Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
CAM
Amber light from the Moroccan-style bedside lamp filters across my wife’s face as I watch her sleep.
The matching lamps we have on either side of our bed are probably one of the truest representations of my wife and who she is.
We were holidaying in Portugal, eating at a Moroccan restaurant in Burgau, when Georgia spotted a lamp she liked and asked the wait staff where it was from.
They didn’t know, so she asked to speak to the manager.
Unfortunately, the manager didn’t know either but said he would reach out to the owners and find out.
Georgia left her card and was contacted the following day with the name of a wholesale place in Faro.
She got on to them, and they put her in touch with the manufacturer just outside of Casablanca.
After a couple of attempts at contacting them on the phone, Georgia googled their address and had us both on a flight to Morocco.
Their warehouse was literally at the back of a residential property.
The entire family, from the ages of about ten to one hundred, were involved in creating these metal lamps and light shades, which, I’ve got to admit, are not bad to look at as far as lamps go.
Lamps in general are not my thing, but my wife liked them, so there we were in fucking Morocco buying fifteen of the things to bring home with us and placing an order for five hundred more.
We have eight or so around the house. The rest were either sold in Posh Frocks’ physical and online stores or used as part of the décor in a couple of my clubs.
That was nine years ago.
Georgia has since paid for the education of four of the kids from the Fassi family, including Aya, who studied fashion and design at St Martins, and now works for her at Posh Frocks.
That’s her.
That’s my wife.
My Kitten.
Brilliant. Beautiful. Tenacious. Captivating. Demanding. Passionate. Funny as fuck. Giving. Pretentious. Challenging. Gentle. Fearless. Temperamental. Glamorous. Argumentative. Sexy. Loving. Strong.
She’s a complete dichotomy, and I love her for it. On occasion, she can also be a bit of a cunt, and I love her for that, too.
Today has been hard. The stories about her past and the love she once shared don’t bother me too much anymore; I’ve heard them all before.
Seeing the photos had me feeling a certain way, though.
I haven’t decided yet if it’s jealousy. Am I too old to feel jealous of a bloke who’s been dead for twenty-five years?
I think it’s more resentment that he knew her when she was young and that he got all her firsts.
But what hurt most was watching her cry.
Not the tears she shed for him, but her tears for what was done to them.
I know indirectly they’re still tears for him, but they just hit differently today.
The unfairness of it all. It was literally them against the world, and just when they thought they’d won the battle…
Fuck me, you seriously couldn’t make this shit up, and I don’t quite know how to explain the way all of it is making me feel, not even to myself.
I’m still trying to process, and while doing that, making sure my wife is okay.
To aid that, I used my fingers, tongue, and cock to give her three orgasms before she finally crashed, totally exhausted and snoring next to me.
Then there’s my own revelation. I thought I’d be taking that one to the grave with me.
I didn’t want to. I know it wasn’t a lie exactly, but a lie by omission is still a lie in my book.
I always knew if the subject of Rocco Taylor’s death ever came up, I’d admit to her the part I played in it, and tonight was the first time it has, so I confessed.
Technically, did I lie? And why am I worried more about lying to my wife than the part I played in the taking of a life?
“How did you do it?”
My soul feels like it leaves my body and hits the ceiling as I jump at Georgia’s question, even though I’m looking right at her and watched her lips move.
Remind me to add witch to the list of all that she is.
Knowing exactly what she’s talking about, I don’t hesitate with my answer.
“When I got the nod he was touting his story around to the tabloids, I made a call to a contact in New York where I knew Taylor was living. I arranged it so that the next time he scored, he’d be served up something extra pure.
So pure, he’d fall asleep and never wake up, and a tox report would only show up the usual suspects in his system because that’s all that would be there. ”
Her eyes have remained closed throughout, but I need to see them to know that we’re good.
“Look at me.”
Her blue eyes meet mine immediately.
“I don’t regret it. I’d have flown to New York and blown the fucker’s head off myself if I’d had to—would’ve happily done time to protect what’s mine. My only regret is not telling you sooner.”
She hitches a bare shoulder. “You told me tonight. We’re good.”
“Okay, well, while we’re on the subject, there’s something else you need to know.”
“Am I a terrible person for not caring that you played a part in ending the life of a man. In fact, knowing you did that for me made me horny as fuck?” She interrupts what I was about to confess, and my thoughts go off on a tangent.
I smile down at her, at how dissimilar yet alike we are, and I pull her on top of me. With one arm across her back and one across her arse and hips, I hold her against me.
“I love the fuck out of you, Kitten. You still horny now?”
“Love you, too, T. And no. I’m fucking knackered.”
“Language, Kitten.”
“Fuck off and tell me what the something else is,” she demands.
I flip us over so I can get a better look at her face.
“I made sure that every deal Haley White scored was laced with something nasty. Nothing that would kill her, but that would, after years of abusing her system, cause her major issues.”
I watch as she closes her eyes and feel her still beneath me.
“Kitten?” I question when it feels like she’s been holding her breath for far too long.
“Shh,” she hisses. Her eyes open and meet mine. She looks over my left shoulder, then my right, before her gaze lands back on mine.
“What’re you doing?”
“Trying to find a fuck to give,” she replies with a frown.
My laughter is loud and instant as she smiles back at me.
