Making It Last - A Novella (Camelot Series) (9 page)

Tony wasn’t looking at the room. He was looking at her. The obvious intention in his gaze set off a dull throb between her legs.

It was possible that everything was so much simpler than she’d been making it.

He loved her. He’d said so, and even though he was Steve, she knew he’d meant it. He always meant it.

He’d come here to tell her that, and he’d told her, and it had done something to her to hear it. It had bloomed inside her. As though she’d swallowed the words, then chased them with a glass of warm water that made them swell and soften and grow, unfurling in her chest with green, moist heat.

They could have fun. Be Steve and Jennifer together, for this one night. Maybe doing that would shift something. Lighten the burden, relight the candle.

It was worth a shot.

Whatever the stakes, she wanted this man’s arms around her. His shirt off. She wanted to find out how he would undress her—wanted to
be undressed
after so many years of pushing off her own pajama pants under the blanket or wearing a short nightgown to bed to signal Tony that she wanted him to push it up, flip her over, press inside her.

So many signals in a marriage—in any sort of relationship. It was seductive to think about the signals Jennifer might send. Anything she wanted, and he would do it. That’s what he’d said.

She could invent a new signal.

Or, heck, she could go ahead and say what she wanted. Out loud. To her husband. There was no one here to interrupt them. No one to stop them from doing what they liked, and maybe
this kind of physical conversation was what they needed. A reminder with their bodies that they could still connect. They still cared.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Steve leaned one shoulder against the wall. “I think personal training must be lucrative.”

She smiled. “I’ve been saving up for a long time for this vacation.”

“I bet your husband is sorry he couldn’t come.”

“He probably doesn’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She looked away from him, not sure what to do with the compliment in either of her roles.

“You guys have kids?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No kids. And no more personal questions, Stevie. You’re breaking the rules again.”

He hooked his thumbs in his back pockets and tipped his head, looking at her from under his eyelashes. “What do the rules say we’re supposed to do next, Jenny?”

Jenny. Cute.

“Have a nightcap.”

“Where’s the bar?”

“Over there.”

Tony found a pair of glasses, and she took him the bottle of chardonnay. They sat at the table, side by side this time instead of opposite each other. He poured two more glasses of wine.

When she sipped hers, it wasn’t as crisp as it had been. It had warmed up, its flavor more tannic, too sharp. She drank it anyway. It seemed like something Jennifer would do.

“How do you like the wine, Jennifer?”

“I’ve had worse.”

“I hope you won’t be saying the same about me in an hour.”

“Me, too.”

They smiled at each other.

This was how it happened—how you made your way toward the bed with a stranger. By making him not be a stranger. Sharing truths and lies mixed together, teasing interspersed with confessions. These halting steps toward intimacy.

“Tell me something nobody knows about you,” he said.

She drained the glass, casting about for something to say.

Tony knew everything. Didn’t he?

Everything but the things he didn’t
want
to know. How she felt since Jacob had started school. How often she would be going through the motions of her day, driving around Mount Pleasant on some pointless errand or putting dinner in the oven, and be overwhelmed with an intense wave of anger. Or sorrow. Or petty jealousy.

How sometimes she laughed, alone in the kitchen, and sometimes she cried, and one time she’d thrown a cake plate on the floor, where it shattered into pieces.

How intensely she resented having to clean her own house.

How much the future scared her.

Steve didn’t want to hear any of that. The petty, stereotypical problems of a Midwestern housewife. Tony didn’t. No one did.

Think of something sexy. Something to turn him on
.

“I masturbate,” she said, before she could stop herself. “When my husband’s at work. I masturbate in the empty house.”

Instantly, the teasing smile disappeared. His eyebrows lowered, and he went dark. His whole face—God,
nobody
could glower like Tony could glower.

“It’s not—it’s not that he isn’t good in bed. My husband. It’s not that he doesn’t get me hot anymore, because he does. It’s more … I don’t even know.”

It was the silence. The quiet.

