Summer's Need (2 page)

Dave’s thumb stroked her palm in soothing little circles and
she felt a small rill of desire, something that was next to a miracle in her
life lately. Sex had been placed on the very bottom of her list of things to do
and Dave was becoming increasingly angry about the lack of contact. Not just
sex, but cuddling as well.

“Hmmm, you giving up control…that doesn’t sound so bad,”
Dave said in a teasing tone.

Ember waved her finger in his direction. “And you, David,
you will not make her feel guilty for not being able to read your mind.” Dave’s
mouth opened but nothing came out and Ember continued. “I see how bent out of
shape you get when Summer doesn’t realize she’s hurt your feelings, but you
hide it so damn well she never knows. Seriously, you should think about a
career as a professional poker player because when you don’t want anyone to
know your emotions you can shut down so nothing gets through.” She picked up
the egg and tossed it between her hands. “You want honesty from her, well, you
gotta give that in return.”

“Yes ma’am,” Dave said in a meek voice.

Ember snorted and pointed the egg at him. “Also, you need to
get over this whole trophy-husband complex you have going on. So you’re a good-looking
man, so you keep in shape, big bloody deal. Summer over there is about as
beautiful as a woman can get but you don’t see her worrying about people
calling her a sugar mama. Did it ever occur to you that the people saying that
may be jealous of you? That they wish they had your life? That they wish they
had such an attractive, successful, amazing woman as their wife?”

Dave stole a glance at her out of the corner of his eye and
pursed his lips. Evidently Ember was hoping for more of a response than that
because she walked over and thunked him on the head with the egg. “That’s the
part where you really look at your wife, not with the blinders of marriage on
but as a man, and tell me yes, she is the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Dave scowled at Ember then turned to Summer in an
exaggerated move with his ever-present teasing grin. Something moved through
his eyes and his smile faded, gentled. He slowly examined her, from head to
toe, and another pulse of desire went through her as he returned to her face
and their eyes met. The heat she saw there reminded her of when they’d first
started dating and everything was fresh and new.

“You’re right, she is magnificent. Two kids and she still
has a body that makes men’s tongues roll out.”

“Not exactly the poetry I was hoping for, but better,” Ember
said and returned to her chair, tossing the egg up high in the air and no
longer watching them. “Now, Summer, give him a kiss that shows him how he made
you feel. You may be unable to talk about your emotions, but you can show him
with actions what you can’t put into words. Guys understand that.”

What became an awkward lean into Dave turned into something
else when he gently cupped her cheek and guided her mouth to his. She sighed
against his lips, loving the smell of his cologne mixed with the scent that was
uniquely Dave. The first brush of their mouths filled her with tingles and she
smiled as he nibbled on her lower lip. While the first blush of passion was
always a heady thing, she didn’t think she would trade it for the pleasure of
kissing someone who knew what she liked. He moved his hands down to her jaw and
he deepened their kiss, turning her head to the side and licking at her lips.

A small gong sounded from the grandfather clock in the
corner of the room, signaling the end of their session. Pleasure, desire,
warmth suffused her limbs and she made a little noise of protest when he pulled
back. Seeing the satisfied and somewhat cocky smile he gave her made her feel
almost as good as the kiss.

Ember chuckled and stood, moving over to the door and
opening it for them while Dave helped her stand from the couch. “Remember,
check your email when you get home and treat one another like you’re something
precious, because you are.”

Heart still hammering in her throat, all Summer could do was
nod as she slid her purse over her shoulder and followed her husband out the
door, the taste of their kiss lingering like sweet candy in her mouth.

Chapter Two

Summer leaned against the closed door of her youngest son’s
room and sighed, the long day catching up with her. Her morning had been filled
with her oldest son’s soccer game, then after a quick lunch they’d bundled
everyone into the car again to head off for a visit with Dave’s parents where
she’d eaten more of his mother’s good Southern cooking than she should have.

Now, after helping both kids with their homework, she should
be heading to the living room to watch some TV with Dave. Instead she had to go
check her email and see what emergencies and disasters had cropped up during
her time away from her computer. Ember had insisted today be a work-free day
and Summer had managed to do it, barely. She’d almost cracked during the soccer
game and checked her email from her smartphone but Dave had given her a pointed
look and she put her phone away with a grimace.

There had been moments when she’d actually forgotten about
work altogether and had enjoyed being with her family. When was the last time
that had happened? Ember said she used work as a barrier between herself and
the rest of the world and she had to admit that was probably true. After the
death of her father last year she’d thrown herself into her job and her family
had suffered because of it. A jolt of guilt raced through her blood and settled
in an unpleasant lump in her stomach.

A soft, furry warmth twined about her bare legs and she bent
down and picked up their “husky” marmalade cat, Pickles. Ugly, overweight and
battle scarred from his life as a stray before they adopted him, Pickles
nonetheless had perfected the mysterious cat aura of superiority. Dave liked to
joke they weren’t Pickles’ owners, they were his support staff.

