Aidan wanted to think the Five Points were based on good Catholic values? I called BS. Marriage and family were the basic tenet of any religion, and at the moment, the Five Points were in danger of forgetting that.
I wasn’t and never would be overly religious, but as Finn’s wife, there were certain things I had to do, which I’d never have done in my past life. Things like going to church on Sunday and confession as well.
The only good thing about lockdown was that both of those requirements were put on hiatus.
“Stephen calls every night,” Mary-Ellen told me cheerfully as she chopped up potatoes into small chunks.
Refraining from snarkily stating that he damn well should, I slumped into the kitchen seat. My wound was itching—a good sign, Lena said. When it itched, it meant it was healing, apparently. I thought it meant it was infected, but when she or Mary-Ellen cleaned the wound, there were no signs of infection so that was something.
“Do you have phone sex?” I whispered, one eye on Lena who was making clanking noises while she stirred the ingredients she’d prepared for tonight’s dinner.
There were five other women who helped with the meals, and they’d already done their chores. Mary-Ellen and I were the slow pokes.
Her cheeks heated. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
I sometimes wondered if Stephen had kidnapped Mary-Ellen from a convent. I mean, I thought I’d been bad. A twenty-five-year-old virgin? I’d fooled around though. I knew what phone sex was and was game.
Asking if she thought Stephen was getting his rocks off elsewhere would have been cruel, and I hated the idea of it enough to murmur, “Just tell him what you’re feeling.”
She bit her bottom lip. “Do you with Finn?”
“I wish.” I heaved a sigh. “He’s scared I’ll hurt myself.” Then I shot her a grin. “Death by masturbation. What would Father Doyle say?”
Her eyes flared wide and I knew she feared for her immortal soul. “We shouldn’t.”
I shrugged. “Why shouldn’t we?”
“It’s wrong, isn’t it?” She worriedly eyed Lena and then the potatoes.
“The joy of the marriage bed,” I crowed. “Nothing is wrong if you both want it.”
“What do you even talk about?”
“What you wish he was doing to you?” I made it a question because I’d never done it before myself, and I was making the suggestion for her.
Maybe I was leaping ahead, but Stephen, after barely seeing his pregnant wife for weeks, was unlikely to be keeping it in his pants.
A lot of the women seemed to accept the fact their husbands strayed, and others bitched about it in the common rooms. Enough that I knew Lena had been right when, all those weeks ago, she’d said the Pointers were rarely faithful to their spouses.
She’d said it to warn me, but I knew, deep down, Finn wouldn’t cheat on me. Maybe if I stopped putting out just to be a bitch he might, he was a man after all, and they were led around by their cocks, and I knew Jenny had several guys cheat on her—and she was not only hot as fuck, but had the flexibility of a pole dancer. If a guy would cheat on her, I sure as hell wasn’t safe.
But Finn felt guilty I was wounded, and he was in the middle of a war that hadn’t started because of me, but to him, it had. He’d taken it as a personal affront and wanted to ‘avenge’ me.
I almost shook my head at the thought.
It sounded like something from a comic book, except gunshot wounds really fucking sucked. I was like a modern day Helen of Troy, but I just hoped in this version, my Achilles didn’t suffer an arrow to his heel.
So, unlike Finn, Stephen didn’t have the same goals. He was just a soldier being steered this way and that, who suddenly had an empty bed…
Perhaps it was mean of me to judge him without even having met the guy, but Mary-Ellen was so sweet. I really hated the idea of her being cheated on, especially for her lack of knowing how to please a man.
The way she pinkened whenever I brought up sex made me wonder if those twins had been conceived through divine intervention.
I cleared my throat, trying to think of a way to prompt her to spice up their nightly phone call. It was a long shot, but it could work if he loved her.
“You know the things he does to you in bed?” She nodded, but kept her eyes on the potatoes. “Do you like them?” This time, her nod was a little more eager than before. Aha! So no divine intervention had been necessary. I grinned at her. “Talk about that. Pretend you have to say the things instead of just doing them.”
“Isn’t that hard, though?” Her blush was almost as potent as mine—made sense considering we were both redheads.