Unraveled

Chapter 1

LILY

I wish I’d never looked up.

The stem of my wineglass is cool against my fingers, condensation sliding down to the napkin beneath it.

The muted clink of cutlery and the low hum of Italian drifting from nearby tables wrap around me, but none of it feels like mine.

I’m a stranger here—more observer than participant—dressed in a modest, simple black dress that seemed right for a fifteenth wedding anniversary dinner that never happened.

I wish I’d kept my head down and focused on the gnats aimlessly flying around me, a mirror reflection of how I felt.

Living one day to the next, slowly fading into the surroundings around me, always there, but not really necessary.

Only acknowledged when I do something wrong or miss something—cleats for practice, the dry cleaning before a big meeting, cooking a dinner nobody wants that night—rather than the other many things I do right.

“Guys, get a move on it.”

I’m sure they’re sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but that’s what they get when they refuse to give me any ideas of their own.

“Blue tie,” I mutter, going through the million things in my head. Anderson had it on when he left. At least I reminded him this morning. His lunch was packed. His water filled.

I run through the list of a million things I need to do. I’m forgetting something. I know I am.

“Ortho after school today, Justin. Then soccer practice, Josh. Then I have to rush you home so I can go back to the PTA fundraiser.”

“We can’t hear you, Mom,” Justin shouts down the hall before the bathroom door shuts.

What am I forgetting?

There’s a horrible retching noise, one after another, and before I can react, Hank, our beagle, pukes everywhere.

“Oh, gross.” But before I can take two steps toward him to clean it, the smoke alarm goes off.

“Fire. Fire. Fire,” it alerts with a high-pitched noise.

“The toast!”

What I was forgetting.

I turn to find the toaster with smoke coming out of it. Frantic to stop the screeching, I yank the cord out of the wall and then begin waving the dish towel under the smoke detector that is on the ceiling. Anything to get it to stop.

“Fire. Fire. Fire.”

“Mom.”

“Mooommmm.”

A chorus of them go off down the hall as the boys run out to see what’s going on. My brain is going a million miles a minute and I abandon the towel waving, thinking that if I remove the charred bread, it’ll be a quicker solution.

Bad idea.

In my flustered state, I try and pick the toast out and burn my fingers on the still hot metal. “Ouch.” I hiss and toss the bread into the sink.

The footsteps stop and laughter starts. Both boys stand there in varying stages of dress for school.

“Oh my God. How dumb can you be to forget the toast?”

“Fire. Fire. Fire.”

“Mom’s losing it.” They both laugh. I know they’re just being teenagers but their words hurt.

It’s stupid.

“Fire. Fire. Fire.”

And as if on cue, my cell rings. Anderson.

“Hi? What?” I sound as harried as I feel.

“What the hell is going on there?” he shouts.

“Fire. Fire. Fire.”

“Toast. Toaster. No big deal.” And luckily, the smoke alarm shuts off. My shoulders sag in relief.

“Since when is making toast a hard thing?”

I grit my teeth, attempting to shrug it off. He’s just stressed with the quarterly meeting this week. He’s in work mode. Breathe. “What’s up?”

“I told you to remind me it was Trish’s birthday,” he says about his admin. “Now I’m here without a gift looking like an ass. Thanks a lot. All I needed was you to help me remember.”

“Um . . . what?” How is it my responsibility to remember her gift?

“You know how bad it looks when the boss forgets something like this. That’s why I asked you to put it on your calendar.”

“Right. Yes.” Right beneath doctor’s appointments, sports practice, school projects, grocery shopping, the vet appointment, my own job, and God forbid getting to take a pee in private without someone calling for me .

. . no problem. I’ll remember something in your day that you could remember perfectly well with a calendar reminder yourself.

I shake the mini-rant out of my head and swallow down my bitterness.

“I can try and bring you—”

“Forget about it,” he bites out. “It’s my fault just . . . I could’ve used your help is all.”

The line goes dead.

