Filthy Vows (Filthy Vows #1)(14)

He didn’t respond, and my thoughts flitted back to my earlier hypothesis—that unless you experience cheating, it’s too fluid of a concept to really understand. My golden husband had never been cheated on, not by any of his college flings and certainly not by me. Despite my rampant imaginary scenarios, I would never cross that line, not when I knew the emotional pain it delivered. Prior to Jonah cheating on me, I’d been almost cocky. Emotionally indestructible. Fearless in my confidence with relationships and the opposite sex—like Easton still was.

“He’s having her followed, so he can see what happens when she goes out tonight.” He placed a short quick kiss on the back of my neck.

“Have you ever thought about cheating on me?” The question came out unexpectedly and surprised me as much as him.

He flipped off the faucet and turned me around to face him. “No. What made you ask that?”

“I don’t know.” I looped my hands around his neck and looked up at him. “Maybe you’ve had regrets that we got married. Or maybe you’re bored.”

“No.” He slid his wet hands under my shirt, ghosting his fingers over my breasts, bare under one of his baseball tees. “Definitely not bored.”

Was I? The internal question hit me as unexpectedly as the one before it, and I pushed it to the side. I wasn’t sure it was possible to be bored when constantly trying to keep up with everything.

“What’s the closest you ever came to cheating on me?” I moved aside and reached for the bottle of wine that still sat on the counter. Tugging on the cork, I refilled my glass.

He didn’t respond, and I plucked another glass from the cabinet and poured the rest of the bottle in it, then pushed it in front of him. “Come on. I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

That caught his attention, his gaze staying on me as he slowly circled the counter and settled on a stool. Pulling the glass toward him, he picked up the delicate stem and regarded it for a moment before tossing back the golden liquid. “The closest I ever came to cheating on you,” he said slowly.

“Yep.” I rested my elbows on the counter and leaned forward, meeting his eyes.

“You go first,” he said warily.

I wanted to laugh. He should know better than to think this was a trap. I’d never been a conniving sort and blunt honesty had been the bedrock that had built our relationship when I had been too gun-shy to trust another man.

Well, I considered. Blunt, but not complete honesty. After all, Easton had no idea of the fantasies I had, the hundreds of men who I’d envisioned above and in me. Some things, my mother once told me, were better off being kept from your husband. That had been her marriage advice, uttered over a spiked ice tea, right before she shot my father a look that was utterly devoid of affection. I’d always assumed my fantasies about other men fell in that ‘keep from your husband’ category. But maybe this conversation belonged there also.

I tilted back my own glass and took a small sip of the wine. “It was with Jonah,” I said finally, setting down the glass. “Senior year. He was in town to move his sister’s stuff and came by my apartment.”

His eyes sharpened. “You told me that.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you everything.”

His hands tightened on the counter’s lip. I watched the muscles in his forearms flex and felt a spike of pleasure shudder through me. “What did you do?”

An interesting way to word it. What did I do? Sexist, really, to put the blame so solidly on me, versus Jonah. Besides, I didn’t do anything. It was all Jonah. “I didn’t do anything. But he tried to get me too. He wanted to have sex. He kissed me. I pushed him away.”

His jaw tightened. “That was it?”

“We talked for a while. Argued. He said I was making a mistake with you. That he still loved me. Stuff like that.”

“How close did you come to doing something with him?” His voice had dropped an octave, turning gruff and possessive. He was mad, but struggling to hide it, and my heart swelled at the protective claim in the reaction.

“Close.” I ran my finger around the top rim of the glass. “I wanted to. I knew that you’d never find out. And I felt this urge to teach Jonah a lesson. I wanted him to realize what he was missing. I wanted to fuck his brains out and then tear him down. Send him on his way and tell him that I was getting it a lot better with you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.” I brought my finger to my mouth and sucked on the end of it. His gaze followed the motion. “Your turn.”

He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to fuck, to reclaim me as his. I could see it in the way he gripped the stool in between his legs with one hand, the other roughly running through his hair. “Ummm…”

“Think carefully.” I moved to his side of the counter and hoisted myself on the counter, hanging my legs over the side of it as I sat before him.

“Probably last—” he hesitated, tripping over the word for a moment. “Last year. There was this woman in Idaho. At the FA symposium.” His hand found my knee and squeezed the soft fabric of my sweats.

I remembered the symposium. I’d originally planned to go with him, but had come down with something a few days before the weekend. I’d spent the weekend in bed, relieved to be left out of the boring financial conference. “She was an attendee?”