1 - A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT #2
The house was dark except for the glow of the television in the living room. Brock was there, sitting on the couch in sweatpants and a t-shirt, a rerun of this afternoon’s baseball game playing low. He looked up when she entered.
“Can’t sleep?”
Victoria shook her head. She hadn’t expected him to be awake.
Had expected to have the kitchen to herself, to sit in the dark and feel sorry for herself in peace.
But now that she saw him—the concern in his gray eyes, the way he shifted to make room on the couch—she found herself moving toward him instead.
She sat at the opposite end. The leather was cool against her bare legs.
“I’m sorry,” Brock said.
“You don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything.”
“I know. I’m still sorry.”
The baseball game flickered. Some team scored. Neither of them cared.
“It’s not fair,” Victoria said. The words came out small, like a child’s. “I did everything right. I took the vitamins. I did the injections. I didn’t drink, I didn’t—I did everything.”
“I know you did.”
“And Joey—” She stopped. Pressed her lips together.
Brock waited. He was good at waiting.
“Joey gets to drink,” she finally said. “He gets to pass out and not deal with any of it. And I’m the one who has to feel like my body failed. Again. Even though it’s not—even though we know it’s not my fault.”
The words hung between them. She hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t meant to put the truth out there, naked and ugly, for her father-in-law to see.
Brock exhaled slowly. “You’re allowed to be angry, Vicky.”
“Am I?”
“Hell yes, you are.”
She looked at him then. Really looked at him. The strong line of his jaw. The way his t-shirt stretched across his chest, a chest she’d seen him work on in the garage, bench-pressing weights that men half his age couldn’t manage. The dark hair on his forearms, the hands that were steady and capable.
Something sparked in her belly. Something she’d been ignoring for weeks now, maybe longer.
“Can I tell you something crazy?” she whispered.
“You can tell me anything.”
“I’ve been—lately, I’ve been thinking things. About you.”
Brock went still.
“I know it’s wrong,” she continued, the words tumbling out now, propelled by hormones and grief and four years of wanting something she couldn’t seem to have.
“I know you’re Joey’s father. I know I’m married. But I keep—in my head, I keep imagining if it was different. If the problem isn’t just Joey, if maybe—”
“Victoria.”
The way he said her name—not Vicky, but Victoria—made her stop.
His gray eyes were dark. Unreadable. But he hadn’t moved away.
“You’re hurting,” he said. “You’re grieving. And I’m not going to take advantage of that.”
“You wouldn’t be taking advantage.”
“Victoria.”
“I mean it.”
She shifted on the couch. Moved closer. The leather creaked beneath her. Brock watched her approach, his body tense, a deer scenting danger. But he didn’t retreat. His hands rested on his thighs, knuckles white.
“Tell me you haven’t thought about it,” she said. “Tell me you haven’t looked at me once since we moved in here.”
“I haven’t.”
“Liar.”
The word landed between them. Brock’s breath caught. His chest rose and fell in the dim light of the television, the baseball game reduced to silent motions of men running bases neither of them were watching.
“You’re my son’s wife,” he said, but his voice had gone rough.
“And I’m about to spend another twenty thousand dollars trying to have his baby when his body’s the one that can’t.”
The bitterness surged up, hot and caustic.
“Don’t you understand? I want to be a mother. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And I’m starting to think it’s never going to happen. Not with him.”
“That’s not fair to Joey.”
“None of this is fair to Joey. But it’s not fair to me either.”
Brock’s jaw worked. The muscle in his temple pulsed.
Victoria reached out. Her fingers brushed his forearm. The hair there was coarse, the skin beneath warm. She felt him flinch, but he still didn’t pull away.
“I’m not asking for a commitment,” she said. “I’m not asking for anything except right now. Tonight. Something that’s just for me.”
“Victoria—”
She kissed him.
It wasn’t tentative. It wasn’t a question. She pressed her mouth to his and felt the shock run through him, the moment of resistance before something broke open. His lips were dry, warm, and after one heartbeat, two, he kissed her back.