“Fuck me, I love you. You are so fucking perfect,” I say before pressing my lips to hers.
“I’m lying here with you, laughing at the deaths of two people. I’m definitely not perfect.”
“You’re perfect for me, that’s all that matters.”
Her eyes instantly shine with tears, so I kiss her again.
“Don’t cry. There’s been enough of that today.”
“What did you say to the girls?”
“What?” I ask, my brows pulled into a frown in confusion. “What girls?”
“Our girls. You went into their rooms before you came to bed. I heard you talking.
“I went into KiKi’s room because I knew that’s where they’d probably both be. Kiks won’t go to Lu’s because she’s as untidy as her mother.”
“Lu’s room’s tidy. I did it myself a couple of weeks ago. She hasn’t stayed here in that time.”
“She came here last Saturday morning looking for a dress, and she’s been here today. Believe me when I tell you it’s a fucking mess.”
“Okay, well, whatever. And fuck you that she’s like her mother.”
“Kitten,” I say on an exhale. “For someone with OCD, which, by the way, is another conversation we’ll be having…”
“Can’t wait,” she mumbles quietly.
Remember me saying sometimes my wife can be a bit of a cunt. This is her demonstrating said skill.
“For someone with OCD—”
“OCPD,” she corrects me.
“OCPD, you are the untidiest person I know.”
“The only place I ever allow to be untidy is here, our bedroom, wardrobe, and bathroom. And that’s because the therapist I saw told me to pick one space that I could leave messy just to remind myself that the world wouldn’t end if I didn’t make my bed or didn’t hang up a wet towel.”
“Technically, you picked three spaces.”
“One, the master suite.”
I sigh. “Fair enough. I just wish I’d known the ‘why’ behind it, then I wouldn’t have given you shit about being untidy all these years.”
“Well, now you know, you can stop giving me shit and tell me what you said to the girls.”
“I apologised for raising my voice the way I did. They asked if you were okay, and I told them you’d talk to them in the morning. I didn’t feel it was my place to tell them what Len told us. That’s your call.”
She again glances over my shoulder for just a moment and nods slowly. “I’ll tell them in the morning. Where were the boys? I thought they were coming over tonight.” Her beautiful brain goes off on one of its usual tangents.
“They messaged. Something came up for both of them. They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“I’ll tell them all together,” she says before biting down on her bottom lip. I wait for her second tell—one I noticed today that Lennon has too. Sure enough, she raises her thumb and chews at the skin on the side.
I knock her hand away. “What is it?”
Her eyes meet mine again before tracking a path all over my face. “Should we tell them about us?”
“Us?” I question, unsure of what she means.
“Us. What we did when I was married.”
“You want to tell them we fucked?” I push myself up onto my palms to take in all of her.
Her thumb goes back to her teeth. Dropping back to my elbows, I again knock it away as my body presses against hers.
“Well, I won’t word it exactly like that, but yeah.”
“Why? Why would you want to do that?”
“Because I want them to know what you’ve always meant to me. I want them to know that I don’t think of you as my consolation prize. The runner-up, backup plan—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I interrupt.
“I want them to know it’s just that I loved him first and didn’t know how to not love him. Then I loved you, I just didn’t know it. Then he came back and, yes, I went back to him, but that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you.”
She pauses for a moment, and a tear escapes the corner of her eye and rolls back towards her hairline. Her lips tremble as she continues.
“If it wasn’t you, I don’t think it would’ve been anyone.”
“What?”
“There was no one else but you out there for me. Not then, not now, not ever.”
“Not then?”
“First, there was Sean. Then it was you and Sean, but Sean’s dead, and I can’t tell you what might’ve happened between us if he wasn’t. But what I do know, with a million percent certainty, if we hadn’t reconnected after Sean died, I’d have remained single.”
I let out a long breath. “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that,” she snaps back. “And I want our kids to know that, too.”
“You don’t have to tell them you’re… we… what we…”
“That I’m an adulterer?” she questions. “No, I don’t have to, but I want to.
The whole world thinks that what me and Sean had was some kind of fairy tale, and, yeah, in many ways it was.
But I also want them to know that I risked all of that to hook up with you because what we had then and have now is so much more than a fairy tale.
What we have is real, raw, passionate, and like it or not, it comes with an ugly side. ”
“You’re not worried they’ll judge you?”
“They’re already judging me. Judging me for choosing him over you. I want to add some balance, some perspective, and explain that it wasn’t like that.”
“You don’t have to do this for me,” I tell her quietly. “I mean, I fucking love that you want to. It’s great for my ego, but you don’t have to.”
“I’m doing it for me, for you, for us. I’ve decided. No more conversation needed. When the boys get here tomorrow, we’ll tell them… together.”
She kisses my cheeks, then my eyes, then my lips.
“I love you. More now than ever, but I seriously need to sleep.”
“I love you, too, but you’ve made me hard. I need to fuck you again before I can sleep.”
“Far out. Are you not too old for twice in one night, two nights running?”
I grind my dick against her belly, roll her to her side, line myself up, and push into her from behind.
“Does this feel old?” I ask while I simultaneously play with her clit and her nipples.
“Not old, just hard,” she says breathily, forcing me to bite the curve of her neck before setting about giving her a fourth orgasm.