Reclaiming My Wife

by Jessica Blake

  “Pretty sure I licked that spot fairly clean last night.” His voice was light and teasing, but there was an edge. His playful moves were costing him dearly.

  Two could play at that game.

  Pulling out of his embrace, I turned around and gave him my most seductive smile. “That’s true. You did,” I purred as I leaned over and kissed his chest. “And I never returned the favor, did I?”

  “Ah.” He blinked. “What?”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve done this. Let’s see if I remember what you like.” His breath came out in a whoosh as I lowered myself to my knees in front of him. I remembered exactly what he liked. What made him moan. What made him forget to breathe. What made him lose his mind, that there was a price to pay for teasing me.

  Glancing up at him, I slowly ran my fingers down the length of his cock and smiled when it jumped. His eyes had darkened and his jaw was clenched.

  I hadn’t even gotten started yet.

  “Let’s see. You used to like it when I did this with my nails.” Ever so gently, I teased him as I traced out designs. “Do you remember when we went to your ex’s party, and she tried to tell me that I wasn’t going to last long? I got so pissed that I pushed you in the bathroom and dropped to my knees. Highly uncharacteristic of me, but I wanted to remind you of how I could make you feel.”

  “Vaguely,” he whispered hoarsely.

  He remembered.

  “Now, what did I do next?” I mused. Brendan groaned, and I smiled as I leaned over and kissed the tip. When he inhaled sharply, I quickly ran my tongue along his shaft.

  “Jillian, please,” he begged. “Please, baby. You’re killing me.”

  “I’m killing you? Sweetheart, I haven’t even started yet.” Wrapping my lips around him, I enjoyed his deep moan as I took him in my mouth. I set out to prove that I’d forgotten nothing. I knew his body so well. Knew when he was getting close so I could change the tempo, ease up on the pressure, until nothing but a string of expletives were coming out of his mouth.

  “You’ve made your point,” he hissed as he jerked me up. Turning me around, he bent me over and slammed into me from behind.

  “Yes,” I gasped as he took me hard and deep. The light and playful morning had ended. This was rough, edgy, and everything that I needed from him. The hot water turned tepid, but it still sizzled off us as he drove into me, rubbing over that sweet spot inside of me until I practically melted as the orgasm racked my body.

  “All day,” he chanted. “And all night. I’m not letting you go, Jillian. I’m not.”

  We were going to be dead before it was all over with, but I held on as he shattered inside of me, and more than just lust swept us away.

  ***

  We ended up not getting back until dark. With the exception of the crickets and tree frogs, the ranch was quiet. There was a single light burning upstairs from Kim’s room, and when we stumbled in, still a little punch-drunk from lack of sleep and our marathon adventures in bed, we knocked over the basket of mail next to the counter.

  “Shhh,” I laughed softly. “You’ll wake everyone up.”

  “You’ll wake everyone up,” he muttered loudly before pulling me close for a deep kiss. I was tempted, sorely tempted, to let those hands roam wherever they pleased, but I pushed him away.

  “You’ve had your fun. I need sleep, and I’m going to bed alone.” I poked him in the chest for emphasis, and he just captured my hands and kissed my fingers one by one.

  “Sleep with me, Jillian. I promise that all we’ll do is sleep. Frankly, I’m so tired that I don’t even remember driving us home.”

  “But we won’t sleep if I end up in your bed, will we? You’ll just tell me that you want a goodnight kiss, and then that’ll turn into something else and…”

  “No good night kisses,” he swore before yawning. “Actually, I don’t even think that I can make it up the stairs. Let’s just sleep in your bed.”

  Before I could object, he stumbled through the kitchen and into the guest room. Following, I turned on the light, but he just plopped facedown in the bed.

  He’d be asleep in seconds. I was always envious of that with him. No matter where we were, he was always the first to sleep. I used to toss and turn in the dark and glare at his peaceful sleeping form.

