As he pulled her against him, his eyes dropped and she followed his gaze, staring at them together. She loved the way they looked together, his skin, so lovely and tan even in the winter. Against the deep brown of her skin, they just looked…amazing, she thought. They were beautiful together. She’d always thought so.
He was all long, lean muscles, and the Irish in him came through in just about every way, from his name, to the dark, coppery red-brown of his hair, to the teasing, sometimes dirty humor he had. And he had a romantic’s heart.
She’d always adored that about him, the way he’d surprise her with a gift of flowers, a book.
As he wrapped his arms around her, she stroked her hands up his chest, smiling. Her hands were a warm, soft brown, so much darker than his skin. Beautiful together, she thought again.
Tipping her head back, she smiled at him and eased away from him. “Come here,” she whispered, reaching for his hand and drawing him along with her.
She stopped in front of the desk that was set up in front of a mirror. There, she turned and stood in front of it, staring at their reflections. “I love the way your hands look on me,” she said quietly. “I love it.”
“I love the way you look period…and I love putting my hands on you.” He cupped her breasts in his hands, staring at her in the mirror as he teased her nipples, rolling them just a bit, pinching until she caught her breath before easing back.
Against her butt, she could feel the rigid length of his cock through their jeans, a heavy brand that she was desperate to feel inside her.
Pushing back against him, she swayed forward and braced her hands on the desk. “Here,” she said. “I want you to fuck me here. Like this.”
“Bossy woman.” He bent forward and pressed his lips to her shoulder. “Luckily for you, I’m happy to fuck you just about anywhere, anytime.”
She laughed a little as he unsnapped her jeans and started to drag them down. “Anywhere, huh? And what if I decided I wanted to sneak into your work and accost you there somewhere?”
“I’d find us a closet.” As he dragged the jeans down her thighs, he pressed his lips to the back of her thigh.
She felt her legs quiver.
“You could lose your job. Maybe we could just do it in your truck.”
“That could work. The windows are tinted. You’d have to wear a skirt… Make sure it’s a skinny one…I love the way your ass looks in those skinny ones.”
“You love the way my ass looks no matter what,” she muttered as he tugged the jeans and her panties completely off.
“True.” He stood up, spread his hands over said ass.
Then, without warning, he brought one hand down on it in a light slap.
Alexis gasped. The harsh pleasure jolted through her, sending a shock straight through her belly to her pussy. She whimpered, licking her lips and locking her knees even as she arched back, just a little.
“Hell, you know what it does to me when you move like that?” Garrett muttered, spanking her again.
“Probably the same thing it does to you when you spank me.” Hunger, hot, sweet as sugar and as addictive as sin, gripped her and when he spanked her a third time, she thought she might come from that alone.
But he stopped.
Lifting her head, she stared at him through the thick rows of her braids, watching as he tore the front of his jeans open. Her breathing seemed to constrict, her throat tightening when all he did was shove his jeans and boxer briefs down just enough. Why was that so damn sexy?
He wrapped a hand around his length, pumped once, twice, and she groaned.
Garrett caught her eyes and smiled at her, braced one hand on her back. Then, as he held her gaze, he did it again, moving in closer. She lowered her eyes, but she couldn’t see him. “Damn it, if you’re going to tease me, at least let me watch,” she demanded.
“You want to watch?”
“Yes…”
He moved, just enough, and she stared in the mirror as he continued to stroke himself. The head of his cock was swollen, a drop of clear fluid gleaming at the tip as he dragged his fist back down, his rhythm slow, steady. Mouth parted, her belly tight and hot with hunger, she stared…and wanted.
“Do you want me to keep going?” he asked quietly.
Alexis shuddered. “As long as you fuck me when you’re done, I don’t care.”
His long, lean body shuddered. “You know, it’s never as much fun to jack off when I’m doing it solo… Why is it so much fun to do it front of you?”
That made her smile. In the mirror, she shot him a look. “Because it makes me hot…and you know it.”
“Yeah.” His voice was a ragged snarl. “Yeah, there is that.”
With his free hand, he touched her, lightly at first, teasing the entrance to her body. She gasped at that first light contact. His fingers slicked over, around, teased…and then, with no further warning, he plunged two fingers inside her pussy.
She cried out and it took all her strength to continue standing there. All her focus to keep her eyes open and locked on him as he continued to stand behind her, his fist pumping harder. Fast. That bead of moisture trickled down and another appeared.
Her lips parted and if she could have found the energy to move, she might have twisted around, taken him in her mouth.
No. No, she wouldn’t have, because all of this would have stopped and it was just too sweet—
He twisted his wrist and she cried out as the climax shuddered through her, burning, breath-stealing and beautiful. As it racked her, she heard him groan, felt the heated warmth of his semen as he climaxed on her skin.
“You turn me into a fucking teenager, Lexy,” he muttered.
A few seconds later, even as she struggled to catch her breath, she felt a soft cloth stroke over her bottom, the back of her thigh. Then he was moving behind her. “A teenager,” he said again. “No control, no finesse…”
“Oh…you’ve got plenty of finesse.” As he slowly pushed inside, she closed her eyes, relishing the familiar feel of him. Despite the fact that he’d just come, he was thick, hard, pulsating within the wet clasp of her pussy.
