Hard Feelings
SLADE
We have a private dinner beneath the stars. Tomahawk steaks and truffled mashed potatoes, dark chocolate souffle with vanilla bourbon ice cream. Big glasses of red wine that take the edge off the pain in my shoulder, but not completely. I should have packed some ibuprofen.
Afterwards, Lila disappears into the bathroom. She re-emerges clad in one of the fluffy robes provided by the resort, holding a couple of towels. “Hot tub time?”
I nod, grimly bracing myself for the exercise in self-restraint that’s about to come.
After changing into swim trunks, I grab another bottle of red wine, along with a corkscrew and two glasses.
I’m normally a bourbon guy, but my self-control where Lila is concerned is already hanging by a thread.
Pouring straight whiskey on top of it is not gonna help matters.
She’s waiting by the steaming tub for me. Her pink hair is piled atop her head in a bun. Her eyebrows raise at the wine in my hands.
“Good idea,” she says.
And then she sheds the robe.
She’s… Christ. I don’t have words for what she is. All I know is there’s a tiny lavender bikini stretched over curves that belong to a fucking goddess. Little ties at her hips, another bow between her breasts. Like a present.
I haven’t even gotten in the hot water and it already feels like my entire body is on fire.
She sinks into the hot water with a sharp inhale. “Oh, that’s hot.”
The water plasters the fabric of her bikini to her instantly. Her nipples are visible beneath it. My wife is the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen and I have to keep my hands off her.
My cocks swells and I follow her in quickly before she can see what she does to me.
I have to focus on something else. Anything else.
The heat of the water. The pain in my shoulder. As I lean against the edge of the soaking tub, the ache starts to dull. My eyes close briefly. In a way, it was better when it hurt. At least that gave me something to concentrate on besides how badly I want to hold Lila.
When I open my eyes, she’s reaching for the wine to open it.
“I’ll do that,” I offer. As I reach past her, my forearm accidentally brushes against her tits.
Fuck.
I give a moment of silent thanks for the dark steaming water that conceals how hard I am. Then I pour the wine with hands that aren’t entirely steady and hand her glass over without looking at her face.
Both of us are still wearing our wedding rings. I haven’t taken mine off since she slid it on my finger, and I have no desire to remove it. Possibly ever. At least for the next year.
I go back to the opposite side of the hot tub and sit again. Lila does the same on her side, lifting the wine glass to her lips for a sip.
“How’d you injure your shoulder?” she asks, eyes resting on my surgical scar. Her tongue darts out to lick a ruby droplet and I would give anything to be the one kissing it off her lips.
“Happened two seasons ago,” I say roughly.
“Took a hit wrong. Played through it longer than I should have because…” I sigh.
Because I’m a stubborn, hard-headed bastard.
“Because that’s what you do. You don’t want to give the coaching staff a reason to bench you.
You don’t want to give anyone a reason to think you’re done. ”
“Are you? Done?”
The question sits in the steam between us.
“My family wishes I was.” I look at the water. “I’m thirty five. That’s old for a hockey player.”
“Young for a cowboy, though,” she smiles.
The corner of my mouth lifts. “Maybe. But hockey is what I do. Other than the shoulder injury, I’ve been lucky. Everything else is in pretty good shape. No reason to retire.”
No reason to rattle around a cold, empty house. No reason to put myself out to pasture, alone and directionless.
I look at Lila across the steam. At least, that used to be true.
“If I had a wife and kids to consider,” I tell her, “It’d be a different calculation.”
She flinches.
And I realize how what I just said must sound to her. Like she doesn’t count. When I’m trying to say the exact opposite.
“I—I’m sorry,” I stutter. “I didn’t mean—”
She takes a gulp of wine. “It’s fine. I get what you mean.” Another smile, this one thin. “No hard feelings.”
Damn it. I hurt her feelings. I’m already fucking up this whole marriage thing.
There’s a beat of silence between us. I look up at the stars, struggling to find something to say, struggling to explain myself better. I wish I was good with words, like my brothers are.
“Does massage help?” she asks. “With the shoulder?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “The only person who’s ever worked on it is our arrogant prick of a team physio and that’s about as pleasant as it sounds.”
“Turn around.”
