All Other Things, page 2
“Hey—you okay?” he asked. Probably because she’d been standing there too long, gawking like a perverted moron. It was embarrassing, really. A few minutes spent staring at her husband and her nipples had stiffened beneath the material of her t-shirt. A low ache had started up between her legs, as though it was somehow wrong or illicit to be doing this.
Even though that was crazy. No person in the world thought it was wrong and illicit to find pleasure in the naked body of their husband. They only thought it was wrong and illicit to find pleasure in the naked body of their husband while the words I’d never stray flashed in neon at the back of their mind.
She closed her eyes, briefly, and tried to think straight. Tried to think like Kieran, instead of about him. What would he do now, if that were his wife in there?
Get in with her, she thought, but that proved right out of the question. Mainly because thinking it only prompted some lurid fantasy about Kieran getting into the shower behind her, to soap her back and persuade her into a little wet sex.
It wouldn’t have taken much, she realized. Not in the state she was in. Most of her just wanted to sink to the ground under the weight of this thrumming, all-consuming arousal. She could feel liquid running between the cheeks of her arse, and when she moved everything seemed too slick and too full.
And then Tommy got out of the shower—as naked as anyone could be—and suddenly her legs didn’t want to hold her up anymore. He looked incredible, just incredible… God, how had anyone as handsome and amazing as him ever wanted to marry her?
Because he never has to have sex with you, a little voice answered, and as ridiculous as that seemed she couldn’t deny it as a possibility. If you were the kind of guy who never wanted to have sex, who better to marry than a plain and prudish-seeming woman?
Kieran had said as much about her. Of course, he hadn’t said the plain part. In fact, he’d said the exact opposite of that and, oh God, she didn’t really want to think about it. But she could actually think about the other thing, the prudish thing.
Was that what Tommy had thought? That she would make a quiet and undemanding wife, sex-wise?
“Honey? You okay?”
Lord, he looked so innocent and hopeful then. Blue eyes wide, face absolutely smothered by a grin. She could tell it would just crush him to know that she was extremely far from okay.
“Great. Perfect. You want a towel?” she asked, mainly because the sight of him, dripping and naked, was starting to hurt her eyes. He looked so solid in their little white bathroom, so solid and real.
And he had all that dark chest hair too—which appeared even darker when wet—and the big, broad shoulders. By comparison, Kieran barely seemed like anything at all. Her husband topped six-five. What was Kieran? Five-eleven? Possibly six foot?
Nothing, really.
“That’d be cool, hon,” he said, and then he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
She felt pretty sure he didn’t know how much of a tease that was. He didn’t seem to see her eyes drift closed, for the barest second. And when he pulled away—the towel she’d held out to him in his hand—he’d already moved on to a new subject.
His kisses were nothing. They were the kisses you’d give a child.
“You know I’ve got to work late tomorrow, right?” he asked as he checked his reflection in the mirror above the sink. She watched him mussing his hair this way and that, the copper hints shining through the dark even when wet, and thought of Kieran.
Kieran, who never mussed his hair. Kieran, who would never pretend to be working late so he could cheat.
She had to face it. Tommy had chosen a plain wife because he had seven hundred gorgeous mistresses.
“Sure,” she said as everything inside her sank. Cosmo definitely had things to say about husbands working late. Definitely.
He glanced at her then, one hand still poised mid-muss. His face ever ready with a smile.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, as though her true feelings had written themselves across her face and for once he could read it.
It made her want to straighten her expression out, to make it as brilliantly happy as his always looked, and that was not good at all. The false world they’d built around themselves was apparently a lot tougher than she’d first suspected.
“Of course not,” she said, and then he reached down and scooped her up into his arms. Like a doll, she thought, like a doll or a child or anything, anything that isn’t a woman with real sexual needs.
Though when he did it, she understood how easily he got away with it. It wasn’t even getting away with anything, really. He just picked her up and shook her about and snuggled her, and said silly things like oh I love loads of you, my little pickle, and then she simply had to giggle.
He made it easy to giggle, and forget. To put an arm around his broad shoulders and let him carry her into the bedroom. When he sprawled her across the bed, limbs tangling and the wetness of him kissing her skin, she could almost forget how much she needed something more.
He was her big, sweet guy. Her big, sweet, very handsome guy and oh she couldn’t resist kissing him. Not a child’s kiss, not a nothing kiss—a real one, hot and open-mouthed.
He wasn’t ready for it, she could tell. It came out too desperate and weird—the kind of kiss you’d give to someone in the back of a cab, when you weren’t sure which way the night was going. Did this guy you’d just met want to sleep with you or not?
It felt kind of like he did. Something seemed less than soft between his legs. And when she pushed her tongue into his mouth, he pressed the less-than-soft thing against her thigh—so firmly it was thrilling.
She couldn’t help moaning into his mouth. This was it—sex. After two weeks and three days he was finally going to give it to her again. He felt hot beneath her equally feverish touch, and when she shifted her body just a little—not enough to disturb the mood, but enough to get some contact between her own legs—he ran a hand down over her arse.
