Stephanie Doyle - Suspect Lover

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should have…” He was at a loss.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said and placed her lips on the side his neck. “Not about this.”

“What is this?” He wondered if she would even understand what he was asking.

Then she grasped his face in her hands and met his gaze. Her eyes were so beautiful. So filled with gentleness. She smiled and he felt a tightness in his chest that he hadn’t felt since long before his mother died.

Startled by it, he began moving inside her, letting his body take over, working out whatever he was feeling with a good hard screw. He pressed his hips high and hard against that sweet spot between her legs, hoping she was with him because he knew he was going to come and he didn’t want to try and stop it. He heard a gasp and felt her tighten around his shaft. Without another thought he let himself go, his body a mass of sensation.

When he came back into his head, her arms were wrapped around his neck and she hummed a little in his ear.

“This was nice.”

“Hmm.” He thought about how much energy it was going to take to get them out of the pool. He had the irrational thought of letting Munch pull them out with a towel.

“So,” she said softly. “Tell me about you and Anne.”

His hold tightened around her body. He hadn’t seen that coming. He should have.

His wife was no dummy.

Dominic stared at the ceiling. After three weeks of marriage, he knew where every faint crack in the plaster was. Every heavy stroke of paint. Even in the darkness with only moonlight filtering through the glass, he could still make out the tiny little imperfections.

She was sleeping on his arm. Her mouth slightly open so that he could feel the warm breaths of air on his shoulder.

It was driving him insane.

He glanced down at her and realized he’d studied her as equally intensely as he had the ceiling these past few weeks. He knew about the dark freckle behind her right ear. He saw the faint wrinkle that ran across her forehead barely visible when she was at rest.

So serene. So at ease with him. So trusting.

Or maybe not so trusting.

He considered the question she’d asked about Anne three weeks ago.

He’d avoided answering by kissing her. He’d kissed her long enough and slow enough until they were burning up. He’d managed to get her out of the pool and back up to his room-their room-where he’d made love to her again. Exhausted, she’d fallen asleep before he had a chance to separate their bodies.

There had been no more questions about Anne.

He wasn’t even sure what he would have said had she pressed the issue. There had been an incident. A year ago at a Halloween party Anne had thrown. He’d told her he didn’t involve himself with married women and that had been the end of it. As far as he knew Steven never found out. And it seemed at least to him that whatever problems they might have had were behind them.

Anne and Steven were happy.

Dominic shifted in the bed. He wouldn’t have thought he had any idea what a happy marriage looked like. But he imagined that he and Caroline looked happy. Why shouldn’t they? He felt happy when he was with her, and the feeling was so foreign to him it was almost unnatural.

In the near month she’d been his wife, there were moments that caught him off guard. Times when he couldn’t remember what life had been like before her or couldn’t imagine how he’d cope without her.

It was too much. Too soon.

He found himself leaving the office early to be with her. Last week he’d walked through the door after a rough day at work and made love to her on the kitchen table. It was as if he couldn’t stop himself. Not when she smiled at him with that damnable serenity etched in her face. The weekend before, he’d taken her to Carmel to show her his favorite view of the ocean instead of working from home as he’d done every weekend since he’d started Encrypton.

He was losing control and he didn’t like it. This wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want to enjoy the warmth of her breath on his shoulder. He didn’t want to crave sex with her all the time. He didn’t want to feel the way she made him feel when she smiled at him.

It needed to end. Space. That’s what he needed.

“Get off me,” he said, his eyes still focused on the ceiling. He jerked his arm and twisted his body and felt her jolt awake. “Get. Off. Me.”

“Dominic? What?” The sheets slid down her body as she sat up.

He pulled away to the other side of the bed. “You’re suffocating me. I can’t stand the clinging every single night.”

He didn’t look at her. Wouldn’t look at her to see what his words had done. There was stillness from her side of the bed. That was answer enough.

“I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I’ll go.” She climbed out of bed and took a pillow with her.

He didn’t stop her. Didn’t go after her. The relief he felt when she closed the door behind her was almost pleasurable. Until the regret over hurting her descended on him and the loss of her made him ache.

He couldn’t think about that now. Tomorrow he would apologize. And tomorrow he would come up with a strategy to keep her at arm’s length. There was no reason to push her completely away. He just needed some distance.

Shifting back into the center of the bed that now seemed cold to him, he went back to staring at the ceiling.

The next morning, Dominic sat down behind his desk and waited for his world to realign. This is where everything made sense. This world he could control. But as soon as he reached for one of the folders in his in-box, he found his head spinning back to Caroline and what had happened last night.

The guest room door had been closed when he emerged from his bedroom shortly after 6:00 a.m. He hadn’t slept a minute; he hoped she had.

Staring blankly at his computer he wondered how in hell he was going to fix what he’d done. But the screen in front of him offered no answers.

She was supposed to have been convenient. A sexual outlet, a sensible partner and a mother for a child he wanted.

Instead she was making him think things and feel things. Thoughts and hopes he’d closed off for so long it physically hurt him to consider making himself vulnerable again.

It was all about control. He simply needed to conquer his reactions and to a certain extent control Caroline. No more leaving work early. No more letting her talk him into a walk on the beach or a late-night swim. No more making love to her outside of their bed. In bed it was about marriage. About making a baby. That’s all he’d let it be.

There. It was a plan.

Forcing himself to concentrate on work, he picked a folder from the top of the pile. Immediately he saw that it wasn’t the one he’d left there on Friday. He might have thought he remembered incorrectly if he didn’t know himself that well.

He hit the intercom buzzer. “Serena, can you come in here.”

“Yes, Mr. Santos.”

A second later the door opened.

“Was someone in my office on Friday after I left?”

She hesitated for a second. “Yes, sir. Steven came by looking for you. You left a little early, remember?”

Caroline’s fault. She’d wanted to go out to dinner. He’d relented. No more.

“He said he needed some figures for the budget he’s preparing. He said he just needed to check a folder. I let him in.”

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

“He’s scheduled to meet with you this morning.”

“I know. Let him in as soon as he gets here.”

She nodded and left. Dominic reorganized the folders the way he wanted them. He was being anal. He didn’t pretend otherwise, but order was as necessary to him as food. As important as making love to Caroline was becoming.