The Other Man (17 page)

And I trusted him, in a way.
 
In a few important ways, actually.
 

“Yes.
 
Just handcuffs.
 
Now spread your legs,” he ordered.

I spread them wide, flexing and angling my body to its best advantage.
 

It seemed to do the trick.
 

He fell on me, shoving his tongue down my throat as he cuffed me to the bed.
 
He did it so fast, like he’d trained for it, and hell, maybe he had.
 

His big hands grasped at me, fondling my breasts, then twisting and pinching roughly at my nipples.
 

He reared back abruptly, grabbing my ass in both hands and pounding into me with a guttural moan.

He didn’t take me slow or gentle.
 

He took me like he had a point to prove, a point that could only be found by hammering so hard into me that he reached the other side.

It was heaven.
   

I screamed.
 
And came.
 
The most explosive orgasm of my life.
 

“Are you okay?” he asked a few beats later.
 

I couldn’t really blame him for asking.
 
I’d let out a racket for a good minute back there.
 

“Yes,” I panted back.
 

“Good,” he grunted and seemed to take it as permission for the next round.
 

He freed my hands, turning me onto my stomach while I was still catching my breath.
 
He forced me up onto my knees, and I felt him at my entrance again, his stiff, thick length pushing at me already, while I still twitched from the last invasion.
   

He fucked me again, jolting into me roughly from behind, both of us on all fours.

It was a long time later, when we were capable of getting out full sentences again, that he spoke.
 
“I
do
like spending time with you out of bed.
 
But for the record, if it’d been up to me, we’d never have left your bed today.”

“Oh.”
 
I paused.
 
The day had been nice, very nice, but . . . “I wouldn’t have minded that one bit.”
 
Vast understatement.

“I didn’t want to be an asshole, so I thought it was safest for you to decide how we spent the day.”

“Well, you were a good sport, so how about you pick what we do tomorrow?”
 

“Okay.
 
I have one errand I have to run sometime in the morning, but after that, you’re all mine.”
   

I swear I fell asleep still smiling.
 

CHAPTER
 

SEVENTEEN

The next morning did not turn out quite how I had expected.
 

Not even close, actually.
 
It was both better and worse.

I awoke to hearing noises in my house that I couldn’t figure out.
 
They just didn’t compute in my sleep-dazed mind.
     

I walked out of my bedroom, wearing nothing but a thin silk robe that hit at mid-thigh, to find Heath, shirtless and just in his boxers, in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand, chatting with my oldest son, Raf.
 

I might have had a small heart attack.
 

Thank God it was Raf.
 
My youngest would have taken a swing at a shirtless man in my kitchen, whereas Raf seemed to be chatting him up.
 
He was not one to swing first and ask questions later.
 
That wasn’t to say he wasn’t every bit as protective of me as his brother.
 
He was just more levelheaded.
 

He was more likely to ask the questions, and then swing if he didn’t like the answers.
 

I approached the two men tentatively, wondering if it would do more or less damage if I ran back into my room to put on more than a robe.
 

The opportunity was lost to me as both of them noticed me right away.
 

Raf grinned at me, and Heath turned back to the coffeepot and began to make me a cup.
 
He prepped it just the way I liked, though I couldn’t remember why he should know that.
 

“Good morning, Mom,” Raf said.
 

“Morning,” rumbled Heath, his voice sounding gravelly and unused, as it usually did, no matter how much he used it.
 

I hugged my son briefly, took the perfectly tailored cup of coffee that Heath handed me, murmured a quiet, “Thank you” to him, and leaned against the counter about two feet from Heath and across from Raf.
 

My gaze moved back and forth as the two of them continued chatting as though all of this was perfectly normal.
 

It was not.
 
Inside, I was freaking the hell out.
 

Did this make me a horrible mother?
 

And,
how horrible of a mother did this make me?
 

But then I remembered how old Raf was, and observed how well he seemed to be taking it all, and I felt worlds better.
 

But then I remembered how old Heath was (not much older than Raf!) and went back to freaking the hell out.
 

Oh my God.
 
What was I doing?
 
And why did they both seem to think this was way more normal than it was?
 
And . . .
 

Were they actually getting along?
 

Hitting it off?

Never in a million years would I have imagined this could go down the way it did.
 
But it only did for two simple reasons.
 

Raf.
 

And Heath.
 

It was like they wanted to get along even more than
I
wanted it.
 

I started blinking rapidly as I realized why this was.
 
Heart melting for both of them.
   

They
did
want it more.
 
And the reason was simple.
 
Me
.
 
They wanted it more
for me.

How wonderful was that?
 

And that was the moment I was sure that Heath cared about me.
 
Not just wanted me.
 
Cared
about me.
 
About what would trouble me, and what would make me happy.
 
And he knew me well enough, apparently, to know how to handle this specifically awkward situation.
 

I’m not sure I can describe it, but it was endearing as almost nothing else could have been, and in a way that could only pave its way
straight
to my heart.
 

The way Heath, this gruff man of few words, bent over backwards to be respectful of me, and to me, to my son.
 

