Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“Will the two of you please allow an old man to have his moment?” Neil scolded. We’d been round and round the gender politics carousel of hell with Neil ever since Emma and Michael had announced that they weren’t going to share the baby’s sex. Neil was super progressive in some ways, startlingly antiquated in others.
Dinner with Michael and Emma was a joy, as always. It was weird, having a stepdaughter who was the same age as me, but in a lot of ways, it was fun. We made an excellent team for ganging up on her father. And Michael was finally able to speak without fear of being destroyed by the hate radiation Neil used to emit whenever the poor guy was around. It was disappointing when it was time for them to head back to the city.
Finally getting a moment alone with Neil alleviated some of that disappointment. I’d stayed in the kitchen to load the dishwasher while Neil walked Michael and Emma to the door, and I was just washing up when he came back.
“Have I ever told you how much I enjoy this whole domestic thing?” I asked, drying my hands.
He came over to circle his arms around my waist. “You enjoy it so much, you started a magazine and put in sixty hours a week?”
“Exactly. I am not scrubbing that pot.” I indicated the giant saucepot in the sink, which I hadn’t been able to fit into the already stuffed dishwasher.
“Leave it. Julia is just going to rewash all the clean dishes by hand in the morning, anyway.”
I rolled my eyes. “She’s not that picky. Besides, isn’t that a good thing in a housekeeper? Attention to detail?”
He kissed my forehead and went to the refrigerator. Pulling out a bottle of white wine, he said, “I have an idea.”
“Oh?” I liked Neil’s ideas. They were usually absolutely filthy. A little tingle of anticipation made me shiver. Before I’d started Mode, Neil and I’d had all the time in the world for sex. Now, with work keeping me in New York several nights a week and exhausted the rest of the time, we did it when we could.
“Why don’t we start a fire in the den, drink some wine, and I can pretend that I’m more interested in hearing about your day than I am about getting into your knickers.” He grinned at me as he opened a drawer and felt for the corkscrew.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Better idea. How about I take a bath, then we do your plan?”
“Oh, if you must.” He set the bottle aside and came to me, looping one arm around my waist to pull me against him. His fingers dove into the hair at the nape of my neck as he kissed me, and my toes curled in my shoes. My pussy clenched, and I momentarily considered hopping up on the counter and letting him have his way with me right then and there, but we had all night. That was pretty rare.
I stepped back, a little wobbly on my feet. “Okay. I’m off.”
Our house was thirty-five thousand square feet, equipped with a library, a home theatre, a hot tub and a sauna, and forty-nine acres of grounds that included the previous owner’s custom built, scale reproduction of the Pavilion Français at Versailles.
But my favorite part of the place was my bathtub.
It’s really amazing. It’s a high-backed, claw-footed copper tub with a white porcelain basin. It was an antique—part of the apartment I’d shared with my best friend Holli. When I’d moved in with Neil, he’d not only bought the tub from the landlord, but he’d had a reproduction made for our house in London.
I started the water running and poured in some bubbles. The tub had good memories for me. I’d spent a lot of evenings lazing in it, fantasizing about the one-night stand I’d thought I’d never see again. Back then, I’d thought Neil was Leif, a hot forty-two-year-old guy who’d swooped in like a sex guardian angel and fucked me silly during a sixteen hours layover. He wasn’t the only one who’d lied about his identity; he’d thought I was twenty-five, not eighteen like I was at the time.
Now, eight years later, we were getting the happily ever after neither of us had even hoped for.
When I sank into the deliciously scalding water, it was like returning to the womb. I moaned with unabashed pleasure, tilting my head back and closing my eyes.
“Have you started without me?”
I smiled slowly. I heard Neil’s footsteps and the scrape of glass on the granite tile. The cool, slender stem of a wine glass pressed against the back of my fingers, and I turned my hand to accept it.
“I haven’t started anything, Sir.” I opened my eyes to bat my lashes at him above the rim of the glass. “Would you like me to?”