Husband Sit (Husband #1) (5 page)

“True,”
he said with a very sexy smirk, “But kissing isn’t fucking,” throwing my own
line back at me.

It
was far too early to come up with a clever response so I
harrumphed
my
way past him and tottered off to the kitchen where I rinsed and spat with cold
water from the fridge until my mouth felt frozen. “I’m going to die,” I
announced, and poured another glass which I planned to try sipping.

“You
might have heatstroke,” he said, “but you’re probably just hungover.”

“There
is no such thing as
just
hungover,” I told him, and headed out of the
kitchen, slurping water everywhere.

He
took the glass out of my hand and walked it to the coffee table. Then he put it
on a coaster for me while I stood obediently behind.

“I’m
going to die,” I announced again, just to be sure he understood. Then I laid
back on the black leather lounge and put my good arm over my eyes. I couldn’t
have looked more melodramatic if I’d tried.

“Do
you want me to stay home from work?” he asked.

I
lifted my arm and looked at him through one eye. “Can you?”

He
nodded. “My study is set up for it. I can work here if I need to.”

I
stopped being a princess for five minutes to think about that. I felt dreadful,
and I didn’t want to be left alone in a strange house. I might drown in my own
vomit—which is exactly the reason I
hate
vomiting. It’s so
unpredictable!

 “I’d
like that,” I said, feeling a surge of warm gratitude.

He
pointed back the way we’d walked. “I’ll be on the other side of the kitchen.
Call out if you need me.”

“You
don’t have a bell?” I made a tiny bell-ringer motion with my fingers.

“No.”
He laughed. “Drink water and sleep. I’ll check on you in an hour.”

“Thank
you, nursie!” I called as he walked away, but all joking aside, I felt loved in
that moment. Finn was a stranger. Well, a stranger I’d kissed. But he cared
enough about my wellbeing to stay home from work and that meant something.

Of
course, what it probably meant was that I was needy and would take any sliver
of affection and blow it out of all proportion. But in my hungover, and
possibly heat-stroked condition, I was happy to lie there focusing on feeling
loved instead of wondering when the room was going to stop spinning.

I
slept. Thank God. When I woke up it was lunchtime and I could smell something
delicious. I wriggled on the lounge, trying to sit up.

“You
didn’t drink your water.” He was bossy nurse now, stirring something on the
stove, looking hunky and completely at ease in the kitchen.

“Drinking,”
I replied and sipped the tepid water until I was sure it would stay down. Then
I guzzled the rest. “Peeing,” I added, and lurched up to head for the bathroom.
Now that my body was starting to feel like I owned it again, my back was
stinging and my wrist hurt. Burns sucked.

When
I came back into the kitchen he said, “I don’t need a running commentary, you
know.”

“I
know. It’s just an additional extra you don’t need to pay for.” I leant around
his broad shoulders and looked into the saucepan. “Soup?”

“Potato
and leek.”

“From
scratch?”

He
nodded.

“I’m
impressed. Can you cook other stuff?”

“I
do all the cooking,” he said, and something about his proximity and the
sexiness of a man who knows what to do in the kitchen warmed me down low, as if
we were somehow involved in foreplay. Even my nipples tingled as I imagined
standing behind him and rubbing them against his back while he stirred the
soup.

He
distracted me from my fantasy by adding, “I haven’t done a lot of vegetarian
meals. I’m liking it.”

“Who
needs chicken stock,” I replied airily and helped myself to a fresh glass of
fridged water. We were companionably silent then until I said, “So do you work
at home often, or is this my rare privilege?”

“Not
during the day,” he replied and there was something different in his tone. “Kat
likes the house to herself.”

Right
. No prizes for guessing that
would be to facilitate her adultery. Did I want to go there? I was just
thinking I was too fuzzy for a deep and meaningful when he said, “I know what
she’s doing on this holiday with her girlfriend.”

Shit.

I
had to say something. “
Sex in the City
tour of New York?”

He
put the wooden spoon onto the side of the sink and turned to face me. “If it
was a man I’d go ballistic, but it’s a girl. I can cope with that. I have coped
with that.”

“But
now you can’t?”

His
gorgeous eyes looked so tormented I wanted to say Fuck her, she doesn’t deserve
you. No wait. Even better, fuck me!

Luckily,
he was oblivious to my mental chatter. “I don’t understand this,” he said and
waved a hand back and forth between us. “What is she trying to achieve?”

I
felt so sorry for the guy I told him the truth. “She wants you to feel guilty
too.”

His
eyes widened. “She feels guilty?”

Duh.
“Yes.”

“But
. . . I’m okay with it.”

“Have
you told her that?”

“Of
course not!” As if it was the stupidest thing anyone could suggest. “We haven’t
talked about it at all. She just . . . does it and I know.”

I
looked up at the ceiling and thought—not for the first time in my life—that men
were really, really stupid. “She doesn’t
know
that you know.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”
He looked away and I could tell he was tracking through their history, putting
pieces together. Then he looked back into my eyes and said, “But how could I
not? She said—” He stopped himself then, and over the next ten seconds his face
went bright red.

Interesting
. I raised an eyebrow. “She
said…?”

He
swallowed and I wondered if I should just let it drop. But some belligerent
part of me wanted to know. They’d put me into the middle of this, damn it. I
deserved to know. “She gave it away?”

He
shook his head but I wasn’t being put off.

“Spill,
buddy,” I demanded, “Or I’ll pester you until you do.”

He
gazed at me for another couple of seconds before he sighed. “Why am I worried
about embarrassing myself? My wife purchased you for me as if I was some loser
who couldn’t get a fuck in a brothel. It doesn’t get more embarrassing than
that.”

