Once at the hotel, I took her inside and got her a room. The walk and elevator trips were somber to me, knowing I would probably never see or hear from her again after I left. The idea of her winking out of my life was upsetting.
Sitting her on the bed, I went and brought her a glass of water. I still felt dizzy from the drinks. “I have no aspirin on me,” I said, putting the glass on her nightstand. I blinked my eyes.
Ruby patted the bed beside her. She looked far calmer than before.
I shook my head. “I can’t…”
Her eyes locked with mine. It was an unspoken plea, but I knew what sitting on that bed could lead to. This entire situation was already too far.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked.
“I would do it for anyone, no one deserves to be left on a bathroom floor.”
Her eyes slowly drifted down my body. She may as well had been touching me. I could feel her hands on every part that she was looking at. I could see inside her mind.
“You love your wife?” she asked. It felt like a weird question.
“I love her with all my heart.”
“I love my husband.” She looked me in the eyes again. “He saved me when no one else could. He made me feel safe, valued… He’s a good man. I needed him.”
I stepped back, but she took my hand. “Please, don’t.” I can’t deny the thoughts in my head, and if she encourages me, I know I’ll lose this battle.
“Why?”
“Because you belong to someone else, and I do too, and this is…” wrong, bad, evil, sinful… but the words don’t come.
“But if you touch me, if you take me, I would belong to you for the night…”
My dick twitched against my jeans, stirring regardless of the obvious trap in this. “I’m not that kind of person,” I stammered.
She put my hand against her cheek, but I didn’t pull it away. “We don’t know what kind of person we are until we put ourselves in certain places. Maybe you would never cheat on your wife with the women you know. The church women, or the girls you meet at work… but those women don’t test you, do they? You probably say that you could surpass temptation for your wife… but temptation has to come from being tempted. So, have you been victorious over temptation before, or is this your first time being tempted?”
I can hear my pulse in my ears.
With gentle fingers, she tails my hand from her cheek, down her neck, and lower over her chest. Nearing her breast, I tried to take my hand back. “No, I can’t do that.”
“Noah,” when she says my name, my mind goes blank. There is something familiar about her saying my name, making her less of a stranger. “Please, help me get through this night.”
I looked back over my shoulder, trying to muster my common sense, but then her hand, led mine to her breast, pressing it over her bra. I won’t look but feeling her is the same.
“Noah,” she whispered.
I looked down, and her legs were spread, causing her tight skirt to be bunched at her thighs. Letting go of my hand, she started unbuttoning her fitted shirt, revealing a lacy black bra.
I rubbed my mouth, wishing I could find a thread of control.
Her hands secured on my belt and slowly pulled, bringing the tongue through the buckle. My dick was so hard that it was painfully throbbing.
I grabbed her wrists and paused us. “I have to leave.”
She tried to resume her work, but I tightened my grip.
“I said, no.”
She wrenched free, looking pissed. Then she stood and slapped me. I smacked her hand away when she tried to do it again, getting equally pissed.
Ruby came so close that her bra cups were scrapping my body. “Get the fuck out…”
I didn’t move right away so she slapped me again. I grabbed her by the hair this time, the way a person would hold a kitten by the scruff to paralyze it. Keeping her head angled up at me, I panted against her mouth, threating with my nearness to kiss her.
“You aren’t man enough,” she baited.
The provocation in her sneering was enough, and I forced my mouth down on hers. I knew I was feeding her demons, not exercising them. Still, she disarmed me expertly.
I was loaded down with guns and shields for my faith, armed fully with knowledge and the ability to see this for what it was. But she disarmed me the way a trained warrior would, leaving me stripped and open for attack.
Ruby bit my lower lip hard, as though to punish me. The defiance and heat in her eyes, telling me that this was how she wanted it.
I shoved her down on the bed and held her thighs, parting them around me. Her hand directed mine up between her legs, ironically, my left hand.
The feel of my wedding band slowed me. “We have to stop,” I said before pulling down the front of her bra. “I can’t,” I chanted.
Her fingers combed my hair, moving my head over her nipple. I obeyed, lavishing her body with my tongue. This was not my wife, this woman’s body belonged to another man, but I didn’t stop. She was so perfect. Shapely hips that I could grab onto and position under my own, large breasts that filled my palms, swollen lips that I imagined on my cock.
Her nails dragged down my back, stinging, drawing blood, I was sure.
I held her throat and reached up under her skirt to pull down her panties. There was nothing gentle about how I buried myself to the hilt within her. I let go on Ruby in ways I had never done with Lydia. I treated her roughly, almost using her body instead of sharing in it.
Ruby pressed my chest back, and as soon as she had room, she turned over, lifting her ass against my erection. Ramming into her entrance again, I heard the word, “fuck,” pass my lips. A foul word I haven’t said in years, especially not during sex with my wife.
She held the bedding under us to stay anchored as I bucked vigorously, losing a part of myself each time. I held her hair in a fist. It was like I was trying to hurt her, to blame her for my loss of sense.
