Everything Gained (4 page)

He was just about to reach out to her, to pull him against her and rub her back the way he knew she liked, but when he did his hand closed around air.

She was already up and out the door without so much as a backward glance.

"Where are you going?" he bellowed, springing off the bed to the balcony where he watched her descend the stairs.

"I have to go out for a while."

Gain swallowed hard, ruthlessly squelching the impulse to ask her where exactly it was that she was going. "Drive carefully, and make sure you have your cell on."

Nina nodded absently as she shouldered her bag, not looking back at him.

"I want you home no later than ten," he ordered, and she stopped in the act of opening the door, so he knew she'd heard him.

"I - I'll try."

Gain desperately wanted to go get her and bring her back to their bedroom, whether she wanted to or not, but he throttled the balcony railing and managed to stay where he was. But he couldn't let it go at that. When he set a rule for her, he expected it to be obeyed. "You'd better do better than just try, Nina Decker. Do you read me?"

Still not looking at him, she answered in a whiny tone that she knew was pushing it, as if he was annoying the piss out of her, "Yes, I do."

"And I don't mean ten twenty or ten oh five."

"Yessss," she let the "s" sound drag out as the door shut automatically behind her.

Gain sighed heavily, still staring at the door she'd gone out of long after she'd left, wondering if he should follow her or face the interminable wait here, in their lonely bedroom.

Chapter Four

He stayed home, waiting anxiously for her return, keeping himself busy with the never ending honey do list that had sprouted years ago when they'd bought their first house, and had only grown since then.

When he was finally able to stand sweat soaked in the kitchen and scratch off the last chore, in the near darkness, the concern he'd been trying valiantly to push to the back of his head all afternoon came home to roost. It was nearly nine, and he hadn't heard a peep from her. She'd been gone over six hours.

He knew he was probably overreacting. She wasn't a child - she knew how to take care of herself. He'd seen to that quite literally, giving her basic self defense lessons when they were still dating. At the very least, it had been a great reason to touch her, although he'd never let it descend into a grope fest, despite the temptation. He'd actually given her several very good moves and made sure they were fairly drilled into her head.

And besides, this was Maine - "the way life ought to be". It wasn't at all likely that she was going to run into any sort of problem - but that didn't mean he didn't worry. The woman who was his life was out there somewhere in the darkness, wandering around after a big emotional shock, alone and lonely and distracted; she wouldn't be paying attention to her surroundings like she should have.

Gain slammed his hand down onto the grey marble countertop. He should have gone with his instincts and followed her, no matter what. He stared down at his cell phone, her number already up and ready to dial, and then the thought struck him over the head. What the heck was he waiting for? She was his. He was hers. She belonged to him; she was his wife, and in their type of relationship, he shouldn't have had to stand there and worry about him.

She was a wonderful, strong, independent capable woman. But he had always kept her on somewhat of a short leash.

And he was about to yank it.

Damning the torpedoes, he pressed the "call" button on his phone, loaded for bear and ready to order her back home so that they could talk about this.

It rang five times - five agonizing times - then switched over to her mailbox.

"I want you to come home as soon as you get this. And you're in trouble already because you're always supposed to keep your cell on, and answer it when it rings." He knew that was an irrational thing to say, because Maine was a veritable minefield of no bars reception. But it had felt damned good, regardless.

He didn't stop there. He called every friend she had - none of them had seen her that night. Or, he mused, they were lying for her, which was entirely possible. The things he loved about Nina also inspired the wonderful long friendships she'd developed, and he wouldn't put it past her to be sitting comfortably in her best of best friend's place, sipping mud slides and complaining about him.

In fact, that was what he was praying for, because at least then she was alright, instead of lying in a ditch somewhere, which was, of course, the first thing he pictured.

Gain knew her well. He had the location wrong, though. At that moment, she was in a chain restaurant that also had a line of ice creams, sitting in front of the largest ice cream sundae ever conceived. It had something like twelve scoops of ice cream, three brownies, four toppings, nuts, a mountain of whipped cream and six cherries.

Her mouth full of ice creamy goodness, Nina rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time that night, choosing to skip over the fact that he'd explained his hesitation when she'd asked him if he'd thought she'd just glossed over signs that Dunn was interested in her as more than just an employee in favor of keeping a job that she loved. "I can't believe what he said. I can't believe he thought that I was blatantly ignoring a come on from him just so I could stay at the paper."

