Chapter 22
Kaylee
How is it possible to sleep like a baby and still wake up feeling as if I got hit by a truck?
As much as I'd like to forget exactly how my dreams went last night, they're the only things that I seem capable of focusing on.
I miss the days when my dreams faded like smoke minutes after I woke up, but since I had the same dream on repeat all damn night long, they seem to be clinging to me like a rash. The worst thing about this particular rash is that I know I'm in a losing battle, trying to fight the urge to scratch the itch. Doing so would complicate everything. With the teasing I endured yesterday in the hot tub combined with the relentless teasing from my dream, complicated seems to be the only answer.
As if the man knows just how to torture me, he walks into the kitchen, half an hour after I settled at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee in gray sweats and no t-shirt.
I look over at one of the other guys who introduced himself as Twisted earlier this morning. Although he's not looking in my direction, I can't help but read the crooked smile on his face as if knowing just how much Ellis affects me.
I curl my lip in irritation at my husband as he walks closer, thinking he's going to go past me and grab his own cup of coffee.
He doesn't. Of course, he doesn't. Why would he do the only sane thing?
Instead of getting coffee, he walks up to me, placing his hand on my cheek like he has every right to do so, and when I look up at him, questions in my eyes, he bends down and presses his lips to mine.
It's a quick kiss, a fraction of the one we shared last night, but it somehow has the ability to reignite that same fire he started with that single damn finger last night.
When he pulls back, he doesn't go far. He turns me on the bar stool, the thing not bothering to even make a groan of protest as he spins me into position, and then the insane man wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my neck.
The sound of his breaths combined with the warmth of his body pressed between my legs sends a shock of adrenaline-coated need right up my spine. All I can manage to do when he steps back is stare up at him as if I've never seen him before in my life.
My jaw hangs open when he adjusts himself in his sweats, the action doing nothing to hide just how his body responded to mine.
"Mornin', wife," he says with a quick wink before turning and proceeding toward the coffee pot.
Twisted chuckles, and I find him watching me now, his head shaking back and forth.
My cheeks are on fire, having a witness to what just happened, because it felt like such an intimate moment. Something that should happen behind closed doors, not right out in the open for others to see.
Maybe it's just his way of marking his territory, and I can't help but wonder just how I feel about that either. I don't exactly hate the idea, but, at the same time, I'm not exactly keen on him pissing a circle around me as if I'd even be in this situation with him and thinking about setting my sights on someone else. I'd never be so disrespectful, and it makes me wonder what he really thinks of me if that's what he believes I might do.
Although I don't exactly hate the attention I just got from Ellis, I don't think that it's something we should share with others. It brings on a certain level of expectation, and that's not what this marriage is about. Instead of challenging him, I busy myself with taking a drink of my coffee.
The argument in my head rages on, however.
Should I ask to speak with him in private and reiterate the rules or should I just see where all of this goes?
One kiss in the hot tub and a little grind on his manhood, and now the man is all lovey-dovey and acting like this situation is something that it isn't.
Has he told these men the truth? Do they know why we got married? Is he lying to them and telling them that we're actually in love?
Who would even believe that you could meet someone and fall in love so quickly?
A throat clearing makes me realize that my eyes are directed right at Ellis's ass as he prepares his coffee. I snap my gaze up, locking eyes with a smiling Rooster.
"Good morning," the man says as he stands there with his arms crossed over his chest, like a father who just caught his teenage daughter in a compromising situation with the neighbor boy. "Did you sleep well?"
I dip my head, lying, because I could never confess the truth to anyone. I don't even know if it would be a conversation I'd feel comfortable having with Morgan after a bottle of wine. That's saying something because I can't seem to control my loose lips after a few glasses of red.
Instead of Ellis turning around to assess the situation, he sips from his coffee cup as he opens the refrigerator door, pulling a carton of eggs and other things from inside before setting about to make breakfast.
I swear when he places a plate in front of me, it shocks me as much as the little kiss and snuggle did fifteen minutes ago.
"Thank you," I whisper, trying to recall when I last had someone make me a meal without me standing at a counter and paying for it.
"You need to keep your strength up," he says with another one of those quick winks that would make my knees weak if I were standing.
The chuckle from across the kitchen makes me realize the innuendo in his comment, and that forces my eyes to narrow at him.
But instead of calling him out on it, I pick up my fork and eat.
The food is delicious, even in its simplicity, and although I can feel his eyes on me as he eats, I keep mine locked on my plate, trying to focus on not choking with every bite.
I feel like I'm somehow existing outside of this situation, as if somehow I'm watching this happen rather than experiencing it myself because it's just so far-fetched. It doesn't seem like something that my mind would even be capable of conjuring on its own.
"I was thinking we could shower after breakfast."
How my fork dropping to my plate with such a clank didn't break the dish is beyond me.
"Excuse m-me?" I sputter, covering my mouth when I see a small piece of egg fly from it.
"A shower," he says, his smile slow and knowing.
I look around the room, but we're currently the only two people in here. That speaks to my level of distraction because I don't have a clue when Twisted and Rooster left.
