Do Over (5 page)

Her gesture freed him as he pounded into her body with a strength she didn’t know he possessed. She was vaguely aware of the fact she was screaming as he pushed her over into one long, painfully beautiful orgasm. The clenching contractions of her inner muscles seemed to push him into a different realm. He gripped her thighs, holding them against her chest as he opened her up for an even deeper fuck.

For a moment, she thought she saw stars and feared she’d pass out as she came one last time. He followed her into the moment, filling her with jet after jet of hot come, until he collapsed on top of her.

It wasn’t until she felt her arms being lowered that she realized she had fallen asleep. Troy had cleaned her and covered her in a blanket, yet neither act had roused her until he unlocked the cuffs and pulled her into his arms.

“Okay?” he asked.

She nodded. Her body was numb from his hard use, but she knew she’d let him do it all over again in a heartbeat if he asked her to.

“So okay,” she whispered.

He kissed her brow. “You’re amazing. Just when I think it’s not possible for me to love you more, you find a way to burrow even deeper into my heart.”

She smiled tiredly at his admission, but her mind felt as mushy as her muscles. “Ditto,” she replied and she fell asleep once more as Troy’s chest rumbled with his soft laughter.

***

Faith woke up the next day, surprised by the brightness of the sun outside. Usually she was up with the birds in the still dim hours of early morning, but it would appear her husband had officially worn her out. Glancing over, she found him snoring softly, looking exactly like the man she’d woken up next to every morning for years. But this morning, something felt different, better. Ordinarily she’d get up and make a pot of coffee, reading the newspaper and playing FreeCell on her computer until he woke up and joined her.

This morning, despite the stiffness in her muscles, she was tempted to wake him up and demand he continue the amazing sex he’d initiated her into last night. His eyes opened slowly and found her staring at him.

“Good morning, Mrs. Wainwright.”

“Good morning,” she said, clearing the sleep from her throat. “Sleep well?”

“Like the dead. That was quite a workout you gave me. Figure I’m lucky I didn’t have a heart attack.”

She laughed. “Feel up to another round?”

He looked at her in disbelief, then worry. “Are you kidding me? Aren’t you sore? Faith, I was more than a little hard on you last night.”

She wiggled a bit, trying to determine if she was in pain. Problem was the second Troy said hard, her thoughts went straight to the gutter. “I don’t think I would have enjoyed a little hard. Seems to me you were very hard…and very good.”

Troy closed his eyes and she thought for a moment he was praying. “All the wasted years,” he muttered. “Dammit, Faith. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but we don’t have time.”

Faith narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t we have time?”

“Tour’s not over yet.”

He glanced at the clock beside the bed and hopped out of bed before she could try to seduce him out of his damn plans. “Troy.”

“Come on, sweetheart. Rise and shine. We’re already behind schedule. I’m gonna grab a quick shower and get dressed. While you’re getting ready, I’ll run out and pick us up a couple of cups of coffee and some donuts.”

“You had me at shower,” she said, rising from the bed, letting the sheet drop away.

Troy shook his head. “Didn’t I specify? I’m showering alone. With the door locked. Behave yourself, Faith, or you’re going to find yourself lying facedown over my lap while I show you what happens to naughty girls.”

Her pussy fluttered at the thought and she grinned.

“Shit,” Troy said, turning for the bathroom.

He slammed the door and she distinctly heard the lock snap into place.

***

Despite Faith’s best efforts to seduce him, Troy remained true to his original schedule. Luckily the beautiful, sunny day snapped her out of her bad temper as they rode through town with the windows on the truck rolled down. Troy was singing along with Toby Keith on the radio, and she had to admit she felt happier and more relaxed than she had in months. It was amazing what a night of incredible sex could do for a person.

She played the night over in her mind, not paying attention to their direction until Troy pulled the truck to the side of the road and parked.

“You were a million miles away,” he said, tapping her nose playfully.

She shook her head. “Not that far.” She looked outside and realized they were parked outside their first apartment. “Hillman Apartments.”

Troy grinned. “Yep. Only doing a drive by here. It’s time for you to open the album again. Read the next letter while we head to the next stop.”

