How dare he?!
With Lydia? A woman I know! He couldn’t at least have had the decency to fuck someone I’ve never met?!
“Baby? Are you okay?” The warm concern in his raspy voice cuts through me like a blade slicing skin.
I keep my eyes clamped shut and my jittery body as still as possible, despite my heart beating so violently I feel sure he could hear it from across the room. I’m a second away from losing it, from screaming at him at the top of my lungs and calling him all those names we swore we would never say to each other during fights. But I can’t. I can’t move. Some invisible, blood-sucking entity has clearly teleported into the room and drained the life force from my limbs.
As I lie still for long, skin-crawling moments, the image of Lydia’s lips on Jack’s light golden skin blazes into my mind in a cloud of fiery ash and sheer outrage forces my eyes open. Pulling the covers off me, I sit up to face him.
“Jess, are you okay?” he asks, a frown casting a dark shadow over his impossibly beautiful face.
Don’t you dare!
Don’t you dare play that game with me—the perfect innocent-husband game.
I steel myself to unleash bloody hell that would put the grizzliest video game to shame.
The meek word that comes out of my mouth makes no sense. “Hey,” I whisper, my voice so tiny I barely recognize it as my own.
“You okay, angel?” he asks, peering into me, his brow furrowed.
The word Okay suddenly sounds like the most ridiculous word I’ve ever heard. I mean, who came up with such a word? O-KAY. No, I am not okay. And I’m going to prove it to him right now…
Right now…
“Yeah. I’m just a bit tired,” I manage, heat rising in my cheeks. “My leg’s been hurting a little today. I’m fine.”
Fine? What the hell?
Why aren’t I screaming, crying, demanding to know why the pig I married is screwing other women?
I flinch as he leans towards me and gives me a strong, unrequited kiss on the mouth. Feeling the same lips now kissing me so tenderly after having devoured me so mercilessly this same morning makes me want to weep, to break down and dissolve into the ground, to find some hole that no one in Manhattan knows about and crawl into it until I no longer remember his name or my own. I stiffen, my eyes burrowing into his, as he glides a firm hand up my neck, scrutinizing my face intently as his thumb glides over my flushed cheek.
“Jessynia, what’s wrong? You don’t seem yourself.”
As I attempt to calm the rabid fury playing havoc with my body, my gaze floats across his, and despite everything, the ferocious, breathtaking masculine beauty of his incomparable face leaves my breath shallow. His intense steely-blue eyes wander over me curiously as I study every inch of his rugged, treacherous features as if seeing him for the first time—his thick, dirty-blond hair with ends stained sandy by the sun; his strong, wide jawline and forehead; his high, sharp cheekbones punctuated by dimples, and the perfect light-pink mouth that has ravaged every inch of my body.
His strong, tall, powerful male presence weakens my resolve and in spite of the crippling sting of his betrayal, I find myself scrutinizing one of the most exquisite men I’ve ever known—studying him as if this may be the last time I see him. My eyes pan down the lines of his thick, golden neck. His dense, muscular arms and broad shoulders are unmistakable even under the crisp white tailored shirt he wears on Wall Street, and the image of a body so savagely virile it shouldn’t be allowed imprints itself onto my mind. Few of his banking colleagues could imagine the perfectly sculpted, bulky mass of hard muscle under his clothes—the result of years of boxing and weight training in grimy gyms in Brooklyn. It is a body that should not be legal.
As I peer into the adoring face that I know so well, I could swear I feel my heart stall in my chest. I fear that if he keeps studying me, he’ll see inside me and know what I know. And in this moment, I realize that I’m not ready to say what needs to be said. Maybe as long as I’m the only one who knows, things can stay somewhat in my control, right? Once he knows that I’ve learned his sordid secret, that look that we used to share when we stared into each other’s eyes and laughed and glowed and floated will be gone forever and the heady magic that I’ve felt for the last three years of my life will drift away and become only a memory.
“I’m okay,” I mutter, finally managing to take a lungful of air. “I just need to take the weight off my leg for a while. It’s been hurting a lot today.”
His eyes search mine as I scour his face for signs of something different, signs that he’s hiding something. I see nothing.
How can my radar be this off?
“I’m sorry, beautiful.” He kisses me on the cheek tenderly. “Do you want me to get you anything? Call Dr. Peterson?” The concern etched in the exquisite lines of his face makes me ache.
“No, I… I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep.” My breath is bated and my voice choked, as though something is stuck in my trachea, strangling it and taking my usual sassy—as Jack calls it—personality with it.
“Sure. Whatever you need,” he replies, unable to mask the perplexed tone at my uncharacteristically icy welcome.
As the sun slides lower over Upper Manhattan, turning the sky heavenly shades of warm peach, lighting up the bedroom in a perfect orange glow, I think back to this very morning when I awoke to find Jack lying next to me, watching me with a hungry smile around his dangerous, glistening eyes.
He made me laugh until my sides hurt before I’d even got out of bed, then joined me in the shower, running shampoo through my long hair and soap over my slim body. His experienced fingers wandered across my glossy skin, over my breasts and down my taut waist, before tenderly exploring the soft folds of my sex, teasing and caressing until I was left gasping in pleasure. My nipples hardened under the cool water as Jack knelt down and used his tongue, in a way no man I’ve ever been with has known how to do, to kiss and lick and tease the tight bundle of nerves between my legs before spearing his tongue inside me until I begged him to fuck me. Always willing to give me whatever I want, he carried me out of the shower, pushed me facedown onto the bed, climbed on top of me and speared his large sex inside me carefully, filling me up an inch at a time. He thrust in and out of me rhythmically, expertly, angling his hips so that I could feel him in exactly the right spot as his lips skimmed my ear, whispering erotic threats that made me lose all rational thought and give myself completely to him. One hand was around my throat and another gently teased my sex as I trembled and moaned at being taken by such a powerful and unabashedly masculine man who, as usual, didn’t come until he had made sure I had, turning me over and gazing at me with devastating force as he came inside me. The groan he let out as he orgasmed almost left me climaxing again and within seconds he was holding me against him tightly, kissing my neck and mouth tenderly and proclaiming his eternal love for me, a feeling I reciprocated with every fiber of my being.
And now this… just ten hours later? It just makes no sense.
As his dominant fingers brush against my hand, I’m jolted back to the reality of two strangers trying to converse. It’s alien and awkward, like scanning the unsuspecting eyes of someone whose mask has just fallen off and they don’t know it. I don’t recall ever looking at Jack and feeling anything so damn phony between us. His gaze flits from my turquoise eyes to my mouth as he leans toward me and kisses me hard on the lips, closing his eyes while I keep mine open, my impassive face not reflecting the swirling mass of destructive emotions I’m brewing.