The tears sting and then well, my shoulders shudder as I fight back the pain. Why do I always feel as though I’m failing? As if it doesn’t matter that I do so many things well for everyone else, yet all that’s mentioned is when things go wrong?

“Thanks a lot. All I needed was you to help me remember.”

No, thanks for juggling it all. Just a smart-ass remark about how hard it is to make toast.

A lone glass of wine. A call to my husband and some little white lies pretending that I was upset that he’d been called away for a last-minute work emergency. I do care. I did care.

It’s our fifteenth wedding anniversary, after all, and now I’m all alone in Italy.

A trip I’d spent months planning—where we’d go.

The places we’d see. The touristy things we’d do.

And then there was the time spent on the home front ensuring the boys and all their activities were looked after—school papers signed, rides to practice sorted, homework reviewed, present for the birthday party Justin was invited to bought and wrapped.

So many little things to do and plan and schedule before I even packed a single stitch of clothing.

And all for a trip my husband had been “so excited” to attend, but not before a work emergency had been deemed more important than spending five nights away with his wife.

Rather than feeling disappointed that this is not a romantic evening with my husband . . . all I feel is indifference. I should be livid and disappointed, but I’m not and that says so much more than it should.

Feeling undervalued does that to you.

Feeling perpetually . . . inconsequential only exacerbates it.

I sigh and watch the couple across the lounge from me. He’s tucking her hair behind her ear, listening intently to everything she has to say. His hand is on her thigh, creeping up every so slowly. Her smile is a constant.

Something that simple, that normal, shouldn’t have jealousy streaking through me. It does.

God, Anderson and I had fun in those early years. Days filled with romance and nights where we couldn’t get enough of each other.

A surprise picnic basket on the front seat when he picked me up from work before driving two hours to the coast just to eat sandwiches, play in the water, and make love in the back seat of the car like teenagers.

The thought feels like a distant memory. One that makes me equal parts happy and sad.

Now? Now, he doesn’t even bother with an excuse that makes me feel better about myself or the state of our marriage.

I wish I hadn’t picked this bar, this drink, this night.

Then I could have wandered down the cobblestone streets slightly buzzed but completely content.

I would have gone up to our hotel room, snuggled into a blanket on the balcony under a Tuscan sky with my e-reader for company.

I’d lose myself in one of those romance books I’ve come to love.

The ones that have helped me reawaken and own my sexuality.

Appreciate it. The fictional stories that have made me realize it’s okay to want more out of my sex life, to want my husband to push the envelope with me. Experiment with me. Demand more of me.

“Your nose in yet another book?” Anderson would no doubt groan if he were here.

The irony is those books have kept our sex life alive. The passages I’ve highlighted on my e-reader in secret. The dog-eared pages of my paperbacks for easy rereading of the scenes that made my pulse race.

What would Anderson do if he knew what those saved pages contained? Be interested? Scoff at them? Play them off as silly and disregard them altogether?

I’ve tried to tell him so many times. Opened my mouth with my books in hand and then shut it just as quickly. His common refrain on repeat in my head, “Stop comparing those fictional books to real life.”

But I did pick this night. This bar. This glass of wine and because I did, everything changed.

I looked up and into eyes the color of dark chocolate, sinful and delicious. Irresistible. Instant attraction sparked with a subtle nod of his head and a bite of my lower lip.

Harmless flirting. That’s all it was.

Feeling seen. Even more potent than any drug.

I met the man stare for stare, a smirk ghosting his mouth as his eyes scraped across my features—lips, cleavage, wedding ring on my finger—before coming back to meet mine. We continued to hold each other’s gazes, his eyes darkening with desire and tongue darting out to wet his lips.

The blatant proposition in his eyes is there. Unmistakable. Flattering and unnerving all at the same time.

When was the last time a man openly flirted with me like that?

It was ridiculous to entertain the idea even if only mentally.

And then I was uncomfortable and averted my gaze. But even then, I could still feel his eyes on me. The weight of his stare—being watched, studied, desired—feeling like fingertips featherlight on my skin.