With an armful of purring cat she made her way to her office
at the other side of the house, dreading what lay inside her email. All manner
of horrible things could have happened while she was in her self-imposed work
seclusion. Mainframes hacked, bank accounts stolen, identity thieves charging
up millions of dollars to old ladies who only had cat food to live on. Right
now some third world country could be on the edge of a civil war all because
she wasn’t there to stop the cyber attack on their government’s mainframe.
Well, that last one was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but she still felt
as if she’d let people down and she hated it.

Pickles meowed in protest as she put him down onto his
memory-foam-lined cat bed on the corner of her desk, but he stopped his
complaints when she took a small bag of catnip and sprinkled some for him. Not
even bothering to turn on her desk lamp, she sat in her black leather computer
chair and opened her email, her heart pounding and her brain conjuring up
disaster after disaster.

Sure enough, there were at least a dozen emails from her
work. Cursing Ember and her husband for making her agree to taking the day completely
off, she opened the first email and frowned. There had been an issue with the
Hong Kong office, but one of her staff had taken care of it. The next email
came from her recently hired assistant, Eric, an intense young man who’d just
graduated MIT. He detailed the problem in Hong Kong and his fix. To her
surprise it was exactly what she would have done.

Email after email showed the same thing, a problem and
Eric’s quick response to it. As she worked her way through the email list she
began to feel an uncomfortable tightness in her stomach, a small kernel of
worry that the company might not need her as much as she thought they did. She
liked being needed, thrived on it even, and had busted her ass to make sure she
was their go-to person for problems no one else could solve… Well, no one else
but Eric.

The last email in her folder was from her boss and in her
glum mood she imagined it would say she’d been demoted and Eric would be taking
over her job. After all, Eric was a man and in the highly chauvinistic world of
computer security having a cock and balls gave you extra points. Add to that
the fact she was pretty and most men in the field looked at her as a piece of
eye candy. How she loved making their jaws drop when they realized she was the
one keeping all their precious data safe, that she was her company’s big gun.

Opening the email from her boss she mentally prepared
herself for a scolding for being unavailable all day.

Summer,

Congratulations on actually managing to take a whole day
off. I didn’t know if you’d be able to do it. It’s nice to see you taking care
of things besides work, and more importantly it’s nice to see you giving Eric a
bit of room to grow. He is trying hard to impress you and you did the right
thing by giving him a chance to prove himself. I’ll see you in a few days at
the management retreat.

Murray

Pickles’ throaty purr mixed with the low hum coming from the
computer. She leaned back, the chair tilting beneath her weight as she stared
at the screen. It had never occurred to her she was holding Eric back and guilt
tightened her stomach again. When she looked at her work relationship with Eric
from the perspective of him being an employee trying to please her instead of
competition she felt like a real schlub. No, more than a schlub, she felt like
the kind of self-centered bitch she’d always hated. Had she really become the
kind of woman who would unconsciously sabotage a fellow employee over some
imagined threat?

Sounds like something my father would do.
As soon as
she had that thought she berated herself for even saying such a thing, even if
she only said it inside her head. Her father had sacrificed everything so she
and her mother could live a life of luxury. Whenever she complained about his
absence her mother told her she should be grateful and should thank God in her
prayers every night for having a father who took such good care of her. He
didn’t drink to excess, didn’t abuse them and he made sure that she could go to
all the best boarding schools and that her mother never had to worry about
anything more than her prescription for Valium running out.

A new email popped up on her screen and at the sight of
Ember’s name she groaned. Right now she’d had all the personal revelations she
could deal with and really wasn’t interested in whatever her therapist had
concocted for her. Still, she wouldn’t leave an email sitting unopened any more
than she would leave the house without wearing clothes so she clicked the link
and tried to focus on the message.

Dearest Summer,

Your take-home quiz is to do whatever your husband says.
Before you go into a full-scale panic, I’m only talking about for this
particular exercise, not your entire life.

Give yourself the gift of letting go and enjoying his
love. Try to see the world through his eyes.

Ember

She stared at the screen, barely noticing Pickles when he
rubbed himself against her forearms. Her mind was strangely still, and she read
and reread the email at least a dozen times before Pickles got tired of her
failure to worship him and blocked the screen with his bulk. With a tired sigh
she picked him up and cuddled him to her chest, rubbing beneath his chin as she
stood and went to the dark window looking over the backyard.

What had started out as a pristine and expertly landscaped
garden had slowly become a playground any child would love to have.
Bright-yellow toy trucks gleamed in the faint moonlight and the boys’ jungle
gym, built to look like a pirate ship, loomed over her husband’s herb garden
and work shed.

When they’d first moved into their new home five years ago
they’d been overwhelmed by its size and wondered how they would ever fill up
the four thousand feet of living space and the gigantic two-acre yard. Now
every inch of the house and property bore the stamp of their lives and while it
was no longer showroom perfect, she liked how it felt like a home,
their
home. At first it had been hard for her to leave for any amount of time for
work and she’d spent her first night away shedding a few tears over missing
putting her children to bed and cuddling with Dave. Over the years it had
gotten easier and right now she didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.

