It isn’t a conscious decision to let my legs fall open, stretched out on the lounge chair. Just like I don’t really choose to move my left hand inside my robe, loosening the tie to expose my skin.
My eyes are closed by the time my fingers slip inside the elastic waist of my panties, moving lower until I feel my wetness.
Anger for allowing Dex Cohen to invade this private moment threatens to dampen my pleasure, but I push it aside, placating myself with the knowledge that no one else will ever know.
Weak. Weak. Weak.
That’s one four-letter word I hate being associated with, but the zing of pleasure I receive as I brush my clit mocks me.
Images from the past mingle with the present, flashing behind my closed eyes like an old movie I’ve watched too many times before.
Teenage Dex—shirtless, working on one of the many construction projects we’d done during the time he lived at The Whitney. As an impressionable pre-teen, I’d been mesmerized at how his many tattoos danced across his muscular chest and arms as he did hard labor. Even all these years later, I remember running to hide in my bedroom, unsure why I couldn’t resist touching my private parts—sure that something was wrong with me.
My brain jumps to years later, remembering hiding in a linen closet to sneak a cigarette when Dex, home on college break, had arrived with some random chick. I’d been trapped behind the stack of linen as he’d shoved his dick down her throat while she knelt before him.
Witnessing the oral sex had been hot enough, but it was the way his eyes had met mine as he’d fucked her mouth to his roaring climax that I remembered most about that day. It was the first time he’d looked at me with something other than brotherly annoyance. I’d seen the hunger in his eyes and knew instinctively he was wishing it was me on my knees sucking him off instead of his girl-of-the-week.
That was the first time I’d ever felt sexually powerful, which is why I masturbate to that memory more than I like to admit, even to myself.
Slipping my fingers between my lower lips, I let my head fall to the back of the chaise, while I use the fingers of my other hand to press against my clit, letting a shiver of pleasure rattle through my body.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re thinking about me right now, isn’t it?” Tristan’s mocking voice yanks me out of my trip down memory lane in a split second.
I am mortified.
Worse than mortified, I’m still horny, left hanging without my release.
“How dare you come in here without knocking!” I cry, quickly closing my robe to hide my body.
Tristan’s chuckle infuriates me.
“I did knock. You must have been too engrossed to hear it.”
“And since when does that give you the right to barge in anyway?”
“You are my wife, if I recall.”
“Screw you, Tristan.”
“I’d enjoy that. It’s one of the few regrets I have about this little business arrangement we have. I wish I’d negotiated for at least a few conjugal rights. Even men on death row get that much.”
“Yeah, well those men don’t have a line of mistresses waiting in the wings to service them like you do.”
“I resent that. There’s no line.”
“That’s right. In your fucked up brain, it somehow makes it all okay because you only fuck one woman at a time. You’re a true prince,” I retort, unsure if I’m angrier at his indiscretions or my own impatience for him to leave me alone so I can finish what I started.
“Listen, I didn’t come in here to argue. I can’t lay down yet with this heartburn, so I’m going down to have a nightcap at the bar.”
“Fine,” I wave him away like I’m swishing at a fly. “Have fun…” I’m not sure what makes me say it, but I can’t bite my tongue hard enough to keep my “Tell number eleven I say hi,” from spilling out.
It’s an offhand comment, but the look I see in his eyes as our gaze meets tells me I’ve guessed right. The fucker isn’t going to the bar. He’s going down to the fuck-pad he keeps on the tenth floor to bone his mistress of the month.
He’s halfway out the door when I shout after him, “You’re going downhill, Tristan! Number ten was much better looking!”
Tears sting my eyes as I hear the door to the bedroom suite slam shut.
I’m not jealous. Not really. I went into this business arrangement with my eyes wide open. Tristan and I are a good match… at least on paper. I enjoy my independence way too much to ever allow a man to hold the kind of power over me that a true marriage would bring.