I
smiled. “Sure it does. After what I did last night, I win any embarrassment
contest already. You’re safe.”

I
could see he was trying to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. I waited him
out and at last he said, “She told me she didn’t want me to . . .” he glanced
away, as if searching for the right words. “. . . perform cunnilingus on her,
and I knew it was because she was getting better elsewhere.”

If
his formal terminology hadn’t alerted me to his shame about this, the high
color on his cheekbones would have. But I was so surprised that
that
was
the lay of the land, I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Wow,” and,
“That sucks.”

Shit.

I
slapped a hand over my mouth.

But
the edges of his lips were twitching. “Is that what you’re supposed to do?” he
said deadpan. “No wonder I got it wrong.”

I
really liked this guy.

“It’s
not like a blow job,” I said, and started puffing as if I was in a Lamaze
childbirth class. “You gotta work on your technique.”

Something
shifted in his eyes then, and I suddenly realized what I’d suggested. He
swallowed again, but he got the words out. “Was that an offer to let me
practice?”

 Inside
my head, the little voice of greed said,
heads-up Jilly, here’s your five
grand bonus
but I ignored it and smiled what I hoped was a mysterious
smile. “We’ll see,” I said, and he nodded, then he picked up the spoon and went
back to stirring the soup.

I
moved in beside him, liking the fact that he was a head taller than me. On the
pretence of inspecting the soup, I watched his large hands with their long
blunt fingers and clean fingernails, and starting thinking about how those
hands would feel on my body.

I
made a soft
mmm
sound in my throat, because I was still half-pissed and
not monitoring my behavior. At all, really.

“What
are you doing?” he said.

“Thinking
about you fucking me.” I wasn’t embarrassed to say that, because I felt like we
were in a different place now after that conversation. A barrier was down. I
was moving into new territory. Well that was my justification. “Have you
thought about it yet?” I transferred my attention from his hands to his face.

He
grinned, and seriously, sexy dimples appeared beside his mouth. “I’m a man.
It’s all we think about. Our brains are wired that way.”

“Really?”
I asked, genuinely interested. “I thought that was a myth.”

“Well,
not
all
we think about,” he amended, “but sex keeps jumping in there
when we’re trying to work or drive or shop or . . . cook.”

“Ah!
So you
were
thinking about sex.”
With me.
I drifted an inch
closer and caught a whiff of aftershave. The illicit Morrissey. Good man! “So
what was the fantasy?”

“It
was . . .” He kept stirring, but the color was back in his cheeks and he
clearly needed prompting.

“Sex
against the fridge?” I guessed. “A threesome with Katinka? Cunnilingus!”

I
was on a roll, unburdening a few of my own fantasies, but it was clearly too
much for Finn. He put down the spoon, stepped away from the stove and put up
his hands.

“I
can’t do this sober,” he said. “It’s…”

“
Hard
?”
I replied, in full innuendo mode.

He
laughed. “Daylight.”

“Oh.”
How old fashioned. I looked at him afresh. “You like it dark.”

“I’m
used to the dark.” He shrugged. “Katinka prefers...”

He
stopped, but I got the picture. She either didn’t want him to see her naked, or
she was fantasizing about someone else. And judging by the
chutzpah
she’d
displayed when I met her, I’m guessing it was the latter.

Poor
guy.

I
knew I wasn’t there to be Suzy Sex-Therapist, but I didn’t want to stand by and
see this gorgeous man’s confidence battered any further. “We’re going to eat,”
I said, and hastily added, “Lunch,” before he could misconstrue that. “After
which I’m going to have a nice long bath and you’re going to tuck me in again
for an afternoon nap. In the daylight. And you’re going to kiss me.”

“I
am?”

“Yes.
I’m psychic.” I waved an airy hand. “I just know these things.”

He
smiled at me then, one of those steamy
I like you
smiles men do, with
his dreads falling haphazardly across his shoulders, and his green eyes looking
warmly into mine. “Okay,” he said, and nodded. “Okay.”

“Good.”
I raised my glass of chilled water to salute our agreement. Then I went over to
the dining table and sat down, scraping the chair noisily on the tiles and
spilling my water on the coaster. “I’d help you dish up—”

“But
we want the soup in the bowls.” He did all the fixings. Then we were sitting
across from each other, eating our soup and pulling chunks of bread off the cob
loaf he’d warmed in the oven.

“This
is fantastic,” I said around a mouthful of soup-soaked bread. And I really
meant it. The man could cook.

“And
no chicken stock.”

“Excellent.”
I glanced up at him through my lashes. “Because I don’t eat chickens.”

He
just smiled and finished his soup.

With
a stomach full of food, I felt much less woozy, which bode well for the
kiss/nap. So I grabbed my toiletries and helped myself to his bathroom,
spreading my stuff around and languishing in the spa for a lot longer than I
should have, but the cool water made my back feel fabulous, even though the
skin behind my knees felt tight while I was getting in and out. When I was
done, I toweled myself dry, gently on the back, and put on a white silk kimono
that was pretty-much see-through.

Then
I padded back into my bedroom and found him there, sitting on the end of the
bed.

He
stood up and pressed his hands together. “Ready to be tucked in?” he said, in
that over-bright voice that screams nervousness. Clearly, I’d left him to think
about it for far too long.

“I
need moisturizer first,” I said, tossing him a bottle of ylang ylang scented
body lotion.

He
caught it and simply stood there as I pulled back the quilt, slipped out of my
kimono and lay face down on the bed, stark naked.