His hand came up to cup the back of her head. His fingers threaded through her blonde hair, and the television flickered its mute colors across their bodies as Victoria Carter kissed her husband’s father on the couch in the house where her marriage was supposed to be healing.
Brock broke the kiss first. His breathing was ragged. “This is wrong.”
“I know.”
“If Joey wakes up—”
“He won’t. He had five beers. He’s out until morning.”
Her words were steady. Practical. As if she’d thought this through, which she hadn’t, not consciously, but somewhere beneath the grief and the hormones and the months of watching Brock’s back muscles flex when he lifted things in the garage, maybe she’d been planning this all along.
She kissed him again. This time, his resistance crumbled faster.
His mouth moved against hers, hungry in a way that made her forget the ache in her belly, the emptiness that had been there since the doctor’s office that morning.
His stubble scraped her chin. His hands—those strong correctional officer hands—settled on her waist.
“Victoria,” he breathed against her lips.
“Don’t talk.”
Her fingers found the hem of his t-shirt.
Slid beneath. The skin of his stomach was warm and firm, a ridge of muscle that made her own belly tighten in response.
He was built like a man who hadn’t let himself go, who still carried prisoners to the ground when the job required it.
She traced upward, felt his chest hair beneath her palm, felt his heart hammering against her hand.
Brock groaned. The sound vibrated through her.
She pulled his shirt up, and he helped her, breaking the kiss just long enough to yank it over his head. In the television glow, his torso was a landscape of shadow and muscle, the dark hair dusting his chest and trailing down toward the waistband of his sweatpants.
“Your turn,” he said, and his voice was different now—lower, rougher, the voice of a man who’d made a decision and wasn’t looking back.
Victoria pulled her t-shirt off. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts swung free, and she watched Brock’s eyes drop to them, watched his expression shift into something like reverence.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
His hands found her. Calloused palms cupping her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples until they hardened into peaks.
Victoria’s head fell back. The sensation was electric, different from Joey’s touch, surer and more deliberate.
Brock knew what he was doing. Thirty years of experience in those hands, and she felt every one of them.
She reached for his waistband. The drawstring of his sweatpants came loose easily, and she pushed the fabric down over his hips. His cock sprang free, already hard, thicker than she’d expected. Her mouth went dry.
Brock’s breath hissed through his teeth when she wrapped her hand around him. The skin was velvet-soft, the heat of him surprising. She stroked once, twice, learning his shape, and he bucked into her grip.
“Slow,” he said, but it came out like a plea.
Victoria leaned in and kissed his neck. His collarbone. The center of his chest where the hair was thickest. She slid off the couch, her knees finding the carpet, and positioned herself between his legs.
“Victoria.” He looked down at her, and something flickered in his gray eyes—desire and guilt and a helplessness that made her feel powerful for the first time in months. “You don’t have to—”
She took him in her mouth.
The sound he made was guttural, almost pained.
His hand flew to her hair, not pushing, just holding, as if he needed something to anchor himself to the earth.
Victoria worked him slowly, her tongue tracing the ridge beneath the head, her hand stroking what she couldn’t fit.
She’d always enjoyed this—the intimacy of it, the way a man came undone under her attention—but this was different.
This was forbidden in a way that made her pulse race, made the slick heat build between her own thighs.
She hollowed her cheeks and took him deeper. Brock’s hips jerked. His grip on her hair tightened.
“God,” he choked out. “Victoria, I’m not—if you keep doing that—”
She pulled off him with a wet pop. Looked up. “Not yet.”
“Then you need to stop, or I’m not going to be able to.”
The admission made her smile. She climbed back onto the couch, straddling his lap, her sweatpants still on but soaked through now. She could feel the damp fabric against her inner thighs. Could feel the ridge of his erection pressing against her through the cotton.
Brock’s hands found her hips. “Last chance to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“Then lose the pants.”
She stood. Hooked her thumbs into the waistband.
Pushed the sweatpants down, taking her underwear with them, until she was bare before him.
The television light painted her skin blue and gold.