Filthy Vows (Filthy Vows #1)(39)

It felt wrong to blame the fertility drugs, yet they had been what had brought all of this on. Prior to those drugs, I had a perfectly normal, if not slightly over-active libido, one fully centered on my husband.

He didn’t react, his palm brushing over the top of the sheet and awakening one pert nipple. “What men?”

I winced. “A lot of different ones. Too many to list. Honestly, it’s embarrassing.”

He stilled. “Dr. Jenthric?”

A laugh burst unexpectedly out of me. “What?! No. He’s like ninety!”

“Your boss? Please don’t say so. I know that’s a common fantasy among women.” He looked almost serious enough to sell the question, if you missed the playful twinkle in his eye.

I grabbed a pillow and swung it at his head. “I hate you. Be serious for one moment. I’m not talking about bald gay men or old pediatricians.”

He dodged a second swing of the pillow, stole it from me, and tossed it to the side. Grabbing my wrists, he pinned them to the bed on either side of my head. “How worried should I be about these fantasies?”

“Not worried,” I said honestly. “They’ve been going on ever since we started trying to get pregnant, and I haven’t done anything with anyone.”

“But this is why you didn’t want Aaron to stay with us?” He studied me from his dominant position, then eased his weight off my wrists, freeing them.

I immediately reached for his hair, threading my hands through the thick strands. “All of my other fantasies were with people I have little to no contact with. It just seems too close, having him right here. What if I mess up?”

“Mess up? You won’t.” It was scary, how much my husband trusted me. The clear faith on his face, the absolute confidence that I would never step over the line with his friend. He leaned down and brushed his lips over mine. “You won’t. You’re too good for that and we’re too strong for that.”

It was quite possibly the most reckless thing any spouse could think, let alone say. I knew we were strong. I had no interest in actually attempting any of my fantasies, but I was still freaked out by the idea that Aaron was staying with us and Easton had engaged in a role-play that involved him.

Steps sounded down the long hall, then paused outside our door. There was a rap of knuckles. “E? Game’s back on.”

“Coming,” Easton called out, then pushed to his feet. “Talk about this later?”

“Sure.” Please, no. We needed to put this conversation and his last remaining Hawaiian shirt in a wooden box, bury it in a deep hole, then run like hell. These were not the talks that successful marriages were built on. These were the sort of talks that led to danger, the kind of confessions that later, when reviewing divorce paperwork, everyone regretted.

He gave me a kiss and it felt like a promise of something. “Come out and eat?”

“I’m going to take a shower. Wash all of you off of me,” I teased, and it came out right. Light and fun, void of the dark pit that had settled in my stomach at the thought of leaving our bedroom and facing Aaron, after everything I just envisioned. Embraced. Orgasmed to.

“See you in a bit.”

I nodded and laid back on the bed. “Save me some pizza.”

When he left, he was still hard and I was still wet, his words hanging thickly in my ear.

“Play with that beautiful pussy and pretend it’s his tongue.”

God. What had we begun?





17





I sat in the nosebleed section of the conference room, in one of the extra chairs wheeled in from offices and crammed along the wall. If I swiveled too far left or right, my knee hit either Tim Rowland or Charity Freeland, both novice agents with higher sales for the quarter than me. While our office’s hierarchy could be easily read by our positions in the room, the giant dry erase board, mounted at one end of the impressive space, also kept score: all sixty-three agents in the company listed and color-coded in order by volume. In green marker and at the top, the rich bitches that always dominated the standings and this conference room. Natalie Bestenbreur. Maria Bott. Jacks Williams. Lorna Pulley, the queen bee herself, currently held court at her standard spot on the northern-most end of the conference table, her gold-tipped Montblanc pen in hand.

“It needs to be trimmed. I don’t understand the issue. Get someone out there and do it!” She jabbed the expensive pen into the monogrammed page before her as if it was Neal Blanton’s chest.

Neal, our fearless broker who should have retired with his stroke four years ago, sighed. “It’s a historical tree. This is downtown, Lorna. You know how these things work. We can’t just hack away at it.”

I studied the agent list on the whiteboard, drifting down the list, where names went from green ink to black and then, near the bottom, red. I was two names above red, not that getting fired from Blanton & Rutledge would matter in the grand scheme of things. If life grew that dour, I would be submitting resumes for a salaried job anyway, and be out these gilded doors before they had a chance to clean out my desk.

“It’s unacceptable.” She sniffed, and the skin pulled tight along her ears, an unnatural fold of skin appearing. Her latest facelift had been impressive, but jumped into play at times. I drew a bubble heart in the margin of my agenda to keep from staring.