1. Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The present
When her alarm went off at 4 a.m., Paige almost cried.
Real, honest-to-God tears.
She thought she might’ve logged three hours of sleep the entire night, mainly because she’d been unable to stop questioning the decision to use her ex-husband for sex. Once she was no longer dry humping him at his kitchen table and was alone in her apartment, a multitude of doubts crept in and proceeded to torment her throughout the night.
She was terrified of hurting David again and even though he’d said that wouldn’t happen, there were no guarantees it wouldn’t, just like there were no guarantees she’d like sex this time around. His claim they would ‘do it’ until they succeeded sounded good in theory, but what if they ‘did it’ for weeks and it wasn’t working? Or months? How long could he engage in unsuccessful sex with her before it became something he didn’t want to do anymore?
That would be devastating. For both of them.
It was essentially what had ended their marriage.
With thoughts like this troubling her, it wasn’t surprising she slept for shit and when she finally did sleep, it was cruelly cut short by her alarm. To add insult to injury, “Here Comes the Sun” pulled her out of another very satisfying sex dream. It was reminiscent of the one she’d been having yesterday morning starring David, only this one had gotten beyond nipple warfare. There had actually been some clit warfare going on (very good and very satisfying warfare) and as the remnants of the dream faded away, Paige again cursed the boys from Liverpool.
“Fuck you John, Paul, George, and Ringo! And fuck this song!”
Rolling over, she blindly reached for her phone, only to accidentally knock it off the nightstand and onto the floor.
Sighing, she lay there in the dark, torn between the need to kill the song she never wanted to hear again in her life, or relieving herself and rubbing one out. It didn’t take her long to decide that making herself come was the top priority, and her fingers were down between her legs and working their magic before she remembered she was no longer allowed to do this.
Gah.
It took every ounce of willpower Paige had to stop, and for a moment, it was literally touch and go. But she did it—she wasn’t happy about it, but she did it.
Then, even though she knew she didn’t have time to lay around she continued to do just that, her thoughts churning. How did people deal with sexual frustration like this? For her, it was a new and unpleasant phenomenon, something she had zero experience dealing with. Would this feeling of wanting to kill someone go away in the next few hours, or would it plague her all day?
And what if it didn’t go away? What if it would only go away after an orgasm … which might be days away? Or, God forbid, weeks?
She’d worked really hard to reach a point where orgasms were an important part of her life, so the possibility of going without one was something that really bothered her now. It was abhorrent, actually, especially when she considered she didn’t know when the next one would occur.
Damn David and his stupid, unreasonable no self-love rule. She could only hope that it had already bitten him in the ass, too, because she shouldn’t be the only one suffering.
Releasing an unladylike groan of frustration, she threw off her covers and retrieved her phone from the floor, then turned the alarm off. With zero energy, Paige shuffled into the bathroom, only to stare at herself in dismay when she saw what three hours of sleep looked like.
It wasn’t a good look.
Pale skin? Check.
Bloodshot eyes? Check.
Dark circles under her bloodshot eyes? Check.
She basically looked like she’d won the hammered-shit trifecta and grudgingly accepted that it was on her and her inability to quit overthinking. However, being able to masturbate would’ve gone a long way toward improving her mood and that was all on David.
Before she could think better of it, she took her phone and fired off a text to him.
PAIGE: You’re the devil. I just want you to know that.
Then, with a long, drawn-out yawn that actually hurt her jaw a little, she tossed her phone down and turned the shower on. While the water heated, she got undressed, which took no more effort than pushing her panties to the floor, since they were the sum total of her sleeping attire.
As she was grabbing a towel, the distinct sound of a FaceTime request brought her up short. Frowning, Paige backed up and slowly glanced over at her phone, shocked—yet not shocked—to see it was from David. Because of course it was.
You poke the devil and he FaceTimes you.
Knowing he would keep calling until she answered, she did so reluctantly. While not an overly vain person, that still didn’t mean she wanted him to see how craptastic she looked; if there had been a dimmer switch in her bathroom it would’ve been dialed all the way down. Unfortunately, though, there wasn’t and the small space was lit up like the stage at Caeser’s Palace, so she did what she could to avoid giving him a close-up of her face, by keeping the phone a fair distance away, and not looking directly at it.
“Why am I the devil?” David immediately asked, his voice a little raspy.
Paige took a quick moment to note he looked pretty damn good as he reclined in bed. His ash-brown hair wassleep-tousled and sexy, instead of resembling a rat’s nest like hers did, which was totally unfair.As was the lack of dark circles under his hazel eyes.
“What are you doing up?” she countered. “It’s not 7 a.m. yet.”
The instant the words were out of her mouth, Paige cringed. On a good day she wasn’t a morning person but throw in shitty sleep, getting up at an ungodly hour, and orgasm denial, and apparently she became salty. She was on the verge of thinking maybe an apology was in order when he spoke.
“Your text woke me up,” David told her dryly, overlooking the insult. He didn’t feel at all guilty for not typically being awake until a reasonable hour. In his opinion, unless you were fighting a war and getting ready to storm the beaches at Normandy, there was no need to be up before dawn.
“It did?” To cover up her mortification at the childish act, she turned her attention to the towel still in her hand and busied herself with the task of hanging it over the top of the shower door.
“Yes.”
Paige sighed. Knowing she’d woken him up made her feel even worse. “I’m sorry.”
