The Erotic Secrets Of A French Maid

Chapter Thirteen

What were you thinking?" The words greeted her as she walked through the door to her apartment. Russ was already inside, which didn't surprise her since she had dawdled on her return here, dreading facing him.

"I wanted to see you play," she said, setting her purse down on the end of the breakfast bar. He was standing in the center of her living area, hands on hips.

"Why?"

She shrugged, trying to think of an excuse. The last thing she would tell him that her interest in him was growing well beyond the sexual. "Curiosity. I don't know anything about hockey except what you've told me."

"You could have looked it up online or bought a book. Why did you come to my game? I didn't even mention it to you."

"But you play the same place every week. Your team's schedule is on the Internet."

His eyes widened slightly. "You looked it up?"

"I was curious, that's all! I wanted to see you play, and I didn't think you'd want me to watch. My intention was that you not see me at all. How was I to know that no one else watches the games, and Daphne and I would stick out like palm trees on the polar ice cap?"

"So you planned to conceal it from me."

Her apprehensions of the evening slipped over into anger and she raised her voice. "I didn't plan to do anything! And what's the big deal, anyway? Huh? You sleep with me three times a week; it doesn't seem such a crime that I want to learn a little bit more about you!"

"Is that what you want? To know more about me?"

"It feels like you know all there is to know about me, but you give me precious little insight into your own life."

"I've shared more with you than I have with anyone in the past five years."

She tucked in her chin, taken aback. She hadn't expected that. "Are you serious?"

"It's not something I'd lie about."

She frowned, trying to figure him out. "Why me? Why tell me so much?"

"Maybe because you tell me so little."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, stunned. "You know everything."

"I don't know how to please you in bed."

The statement took the breath from her, guilt sweeping over her. "I'm happy with how you treat me in bed."

He shook his head. "You know what I'm talking about, Emma. You won't let me give to you the same pleasure that you give to me. Why?"

"Because this isn't about me. This whole relationship is about pleasing you. That's my job."

"Maybe I don't want to feel like you're doing me as your job."

"You seemed happy enough!"

"Even a kid will get sick of candy eventually and want something real to eat."

She felt stricken. "You're sick of me?"

He came forward and held her by the shoulders. "I'm not sick of you. Nor am I some stereotyped horndog who cares only about himself. I want to make love to the real Emma, not a French servant girl or a harem wench. Not even to someone whose mind is elsewhere, and whose only goal is to get me off. There is pleasure in giving pleasure: pleasure in knowing that you've touched a place deep inside a person; that she's trusted you with her secret desires, and felt safe enough to lose control in your arms. You've deprived me of that-whether by design or ignorance or fear, I don't know. But without it, we can't go on."

"I like what you do to me, Russ-truly I do. I don't know why I don't stay with it all the way; why I don't let you get me 'there.'"

He slid his hand up her neck and into her hair. "What am I doing wrong? Why won't you open up to me?"

"I don't even open up to myself," she said softly.

"Why?"

She leaned forward, resting her forehead against his chest. "I don't know. I think I'm afraid."

"Of what?" he asked more gently.

"Of embarrassing myself. Making a fool of myself. Being laughed at. Being vulnerable."

She felt him smooth his hand through her hair. "It's okay to be afraid. It's not okay to let that fear stifle you." He kissed her temple, his lips lingering as he whispered, "Tell me what you want."

His words shivered down her spine and she closed her eyes. "I don't know what I want."

He stepped back, holding her away from him. She opened her eyes in surprise.

"You have to tell me, Emma. Tell me what you want me to do to you. Spell it out in English."

She hunched her shoulders, the thought of telling him where and how to touch her too mortifying to accept. "I can't do that."

He dropped his hands. "I can't continue like this. We're finished, then."

Panic flashed through her. "No!"

"It's your choice."

"But- But you can't mean that I have to verbally guide you to my own orgasm!"

He picked his jacket up off the couch. "You can stay in the apartment as long as you need to."

"No! Russ, wait!"

He held still, watching her.

"Wait. I…" She couldn't speak. Couldn't do this thing he wanted of her.

He moved toward the door.

"I want you to put your coat down!"

He turned, cocking an eyebrow at her.

"And… and then I want you to pick me up and carry me to the bedroom!"

