Jeremy grimaced and took another swing.
Miraculously, the ball sailed between the dense trees and back onto the course.
Craig let out a low whistle of appreciation.
Jeremy dug himself out of the ravine and dusted off his knees, which had somehow gotten dirty in his undignified trip down into the gulch.
They observed the ball, and took a little breather. At White Stone there was not usually a gang of people behind you. Tee times were well-spaced in a complex formula accounting for people’s handicaps.
It was that kind of place.
They were on the twelfth hole, and Jeremy was already pretty tired of the game. This happened every time he played golf. He didn't want to be a dick, though, and call it quits at the prestigious White Stone, which he would likely never get to golf at again. He squinted into the distance and trudged toward his ball.
“Man,” Craig said, swinging the club out from behind his shoulders in a way that looked a little like it came from a mafia movie. “It's hot as hell. I'm sort of sick of this game. Wanna go grab some beers at the club?”
It was music to Jeremy's ears.
The club was much more impressive than the course, which was nice, but hadn't been especially amazing, given the reputation of the place. Jeremy tried not to gawk at the opulence as they cut through the main building to a large room with twenty-foot ceilings and rich wood paneling from floor to ceiling. A patio outside was decorated with more modern decor, and well-placed fans that seemed to be blowing air-conditioned breezes, as well as some large, living shade canopies, salvaged the area from the blistering heat.
Craig, as Jeremy had expected, took care of ordering the beers after pausing for only a brief moment to see if his choice was okay with Jeremy.
It was the kind of club with no prices on the menu, so Jeremy said a little prayer and hoped he wouldn't be in too deep of shit with Leigh, who may have been out shopping right now but would never do anything impractical with money. Like possibly order a $50 beer.
The beers came, and they went down easy. Craig ordered nachos, which came out with a helping of the toppings placed individually on each nacho.
Jesus help him.
But after a few beers and some idle chit-chat, Jeremy felt the warm glow of booze and the laziness of summer taking over his worries. He relaxed.
Craig was a surprising guy. Surprising in the sense that he didn't go through the usual litany of questions about what Jeremy did for a living, and when Jeremy broached the subject with him (out of habit), he side-stepped it to talk about whether there was any way to kite-surf closer than the sound. They ended up talking about places they'd been, things they did, an interesting book Craig had read, because apparently the guy, in addition to being muscled, tattooed, and a financial planner, was also an avid reader of fiction.
“So man, did I tell you how I thought I knew your wife from somewhere?” Craig said, out of the blue, during a pause in the conversation while they were looking through some shrubs out to the golf course.
Jeremy was feeling pretty buzzed. The slow buzz of the cicadas and wet heat had thickened his mind as much as the air. It took a few moments for the sentence to make its way through his brain.
“Really?” he said. He took a sip of his beer. Leigh was going to be pretty displeased that he had had so much to drink, no matter how much it cost him or didn't.
Oh well.
“You know her?” he said, his thoughts thick.
Craig laughed at him. He shook his head. Jeremy watched Craig’s fingers as he deftly maneuvered the matchbook he was playing with with his fingers. Jesus. Hadn’t the man had just as much to drink as he had?
“No, I said, ‘remember that I told you I thought I recognized her from somewhere?’’”
“Oh,” Jeremy said. He had his mouth open to say something else but decided not to. He was slightly confused at this point.
Craig slapped him on the back. “So, I figured it out. Where I know her from.”
Jeremy nodded. “Oh,” he said.
The conversation suddenly had a strange feel to it. There was something odd in Craig’s tone.
Suddenly, his mood shifted. He was prone to wild swings when he drank – euphoria one moment, half-despair the next, and for not much reason at all. He felt like clouds had just come in on them, and he even looked skyward to see them.
The sky was cloudless and blue.
“The thing is...” Craig said. He squinted at the sun. “I, um, I don’t know if you know about it or not, so I, um... didn’t want to say anything.”
Jeremy felt like someone had just flushed his head. He was instantly sober.
What would he not know about, with his own wife?
“Oh, I know about everything... with Leigh,” he said, though he felt less certain than he sounded. “We tell each other everything.”
What the fuck was this guy talking about?
Had to be something from her past.
But Leigh’s past was fairly uneventful.
Jeremy scanned the tattoos on Craig’s arm.
There was that time, when they were really broke and paying on both of their massive student loans, that she had taken a lot of odd jobs. She had worked at Hooters for two days, but found it too disgusting to continue. She had worked at a night club as a cocktail waitress, and a handful of restaurants. Maybe that was it?
“Okay,” Craig said. “So, you know, then, that she’s on the cover of about half the erotica books on Amazon, right?” He paused, while his words made a very slow circle through Jeremy's brain.
When Jeremy just sat there staring at him, his mouth slightly open, Craig added: “And I happen to read a lot of erotica. So… that’s where I saw her.”
Jeremy had an experience that he had never had before in his life: his brain actually just completely stopped working. He gave a strange little shake of his head, and made a face, because his brain had long enough to figure out that he had no fucking idea what this man was talking about.
But after that? It just stopped working.