Putting the car in drive, he pulled away from the curb as she turned to the next page. Happy tears sprung to her eyes when she found a picture of Jackson and Jenna sitting outside on the grass in their Easter finest. Jackson, the very protective four-year-old brother, was sitting with his arm around his one-year-old sister. Both of them were smiling widely and Jenna had a pink
plastic Easter egg in her hand. Faith ran her finger across the picture, touching their faces and recalling how soft and wonderful it had been to caress their baby skin. Discreetly, she brushed away a tear, turning her attention to Troy’s letter.

As she finished reading the letter, Faith let her eyes drift back to the picture of her son and daughter. She simply couldn’t look at Troy yet, couldn’t speak without dissolving into tears. Her mother had been right. All these years, she’d thought her husband was easygoing, unobservant. Turned out he’d understood their lives better than she had.

They drove in silence for several minutes. Troy was focused on the road and she suspected he knew how close she was to losing it. Finally, he turned the truck into a driveway and shut off the ignition.

“We’re here.”

She looked up. They were parked in front of their first home. They’d moved in to this house on Anders Street the day Jackson turned one month old. The apartment had been too small to even consider raising a child in and Troy had insisted his son have a yard to play in.

“Our first real home,” she said, her voice thick with the emotions fighting to get out. “I loved this little house.” They’d stayed here for eleven years, spent the majority of their children’s younger years in the place until Troy’s transfer at work sent them away from Carlysle, away from their friends and family.

“Wanna go in?”

She looked at him with surprise. “Can we? I mean do you think the people who live here now would care?”

Troy opened the door, crossing to help her out of the truck. “Guy who bought this place from us moved out a couple years ago. With the economy in the shitter, he couldn’t sell so he’s been renting it out. Turns out the last renters moved out a few months ago and he hasn’t found anyone else to move in. So, I rented it for the day.”

“You rented it? For a day?”

Troy shrugged, but she couldn’t believe all the time he must have spent planning this perfect weekend for her. Tears sprung to her eyes.

“This is your fault, you know,” she said, when he laughed.

“More of those happy tears?”

“I can’t believe there are any more tears left in me.”

Troy took her hand and led her to the front porch. Bending down, he lifted a flowerpot and retrieved a key. “Right where it’s supposed to be.”

He unlocked the door, but before she could step over the threshold, Troy bent down to pick her up.

“What are you doing?” She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped. Try as she may, she couldn’t remember her husband ever picking her up like this.

“I couldn’t carry you over the threshold the first time because you had Jackson in your arms.”

“So this is another do over?”

He grinned at her use of his term. “Yep. We’re really correcting a lot of mistakes here, aren’t we? Another day or two and we could have every screw up from the last twenty-five years sorted out.”

“That would be nice,” she said, struggling to think of a single mistake that needed to be fixed.

He put her down in the front foyer and Faith turned to look at her beloved first home. “It’s still the same.”

“Not exactly,” Troy said as he led her into the living room. “Mercifully that brown shag carpeting has been replaced with Berber.”

“Oh my God. I’d forgotten about that horrible carpet. Terrible stuff to try to clean.”

“Wish we’d had money when we lived here. I always thought this place would really look good with hardwood floors.”

Faith smiled at his comment. Her husband was the consummate builder. For the past twenty-five years, he’d worked his way through the ranks at the construction company, now serving as master carpenter and supervisor. He’d recently started talking to his boss about buying half the business and expanding it. Troy was the hardest worker she’d ever met and one of the smartest men on the planet. She was so proud of all he’d accomplished with just a high-school diploma and at least two dozen trade and management classes taken at the local community college over the years. He was constantly striving to better himself, to learn more so that he could be a valuable employee and a successful supervisor.

“That would have looked nice. I wonder…” She drifted through the living room to the door that led out on to the back patio. “It’s still there.” She smiled as she spotted the wooden playset Troy had designed and built for their kids.

Troy grinned when he spotted what she was looking at. “What do you know about that? Spent two months designing that thing.”

“The kids loved it. I can’t begin to count how many hours Jackson spent on that tire swing and the monkey bars.”

