“When is your divorce final?”
His question was like a bucket of cold water on my excitement.
“Ah… Next week, supposedly. Honovi said to plan on being available Thursday for the judge to sign off on it.”
“And how is Jolie handling it? Is she looking forward to being able to date again?”
“Can we… can we maybe not talk about her right now?” I asked. “It’s kind of doing pathetic things to my dick.”
Otto’s forehead creased in concern. “Seth, I didn’t plan on us sleeping together until your divorce was final, so I guess I just wanted a little reassurance to help me feel like I wasn’t quite the homewrecker your wife is making me out to be. It would make me feel better knowing she’s looking forward to her chance to sleep around too, you know?”
Leave it to Jolie to cockblock me from afar. “Well, she hasn’t said anything about it. In fact, all she’s done is make me feel like a homewrecker too. So, see? You’re not alone there.”
Otto moved away from me to sit up on the edge of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. “Fuck.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
He turned back to look at me with a smirk on his face. “You know I want to more than anything.”
“But?”
“But as fucked up as this whole situation is, she’s right. I am part of the reason for your divorce.”
“That’s not true. When she and I got married, it was supposed to be just for the purpose of Tisha’s legal paperwork. Then when I offered to stay married and help provide her that stability for the early years, I specifically said it was until Tish went to school. That would have been three years ago, Otto. The only reason I didn’t push the divorce is because I didn’t have a pressing reason to make it happen. Now I do.”
“Yeah, me,” he muttered. “Like I said, I’m the reason.”
I moved over and laid my hand on his bare shoulder. “Even if you hadn’t been here. Even if you were still overseas and career military, I would have needed to divorce her and move on, Wilde Man. I wasn’t going to be celibate my whole life. I want a true partner. And as much as I worried I’d never find someone to love as much as I love you, I wasn’t willing to go my whole life without at least trying.”
Otto turned and pulled me into his arms, kissing me and scratching our unshaven cheeks together.
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to spend your life without someone to love,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
“Of course I do. And I feel the same way. Now, can we please find our stash and fuck?”
I needed the emotional words to be over for now. I felt raw and vulnerable, too close to crying again. If I could just get Otto to shove his hard cock into me and let me lose myself in the feeling of being filled by him again… well, then, I could escape this feeling of my skin being too tight.
“Lie back.” Otto’s voice took on a similar command tone that always put me in just the right mood. For a brief moment, it was like I was seventeen again being bossed around by my dominant high school boyfriend.
I fucking loved every minute of it.
After sliding the scrub pants the rest of the way off, I scooted back on the mattress and waited. Otto stood up and went to the closet to find the loose baseboard panel we’d stashed all kinds of shit behind over the years. He came back and tossed the tube of lube at me before untying his own drawstring and lowering his pants to the floor.
My mouth filled with saliva. His thighs were thick with muscle. There was a large tattoo on his right hip and I realized it was his horse, Gulliver. I felt my cheeks tighten in a smile as I reached out to run my hand over it.
“Love this,” I said with a chuckle. “You’re so fucking gaga over that horse.”
Something funny crossed his face, and I lifted an eyebrow in question.
Otto cleared his throat and turned around so I could see the ink on his back. “He’s not the only thing I’m gaga over,” he said softly over his shoulder.
I ran my hands up his back, noting the curved line of his siblings’ initials in birth order along his side, some kind of submarine tattoo on the back of one calf, and what was probably the GPS coordinates of the ranch at the top of his spine.
Then I saw it.
If you’d shot an arrow through his heart, it would have come out in the center of the tattoo I saw last. The one of two little boys sitting side by side fishing off a dock. It wasn’t just any dock. It was the crappy little dock where we always fished together growing up. And it wasn’t just any two little boys. It was us. Eight-year-old us from the summer when we met.