“’Kay.” I offered a faint smile. “I’ll update you when I know more about what’s going on. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“I’ll be here.”
Walking me to the front door, he held my face in his hands and looked intently into my eyes before he leaned down and kissed my forehead, the tip of my nose and, finally, my lips. His hands made a slow descent down my arms until they met my own. He released one hand and as I walked away, not wanting to let go, his outstretched arm held onto my hand for one more gentle squeeze of his fingers before I reluctantly left his place.
The Saturday morning sun was just beginning to crest over the eastern horizon as I pulled out of my driveway a little after six AM. A canopy of autumn leaves in brilliant shades of gold and red veiled the cobblestone street I drove down, a reminder that November was upon us and the frosty, snow-ridden days of winter would follow soon after. For everything I loved about my adopted hometown of Boston, the one thing I could do without was the winters. Colin was always deep in the season, spending countless hours away prepping for each week’s game. Night would fall before I’d make it home in the evening, leaving me wanting to go to bed before nine. Plus, I was reminded continuously of the family I didn’t have to share holiday meals with. As nice and as welcomed as Colin’s family always made me feel, I couldn’t help but feel melancholy at the lack of my own parents who cared.
Pushing aside my own forlorn thoughts I could do nothing about, I hit the voice activation button on my steering wheel and focused my attention on the task at hand. “Call Sexy Seth Andrews on mobile.” I enunciated the words clearly for the car’s computer, snickering at the silly name Seth had entered into my contacts.
“Would you like to call Sexy Seth Andrews on mobile?” the digital voice replied, eliciting another giggle from me.
“Yes,” I confirmed then waited for the call to connect.
After three rings, I grew nervous he wasn’t going to answer, but before his voicemail picked up, I heard his groggy voice on the other end of the line. “Roe? You okay?”
“Hey, Seth,” I greeted him a little too cheerfully, unsure of how he was going to react. “Sorry to call so early, but I’m calling because Colin’s been in an accident.”
Suddenly, he sounded wide awake and panicked. “An accident?! Where is he? What happened? Is it serious?”
“He’s okay, he’s okay. Don’t freak,” I assured him. “It’s not life-threatening, but he thinks it’s a pretty serious injury to his shoulder and arm.”
I went on to explain to him what happened and how I was on my way to take him some clothes, when he cut me off. “Monroe, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not sure why you’re calling me right now. I feel really terrible this has happened, because I honestly want the absolute best for him, but something like this doesn’t concern me anymore. I told you a while back at the game that I’m moving on. I can’t continue to fall back into something I know is going nowhere, and that’s exactly where Colin and I are headed as long as he wants to continue living a lie.”
“But . . . but he’s sorry,” I argued, my heart breaking for both of them, “and you know he lov—”
“Did he ask me to come?” he interrupted. “Does he want me to be by his side to support him as his lover?
I sighed. “No, but—”
“But nothing, Roe. I’m tired of being his dirty secret. I deserve more, just like you do.”
Swallowing hard, I resisted the desire to tell him about Oliver and the night before. If Colin found out I told Seth first, it would hurt his feelings, and with everything else going on, I didn’t need to pile it on. So instead, I replied, “I understand. Sorry I woke you up.”
“No need to apologize, baby girl.” Seth’s voice softened. “If you need me, call any time. You’re still my number one girl.”
“’Kay, I will.”
“Bye Roe. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Bye, Seth.”
The remainder of the drive, I tried to not think about what Colin’s reaction would be when I relayed Seth’s message by losing myself in terribly off-key singing to Top 40 songs on the radio. But when I found him in the medical wing of the team’s training facility and conveyed his ex-lover’s message, I watched the giant of a man who I loved crumble in front of me, destroyed by physical and emotional pain. Wanting to comfort him in any way possible, I went to him and held him in my arms for a long while as he sobbed into my chest.