Somewhere behind me a glass shatters on the tile floor and someone barks out a laugh. A car’s horn. A cell phone ringing. The shouting from one person to a friend to join them.

Evidence of people living life carry on around me, but the sounds are muted. My heartbeat pounds in my ears as the faintest trace of cologne settles in the space between us.

I immediately know it’s his.

I should have refused the drink the bartender slid in front of me with a murmured, “Compliments of il signore.”

I should have let it sit there untouched. But I didn’t. I picked it up and swirled the liquid around a few times in contemplation, before I drank it.

Almost as a sign in and of itself that I was accepting what he was offering.

I should have refused it. Sent it back. Got up and left.

I wish I had.

But I didn’t.

It’s not the first time I’ve ignored that little voice. In the past, ignoring that not-so-subtle voice cost me shreds of my own dignity. This time though, I have a feeling it might cost me more.

“Please,” I cry out. Owned by a potent cocktail of fear mixed with traitorous pleasure, my body trembles. The heightened sensation shocks my mind back to the present. To the here and now.

To the gloved hand sliding a fingertip between my breasts.

To the ragged breathing of the man I can’t see.

To the potent fear-laced anticipation racing through me.

And the deep-seated ache to feel owned. Consumed. Taken.

Somewhere in the fog between the bar and wherever I am now, the warmth of the wine turned to the cold bite of leather against my skin.

The music, the chatter, and the romance of the quaint bar, all gone now.

It’s been replaced by silence so heavy and an anticipation so intense, it hurts to draw in a breath.

His fingers slide between my spread legs and slip between the seam of my pussy, wet and swollen, a result of everything he’s done to me thus far.

The initial resistance I had is long gone.

The fledgling shame I first experienced, obliterated.

Fear remains, though. It’s a cold and callous presence, but it’s rivaled by the unexpected desire that barrels through my body like a freight train.

I’ve tried to deny it. Tried to fight it. But it’s a devilish hunger, the sweetest of burns, that I’ve only ever let myself imagine in the pages of a book, in the safety of knowing it would end with a kiss and a confession.

Not here.

Not like this.

I cry out at the feeling of two leather-gloved fingers as they push their way into me, the texture of the material an oddly pleasurable feeling.

I’m so over-sensitized, so used, that I don’t think I can take much more.

My knee-jerk reaction is to snap my thighs closed, but my mind is so overwhelmed that I forget, I can’t.

It takes one tug to remind me of the restraints holding my ankles apart.

His touch continues. Slow. Controlled. Purposeful.

My body begins to writhe, its need to sate the burning ache a sharp contrast to the warring emotions in my psyche.

My only focus is on the slow push in of his fingers and the pressure and friction against nerves unexpectedly reawakened.

The tortuous withdrawal of leather that’s not wet enough so it tugs softly on the most tender of flesh, causing a different but equally arousing sensation.

I try to fight it.

At least I rationalize that I do.

My thoughts and body are in a constant war of do I or don’t I.

If I don’t have any reaction, maybe he’ll stop.

If I do react, do move, maybe this will all be over faster.

Every option feels like a trap . . . especially when my hips jut up in reflex and betray me.

How can an orgasm rip me apart right now—again—when fear still holds my breath captive?

This doesn’t make sense. It’s not rational. Not logical.

It was the acceptance of the drink he bought. My look up to acknowledge him with a subtle nod of invitation.

I thought it was harmless.

I was wrong.

My body surges with sensations as the swell of white-hot heat sears through me, taking nerve endings hostage and overwhelming all thoughts.

Because this—the man I can’t see on the other side of my blindfold—is him. It’s the same cologne. The same weight of his stare.

Intrigue mars with fear. Uncertainty blends with disbelief.

I shouldn’t have looked up.

No.

I should’ve let his silent proposition fall by the wayside.

The question is, why am I almost glad I didn’t?

Because in one look, he saw the parts of me that Anderson has ignored for years—and I don’t know if that makes me broken . . . or just finally awake.