“It’s impossible Michael. You know it’s impossible for us to get married.” I’d just disentangled myself from one husband and I wasn’t sure I wanted another. I liked the life I’d built for myself, did I really want to slip back in the role of wife? A life where every second of my life was devoted to someone else’s needs, even if it was at the detriment of my own? How did I know that Michael the husband would be the same man as Michael the lover?
“Why? You aren’t married anymore and there is no law that says you can’t remarry if you’ve been divorced.” He stepped close to me and the scent of his aftershave invaded my sense. I wanted him so much, but would giving into my desire for him send the wrong signal to him? Why did he have to come here now, wanting more from me that I was prepared to give. Had he come here just to fuck me, without talking of love and marriage, I would be naked underneath him by now. But once again he failed to see things from my perspective.
“That’s not why it’s impossible.” I put my hands up on his chest, and the muscles were so firm against my palm that I had to clamp down on the shudder of desire that went through me. I’d put my hands on him with the intension of pushing him away, to get him out of my space so I could think, but all I wanted to do now was draw him closer. “You’re still too young for me. What would people say if they saw you were married to a woman old enough to be your mother?”
That was the crux of it. I was still worried about what other people said, about what other people thought. The hell that I’d been through when I filed for divorce against my husband had not hardened me to the opinion of others. I wished it had, since the process of dissolving my marriage would not have been as bad if I could ignore the disdain in the eyes of the people from my town.
“I don’t care what other people think. I care what I think, and do you know what I’d think if I was married to you, Grace? I’d think I was the luckiest man in the world to have you for my wife.”
“But that’s not what other people would think?” My hands were still on him, and I wished he would stop talking about this. I wanted him. I let my hands fall away and backed up. I needed to put some distance between us. I went over to the sofa and sat down on it. I couldn’t think when I was so close to him, but I didn’t count on him following me, on him sitting so close to me that I could feel his denim clad leg pressed against me.
“What people, Grace? Are you worried about what your girls would think? I don’t know about Beverly, but I do know that Gloria only wants you to be happy. Do you think she’d turn away from you if you did what makes you happy?”
I knew that if marrying Michael was what I really wanted to do, what would make me happy, both my girls would support my decision. But did I even want to be married again?
“Why are you here pushing me? I have half a mind to kick you out of my apartment right now.” Even as I said it, the notion had some appeal. I could move on, and go back to the safe world I’d built for myself. If there was one consistent theme about being with Michael it was that he was always pushing me out of my comfortable shell. It had mostly been for the good of me, but I couldn’t say that I would have done anything of the things I’d done with him if I hadn’t been pushed.
“You won’t kick me out.” He moved closer to me with a look of confidence on his face. I longed to prove him wrong, but he was so close now that I could see that dark fringe of black lashes that brought out the blue of his eyes. “In fact, you are going to let me stay and let me show you just how much I love you.”
I let out a nervous laugh. There was something to be said for Michael, he was always sure of himself. “Oh I am, am I? And why am I going to do that?”
He leaned forward and brushed my hair away from my ear. His lips brushed against me and I shivered.
“Because you love me.” His voice was a deep whisper in my ear. I turned my head and looked at him. His eyes were so deep, so blue, and I could see myself clearly reflected in them. “Don’t deny it. We both know that you love me, otherwise you would not have been so hurt by what I’d done. You would never have let me in here and you would never have forgiven me. Please Grace, give me a chance to show you how much I love you. To prove to you how much we both need each other. This isn’t about other people, it’s about us.”
And just like that his words melted away any resistance I might have had against him. I still wasn’t sure I could marry him, but I couldn’t deny to him or myself any longer that I loved him. He was right about that. I fell in love with him during those hot months between us last summer, and I pulled him to me. I thought I would die if he didn’t kiss me again, and we came together like we were starving for each other.
His lips were on mine, and it all came rushing back to me. The intensity of my feelings for him, which I had buried out of necessity in order to survive alone, came flaring back to life now that he was touching me and kissing me. His hard body was pressed against me on the sofa, but I didn’t want our first time back together to be a frenzied coupling in my living room. If this was his homecoming, I wanted it to feel like that. I wanted us to sate each other over and over until we’d managed to make up for the months we’d been separated. We could not do that on my cramped little sofa.
I pulled back from him and looked up at him. I could see the fire of his desire for me, and I knew that he could see the same in mine.
“Take me to my bedroom.” I didn’t need to ask twice, as he got off me and scooped me up in his arms.
My bedroom was down a short hall connected to my living room and he carried me down it like a bride on her wedding night. I almost felt like that, since it had been so long since I’d held him to me and enjoyed the pleasure his body gave mine. Nervous excitement churned inside me as he carried me into my bedroom. He set me on my feet beside the bed and as I breathed him in, it felt like I’d been living my life on hold until he could come back to me. I opened my arms to him and he stepped inside them.
Standing in my small bedroom in Michael’s arms made my life feel complete for a moment. I hadn’t realized until now that I’d been walking around with a hole inside me, one that could only be filled by this moment and this man. And now there was nothing holding us back. There was no longer anything between us. Earl was gone, I was anonymous in this city and no one cared who came to my apartment. I could be free with him in a way that I’d never been able to do when I’d been in that house. I could have Michael as my lover again.