He draped his jacket over the breakfast bar and came toward her. Alarm ran up her spine and she was filled with sudden apprehension. They'd been intimate for weeks, but an embarrassed modesty swept over her as he approached. This would be the first time that the focus was all on her. He was putting the control of what happened in her hands, but only so that she would reach a point where she lost her grip on it completely.

She was being forced to give him the keys to her surrender. She was being forced to admit there were things she wanted that only he could give her.

He swept her up in his arms, surprising a gasp from her as she found herself lifted off her feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he carried her toward the bedroom.

"What if I can't, you know-get there?" she asked, a quaver in her voice.

"Have you ever managed to in the past?"

She nodded.

"Then you can't use that as an excuse." He pushed open the door and used his elbow to flip on the light. "Now what?"

"You mean I have to keep telling you things until I feel z'f?" The thought flitted through her mind that she could pretend to reach the big O and he might not know.

"I've said what I expect." He raised a brow. "And don't think I can't tell if you're faking."

She sighed. "I guess we should get this over with, then."

"Such passion!"

"How am I suppose to feel lusty on demand?" she asked querulously.

He shifted her in his arms, her weight obviously beginning to drag on him. "You've managed it for several weeks."

It was true. She knew that she only needed to consciously decide to accept the situation. She might not always be in the mood when he visited, but if she went ahead with foreplay and sex anyway, she almost always ended up enjoying it; or at least not disliking it. Sometimes she'd enjoyed it most when she'd initially thought she'd rather be reading a book.

This, though, was different. This time she had to fully engage both body and mind. Orgasms never happened while thinking about anything other than one's own pleasure. Was it really okay to be so selfish?

She realized he was waiting for his next command. "You can put me down."

"On the bed?"

"No, let me stand."

He set her down and she straightened her clothes. So, here they were in her brightly lit bedroom. What now? "Okay, um… I guess I should tell you to seduce me."

He shook his head. "You'll have to be more specific than that."

"Er, how about, 'Let's get naked and in bed and then you will, uh, stimulate me to the point of orgasm.' " Her cheeks colored. Stimulate, ugh, what a word.

He shook his head again. "Step by step, Emma. Every touch, every motion."

She chewed her upper lip, nervousness making her hands tremble as she went around the room and lit the candles, aware of him watching her every move. She flipped off the overhead light, then turned to him, her hands twisted together. "This isn't going to be much fun for you, is it?"

A wicked smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. He looked different in the darkened room, his face harder, less knowable, his eyes shadowed but for a glimmer of reflection from the candlelight. "Won't it?"

A shiver breezed across her skin, sending ripples of anticipation through her. She hadn't ever seen Russ like this, an undertone of angry frustration coloring his desire. It alarmed her, even as it touched something deep inside her.

He cared enough to be angry that she kept part of herself closed away from him. He cared enough to try to change it, instead of just leaving. If she hadn't sensed that his caring was at the heart of this, she would've let him go. Knowing he cared helped a little bit.

"Okay, um… I suppose you should get undressed." She mentally rifled through the sexual scenarios in her books, searching for something to use, but her books had focused on pleasing a man, not on pleasing herself. That was something she did alone.

Russ's shirt and shoes were off in the space of moments. My, he was an efficient follower of commands.

A devil of mischief roused inside her. "Slowly," she said. "And make it sexy." She sat down on the edge of the bed to watch the show.

Russ lowered his hands slowly to his belt buckle and started to undo it. He rocked his hips from side to side, dancing to an off-tempo rhythm in his own mind.

Emma covered her lips with her fingertips, hiding her smile. The big sweetie couldn't dance.

The buckle undone, he whipped the belt out of the loops in one long pull and then cracked his belt like a whip.

Emma yelped as the end of it hit her dresser, knocking over a candle.

"Crap!" Russ said, quickly righting the burning candle.

Emma slid her hand over her face, giggling and peering at him through her fingers.

Russ tossed the belt aside and returned to the center of the room with a shrug. He began to sing under his breath to the traditional burlesque strip tease theme, "Dah DOOP dah dah, dah DOOP dah dah, dah DOOP dah DAAH daah," as he unbuttoned his pants and pulled down the zipper.

Despite her laughter, Emma found herself watching that zipper go down. Just as he started to part the front of his pants he turned around, his butt to her.

Ass-shaking followed as he lowered his pants, revealing black Jockeys over that rounded skater's tush that she had admired from the beginning. His thighs and calves were dusted with dark hair.

