Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
With soft licks of her tongue, she wetted him.
She took her time doing this.
Tom liked it, and let it go on.
But then, enough was enough.
“Take me,” he ordered.
Her extraordinary eyes lifted to him, heat behind them.
Then she bore down.
Tom’s smile got lazy.
And he managed the feat of being quiet as she sucked him off and swallowed the load.
* * *
“Okay, now that I have you in my thrall, Dr. Pierce, tell me what was on your mind before I sucked you off.”
Of course she hadn’t missed thoughts were weighing on him.
Tom grinned up at Mika, the urge to pull her hair away from her face, to feel its silk against his skin, was twitching his fingers, but he thought better of it.
It was curtaining them in her bed.
All he could see was her face, those startling eyes looking into his.
All she could see was his.
He needed that in that moment. The world shut out. Only the two of them in it.
“It’s going to be a lot,” he warned.
“I’m fucking up royally if I haven’t demonstrated yet that I like a lot from you,” she replied.
Even if he was about to bring heavy to her bed, that made his lips quirk.
Then he gave her the heavy. “I was realizing how much more of me I set aside to make the ones I love happy.”
“Tommy,” she whispered.
“It’s on me. If I’d shared, they loved me too. They’d have wanted me to have it.”
Mika, as ever, went right to the meat of the matter.
“By you referencing ‘they,’ are we talking Imogen?”
“I eventually want us to become a family again,” he cautioned. “In other words, I don’t want you to develop resentment toward her.”
“That means yes,” she noted.
“Honey—”
“You take responsibility for yourself, Tommy. Do you know that? Recognize it? No, you aren’t perfect. Yes, you made mistakes. One of them, particularly, was huge. But you take responsibility for it.” She took a breath, cupped his jaw and carried on, “Please know, I’m not that person. I know there are two sides to every story, and I’ve never met Imogen. But she’s not my priority. You are. You always will be. Still, I won’t jump to judgment. When I meet her, I’ll let her form my opinion of her. That doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion. And I hope she, too, can take responsibility for herself.”
“She’s a very good woman,” Tom said.
“I have no doubt,” Mika replied. “You married her. You loved her. And you have great taste.”
That made Tom’s lips quirk again.
Mika’s did the same before she went on, “But you were up in your head, putting distance between us, because you couldn’t forgive yourself. That worries me.”
“She’s forgiven me.”
Quietly, Mika suggested, “I think the closure you need to have, baby, is she needs forgiveness too.”
Tom couldn’t go there.
“And you need to forgive yourself,” Mika whispered.
“I’m not sure that will ever happen,” he warned.
She gave a single nod of understanding.
“Part of me thinks that’s okay because you’re mine now, and it means you’ll never do anything like that to me. But Tom”—she drew closer—“part of me finds that unsettling, because I already know you won’t do anything like that to me. It’s just not the man you are.”
“It was the man I became.”
She shifted with agitation and declared, “I’ll tell you what, if Rollo turned away from me in bed, that was such a huge part of our life, our relationship, who we were, our sexuality, the depth and trust in our intimacy, I honestly don’t know what I’d do. I’m a pretty confident chick, but that would be a blow. This man I loved and committed to indicating he didn’t find me attractive anymore?” She shook her head. “Devastating.”
At the effect her words were having, in order to keep his throat from collapsing, Tom concentrated on that, and not replying.
“With you and Imogen,” she continued, “it was more than that. It was every intimacy you two shared. I’m not absolving where you went with that. I’m pointing out you’re being very hard on yourself.”
When Tom remained silent, Mika kept speaking.
“Women bear the brunt of this too, and they do it silently. Stereotypically, men wander. I’m not going to get into that now. But it happens a lot. It might not lead them to another woman, but it happens often, and it’s expected. Also expected, a woman sucking it up and staying loyal, unless he strays, giving her a reason to leave. The thing people don’t talk about is, women do it too. They wander, mentally, emotionally and physically. I’ve never been in a relationship long enough to have personal knowledge of this, but I have a ton of friends. There are peaks and valleys and sometimes those valleys are low and wide. You’re a handsome, accomplished man expected to be confident in your vitality and sexuality. Your wife shook that. It’s not a minor blow, it’s a colossal one. As such, it is not a small deal, for women or for men. To end, you need to cut yourself some slack. You didn’t do right. But you’re not Roland, fucking everything that moves just because you can.”