Chapter 16
Shannon
“I can’t think of a single place I’d rather be than right here,” I tell him.
“Ditto.” His arms tighten around me and we barely move, swaying as little as possible and losing ourselves in the moment.
“I have a question,” he says softly.
“Sure.”
“What happened to your glasses?”
“I had laser surgery. My ex hated me with glasses, and I had the surgery for him, but it turned out to be a good thing. I love waking up and being able to see, or when I swim… I don’t miss them at all.”
“I just like having easy access for staring into your gorgeous eyes.”
He knows how to push every one of my erotic buttons—being with Ace is heavenly.
I love everything about this man, from his chiseled jaw and strong hands to the muscles bulging in his biceps to the way he looks at me like he wants to devour me.
I’ve never thought about a man literally devouring me, but with Ace, that’s how it feels.
“It’s time to call it a night,” Chris says when the song ends and we reluctantly head back to where we’ve been sitting.
“Us too, I think,” Ace says, arm around my waist. “It’s been a long few days for us.”
“I’ll see you in the gym at seven.”
“See you then.”
Ace keeps his arm tightly around me as we descend the stairs and make our way back to the room. I kick off my heels and sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing my sore feet.
“Want a foot massage?” Ace asks, smiling down at me.
“Absolutely.” I scoot back on my bed and present my foot to him. He sits on the edge of the mattress and sets it on his lap, using both hands and rubbing his thumbs up the center of my foot.
“Oooh…” I lean back and close my eyes.
This is heavenly. Those damn hands of his are going to be the death of me.
He’s holding my foot gently now, as if it were the most delicate thing in the world, but his fingers are working magic and goose bumps rise on my flesh.
We’re both fully dressed but this might be the most erotic moment of my entire life.
He kneads the ball of my foot with his fist, the pressure just enough to erase an evening of high heels and leave me feeling relaxed and comfortable.
His hand moves up my foot, to the ankle and then to my calf.
He rubs both hands along the skin there, going back to my foot and then up to the calf again.
I’ve had foot massages before, but not like this, and I barely recognize the longing inside of me.
Once upon a time, I was an excited virgin, anxious to learn what the big deal was about sex.
About orgasms. And everything to do with intimacy.
Instead, my best orgasms happened by my own hand and there was no such thing as true intimacy with my husband; he never lasted long enough and foreplay was nonexistent.
“You just got stiff as a board,” Ace murmurs. “Where did your mind go that took you away from the here and now?”
“To a time when I gave up on my dreams and settled for something spectacularly underwhelming.”
“Your ex.” His voice is strange, as if he’s holding back anger, and I open my eyes, lifting myself to my elbows to look at him.
“Are you mad?”
“Not that you were thinking about him, but that he did whatever he did.”
“He didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was just…boring. Staid. And sex was over so damn fast, I never had the chance to learn how to enjoy it.”
“Can I ask why you got divorced?” He’s picked up my other foot now and is starting the whole process once more, so I lay back again.
“My mother introduced us.” I laugh even though it isn’t funny.
“Which should have been my first clue that we were totally wrong for each other, but I was twenty-five and wanted children, so I started going out with him. It was nice. Nothing earth-shattering, but he was smart, well-traveled, educated, and attentive. We went to nice places and did fun things all the time. So the man, who he was beneath the surface, didn’t become apparent until it was too late. ”
“Pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside,” he murmurs.
“It wasn’t entirely his fault,” I say sadly.
“I wanted him to be something he wasn’t.
I was fairly quiet and shy when we met, because I was trying to be who my mother told me I should be, so I could find a husband and have the children I wanted so much.
I should have let him see who I was much earlier as well, but I didn’t understand what that meant in the context of a relationship. ”
“But you are quiet and shy, aren’t you?”
“Shy, yes. Quiet? Not really. Not with people I know. The thing is, he thought I would be the perfect submissive little wife and bow to his every whim. He didn’t realize that shy doesn’t mean easily manipulated or na?ve about the world.
Na?ve about sex? Definitely. But the world in general? Absolutely not.
“When he realized I wasn’t going to be what he wanted, he tried to access my trust fund, but I wasn’t willing to let him have a dime.
He wanted me to stop working, but I love to teach and wasn’t ready to quit.
” I swallow hard, slightly embarrassed to be telling him about this.
“He also wanted threesomes, and while that’s fine if it’s your thing, it’s not mine.
Not because it’s bad—everything he proposed actually seemed kind of sexy—but our relationship was already precarious, and frankly, I’m not the kind of woman who could do that, share my husband with other women.
Maybe if I’d been sexually active before I got married, I might have tried it with a one-night stand or something.
But with my husband? Not a chance in hell. ”
“While polyamorous relationships are fine in theory, I don’t think I could do it either,” he says, his hands moving up my calf and squeezing a little harder than before. “But it was unfair of him to spring that on you, especially knowing you were a virgin before you got married.”
“Well, we had sex before we got married, because I didn’t want my wedding night to be painful or messy or any of the stories you hear about your first time.”
“So, he knew you were inexperienced and thought he’d be able to mold you into the sexual partner he wanted instead of allowing the two of you to discover what you wanted together.” It was more of a statement than a question, and I merely nod.