He never ran a hand down over her arse. It was definitely going to happen. Kieran was wrong, he was wrong, and when she pushed a hand between their bodies and felt the thick length of him, it seemed like triumph.
Or it did until he rolled off her, so suddenly she hardly had a chance to catch her breath. One second he had his tongue almost in her mouth and his hand close to squeezing her arse, the next second she felt like a slutty fool, spread-eagled on the bed with no man to fill the space above her.
“Sorry, hon,” he said. Of course he did. He always said sorry, hon. She could almost mouth the next words he uttered along with him. “I’m just so tired.”
Tired. Jesus. What would Kieran have to say about tired? Probably that she was a huge idiot for failing to initiate a hot, steamy fuck session. You’re a sexual dishrag, he’d say. No pulse, no power, as weak as a kitten.
God, it had to be bad when she spent her time mentally berating herself on behalf of another person.
“Tommy,” she started, though words didn’t want to come. All the breath in her body seemed to be blocking them, and it got worse the more she tried to push them out. “Is anything wrong?”
It sounded like a death knell before she’d even gotten to the heart of the matter. She practically felt him freeze next to her, as though she’d shot an arrow into his perfect big heart.
“No,” he said, half-bemused. But then quieter, quieter. “Why? Is there something wrong with you, hon?”
How could she answer then? He was perfect. He was just tired. She should be satisfied.
“No. No—nothing wrong. It’s just…” Go on, you great idiot, Kieran said in her head. “You don’t seem to want to have sex very often.”
This time the Kieran in her head ran across a field in football shorts and jersey, then booted the ball right into the back of the net. She shoots, she scores— Well done, girl.
“Really?” Tommy asked. He sounded genuinely surprised. Her body felt genuinely electric. “Huh. I hadn’t really thought about it… I guess I haven’t!”
God, trust him to sound so…cheery about it. Like hey, it’s no big deal! She wanted to take him by the shoulders and scream at him that it was a big deal. She had another man running around in her head, scoring goals when she managed to live up to his bizarre ideals, for fuck’s sake.
Everything was not cool in Happy Land. The magical pixies had run away and the laughing fairy queen had been replaced by a rumpled Irish man with a sex toy in his luggage.
“I mean—you’d tell me if there was a problem, right?” she asked, though most of her wanted to say something else instead.
I have a problem. I do.
“Oh Bea, honey. Of course I would,” he said, and when she dared to look at him, his face was all openness. Still full of smiles, still as golden and handsome as always. And his voice fair near dripped sincerity—as warm and silky as just-vacated sheets. “Honestly—work has just been so tough lately. We’ve got the big merger coming up, the departments are shifting…”
He stopped then. Leaned back in to gaze at her a bit, with his foggy, blue eyes.
“Hey. You’re my girl, okay? And I promise, I’ll stop neglecting my girl as soon as things are less crazy at work.”
And when he kissed her…whoo Lord. It felt like the first time he’d ever done it, under the arches on their way back from lunch. Him still just some guy she’d sold insurance to, everything normal and normal and normal and then bam.
His soft mouth on hers, suddenly, pulling at the tender skin there. Catching her bottom lip between his two plump ones, everything so slow and arousing at the same time that she’d masturbated later, thinking about it.
She had a feeling she was going to masturbate thinking about this later too. When he pulled away she felt breathless, agitated. Her clit pulsed once, insistently, and then he was gone. He was turning off the light.
“Good night, Bea,” he said, and oh God, she just wanted to curl up and die, she did, she absolutely did. He had no problem drifting off to sleep with his arm across her middle, while all she could think was—
Could a person die of arousal?
Chapter Two
She snapped awake at some ungodly hour, like 3:30 in the morning, sure of one thing and one thing only. Her dream had been about Kieran, and Kieran hadn’t been doing pure and wholesome things in it, and she’d woken up because in between poking his filthy tongue into her ear, he’d whispered something she couldn’t quite hear.
Something like time to get up now.
And then she turned over in bed and found the space next to her empty. As though the devil-Kieran in her head had snuck into her bedroom in the middle of the night and stolen her husband away. She’d made him into one of those goblins from stories about people being replaced with eggs and the like.
She put a hand over her face and tried to restore sanity.
Only the empty space next to her wouldn’t let anything like that happen. The empty space said, Hey, your head is full of another man, you cheating whore. Or it didn’t say that, exactly—really it was much more like, Hey, go find out where your poor husband is.
Though in truth she felt the sentiment was much the same.
She scrubbed her face once and swung out of bed. Likely as not he’d be at the computer, adding things to a proposal he was developing or a marketing budget he had to oversee. Sometimes she even got up in the middle of the night and found him hacking someone to death on World of Warcraft.
Though this was the first time she found herself hoping for the latter. If he was up because what she’d said had unsettled him, she was going to kill herself.
And in truth, it could have done. It hadn’t seemed to, but then again she still remembered the time she’d vaguely mocked his choice of ties and only discovered later that he’d binned them all and bought new ones in the exact color she’d suggested.
Things seemed to bounce off him, because he was big and golden and perfect. But really… Really she didn’t think anything bounced at all. Most stuff got under his smiling skin, she knew it did.