Instead of badgering me about it, he takes my now empty plate from in front of me and rinses it in the sink before placing it in the dishwasher.
I stare at his back as he spends a few more minutes cleaning up from our meal, including taking my empty coffee cup and putting it in the dishwasher.
Instead of looking expectant when he turns around, he holds out his hand to me.
Like a fool, I place mine in his, curious about where this will go, although I'm fully aware of exactly what direction it's going to take as he leads me from the room.
My mouth grows dry, my knees weak, as we traverse the stairs back up to the room we're sharing.
"We can't have sex," I blurt once he closes us in the bedroom.
"Because of the annulment?"
I dip my head, watching him scrape his teeth over his lower lip as he watches my face.
"We can always lie about it."
"Morgan said the same thing," I confess, wishing I would've just kept my damn mouth closed for the smile it brings to his face.
"I think I like your friend already," he says, his thumbs hooking inside the waistband of his sweats.
"Wait," I blurt, holding my hands out to stop him. "I don't know if this is the best idea."
"We aren't going to have sex, Kaylee. We're going to shower."
I know exactly what my face does when he chuckles, and it makes me wish I was better at hiding the disappointment.
When he pulls his hands from his body and holds one out to me, I feel like I'm being seduced by the devil himself. As a good girl from a small town, I don't understand why my hand reaches out to it.
The warmth of it sinks inside of me as he pulls me toward the bathroom. Once inside, I'm left standing there with my jaw practically on the floor when he shucks off his sweats, as if it's no big deal to have that muscular ass of his pointed at me. He reaches inside and turns on the water.
I dart my eyes away quickly when he turns around but not before getting an eyeful of his thick length.
I feel locked in place, my knees shaking and my hands trembling like I've never seen a man's naked body before. But, actually, I've never showered with a man before. All of my sexual encounters happened in the dark from the time I gave my virginity to my high school sweetheart until my last trip back home when I stupidly hooked up with the same man after his sob story of how his wife left him.
"Let me help you," Ellis whispers as steam begins to swirl around us.
I stand stock-still as he reaches for the hem of the t-shirt I blatantly took from his dresser drawer before my shower yesterday.
"Jesus," he mutters as I lift my arms and allow him to slip it over my head. "I know I have no right to be jealous, but had I known you were naked under this thing, I would've beat Twisted's and Rooster's ass for seeing you today."
I fight the urge to cross my arms over my chest when the air in the room tightens my nipples.
I drop my eyes, only to have the sight of his thickening cock fill my vision.
Instead of taking a step back, he reduces the space between us, the tip of his cock brushing my stomach and leaving a wetness on my skin.
"Sorry," he whispers, without any attempt to increase the distance between the two of us.
"Sh-shower," I stutter, knowing I need water sluicing down my body to hide the arousal growing between my legs.
His hand wraps around mine, and a second later, we're both standing under the spray.
"I can't get over how sexy you are," he says as his hand runs over his chest. "You turned me on the second I saw you at the grocery store."
His confession sparks something inside of me, and it only takes a few breaths before my skin feels like it's on fire.
My hand twitches with the need to touch myself, but I could never do something so openly sexual in front of anyone.
"I wanted my mouth on your skin, my hands cupping your breasts," he continues. "I wanted to know what it was like to slide my cock right into the center of you."
I swallow down the knot in my throat before taking a step closer to him.
"Touch me," I beg, but instead of closing the distance between us, he places his hands behind his back.
I want to growl at him, to tell him he's a jerk for refusing me, but when I look up into his face, I see that he's struggling just as much as I am. It feels nice to have him on my side in this, despite how much we're aching for each other.
"We went over the rules before we got in here, and I'm not going to do something you didn't agree to out there," he says, sounding reasonable and completely insane at the same time.
"You're infuriating," I mutter.
"You'll thank me for it later, Kaylee. Touch yourself."
My head shakes, refusing to do as he wants before my brain can even formulate a response.
"I can't."
"You will," he says, as if he's already seen the future and knows exactly how this shower will end.
"Ellis," I whine.
"Say my name when you come," he offers, one hand coming out from behind his back to stroke down the now rigid length of himself.
It's as if his touching himself gives me the courage to do the same, but I lock my eyes on the shower wall when my fingers part that sensitive crease in my body.
I barely manage to control the whimper that threatens to escape my lips, but he seems less capable, the rugged sound of his groan echoing all around us to the point that I wonder if others in the house can hear him.
"Fuck, that's so sexy," he whispers, his words coming out on a pant.
My fingers move faster, the brush of them on my clit so powerful that my knees threaten to give out.
"That's it," he praises. "Come for me, baby."
As if my body has been obeying his commands for years, I explode, blackness filling my vision.
When I come back down, he has stepped into me, the back of his hand brushing over my stomach as he strokes himself. I whimper for a second time when I look down in time to see the head of his cock throb as cum spurts from the tip of him.
We didn't have sex, yet somehow this seemed much more intimate than any sexual experience I've ever had before.