Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The next morning I was washing my face when Michael came up behind me.
“I scheduled my vasectomy reversal. You’re going to get your baby.”
For a moment, my heart leaped, but Michael was like a fucking chessmaster. He thought getting pregnant would shut me up. And I didn’t trust him.
“I don’t want that. I want a faithful husband. Or I’m walking.”
His eyes darkened as he yanked me closer.
“Understand this. You will never control me. So don’t bullshit me about walking. You should know by now you can’t leave me. I won’t allow it. You are going to get this damn baby you want so badly and I’m going to get my sweet little wife back.”
I turned aside.
“I’m not going to the Chamber of Commerce Banquet.”
“Oh yes, you are.”
But I sat, disobedient, on the stool.
“Hurry up, Lavender. We don’t have much time.”
Still I sat, looking at my reflection.
I would not be seduced by his talk of breeding. My husband was dangerous, unstable, willing to do or say anything to keep me.
Anything except the one thing I wanted.
When I continued to ignore him, he went to the closet and yanked a green dress out, shoving it at me.
“Put this on.”
When still I refused, he growled in his chest and pulled my pajama top roughly off me, exposing my pink nipples to the cool air. Then he forced the dress over my shoulders, down my body, letting the silky fabric swirl around my feet.
I examined myself in the mirror, the unusual stubborn tilt of my chin, then pulled my long hair out of its bun and let it cascade down my back.
Michael hissed in displeasure.
“I want your hair up.”
When I continued to ignore him, he grabbed a clip and attempted to tie it up again, but he was not used to fixing my hair, and the arrangement was a mess on my head, bits and pieces falling out as he hissed and snarled.
His fingers tapped impatiently on the back of my chair, and he stuffed high heels on my feet, and pulled me savagely to the door.
“I am very displeased with you,” he snarled, pushing me against the car.
My nipples tautened against the sleek metal, but I only went limp in his arms.
“Do what you want.”
He growled again, and picked me up by the back of the dress and put me firmly in the car.
On the way over, he had restless, angry energy, while I sat there, composed and silent, looking out the window at the palm trees gently waving in the breeze.
“I’ve been very gentle with you,” my husband warned me as we walked into the Country Club. “You leave me no choice but to force you to accept my control.”
“Pretty weather today,” I replied sweetly.
Michael gritted his teeth audibly.
“I have been discreet for your benefit. But now that I see you are being a brat, I’ve changed my mind.”
What was that supposed to mean? I wondered, but said nothing.
He was getting nothing from me.
The annual St. Angeles Chamber of Commerce Banquet was attended by the biggest movers and shakers in town.
Michael moved easily among the most powerful people in St. Angeles, comfortable and at ease, shaking hands with our taciturn, powerful Mayor Ellis Christianson. It looked like his wife Maggie was pregnant again.
Was that what Michael really wanted? I couldn’t believe it. He was just throwing out anything he thought would change my mind.
We were seated at the same table as famous theater owner Nicky Lennox and his new wife Sterling, who were taking turns bouncing their nine-month-old baby between them.
I didn’t know them very well, but at least we weren’t seated next to Dr. Ben-David and Alix.
“I heard you were opening a new musical,” I said as Michael shook Mayor Christianson’s hand.
Nicky made an expressive face and waved his hand dismissively. “Mere pablum for the masses.”
His wife Starling was very pretty, with her long hair pulled loosely back, daisies wound through each plait of her braid.
“There’s going to be a life-sized animatronic elephant,” she said eagerly, her face sunny with excitement.
“Apparently if you pander to the lowest common denominator the theater isn’t dead anymore,” Nicky said harshly, but the fact that he was cutting up cooked carrots into tiny pieces for his baby meant I couldn’t be too afraid of him, especially since he had clearly gone to a lot of trouble for a theater production his wife loved.
The sting of something irrevocably lost prickled me as I watched them with their baby.
This was what I had always wanted with Michael, but babies just didn’t fit into his schedule as a surgeon.
And now we’d never have them.
To distract myself, I wandered about the room, chatting with our friends and neighbors, about all the same old things. None of the new things.
Like that my husband and I were at a stalemate.