After he got out whatever it was he needed to get out, he pulled away from me, kissed my cheek, and then spoke. “Doc says I really did a number on the shoulder. In addition to the separation, I have a partial tear in one of the ligaments, and I’m gonna need surgery to reset, repair, and tighten the surrounding tendons, in hopes it’ll prevent future instability. He says I’m looking at eight to twelve weeks normally, but is recommending this brand new rehab place down in Miami. He thinks with whatever cutting-edge treatments they’re doing, I could maybe be back in five or six.”
Disappointment washed over me, though I tried not to let it show. This decision wasn’t about me.
“Is that what you’re gonna do?” I asked.
He nodded hesitantly. “If you think you’ll be okay here by yourself? You know you’ve got my parents, Seth and Effie, and now Oliver around if you need anything. Plus, I’m only a short plane ride away.”
I forced a smile and ran my fingers through his short hair. “Don’t worry about me, babe. All I want is for you to get fixed up the best way possible.”
“I love you, Roe,” he said with a sad smile.
“Love you too, big guy.”
Later that day, Colin underwent successful surgery to repair his shoulder, and the next morning, he was on the team plane bound for Miami, Florida for a minimum of four weeks.
Four weeks I had alone.
With Oliver.
“We laid in bed
and watched the clocks
around us dance
until time to us,
was only the rise
and fall of our
ruptured heartbeats.
We kissed and we kissed
until we knew no other taste
and we no longer understood
the pattern of a day as
we fell in love with the
colors and the world
between each other’s
eyelids.”
–Christopher Poindexter
Oliver
“I’M REALLY GLAD you let the beard grow back out,” Monroe quipped as she melted into the mountain of pillows beneath her head, eyes squeezing shut and chest heaving in her post-orgasmic state.
As I looked up at her naked body from my vantage point between her legs, a deep laugh rumbled up through my chest into the back of my throat. “Is that so?” I smirked, licking the sticky, sweet taste of her release that coated my lips.
“Mhmmm,” she moaned while sifting her fingers through my hair. “And I’m glad you haven’t cut this either. I like to pull on it when it happens.” Her grip tightened near the roots as she said the words, triggering my dick to jump in response.
After over three straight weeks of spending almost every non-working moment in that bed with her, I knew damn well she liked to pull my hair when she came. And even more than that, I knew I fucking loved every single time she did it. Even from the beginning, when I was careful to move slowly with Monroe, wanting her to feel in control and not pressured, she would twist her fingers in my mop of waves and yank hard each time she climaxed, regardless if it was on my hand, my mouth, or my cock. Which was often. Really often.
With Colin being out of town for at least the entire month of November, and Monroe and me in the full swing of the honeymoon phase of our relationship, we rarely left my apartment. When we weren’t working, we were in my bed, naked, either exploring each other’s bodies or watching movies on Netflix. Occasionally, we ate, showered, and slept, and all of that we did together too. The only time we spent apart
was on Thursday nights when I played at Riff’s and she’d have dinner at the children’s home. We didn’t want to take a chance of someone associating her being there only on nights I performed, so she utilized those evenings for some quality time with the kids.
Effie had started showing up more frequently during the work week as we neared the December first closing date on the house, and even though I hated when she was there, because I couldn’t touch or kiss or break for a quickie when I wanted with Monroe, she actually proved to be a pretty good employee, and I was happy Monroe had her working for her. Her persistent, unrelenting personality annoyed the shit out of me when she was coming on to me, but it paid off big in the business world. Plus, I kind of liked it when Monroe would get jealous while Effie flirted. On those days, she’d damn near attack me the moment the poor girl walked out the door and the lock was turned. Her carnal need to mark me inflated both my ego and my shaft, which usually led to some pretty off-the-fucking-reservation, oh-my-God-she’s-the-thing-dreams-are-made-of sex. So yeah, maybe I didn’t mind Effie all that much.