Yet, she liked it. She responded to it, pushing her hips back to my thrust, crying out, telling me things in breathless gasps such as, “fuck me, don’t stop, harder.”
I gave her everything she asked and when it was over, I did it again. I kept doing it. Until the sun came up, along with my shame.
I sat on the edge of the bed in silent tears, knowing that if Lydia ever knew, she would break. I single-handedly destroyed the beauty of our marriage.
Now I needed this type of release. This rough and passionate sex.
“Noah,” Ruby woke behind me and came to sit at my back, massaging my tense shoulders. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” I held my hands by my face, naked except for the sheet across my lap. “Oh, God, it’s not okay.”
“You’re human,” she whispered, caressing my back and arms.
“She’ll never forgive me.”
“That’s not true. Lorenzo forgave me…”
I turned my head and stared at her. “Your husband knows?”
“He knows about the first time and has suspected since then…”
“You’ve done this before?”
She swallowed. “I told you that I wasn’t a good person.”
“How often do you do this?”
Her silence unnerved me.
“Look,” I stood and started dressing. “My wife isn’t like your husband. Her entire life was bent around saving herself for me, being loyal to me, loving me…”
“Sounds pressuring.”
“She is under pressure.”
“I meant for you,” she corrected.
I stopped, then went on. “We can’t do this again. Not ever. I can’t do this to her, she doesn’t deserve it.”
Ruby nodded but said nothing as I put on the rest of my things then fled the room. I could still smell her on my skin and on my clothes. I could smell sex. I felt the burning on my back from her scratches. Worse than those things, I froze on the elevator when I realized I hadn’t used a condom. What if Ruby was pregnant? It would kill Lydia.
What if Ruby wasn’t clean? I could bring something back.
I called Lark…
That was how it started.
The lies were first.
I kept away from Lydia for a week with excuses until I could get tested, until the scratches on my back healed, until I was sure I could erase my deed.
But I couldn’t.
I confided in Lark, my second biggest mistake because he reveled in my fall from grace. He encouraged it.
The biggest crime was that I couldn’t get Ruby out of my head. Her brokenness, her passion, her body.
This led to a return to that same bar with Lark… where Ruby happened to be again.
And I repeated my mistake. Perfecting the lies, taking proper precautions such as protection.
I turned a one-night accident into a full-fledged affair.
I blamed it on Ruby, Lark, the drinks, even the night itself.
And Lark is right. Now, I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.
Chapter Ten
LYDIA
I searched endlessly for cute lingerie with Sara from church. She was worldly enough to know what to look for but nice enough not to ask questions or tell everyone we knew what I needed.
We laughed a lot.
I felt a closeness to Sara that couldn’t be explained. She makes me laugh. At myself, at everything.
“You weren’t lying about the lack of boobs,” Sara cocked her head, seeing a lacy bra become more of an empty net on me.
“I brought you in here for support,” I told her in the dressing room.
“I’m trying,” she shook her head. “My support is a lot better than that bra.”
After acquiring many pink bags of risqué undergarments, I went home and packed.
Noah arrived promptly after getting off from work, and we drove off to a bed and breakfast that was three hours from our home.
“See,” I said as we held one another by the fire in our room. “This was what we needed.” I held him close while we watched the flames dance in the hearth. Here on this beautiful sofa made of satin. “Just you and me, away from all of it, away from everyone…” I thought up ways to hint. I made a promise to myself that this would be our starting over point. All he had to do was come clean. If he didn’t, I would consider separating.
“You were right, this is nice,” he toyed with our fingers, his big hands holding my smaller ones.
“Um,” I thought of how to proceed, having practiced a lot. “I found out that one of Sara’s husbands… he cheated on her…”
He set his chin on my head. “Oh.”
“We shopped together this week, and she said her first husband was seeing a woman in Queens for the last year of their marriage. Sara said it wasn’t so much what he did, it was the lie,” I used Lorenzo’s words more than Sara’s. “I get it because that’s what would hurt me most. I mean, you and I are friends and lovers. It would hurt me more to know you were lying to be with someone else. That you thought someone else was better at making you happy…”
He stilled, his body becoming taut. “Yeah…” he agreed.
“Would that be the case for you?” I poked. “Wouldn’t my lying be worse than the actual cheating?”
He sat further up. “Cheating is cheating. It would hurt no matter what.”
“But if I cheated on you, what about it would hurt the most?”
Noah bent his knee and rested his elbow on it. “I wouldn’t be able to handle the thought of you being touched by someone else. You swore your body to me, and I love it. I love making love to you. I wouldn’t want to share that private part of you with someone. Especially since you saved yourself all those years before we met. What we have is even more sacred.”
I felt a mix of anger and sadness as it whirled in my stomach, warring for a prominent position. “I would want to be told,” I said coldly. “Because to me, the lie would be worse. Trust is the foundation of any relationship. Once it’s rocked, how is it fixed?”