“So, why am I—” he broke off as her phone screen abruptly tilted and her face disappeared. He found himself looking at one of her bathroom walls for a few seconds, followed by the ceiling light, which briefly blinded him and made him blink rapidly several times. “Why am I the devil?”
She didn’t want to tell him the truth because the truth was embarrassing. However, they’d made a pact of complete honesty not too long ago, on the night she shared the details of her recovery, so Paige felt honor-bound to come clean. But … maybe there was a loophole. “Could we just forget all about that text?” she asked, still not looking at him while unnecessarily adjusting the towel, as if getting it arranged neatly was of the utmost importance.
The request hardly registered, since David’s attention was now focused on her bare shoulders and upper chest, which made him think she might be … naked. The likelihood of this increased as he became aware of the sound of running water, making it clear Paige was getting ready to take a shower. Unable to stop himself, he immediately pictured her with rivulets of water running down her body, along the curving slopes of her breasts, to her stiff nipples—
His wayward thoughts halted as part of an actual nipple came into view, as if his imagination had conjured it. His eyes widened a little when it stayed onscreen, then widened further when the other one made an appearance. He knew she wasn’t deliberately flashing him, nor was she likely aware it was even happening. Instead, it seemed to be an unintended consequence of whatever Paige was trying to do while holding a phone in one hand.
He could probably be a gentleman and tell her what was going on, but he wasn’t going to say jack shit about it. His mother hadn’t raised an idiot, after all.
Finally finished with the towel, she turned back to her phone and found him just staring at her. Not knowing if it was because he was shocked at how awful she looked, or because he was waiting on justification for her request to forget about the text, she explained, “I sent it in the heat of the moment and I shouldn’t have.”
“The heat of the moment?” he asked. “That sounds interesting.”
“Not really.”
His eyes were glued to her breasts, discreetly of course, so as to not jeopardize what was the best FaceTime call he’d ever had. “Tell me about it anyway. You know, since we’re both awake and all.”
Her loophole a complete failure, she pursed her lips. “Well, to begin with, I didn’t sleep very well—”
“Oh? Why not?”
She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “After I got home, all my doubts came back which made me start second-guessing our decision and kept me from falling asleep.”
David wasn’t surprised to hear this, since he knew her biggest fear going forward was the possibility he would be hurt. “I think I’m going to add another ground rule—”
“Another one? Oh, my God, are you serious?” she muttered, the dozen or so rules he’d thrown at her the night before seeming more than adequate.
“Yes, I’m serious. And this one is really important.” He paused briefly before saying dramatically, “No more second-guessing our decision.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “You know, I want to add a rule, too,” she told him. Then, imitating his dramatic delivery, said, “No more rules.”
He grinned. She hadn’t been this feisty when they were married and he found himself enjoying it. Really enjoying it. Was she like this every morning, or was it due to her lack of sleep? Or was there something else going on, too? Which reminded him … “So what’s the rest of the story?”
“The rest of the story?”
“Yes. I’m assuming there’s more, since you said ‘to begin with’ you didn’t sleep very well, so what else happened to bring on the ‘heat of the moment’?”
“Well, when my alarm went off, I was in the middle of a sex dream.”
His ears perked up at that interesting nugget, but when nothing more was forthcoming, he prompted, “And?”
“And nothing, because I wasn’t allowed to rub one out, per your stupid ‘no self-love’ rule.”
Hearing her say those words, especially so petulantly, drew a soft chuckle from him. “So, that’s why I’m the devil?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, my ban on self-love has already bitten me in the ass, too.”
“Um, it doesn’t. In fact, it makes you even more of a devil, for causing us both to suffer needlessly.”
“Not needlessly. We’re priming the pump.”
“Priming the pump?”
He nodded. “You’ll thank me for it later.”
“Whatever. I still don’t like it.”
It was quite astonishing to see her sexually frustrated like this, especially since he’d never witnessed it before. David couldn’t help but smile, not because it was funny but because it was a good sign.
“I also really don’t like that you look like that this early in the morning—” Paige did a quick finger motion toward him, before turning it on herself, “—and I look like this. It’s not fair.”
His smile grew as her motion unknowingly indicated her tits, along with her face. “Well, I happen to think you look fantastic.”
Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “You must be joking.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Then you have to be lying.”
He shook his head. “I’m definitely not lying.”
“Fine. Then you’re blind—”
“Jesus, I’m not blind.” He released an exasperated growl. “Now quit arguing with me so I can get back to enjoying the view.”
Something in his tone made Paige’s eyebrows pull together for a long moment before looking more closely at her phone—specifically the tiny video square of herself in the upper right-hand corner. When she saw that his ‘view’ included a good portion of her boobs, her eyes widened in shock. She’d been so focused on everything but herself that she hadn’t even noticed.
David had, though. It was no wonder he thought she looked fantastic because he’d obviously been fixated on the perkiest parts of her while she’d been oblivious. Tilting the phone so that her boobs were no longer visible, Paige asked, “How long was I flashing you?”
He’d seen the moment she realized how much skin she was showing and admired her taking it in stride; it really was a testament to how far she’d come. And even though he was disappointed her nipples had vanished, he smirked at her as he replied, “Long enough to give me some respectable wood.”
She considered that, somewhat pleased. “How respectable?”
“Respectable enough that I won’t be able to go back to sleep.”
“I’m so sorry,” she told him, adopting an expression of over-the-top fake sympathy before leaning forward until her face overtook the screen. “If only you were allowed to do something, like rub it out like a normal person. But. You’re. Not.”
Then, with a sweet smile, Paige disconnected the call.