Control

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not with the valet attendants and other patrons nearby.

Robert had been rude on other occasions, more often than I liked these days, but his behavior tonight was completely uncalled for.

Was it his age, his medication, or his growing insecurity? Or was this the real Robert? Had I overlooked his true nature all of these years?

Yes.

The answer sounded in my mind—and it scared me.

Chapter Three

I wrapped my shawl around my shoulders as I stood outside waiting for Robert. I didn’t turn back to see how close he was, or if he’d stopped to complain to the manager. It was just the kind of thing he would do.

Several agonizing seconds passed and no Robert. My curiosity getting the better of me, I turned. He was a couple steps from the entryway.

People were staring in his direction with the kind of interest reserved for tabloids and reality shows.

Despite my anger, I reached for the door and opened it for him. It was something I did all the time, the kind of thing a younger wife did to take care of her elderly husband.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Robert said casually, as though he hadn’t created a public spectacle inside.

I didn’t respond. Just watched as he approached the valet stand and handed in our ticket.

A few minutes later, our yellow Porsche 911 Carrera pulled up to the curb. The young valet who’d brought it held the driver’s door open for Robert, then made his way around the car and opened the passenger door for me.

Not going to accuse him of staring at my tits? I thought sourly.

No, Robert just handed the young man a ten. Then he revved the engine and began to drive.

Angry, I stared ahead blankly. I was going to give Robert the silent treatment if he spoke to me, but he didn’t say a word, either. After a couple of minutes, I glanced his way to gauge his mood. On his face, I saw a contented expression—and if I wasn’t mistaken, a hint of smugness. Not at all the look of a man who’d acted so outraged that a waiter had been inappropriately ogling his wife.

If he truly believed that ridiculous claim.

Robert hit a button to turn on the stereo, and classical music filled the car. He thrummed his fingers against the steering wheel like a man who didn’t have a care in the world.

“I say we head to the country club. You can count on professionalism there.”

I turned my gaze from his face to my window. To the country club…gee, what a surprise. Suddenly, I couldn’t help thinking that Robert had orchestrated the whole ugly incident just so we would leave The Melting Pot. He hadn’t wanted to go there in the first place, and what a perfect plan, to make the experience so uncomfortable there was no way we could have stayed.

Did you do it on purpose? I wanted to ask him. Did you humiliate our waiter just so you could get your way?

Yes. You know he did, Elsie.

And I did. That was exactly his style. Passive-aggressive bullshit so that he could always get his way.

After a few minutes, Robert asked, “Are you not going to speak to me again?” He sounded almost cheery.

I said nothing.

“Elsie…”

“You embarrassed me,” I said. “Not to mention that poor waiter.”

“That poor waiter needs to learn some respect.”

Now I faced Robert. “What are you talking about? He wasn’t looking at my tits, as you so crudely put it.”

“He was.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“You never see it, do you?”

Knowing what Robert was referring to, I once again turned to look out the window.

“I don’t want a repeat of Hawaii,” he said.

“Hawaii?”

“Yes, Hawaii,” Robert stated curtly. “Don’t play dumb when you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Nothing had happened in Hawaii—though Robert wouldn’t believe it. During our last vacation there, over Christmas, he had been convinced that one of the pool attendants was hitting on me. The man had made pleasant conversation, brought me extra towels, reserved our lounge chairs every day. Robert had point-blank asked the man if he’d been trying to get me into bed.

He hadn’t been, of course—even if I can admit he was flirting. Robert and I weren’t the only May-December couple who went to the spectacular St. Regis Resort in Kauai over Christmas, year after year. Hollywood producers and their young wives also packed the place over the holidays. Men with power and money and trophy wives. The hotel staff knew how to cater to just that kind of clientele. How to pander to them and even kiss their asses when necessary. But this attendant, Richard, was new, and didn’t keep the same kind of “professional” distance that men like Robert expected. He’d talk to you about the weather, your interests, where you were from—that sort of thing. And sure, he probably stole a few excited glances of me in my two-piece.

