Reconciled for Easter (5 page)

They both went back into the living room, where Thomas slid his laptop into his case.

“Don’t forget Mia’s going to be staying at your parents’ tomorrow,” Abigail said, trying to summon back their normal interaction. “Since I have to be at Milbourne House all day, and you’re at work.”

“Yeah,” he said, straightening up and looking deeply exhausted, kind of the way she felt. “I remember. Hope tomorrow goes well for you.”

She knew his last comment and the quirk of a smile that went with it was a kind of peace offering. She returned his smile sincerely before they said goodnight.

Although she was glad they’d basically come to terms, she was still shaky and overly emotional when she closed and locked the door.

She peeked into Mia’s room to make sure the girl was still sleeping. When that was confirmed, she went to get ready for bed.

It wasn’t long before she crawled under the covers, but she didn’t feel sleepy.

She felt wired.

Arguing with Thomas had always done this to her—left her feeling jittery and at loose ends.

Abigail found herself remembering one occasion, on their third anniversary, when they’d come home after what was supposed to be a romantic evening.

They’d seen one of the nurses at the hospital when they’d stopped in a bakery for dessert, and that was what had prompted the fight.

The nurse was obviously close to Thomas—they spent a lot of time together at the hospital—and Abigail had been horribly jealous of the gorgeous, sexy brunette who could have been a model and who made her feel like a dumpy, dowdy plebian.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Thomas had snapped, as he closed their bedroom door to make sure their voices didn’t carry to where two-year-old Mia was sleeping down the hall. “You can’t possibly think I’m having an affair with her.”

“That’s not the point! You know how it makes me feel when you have all these beautiful female friends, and yet you still hang out with them all the time.”

“That’s where I work. I can’t help but hang around with them. Besides, I can’t always dance around your insecurities. You need to learn to trust me.”

“This isn’t about trust. It’s about your surrounding yourself with gorgeous women. How do you think that makes me feel?”

Thomas had been shaking with frustration. “You’re my wife. I love you. I married you.
That’s
how I expect you to feel!”

They’d been arguing for more than a half-hour—all the way home from the bakery—and the fight had basically run its course. Thomas’s words were the last straw for Abigail. She’d thrown herself on him with urgent passion, clutching at his head as she kissed him, grinding her body against his.

He’d responded immediately, lifting her by the hips until she wrapped her legs around him and then carrying her over to the bed. She wouldn’t release him, even after he eased her down, and they didn’t take the time to remove their clothes. Thomas just unfastened his pants and Abigail pushed up her skirt.

They rutted like animals, Thomas half off the bed and Abigail beneath him. They grunted and panted and shook the bed hard.

Shaking and sweating, Abigail had still wanted more. “Harder. I need it harder.” He'd given her a pendant necklace for their anniversary, and she had felt the weight of it against her throat.

Thomas pushed into her fiercely, forcing her body backward on each thrust. “Tell me you trust me,” he’d rasped.

“I trust you.”

Thomas thrust hard.

Her head tossing restlessly, she gasped it out again. “I trust you.”

Another powerful thrust.

“I trust you.”

They kept it up until they both reached climax.

Remembering that evening, Abigail’s body pulsed with arousal, but a few tears burned in her eyes as she tried to process the memory.

And there was one truth she kept going back to, feeling like she was seeing it—seeing herself—anew for the first time.

When she’d told Thomas she trusted him, over and over again that evening so long ago, she hadn’t entirely believed it.

***

It was after nine o’clock on Saturday evening when Abigail returned from working the function at Milbourne House.

Everything had gone fine, but now she was tired and didn’t feel much like doing anything.

Mia was still with Thomas’s parents. It was after bedtime now, so Abigail would go pick her up first thing in the morning. She should probably try to go to bed early and catch up on her sleep, but Abigail felt restless and bored.

And a little lonely.

The small house seemed vast and empty without Mia’s presence. Abigail changed into a tank and a pair of yoga pants and decided she might as well be a coach potato all evening. She called to get an update on how Mia was doing. Then she flipped on the television.

A knock at the door startled her.

Jumping to her feet, she went to peer out the peephole.

Saw Thomas.

She swung open the door. “Hi,” she said, feeling a jump of pleasure in her heart at the sight of him.

“Hi.” He smiled at her ruefully. He was dressed fairly casually in a crew-necked shirt and gray trousers. “How was the thing today?”

“Fine. I thought you were working.”

“I just got off.”

“Oh.” Then she noticed he was holding something behind his back. “What’s that?”

With an almost sheepish expression, Thomas showed her a bottle of wine. “That is an apology.”

Abigail looked from the wine to Thomas’s face and back again. It was Merlot. Her favorite kind. She was so overwhelmed she couldn’t think for a moment.

He shifted slightly at her hesitation. “I’m assuming it’s still your favorite. I feel bad about last night.”

She met his eyes and recognized that he looked slightly embarrassed.

She smiled, affection flooding her cheeks and rising to her throat. The understated gesture was so much like Thomas, and there was no one in the world like him.

“Thank you. I don’t have anything to do this evening. If you want, you can come in and we’ll open the bottle.”

***

Abigail was laughing so hard she could barely speak. The living room was warm and just a little blurred at the edges, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relaxed.

Choking on her hilarity, she managed to finish her story. “And then...and then she looked up at that crass teenager through her little glasses and said...and said he should be ashamed of himself. Whistling at ladies was a rude and dem—...demean—...” Abigail had to gasp for air between her cackles before she finished, “Demeaning!”

