Cupping both furry faces between my hands, I planted a kiss on each one of their big heads. “I’m sorry, Scott.”
“Yeah,” he said with a faraway look on his face I didn’t like one bit. “Me too.”
I watched the snowfall, digesting everything he’d told me. The picture was finally coming together.
“Is that why you left? Because you didn’t want to be reminded?”
He took his eyes from the snow and placed them on me. “Because I didn’t want to wind up like him.”
Chapter Seventeen
Scott
I heard the music blasting through the house as soon as I stepped into the hallway attached to the garage. Aretha Franklin, by the sound of it. Which was why the dogs weren’t at the door to greet me. She’d been gone two weeks and it felt like a hundred years. I was beginning to hate this house when she wasn’t here.
Shucking off my jacket and work boots in the mudroom, I followed the trail of music and the scent of vanilla into the kitchen. My wife was home. At the threshold, my feet stopped and my pulse raced.
Sydney was dancing with the dogs. Her hair was piled up on top of her head, hanging to the side. The ubiquitous Yale Law sweatshirt, which my dick and I had seen too much of, was falling off one shoulder, her legs bare. She’d stopped hiding them from me the night we returned from the hospital.
She held a wooden spoon to her mouth like a microphone and lip-synched I Never Loved A Man, her face animating every syllable, while Juliet barked and Romeo pranced around.
“You’re a no-good heart breaker
You’re a liar and you’re a cheat
And I don’t know why
I let you do these things to me
My friends keep telling me
That you ain’t no good
But oh, they don’t know
That I’d leave you if I could.”
Sheer awe filled my chest. I would’ve sworn on a Bible that I’d never seen anything more captivating. And it wasn’t that she was having the time of her life, or that she was drop-dead sexy in nothing but an old faded sweatshirt. It was so much more than that. Something that went deeper than skin and scars.
Despite what she’d suffered––something so fucking horrendous it had left a reminder on her gorgeous body––she believed that she was lucky. Lucky, for shit’s sake! She laughed like life was not only good, but good to her. The depth and breadth of strength my wife possessed astounded me. Not because of what she’d suffered, but because of her willingness to meet each and every day as if she hadn’t.
“Ready…here comes the second verse,” she said to the dogs, unaware of my presence. I curled my lips around my teeth to stop from laughing at the weird, jerking moves she made while she danced. On the plus side, the knee seemed to be completely healed by the looks of it.
“Don’t ya never, never say that we were through
Cause I ain’t never
Never, Never, no, no…loved a man
The way that I, I love you
I can’t sleep at night
And I can’t even fight
I guess I'll never be free
Since you got, your hooks, in me.” Aretha’s voice drifted out of the sound system loud and clear.
I wanted to go to her. I wanted to be part of this…this feeling. Anybody who got near her got sucked into it. I saw it with Laurel, Drake, and Ry––even my father had gotten caught up in her orbit. I’d been living under a cloud since Charlie died. Eight long-ass years. I just hadn’t known it until something bright and shiny walked into my life, lighting me up and making me see what I’d been missing.
I love this woman. The realization punched me in the chest. The one that followed was even scarier. I wanted her to love me back.
Romeo finally noticed me standing in the doorway and trotted over, Juliet joined him shortly after, their tails whipping back and forth. Sydney’s eyes met mine, wide and full of surprise, the wooden spoon frozen in place near her mouth. I was done playing games, pretending I wasn’t up all night thinking about her, jerking off every morning to fantasies of what I wanted to do to her.
“I missed you.”
Her face softened. “I missed you too.”
Brushing the dogs away, I walked up to her, took the wooden spoon out of her hand, and chucked it over my shoulder. The dogs went chasing after it. Then I took her face in my hands, cupping her cheeks, while hers came up to gently cover mine and her thumbs brushed against the inside of my wrist.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” I warned, my gaze roaming indiscriminately over her face, one that I’d come to know better than my own. “Then I’m going to peel away this ugly fucking sweatshirt, and worship every inch of your body with my mouth. And when you think you can’t come anymore, that I’ve wrung you dry, I’m going to fuck you and prove you wrong. If you have a problem with anything I’ve just said, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
She blinked, her mouth quivering. “This sweatshirt is not ugly.”
“Is that a yes?”
She nodded once, one chin jerk, and I pressed my mouth to hers, giving it everything I had. Moving forward, I backed her up against the kitchen island covered in cooking supplies while our mouths searched for the right angle, tongue meeting tongue, my dick painfully hard pushing into her belly.
Hands under her ass, I picked her up and dropped her on the counter. Utensils and pans fell off the edge with a loud clattering sound, and still, we didn’t stop kissing, the chemistry as explosive as it had always been. Cupping the back of her head, I stepped between her legs and made love to her mouth––to my wife’s mouth. My wife. That sounded pretty damn good to me.
“Wait!”
I pulled far enough away to get a look at her face. “What?” My gaze went straight to her swollen lips, made that way by my kisses.
“Have you slept with other women?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Never mind.”
I kissed her hard. “Your faith in me is touching, Mrs. Blackstone, and no, not since I married you.”
She kissed me harder. “Carry on.”
Grabbing the edge of the sweatshirt, I yanked it up and over her head, threw it away.
“No more Mr. Nice Guy,” I muttered against her lips and she started giggling.
“When have you ever been––”
The words died as soon as my mouth latched on to her nipple. Then she moaned, clamped her legs around my waist, and her head fell back in satisfaction. Hooking two fingers over the top of her shorts, I pulled them down and off and took her panties with them. They dropped to the floor, done for the day.
Next to her hip, there was a bowl filled with sliced strawberries and another with cake batter. I dipped a finger in the yellow stuff and painted it on her tummy, the strip of light blonde curls below taunting me. My dick was more than eager to get to the main attraction, but I’d be damned if I was going to be rushed to the finish line when I’ve been waiting for months to savor this moment.
“What are you doing?” she said in a weak voice that made me smile.
“Making living art.”
With the flat of my tongue, I licked off the vanilla-flavored batter and heard her suck in a ragged breath, her fingers sifting through my hair and closing around a handful. Her legs lifted, her heels dug into my shoulders.