Wicked Wish, page 8
Walsh straightens and pushes his plate away, his eggs half-eaten, his toast ignored. “What happened?”
I shrug and push my food around my plate, not overly hungry because this conversation turned heavy. “I miscarried before we got married, but we went ahead and did it anyway. I mean… we loved each other, so why not? My point being, we didn’t necessarily get married because we felt we would spend the rest of our lives together.”
“If you love each other, you should talk things out,” Walsh says, but his voice is tight. I wonder if he’s saying that because he believes in the sanctity of marriage or he just wants to push me away.
I’m not ready to accept either of those right now, so I turn the tables. “What about your marriage?”
I expect this to put Walsh on guard and maybe turn him defensive, but he acts all casual now as he leans back over the counter and grabs his fork. “What about it?”
He takes a bite, chews as if this is the easiest thing in the world to have a conversation about, and watches me… waits for me to ask more.
“Why did you get divorced?” I ask, not sure I want to know about how he got to the marriage part.
“We didn’t have a lot of compatibility to make it long term,” he tells me.
“But you had some compatibility,” I push.
“Well, yeah, Jorie,” he says with a smirk. “I didn’t just marry some woman off the street.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
Ugh… why does that bother me?
“How were you incompatible? You’re pushing me to work things out with Vince, so why didn’t you work things out in your marriage?”
Walsh swallows some eggs he’d forked into his mouth, takes a napkin, and wipes his mouth while he appraises me, as if he’s trying to figure out if I really want to know the truth to the questions I just asked.
Finally, he says, “The only thing we really had in common was sex. It was…”
He trails off as if trying to find the right word, so I supply it for him. “Good?”
“Fantastic,” he corrects, and that makes my stomach sink. “It was so incredible for both of us, we thought it meant more than it did. In the end, it was just great sex. That wasn’t enough to overcome all the other areas where we just weren’t aligned.”
“Like what?” I can’t help but ask, because I want to compare her to myself.
“We had sex without a condom,” Walsh says in return.
“Well, yeah… you were married. Why would that be an incompatibility?”
Walsh shakes his head, his eyes focusing hard on me. “You and I had sex without a condom. Half an hour ago. I didn’t ask your permission, and you didn’t protest.”
“That’s true,” I say hesitantly, because he’s veered so far off course from talking about his marriage that I’m having a tough time keeping up. Also, just thinking about the way he felt inside of me as he came, and the way he leaked out of me after…
I shake my head to get out of my head.
“Jorie… we had unprotected sex, and you don’t seem to care.”
“I’m on the pill,” I tell him, even though he already knows since he did ask me about it just before thrusting inside of me.
Walsh rolls his eyes at me and growls, “Aren’t you worried about STDs?”
My eyebrows knit in confusion. “No, why should I?”
“Jorie,” Walsh says in exasperation. “Safe sex. STDs. How can you not be worried?”
Then it hits me. Walsh really doesn’t understand that even though we haven’t seen each other in years, it doesn’t mean I don’t know his core being.
“You’d never hurt me,” I tell him simply. “You would have never taken it upon yourself to expose me to something like that. I figure if you took me without protection, you did so because you were clean. So, no… I wasn’t worried then and I’m not worried now.”
I expect this reasoning to make Walsh happy, but his jaw tightens. I’m insightful enough to know that he doesn’t want me believing in him so much, because while he may never expose me to physical harm, I’m sure he’s worried about the emotional wreckage someone like him could leave behind.
With a curt nod to my plate, Walsh says, “Finish up. I’m going to get a shower, and then I can have my driver take you back to your car.”
I’m silent as Walsh puts his plate in the sink and turns to his bedroom. I have a million things I want do, none of which I can.
I want to crawl naked into the shower with him, take him back into my mouth, and make him see me as something other than a little sister.
I want to pull him back to the counter and make him talk to me. I want to know more about his marriage, and why he is so opposed to relationships now. I want to know if we could ever be anything to each other than just sex.
But I can tell he’s closed off for now, and I should back off. Walsh is a man who doesn’t like to be pushed too far, and I’m a woman smart enough to know how to play this cool.
Still, I can’t help but call out. “Walsh?”
He stops, turns slightly to look at me.
“Why weren’t you worried about having unprotected sex with me? You didn’t ask me if I was clean.”
“Same as you,” he says quietly. “I knew you’d never do something to hurt me. You were trying to push my bare cock into you, and you would have only done that if you were safe.”
My heart soars with his admission that we’re tight enough he trusted me on something that’s important in a sexual relationship. I’m satisfied enough to let him walk off without any further conversation.
CHAPTER 11
Walsh
Taking a deep breath, I step up to the rack, squat, and position the bar over the back of my shoulders. It’s loaded with three hundred and twenty-five pounds. Certainly not my personal best, but I’m not going for heavyweight, only repetitions.
I take another breath, push up against the weight to stand straight, then take two steps back from the rack. I exhale, inhale again, and squat. The breath pushes out of me hard as I stand back up.