Troy nodded. “And if you couldn’t find Jenna in the house, it was always a good bet she’d be in that sandbox.” He draped his arm around her shoulders as they looked around the large backyard and reminisced about all the kids’ birthday parties and family picnics they’d held there.

“It was a great house to raise kids in,” Faith said as Troy gestured for her to lead the way back into the house.

“The perfect house. What do you say we check out the rest of the rooms? And then…” He paused as she turned to look at him.

“And then?” she prodded.

“And then I have a surprise for you in our old bedroom.”

She laughed, running her hand across the front of his pants. “I’ll just bet you do. You realize I could begin to get spoiled by all these surprises.”

Troy shrugged, pulling her hand away from his cock and kissing it. “I’m a guy, Faith. We don’t think of sex as spoiling, but more as sustenance. Besides, I wanted to make this weekend special.”

She moved closer, wrapping her arms around his waist and placing a soft kiss on his lips. “It’s been the most special weekend of my life.”

“Good. But…” he placed a quick kiss on the end of her nose, “it’s not over yet.”

They toured through the rest of the house at a leisurely pace, each room bringing back a plethora of memories.

When they entered their old bedroom, Faith gasped. Like the rest of the house, the room was bare, but in the middle of the floor, someone had laid out a plush, quilted bedspread and pillows. Next to it was a picnic lunch, complete with chilled wine, fried chicken, potato salad and chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert.

“How on earth?” The food was fresh, the scent of the warm chicken assaulting her senses and making her mouth water.

“Your mother came by earlier and set this all up for us. I picked the key up from the guy yesterday when I supposed to be golfing and gave it to your mother while you were changing into the T-shirt and letterman’s jacket. I told her to leave it under the flowerpot on the front porch on her way out.”

“My God. You thought of everything.”

Troy shrugged. “You’ve always teased me about over-planning.”

“I’ll never do that again. Troy, this is wonderful.”

They walked over to the blanket and sat down. Faith filled their plates with her mother’s scrumptious homemade picnic lunch while Troy poured the wine and pushed Play on the small CD player. Neil Diamond’s “Hello Again” filled the room.

“Another one of my CDs?”

Troy nodded. “Snuck them out of your car a couple days ago. Kept worrying you’d realize they were missing.”

They listened to the music, relaxing as they ate. It had been a long, busy weekend and yet Faith didn’t feel a bit tired. Instead, she was energized. She felt more alive than she had in months.

“Jenna was conceived in this room,” Faith said as she finished the last of her potato salad and wiped her mouth on a napkin.

“That was quite a night.”

She laughed. “You’d just come home from Billy Tucker’s bachelor party and you were drunk.”

“I was barely tipsy. I’d had three beers the whole night. And those were only consumed in hopes of making the women at the strip club your cousin Rodney dragged us to, look better. Never been to such a dive.”

Faith narrowed her eyes and pretended to be annoyed. “You came home at two in the morning, crawled into bed and woke me up by putting your freezing feet on me.”

“It was the middle of January. I was hoping you’d warm them up.”

It was amazing to her how clearly she could recall that night. Half the time, she struggled to remember what had happened the week before and yet, she could remember the night they’d created Jenna like it happened yesterday instead of nineteen years earlier. “You pulled me into your arms and kissed me.”

Troy nodded. “I said, ‘Let’s make a baby girl.’”

“And we did,” she replied.

“And we did.” The look Troy gave her was so reverent, so filled with gratitude she had to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Of course, you got pregnant during the first damn attempt, fertile Myrtle.”

Faith laughed. “Yep, you thought you were gonna start getting sex all the time.”

“Instead, two weeks later, I was holding your hair while you threw up your breakfast.”

She shrugged. “Morning sickness sucked.”

“I know you miss the kids.”

His words caught her unaware and all she could do was nod.

“I know I’ve been working long hours lately with the Higgins’ project. I wish I could be home more, Faith.”

She closed her eyes, shook her head. “No, your work matters, Troy. I understand that.”

His face darkened and she saw shades of the same anxiety he’d displayed yesterday at the diner when he looked at her engagement ring and again in the truck when he revealed his concerns about their first time. “I leave you alone too often.”

“I’m a big girl, babe. I have lots of friends, lots of hobbies. I don’t expect you to entertain me 24/7.”