Needing to do something to keep the emptiness from crawling deeper inside her.

It was the sheer
indulgence
of it.

She’d gotten herself off on the living room couch. In the kitchen, standing up. At the table. She’d done it on the stairs, in the laundry room, in the shower.

She didn’t think of Tony. She thought about things that got her wet. This moment in a movie from years ago. A snippet of a novel. Damp mouths and busy hands and slapping flesh.

She was getting really
good
at it, too. She was becoming a master of masturbation.

She giggled, the sound too loud, totally inappropriate with Tony’s face still so dark.

It was possible that the alcohol was affecting her more than she’d bargained for. Absinthe packed a punch.

Or it simply made her giddy to say this thing, this slightly shameful, entirely unsanctioned thing, out loud.

Because sometimes when she did it, she felt so defiant.
Fuck you
, she said to the house, with her hand between her legs.
Fuck Tony for not being home, ever. Fuck this house for being such an endless source of work that I’m supposed to enjoy just because I chose my life, I chose the carpet and the couch
.

Fuck fear, fuck death. Fuck it
.

“What do you think about?” he asked.

“Oh. Lots of different things.”

“Tell me.”

His fingers were white around the glass. He would squeeze it too hard, and it would explode.

This was backfiring in a really bad way.

But, she reminded herself, he wasn’t supposed to be Tony. He was supposed to be Steve, and this was supposed to be fun. Steve would find the idea of a lonely housewife masturbating kind of sexy, wouldn’t he?

Sure he would. If she made it sexy, he would. If she fed him some over-the-top
Penthouse Forum
material, maybe he would smile and tease and fall back into his role.

“I think about the UPS guy,” she said. “Ringing the doorbell, and I invite him in. Wearing lingerie.”

“The UPS guy?” The lines around his mouth relaxed a fraction. “You do not.”

“I do. I answer the door in this pink lace nightgown, and he can see right through it. He can see my nipples and my … all my hair, and he’s only, like, twenty-two. And I invite him inside.”

“What do you do with the poor kid?”

“I go down on him. In my front hall.”

“On the marble? That would be hell on your knees.”

“I’ve got carpet in the front hall,” she said indignantly, and he smiled. Because yeah, he was totally right. It was no fun at all to kneel on the marble.

“So you get yourself off thinking about giving the UPS man head.” He sounded dubious.

She tried to come up with a more outrageous fantasy.

“I spank him sometimes,” she offered.

His eyebrows lifted. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you like about the spanking?”

The latest UPS guy had red hair and very white skin, and if she spanked him, his butt would be bright pink and … just, no.

She put her hand on Steve’s thigh. “I think you’re focusing on the wrong part of this story.”

“I don’t know. This part’s pretty interesting.”

“You’re supposed to be focusing on the masturbation part.” She slid her hand a little higher. Moved her fingers closer to the part of him that she hoped was getting interested.

“I was going to get back to that.” He covered her hand with his own, preventing her from exploring further.

“Were you?”

“I was. I was going to ask if you wanted to show me.”

“Show you how I masturbate when my husband’s not home?”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“No?” He sounded disappointed.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think I could do it with you watching.”

“You could close your eyes,” he said.

His voice was all low and rumbly, the way it got when he was turned on. His hand pressed hers a little higher. A little farther over. Pushing her toward his erection, though he seemed reluctant to let her arrive there.

“I’d do it if
you
closed your eyes,” she offered.

“No way.”

“Well, then. We’re stuck.”

He drank his wine, watching her.

He pressed her hand an inch more to the side, right over his erection.

His cock.

She had to admit, she’d kind of gone off cocks the last few years. Sharing a house with four of them would do that to a girl. Back when she met Tony, she’d been so inexperienced that his cock had seemed like this miraculous thing, but lately she just wanted every penis in the house put
away
. She didn’t want to hear about them, look at them, think about them. Didn’t want to know when they were stiff or itchy or getting slammed in drawers. Basically, she had days when she never wanted to encounter another penis so long as she breathed.