He kissed me deeply and thoroughly as we stood beside my bed. His large body dominated my room, and I longed to see if he’d changed at all in the intervening months since the last time I’d been with him. I drew back from him and looked up into his heavy lidded gaze. The desire for me was clear on his face, and it only made me want to be with him even more.
“I want to see you.” I put my hands on the hem of his T-shirt, and he took it from me and yanked it over my head. He was exactly the same as when I’d last been with him. His body was just as hard, every muscle as familiar to me as the curves of my face when I looked in the mirror. He reached for his belt with his broad hands, and he paused as his eyes swept over my dress.
“Don’t make me wait to see you too, Grace. I’ve been dreaming about you for months, the image of you in my mind has been the only thing that has enabled me to give you the time you needed to be your own woman. Don’t think that because I wasn’t here with you that I didn’t care.”
I swallowed when he said that. When I had gone through what I had over the past few months I had longed of him too. I’d dreamed for him, but I could see that staying away from me was the best thing he could have done. I needed to learn to stand on my own, so that when I stood in front of him in this room I faced him as on equal footing. I was no longer Mrs. Randal, no longer Gloria’s mother. I was Grace, his lover, and as I stripped the clothes from my body, I saw love and desire for me in his eyes.
It took only moments for us to shed our clothes. He reached out and cupped my breast, hardening the nipple into a stiff peak. I could not keep
my hands to myself any longer. I had been too long without him to pretend to be coy. I slid my hands up his chest and around his neck as I brought his mouth back down to mine. I’d missed this feeling of being pressed close to him, of skin to skin contact with him. The curves of my body fit perfectly against the harder planes of his, and it was if I was made for him and he for me.
Soon kissing was no longer enough, and I pulled away. I needed to taste him, only then would I know that this was no dream. That he was with me, and nothing would keep us apart again. I ran my tongue over the salt of his skin as I used it and my mouth to learn his body all over again. He stroked his hands over my hair as he exercised great restrain in not urging me to take his cock into my mouth before I’d explored all of him that I wanted to. I could not resist the lure of it for long, and I sank to my knees in the thick carpet on my bedroom floor.
I stroked my hand over his thick shaft as I looked up at him. The skin on his face was tight, and I knew that the separation from me, along with the teasing of my lips and tongue, had driven him wild. It would not take much to take him over the edge and that’s exactly what I did when I took him in my mouth. He gave a long, drawn out groan as I slid my mouth on him, bring him inside the warm, wet recesses of it as far as his cock would go. What wouldn’t fit in my mouth I stroked with my hand, and I worked him with the practiced ease of a woman who knew exactly what pleased her man.
His fingers tunneled in my hair, and I read his eminent orgasm in the tightening of them and in the swiftness of his breath. I was ready for it to happen, it had been so long since I’d done this for him that I was eagerly anticipating the spill of his cum into my mouth. I was so turned on by it that I could feel the wetness pooling between my legs.
He gave a long drawn out groan and shudder as his hot seed spurted into my mouth. As I swallowed every drop it brought back the memories of him. Every moment together with him, all the things he taught me about being a lover and a woman, came flooding back to me. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, and I didn’t think he did either, he’d come into my life at the exact moment I needed him most. I didn’t even want to think of where I’d be now if I had not put that ad up for help on my shed and he had not answered.
His hands came around my upper arms and he lifted me to my feet. I trembled with my desire for him, because I knew my turn was coming. He moved me back until the edge of my bed hit the back of my knees, and I sank down on it. The cotton of my bedspread was cool against the fevered skin of my back as Michael draped my legs over his shoulders and lowered his face to my pussy.
My back arched and I grabbed fistfuls of the bedspread as he became the center of my world. His mouth on my most intimate place sent shards of pleasure going through me, and it was a miracle that I’d survived the past ten months without it. His tongue working my clit as his thick fingers slid in and out of me became the focus of all my attention. I couldn’t think, could only feel what he’d was doing to me. My excitement rose with the increased pace of my breathing, and although I wanted to drag this moment out, to make it last, I couldn’t. My body had been too long without his, and I was helpless to hold back the tide of my orgasm. The late afternoon sun slanted through the blinds on my window as I exploded against his mouth. I was racked with the deep pulses of my orgasm and I was helpless to do anything but ride it out to its conclusion.
The sobbing of my breath soon slowed, and my body went limp. I didn’t know if it was the time away from him, if it was because my body had been starved of the pleasure that he gave me, but that had been the most intense orgasm of my life. Somehow I managed to drag open my heavy eyelids and looked up at him as he stood look a conquering king in front of me. He’d certainly conquered my will to resist him.
Together we moved to the centre of the bed, and he settled between my legs, his cock heavy against my inner thighs. He was so big, so thick and it had been months since he’d been inside me. I expected it to hurt, but all I felt as he slowly eased inside me was the delicious stretching I’d grown to love when he filled me with his cock. This was what I’d missed the most, his heavy body on top of mine with his cock buried deep inside me. I was as close to him as I could possibly get and I welcomed him into my body and back into my life. I didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow, but we had this moment to revel in the pleasure of what our bodies did together.
