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I glance at the page and pretend to read. “He tore off her clothes, then fucked her really hard, several times in a row.”
He raises a brow. “Lucie, that’s not what it says.”
I groan. “Fine. ‘His fingers slid beneath her skirts, to the—'”
His hands are already moving up my thigh. “Why’d you stop? I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do next.”
“It says heparts her spiral curls. It’s just…kind of a gross image. I’m picturing a vagina with long, flowing hair.”
“That makes this way less hot suddenly.” He leans over me, sliding his fingers beneath the edge of my panties. “Ah, but look how wet you are. It’s hot again. What next?”
“‘His fingers speared her—'”
His fingers, three at once, push inside me. I’m so deliciously full that it’s hard to breathe.
“‘And then he grasped his staff.’”
Caleb stills. “Hisstaff? You mean, like, some kind of walking stick?”
In spite of his fingers still inside me, in spite of his erection pressing into my thigh, I laugh. “No, I think they’re referring to his genitalia.”
“I thought it was about to get really kinky.”
“You seriously thought he was about to use a walking stick on her somehow?”
His eyes gleam. “I can see a few ways we might use one. You have other holes.”
I swat him with the book. “You’re ruining this. Lord Devereaux never would refer to‘other holes.’”
He moves lower on the bed and his tongue slides over me, slick and hot and eager. “So I’m ruining this, you say?”
“No,” I gasp. The book falls to the floor. “I think you’re turning it around.”
LATER, when the lights are off and I’m tucked tight to his chest, we talk about those times I snuck out to the dock to see him as a preteen, and he claims to have no clue that I ever had a crush, which I find difficult to believe.
He asks me how I wound up going to Ruth’s house in the first place, and I tell him things I never shared with Jeremy—the way my mother would claim she had ‘work issues’ each summer and dump me with my aunt when she was actually going on a trip with whatever man was around at the time. How she’d go to Disney or Yosemite or Mexico and promise me a souvenir if I kept it all a secret—a Belle dress from Disney, Hermione’s wand from Universal Studios—and then later claim it was stolen or that I hadn’t earned it, so she’d given it away.
He asks why I kept lying for her. I guess it’s a reasonable question. I only hesitate because that’s a worse story—I lied because I eventually grew as desperate to be away from her as she was me. I lied because once I hit my teens, she began to resent my youth and my appearance, and every time one of her boyfriends hit on me, she’d find a way to make it my fault.
I’m embarrassed, once it’s out—by how much I shared, by how gross it all is when laid bare. “It probably sounds pretty trashy compared to all your past relationships.”
He shakes his head. “It’s weirdly similar to my past relationships. At least the last one.” He pulls the blankets around my shoulders as the air conditioning kicks on. “Kate didn’t really know either of her parents. Her mom overdosed when she was little and she had no clue who her dad was. She grew up in foster care.”
“She grew up in foster care but got intoStanford?”
“She’s crazy smart. Probably to her detriment, since it allowed her to hide a lot of shit from me and from her employer for way too long.”
I’m not sure it’ll do me any favors to learn more about hissmart, beautiful wife who went to Stanford and was super fun. But there’s a lot more here, a lot more he doesn’t discuss about the baby and how it affected him, and he might need to tellsomeone. I suspect he never has. “How did you meet?”
“We both went to Stanford undergrad and Wharton for grad school,” he says. “We were never in the same class, but we met at an alumni event in San Francisco. I don’t even remember which school it was for.”
There’s another internal pinch—she went to Stanford and grad school. I barely finished undergrad at a school no one’s heard of.
“And she moved out to the middle of nowhere for you?”
He stiffens again. “Not really. She moved because she was pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but…” He shrugs.
Was there ever a time when he was excited about the pregnancy? I’m not sure how to ask, and before I can try, he rolls me on my back.
