Bound to Please(45)
“You pick guys you know won’t stick around.”
“Not on purpose,” Ruby said. “It just… happens.”
“You’re always looking for the perfect man, but honey, he doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t want perfection. I just want a normal, steady relationship. Is that so much to ask?”
Claire laughed softly. “You want a fifties sitcom. God, remember when we watched reruns of those show every day after school?”
Yes, Ruby did remember. If her parents were sailing or home or at a party, it didn’t matter. Because every day at three o’clock, she could escape into black-and-white perfection. Two reruns in a row. An hour of watching how normal people lived.
Or so she’d thought at the time.
“Anyway,” Ruby said. “I hope you come visit.”
“I will, soon. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” She hung up the phone but remained seated, staring at her cozy kitchen. If the Cleavers had lived in an apartment, it would have looked like hers. Bright, sunny yellow cabinets, white-tiled counter, and black-and-white laminate flooring straight from the 1950s.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was where she’d spend the rest of her life. Maybe Claire was right and she was looking for a man who existed only on television.
She thought of James Cleaver. He seemed perfect, and yet he’d never made her heart thud. He’d never made her want to tell him her most secret fantasies.
And, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there was Mark. He was so immersed in his music he hadn’t spoken to her all day. As he should be, his music was his job and she respected that. Still, she hated the way her heart hurt with the disappointment that he’d been distracted from her so easily.
Pushing herself up, she tried to drive the feeling away. She’d prepared herself for this, hadn’t she? It was exactly the reason she’d resisted him in the first place. The nature of their relationship had ratcheted up their intimacy level too fast; zero to sixty-nine in under a week.
She pulled a half-empty bottle of chardonnay out of the fridge and poured herself a large glass. And as she drank it, alone in her kitchen, she told herself she wasn’t going to settle for anything less than what Meg and Emmett had. The perfect couple, they were proof that what she wanted was possible.
Right?
Chapter
Thirteen
Meg was spying on her husband, and she didn’t even care if she got caught.
They hadn’t had sex in months, ten weeks to the day to be exact. Meg knew because the last time they’d fucked she’d been ovulating. She had it all marked on a little calendar, the possible baby-making days starred with a red pen.
They’d missed several baby-making days.
But she didn’t care about that. What she cared about was that her husband wasn’t interested in her anymore.
Looking back, she could see he’d been distancing himself from her for a while. The question was, what was she going to do about it?
Why, spy on him, of course. She’d briefly glimpsed the porn on his computer, but she thought maybe if she studied it, she could get a real idea of what he wanted. Which brought her here, to his office, to his desk, where she was sitting, waiting for his computer to boot up.
It finally did, and ignoring her damp palms, she clicked the history on his Internet browser.
And that was when she found it.
It wasn’t the pornography itself that shocked her. No, it was the type of porn her husband appeared to be fond of. She landed on one site, the links flashing, a garish neon sign in the dark:
Boy toys for you!
Naked men who clean!
XXX Men who give you what you need!
Meg wasn’t a porn aficionada, but most of what she’d seen in her life featured fake-breasted women who spent a lot of time fondling each other and giving men blow jobs. But the sites Emmett had been browsing boasted naked men. Lots of them.
“Holy shit!” The screen came up with various images of young men surrounding cars. They held buckets and sponges and towels. They were all naked. Many had erections. Some had penises that just bobbed around as they cleaned windshields and bumpers.
She couldn’t stop clicking; she’d never seen such things. Images flashed across the screen: Women lashing men with wet towels. Women forcing men to crawl on their knees as they served the women. One image featured a man tied to the bumper of a Nova, his face buried in the behind of a tall blonde. Meg’s pussy went moist. She couldn’t help it. The images of the naked subservient men made her squirm in her husband’s chair.
She found a video and clicked the Play icon.
Two nude men washing a red, eighties-model Mustang came to life on the computer screen. Her pulse hammered as she watched a curvy woman with a sleek ponytail and a long leather flogger circle the men. Meg’s nipples started to tingle when the woman smacked one of the men’s naked asses. The woman on the screen did it again, and Meg’s cunt throbbed as she watched a red welt appear on the man’s golden flesh.