The house was quiet. She covered her exposed breasts with her arms as she looked out the kitchen windows over the driveway. The sun was just starting to rise. She just made out his tall and slender figure headed down the street toward their friends’ home with his tackle box and fishing rods in hand.
He left to go deep-sea fishing and didn’t even bother to tell her good-bye. How much more can I take? She turned and let her body slide down to the polished hardwood floor as tears racked her body and she could do nothing but wrap her arms around her knees and rock to make herself feel a little better.
* * *
“Shit!” Renee Clinton swore as the gray acrid smoke rose from the frying pan with fury. She hurried to turn off the lit eye of the Viking stove before shifting the pan to one of the remaining five burners.
“Damn, damn, damn it all to hell.”
Renee could only shake her head in shame at the blackness of the bacon she’d been frying. It was beyond crispy.
“Is something on fire, Ma?”
Renee looked over her shoulder as her fifteen-year-old daughter, Kieran, walked into the kitchen on dragging feet in her oversized fuzzy pajamas. “Just breakfast.”
“You were cooking?” she asked in disbelief as she sat leaned her hip against the island in the center of the kitchen.
“I wanted to fix your father breakfast before he left to go fishing.” Renee slid the halfway-decent-looking slices of bacon onto a clear glass plate.
“You never cook.” Kieran moved across the kitchen to the pantry.
“I know how to cook,” Renee protested as she ran a hand through her deeply wavy natural. “It’s remembering that I have food on the stove that I have a problem with.”
Kieran stepped out of the pantry digging into a box of cereal before throwing a handful of some sugary-sweet cereal she loved into her mouth. She moved over to stand beside her mother and looked down at the bacon with a frown. “Good thing Daddy loves you,” she joked before turning to walk out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, good thing,” Renee said hesitantly as she cracked eggs into a large red Le Creuset ceramic bowl and whisked them with a little extra ferocity.
She poured the eggs into a stainless steel pan and left them so that they would set before she scrambled them. She moved back to the end of the island where her briefcase was opened and instantly became absorbed into the facts and figures of the report she’d brought home to review.
At forty-three, Renee was the vice president of marketing for the CancerCure Foundation, one of the largest nonprofits serving cancer research and awareness in the country. It was her job and her passion to develop partnerships with major corporations for invaluable donations and increasing the national visibility of the foundation. She took her work very seriously—not just for the six-figure income she received, but because it intrigued and challenged her every day. It was very easy for her to get deeply absorbed in her work.
Renee picked up an oversized cup of gourmet coffee with one hand and the open report with the other. Her lips moved as she read. Her face showed her shifting feelings: interest, surprise, discontent. She leaned her hip against the island as she took a deep and satisfying sip of her drink.
“What the hell is burning?”
The words on the report disappeared as Renee closed her eyes and frowned as she thought, “Damn,” at the sound of her husband, Jackson’s, voice from behind her.
She dropped the report and snatched the burning pan from the stove in one continuous motion. “This just isn’t my morning, Jackson,” she told him, looking over her shoulder at her tall, solid husband of the last eighteen years.
His handsome square face shaped into a frown as he took in the papers and files on the island. There was no mistaking the immediate look of disapproval.
Renee hated the guilt she felt at that one look that spoke volumes about their marriage. “I thought I would cook—”
“And work?” he asked, moving past her to fill the thermos he held with coffee.
Renee swallowed her irritation. She looked down at the burnt bacon on the plate and the brown eggs in the pan and scraped them both into the garbage disposal. “I’m trying, Jackson,” she stressed, her eyes angry and hurt.
He just snorted in derision.
Renee felt tension across her shoulders. She jumped a little as he moved close to her to press a cool kiss to her cheek. She closed her eyes, absorbing his scent as she raised a hand to stroke his bearded cheek. He felt familiar and strange all at once. It had been so long since they showed each other simple affection.
She tilted her head back to look up into those eyes that had intrigued her from the first time she saw him on the campus of Rutgers University. “I love you, Jackson,” Renee whispered, hating the urgency in her voice as her eyes searched his.