He held me tighter. “Probably, in situations like that, people are afraid to tell the truth because they’re scared the other person could never forgive them… that… they would lose the real love of their life.” He played with the length of my hair. “Just because someone makes a mistake, it doesn’t mean they wanted to or that they love the other person they made the mistake with.”
I sat up and faced him. “You wouldn’t lose me— not if you told me the truth.” I pressed my tears down. “But if you don’t— didn’t— then I wouldn’t know how to trust you, and what kind of marriage has no trust?”
He stared at me as though he was trying to decide if I knew. This was his moment to save us. I waited, just watching him, giving him time to decide.
He opened his mouth, but then closed it, focusing on the golden cross around my neck. But then he dragged his knuckles down my arm, across my breasts, and up to my jaw. “Let’s not talk about this anymore, it’s not us. It was Sara and her husband. Look at Sara. She’s not like you, there’s no way she was as devoted to her husband the way you are to me. The way I am to you,” he kissed my forehead. “She could have driven him away, or maybe she was cheating too and she’s only telling you half a story. I would never purposefully hurt you like that.”
His lie lodged in my throat, refusing to be swallowed.
“I love you,” he said. “And I’m not Sara’s husband.”
The sickness surfaced again, as he began kissing my neck. He wants to sleep with me. He wants me to lay under him and share. He wants me to share him with her. To know that as he pushes inside me, he was inside her, not many days ago.
I jumped to my feet and ran for the bathroom.
“Honey?” he got up to follow me.
I bent over the toilet and threw up.
He held my hair back, bending to support my head.
The downside was that our discussion ruined our getaway. I was sick and that was my excuse. The upside, if it was one, was that I now knew where he stood. He was never going to tell me about Ruby. Meaning, there was no reason to stay with him. I have a ton of reasons to leave, only one to stick it out.
That I’m foolishly in love with him.
But that was not a solid reason, so I decided that once we returned, we would separate.
LORENZO
“He didn’t say nothin’?” I asked her again.
Lydia sat on a stool in the very corner of my kitchen at the restaurant watching me prepare to begin cooking. We had just finished our morning coffee and silent company, and for the first time, I invited her to stay a little longer while I started the food. I could feel that she had a lot to tell me about the weekend, and I was right.
“All three days, he said nothing,” she repeated. “And now…” She looked down at her wedding ring, turning it. “Now I take steps toward separation.”
I nodded. I’m glad she sees how much of a dead end this is, but it also means she won’t be hanging around here anymore. It wasn’t likely.
“Lorenzo?” she asked.
I got my ingredients ready. “Hmm?”
“Why won’t you leave Ruby? Do you still love her or is it something else?”
I started hand-mixing the dough that would soon be a pizza. “You ever make a pizza?” I asked in return.
She narrowed her eyes, seeing how blatant my avoidance was. “Sort of.”
“What is sort of?”
“I bought ready-made dough from the supermarket and I put things like sauce, and cheese and Noah likes Hawaiian Pizza, therefore, I put pineapple and—”
I ranted in Italian. Muttering and grimacing at the thought.
Lydia sighed. “Not all of us are born with superior pizza knowledge.”
“That thing you made was not pizza.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Come here.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to show you how to do it right.”
“No, this is your restaurant. I’m not messing with your food, here.”
“Come
here.”
“You’re so bossy,” she said under her breath, obeying at the same time.
I showed her step-by-step, how to mix the ingredients. She talked about spoons, which I snorted at and showed her how important hands were in making bread. She was a quick pupil, seriously watching and learning.
“Fold,” I barked as she kneaded the dough. “Fold, do not fist.”
“I thought—”
“No, no, no, no,” I pressed my shoulder to hers, making her move so I could demonstrate.
She took off her wedding bands and set them down on the counter, then got her hands messy.
I floured the surface for us, molding the shape and working it well with the heel of my hands. She watched me and copied all my movements.
“Can you do that spinning thing?” she asked.
“Pizza tossing?”
“Yeah.”
“Get back,” I lifted the flat circle I made, and she did as I asked. I tossed the dough all around, catching it every time, making her laugh and squeal. I even tossed it from behind my back, over my head, a steady rhythm in my head, matched to the Italian music streaming low from the speakers out front.
“Your turn,” I beckoned her.
“I’ll drop it.”
“Come.”
She came and I showed her how to hold her hands. One in a fist. Dropping it several times, we laughed hard at her attempts. She swung it into her own face, making her snort laugh. It was a hideous sound and made me laugh also. By the end, she was close to getting it right.
“Hey,” Giada appeared in the doorway and Lydia dropped the dough. “Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t read your handwriting. The note you left on the hostess stand…”
I hated the look on her face. This knowing, secretive, approving, cheeky grin. It made my heart shut down because it’s not what she thinks, and I don’t like being accused even without words.
“Order more Pizza boxes,” I said, taking up the dough and trashing it. “That’s what the note said. Walk Lydia out, I need to finish in here.”
The Affair (The Relationship Quo Series Book 5) Page 13