  “Shoes off,” I sighed as I slipped out of my pumps.

  With a grunt, he used his feet to kick them off. “Want to undress me now, baby?”

  I was about to bless him out when we heard the door slamming above us. I froze. Apparently, Kim was home, and she no doubt knew that we were also home.

  Brendan read me like an open book. “Don’t worry about her, Jillian. Just come to bed.”

  “I need to wash my face and brush my teeth. Plus, if I don’t brush my hair, it’ll be a tangled mess,” I murmured, but I walked toward him like I was hypnotized. I fell on the bed, still fully dressed, and he immediately curled around me.

  “Go to sleep, baby,” he whispered.

  Closing my eyes, I did just that.

  Brendan was gone the next morning when I woke up, and I could easily see why. Blinking at the clock, I realized that it was well into the morning. Gasping, I shot up off the bed. I couldn’t even remember the last time that I’d slept in this much. As I frantically gathered some things to take upstairs to shower, I noticed the note on the door from Brendan.

  Seeing you sleeping so peacefully in the morning will be the highlight of my day. If it’s late, don’t panic. You need to relax some. Coffee and a bagel will be waiting for you. Enjoy.

  It made me smile and it also made me want to rip his head off. The fact that we were back in bed together was complicated enough. I didn’t need to be reminded of the sweet and loving side of him.

  I still took his advice though. After a few deep breaths, I calmly went upstairs to shower. For once, it didn’t bother me to walk through his room. His scent was all over my bed, all over me, so it didn’t matter that his musky aroma encircled me as I passed through.

  It seemed ridiculous to take a shower before I was about to head out to the stables, but I smelled like sex, and that wasn’t really the impression that I wanted to give everyone. The cold water helped me to shake things loose and think things through a little more clearly. Whatever was going on with us needed to be kept quiet. I had a hard enough time deciding on how I felt about it without everyone else shooting me knowing looks.

  After I showered, I dressed and poured a cup of coffee to go. Snagging the bagel, I grabbed my bag and headed outside to check on Silva. He’d been improving in leaps and bounds, and I enjoyed spending the morning in the stables and reading my dissertation out loud to him.

  He wasn’t much of an audience, but it helped for me to collect my own thoughts.

  The barn wasn’t empty when I went in. Seeing Kim opening the gate to Darling’s stall gave me pause, but I wasn’t about to run from her. “Good morning,” I announced as I walked in. “I’m sorry that I slept so late.”

  She whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes. “No need to apologize to me,” she grunted. “I don’t really care how late you sleep. Of course, who you sleep with might be a problem.”

  I could have pointed out that all Brendan and I did was sleep last night, but there wasn’t much of a point. We got very little sleep over the weekend. “I really don’t see how that would be any of your business,” I said coolly. “Not only are we both adults, but it’s actually legal.”

  “It’s my damn business because he’s my brother. It’s my damn business because this is my ranch too,” Kim snapped. “It’s my damn business because I don’t want you pretending to be in love with my brother just so you can take a shot at his money. What? He wasn’t good enough for you when he was broke, but he is now that he’s wealthy?”

  Immediately, I stiffened. “If I cared about your brother’s money, I wouldn’t have married him when he didn’t have two nickels to rub together. He had no plans to return to this ranch, and I didn’t give a
damn if we were broke our entire lives.”

  “Sure you didn’t,” she sneered. Darling whinnied nervously and stamped her feet, but Kim didn’t pay any attention to her. “Convenient how it all worked for you, didn’t it? A fake divorce just so you can come back once he’s head of the family fortune.”

  The idea was so unbelievable that I just tossed my head back and laughed. “You think that I set up a fake divorce? Just so I could maybe break his heart enough to run back home? I’ve got news for you, sweetheart. That divorce that you hate me so much for wasn’t even my damn idea.”