I do this for a total of six reps and then manage to maneuver the barbell back onto the rack. I’m streaming sweat from every pore in my body, and my legs are shaking from that last set.
One of the perks of being incredibly wealthy is having all the toys. I’d outfitted my apartment with a world-class gym, and I take advantage of it every single day. If I’m not power-lifting, I’m running. I’m doing something every day because exercise is the second-best way for me to destress from my hectic life.
Sex obviously being the first one, but that situation’s all fucked up, so I worked out extra hard tonight after I left the office.
Grabbing a towel and my water, I first mop my face, then drink the entire contents of the bottle. I toss it in the waste bin that my housekeeper will ensure gets to recycling, and head to my master bath for a shower.
Just as I’m entering my bedroom, I hear my phone vibrating on the nightstand where I’d left it with the ringer turned off and charging. As I walk closer, I see Micah’s name on the screen.
I’d like to avoid him right now, but that will do nothing but feed my guilt, so I answer it reluctantly.
“What’s up, man?” I say casually as if the weight of his little sister weren’t resting on my shoulders.
“Not much,” he says. “Just checking in with you. Did Jorie get up with you?”
“What?” I ask, freaked his first question would be about his sister.
“She texted me yesterday morning for your phone number,” Micah says casually, apparently not picking up on my distress, thank fuck. “Said she was in Vegas and was going to try to get up with you for lunch.”
Fuck. Is he testing me? Did Jorie tell him we talked? Had lunch? Do I lie? Do I tell him the truth that we did, in fact, hookup but not for lunch. We hooked up and fucked all night.
Goddamn it.
“Um… no,” I say, throwing caution to the wind and lying my ass off. “She didn’t.”
I wince and wait for Micah’s next words, my entire frame feeling weak with the guilt for what I’m doing. I’m not always a good guy, but I am loyal and forthright with my friends. Especially Micah.
Always with Micah, actually.
Until I fucked Jorie.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Well, you might want to give her a call,” Micah suggests, and I exhale so hard in relief my lungs almost completely deflate. “I think she’s been a little down since all this shit with Vince. It would be nice for her to see a friendly face.”
Like friendly as in my face between her legs? Because she’s seen that plenty.
“Yeah, sure thing, buddy,” I say as I walk into my bathroom, then move to change the subject. “What’s up with you?”
“Aren’t you going to ask for her number?” Micah asks.
More guilt… a punch to the gut that I’m doing something Micah would go ballistic and would probably sever our friendship over. “I’m getting ready to jump in the shower and don’t have anything to write it down with. Just text it to me,” I say easily.
“Will do,” he returns. “So, I’m working on an updated design for a power dildo.”
I laugh, relieved to be talking about dildos with my best friend. “What’s the concept?” I ask as I turn on the shower and step back to let the water warm up. I lean against the marbled vanity as I listen to Micah explain.
The man is a brilliant engineer and founded a premier firm in San Francisco almost five years ago. He’d started out in Michigan after graduating from college, soaked up as much knowledge on the business side as he could, and moved to northern California after Jorie turned of age.
But despite his success and money, he’s turned a kinky hobby into a business concept that might have some legs. He started dabbling in these sex machines just to get his girlfriends’ rocks off, but Jerico paid him good money for that dildo machine and the chance to try it out, and a niche business suddenly looks to be feasible. Micah can certainly do it on the side and still maintain his professional business.
“What do you think?” he asks me solemnly after he tells me about the concept.
Let’s see… he envisions a contraption that will hoist a spread-eagled, tied-with-rope woman in the air and drill a mechanical power dildo into her from above?
“Fucking fantastic idea,” I tell him, and my dick gets rock hard as an image of Jorie in that contraption erupts within my mind.
Christ. My hand goes to rub myself through my gym shorts, but then my erection starts to fade when Micah says, “Thought you’d like that. But listen… I got to go. I’m texting you Jorie’s number. Maybe take her out to lunch or breakfast or something, okay? Help get her mind off that asshole husband of hers.”
“Okay,” I say hoarsely as a wave of shame from my deception threatens to render me impotent forever.
That’s it. Decision made. I absolutely cannot do this with Jorie.
“Thanks, man,” he says. “You’re the best.”
“Back at you,” I mutter, and we say our goodbyes.
I turn and set my phone on the vanity, the shower now emitting steam from behind me. Morose eyes stare back at me from the mirror. There’s a woman I want more than anything in the world, and I absolutely cannot have her.
Micah made sure of that three years ago after my divorce finalized with Renee.
It was a time to get together with my best friend and confidant. To mourn the loss of my marriage, or perhaps it was to celebrate since it started a new chapter in my life. Micah never came to Vegas because he hated the glitz and touristy nature. He had no family left at all except for Jorie, and she was in Los Angeles living her life. I often chartered a plane to San Francisco to party with Micah, so it was the logical place for me to go the weekend after I got the divorce papers filed.
We got drunk.
Well, I got supremely drunk that first night.
Shit faced.
I woke up in his apartment, in the guest bedroom with a naked woman on top of me. I remember raising my throbbing head off the pillow and looking at her with bleary eyes, not recognizing her or remembering a damn thing about what we did.