Molly, her closest friend in all the world who'd known her almost as long as Gain had, sat across from her, licking ice cream off her spoon as if she was giving it a blow job. She snorted derisively, and Nina frowned. "Puh-leeze. You'd've sold your soul to stay there. You were lapping all that fame and fortune up.

"I would not!" Nina replied emphatically.

"Would to." Molly leaned back in the red plastic booth, crossing her Payless shod feet on the seat next to Nina. "Answer me this: if Gain hadn't have come home and discovered Dunn's little play for you, would you have quit right then and there, or tried to sweep it under the table and stay with the paper?"

Nina bit her lip. Why did Molly have to be so damned insightful? "I don't know," she answered baldly. "I don't know. I really like this job. I would have seriously considered leaving the bank and doing it full time if he'd offered that, and I think that that was what he was going to suggest yesterday, before he decided to go all Don Juan on me."

Molly's eyelids drooped to half mast, and her voice was dreamy as she asked, "What was it like to kiss him?"

Nina frowned, leaning over to carve out a scoop of slightly underdone brownie, whipped cream, and cookie dough ice cream. "I don't have the slightest idea! I was too busy being shocked and outraged and trying to fend him off without losing my job... " She slumped back suddenly, a blinding light going on in her head. "And there lies the heart of it. Instead of using every trick in the book to put him down and get away from him, like a loving, committed involved wife, I was trying to extricate myself delicately and keep the employer employee relationship intact, so that I could still write for the paper." Tears flooded into her eyes. "Gain was right. I hate it when he's right."

"Stop it. You're human. You've found a niche, and you didn't want to lose it. It wasn't as if you jumped into bed with Dunn to keep your job. Don't blow it out of proportion."

But Nina knew there was only one way she was going to feel absolved of her behavior - although she was in absolutely no hurry to do what she knew she needed to do. Gain was already going to be hopping mad at her for not answering her cell, or at the very least checking her messages regularly.

As if it knew she was thinking of it, the cell trilled, but she could see that it wasn't Gain. Instead, it was Gail, another of her good friends. She pushed the "answer" button. "Hi."

"Hey, where the hell are you? You're husband's downright frantic, ya' know."

"I started out at Moll's house, but we decided that what this situation needed was a sugar rush, so we're at Friendly's, drowning our sorrows in a pile of ice cream and hot fudge sauce that's bigger than my head."

"And you didn't invite me?" Gail sounded downright indignant.

"Come on down. I'm sure we'll still be here. If we keep eating this, we won't be able to slide out of the booths."

"I think I'll pass, although I want in on the next blow out."

"K." Nina purposely moaned and groaned sensually as another mouthful melted over her tongue.

"Ewwwwwwww!" Gail whined. "Cut it out! It sounds like you're having sex."

"Just enjoying the ice cream," Nina replied innocently.

"Speaking of having sex... when are you going to call that gorgeous husband of yours and let him know that you're not dead or otherwise horribly mutilated?"

"Nice segue."

Gail wasn't above sarcasm, either. "Thanks. I thought it was rather smooth, myself. But you really should call him - even if you don't come home. Just call and let him know you're all right and with friends and that he doesn't have to worry."

The guilt she'd been trying unsuccessfully to avoid all evening came home to roost with a dull thud. It seemed everyone was right today except her. "Yep. I will," the seriousness of her tone made Molly stop shoveling the luscious dessert into her mouth and sit there watching her closely.

"Are you okay?" Gail asked.

Rubbing her hand over her forehead as her eyes closed, Nina answered in a tear husky voice, "Yeah. It's just been a really shitty day, overall."

Gail immediately shifted into sympathy mode. "Awww, I'm sure everything's going to be okay, Neen. Gain didn't sound mad or anything, just worried."

Gain almost never sounded mad, but she didn't say that to Gail. "Yeah. I'll call him shortly."

"Good. I'm always here if you need to talk, you know."

Gail's heartfelt sympathy wasn't helping Nina control her tears any. "I know - and thank you. You know the same is true for me."

Gail did know that - she'd come to stay with Nina and Gain when she was going through a pretty bad divorce, where she'd really needed to hide out from her soon to be ex. "Call me tomorrow. I'm missing details here that are going to drive me crazy."

"I will," Nina promised.

"I love you, you know."

The battle against crying was surrendered then and there. "I love you, too," she was barely able to get out before hanging up.

