rejection meds?”
“Yes.”
“Eating right?”
“Yes.”
“Is he exercising?”
I sighed, frustrated. She was building a case, and the jury would find in her favor. “Jogs miles and miles a day.”
“Is he not taking care of himself in any way possible?”
“He’s a model citizen.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I love him, and I don’t want to lose him. That’s the problem. When are you going to tell him about the Swiss thing?”
“Tomorrow I’m going over to your place to get some things signed. I’ll bring it up then. Be scarce.”
“Okay.” What I said with that “okay” was that she’d better do it or I would blurt something out in the bedroom. We’d agreed that it should be presented as business, and Margie was business, but after one more day, it would feel like withholding.
“What did you get him for his birthday?” Margie changed the subject.
“I wrote him a song.” As soon as I said it, I knew the song was wrong. It was about a flat compromise over a house. I’d written it before he’d reclaimed me, and I suddenly hated it.
Margie’s sigh was audible over the traffic. “You’re a good wife. It’s almost sickening.”
chapter 10.
MONICA
T he morning of Jonathan’s birthday, I woke him by putting his cock in my mouth, and he twisted me around and put his mouth on me at the same time. He didn’t even say good morning before I came, groaning with his dick down my throat.
“Monica, you didn’t ask.”
“But, wait, we’re in scene?”
“Get up and stand by the window.”
I had to write him a new song, and dinner was at five. I was already cutting it close. I wasn’t a particularly quick songwriter. Since we’d both collapsed without fucking the night before, this could go on for hours.
But I couldn’t hesitate. I wasn’t afraid he’d beat me harder. I was afraid he’d think I didn’t want to play. So I stood, already naked, and faced the back patio. I wanted to do this and do it hard, then write the song, because I had no idea what I wanted to write. I had no idea what to say except everything.
“Put your hands on the glass.”
I leaned forward and put my fingertips on the back doors. Behind me, I heard his belt buckle clink and his fly zip as he put on his pants.
“Whole hand. Come on, Monica. Commit.” He spanked my ass playfully.
I put my whole palm on the glass and stretched my back.
“Open those legs.” I did, and he pressed on my lower back until my ass was all the way up. “Good.”
“Thank you.”
He nonchalantly went out the back door and looked out over the ocean. The salt breeze blew his hair back. Then, as if noticing something for the first time, he played with the bamboo stalks in the patio’s stone planter as if they were strings on a harp. Then he stood in front of a pot of rattan. It looked just like any other potted palm in Los Angeles. He’d had it brought in a few days ago to block a sliver of view from the beach. He’d insisted on rattan, and from what I’d heard on the phone, he had to go see it personally. I’d had no idea what his problem was. I didn’t know if it was some obsessive pickiness he’d inherited from his new heart that hadn’t yet had the opportunity to show itself or if it was something I simply had never known about him.
But my king wasn’t impulsive. He bent one of the leaves and snapped out his pocketknife, which also just happened to be in his jeans. He cut off a branch and stripped off the leaves.
He stood right in front of me on the other side of the glass door, as if he were in a different room, as if I couldn’t see him. He rolled the cane around in his hands, then across them, inspecting it for I didn’t even know what.
He walked back in the house with the switch. “Now,” he said from behind me, “I think we’ve talked about your orgasms before, and who owns them.”
“You do.” I looked out the window. Without him in front of me, I felt exposed, my breasts hanging, ass
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