He let the pants drop to his ankles, the tops of his socks peering out above the crumpled material. He tried to step out of his pants but his feet got caught up in them, a pant leg turning inside out as it clung to his sock-clad foot. He stumbled, then bent down to free his foot. He peered past his knee at her while he was down there and saw her watching. He narrowed his eyes, and then his face disappeared on the other side of his legs and he started to do a butt dance, bobbing it up and down, side to side.

Emma laughed out loud, the spectacle of his dancing tush above the socks and tangled trousers too much to take.

Then his hands came up and his thumbs looped into the elastic of his Jockeys. He inched them down, the crack of his ass appearing.

"No, no!" Emma laughed.

He stood up straight, thumbs still in his half-lowered Jockeys, and looked over his shoulder at her. "Oh yeah, baby!"

Emma fell over on her side. "Stop! My stomach hurts!"

He stopped dancing and turned around, walking toward her with his underpants stuck awkwardly over his erection, the trousers dragging behind him. "Your wish is my command."

Emma rolled onto her back and covered her eyes with her arm. "Just, just… take it all off, will you?"

His dance had broken some of the tension, making her forget for a moment how serious this all was to him.

"All right," he said softly. "What do you want me to do, Emma?"

She closed her eyes. What did she want? What could she ask him to do that would guarantee excitement and orgasm?

It was too much pressure.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what will get me there."

"Forget about that. Start with where we are now. Look at me."

She opened her eyes, turning her head to look at him.

Lord, he was gorgeous. The candlelight licked gently at his skin, shadowing the definition of muscles in chest, arms, abdomen. His thighs were thick and strong, and his erection rose firmly from an unfathomable abyss of dark hair. Her gaze skimmed up his body to his face.

He was gorgeous, her own dark god come to please her. A month ago she would have given a year off her life to have an opportunity like this. It would be pitiful if she couldn't think of at least one thing she'd like him to do to her. Not putting a gorgeous, willing man to good use was one regret she didn't want to have. -

"Could you touch me here?" she asked tentatively, raising her shirt and hoody and pointing to her belly.

Russ knelt down beside the bed. "Here?" He lay his palm on her skin.

"Yes."

He stroked his hand lightly over her, his touch gentle. His touch circled, tracing a wider route, drifting down over her sides and up to the edge of her shirt and the waist of her low-cut jeans. Emma closed her eyes, his gentie stroking both relaxing and arousing. It reminded her how much they had already shared together, and that she had no reason not to trust him.

Each time his hand stroked up toward her shirt, she wished it would go higher; he seemed to be teasing her with the possibility. He didn't go any farther, though, even when she moved so that her breasts would be closer to his hand.

She opened her eyes and looked at him, moving again so that her message was clear.

The wicked smile returned to his lips. "You have to tell me. Say it out loud."

"You know what I want."

"Say it."

"Are you getting off on this?" she complained.

The wicked grin widened. "Yeah, I am."

The admission sent a tremor through her. "Really?"

He moved his hand slowly across her belly, the edge of his fingers skimming the waistband of her jeans, sending a shiver straight down her panties. "Yes," he said, "I really am enjoying this."

"I don't want to disappoint you," she admitted.

He sighed. "The only way you'll disappoint me is if you lie there worrying about what I'm thinking. Be selfish. Be rude. Be crass and ask for raunchy things that you think will revolt me. Ask for silly things. Embarrassing things!"

"Why is it so hard to do?" she asked softly.

"Maybe because you've never done it."

She lay her hand over his on her stomach, holding his large, strong hand still. He was right: she'd never done it, not with anything in her life. The realization had been growing in her since meeting Russ; it had been appearing to her repeatedly in different forms, but the theme was the same in each go-round. She'd seen it enough now to be heartily sick of it.

If she couldn't find and ask for what she, Emma Mayson, wanted in a situation as safe and enticing as this one, then she might as well give up on ever achieving any of her dreams. A life of utter mediocrity and disappointment was all she'd ever have.

"Undo my jeans," she said. "Take them off."

He did as she asked, his fingers hard against her soft flesh as he struggled with the button. She felt a smile pulling at her mouth.

"You're not used to being the seducer, are you?" she asked.

He fought the button free and made short work of her zipper. "I'm a quick learner." He nudged her to lift her hips, and a moment later her jeans were gone, her shoes going with them.

