As I watch the pleasure spread across her features, my dick grows painfully stiff against the denim that confines it. It’s damn near impossible not to set it free and dive right in. My body aches for her—my hands want to touch her, my tongue wants to taste her, and the impatient bulge between my legs needs to burrow itself inside her.
Unable to wait any longer, I use my free hand to unzip my pants. The sound alerts Mia and she lifts her head, her eyes meeting mine. “Let me,” she purrs, her hands already tugging at my jeans.
She scoots off the desk and stands before me, bending to guide my pants down my legs. I step out of them, one foot at a time, and she tosses them to the side. “Socks,” she orders.
I laugh because I know that’s always been a pet peeve of hers. “Yes, ma’am,” I say as I pull them off and throw them in the corner to join my pants.
“I’ll give you ma’am,” Mia jokes as her hands travel up my legs, sending a fantastic message to my dick. She’s coming closer… a lot closer.
Settling herself on her knees, she cups me from behind and trails her tongue from one hip to the other. I nearly buckle over with shivers; she knows this is a weakness, but I bury my fingers into her hair and stand straight, rolling my eyes into the back of my skull. “Shit, Mia, Happy Fucking Anniversary,” I growl as the warmth of her mouth wraps around me, her lips sliding up and down with slow precision.
Intimate moments alone have been too hard to come by lately, but with our trip to Newport next week… there’ll be plenty of time for this on the agenda. Now seems like the time to tell her all about my gift to her, but I can’t seem to form any intelligible words other than fuck, shit, and yeah with Mia’s mouth working its magic.
I don’t know what goes on in other households, but right now I feel like one lucky motherfucker. A sexy-as-hell wife, a killer studio, and the best damn welcome home I’ve ever received in my life.
After our fun in the studio, I leave Declan to his toys and go upstairs to freshen up for bed. Looking at myself in the mirror, it all starts to resurface. The guilt. The remorse. The nagging feeling that even though things between Declan and I are on the right track, a part of me will never be able to forgive myself for almost giving up on us.
No amount of gifts and blow jobs are going to make up for it. And it’s not that Declan is even the one making it difficult for us to get past it. It’s me. I made my bed and I have to lie in it and live with it… and all the reminders of the things I almost had with Noah. I know I’m back where I belong, but I was so close to giving my heart to someone else and that still scares the shit out of me.
Old habits are hard to break. Not that I plan on making a habit of hooking up with old flames, but now that we’ve been down that road of separation and infidelity—will we fall into old patterns? Wind up taking each other for granted again? It’s only going to get harder with time, and age. We’re still the same two people we always were and although I’d like to think what didn’t ruin our marriage will make it stronger—things can go the other way too.
I replace the cap on the eye cream and remove the one from the hand cream. All these anti-aging remedies that probably mean diddly. I can’t erase the wear and tear on my skin any more than I can erase the evidence of the toll that time takes on a marriage. As much as any husband and wife love each other, and vow to stick through good times and bad until death do they part, things get in the way… life gets in the way. I like to tell myself that we’ve been through the worst, but there are no damn guarantees—not even branding your spouse’s name on your body sets anything in stone.
“Damn it!” I sigh, gripping the granite countertop as I scowl into the mirror. “The past is the past… we can only move forward.”
Declan told me that the first night we got back together. It’s been a calming mantra every time I have a freak-out, melt-down moment. I try to let the soothing message penetrate, wondering why my mind is wandering back to bad thoughts when things are so obviously good. It must be that he was away. Just the mention of Hong Kong makes both of us want to break out in hives. Business trips and the Murphy’s just don’t mix. I’ve got to find a way to put an end to them for good… maybe I can call Robert myself and beg him to keep Declan safe and sound in his cubicle from now until retirement. That should go over well.
Before I have the time to concoct a persuasive email to Declan’s boss in my warped brain, I notice my husband standing behind me, staring.
“What?” I ask, my hand on my hip. I hope he can’t see through me—all those doubtful thoughts running around haphazardly.