“Well, beautiful girl,” I pushed up on my hands and knees, pausing to feather my lips over her sweet spot one last time before crawling up the length of her frame, “as much as I’d love for you to pull my hair again right now, we need to jump in the shower and get ready to head to the airport. I don’t want to be late for Callie’s flight to arrive.”
“Ugh,” she complained, scrunching up her nose in the cutest way. “I don’t want to sleep without you for a week. This sucks.”
Chuckling, I stole a kiss from her pouting lips and rolled off the mattress before I allowed myself to get lost in her again. “I’m not arguing that with you, but it is what it is. My niece will be here for three nights, and then I’ll be at my parents’ house for four. But I’ll be back before you know it, and then I can show you how much I missed you.”
Her lids fluttered open and she looked over at where I was standing next to the bed. “You’re not getting tired of me yet?”
“Of course I’m not, weirdo,” I scoffed, throwing her a don’t-be-ridiculous look. “I think I’ve made it pretty damn clear how I feel about you. You’ve been in my bed every night for twenty-one straight nights, and it’ll take another twenty-one hundred before I could even think of getting tired of.”
The instant her forehead dipped into a low V, I knew I’d screwed up the math. “That’s like six years,” she confirmed my fuck-up.
“Well, I meant twenty-one thousand. I can’t math when you’re laying there all naked, looking warm and inviting in my sheets, and Iron Chef is controlling ninety-eight percent of my brain activity,” I contended.
Monroe grinned impishly as she scooted her body toward the edge of the mattress and locked her ankles around my ass. “Are we at a hundred percent yet?”
“Almost,” I grunted, unable to resist her.
Slightly tilting her hips, she rubbed her wet center up and down the length of my throbbing shaft. Her daring green eyes never left mine, and finding her inner vixen, she cupped her own breasts and began rolling her nipples between her fingers. “How ‘bout now?”
With a feral growl emitting from my chest, I scooped her off the bed and carried her to the shower, where I gave her every damn percent I had in me before we washed up and got dressed. It was with ten minutes to spare that Monroe parked her blue Volvo in the VIP lot at the airport, and the two of us put our romance on a temporary hold as we walked inside to pick up Callie—together, but not together like I wished we could be.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me you know Monroe Cassidy!” my seventeen-year-old niece exclaimed for at least the fourth time that day as her gaze bounced back and forth between me and Monroe, who was sitting next to me in the corner booth at the Lobster House, where we were finishing up our early dinner. “And I still can’t believe I’ve been hanging out with her all day!”
Callie glanced over at the younger teenage girl next to her as she shoved a French fry in her mouth. “And you’re basically gonna live with her! How bad-ass is that?”
JoJo smiled wide and nodded. “It’s really cool when she brings Clutch around too. They’re both awesome.”
“Oh, my God, he is sooo dreamy,” Callie swooned. “Do you have anything signed by him?”
As the girls dove into a lengthy discussion filled with giggles and squeals about how amazing Colin Cassidy was, I glanced over at Monroe and smiled like an idiot, unable to contain my happiness over how well the day had gone so far. After we scooped Callie up from the airport, we drove to the Suffolk County home to pick up Heather and JoJo to join us on our day of sightseeing around the city, but unfortunately, Heather had come down with a nasty cold the night before and couldn’t come.
So the four of us had ventured out into the crisp, sunny November Sunday afternoon, first taking the Boston Movie Mile Walking Tour, where a local actor guided us around by foot for a couple of hours, pointing out prominent landmarks and well-known neighborhoods that have been a part of major motion pictures and network TV shows. Monroe had quietly pointed out her house to me when we passed it during the portion of the tour that led us through the winding, tree-lined streets of the historic Beacon Hill neighborhood. I wasn’t expecting the pang of jealousy that shot through me at the sight of the house she shared with Colin, but it was there nonetheless. Even if he didn’t know her in the intimate sense that I did, he was still legally her spouse, and together they owned a house, cars, and who knew what else. Her heart and body may have belonged to me, but she was his wife.