That was to be expected. Guys the world over checked women out, not caring if they were married or not. And wasn’t that supposed to be the perk of having a beautiful woman on your arm—that other men were openly envious of your catch?

Unfortunately for Richard, Robert had been so offended by his “lack of professionalism” that he’d complained to the hotel. There was no way that management wanted to risk losing any of their high-end customers, especially not Robert Kolstad, so Richard had been made to apologize to me and Robert—and then he’d been fired.

“Our waiter was nothing but courteous and professional,” I said.

“He’s lucky I didn’t speak to the manager.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“I’m sure you are.”

I sighed. “Robert, can you just let it go? Please, you’re making an issue where there is none.”

He had never been jealous. Not early in our relationship, anyway. But in the last few years, I think, as the realization that he was getting older, while I was still comparatively a young woman, hit him, he had become far less secure in our marriage.

That had to be the reason for his odd behavior. Which was why I felt he needed something else to make him feel more secure. Something that would show I loved him and was committed to him.

A baby. I wanted a baby more than anything.

“Maybe I did overreact,” he admitted. “I guess I need to accept that I have a wife most men would love to steal from me.”

Then don’t push me away, I thought silently. It was a sentiment I’d felt more than once over the last year—that Robert’s behavior was eroding the relationship we had. There were other men out there, maybe someone who was perfect for me.

Like the man with the hazel eyes who had come into my shop a couple weeks before.

But I said to Robert, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.” He paused a beat. “Shall we go to the country club?”

“Sure,” I said. You got your way again.

When I was out of town or on vacation, and anyone asked me where I lived, I always said Charlotte. But Robert and I actually lived just north of Charlotte in an exclusive community called The Peninsula. Situated on Lake Norman, The Peninsula was a country-club community with so much to do, you didn’t have to go anywhere else if you didn’t want to. There was a yacht club, a championship golf course, swimming, tennis. Casual and fine dining. We were members of both The Peninsula Yacht Club and The Peninsula Club. Though we had our own pool at home, we sometimes used the pool at the yacht club when we socialized.

On most days, Robert could be found on the greens at The Peninsula Club. It was his home away from home. We ate there much of the time when we chose to dine out, which was why I had wanted to try someplace different.

But that’s where we went, and Robert was a much happier man. After a casual dinner and a couple of drinks, we headed home—where I still hoped to end the night the way I had originally planned.

I tried to get Robert in the mood after we pulled up in front of the house. Reaching across the seat, I lazily skimmed my fingertips over his hand before taking it in mine.

Robert squeezed my fingers in return. Then he met my eyes.

I stared at the man I had married. He was getting older, yes, but he was still so distinguished. Still looked like Harry Belafonte, a man who no matter how old he got would always be attractive.

“I love you,” I told him. “Only you.”

Robert’s mouth curled in a small smile, one thing that despite the years was as dazzling as it had been the first day I met him.

Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to his. A lingering kiss that said we would continue this in our bedroom.

“I love you, too, Elsie,” Robert whispered as we pulled apart.

We exited the Porsche, which he had parked at the front of the house. A series of pod lights and spotlights illuminated our grand, Italian renaissance manor. It truly was a spectacular place, complete with a Roman-style fountain on an island of grass in the center of the long circular driveway.

I looped my arm through Robert’s as we made our way up the steps. Once inside, I kissed his cheek. The double front doors led to a huge great room with a plasma television mounted on the wall, a fireplace, sofa, love seat and lounge chair. There was plenty of room to make love right there, and Olga, our housekeeper, was long gone for the day. But I knew my husband. He would want to wait until we were comfortably settled in our bedroom, as opposed to getting hot and heavy on the sofa.

Holding his hand, I led him up the curved staircase, across the portion of hallway that overlooked the great room below, to the double doors at the end that led to our bedroom.

The moment we crossed the threshold, I turned to face Robert, snaking my arms around his neck, my mouth on his, slowly coaxing his lips apart. Slipping my tongue into his mouth, I held him tighter. Robert began to kiss me back and I moaned, the sound ripe not just with desire, but with desperate need.

