about my neighbor.”
“Jesus, Gus …” Parker whispered, looking up slowly while shaking her head.
“The day before we met I would have said no fucking way was I that guy. A cheater? No. Fucking. Way. Then you happened and in an instant, I became a hypocrite and a cheater.”
Parker returned a pleading look, staring at him like her whole world was about to crumble to the ground. “My sister.”
He narrowed his eyes. For a second he questioned whether he heard her right.
Her glazed-over gaze fell short of his, focusing on his shoulder or maybe something over it. “My boyfriend cheated on me with my sister.”
No way did he see that coming.
“I hated her more than him. We are family—blood, yet we haven’t spoken in two years, and I think I was prepared to never speak to her again. Until…” she shifted her eyes to meet his “…you said my name.” She laughed, and it sounded like the most painful laugh he had ever heard.
“My. Name. How stupid is that? Honestly, I’ve never really liked it. But when you say it … I feel it in places I sure as hell shouldn’t be feeling anything from a married man. I don’t want to feel you. I don’t want you in my head. I don’t want to check myself in the mirror a hundred times before I walk over here in the morning. I don’t want to envy your wife. And I don’t want to know that you fucked her last night while thinking of me.”
“Parker—”
She took a step to the side as he stepped toward her. “I’m coveting thy neighbor’s husband! That’s a sin, Gus. Like … a major one … I think. I’ve blamed the ruination of my life on cheating, but here I am having horrifically inappropriate thoughts about my neighbor. There’s no way around it. I don’t know how to stop it. My mind doesn’t have an off button. Seriously … I’m going to Hell!”
“Parker—”
“STOP SAYING MY NAME!”
Swallowing his tongue, he retreated a few steps, giving the rabid neighbor her space.
Her hand flew to her mouth, eyes wide. Rags dashed to her side, tail wagging. The nameless girl broke into laughter—complete hysteria. Not a good sign. “I … I’m sorry.” She fought for a breath, wiping tears from her eyes. “I haven’t had sex in … a long time. I just replaced the batteries in my vibrator before we met, and they already need to be replaced again. My friends tell me to set up an online dating profile, but I tell them that’s just for people looking to hook up. But let’s be honest, if my vibrator batteries are only lasting two weeks, it might be time for me to find a quick hookup before I end up with some silicone rash in my girl parts.”
Winded breaths filled the air as they stared at each other. It took a few minutes for Gus to
realize she’d stopped talking.
“August Westman … you kissed the life out of me yesterday and then flaunted your sexual conquests in front of me this morning. I just finished telling you a bunch of random stuff that ended with the words ‘silicone rash’ and ‘girl parts.’ Say. Something.”
“I fear this erection I have could last longer than four hours. So if your batteries are dead, then I could probably—”
“Not funny, Gus. I’m serious. The day we met we didn’t do anything. How could you feel like a cheater the moment we met?” Parker shook her head.
“But I did do something. The moment you jumped behind the door and smiled in spite of your embarrassment, I broke my wedding vows. Like when I was nine and my mom took me to the eye doctor, and he held these lenses up to my eyes. I had no clue what I’d been missing, but it was total bliss. A whole new world. I didn’t want to blink because I was afraid the clarity would vanish. I felt this euphoria from the tip of my nose to the end of my toes.
“When you smiled, I didn’t want to blink because I knew the second I did, you’d still be there, and I’d still be in a fucking miserable marriage with another woman. I’m pissed off for the same reason you are.”
Giving in or maybe feeding her curiosity, she glanced up. “Well, I just said I wasn’t, but enlighten me, Mr. Westman.”
“The woman I should desire feels like a stranger and the woman I do desire is a stranger. I want to do the right thing, but after last night, I don’t even know what that is. And you … you’re so damn scared that you’re becoming everything you thought you hated. Tortured by the emotions you can’t control. Traumatized by your past. And so fucking afraid of the future because happiness has eluded you and now you’re not sure you even deserve to be truly happy.”
“I deserve to be happy. I am happy.” Parker tipped her chin up.
A lopsided grin stole his lips. “You’re happiness personified, like a warm bag of peanuts at the ballpark. I see it and it’s so damn distracting, but I don’t buy that you see it yourself.” He pulled on his Cubs hat and grabbed his brown bag. “Let me be the bad guy with the fucked-up marriage. I won’t drag you into it anymore, but I also won’t ask you to keep quiet if your conscience is killing you. Good day, Ms. Cruse.”