"Socks," she said. "Off. Then…" she hesitated. She wanted it, but she couldn't imagine he'd want to do it. She herself wouldn't want to do it to him.

He peeled her socks off. "What do you want?"

"Could you…"

"Tell me."

"Suck my toes? Lick my arch?"

He laughed and climbed up onto the bed, sitting near her feet. He seemed completely unselfconscious of his nakedness, although sitting tailor fashion left his goodies in plain sight. Holding her heel in the palm of his hand, he met her eyes and raised her foot toward his mouth.

Emma laughed nervously and covered her eyes with her hands. Her toes curled in anticipation, and she was embarrassingly aware that with her leg raised and her panties off, she was giving him just as big a display as he was giving her.

He kissed the side of her foot where the arch began its curve, then darted his tongue out in a quick flick.

It tickled more than anything. "Harder," she said, peering between her fingers.

He ran the point of his tongue against her arch, apparently as hard as he could. Emma flinched and laughed. "No, that tickles!"

He did it again and again, and she tried to get away, her hands coming down to push against the mattress. She tugged her foot, but he held tight and licked.

"No, not like that!" Laughter made her weak, helpless under his torture.

Russ relented and did as he knew she wanted, using the flat of his tongue to stroke her arch. He'd only tickled her to get her to relax, just as he'd deliberately fumbled the striptease.

He had thought, given Emma's bold sexual adventuring, that she'd deliberately kept from opening up to him. Instead, she was just as shy in her way as he was in his. Maybe even more so; at least he had ten years' more experience with expressing his wants in bed, however hesitant those expressions might be.

That she was trying to open up to him now meant a lot to him; he did not underestimate the fragility of the trust she was offering him. Whatever she wanted, he would do it and be grateful she had shared it with him.

At the end of this night, she would have no physical secrets left. The thought of feeling her contractions around him as he thrust deep inside; of seeing her face lost in passion he had created; of knowing she had given herself over to him completely: it made him hard, and he knew he would stay that way through any length of toe sucking.

Before Emma, he hadn't spared more than a passing thought for what went on below the surface of a woman's mind. He hadn't cared enough to ask, and hadn't understood how much it could mean to him.

In his youth, he hadn't even suspected that a woman might hold part of herself separate, that what he saw wasn't all there was to get.

He licked the arch of her foot again and she squirmed, her hands fisting at her sides. She had closed her eyes, and despite the fact that she was dictating his actions, he felt more in control than he ever had with her. It was hard to beat the thrill of a woman writhing in pleasure under his touch.

He looked at her pristine toes and did as she had asked, one toe at a time. He dipped his tongue between each one as he sucked, rubbing against the tender skin. Emma bared her teeth as if in pain and her whole body tensed. She held perfectly still, as if afraid that moving would stop what he was doing.

He would never have guessed her toes were an erogenous zone.

He did the last of her toes and set her foot down.

She rolled onto her stomach and he admired her rounded behind before she twisted and sat up, her back still to him. She peered over her shoulder at him. "Finish undressing me."

He put his hands on her hips and slid his palms up her sides, her T-shirt and hoody coming with them. She raised her arms as he moved upward, then detoured to her breasts, brushing his palms over the mounds pressing into the silky stretch material of her bra. He circled there until he felt her nipples hardening, making pebbles beneath the material.

He pulled her tops off and tossed them onto the floor, then turned his attention to her one remaining garment.

He cupped her breasts in his hands, thumbs stroking over their peaks, then slid his hands back toward her sides and forward again, this time his fingers inside the material. He ran her nipples between his fingers, pinching them gently, and leaned forward until his lips were just above the nape of her neck.

He could hear her breath from her parted lips, and he wanted to lay his mouth against her skin. He waited for her to ask him to, and when she didn't, that stretch of naked skin became twice the temptation. He raised his mouth beside her ear, knowing that she could feel the heat of his breath.

He gently withdrew his hands from her bra and unfastened it, easing the straps down over her shoulders and pulling her back against him as he skimmed over her breasts in a touch that was more tease than caress, taking the lingerie with him. It joined the rest of their clothes on the floor.

"Play with my breasts," Emma said softly.

