Chapter 4: The Unexpected Husband
The water, once a refuge, became a liquid trap. Every molecule of it seemed to transmit the vibration of his footsteps on the patio stone. My blood roared in my ears, a tidal rush that drowned out the distant birdsong. Andrea’s heart was a frantic, small animal trying to crack its way out of my ribcage.
“Andrea? Honey? You’ll never believe it—the conference collapsed. I caught the red-eye.”
The voice was deeper than mine had been, textured with fatigue and the ghost of jet engines. It came from the shadowy interior of the house, moving closer.
My mind blanked. Justin’s mind, a filing cabinet of quarterly reports and stock portfolios, offered nothing. I had to speak. Sound had to come out of this throat. I opened my mouth, and a voice that was too high, too soft, shaky with a fear that was entirely mine, leaked into the air.
“Out… out here!”
It sounded like a question. Like a stranger found hiding in the bushes.
The sliding door rumbled on its track. He filled the doorway. Mark. I’d seen him from my deck a hundred times—a broad-shouldered silhouette grilling, talking on his phone. Up close, he was more. The gray at his temples was sharper. His jaw was shadowed with a day’s growth. His eyes, a cool granite blue, scanned the patio and landed on me in the pool. He looked tired, but his presence was a physical pressure, a rearrangement of the space.
“There you are,” he said, a smile breaking through the weariness. He dropped his carry-on bag with a thud. “God, what a shit show. Client pulled out last minute, whole thing fell apart. Figured I’d surprise you.”
Surprise. The word was a landmine. I forced Andrea’s lips into a shape I hoped was a smile. The muscles felt strange. “Wow. A welcome one.”
My voice. I had to watch its pitch, its cadence. I’d heard Andrea speak—a quicker, lighter rhythm. I tried to mimic it and felt like a bad voice actor.
He chuckled, already pulling his polo shirt over his head. His chest was broad, matted with dark hair, his stomach solid. “It’s hotter than hell. You’re a genius for being in there.”
He unbuttoned his jeans, pushed them and his boxers down in one practical motion, and kicked them aside. He was naked. It wasn’t a sensual display; it was the unselfconscious act of a man arriving home in his own territory. And he was fully, blatantly erect. It was a thick, heavy-looking thing, curving up against his belly. My gaze snapped away, heat flooding my face, my neck, my chest. A flush that originated from some deep, autonomic place in this borrowed body. Shame and a sharp, unwelcome spike of something else—a visceral, electrical recognition.
The splash as he jumped in was enormous. Water slopped over the edges. He surfaced right beside me, shaking his head like a dog, droplets spraying my face. The intimate, chlorined space of the pool shrank to the few feet between us.
“Missed you,” he said, his voice lower now, a private rumble. He reached out. His hand, large and warm, settled on my wet shoulder. The contact was a jolt. His palm was rough. It encompassed the entire curve of my shoulder, his thumb brushing the edge of my bikini strap. My skin there seemed to ignite, the sensation magnified a hundredfold from what I was used to. It was too much. It was an announcement of ownership.
“You too,” I mumbled, staring at a point on his collarbone. The words tasted like ash.
He moved closer. The water displaced around him, pushing my body gently backward. His other hand found my waist, sliding easily around the dramatic inward curve I’d traced in the mirror. His fingers spanned almost the entire width. The touch was possessive, casual. It pinned me in place.
My breathing shallowed. My own body, Justin’s body, would have been braced, ready to shove back, to create space. This body did the opposite. The muscles in my core stayed soft, pliant. A treacherous warmth pooled low in my belly, a direct, humiliating echo of the tension I’d sparked alone in the bedroom. This was different. This was external, demanded.
“You feel tense,” he murmured, his mouth close to my ear. His breath was warm. “Long weekend without me?”
His erection bobbed in the water, bumping against my hip. The contact was fleeting, but the shock of it—the insistent, fleshy heat against the bone of my hip—rippled through me. A short, sharp gasp hissed between my teeth. I couldn’t control it.
“Something like that,” I managed. My mind was screaming, a silent movie of panic. He’s your neighbor. He’s Mark. You’re Justin. You’re in a fucking bikini. Get out.
His hand on my waist slid lower, fingertips brushing the top edge of my bikini bottoms, where the fabric met the soft, vulnerable swell of my lower stomach. “Let’s get you unwound.”
His mouth found the side of my neck. Not a kiss. A slow, open-mouthed press of his lips against the dripping skin just below my ear. The sensation was catastrophic. It wasn’t just touch. It was a key turning in a lock I didn’t know existed. A wire of pure, undiluted sensation fired directly from that spot to the deep, throbbing center of me. My knees liquefied. I swayed against him, and his arm tightened around my waist, holding me up.
My head fell back of its own accord, a submission written in the arch of this strange neck. My breasts, barely contained, pressed against the hard wall of his chest. The friction of wet skin on skin, the crush of softness against unyielding muscle, sent another dizzying wave through me. The bikini top felt absurd, a pointless gossamer barrier.
His other hand left my shoulder, trailed down my arm, and then cupped the outside of my thigh, hiking my leg up to wrap around his hip. The movement was effortless for him, exposing me, bringing the heart of me into agonizing proximity with him. The water provided a sickening, fluid intimacy. Everything was outlined, pressed, available.
“Mark…” I breathed. A protest? A plea? It came out as a sigh, a broken sound that belonged to this throat, these lungs.
“I know, baby,” he whispered against my skin, misinterpreting everything. “I’m here now.”
His fingers traced the edge of my bikini bottom, dipping beneath the elastic at my hip. They were heading inward. In a second, they would be there, where my own fingers had been, where the body was already slick and ready to betray me completely.
The conflict tore me in two. Justin’s mind recoiled, a howl of violation, of sheer existential wrongness. This wasn’t my life. This wasn’t my consent. But Andrea’s body… Andrea’s body was a lit fuse. It hummed with a need that drowned out the howling. It arched into his touch, the small feet scrambling for purchase on the slippery pool floor, the thin waist twisting to get closer. The arousal was a thick, palpable fog in my brain, smothering panic under a blanket of biological imperative.
His fingertips brushed the curls. The world narrowed to that point of contact.