Her hands on me? Massaging? This is going to be torture. Bliss, but torture. “Lila…”
“Please? I’ll be gentle,” she says.
How can I deny my wife anything? Especially when she asks so sweetly.
I turn around.
Her hands are warm when they find my shoulders. She starts slow, fingers rubbing the muscle carefully. When she finds the right spot her thumbs press in carefully and I feel the tension there for the first time, the knot I’ve been carrying so long I stopped noticing it.
I ignore the throbbing of my dick.
“Does that hurt?” she asks.
“Good hurt,” I say.
She works quietly. The water steams into the cold night air. The stars glimmer above us, the seam of the Milky Way visible in the velvet black. Her hands are careful and unhurried and I close my eyes and think about the last time someone took care of me and can’t come up with an answer.
“Tell me something,” she says.
“Like what?”
“About your childhood. You haven’t talked about it much.”
“It was good. Idyllic, I guess you could say.”
There’s a pause. “Can I ask… can I ask about your mom?”
I’ve never talked about Mom with anyone outside of my dad or siblings.
But Lila is my family now too, even if it’s in name only. But names mean something. And hers is Mrs. Rhodes now.
“She died about ten years ago,” I say. “Lung cancer. Never smoked a day in her life, and yet.” The howling injustice of it, the cruel irony, had enraged me for quite some time.
That faded eventually. For years now, there’s been only numbness.
Lila’s hands stroke slowly, comfortingly across my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Slade.”
I close my eyes against the flood of bitterness and pain. Try to find something good to say. “She would have loved you. She loved to go antiquing. Loved old books and treasures and things with history. You guys would have had so much to talk about.”
“I wish I could have met her.”
“Me too.”
Her fingers stroke down my neck, sending waves of pleasure radiating through me despite the bittersweet emotion coursing through me.
She asks, “What’s one of your favorite memories of her from when you were a kid?”
It’s a good question. The pain and bitterness fade, replaced by the warmth of better memories. Ones I haven’t thought about in a long time.
“Mom used to make buttermilk biscuits every Sunday morning,” I say.
“We would wake up to the whole house smelling like heaven. It was the only time all four of us would be at the table before she even had to call us. Come rain or snow or summer mornings that were already hot before the sun was fully up, no matter what else the day brought, we woke up to something soft and good and made with love.”
Lila’s hands slow slightly. Then keep going.
Now that I’ve started talking about Mom, I can’t seem to stop.
“There were years I’d come home from hockey practice and hear her playing a duet on the piano with Walker.
Or she’d be out with Tanner, feeding the chickens, and they’d be inventing gossip about the chickens and cracking each other up.
And Josie… she and Mom loved to garden together.
They had this little patch on the south side of Rosemont.
They’d grow pumpkins and sunflowers. Strawberries every summer.
We’d eat them straight off the vine, still warm from the sun. ”
“Sounds lovely,” she says tenderly.
“What about you?” I ask. “What do you remember about being a kid?”
Her hands keep moving but something changes in the pressure. Lighter. More careful. “Not much worth telling.”
“C’mon,” I prompt gently. “These are the kind of things a husband ought to know about his wife.”
“You have good things to remember,” she says. “It’s different.”
“Didn’t say I only wanted good stories,” I say gently.
She’s quiet for a moment. Her thumbs press into my shoulder. “I had a nanny named Rosa,” she says finally. “She’d let me sit in the kitchen while she cooked. She made arroz con pollo on Fridays for all the staff. I’d sit on the counter and watch and she’d let me stir.”
The nanny. Not her mother. Not her family. Before I can make a comment, she continues, “She was fired for sneaking food to me. Mommy dearest had me on a very strict regimen to compensate for my ‘stocky frame’ and ‘slow metabolism’.’”
I freeze, shocked by her mother’s casual cruelty. “How old were you?”
“Nine.” She pulls away, not meeting my eyes. “I’m getting pruny in here. I’m going to get ready for bed.”
I get out of the tub first and hold the robe open for her.
She steps into it and I wrap it around her shoulders, and for a moment my hands are at the lapels and she’s right there in my arms, steam rising off us both into the cold air.
I wish I knew how to comfort her. I wish I could hold her, kiss her and caress her everywhere, make her understand what I see when I look at her. How beautiful she is. That her body is gorgeous and perfect and nothing has ever tested my willpower like promising to keep my hands off it.