Robert’s hands went to my upper arms. He held me for several seconds, kissing me. Then he tightened his grip and forced my body away from his.

“I haven’t taken my pill, Elsie.”

“You can take it now.” I moved forward to kiss him once more, but he held me away.

“I want to make love to you—I do. But tonight—”

I planted another kiss on his lips. “Please, sweetheart. Please…”

I continued to kiss Robert, not ready for our night to end like this. He allowed it to go on for a few more seconds before pulling away again.

“I’m sorry, Elsie.” His eyes roamed over my face. And I thought I saw, just for a moment, a flash of disapproval.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s…” He fingered the loose locks of hair around my face, almost as if examining the strands. “I’m tired, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

I got the feeling that Robert had been about to say something else. That there was another reason he didn’t want to take me to bed.

But it was late for him—nearly eleven—and he’d had a couple glasses of that expensive cognac at the club, which always made him a little drowsy.

“Okay.” I gave him a soft kiss this time, trying to quell my disappointment. “If you’re tired, you’re tired. Why don’t you go get ready for bed, then? I’ll do some reading in the great room.”

“I’m sorry,” Robert repeated.

“It’s okay.” I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

I turned and exited the bedroom. Halfway down the hallway, I felt tears fill my eyes.

What am I doing wrong?

Robert and I hadn’t made love in nearly two weeks. There’d been some crisis at the office, Kolstad Systems, and he’d stepped in to help sort the problem out. I’d been busy with work. With all that had been going on, we hadn’t carved out any time for us.

This was the first evening in a while that we had spent any significant time together. I hadn’t wanted it to end like this.

Because I was pretty certain I was ovulating.

I went downstairs to the kitchen and made some tea and put on some smooth jazz. I hoped it would wash away my disappointment, but it didn’t. Two years I’d been off the Pill. Two years I’d been trying to get pregnant.

Robert’s rejection—even if he was tired—stung.

And then I asked myself why the night was necessarily over. Sometimes one partner had to do some coaxing to get the other in the mood. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seduced my husband.

My drive renewed, I made my way back upstairs. I would take off my clothes and crawl into bed with him. All he needed to do was get erect. I would climb on top of him and do the rest of the work.

As I neared the bedroom, I unzipped my dress. I pulled it over my head and tossed it onto the floor. Then I unclasped my bra and let it fall, as well. It was an idea that came to me, and I acted. Surely when I entered the room, naked except for the pumps and necklace, Robert would become aroused.

Outside the door, I paused to strip off my thong panties.

The lights in the room were doused, except the lamp on my night table. Robert was lying on his side with his back to me. He didn’t hear me approach.

“Robert,” I whispered.

No answer.

Time for plan B.

I kicked off my pumps and pulled the covers back on my side of the bed. Then I slipped under the sheets, their coolness caressing my skin. I slid over to my husband, running my hand down his left arm. He didn’t react, so I leaned closer, nuzzling against his neck.

That’s when I heard his deep, steady breaths—and realized he was sleeping.

Still, I ran my hand over his hip and stroked him through his silk pajamas, hoping to wake him. Robert didn’t react.

I was defeated. I lay back on my pillow, sighing. It wasn’t just that I wanted to make a baby. I was sexually frustrated, needed sexual release.

As I lay in the dimly lit room listening to my husband’s steady breathing, I rested my right hand on the lower edge of my belly. I ran my fingertips over my skin. It was my own touch, yet my vagina thrummed in response. It needed to be stroked.

My hand went lower, over my pubic hair and to my center. I spread my folds. Lazily let my finger stroke my clitoris.

Angling my head slightly, I glanced at Robert. He hadn’t moved. He was still asleep. But even if he woke up and found me touching myself, I wouldn’t stop.

If he saw me, hopefully he would become aroused and make love to me.

I circled my finger around my clit, each stroke making me hotter. Raising my left hand to my breast, I tweaked my nipple. It hardened instantly.