A command with which he was happy to comply. He held them tenderly in his palms and she rested her head against the crook of his neck and relaxed, her hands resting on his thighs. He could see down the slope of her chest to her breast in his hand. He gently squeezed, then massaged, watching as they changed shape under his touch, his excitement rising as he saw his hands on her nude breast, her nipple appearing between his fingers, vulnerable to his play. He traced around her aureole, then grasped the nipple between several fingertips and slowly, gently pulled outward, as if her nipple were a sucker being pulled from a mouth.

"Go lower," Emma whispered.

He slid his hands down her torso, then back up again, and felt goose bumps rise on her skin.

"Lower."

He skimmed the base of her abdomen, fingertips barely touching the beginning of her nether hair.

"Lower."

He trailed his fingertips down over the tops of her thighs, returning upward on their soft inner sides only to repeat the same path again. Emma parted her legs in invitation and he skimmed up to, but not touching, her sex.

He wanted to touch it; wanted to feel if she was damp for him yet; if her entrance pulsed for him. He wanted to feel her warm soft inner lips part for him, and to feel her arch her hips against his hand.

But she had to ask for it.

She seemed to have forgotten the necessity of words. She parted her legs yet farther and reached up and back with one hand to hold his neck.

The sides of his index fingers met where leg curved into sex, his thumbs touching the surface of her curls but no deeper. He pressed his hands harder against the inner tops of her thighs, massaging in a circle, knowing that the motion would transfer to her sex.

Emma pulled away from him, leaving his hands and arms empty. She peered over her shoulder at him, then lay down on her stomach, stretching across the bed.

"Massage the backs of my thighs and my backside. Please." She tucked her face into her arm, lifting her head again a moment later to peer at him over her arm, as if uncertain whether she'd asked too much.

Hardly.

He went to work on her thighs and buttocks, although his hands yearned to tease her until she whimpered Now. Take me, now. But as he rubbed her thigh Emma gave a soft tnmm of pleasure, and he realized that her erogenous zones weren't limited to her toes, breasts, and her sex. Her whole body wanted to be touched, caressed, made love to by his hands.

He felt a fool for having missed that fact in all the times they'd been together. He'd been touching her the way he wanted to be touched, hands diving right for the goods, forgetting that a woman's approach to sensuality could be different entirely.

It was going to be torture for his eager body. Each ooh and ahh and mmm she made as he massaged the backs of her legs and her buttocks went straight to his crotch. He wanted to hear her make those noises as he parted her thighs and pressed the head of his cock against her, her slit parting under him, the wet, hot slickness of her passage tight against him as he slid deep inside. He could already feel himself there, his hands on her hips as she pushed back against him, writhing and moaning with the pleasure he brought her.

Christ. He was going to have to think of lust-killing things like tax forms to make it through this.

But what sweet torture.

Emma felt his hands moving on her as she had asked and tried to relax and enjoy it. She knew now that he would continue this as long as she wanted, but she sensed a hint of impatience in his touch.

He was the one who had insisted on doing as she wished despite her embarrassment: he could suffer for it.

The thought that she was subtly torturing him was perversely freeing. She could revel in that, in a way that she was afraid to revel in asking for what she wanted without thought of his own pleasure.

One of his massaging hands slipped between her thighs and pressed a little too close to her sex, setting off a shiver of sensation. It was deliciously tempting, but she wasn't going to give in to it. Not yet.

"My lower back," she ordered, and made a small mmm of pleasure when he obeyed. Her skin seemed to soak up each touch of his hands, the very act of contact changing something within her. She was aroused and relaxed at the same time, an intoxicating, shimmering pleasure moving through her blood, drugging her, making her feel that she could continue like this forever. She wanted him to touch every part of her, from back to shoulders to the tender inner bend of her arm, to the sensitive center of her palm. She gave voice to her wishes, sending him on a treasure hunt over her body, finding the places that had lain undiscovered through all their joinings.

It was only when he'd touched every inch of her except her sex; only after he'd gently stroked her eyebrows and the shape of her ears; after he'd run the flats of his hands down the front of her torso, treating her breasts as any other part of her body, making her stretch her arms above her head and arch her back in catlike contentment; only after he'd touched the smooth space behind her ear and let his fingertips press over the faint ridges of her rib cage, that she knew she was ready to ask for something more.

"Lie on top of me and kiss me. I want to feel trapped. Pinned."

She felt his weight on her, his arousal a hard thickness against her loins. "Now kiss me like you're starving for it, and won't take no for an answer."