Craig's smile turned down a little and he put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder. “Dude,” he said. “I hope I haven't let the cat out of the bag or something.”
He sounded, though, like he didn't really care if he had let a cat out of a bag.
“You, what?” Jeremy mumbled.
“I'm sure it's her,” Craig said. “Shit. If this is something you didn't know about, man, I...”
He slipped his phone out of his pocket. “Here man,” he said, leaning over. “It's your wife, you'd know better than I do if it’s really her.”
And then, quite suddenly, Jeremy was looking at a photograph of a woman who indeed appeared to be his wife.
Not at first glance.
This woman was dark-haired like Leigh, and had Leigh's color of eyes. But she was wearing a strapless black dress, and showing a lot of delicious leg.
“This?” Jeremy said, and his voice was a mixture of relief and hope.
He was about to say, “This isn't my wife,” but the longer he looked at the picture, the more he realized:
It was.
The shape of the woman's legs, and the striking cut of her large, sensual mouth were the first things that clued him in: Leigh was like no other woman in these respects.
She was wearing a lot of make-up, and a much sexier dress than she usually did, but it was her.
Jeremy closed his mouth with a snap. His heart was starting to beat wildly with a feeling he couldn't identify. Adrenaline, but why? He felt like he had caught Leigh in the act of something very naughty, and he felt rage that it was being held in the hand of a man he barely knew.
And he felt.. a little excited.
After all, Leigh looked hot.
He leaned toward the screen, and then snatched it out of Craig's hand without thinking, to get very close to the woman's face. It couldn't be her.
But it was.
Then he read the title of the book:
Julia
's Big Boss.
A very erotic sensation traveled through him.
“What is this?” he said, turning the phone toward Craig. His mind was swimming, trying to reconcile the picture of his wife with the book's title. “What kind of book is this?”
Craig leaned closer to him. “Oh that,” he said. “That's hotwife erotica.”
The word “hotwife” lodged in Jeremy’s consciousness. What the hell did that mean?
“But she's not just on that one,” Craig continued, cheerfully. “She's on all kinds of books. Billie likes to read these motorcycle club things...” He took the phone from Jeremy’s hand. Jeremy was still staring at it, his mouth open, and he continued looking at his empty hand with the same expression on his face as Craig swept his fingers over the screen.
“See?” Craig said, holding the phone out so Jeremy could see the screen. “Look at this.”
And there she was again. This time, there was no doubt that it was Leigh, wearing a skin-tight white shirt and a pair of cutoffs (looking quite a bit like Billie had, at the previous weeks' barbecue.) But the kicker? A very burly man with a huge beard had his big, muscled arms around her, one large hand on her bare midriff, fingers pointed down to the hem of her jeans.
The scene looked for all the world like it had gone on from there – burly-man sliding his hand down and into her jeans, further, further, into those little cutoffs.
Jeremy's eyes went wide and his heart raced.
He found he couldn't stop the train of his imagination: he envisioned even more to the scene. The man's other hand slid up to cup Leigh's breast. Leigh opened her mouth and moaned, leaning forward so that her wild hair could stick to her sweaty face. She could feel his big, hard cock against her lower back...
Suddenly Jeremy remembered where he was. He blinked and tried to focus on the book.
The title was Tie Me Up: The Rye MC Series.
He stared at his wife. The very proper, very conservative dresser that Leigh was now looked like a trashy mens magazine model.
His cock, peculiarly enough, twitched with excitement.
He looked at Craig, who was watching him with interest. Craig raised his eyebrows. “Dude,” he said. “Tell me you at least knew she was a model?”
A bell went off in Jeremy's mind, and he was flooded with a very temporary sense of relief. She was a model. He remembered that. It had been another quick job, one to help pay the bills, one which hadn't, to his recollection, lasted very long.
And just because she had modeled for these photographs, did not mean that she, Leigh, had anything to do with the erotic content of big bosses, or being tied up by burly men.
Jeremy’s insides twisted again.
“She did some modeling,” he said uncertainly. “I just... I didn't realize it was...”
Erotic?
His wife.
Craig slipped the phone from Jeremy's hand and leaned back in his chair. He shrugged. “She looks fucking great. I have to tell you, I couldn't stop thinking about it because that was one of my favorite books. I pictured the woman in the story being just like the picture.”
Jeremy stared at him.
“So you might say,” Craig mused, “I was inadvertently jerking off to your wife.”
Jeremy felt a wild sensation, that same inexplicably erotic feeling, travel through him again.
Craig held up his beer. It took Jeremy a moment to realize he was toasting him.
But Craig being Craig, he made a joke of it by smiling.
“Just joking, man.”
His smile, though, said maybe he wasn’t.
*
It was difficult to keep his cool while Billie and Craig said their goodbyes. It was a really drawn-out affair, in which they had a glass of wine, and Billie held up the clothes she had purchased. Then she made Leigh show the dress that she (Billie) had pressured her into buying.
Leigh stopped short of a fashion show (probably because the dress was shorter than anything she owned, and bright red, and Leigh didn't particularly care for being the center of attention.) then it was another fifteen minutes before they sort of trickled out of the door and away.