Thomas laughed with her, more warmly and openly than she’d seen him laugh in a long time. “I wish I’d been there.”

“You should have been there. It was the funniest thing.”

They were both slouched on the couch, and they’d finished the wine he’d brought over.

 “Whew! I think I’m buzzed.”

“You never did have much tolerance.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like it’s a flaw in my design.” Feeling overly warm, she pulled the fabric of her tank top away from her chest and tried to blow some air down her neckline. Then her eyes widened dramatically. “I don’t have a bra on.”

“I noticed that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He gave a matter-of-fact shrug. “Doesn’t bother me. I’ve seen the parts in question before.”

Abigail huffed for a minute, until she decided on the reasonableness of his claims. But just to make sure they were on an equal playing field, she said with what she thought was impressive acumen, “I’ve seen your parts too. Don’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten. You were always very good to my parts.”

Even through the pleasant blur the world had become, Abigail recognized something off about his words. She sat up straight and gasped, “You’re buzzed too!”

“Nope.”

“You are! How much wine did you drink?”

“Not much. You drank most of it.”

“I did not. I drank...” She paused, trying to rehearse the number of glasses she’d drunk. Neither one of them were big drinkers, but her tolerance was particularly low. Finally, she gave up on figuring it out. She slumped back in a happy daze and turned her head to stare at Thomas.

He looked overly warm too. His face was slightly flushed, and there was a sheen of perspiration on his skin. As she watched, he took the bottom of his shirt and lifted it to casually wipe some of the sweat off his face. The move bared a flat, toned belly. One she’d always found irresistible.

She reached over to poke it.

Thomas grunted.

She poked his belly again.

He grunted.

He caught her hand before she could poke him one more time.

“Hey!” she said reproachfully.

“Hands to yourself.”

“Hmph. You used to like my hands on you.” She tried to glare at him but couldn’t quite coordinate the expression.

“You used to like my hands on you.”

“Oh.” It was an excellent point. She couldn’t think of an appropriate rejoinder.

So she gave a long sigh and concluded, “I’m buzzed.”

“You said that before.”

She wrinkled her nose and prepared to give him a good set-down. Then she noticed how incredibly gorgeous he looked, sprawled and rumpled on the couch beside her.

And she got a better idea. He must have always thought she was uptight and unsexy, so she would prove him otherwise. She crawled across the length of the couch and plopped down in his lap. “Maybe we can be buzzed together,” she said, stroking his head with eager fingers.

Thomas exhaled slowly, thickly, and his hands settled on the curve of her bottom. “Don’t see why not.”

Abigail’s head was spinning and a giddy flush warmed her skin. Conscious of nothing but the sudden urge to touch, she leaned forward toward his attractive, so familiar face.

Her lips landed, not on his mouth, but on his chin.

Undeterred by her poor aim, she pressed a series of wet kisses in a line along his jaw. “Being buzzed is fun,” she mumbled as she mouthed her way up to his ear.

“Mm hmm,” Thomas agreed, one of his hands still squeezing her ass and the other edging up toward her chest.

She sucked on his earlobe vigorously, closing her eyes as Thomas palmed one of her breasts. Humming in pleasure, she finally released his lobe and stuck her tongue in his ear.

He grunted.

Delighted by this reaction, she tried the move again, this time fluttering her tongue while she rubbed her fingers over his scalp.

Thomas grunted again, and his tense body gave a little twitch.

Abigail felt an arousal pulsing between her legs, but she couldn’t identify exactly what had triggered it or when she’d become aware of it. With fuzzy satisfaction, she kept tonguing Thomas’s ear and caressing the back of his neck, which she remembered had always been particularly sensitive.

She sensed his body growing tighter and tighter beneath her, and he huffed out guttural, uncontrolled sounds that thrilled her. Even before things had fallen apart, he’d always seemed so careful and controlled.

But she knew she was turning him on at the moment, and her blurred thought-process understood this as reason enough to keep doing it.

Eventually, her tongue got tired, so she moistened her lips and then rubbed them along his temple. When he moaned softly, she asked, “You like that?”

“Mm,” he hummed. He’d been doing his best to fondle her breasts through her tank top, hampered by her awkward position above him on the couch.

“You’re not saying much,” she complained, feeling like she was doing all the work in sustaining the conversation. Still straddling his lap, she raised herself higher on her knees so she could run her lips across his forehead.

“Otherwise occupied,” Thomas murmured, taking advantage of her higher position to pull one of her breasts out of the neckline of her top.

Abigail was briefly peeved that he sounded slightly more articulate than her, but that mild irritation vanished when he closed his lips around her nipple. He suckled with more enthusiasm than skill, but the stimulation caused her intimate muscles to clench.

She reached down and discovered he was hard in his pants. She did her best to massage him, rewarded when he groaned softly.

Then suddenly he was lifting her off his lap, putting her down on the couch beside him. It was like something had changed in him, clicked in him, turned off.

Or maybe on.

“What’s going on?” She started to move over him again, her body desperately craving what only he could give her. “I wanted to—”

“I know, baby,” he murmured, gently moving her hand from his groin. “I’m sorry. But not like this. Not when you’re buzzed.”

Her face twisted in frustration. “I want to. I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t buzzed.”

“I know.” He said again, grabbing her wrists so she couldn’t reach for his erection again. “That’s why we have to stop.”

There was something final in his tone that even her fuzzy mind could recognize. So she slumped down, against him, disappointed, frustrated, and heavy with something even deeper. “I wanted to,” she murmured.