  The bottle crashed to the floor and splintered into pieces. His face was red with anger, and his fists were clenched. “What do you want from me?” he asked hoarsely. “You won’t talk to me. You won’t let me touch you. What are we supposed to be to each other, Jillian?”

  Trembling, I stared at him. He’d been gone for days. Days, and I hadn’t heard a word from him. “I want…” The words got caught in my throat. I wanted him to forgive me. I wanted to hear that he still loved me.

  “A divorce?”

  The words sliced through me, and I flinched. I wanted to scream at him. Of course I didn’t want a divorce. I was his wife. It was the only thing that kept me going.

  “Do you want a divorce, Jillian?”

  Fueled by the pain that seared through me, I was on a roll as I rounded on his sister. “I guess you think that I faked that miscarriage too and all the nights that I spent crying alone because he was nowhere to be found. Or maybe I faked the arguments where he told me that I’d let part of me die with our baby? Are you going to blame me for that too?”

  In my anger, I almost missed the blood rush from her face. She went from blazing mad to pale and ashen in a matter of seconds. As her pretty eyes widened and her jaw dropped, I realized that she didn’t know.

  He’d never told her.

  Her heartbreak was written all over her face. In that moment, I’d made her an aunt and just as quickly taken away the baby. “Jillian,” she managed softly.

  “We’d known for weeks that we were going to be parents. It was why he married me in the first place.” Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “Then we went to the appointment to learn the baby’s gender, and that’s when they told us. No heartbeat. The doctor told us that it just happened sometimes. No one knew why.”

  Even now, it was hard to talk about it.

  “He never said a word.” Kim’s eyes filled with tears. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “I don’t know. We were young, lost, and he wasn’t really talking to his father. We handled the whole situation poorly. We don’t even talk about it now.” I put my hand on my belly. “Kim, I didn’t try to divorce your brother because I didn’t love him or because he wasn’t good enough for me. We left each other because we weren’t the same after that. Maybe if we’d been older or more mature, we could have handled it. I never expected Brendan Ward to come waltzing back into my life, and I sure as hell didn’t realize that we were still married. I’d moved on with my life.”

  “Really?” Kim shook her head. “Because it sounds to me that it wouldn’t be possible for the two of you to get over it unless you talked about it. Isn’t that what a therapist would say?”

  Of course she’d say something like that. Deep down, I knew that she was right, but I also knew that it wasn’t something I thought Brendan could handle. And we weren’t through playing this little charade of his.

  Or maybe it just wasn’t something that I could handle.

  “We’re not trying to fix things, Kim. Brendan wants his land, and I want to make sure that our marriage and failed divorce don’t ruin my chances of a successful career. This isn’t us trying to give it another chance. I shouldn’t be sleeping with him. I know it, and I’m sure that he knows it, but I guess that spark just never went away. But sex can just be sex without anyone’s heart getting involved.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie. It was just a lie where we were concerned. “We’re both going to get through this without getting hurt.”

  “If you believe that, then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought,” she snorted. “But I have a feeling that you aren’t going to have to worry about your career.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Pulling her phone out of the pocket of her tight jeans, she pulled something up and handed it to me. “Because you’re the hottest thing trending on social media right now.”

  Horrified, I looked at the picture of Cindy and me outside the dress shop. It was a good picture of both of us, but that was the only thing good about it. Apparently, newspapers and magazines across the country were speculating about Cindy’s therapist. Most had concluded that I was so exclusive that I worked only with the stars.

  “This is a nightmare,” I moaned. “I’m not really Cindy’s therapist. She doesn’t pay me.”

  “Doesn’t matter now. It’s a good thing that you’re in hiding here at the ranch. I was about to finish up with Darling and then head out to find Brendan and tell him. Your last name might not be printed, but Blackwell would have to live under a rock to not see this picture and recognize you. I hope this doesn’t ruin our chances.”

  Damn it, I hadn’t even thought about that. “I’m going to call Cindy and see if she can do some damage control.”