"No problem," he murmured, and took her face between his hands. His eyes looked down into hers with dark intensity, almost animal in their naked hunger.

She closed her eyes and let him kiss her, enjoying the sure, hungry movements of his mouth on hers and the weight of his body. She wanted to be ravished, to be taken without permission by him, if only within the confines of this game they were playing tonight.

She wrapped her arms around his chest and one leg around the back of his. "Take me," she whispered against his ear as his mouth sucked at the edge of her jaw. "Now." She moved her hips against his erection, feeling it slide against her mound, his position changing enough that the head ran down her sex and across her slick wetness.

"Tell me how," he growled into her ear. "Spell it out, Emma."

She felt the head rubbing against her opening, teasing at her with its blunt hardness that refused to enter. "Don't ask. Just do it. That's what I want!"

"Say it. Say how."

Frustration boiled up within her and in a flurry of motion she fought out of his embrace, making him yelp in surprise and climb off her. She rolled onto all fours, looked over her shoulder at him, moved her knees apart and lowered her torso, her sex spread out in an unmistakable target. "Is this clear enough for you?"

Without another word he put one hand hard on her hip and the other to his cock for guidance, and she gasped as he thrust inside her with one long, deep stroke. She dropped her forehead down onto the mattress, feeling him move the length of her, stroking hard, his thickness within her body and seeming to take up half of it. She was no longer in sole possession of her body, and it was just what she wanted.

"Your fingertip," she gasped out in near incoherence, wanting him to reach around and stroke her nub.

"What was that?"

"Your finger. Use your finger."

There was a pause; then she felt his hands on her buttocks. Her eyes widened, but before she could stop him she felt the tip of one finger dip into her back door.

Shock held her motionless.

His thrusts resumed their former energy, his fingertip following the rhythm, pressing in and releasing along with each thrust.

Her psyche was overwhelmed by the double penetration, the double possession. A cool liquid rush washed over her, and she lost all sense of where she ended and he began.

With her right hand she reached down to her sex, touching the joining of their bodies, feeling the wetness and the movement of flesh against flesh. Her fingertips damp, she trailed them to her nub and stroked.

Triple contact now, her whole consciousness existing in the trio of sensations. They blended together, amplifying each other: thrusts of his cock inside her, the pressure of his fingertip at her back opening, the tingling pleasures of her own hand at work on her desire.

Ohh God, it felt so good…

She felt herself rising on the tide, felt the tension in her body as she strained toward the crest of the wave.

Yes, yes, it's coming, it's coming…

Her body tensed, her lower legs clamping against his thighs, a high-pitched keen vibrating in her throat. She held for a moment at the crest of the wave, balanced there, precarious, and then with one more stroke of his cock she felt herself tumble down the slope. Her inner muscles clenched around him, squeezing and releasing rapidly.

"Oh God, Emma," Russ groaned, and thrust once more deep inside her, where she felt the pulses of his own release blend with hers.

Emma closed her eyes in the afterglow. She felt Russ rest lightly upon her with his cock still deep inside, breathing heavily.

She carefully lay flat and then he rolled them both to their sides, spooned together. She felt him nuzzle his face into her hair.

A smile curled on her lips and she fell into slumber, their bodies still one.

In the bathroom a half hour later, washing up together, Russ glanced at Emma. She caught his look and smiled, a sleepy cat-contented smile. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"What wouldn't I do to please you?" he asked softly, the words a question for himself as much as her.

"I wouldn't mind finding out," she said, and laughed.

Russ smiled, and felt his own cowardice. He had asked her what she wanted him to do to her body, but he hadn't had the nerve to ask her the more important question: What did she want from him when it came to her heart?

It was a question he likely would never have the chance to ask. It wouldn't be fair, when he was paying her; he wouldn't put her in the position of having to pretend to be in love with him in order to keep her "job."

"Don't take too long," she said, patting his buttocks as she left the bathroom.

He watched her go, then looked at himself in the mirror. What had he become?

He was a permanent John, buying sex in lieu of the love that every man craved, whether he admitted it or not, whether he realized it or not.

He had become a man falling in love with the woman he had turned into a mistress. The woman he had, through his own actions, put beyond his reach for anything more than what was physical.

"Russ?" Emma called softly. "Are you coming back to bed?"

He turned away from the mirror and shut off the light, and returned to the soft comfort of Emma's body.