“Look at me,” he rasped, stroking a hand up her back and tangling it in her hair, using his grip to tug her head up. Behind her, he started to move, slow at first, then deeper, driving digs of his cock that had him stroking and rubbing against every sweet spot she had.
“Look at me,” he demanded again, tugging harder on her hair.
Alexis opened her eyes and met his gaze in the mirror, her breath seizing in her lungs. The sheer eroticism of it was like a fist to her belly, one hand tangled in her hair, the other gripping her hip. It was a possessive, almost dominating act but she didn’t feel overpowered…she felt craved. Needed…like if he didn’t get what he desired from her, something inside him would suffer for it.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his midnight eyes boring into hers as he thrust deeper. “Watch me… Fuck, Lexy, you’re so hot for me. Tell me you love me.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
A slow smile canted his lips up. “I love you…” Lids drooped low, shielding his eyes. “My Lexy…mine.”
“Yours. And you’re mine.”
Letting go of her hair, he pulled her closer, bracing her with his arm around her waist as he drove deeper, harder. She cried out, gripping his arm, her nails biting into his flesh. “Mine,” he growled against her ear.
“Yes…”
He slid a hand around her hip, his fingertips seeking through the neatly trimmed patch of curls between her thighs. When he touched her aching clit, the battering of pleasure just increased. Too much—too much—
And then he pressed. Circled. Pressed again.
As she climaxed, hard and fast, she felt him swell inside. And he kept moving, with deep, purposeful strokes…
Panting, she whispered, “You’re trying to kill me.”
But man. What a way to go…
Sprawled across his chest as they lay in be
d, she absently wrote her name on his skin with her fingertip. Then she wrote her own. “Are you having fun?” she asked softly.
“Yeah.” He popped one eye open and peered at her. “Although I never would have pegged you for having Disney World as a fantasy vacation.”
Alexis wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ll have you know that I’ve always wanted to come here. I just…” She shrugged, shifting her weight to one elbow and lifting up to stare out the window. “I’d always dreamed of coming here when I was kid. Mama and Dad couldn’t afford it. Four of us, Dad on a beat cop’s pay, Mama staying at home with us…just wasn’t an option. When I got bigger, I just kept thinking about it, thinking about…” She paused and then glanced back at him. “If I tell you something, will you not laugh at me?”
He stroked a hand over her braids, tugging on one playfully. “I don’t know. Depends on what it is. If it involves Goofy, all bets are off.”
“Ha, ha.” She sat up and folded her legs, sheepishly smiling down at him. “I…well. Um. When you asked me to marry you, for a while I thought about trying to do the wedding here. You said you didn’t care, and they had these amazing weddings…”
The look in his eyes just about broke her heart. He sat up and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Baby, if you wanted to come down here for that, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because it cost more than we could afford,” she said honestly. “We had the money my dad left me in his will, but I wanted to use that on the house. It mattered more than having the wedding here.” Then she leaned in and pressed her lips to his. “And hey…I just had mad, passionate sex at Disney World. That’s almost as good as getting married here. Right?”
He pulled her into his lap, nuzzling her neck. “We could have found a way.”
“Hmm. Well, maybe we could do one of those vow renewal things here one year.” Draping her arms around his shoulder, she pressed her brow to his. “It’s no big deal, Garrett. It was just a dream. I’m happy knowing we’re secure, that when we have kids we can afford to bring them down here, give them that dream.”
“When we have kids…” He stroked his lips up to her ear. “You know…speaking of kids. We said we’d talk about it a few years into the marriage. It’s been a few. And then some.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
Yeah. They’d had that talk.
They’d had it a few times.
Not lately, though.
“Ah…yes. We did mention that, right?”
He stared into her eyes. “Maybe we can talk about it more at home…but lately, more and more, I’ve been thinking…when?”
Alexis felt her heart slam against her ribs as he reached between them, laid his palm flat on her belly. “When what?”
“When are we going to take that step, Lexy? We both want kids, right?”
She nodded, caught in the rich, mesmerizing blue of his eyes. Wow. How had they gotten here, she wondered. Just how had they gotten here?
“I want to see you pregnant,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her chin, her cheeks, her lips. “I want to see kids in our house…we can talk about it when we get home, but I’m ready for us to have that talk.”
“Ah…I think we just did.” She wiggled away from him and went to the bathroom. On the counter was the round little packet of her birth control pills. Snatching it up, she carried it back out and held it up. “How serious are we?”
He was leaning back, one knee drawn up, his other leg stretched out in front of him. “I’m pretty dead serious.” He stared at the pills for a second, then up at her.
Smiling, she tossed the pills in the trash on the way to the bed. “I’ve kind of been wanting to have that talk, too. There…we talked.”
She crawled on top of him and straddled his hips, nudging his shoulders until he fell backward. “It’s mostly just a practice run for a while…after all, I took the pill last night, but how about you go ahead and see what you can do about getting me pregnant…starting now?”
* * * * *
She came back to herself, the cool air a damp kiss on her face.