After I rolled her off me, I stumbled into Micah’s kitchen, jonesing for some coffee and promising myself I’d never drink again. My stomach was threatening to rebel. My headache was so intense everything was blurry.
I found Micah in the kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, sipping at his coffee. He didn’t greet me, but I didn’t notice at the time, or think anything was off.
After pouring my coffee, I sat across the table and muttered, “Sorry about the woman in there. Hope we weren’t too loud.”
Micah put his cup down. “We brought her home together.”
Despite the pain in my head, my eyebrows raise in interest. We’d shared women before, but it had been a long time. “I don’t remember. What did I miss?”
“The usual,” he said, which meant one of us had her pussy and the other had her ass at the same time.
“Let me get my stomach and head settled, and we can give her a nice send-off,” I told him with a grin, then winced at the pain that caused.
“You really don’t remember?” Micah asked, and that’s when I noted something funny in his voice.
I didn’t shake my head in denial because it would have hurt too much, but I told him the truth. “Completely blacked out. How much did I drink last night?”
“Enough to make you black out, apparently,” he said with heat to his voice.
“Did I do something to piss you off?” I asked flatly.
Micah’s eyes narrowed. “Does my sister Jorie ring a bell?”
I honestly had no clue what he was talking about. Jorie had been living in Los Angeles for several years. I hadn’t seen her in forever, and didn’t know much of what was going on other than she was married to some financial advisor or some shit like that.
“Jorie?” I asked in confusion.
“You don’t remember the shit you told me last night?” he asked with disbelief.
Dread welled up inside of me, because that could only mean a couple of things. I either professed my attraction to his sister, or I spilled the beans about what happened to her when she was sixteen, a secret Jorie and I had kept solidly together.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?” I asked, but I sure as hell didn’t want to know the answer.
“After we fucked that woman in there,” he said with a jerk of his head toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms, “we came out to the living room and drank some more. You were bitching and moaning about Renee.”
“Bitching and moaning?” This was odd because Renee and I mutually decided to end the marriage. There was nothing really to bitch or moan about, except for the fact I was going to miss having sex with her.
“About how you shouldn’t have bothered with marrying her.”
I could totally see me saying that because it was the truth. I was smart enough to have a prenup signed with Renee, but she still left the marriage with a nice chunk of my money. Still, I didn’t begrudge it to her. I knew what I was getting into.
“What does that have to do with Jorie?” I asked.
“You started talking weird shit about Jorie,” Micah said. “It made no sense.”
“Like what?” I prodded, my stomach tightening, the one sip of coffee I’d had threatening to come up.
“That you didn’t have a special bond with Renee, not the way you did with Jorie,” he said, and bile rose in my throat. “I asked you what that meant, but you just kept repeating that, all slurred and not making sense.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly.
“Until you appeared to sober up miraculously for just a moment,” Micah said through gritted teeth. “You looked at me and said, ‘If you could have just seen the way she looked at me, brother… I’ve never had anyone look at me like that before.”
I wanted to mutter every curse word in the dictionary, because while I had no recollection about what I’d said while drunk, I knew exactly what I was referencing.
I was talking about the moment I walked into that bathroom in that hotel suite to rescue Jorie. When I walked in that door, the utter look of worship in her eyes almost made me stumble. Like I was her hero, or that if she never saw another thing as long as she lived, she’d be satisfied with that one moment where I came to save her.
“Did you fuck my sister?” Micah growled.
“What?” I barked back at him, stunned he would even think that. He actually jerked his head back at my tone. “Fuck, no. Why would you ever ask me something like that?”
“What did you expect me to think?” he retorted, but the heat had died from his voice. “What did you mean ‘the way she looked at you’?”
This was dicey. I couldn’t share Jorie’s secret.
I lied for the first time about Jorie to my best friend who was like my brother. “I don’t know, Micah. Maybe I was talking about how when we were growing up together, and Jorie would fucking follow us around all the time. She looked up to us, man. We were her heroes, dude. Surely you remember that?”
I hated turning the tables on him like that, but I had to deflect the pressure off me. Micah’s eyes softened as he admitted, “Yeah… that little monster wouldn’t leave us alone.”
“She was a little monster, wasn’t she?” I chuckled with relief. “Look… you know I love Jorie like a sister. I have no clue why she came into the conversation about Renee last night, but maybe I just wanted that from my marriage. To be her hero or something.”
God those words tasted like shit on my tongue. Not only from the lie inside of them but because I never in my life wanted to be that to a woman. I’d been that to Jorie for just a few hours of my life and the connection was so intense, it was almost painful. Letting her go completely from that type of emotional connection sucked hairy balls, and I sure as shit didn’t want Renee looking like that at me. It smacked too much of an emotional commitment I wasn’t ready to give, even to my wife.
“Alright, dude,” Micah said with a nervous laugh. “I get it. But fuck… the thought of you and Jorie together. Christ, it gave me the willies. Talk about fucking wrong, Walsh.”