“Even so—”

“Even so, nothing. Troy, you’ve devoted your life to climbing the ladder in that company so you could help provide a good life for me and the kids, so you could afford to put them through college. Now you have a chance to become part owner and believe me, there’s nothing I want more than to see you accomplish that goal. I’m so proud of you, of all you’ve done. So no more about this leaving me alone too much. I’m not lonely—honest.”

He narrowed his eyes and she knew he didn’t believe her words, so she tried to clarify them. “I mean there are times when I feel a bit alone, but that’s true of every single person on earth. I know I’ve been a bit blue lately, but my girlfriends who’ve had kids go off to college say my feelings are normal and that they’ll pass. It’s empty-nest syndrome. It’s as simple as that.”

“Problem is I don’t
ever
want you to feel alone, even for a minute.”

She smiled at his sweet words and leaned forward. “Then I guess you’re just going to have to make sure I have lots of red-hot memories to keep me warm for those times when you can’t be around.” She kissed him, knowing her words had struck a chord when Troy quickly took charge of her lips, pushing her back on the quilt and coming over her.

They kissed for several moments, content to simply explore and enjoy each other’s mouths, lips. When Troy pulled away, he rested his forehead against hers.

“You know, I think I can deliver on those spicy memories.”

She grinned. “I know you can.”

Troy looked around the room and then back at her. “Seems to me there’s no time like the present. Stay there. Don’t move.”

He rose, standing as she reclined at his feet. As she watched, he shed his pants and boxers, but left his T-shirt on. She licked her lips when the image of his erect cock emerged from the denim and she started to rise up on to her elbows.

He shook his head. “I said don’t move.” His voice had taken on the commanding tone of the previous night and she went wet at the sound.

“I want to take my clothes off,” she said, when he knelt beside her. “I want to suck your cock.”

“No, not this time.” He reached down and unhooked the button on her pants, pulling down the zipper. “Lift your hips.”

She obeyed and he helped her shimmy her jeans and panties off as she remained lying on the blanket.

“Roll over,” he directed. “Get up on your hands and knees.”

She followed his directive, curious about his intentions.

“I like the idea of fucking you from behind while we’re both half dressed.”

Faith closed her eyes and groaned softly as his hand brushed the sensitive skin of her ass. He shifted until he knelt behind her, but he made no move to take her. Instead, he caressed every inch of her bottom and upper thighs with his hands until she was panting with need. She arched her back, hoping the position would tempt him, beckon him to proceed.

His fingers delved between her legs and he shoved three inside her wet pussy without warning. She cried out at the shock, the glorious intensity as he roughly fucked her with the thick digits.

“Yes,” she hissed as he pounded harder, deeper.

“Come for me, Faith. Let me feel that pussy of yours clench against my fingers.” His words prompted the reaction and she came hard, trembling as he continued his assault, refusing to lessen his speed, the power of his fingers as they pummeled her needy flesh.

He slowed only as her climax began to wane. His fingers left her and she felt immediate relief. He would take her now. Despite her orgasm, her body wanted the main event, wanted his cock filling her.

When he didn’t move, she looked over her shoulder, surprised to find him studying her ass intently.

“Troy?”

He looked up at her, his face lined with seriousness. She thought he looked as if he wanted to say something, but instead his gaze dropped once more. This time when his fingers stroked her, it wasn’t her pussy or clit, but the tight pucker of her ass he started to rub.

“God,” she murmured on a breathless sigh.

“It’s been a long time since I touched you here.”

She nodded. It had been years since they tried any of the things they’d toyed with when they’d been young and adventurous in bed. “I know.”

“I want to try it again.”

Her mind flashed back to the early days of their marriage. They’d experimented with pretty much everything in bed, but somewhere along the line, the kinky games gave way to sneaking in morning quickies before the kids woke up.

His finger, still damp from her juices, wiggled on her anus and she pushed back in invitation. “Is this another do over?”

He shook his head. “Hard to do something over that you’ve never done before.”

“You’ve put your finger in my ass before.”

Troy leaned over her back, his lips grazing her ear. “I’m not going to stop with just a finger this time. I want to fuck your ass, Faith.”