The last line of Ember’s message kept floating through her
thoughts and seemed to echo her earlier email from her boss. She’d always been
good on mentally landscaping the vast network of computer systems, but that
same intuition didn’t seem to extend to her personal life. Dave had always been
the charming one, the guy who made a room light up when he entered. He kept the
conversations going when her social awkwardness left her stumbling over small
talk and always seemed to know the right things to say to complete strangers.

She was so very lucky to have him as her husband.

Humming low in her throat, she placed Pickles back on the
desk and briefly considered changing into something more revealing than her
current comfy buttercup-yellow jammies. Maybe that racy red number she’d picked
up in Madrid, or the black bit of lace she hadn’t worn in years. But she walked
past the double doors of her bedroom, knowing if she stopped to change, she’d
also stop to shower, do her hair and redo her makeup. By the time she finished
Dave would be asleep and she’d be asleep face-first on the bathroom floor.
Already her bed beckoned and a wave of exhaustion washed through her but she
pushed it back. She had a job to do. No, wait, not a job, a treat. Ember said
she needed to change her view of sex from a chore to a treat. So she had a
yummy treat waiting for her downstairs.

The cool cherrywood floor turned into a thick cream carpet
when she reached the archway to the living room and she paused for a moment,
amusement bubbling through her as she spied Pickles draped over Dave’s
shoulders like a fuzzy afghan. For being overweight that cat moved like a pumpkin-shaped
ninja when he wanted to.

She took a moment to watch her husband laughing at something
going on in the movie playing on the giant flat-screen. The French doors were
open, letting the warm spring air into the room and his discarded t-shirt lay
on the back of the wraparound couch. Keeping in mind the exercise from earlier
today with Ember, she really tried to look at her husband, to see him without
the constant chatter of her mind interrupting. Broad shoulders with a
scattering of freckles from the sun, strong hands and a flat stomach most
twenty-year-olds would kill for. He was handsome, he was delicious, and he was
all hers. The tiredness she’d felt before entering the room disappeared.

His laptop lay open on the mahogany coffee table and she
wondered if he’d read his email from Ember yet. In a perfect world she would
sweep into the room, make some sultry quip and they’d be on the floor having
hot, sweaty sex. In the real world her mind locked up. She’d always been
terrible at flirting, her overactive brain tripping over itself as she
struggled to put her emotions into words. But cripes, if she couldn’t talk to
her husband who the hell could she talk to? Screwing up her courage, she rapped
softly on the archway.

“Hey, stranger, mind if I join you?”

He turned at the sound of her voice and smiled, his
happiness lighting up his face. “Sure.” He glanced at the screen then back at
her. “Do you want to watch something else? I know you’re not a big fan of
slapstick.”

She walked over to the couch and shooed Pickles away,
earning a look that assured her the cat would find someplace to throw up a
hairball where she would step in it. “Well, I was actually hoping we could…that
is Ember…” Embarrassment filled her with a hot flush as she struggled to form
some kind of flirty yet sophisticated and seductive sentence. Instead she
blurted, “So, you wanna make out or something?”

He turned fully on the couch and started to laugh, but he
must have seen something in her expression because the laughter faded away,
replaced by a smile filled with such gentleness she felt like a dumbass for
being afraid of making the first move. “Come here.”

He pulled her over the couch and she giggled as he hauled
her into his arms and gave her a sound kiss on the forehead. “Did Ember tell you
to come down here?”

She stiffened and avoided looking at him. “Is that the only
reason you think I’d want to spend time with you? Because our therapist told me
to?”

He took a deep breath and she got ready to argue with him,
cutting remarks and comebacks filling her thoughts, her verbal armor to protect
her fragile heart. She started to sit up and but he wouldn’t let her go and
instead pulled her closer. “Summer, you don’t have to do anything you don’t
want to do. I’ll wait until you’re ready. I’ll wait for the rest of my life if
I have to.”

“Yeah, well I think it’s pretty insulting—wait, what did you
say?”

He cupped her cheek, his work-rough fingers stroking her
skin. “I said we don’t have to rush things. While there is nothing more I’d
love in the world right now than to have you purring beneath me as I take you,
I don’t want you to be doing this because you feel like you have to, and not
because you want me.”

She studied his face, noting the tension in the lines around
his mouth, the flash of hurt in his dark eyes. “I do want to be here. I do.”
Words failed her so she turned to action, cupping his face in return. She held
his gaze, trying to put everything she was feeling into her eyes as she leaned
closer and swept her lips over his.

His mouth stroked against hers, a warm and lingering touch
that drew her closer to him. He felt so hard, so male against her and she
traced the seam of his lips with her tongue. With a low groan he opened for her
and the delicious slide of his tongue against hers reminded her of how talented
he was at using his mouth on other places. Her body clenched and real desire
began to grow, awakening the soft flesh between her legs. A warm tingle
radiated through her as he repositioned them without breaking their kiss so she
straddled his hips, the iron-hard nudge of his erection settling between her
thighs and pulling an answering pulse of need from deep inside.