Which is why it was something of a surprise to find she was kind of into Steve’s. Maybe
because
it was Steve’s and not Tony’s.

Or because Steve was more forward than Tony had been in ages. Tony certainly didn’t say things like “Do you show your husband how you fuck yourself? Later, in bed, after he comes home?”

The wine was fogging up her brain now, or his eyes were. All sex-drugged, his lids at half-mast, his cock so hard under her hand she thought it must be hurting.

“No,” she whispered.

“You should,” he said. “He’d like it. So much.”

He reached out and plucked at her nipple, right through her dress, and her eyes closed, pressed hard shut so that she could enjoy the zing of it. The pinching pain. The warm wash of pleasure.

She was a mess between her legs. Her labia swollen, still stinging a bit from yesterday and starting to feel slick now. The slickness was different without pubic hair. It spread more easily—she could tell that already. She felt messy and hot, like one touch could set her off.

She wanted to do it. Spread herself out on the bed. Let this man’s hungry eyes see what she looked like, let him see how she touched herself when she didn’t care what anybody got from it but her. How she could make herself come with just her fingers and her imagination, and she could make it last longer than he could. She could do it better than he did, with no compromises, no mess to clean up afterward. No pillow talk. No trouble at all.

“You could practice on me,” he said. “Pretend I’m him.”

“That’s sick.”

“Is it?” He pressed her hand harder, urging her fingers to grip tighter and work him up and down with long, slow strokes. “I think it would be fun.”

And it would. She didn’t really believe in “sick”—not when it came to what two people did in bed, inside a committed relationship.

It would be something she could give him. Something he wanted. A secret she’d hoarded, and now both of them could share it and take pleasure from it.

“Would you do this?” She squeezed her hand tighter around him. “While you watched?”

“I’d try not to.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t come, I could fuck you after.”

“Maybe I won’t want to. Maybe I’ll be sleepy and I’ll send you on back to the bar to find some other willing woman.”

He smiled. “I’ll take my chances if I get to see you naked.”

She pulled on her hand. He released it, and she stood up, offering him a cheeky smile. “Who said anything about naked?”

* * *

Tony watched as Amber took off her shoes and got up onto the bed. It was such a tall bed, she had to climb, and then she
crawled
across it, and he found himself gripping one of the bedposts in his hand, with no recollection of having moved closer. His heart raced as if he’d never seen his own wife’s ass before.

She masturbated. When he wasn’t home.

It was like some kind of ridiculous gift from the gods.

He hoped that when she’d told him, she hadn’t been able to read his thoughts. Sometimes she had an uncanny ability to do that, and in this case he’d rather she couldn’t hear them, because his thoughts were, basically,
That is the single hottest thing I’ve ever heard in my life
and
I must be the lousiest excuse for a husband there ever was
. Both at the same time.

Clearly, he was doing something wrong. He was supposed to be keeping her satisfied. If she wanted sex, she could have it, pretty much any damn time.

Except between the hours of five a.m. and ten p.m., when he was at work. Which was, what, two-thirds of the day?

Falling down on the job there, Mazzara
.

By the time he got home and ate something, showered, and crawled into bed, she was always already so damn tired. Sleepy and soft, and they had a whole day’s worth of conversation to catch up on. Stuff that had happened to the kids, whether Ant needed medication, if Jake was getting enough sleep.

They still managed to have sex a couple times a week. He’d talked to other guys, other married guys, and he knew he and Amber weren’t doing half bad, comparatively. He knew guys who got laid once a month. Quarterly. Never.

But if she was making herself come when he wasn’t home … if she was doing it
a lot
?

He wanted in on it.

That was the upshot. He didn’t want to waste time feeling like a loser. He wanted to come home from work and fuck her on the kitchen counter. On the stairs. In the front hallway, and he could be on top. He’d put up with his knees aching for a week if he could spread her out on that cold marble floor he’d laid himself, tile by tile, and hear her come so loud it echoed.