That fleeting twinge of self-pity had been the only snafu in the entire day, and thankfully, no one but I knew anything about it. I’d known exactly who Monroe was and what I was signing up for when she and I began our relationship. Admittedly, I’d felt infinitely better about my sealing the deal with the whole adultery thing once I knew that Colin and Monroe weren’t husband and wife in that sense of the word. Even if I wasn’t aware of that fact until after I made the decision to take her as mine, I chose to ignore that minor detail. After all, it was just semantics. The important thing was that I was the only man on the planet who had experienced the heavenly sensation of being buried deep inside her, and if I had it my way, that’s the way it would stay.
“Are you about ready to meet some ghosts?” I teased Monroe when the girls excused themselves to the restroom, alluding to the Haunted Boston Ghost Tour we were getting ready to leave the restaurant and head to.
Taking full advantage of the few minutes we had alone, I shifted my inside hand to the pleather bench seat we shared and ‘accidentally’ brushed my fingers against hers. With a sharp, sudden intake of breath, her gaze fell to where our skin touched, and after a couple of seconds, a devious grin began to spread across her gorgeous face.
“It depends,” she smarted back as her hand inched toward my thigh, completely hidden by the table, “on whether or not you’re gonna hold and comfort me if I do.”
The instant her fingers made contact with my leg, even though it was through the rough denim of my jeans, my dick stirred to life and I groaned. I shot her a you’re-the-devil look and tried to shift away from her, but she tightened her hold to a death-grasp and shook her head.
“Unh-unh, no running away,” she laughed, the beautiful sound dancing in my ears. “Answer my question. Are you gonna take care of me afterward if I get all scared when I see a ghost?”
“You already know the answer,” I murmured, dropping my stare to the table, suddenly feeling shy. “I always take care of you.”
Relaxing her grip, Monroe patted my leg soothingly as she leaned in to whisper, “You’re right. You do. And I don’t ever want you to stop.”
My nostrils flared and my pulse spiked as I utilized every last ounce of willpower I had inside me to refrain from kissing her stupid right there and then, not giving a single fuck who saw us. I’d been captivated by her since the first time I met her, and the fast and furious ride from pipedream crush to practically livin
g together in the span of three months had led me right to that very moment. Sitting in a corner booth at the local Lobster House, as dusk fell outside the window over her shoulder, with her hidden hand on my thigh and her warm breath floating across my neck, it was then I knew I didn’t ever want to stop taking care of her either. As in never ever.
I wanted to wake up to her morning breath and fall asleep to her faint snores. I wanted her to make fun of me when we had dance parties in the living room and laugh until she snorted like a pig as I tickled her relentlessly in bed. I wanted her to get mad at me when I forgot to take out the trash and I wanted to roll my eyes each time she forgot to put the chocolate milk back in the fridge. It was always easy to want the good with someone, but it was when I realized I wanted the bad with her even more than I wanted the best of anyone else, that my brain confirmed what my heart already knew.
I loved her.
Mind, body, and spirit, I hopelessly adored her and wanted nothing more than to keep her as mine forever.
“Monroe,” my breath hitched as our eyes locked, electricity crackling in the air between us, “promise me that you’ll tell him as soon as he gets back. I don’t ever want to stop taking care of you either. Please don’t ask me to.”
Pressing her soft, pink lips together, she nodded slightly. “I promise, Ollie.”
“If darkness
is really not
darkness at
all, but rather,
the absence of
light,
then my flaws
are not really
flaws at all,
but rather,
the absence
of you.”
–Christopher Poindexter
Monroe
“KEEP STIRRING UNTIL all the liquid is absorbed. This may take anywhere from three to five minutes,” the gorgeous Italian chef instructed with a smile as she mixed the rice mixture with ease, exerting just enough effort to make her amazing boobs squeeze together and peek out of the designer V-neck blouse she wore.