Chapter 28 #2
That reminder that all wasn’t well in our marriage was all it took for Melanie to pull away. Her hands had dropped from my hair, and she’d gently pressed against my shoulders to put some space between us.
I’d immediately let go of her hips and tried to control my racing heart and heavy breathing. There hadn’t been a damned thing I could do about the fact that my hard dick was pressing against my zipper, a fact she would have seen if she glanced down.
“I think I should go to bed, now. Goodnight,” she’d whispered.
“Goodnight, sweetness. I love you, and I hope you have sweet dreams.”
She had flashed me a quick smile before walking into the guest bedroom and quietly closing the door behind her.
Sleep was elusive, even after I’d jacked off in the shower to relieve the ache in my balls. I finally drifted off a little after one, hugging Melanie’s pillow close to my chest.
I’d worried that things would be awkward between us Friday morning, but both of us made an effort to keep things light and easy.
After breakfast – I made the pancakes while Mel made the bacon – we pulled out our old Scrabble game.
My Dad had loved to play, as did my father-in-law, so both Mel and I had grown up playing it.
She was a fierce competitor and easily beat me by playing the word “quixotic” using the “t” from the word “notice” that I’d just played a few turns earlier.
“Let’s see, that twenty-six points, and it’s on a triple word score, so that’s seventy-eight, plus fifty bonus points for using all of my letters.” Melanie couldn’t hide her satisfied grin as she wrote one hundred twenty eight on the scorepad under her name.
“Shit, there’s no way I’ll be able to catch up,” I said, looking at her total of two hundred seventy one points to my measly one hundred thirty seven.
She wagged her finger at me. “Don’t give up hope. There are still a few tiles to play.”
I eyed the letters on the wooden tray in front of me. “I have all vowels, Mel.”
She giggled then, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard that sound. “Oh, my,” she murmured.
“Yeah, I think that calls for something a little stronger than ‘oh, my.” I’m thinking more along the lines of ‘Holy shit, I’m fucked.”
Melanie threw her head back and laughed so hard that she had trouble catching her breath, and there were tears glistening in the corners of her eyes that she delicately wiped away.
“I’m so glad I could amuse you,” I groused playfully, and she wrinkled her nose at me.
“Just be glad we aren’t playing Strip Scrabble. You’d be down to your boxer briefs by now.”
“Is that an option for the next game?”
We had played Strip Scrabble on occasion over the years the boys weren’t home.
The rules were simple. If a player scored over thirty points in one turn, the other player had to take off an item of clothing.
No matter who actually scored more points, we both ended up winning because it had always led to hot, sweaty, spectacular sex.
Melanie raise a brow and pinned me with a look. “Not the next game, no, but maybe the game after that.”
I was quietly hopeful when we finished the next game, but Melanie stood and started putting the board away, giving me a sassy wink.
“I think that’s all the Scrabble for today,” she teased, then shrieked and swatted at me when I reached across the table to pinch her delectable ass.
After a lunch of leftover lasagna, I turned on a movie about a bank heist gone wrong while Melanie grabbed her Kindle and curled up in the fluffy chair in the corner. She tucked her legs under her and settled in to read, and I spent more time staring at her than I did watching the movie.
When she drifted off to sleep about forty minutes later, I grabbed one of the fleece throws that Mel kept in a basket next to the chair and carefully draped it over her. The Kindle was resting on her lap, and I didn’t try to move it for fear of waking her.
Since it was unlike her to nap during the day, I had wondered if she’d slept as poorly as I did.
She woke up almost an hour later and looked at the blanket in bemusement.
“I didn’t want you to get cold,” I shrugged. She stood up and stretched before folding the blanket and putting it back in the basket. She paused as she walked by my chair, then leaned down and gave me a kiss on the top of my head.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, before going into the kitchen for a glass of water.
We decide on a light dinner of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and afterward, snuggled on the couch again while we watched a movie.