For what seemed forever, his eyes searched hers as well. “We need to talk. We have to talk,” he said, his voice husky and barely above a whisper.
A soft press of his lips down upon hers silenced any of her words or questions.
Moments later, he was gone and Renee felt chilled to the bone.
* * *
“You didn’t have to get up so early with me, baby.”
Aria Livewell shrugged as she followed her broad-shouldered husband, Kingston, down the stairs of their three-thousand-square-foot home in the family-oriented subdivision of Richmond Hills. A home meant to be filled with children. “It’s no problem. You know me and the girls are hanging out today and I wanted to get some housework done before they picked me up.”
Kingston sat his fishing equipment by the wooden double doors. “Think you four will be back on time? You know we’re supposed to meet at the Clintons’ tonight to fry up all the fish we’ll catch today.”
“Just three, actually. Jessa said she had something else to do today.” Aria made a playful face and waved her hand dismissively.
Kingston put his broad hands beneath her short cotton robe and pulled his beautiful mocha-skinned wife close to him. “If we whup our friends in bid whist tonight, I have one helluva surprise for you.”
Kingston was so competitive.
She tilted her head up to lightly lick his dimpled chin as she pushed her hand into the back pocket of his vintage jeans to warmly grasp his firm, fleshy buttocks. “Can I get a hint?” she asked huskily with a teasing smile, the beat of her heart already quickening with anticipation.
“Damn, I love you,” he said roughly, his eyes smoldering as he slid one hand up to her nape.
Aria moaned softly in pleasure at the first heated feel of her husband’s lips. As she gasped slightly, he slid his tongue inside her mouth with well-practiced ease. She shivered. Her clit swelled to life. Her nipples hardened in a rush.
“Do we have time?” she asked in a heated whisper, barely hearing herself over her own furious heartbeat as Kingston undid her robe and planted moist and tantalizing kisses along her collarbone.
“We’ll make time” breezed across her flesh.
As her robe slipped open and his familiar hands caressed her silky skin, Aria enjoyed their passion and wondered if the time would come when she didn’t cherish and yearn for her husband’s touch. His dick. His kisses. His love.
With his mouth, Kingston made a path to the deep valley of her breasts, bending his knees to take one swollen and taut dark nipple into his mouth. He sucked it deeply and then circled it with the tip of his clever tongue.
“Yes,” Aria whimpered, flinging her head back.
Kingston turned them and pressed Aria’s back to the towering front doors as he quickly undid his belt and zipper. His hands shook as he placed them on her plush hips and lifted her with ease until her pulsing and moist pussy lips lightly kissed the thick tip of his dick. “Why is your pussy so good?” he whispered against the pounding pulse of her throat.
Aria didn’t answer, she just smiled wickedly—and a bit cockily—as she caused the swollen lips of her vagina to lightly kiss the smooth round head of his dick . . . twice
.
Kingston dropped Aria down onto his erection, her pussy tightly surrounding and gripping him like a vise. “Damn,” he swore, his buttocks tensing as he froze. He didn’t want to cum. Not yet.
Aria pressed the small of her back to the door and began to work her hips in small circles, anxious to not just have his dick pressed against her walls but to feel his delicious strokes.
Kingston’s jaw clenched. “Don’t make me nut, baby.” His voice was strained.
Aria raised her hands to tease her nipples with her slender fingers as she enjoyed the tight in-and-out motion of his penis when Kingston began to work his hips. She felt wild and free, uninhibited and sexy. “Umph. I’m gone cum, baby. Please make me cum,” she whispered with fevered urgency as each of his deep thrusts caused her pussy juices to smack and echo in the foyer like applause.
Kingston’s chest and loins exploded with heat as his primal need to feel as much of Aria’s pussy as he could. He pushed deeper up inside her, drawing quick and uneven breaths as his heart thundered. His buttocks clenched and then relaxed as he touched every bit of her ridged walls with his solid inches. “Damn, Aria,” he swore, planting adoring kisses along her collarbone as his dick filled her several times with warm shots of cum.
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