I don’t say it, though. Not because I don’t mean it. Because she just told me something raw and vulnerable, and the last thing she needs right now is a man turning her pain into something about him.
“It’s cold,” I say instead. “Let’s go in.”
She nods. Wraps her arms around herself inside the robe.
We get ready for bed quietly. She showers first, then me. It all feels very domestic and very charged simultaneously. Brushing our teeth side by side at the small camp mirror. Her shoulder against mine. Turning off the lights one by one until only the glow of the wood stove remains.
I go to the tent flap and stand there, looking out into the dark.
I hear Lila slip into bed behind me, the sheets rustling softly.
“Slade,” she asks. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping watch. This is bear country. Should’ve come armed.” I shake my head. “It’s our honeymoon, and I bring my wife to a fucking tent.”
“Slade.” I hear the smile in her voice now. “While it’s very, um, sweet that you’re prepared to defend me against rogue bears, you do need to sleep too.”
I turn around.
She’s lying on her side, head on the pillow, watching me with those warm brown eyes. She’s wearing a silky little nightdress. Her pink hair is loose around her shoulders, still damp at the ends from the shower. The wood stove throws a low warm glow across the bed and across her.
I stand there in the tent flap, mesmerized.
She pats the duvet. “Come to bed.”
I know she doesn’t mean it to sound sultry. But it does. Her soft voice. Her incredible curves laid out for me like a feast.
Every caveman instinct in me takes it as an invitation.
Moving slowly, controlled, fighting against that instinct with every breath, I close up the tent flap.
I get under the covers and make a series of careful decisions.
The first: where to put my hands. Those go flat on my chest, not reaching.
Then, where to direct my eyes: the tent ceiling, not her.
Most importantly, where to keep my dick: in my pants.
Not, as much as I may want to, inside my wife.
I breathe deeply. It only gets me a lungful of her delectable feminine scent and I close my eyes briefly, praying for the strength to get through this night without pulling her body to mine.
She turns on her side to face me. I can still make out her features in the moonlight. “How’s your shoulder now?” she asks.
“Better. Thanks to you.” I pause. “I’m sorry about the ‘tent’ of it all. I wanted to give you an authentic Montana experience. Could’ve just stayed at Wild Rose and had four walls and roof too.”
She laughs. “This is lovely.”
“You don’t have to pretend,” I tell her. “I know how you grew up. This is roughing it for your kind.”
“It’s rustic and beautiful. I’m having the time of my life. Truly.”
We lie there in the warm dark. The wood stove ticks. Outside the wind moves through the spruces and the pines, ruffling the flaps of the tent.
She’s close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off her. Close enough that if I reached out my hand I’d find her immediately. I could tug her into my side with no effort at all.
I say, “I’m sorry your family didn’t come to our wedding.”
She snorts. “I’m not.”
After hearing the kinds of things they say to her, the truth is I’m not really sorry either. What I’m really sorry for is that she doesn’t have a better family.
“They would have been terrible guests,” she continues. “Would have drank every drop of alcohol and left the food untouched. Made some snide comment or another about us. Trust me, the less we see of the Sherwoods, the better.”
“How’d someone…”—as perfect as you— “Like you come from someone like them?”
“We’ve all been asking ourselves that question for twenty five years,” she sighs. “I’m the black sheep of the family.”
Reaching across the bed, I gently tug on a strand of her hair. “Pink sheep.”
She smiles and looks at me with those gorgeous deep eyes and I feel it everywhere: the pull of her. The warmth of her body just inches from mine. The softness of her hair still curled around my finger.
I could cross this distance between us. If I could, I would kiss her until she was breathless. Peel every scrap of silk off her body and bury my face between her legs and feast. And after I made her come that way, I would fuck my wife and make her come for me again, on my cock.
Then I think about how much I would want all of that to happen again. Tomorrow. The day after.
Every day for the rest of my life.
And that last thought is exactly why I lay back on the pillow and stare at the tent ceiling.
I made a promise. I’m keeping it, for both our sakes’.
Even if it just about kills me.
“You should know,” I tell her, before I close my eyes, “you’ve always got the Rhodes family now.”