Melanie picked one of the rom-coms she loved, and I swore the plot was the same as every other one she watched.
She loved them though, and I loved her, so I pulled her into my side and watched her as she watched the TV screen.
We ended our night with another passionate kiss outside the door of the guest bedroom, this one ending when I pulled back this time.
“I only stopped because I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret in the morning,” I whispered as I rested my forehead against hers. We stood there like that for several long moments until our breathing returned to normal.
She took a step back and nodded decisively. “You’re right. I’m not ready for anything more just yet.”
That ‘just yet’ gave me hope, and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I headed into our bathroom for another solo session in the shower.
Saturday was much the same, except I beat her at Scrabble this time.
“What on earth is byzants? Are you sure that’s a real word?” Mel’s voiced was filled with skepticism, and I gestured to my phone laying on the table next to the game board.
“They were gold coins used during the Byzantine Empire. Feel free to look it up in the Scrabble Dictionary.”
She gave me a dubious look, then reached for my phone, typed in the date of our anniversary to unlock it, then tapped at the screen for a few seconds before tossing the phone down in disgust.
“Satisfied?”
She rolled her eyes, then chuckled. “Fine, it’s a word. A freaking weird word for you to know off the top of your head, by the way.”
I tallied up the points. “Twenty one, and I played it on a triple word score, plus my bonus for using all seven letters. I believe that’s one hundred thirteen, putting me in the lead at two ninety one. I really wish we were playing Strip Scrabble right now,” I murmured, and she shot me a grin.
“I’ll bet you do. Since my bra is hanging in the laundry room to dry, you’d have been in luck.”
My jaw dropped, as did my gaze. I stared at her chest, cursing the fact that she was dressed in layers today – a T-shirt and one of my flannel shirts – probably to hide her nipples which I was sure would be erect.
They usually were, because she was so sensitive that even the tiniest bit of friction from her clothes made them hard.
She always wore bras with padding over the center of the cup, so they didn’t show under her clothing.
“You aren’t wearing a bra, and you’re just now mentioning it?”
She gave a careless shrug, then went back to studying the game board.
As soon as the game ended, she said she was going to call Jen and went upstairs to the guest room.
They talked for almost an hour, and I couldn’t help wondering if I was one of the topics of conversation.
She was still in a good mood when she finally came back downstairs, so I figured that if they had talked about me, and our marriage, then it must not have been anything too bad.
That night, our cuddle session on the couch ended with a kiss, and my hand under her shirt.
“I was right,” I murmured against her lips as she gasped. “Your nipples are rock hard, sweetness.”
We both reluctantly called a halt to the intimacy a few minutes later, which was good because I was about to come in my pants.
I had to adjust myself in order to walk her upstairs to the guest room, and I limited myself to a peck on her cheek before heading back into our bathroom for yet another shower.
As I slipped into bed fifteen minutes later, the unmistakable sound of a snowplow filled the room. I groaned and got up to look out the window. Sure enough, the cavalry had arrived – in the form of one of the city’s plows – to clear the snow from our street.
“Dammit,” I muttered, knowing this meant that Melanie would be going back to the condo tomorrow.
We’d watched the news earlier this evening, and the area around her parent’s condo community was reported to have been cleared this afternoon.
The side streets in our area had been left for last, a fact I’d been immensely grateful for.
I didn’t sleep well, knowing that I only had a few hours left with her under the same roof again. I wanted to beg her to stay, even if we kept to separate bedrooms. I’d loved having her here for the past few days. It had seemed like old times – the good times – and I hated that it was ending.
As much as I was dreading her leaving, my Sunday morning was made even worse when the doorbell rang just as I was getting out of bed. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and pulled them on, then cursed as it rang again. I dashed down the stairs to answer the door before whoever it was woke my wife up.
I didn’t take the time to look out the peephole to see who it was, assuming it was Justin or one of our other neighbors. I swung the door open and immediately wanted to slam it shut again.
“What the fuck do you want?”