Luckily, Molly was there with a napkin in her hand. "Here. It's a good thing you don't wear makeup. You cry so much it would all be around your knees, anyway."

"Bite me."

They chatted for a few more minutes, then Molly sat back. "So, are you going to call him, or hasn't he suffered enough for you?"

It was a damned good thing that Molly was such a good friend, or Nina would have had to punch her out. Instead, she sighed, toying with a cherry before popping it into her mouth, throwing the stem onto her plate.

"No tying it into a knot with your tongue? I would have thought something like that would be child's play for you."

Nina didn't deign to acknowledge that jibe. Molly's relationship with her husband could not have been any more different from Nina's with Gain. Whereas Gain and Nina were more sexually active than a lot of twenty year olds, and were even more in love now than they had been when they were first married, Molly's marriage hadn't faired so well. She and her husband hadn't had sex in years, and Molly professed to have absolutely no interest in picking up that thread of their relationship.

But she was almost insatiably curious about Nina's sex life - but more than that, about her lifestyle with Gain. Molly was always amazed at how open and interested Nina was in sex, and how many different things she and Gain had tried, especially the spanking aspect. She was always asking her when her last spanking was, and for excruciating detail about what it was like, always wondering aloud if something she'd done had gotten Nina into trouble, and listening raptly to the answers.

If she hadn't known that Molly had become largely asexual, Nina would have thought she was a closet spanko.

Try as she might, though, Nina couldn't explain, somehow couldn't convey to Molly, despite her facility with language, how emotionally fulfilling this type of relationship was, at least for herself and her husband. It went much further than a mere fetish. It engendered all of the deepest concepts of love and commitment and responsibility and, very definitely, sexual attraction. But it also involved real pain, real tears, and the resolve necessary to invoke them when needed.

She'd given up trying to explain the less prurient aspects, knowing that Molly didn't want to hear about them anyway. Her marriage to Glen was largely affectionless, due, Nina was sure, to her own lack of sexual interest.

Nina glared at Molly. "It is not 'right up my alley', thank you very much, although I'm certainly no slouch in that area, either." She dabbed at her lips, certain that she had worn more of the treat than she'd ingested, then threw the napkin onto the table, sighing loudly. "I'll call him, I'll call him. It's just that I know what I'm going to get when I get home, and even though I know I deserve it - although not necessarily for the same reasons as I'm going to get it - I'm still not in any hurry to get my bottom blistered."

Molly shook her head slowly. "I will never get over being amazed that you let him do that do to you."

"I know. But it's right for me, and for us, somehow."

"Even though it makes you afraid to go home?" came the pointed question.

Nina pursed her lips. "It's not afraid, really. Just... reluctant."

One of Molly's thick eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. "There's not a lot of difference there, so far as I can tell."

"Yeah, there is. You've never seen me with a black eye, have you? Ever had to come get me and take me away from the E.R. so that my husband wouldn't be able to beat me up again?"

Molly had to agree that she hadn't.

"And you've said it yourself - he loves me. He doesn't hide it at all. He loves me."

"Yeah, he does." They were the only couple, who, when they got together to play cards or just have dinner together at someone's home or a restaurant, that spent the majority of their time holding hands, or with his hand stroking her hair, or lying across her shoulders. It was as if they still couldn't get enough of each other, and they'd been married much too long for that to be true anymore.

But it was.

Nina just kept repeating what she'd said to Molly all the way home, more hours later than she wanted to admit, and well past the ten o'clock curfew he'd set. They'd gone from the ice cream parlor back to Molly's for He loved her. He loved her. He wasn't going to be very happy with her, but he loved her very much, and she knew that, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She came in through the front door, not wanting to give him any more warning that she was home than she absolutely had to, and if she'd gone in through the side door, into the mud room, he would have heard the garage door going up and down.

It didn't matter in the end. He must've been sleeping on the couch in the living room - where no one ever sat and definitely never slept - because when she turned around from shutting the door, there he was, in all his seething, outraged masculine glory.

Nina looked him straight in the eye. It was the least she owed him. Then she took the few steps necessary to press her body against his and reached up to frame his precious face with her hands. "Come down here and kiss me," she whispered, cursing her small stature not for the first time.

For a split second, she thought that he was going to refuse. But then he melted, almost the way she'd imagined he would, and kissed her, wrapping those wonderfully strong arms around her and lifting her off her feet so that she was eye to eye with him.