Like that I tried to leave him, but he just wouldn’t let me go.
“Your husband said he needs you,” someone I couldn’t see whispered in my ear as I picked up a crystal glass of sangria. “In the cloak room.”
It sounded like Alix.
“Why?” I asked, but she was gone.
As I always did, I obeyed.
Half-distracted, my mind still on his promise to breed me. Why had Michael Carrington married me in the first place? Why had he picked me out of all the other girls vying for his attention?
I opened the door to the small, out of the way room, and my husband had a woman from the catering company up against the wall of coats.
He met my eyes and I felt the power struggle crackle between us, my husband deliberately holding my gaze as he yanked up the waitress’ skirt and pulled a condom from his back pocket.
I was transfixed, frozen in place as he tore the condom from its packet with his teeth and rolled it down his length.
Then Michael picked the woman up by her hips and positioned himself at her entrance.
She was gasping, trembling with excitement and lust and hope, and there was an audible wet sound as her pussy slurped on his cock.
His hips snapped forward as he thrust inside her, and her arms were around his throat, but he wasn’t looking at her. Only me.
My insides seemed to curl in on themselves, frozen disgust and betrayal coalescing into a simmering rage. Did he want me to leave?
I wouldn’t.
I stood there in the doorway for the whole thing, her head falling back as she moaned and whimpered.
“Take my cock,” he demanded, but she wanted to, her fingers tightening on his broad shoulders.
Of course she wanted to. They always wanted to.
I watched until he unloaded inside her, his eyes never leaving mine, the cold fire blazing from his ice-blue eyes.
Then I had to go back to the table and eat a goddamn roasted duck and scalloped potatoes.
Michael straightened his tie an infinitesimal amount as he finally sat beside me and put an arm lightly on the back of my chair.
He was giving the keynote speech. Wouldn’t do to look less than his best.
There was a waitress serving us food with a wet cunt and the imprint of Michael’s fingers on her hips. And he thought it was OK because he didn’t know her name or give a fuck about her.
As they brought the coffee out and Nicky and Michael were at another table discussing golf with the Mayor, I felt a soft touch on my shoulder.
“Are you doing OK?”
It was Reuben.
“No,” I gasped.
Suddenly I wanted to cry, rage, knock this whole table on the ground and scream at the top of my lungs.
“I know you don’t want to sleep with me,” he said gently. “I am so sorry about this whole situation.”
My eyes filled with tears and I turned away, letting them fall in burning streaks down my cheeks.
“There is one thing you could do for me. But it might make Michael angry.”
Reuben smiled, transforming his stern face with pleasant lines.
“Happily. What?”
When I whispered a few quick words in his ear, he smiled even wider.
“And if you need a place to stay after that—” he began.
“Wouldn’t—Alix be very mad?” I asked in a small voice.
The older man snorted. “Alix is on a very short leash. If she wants this to work out, she’ll do as I say.”
“Then—staying a few days would be very welcome. If—you don’t mind. Just until I figure out what to do.”
“Anytime,” he said.
I waited quietly until it was time for Michael’s speech.
“And now,” the Mayor announced, “our keynote speaker, Dr. Michael Carrington.”
My husband looked assured and brilliant as ever as he clicked on the PowerPoint and began to talk about the newest surgical advances, how the technological investment the city had made into the hospital had made it a destination location for the trickiest cases.
As as he was at the height of his powers, Reuben slipped into the seat beside me and rested an arm on the back of my chair.
Michael noticed almost immediately, his hands clutching the platform, white-knuckled and furious.
His speech trailed off as he stared at me, and he clicked to the next slide, but he wasn’t even looking at it.
Reuben moved his arm to my shoulders, and I snuggled back into his chest.
Michael’s chest rose and fell, a muscle twitching in his jawline.
This was a man who was supposed to love me. Cherish me.
And he’d only betrayed and humiliated me.
I gathered all my courage in both hands.
Now or never.
Just like I had expected, Nicky and Starling were both staring open-mouthed at me, Nicky barely concealing his glee at this juicy drama.
“Oh, didn’t you know, we have an open marriage?” I asked, putting both my hands on Reuben’s face and kissing him.