“I suppose.”
“Of all the things I regret in my life, that might be at the top of my list now. If your first time had been with me, I promise it would have been very, very different.”
I think I said, “I know,” but I’m not sure because I must have drifted off to sleep.
The next time I open my eyes it’s morning, though it’s still dark out.
I’m under the covers, still fully dressed, and I nearly cry with frustration.
I fell asleep, and he was a perfect gentleman.
I wouldn’t expect any less from him, of course, but this isn’t fair.
I don’t know how long I’ll have him in my life, and I want him, all of him, all of everything there is to share while we’re together.
And maybe, if the intensity between us continues to grow, he won’t leave me at all.
Ace is awake, because when I turn over, he’s lying on his side with his back to me, but I see the light from his cell phone and hear him lightly tapping on the screen.
Though he’s just a couple feet away, since our beds are separate, it feels like miles and I’m suddenly sad.
As if the distance between us is some kind of metaphor for my life.
The loneliness I try so hard to pretend is okay.
The babies I haven’t had.
The emptiness that’s become so poignant since losing my father.
Even when my marriage was unraveling before my eyes, I had my father to lean on. Now I don’t have him either.
I still have my mother, of course, and though we’re closer now than we ever were while Dad was alive, it isn’t the same as the bond I had with my dad.
And now that I’ve gotten so close to Ace in such a short time, have him in my life again, he’s keeping a distance between us that I don’t understand.
I would have gladly made love with him already, but he’s used excuse after excuse, and though my heart believes he’s being a gentleman, my brain is starting to doubt everything about us being together.
“I waited nearly five years for you to come back.” I keep my voice soft in the darkness, but he immediately glances over his shoulder at me.
“What?” He turns over in the small bed, the muscles in his bare back flexing as he moves.
“I mean, not like, sitting by the phone or anything, but in my heart of hearts, deep down in the part of your soul you don’t let anyone see, I believed you would come back.
Your service would be done or you’d retire or something, and you’d show up and tell me you’d been thinking about me the way I’d been thinking about you. ”
“Oh, baby. That hurts my heart. You knew I wasn’t coming back. I told you I wasn’t coming back.”
“I know. But my heart, well, it has a mind of its own, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The night before my wedding, I couldn’t sleep.
I was with my parents, so I went down to my dad’s den and sat there in the big armchair by the fire, wondering how I was going to survive being married to a man I didn’t really love.
I liked him at that point and thought we were going to have a good life, but I wasn’t in love with him.
Not the way I should have been. Not the kinds of feelings a woman getting married should’ve had.
“Dad came downstairs around three in the morning and found me. He knew I wasn’t happy and said we could cancel if I was having doubts.
I said no because I didn’t know what else to say.
He asked me what he could do, and I asked him if he knew where you were.
And just like that, he understood. He knew why I’d asked and said that while he didn’t know where you were, he’d move heaven and earth to find you if I wanted him to. ”
I sniffle, mortified that he might hear me cry. He’s moved closer to the edge of his bed and reaches out a hand, waiting until I close my fingers around his.
“And then I felt so stupid,” I continue in a hushed whisper.
“I mean, you and I danced a few times and you kissed me. Big deal. I felt like an idiot admitting what I was feeling to my father, so I said I was just having last-minute jitters, that I was okay, to forget about it. But Dad knew me better than anyone, and he sat up with me all night, telling me stories about you from when you served with him. Telling me all the wonderful things about you that I didn’t know but somehow sensed anyway. ”
“Your dad was a good man.”
“He was the best.” I sniffle again, tears starting to fall no matter how hard I try to stop them. He slowly slides across the small space between our beds, until he’s pressed up against me.
“I thought about you a lot,” he whispers, slipping under the covers so he can wrap his arms around me. “But I couldn’t come back, couldn’t be the kind of man you wanted and needed in your life. Not then.”
“But how could you know what I needed? I didn’t even know what I needed.”
“Well, they say that love is wasted on the young…and this is one of many examples of why they say it.”
“But we weren’t… Aren’t?” My voice is shaky, completely overwhelmed with emotions because I don’t know what it feels like to be in love, but I’m getting there much more quickly than I could have imagined.
“No, but whatever happened between us that night ten years ago is definitely special because it’s lasted more than a decade. Feelings like that don’t always have a label, but they should never be ignored.”
“Then why are we sleeping in separate beds and not making up for all that lost time?” I whisper, swiping at my tears and pulling away enough to look at him, despite the darkness.
“Because you mean a lot to me, and I don’t want to cheapen it.”
“There wouldn’t be anything cheap about us making love.”
I turn so we’re facing each other now, bodies close, eyes locked together. We lay there in the semidarkness not saying a word, just looking at each other. He has one hand on my hip but slowly brings it up my torso until he’s cupping the side of my face.
“I want you so much it hurts,” he whispers. “Tell me what you want.”
“You, silly. Being with you like this is like a reward for ten years, seven months and twelve days of dreaming.”
“You’re my reward for nineteen years of sacrifice for my country.” He slowly drags his lips along my jaw, pausing just before settling on my lips. “And I’m not waiting another second to claim you.”