Jeremy was so full of nervous, anxious excitement that he could barely think straight. His skin crawled and his torso felt like a pit of snakes.
He shut the door behind his guests and held on to the knob. Part of him felt like flying off the handle. He had an urge to turn to Leigh and demand to know what the hell was going on, why she was apparently the porn queen of Amazon, and how this had happened.
And deep inside of himself, there was also a part of him that wanted an interaction like that to end kind of dirtily, sexually. Part of his mind wandered off to brief fantasies of Leigh's face changing, her eyes narrowing, her mouth getting even sultrier. A fantasy in which she would say: “Yeah, so what? Can I make it up to you?” and then get on her knees to do just that.
But when he saw his actual wife, brushing a lock of loose hair from her face again, her ponytail carefully crafted in an old-fashioned, bobbing curl at the end, an actual ribbon tied up in her hair – his heart softened.
This was Leigh.
There had to be a reasonable explanation for all of this.
“What's up with you?” she said, leaning on the counter on her elbows. Then her face changed and she squinted a little. “Did you have too much to drink with Craig?”
Her tone wasn't especially accusatory. But Jeremy was on edge.
“Can't a man have a beer with a friend? I didn't drive, either,” he snapped.
Leigh stood up straight. “I was just asking because you seem really lost in thought,” she said bitterly. “God.”
She turned and got herself a glass from the cupboard behind her and poured herself some water.
“I'm sorry,” Jeremy said. He realized this was an excellent segue into what he wanted to say anyway. “I'm sorry. I was... I was distracted.”
Leigh turned back to him and set the water down, her eyes caring. Her face was attentive. She was listening.
“It's just... uh, Craig told me... he showed me something really, uh...” he sought an appropriate word. “Sort of disturbing,” he said.
Leigh's face changed to a look of confusion. She looked curiosity, confused, and a little preemptively grossed-out. Leigh was not a fan of “disturbing” things. She didn't like horror movies or bad news stories, had no interest in seeing what had happened at a car accident, and just about fainted when she saw blood. “What?” she asked.
Jeremy stepped closer to her. He took her hand. “Did you... hmm. You remember when you did some modeling?” he stammered.
A flicker of recognition went through Leigh's face. It was obvious from her expression that he had reactivated a latent worry of hers, a sense that was already there that she had done something slightly improper.
Instead of making Jeremy feel angry, that she had perhaps told him a lie, or feel sorry for her, because she obviously felt bad – it ignited that feeling he had felt earlier in the day at the golf club.
Arousal.
Leigh looked down. But she just nodded. “Mmmhmm. Why?”
“What were they for?”
Her eyes snapped back up to his. “What do you mean?”
Jeremy was taking out his phone. “Just that,” he said. “What were they for? What were you modeling for?”
What had she said about these photos at the time? She had shown him a few pictures from the photo shoot, because he had, of course, asked to see them. The pictures she had shown him had been of her sitting in an office, ostentatiously drinking coffee, looking at a computer.
Nothing like what he had seen today on Craig’s phone.
“They're just pictures. Stock photos,” Leigh said. Her voice had grown a little nervous, Jeremy noticed. “Why?”
Now she had something on her mind. Something wasn't sitting right with her, and in order for that to be true... she had to have an idea of what he might be showing her next. Jeremy swept his fingers over the screen o
f his phone.
“So, just stock photos?” he said.
Leigh said nothing. She just watched him as he tapped away on his phone.
“So...” he murmured, to fill the silence, as he searched for Julia's Big Boss.
Leigh peered over the top of the screen. When the book materialized on its product page, her eyes widened and she snatched the phone from his hand to look at it more closely – a very un-Leigh-like move.
Jeremy watched his wife's face. Color was creeping up from the back of her neck and spreading all over her cheeks and her temples. It was hard to say if she was ashamed or furious: he hardly ever saw Leigh looking like either. In fact, he had never seen her furious, so that would be a new one -
“What the hell is this?” Leigh said, interrupting his thoughts.
And that was another thing: Leigh didn't typically cuss.
Her fingers were swiping the screen, and then her eyes were moving back and forth, reading.
Jeremy watched her face, which had turned to stone except for the way it was changing color. What was she reading? And what effect was it having on her beneath that stern expression?
Her mouth dropped open. “This is... this is... this is porn, this is disgusting, this is...”
She swept her fingers up the screen, and her eyes moved rapidly as she read.
Then they slowed.
And Leigh appeared, for just a moment, to get sucked into the story.
Her face got more and more red, and little droplets of sweat appeared on her temples.
She looked up at Jeremy, snapping out of her reverie. “I don't,” she stammered. “I don't have any idea what...” She held her hand to her mouth.
Jeremy took the phone from her hand.
She looked so horrified that he was starting to feel sorry for her.
“It's not that big of a deal,” he said reassuringly.
But he did have something nagging at him, in the back of his mind. Why hadn’t she shown him these photos, or even talked about them?
“It's porn!” she practically screamed. She looked from side to side, almost like she wanted to find something.
Then she reached for it – her phone.
“What are you doing?” Jeremy asked.
Leigh Uncovered: A Wife Sharing Novel Page 3