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“Easy love,” Reggie murmured as he rescued her from collapsing to the floor.
An old chair by the window—a place where she loved to sit and read when it was storming on the lake—cushioned their exhausted fall. They landed in one big heap on the over-stuffed pillows, with Jocelyn holding tightly to her husband.
“I’m so sorry.” She wept, her face pressed to his warm chest so she could feel his cold heart beat hot.
“I have to remind myself sometimes that you’re as foolish as every other woman I’ve ever known,” he replied.
“I shouldn’t let you say that,” she told him through a sad sob.
“But you do because it’s the truth,” he retorted. Running his fingers through her hair, his touch was magic. So delicate, as soft as rose petals falling to the mossy ground. She gave him tiny kisses on his neck in reply, smelled the scent of him, the mix of cologne and a little brandy he must have had at dinner. And cigars he’d been smoking with his associates on the private jet. And something minty, the after dinner kind of mints they served before the plane landed. That closeness to his virile, masculine neck gave away all his secrets.
“I love you,” she said.
“I know that, darling. And you need to be loved.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”
“Not enough apparently. But I’ll remedy that.”
“Oh, please,” she exclaimed finally lifting herself away from his chest.
“Only if you get your head straight about your business, Jocelyn.” The remark was intended to carry a sting.
“Please let’s not fight.”
“No? Not now? Well then, we’ll do it in the morning.”
***
For fifteen minutes Jocelyn watched the figure of her husband, mostly his backside, saunter about the bedroom naked, noting as he did how much she adored his firm sculptured ass, and the way his trim waist flared into powerful shoulders. Jockey shorts on, there was hardly anything hidden, the smooth cotton just accentuated the provocative form and the muscles as he moved from the bath, to the dresser, to the mirror, to the closet—where disappeared returning half dressed with pants on, and a white dress shirt ready to be buttoned. Each movement was part of a carefully orchestrated ritual that turned out the impeccable Reggie Harold every day of this working life. It was hard to live with such perfection, but at the very least Jocelyn could admire the erotic quality of her husband’s careful grooming.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get going,” she exclaimed as she finally charged naked from bed.
A comment he’d ordinarily ignore, Reggie turned to her, his blue eyes biting.
“It’s time for a hiatus,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Time to close down Killian Management for a season, let the furor of Ibercon die down, let yourself heal.” They were wise words.
Jocelyn brushed past him on the way to the bath, though he grabbed a wrist and pulled her back.
“I can’t,” she swore, looking as undaunted and in command as he’d expect of his over-achiever wife.
“You will,” he countered.
“Don’t you pull that dominant trump card on me,” she retorted.
“You had no problem giving in to it last night,” he reminded her.
“Last night was sexual, I missed you.”
“That’s bullshit, Jocelyn, and you know it.”
“Okay, I stupidly let some stranger have my ass,” she conceded.
“It’s all about pride and ego.”