I played with my nipple. Played with my clit. Looked toward Robert and saw that his back was still to me. He was clueless.

Closing my eyes, I started to imagine my husband’s hands on my pussy. But the fact that he was sleeping beside me, that he’d turned me down…It left me cold.

So I began to imagine someone else’s hand playing with my pussy. A man who, if I climbed into bed naked beside him, would wake up. He would wake up, lower his head over my chest and lick my nipples with his tongue. He would lick and suck, pull at them with his teeth…

My clit flinched in response to the image playing out in my mind. I moved my finger more quickly over my sweet spot, then dipped it into the soft folds. I was wet.

I used two fingers to play with my pussy now, but in my mind it was a tongue. A wet and hungry tongue that couldn’t get enough of me.

The tongue belonged to the man with the hazel eyes. And he was merciless with it. He circled it around my clit, over and over and over. Oh, God, I needed this. And he needed it, too, this lover of mine. He was young and virile and would fuck me all night long…eat my pussy all night long, if he knew I wanted that.

I spread my legs wider and arched my hips upward, giving him more of me. He buried his fingers inside of me and drew my engorged clitoris into his mouth and suckled me so damn sweetly…

An orgasm shuddered through my entire body. I arched my back, pushed my fingers deep into my pussy as I rode the wave. The pleasure was so intense and overdue that I couldn’t suppress my moan. I let myself enjoy every last bit of my orgasm.

As it subsided, I glanced to my right again. Robert’s back was still to me. He was still asleep, unaware that I’d brought myself to climax.

And for just a moment, I wished the man with the hazel eyes was beside me in this bed. That I could climb on him right now and slide onto a hard penis. One that could stay hard for a very long time.

Just as quickly as I thought it, I pushed the idea away. Guilt ate at me immediately. It wasn’t the first time I had fantasized about him—but I hoped it would be the last.

It was wrong, I knew. Wrong to have such an explicit fantasy about someone other than Robert.

I got up and went to the bathroom, where I started the shower. I stayed in there for a good long time, letting the cool water splash over my body.

Letting the memory of my fantasy wash away, like the soapsuds disappearing down the drain.

Chapter Four

All the next week, Robert was preoccupied by business. There was some complication with a company out of Germany that Kolstad Systems wanted to buy—a software firm with some sort of graphics technology that would aid in the computer systems Robert’s company created. The German owner was suddenly stalling, and Robert believed he was trying to solicit other bids. If this acquisition didn’t go through as planned, Robert feared that Kolstad Systems’ stock would fall.

With all of this weighing on his mind, he wasn’t interested in sex—not in the least. But I was able to coax him to erection one morning with a blow job. Excited that he was hard—and without the aid of Viagra, at that—I had straddled him, then moved slowly and steadily over his penis until I made him come.

I hadn’t come, but that didn’t matter. My husband’s sperm was inside me, and I was elated.

“What are you doing?” Robert had asked when he came out of the bathroom and saw me lying on my back on the bed, my legs bent at the knee. What he couldn’t see was the pillow beneath my hips, positioned to angle my pelvis on a downward slope—something I hoped would give Robert’s sperm the advantage of gravity.

“I read somewhere that lying on your back for thirty minutes increases the chance of conception,” I told him. “I’ve got fifteen minutes to go.”

“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “All right. I’ll be downstairs, having breakfast.”

“If I don’t see you, I hope all goes well at the office.”

When I was sure Robert was downstairs, I closed my eyes and began to stroke my clit. A couple minutes later, my body was shuddering with an orgasm.

What I didn’t tell Robert was something else I’d read—that a woman’s orgasm also aided her chances of conceiving.

I didn’t know if that was true, but I wanted to give myself every advantage in getting pregnant.

Nothing else had worked thus far.

I didn’t typically masturbate, yet I did twice more that week. Both times when Robert wasn’t home. My body had needed release—release I wasn’t getting from my husband. And as I touched my pussy I found myself thinking about the man with the hazel eyes, not Robert. Each fantasy was becoming longer and more vivid.

