Read Online Four of a Kind by Valerie Frankel - Free Book Online Page A

formidable and bulletproof.
    They would be her armor, she thought, at lunch with her mother tomorrow.
    “I’d love to see how they look on,” said Borden, grin widening, his penis visibly hard in his boxers. He sat next to her on the bed, and nibbled her neck, pulled the strap of her nightgown off her shoulder.
    Bess groaned. Not again. “What do you eat? Dried bull testicles?” she asked.
    He chuckled into her shoulder. “I’m a healthy American male. And you’re my beautiful wife, and I adore you.”
    “As I adore you,” said Bess, “But I already put out this morning.”
    Borden woke her at six by grinding his erection into her thigh. She’d pretended to be asleep for a few minutes, but when he started slicking her anus with lubricant (at the ready in his night table drawer), she knew she’d have to speak up, or get a predawn ass fucking. He tried that move when he dared, going for her not-favorite activity when he thought she’d be too tired to argue.
    “Just a quickie,” he said.
    “I’m exhausted,” she replied. When wasn’t Bess exhausted? Four kids, only part-time babysitting/housekeeping help. Bess had to address and satisfy the daily needs and desires of five people—counting Borden, but not herself. It was a tremendous responsibility, no margin for error, that required Herculean diplomacy, strength, and organization. Bess was convinced no man could do it for a day. Bess had been doing it for years.
    Borden continued to kiss her nape. “Okay, I’ll leave you alone. But try on the boots anyway. Give me something to think about.”
    Bess agreed, and zipped on the boots. She stood up, letting her nightgown fall to the floor in a silken puddle. She was bare beneath it, naked now, except for the knee-high boots.
    “You are incredible,” said Borden, standing to embrace her, his hands on her upper arms, stroking her skin and bending to kiss her.
    Much as Bess appreciated Borden’s unrelenting attraction for her, she often wondered what was
wrong
with him. His libido was off the charts. It wasn’t normal. They’d just passed their eighteenth wedding anniversary. She might be well preserved, but Bess was not the fresh-faced, perky-breasted undergrad she’d been when they met. Why wasn’t Borden taking his sky-high sex drive elsewhere? Why wasn’t he having an affair with some junior trader?
    If he did, and she found out, Bess would have to kill him.
    The problem with having too much sex: Bess never got to miss it. Sexual tension wasn’t allowed to build. The lack of anticipation made it hard for Bess—who needed
some
sizzle before the steak—to appreciate Borden’s stroking, despite his skill and beauty. Bess knew she was blessed that he wanted her so badly. But two times a day was simply too much of a good thing! She resented it that Alicia, Carla, and Robin laughed at her complaint, and she felt a little guilty to have made up the bit about Borden wanting to impregnate her. But beefing up her grievance hadn’t won their pity. She shouldn’t have said anything. Fatigue and a weary vagina hardly compared to Alicia’s celibacy and Robin’s loneliness. Carla hadn’t talked about her sex life at all. Probably never would.
    Right now, Borden’s hands exploring, Bess pushed him away and said, “Give my pussy a rest!”
    Borden said, “Say that again.”
    “Pussy.”
    His cock jumped, and he groaned. Honestly, men were ridiculously predictable.
    After twenty years as a couple—eighteen of them married—Bess was still amazed that she felt any guilt when she rejected him sexually. Once, Bess had made the tiniest reference of that guilt during a rare confessional conversation with Mother Simone. That crumb was all Simone needed to make a meal of the sexual enslavement of housewives. No matter how vociferously Bess defended herself—she wasn’t Borden’s sex slave; she was his wife, she loved him, and she wanted to make him happy—Simone dug in, and insisted that Bess was in deep