His thrusts were slow and deep, just the way I liked them. I flexed my hips to meet his as I matched every stroke he made. This was a dance we’d done so many times together that I went where he lead me with the sounds of our moans of pleasure the music we moved our bodies to. Soon slow and deep was not enough for me and I urged him to take me harder and faster.
He rolled over onto his back, taking me with him. He slipped out for a second, and I grasped him in my hands and slid down on him. I was so full of his cock that I didn’t think I could have taken another inch. I was astride him, with his fingers digging into the flesh of my hips as I rode him. I loved being in control like this as I set the pace. I moved my hips in an ever increasing rhythm and I could see the strain on his face as he fought to let me have my way with him.
I could feel my pleasure rising higher and I slid my hands up my body to cup my breasts. I looked down at him, and I saw the moment his control snapped. He put his hands on either side of my ribs, drawing my body forward as he drove his hips up, slamming his cock in and out of me in the way that I loved the most. I braced my hands on either side of his head as the force of his thrusting made my breasts bounce.
“Oh God, Michael. You feel so good.” My body was slick with sweat, and I clenched my hand in the pillow in either side of his head as I crested the waves of pleasure he was sending through me. I climbed high until my orgasm shuddered through my body.
He was right there with me and the pulsing of his cock inside me only drove my ecstasy deeper inside me. I felt like I was one with him, and for a brief moment I didn’t want to be parted from him again. My body collapsed on top of him and he cradled me against him as we came. I never wanted to move, but soon I had to.
As much as I loved being with him, with my body pressed close to him, the summer warmth in my bedroom made my body sticky with sweat. I rolled off him and lay on my bed with my body splayed open. His hand found mine on the mattress, and he grasped it tightly in his as the only sound in the bedroom was the softening of our breathing.
I didn’t know where I was going to go from here, but I knew that I wanted to make that journey with this man beside me. Whether that include marriage I wasn’t sure. The only thing I was sure of was that I loved him and didn’t want to this affair to end.
15
The fan beside my bed stirred my hair and the scent of coffee and bacon tickled my nostrils. I opened my eyes a crack and wondered for a moment if I was still dreaming. The morning sun shone through my bedroom window, and the empty space in the bed beside me told me that it wasn’t. The memories from the night before filtered through my head and I remember it all. Michael had spent the night and we’d spent most of it in the throes of our passion for each other. We had ten months of being apart to make up for, and it was like we were trying to do it all in one night.
That didn’t explain why my apartment smelled like breakfast and Michael was no where to be seen. I sat up and reached for my robe, which I usually left draped over the chair by my bed. I shrugged it on, and after a quick trip to the bathroom, I walked through the living room toward the kitchen to see what he was up to.
He stood in my small eat in kitchen wearing the same clothes he’d been in the night before, with his hair standing up in spikes as he stood by the stove with a spatula in his hands. He must have heard me come in behind him because he turned his head to look toward the door and gave me that brilliant white smile of his. Oh God, I loved him so much that I didn’t know if I could live through being apart from him again.
“I was wondering if you were ever going to get out of bed. Come in and sit and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.�
� He moved away from the stove and went to the cupboard to get out a coffee cup.
I went further into the kitchen and sat down at the small table in the center of the room. A feeling of unreality fell over me, and I wondered for a moment if I was dreaming after all. The only time I’d ever had breakfast made for me was when my daughters were home and they’d made me breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day. I resisted the urge to pinch myself when Michael set a steaming cup of coffee in front of me made exactly the way I liked it.
“What’s the occasion?” I took a sip of my coffee and looked at him over the rim of my cup. I set the cup down on top of the table as Michael leaned forward to kiss me. He pulled away and turned back to the stove.
“I don’t need an occasion to treat you the way you deserve to be treated.” He got plates out of the cupboard and portioned out the food. He turned and put a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of me before turning back for his own plate along with a plate of toast that he’d been keeping warm in the oven.
“Michael, what is this all about?” I didn’t know why I had to search for an ulterior motive in everything. Perhaps there was still some baggage lingering from my marriage. My ex husband had been selfish to the core and hadn’t done anything for anyone else unless there was something in it for me. I wanted to enjoy this morning with Michael without questioning everything, but old habits died hard.
“This is about me doing something nice for you. About showing you how much I care about you. I haven’t given up on marrying you.” He dug into his food as if we were discussing the weather and I tried to do the same but I could not pretend nonchalance on this subject.
I knew I wanted to be with him, but I didn’t know if I wanted marriage to be part of it. I was afraid that this was all a show, that once I had his ring on my finger the Michael I loved would disappear to be replaced with someone I wouldn’t recognize. I’d been fooled once before, when I was too young and naive to know better. I was older now, wiser I hoped, and I carried some deep scars from trusting someone who wasn’t worthy of it.
A Wife Scorned: Complete Series Page 11