On Thursday morning, as another earth-shattering orgasm ripped through my body, I gazed at Robert’s side of the bed. It was empty. And I realized why I was consumed with this phantom lover: I was lonely.

Or was there more to it than that?

Even though Robert had retired from his position as CEO of Kolstad Systems, he was still involved in the company’s operations as a board member. He had been in the office every day this week, dealing with one problem after another regarding this German acquisition.

His absence reminded me of the early days of our marriage, after we’d returned from our honeymoon and Robert had gone back to work. I’d had fantasies of the wonderful life I would share with my distinguished and successful and charming husband. But it hadn’t quite played out the way I had dreamed.

After Robert proposed, I’d quit my job as a waitress, so I wasn’t working when we got married. He, of course, had his business to run. Robert would be at the office sometimes twelve or fourteen hours a day. Even longer on some occasions. I had missed him terribly, and didn’t like being in my new, oversize home with the housekeeper as my only company. Especially when he went out of town.

I’d occasionally accompanied Robert on his longer business trips to Europe. He promised we’d steal some romantic time to see the sights when his work was done. But on more occasions than not, I would sit alone in my hotel room in London or Paris, longing for my husband’s touch, but having to settle for a glass of wine as I watched a movie in our lavish suite.

Convincing Robert to fund my own business venture had been not only the fruition of a dream, but a godsend in terms of my mental sanity. I needed something constructive to do—much more than shopping and lunching with other wealthy men’s wives.

Before Robert and I married, he’d promised to make my dream of opening a floral shop a reality. Ask any of my friends from childhood and they’ll tell you how I would always pick dandelions and wildflowers and arrange them in a bouquet. If they had a bad day, I would make them something special. Ditto if they got a good mark on a test. My teachers probably got bored with all the homemade bouquets I brought in for them. And I got in trouble more than once for picking tulips and roses from a neighbor’s garden.

Meeting and marrying Robert had enabled me to open Distinct Creations, a shop in downtown Cornelius, just north of Charlotte.

We had a beautiful house, luxury cars, lots of money in the bank. We’d traveled on yachts, and to exotic and exclusive places all over the world.

And yet something was missing.

I hadn’t given a second thought to what it would mean to marry a considerably older and powerful man, or that anything would ever go wrong. Yet the fact that he’d been married and divorced twice was testament to the fact that money and security didn’t guarantee a lasting marriage.

No matter what happened, I would always be grateful to Robert for the life he had given me. But I couldn’t deny the reality that we didn’t seem to be on the same page anymore. There were times I wondered if we were even in the same book.

It wasn’t about his age. I loved my husband the day I married him, and I still loved him now. And yet there had to be some reason I was so vividly making love to a stranger in my mind.

Maybe it was because the passion with Robert had undeniably faded.

I’d married him for better or for worse. I’d known that “worse” would be the age issue—and I had never expected that we would be able to fuck like bunnies. That kind of passion hadn’t mattered to me then, and it didn’t now.

It was the intimacy I craved most.

I almost wouldn’t mind if Robert chewed guys out for staring at me, if he followed up that proprietary attitude with some genuine attention. Some romance and affection.

Something that showed he viewed me as more than a possession.

I wanted Robert to hold me and kiss me, even if he couldn’t make love to me. I wanted him to assure me that he wanted a baby as much as I did, even if it meant adopting. He never said those words, and there were times I got the feeling that he didn’t care at all if we had one.

It was one of the things that made me wonder if we were on the same page—and with that thought came the question as to whether or not there would be a happily ever after for us, after all.

Don’t think it, Elsie, I said to myself as I stared at the ceiling. You did not get married to get divorced. You married Robert because he was the first man who made you feel that he could give you the emotional stability you needed.

He wasn’t a man interested only in hot sex. I’d had hot sex with the younger men I’d dated, but had always felt cold in those relationships. Probably because sex was the first thing—and seemingly most important thing—they wanted from me. Being seen as desirable should have made me feel confident, but instead it brought out my insecurity.