Absently, she reached up and realized she was crying. At some point, since she’d lost herself down memory lane, she’d guzzled more wine, had managed to empty the bottle and her head was spinning.
But she didn’t think that was the reason she hurt so bad.
Sniffling, she reached for a box of Kleenex Melissa had left nearby. As she wiped the tears away, she sighed and rested her head back against the wall.
Her little trip down memory lane hadn’t helped.
Melissa’s question still danced through her mind.
Is that what you want…?
Did she want to leave Garrett?
She stared at her wedding ring and tried to imagine taking it off. Walking away—
A vicious pain tore through her heart and she realized, abruptly, she wasn’t so numb at all. Not numb. And just thinking about leaving him, really thinking about it, hurt more than she thought possible.
Is that what you want…?
No.
Alexis wanted her husband. As much as she’d been feeling numb for the past little while, the ache in her chest right now was proof of one very, very clear thing.
She still loved her husband.
Chapter Two
“I’m sorry, Garrett,” Melissa said, her soft voice quiet, emotionless over the phone. “She doesn’t really want to talk to you right now.”
Clenching a hand into a fist, he stared out the window over the barren backyard.
Not that long ago, they’d talked about putting in a swingset. Landscaping it a bit more. A firepit. Making it a place where they could spend the evenings…weekends. A family spot.
For a family that didn’t exist.
That’s bullshit…you two are still here. You’re broken right now, but you can fix it. Can’t we?
“Is…” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Is she okay, Melissa?”
“How do you think she is?”
“Pissed off, I’d figure.”
“You’d figure wrong, Garrett.” Melissa sighed, and the very exhaustion he heard in her voice bothered him.
But her words…they cut into his heart. “She’s empty, Garrett. It’s like she doesn’t feel anything. I’d expect her to be mad, to be hurt. And I think she might work up to it, but right now, she is just empty.”
“Melissa…”
“I have to go. She needs me right now.”
And that was another scrape across his heart. His wife, the woman he adored, the woman he’d failed…she was hurting, she was needing…but she didn’t need him.
As the phone went dead in his ear, he gently lowered it.
Then he leaned forward, hands braced on the window as he continued to stare out into the night.
* * * * *
“So what are you going to do?”
The next morning, Alexis stared into her friend’s worried eyes. A headache throbbed at the base of her skull, she desperately wanted another five hours of sleep and wanted her own bed. Polishing off a bottle of wine had been an entirely stupid way to handle this, she decided. But then again, after the first glass and half, she hadn’t really been thinking clearly.
Alexis never had been able to drink very well.
She’d missed Garrett’s warmth more than she would like to admit.
“Beats the hell out of me.” Then she rubbed her hands over her face and said, “I think I’ll talk to a friend, see if they can recommend somebody about filing for a divorce.”
“You sure that’s what you want?”
“Yes.”
Feeling the weight of Melissa’s stare, she looked up. The other woman was watching her, gaze knowing. Intent. “What is it?”
“Maybe you should think about it,” Melissa said quietly. “Talk to him.”
“That’s the problem,” Alexis snapped as she shoved back from the table. “We don’t talk. It’s over. There’s no part of me that feels anything for him anymore.”
<
br /> “That’s not what you said last night.”
Alexis stilled. “What?”
“You heard me. Last night, you were very…clear,” Melissa said with a shrug. “Last night…before you passed out from one too many glasses of wine…you said you wanted to fight for him.”
“I said that?” Alexis squinted, trying to think back and remember it. She didn’t remember—no, wait. She remembered thinking about how things used to be. When they’d been happy. It hadn’t been that long ago. It was the past two years that had been horrid, really. “What did I say? What happened?”
“You were sloppy-drunk. Pissed off…and can I say how happy I was to actually see you show some emotion?”
Alexis just stared at her friend.
“Fine.” Over the rim of her coffee, Melissa said, “After you raged for a few minutes, you started to cry. Then you told me you wanted him back…how things used to be.”
“How things used to be…” It made an ache settle in her heart, just thinking about it. That numb, empty spot in her chest shifted and she caught her breath, tried to nudge it back into place.
She couldn’t let it move. If that emptiness moved any, she just might—
No. It was over—
A hand touched hers. Jerking her head up, she stared at Melissa.
“It’s over, Mel,” she said quietly.
“Why?” Melissa stared at her. “Because you’re hurt over last night?”
“I’m not hurt,” Alexis said, shrugging. But she felt an odd little tug inside.
One that hadn’t been there last night. Wasn’t she? A little?
No.
“Look,” she murmured, pushing back from the table. She needed more coffee to handle this. “We can’t turn back the clock, Mel. He’s never home anymore. He doesn’t want to look at me…touch me. It’s like we’re strangers in our own home and I…” She trailed off, uncertain what she even wanted to say. What she needed to say.
Melissa sighed and rose from the table, moving to stand beside her, slipping an arm around the table. “Lex, I saw you last night. Maybe you don’t remember it, and maybe you’ll feel better convincing yourself you’re just a crier when you’re drunk, but we know better. You get goofy when you’re drunk. Silly. Very silly. But last night, all you could do was cry. You are hurting. You’re just hiding from it.”
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