  I handed the phone back to her, and she reached across and hugged me suddenly. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you. Maybe you’ll give me a second chance?”

  Second chances?

  Were they even possible? Could the pain and hurt that occurred between one chance and another ever go away?

  “I’d love nothing more.” Feeling strange, I hugged her back. Technically, she was my sister-in-law, and in another life, we might have been friends, but I wasn’t sure that we were going to have a relationship when this was all over.

  How could we? I’d planned on having nothing to do with Brendan once we walked away, and that included his family.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Brendan

  I noticed the limousine first. I thought my little silver sports car stood out amongst the grimy pickup trucks and the John Deere tractor, but it was nothing compared to the white sleek stretch. The setting sun reflected off it and set off a glare that was bound to be seen from miles around.

  The next thing I noticed was the whispers among the ranch hands and the furtive looks. It lasted for at least thirty minutes, and by the time I was ready to check over the work for the day, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

  “What the hell?” I grumbled.

  I’d been busy all day. Spending the weekend away had been good for me, and spending the weekend with Jillian wrapped around me had been very good for me, but it meant playing catch-up. The vision of Jillian still sleeping in the bed kept me going all day. All I could think about was getting my lips on her once I’d finished up work.

  The woman was a powerful motivator.

  And now that I was ready to get my hands on her, there wasn’t anyone around. No Ben. No Debra. No Mickie. Not even my sister to harp on me about sleeping with Jillian.

  When someone did walk into the office I’d set up at the main barn, it wasn’t the person I was expecting. Gordon leaned against the door and gave me a strange look.

  “What? Did your man find something?”

  “He did,” he said slowly. “But that’s not why I’m confused.”

  I waited, but he didn’t give another explanation. “Gordon, spit it out. What the hell has you in a tangle?”

  “I’m trying to decide how my best friend can host the woman of my dreams at his ranch and not tell me? I’m actually considering ending our friendship over this. You stealing Leslie Bishop from me in the fifth grade was one thing, but I don’t think that I can forgive this.”

  “First of all, I didn’t steal Leslie Bishop. You cheated on her with Jennifer Key, and the poor girl just went running into my arms. Secondly, I’m fairly certain you’ve met all the women on this ranch.”

  “
It’s like you don’t even know that Cindy Collins is currently in your house entertaining all your workers,” he said mildly.

  I moved so fast that the soup can of pens I kept on the desk flew off onto the floor. The damn actress was on my ranch and nobody had the decency to tell me? “I’m going to kill her,” I growled.

  “Kill Cindy? Can you wait until I make a move first? I think she’s still single, and if Jillian really is her therapist, I might have a shot.”

  “Jillian is not her therapist. At least, not a paid one. And how do you know about that?” I stopped my hurried stride to the house and stared at him.

  “It’s pretty much everywhere,” Gordon said as he pulled out his phone. “Is your head buried in the sand today? Jillian and Cindy were seen shopping together this weekend before Cindy’s award ceremony. Can you believe that she didn’t win? I thought she was a shoe-in. Anyway, Cindy introduced Jillian as pretty much the best therapist in the world. The whole nation is trying to figure out who Jillian is.”

  “Great. Just great.” I scrolled through the article and ran the back of my hand over my brow. “At least Blackwell knows that Jillian and I had been on a break. Otherwise, this would have been a disaster. It might still be a disaster. Therapist to the stars? It’s not the homebody ranch wife he’s been looking for.”

  He took his phone back, and his expression darkened just a little. “I’m not sure that I would worry about Blackwell anymore. There isn’t a chance in hell that he knows what his son is doing, and once he finds out, he probably won’t be able to sell you the land fast enough.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked as shouts and laughter rose from the main house. “Never mind. One crisis at a time.”

  As I entered the house, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The actress was sitting on the kitchen counter, and every single one of my employees plus my own sister were crowded in the room and staring at her like an idle to be worshipped. As the actress talked, it was clear that she was adoring the attention.