Sincerity fairly oozed off him as he tried his best to portray to my son that, while it was obvious he had spent the night at my house, he was there, not for some sleazy reason, but because he
cared
about me.
 

Heath glanced over at me, and his whole hard face softened as he caught what must have been a smitten, dazed look on my face.
 

He took a deep breath and moved to me.
 

“Hey,” Heath said, cupping the back of my head and giving me some intense eye contact.
 
“I need to get ready to go work for a few hours, but I’ll be back in time to go to the grocery store with you.”
 

Whatever that meant
, I thought.
 

He kissed me lightly on the forehead and went back to my bedroom to get dressed.
 

After he was gone, I faced my son as squarely as I could, tried to make eye contact, but couldn’t stop a grimace.
 
“Busted,” I said with a sigh.
 

He laughed, and a weight lifted off my shoulders.
 
I’d been worried that, I don’t know, I guess that my dating again would somehow affect my sons badly.
 
Like it would
damage
them somehow.
 
But Raf did not seem at all damaged.
 
I couldn’t have been more relieved.
 

“So . . . you’re actually okay with this?”
 
My tone was hopeful.

“To tell you the truth, when he answered your door at that hour of the morning and everything, wearing what he was wearing, my first gut instinct was, well, I was a bit appalled about the whole thing.
 
It’s sort of a worst nightmare of mine, you . . . hooking up with one of my old classmates or whatever.”

I just stared at him.
 
I had no idea what he was talking about.
 

“I’m sure you noticed,” he continued, “but in high school, and even in college, we’ve had some friends who were pretty f—”, he corrected mid-word, “freaking obsessed with you and things would slip, they’d say stuff about you.
 
Well, we got in some fights.”

I had noticed, in a vague kind of way, how weird all of his friends were around me, how awkward, and I wasn’t stupid or oblivious, and they were teenage boys, so it was easy to figure out why they were being weird and awkward, but I hadn’t known that it bothered my boys so much.

And I did remember the fights.
 
I’d hated it when they got in fights.
 
Seeing cuts and bruises on them was a special kind of torture for me.
 
It literally made me feel faint when I thought of either of my children being physically harmed.
 
My reaction to seeing their blood had always been extreme.
 

“But anyway,” Raf continued, “he’s not an old or current classmate, so that’s not really the issue.
 
He’s just young . . . and a little strange, with all the scars on his chest . . . But who the hell cares?
 
He obviously cares about you.
 
And, well, Dad was a
bastard
to you, and you deserve so much better.
 
You deserve to have
whoever
the hell you want, and
you
get to pick who that is.
 
So if you’re happy, we’re happy.
 

It was one of those moments you can only have when you’re looking at your own child and thinking,
Well, here it is, this is who my child is, and no matter what happens, how they mess up, or what mistakes they make, as people invariably do, I am looking at a
decent
human being.
 
I raised a
good
person.
 

Pride could be as profound a thing as love.
 
In its own way, just as powerful.
 
And God, was I proud of my boys.
 

It wasn’t lost on me how ironic it was, the pride I took specifically in Raf’s sensitivity.
 

When he was young, it had manifested early.
 
As early as three I could remember him just
suffering
when he saw anyone else in pain, even if it was just a scraped knee.
 
If he saw another kid get hurt, he was the one that would set up the second ear piercing scream, and I’d run to him, ask him what was wrong.
 
He’d always say something, in the serious little way he had, something like, “I don’t want my friends to get hurt,” or, “Do you think they’re okay?
 
Will they be all right?”
 
Or when he was a little bit older and protective of his kid brother I’d get random outbursts of, “I don’t know what I’d
do
if something ever happened to Gustave.”
 

He was the sweetest boy, but it had worried me endlessly how keenly he felt the suffering of others.
 

But live and learn.
 
What a beautiful person that too sensitive soul had turned into.
   

“Will you put in a good word to Gustave for me?” I asked him.
 
Gustave, my youngest, was more stubborn, less accepting than Raf, but Raf had a way winning him over to his point of view.
 
“I know . . . the age difference and the suddenness of it all.
 
It would be totally understandable if it freaked you guys out.”

“I’ll tell him.
 
He’ll be fine with it, Mom.
 
I promise.
 
He—we both just want you to be happy.
 
There’s not one single thing in the world I want more.”
 

I turned away from him, busied myself, put my mug in the sink, rinsed it out.
 
I didn’t want him to see that he’d made me tear up.
 
He hated, more than anything to see me cry.
   

But he was silent for so long that I knew he’d seen it.
 

Without even looking at him, I moved into him, burrowing into his chest to give him a hug.
 

He’d outgrown me when he was fifteen, but to this day, I marveled at how much taller he was than I was.
 
I was not by any means short, but he could still fit my head under his chin.
 

He squeezed me back.
 

“I love you, bud,” I said into his shirt.
 
“Oceans deep.
 
Rivers wide.”
 

“I know it.
 
I love you back.
 
Just as much.
 
And Gustave is going to take this better than you think.”
 

“I hope so.”

“I know so.
 
And it’s a good thing, too, since I invited Heath to have dinner with us here.”