And that, above all, was what made things hard. Nobody wants to be the one to take away the sunshine from someone so sunny. She certainly didn’t want to be the one to do it.
Which was why she found herself approaching his study, slowly and with a million comforting words in her head. Words like, It’s really no big deal if you’re tired. I completely understand and am not horny in the slightest. Also, I love you and only you, always.
She mentally scratched that last one, just as she got to the half-open door. It sounded guilty, and by God she would never be guilty of anything. Thoughts were not actions, and actions would never, ever happen. Never. Ever.
Not even if her husband decided he wanted to have sex with people via his computer.
At first, she didn’t get it. Of course, she could see him sitting at his desk with his back to her, and she could tell that he was neither playing a game nor writing a report. But the pieces didn’t coalesce. They were just words on a screen, words that flickered by faster than she could read them—they could have meant anything.
Until she thought of Kieran saying, Any man who says otherwise is a liar.
Her husband was a liar. Or at least he hadn’t told the whole truth. He’d claimed tiredness, but here he was at 3:30 a.m., messaging someone. Some babe probably, who’d get her tits out on a webcam very shortly.
She tried to slow her breathing, tried to calm down. If her heart beat any harder he was going to hear it—and really, that was the last thing she wanted him to do. As terrifying as this was, she needed him to carry on, and if he noticed her hovering so dangerously close to him he’d stop. He’d pretend it wasn’t happening, flick to some game, smile too brightly.
Whereas this… This was real. It revealed the true face of her husband, and she had to see what it looked like before he turned away. She had to. And God, the words were just big enough for her to see.
Some of them were blocked by his shoulder, but not enough. She could tell at the very least that he’d picked the name Tom359 for himself. And the person he was talking to had the handle Wakewood.
Weird,she thought, then hot on its heels—it’s a pun. Wake. Wood. Scare up an erection, etc.
She wanted to roll her eyes, and couldn’t. She wanted to frown, and couldn’t. Her body had frozen in place, bare feet welded to the wooden floor, eyes eating up every word she could get at.
Tell me about her mouth again, the words said, but she couldn’t for a second imagine who this person meant. Some other babe Tommy had jerked off to recently? He was jerking off now, she could tell. She’d never seen him do it, but the rhythm was unmistakable. It passed through his body to his shoulder, which fair near rippled with whatever sensation he was provoking.
And she could hear it. The slick click-clack of a hand on a cock, so reminiscent of a million adolescent fumblings she’d experienced in the back of Malcolm Braithwaite’s Ford Fiesta. So viscerally, involuntarily exciting—just as it had been back then.
She watched him reply one-handed, her body humming. Breath catching in her throat. Disgust and arousal warred inside her, with disgust coming out the loser. She wasn’t even sure if disgust was the right word, when she really thought about it.
It felt more like…wonder. Especially when Tommy typed—
She always wets her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, so everything looks slick and shiny constantly. And her upper lip only curves right in the middle, almost like—
The words cut off then. His shoulder blocked the rest of them—though she could make out the next line.
And when she does it, she always looks up at me with these dark, hungry eyes.
She wondered if it was possible to actually stop breathing and not die. It felt as though her body had forgotten how to take in oxygen, and that was before they hammered out their next exchange.
It’s not kind to starve a girl,Wakewood said, because of the hungry comment. Because of the hungry, obviously-talking-about-a-blowjob comment.
And then Tommy answered—
What should I do then?
While she died on the spot.
He was… What was he doing, exactly? Talking about blowjobs with a stranger, talking about some other girl and what he wanted to do to her? Only it wasn’t some other girl, was it? The mouth that only went up right in the middle, the way she liked to lick her lower lip…
He was talking about her. He’d decided to talk online to some woman about his wife, for reasons unknown to man or beast. She got, Oh hey I’m so tired, and this online person got descriptions of all the things he wasn’t doing to her.
She could have punched him. She very nearly pushed open the door and announced her presence, at the very least. And she would have done, if Wakewood hadn’t then typed—
If I were you, I’d go to her right now. I bet she’s all warm from the bedclothes and still as horny as fuck. So I’d turn her over all gently, you know—so as not to wake her completely. And then I’d run my tongue between the cheeks of her arse until she moaned for me to stop.
She felt grateful for one thing—Tommy had leaned back in the chair enough for her to read the whole thing. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if she’d only been given half of those lurid, delicious, impossible words.
And oh God, they went on.
I can’t do that, Tommy typed, but he was a little fucking liar. She could hear him jerking off even more vigorously than he had been before, and when Wakewood added a few more choice words he actually made a sound of pleasure or frustration. A little groan, of the kind he’d never made for her.
And once I’d finished licking her neat little arsehole, and made it all nice and wet, I’d spread her cheeks and sink my finger all the way in to the hilt.
It almost seemed natural that Tommy then typed, no, no. He’d never so much as glanced at the general area this person was talking about. And yet he was still stroking his cock, and when Wakewood continued typing the lewdest, most obscene things, that little no, no started to look more and more like the protestations of a virtuous maiden, swooning in a rake’s arms.
