What dark emotions stormed across his eyes, I don’t know. Pity? Disgust? Dismissal? I couldn’t read the man when usually, they’re open books.
“Sherwin Williams,” I answer him now, yanked out the dream of his perfect body by his icy eyes. “Why?”
It snarls Gentry’s lip. He doesn’t like me answering back to a man, not even one he’s hiring. But I don’t care. Suddenly, in Ford’s presence, Gentry is not in charge.
“Making sure it’s not the cheap stuff,” Ford answers, pausing before he rips his piercing eyes away from mine. It’s like he just stole something from my depths before leaving me standing here. Exposed. Alone. Judged.
What the hell?
This is the South; use your fucking manners. Smile at the motherfuckers you hate. Didn’t he get the memo?
Turning back to Gentry, he says, “The white is a quality color, Cotton. We just redid the Middleton’s home in it.”
Like a slap, Ford’s endorsement spins my head... over a damn paint color. The hot man, who’s obviously a cold dick, is correct. The color is called “Cotton,” and yes, it’s trendy right now.
And dropping the “Middleton” name to my ambitious husband, who’s always got his nose up, sniffing for power? Like a weasel, Gentry just detected a mate to fuck.
He doesn’t reply, his decision wavering while the men keep their backs to me.
Something about how they’re standing; there’s a chasm between Gentry and Ford on Gentry’s right. But it’s the way Ford and the other two men stand together, shoulder to shoulder. They seem connected, fused by something powerful, and the only thing breaking the arc of electricity between their massive bodies is the glances each one steals back at me.
“Mateo,”—Ford calls the man on his right—“how does Cotton cover? Two coats or three?”
“Usually two,” Mateo answers. “It saves money and time.”
They consider the grand wall in front of them with Gentry’s coveted flatscreen over our fireplace like it’s art. Like it’s the Mona Lisa.
But the real art is Mateo.
He’s breathtaking, and I can barely get a good look at him.
Hiding under a white baseball cap, his long hair brushes his shoulders in glistening coal waves. His broad shoulders touch one inch shorter beside Ford’s while his sturdy white button-up drapes over his V-shaped back.
It’s like Mateo’s dressed for business, construction business, but I note the drop of white paint on the cuff of his dark tapered jeans. When he turns his chin like he’s trying to sneak another look at me, his stunning face is smooth, beautiful. The sparkling pale green rimming his brown eyes is mesmerizing.
Sweat hits my palms as I catch the black tattoos hiding under his white collar, covering his light umber skin. The sight of him makes my ribs lift, my breath thinning in his presence. I’m intrigued by Mateo.
My god, I want to run my fingertips over him while he can paint my every inch.
“It’s a good color,” he also endorses my choice as the house politics quickly shift in my favor with two men on my side now. “The Middletons sure liked it.”
It’s like Mateo and Ford are aligned. Without a word, they get each other’s back, and is it for my sake, their ease, or just coincidence?
I don’t know these men. Janice Middleton just raved about them last month at a Thanksgiving get-together. It helped me to convince Gentry to refresh the walls of our first floor with a fresh coat of paint before our big New Year’s Eve party in a couple of weeks. It’s one of the few things he cares about, relying upon me to impress everyone.
And here, I assumed Janice was satisfied with the quality of their work. Clearly, Janice was satisfied with more than that.
“What do you think, Luke?” Mateo nudges the young man on his right, and my eyes follow.
And like rays of golden sunshine breaking through storm clouds above, Luke dares to address me, casting his huge smile like I’m the only one in the room.
“Whatever makes you happy, ma’am. I mean, I’d sure want to make my wife very happy,” Luke answers with a coy grin. And either he’s so young, he doesn’t know better. Or he’s so goddamn built like a brick shit house that nothing scares him, not even Gentry, who’s glaring at him for acknowledging me.
“It’s a nice color, ma’am. You’ve got pretty taste.” Luke doesn’t stop. “It’ll brighten the place up.”
No, he brightens my places up.
His wide, shimmering smile and bright white teeth. His lush, full lips and face tan by hours outside. His shaggy brown hair is painted blonde by the sun. The thickest eyelashes I have ever seen on anyone frame his big, bright green eyes that shine my way, and he’s so young; evil doesn’t color his world yet.
How old is Luke? Nineteen? Twenty maybe?
The intensity in Ford’s eyes tells me he’s in his late thirties, but no one informed his body; it’s perfection.
Mateo seems to live between Ford and Luke; his forearms are corded and strong, his shoulder muscles are honed, and damn, his ass in jeans.
What do these men do? Work at a peach farm on the side?
I can imagine what all three would look glistening and naked above me.
Because that’s what I’ll be doing tonight. Like I do every night. Imagining...
On some lucky nights, Gentry isn’t here. He claims he’s spending the night alone on his yacht moored in the harbor by the golf club, and I’d rather he sleep at the bottom of the ocean, but as long as it’s not with me, whatever.
But on the nights I have to suffer him. Either his biting comments about my thighs. “You’re getting that cottage cheese shit on your legs.” Or when I take off my makeup, and he looks disgusted. “You need more Botox,” he sneers, and I’m only thirty.
It’s either that or he brings his golf club, a condom for its grip, and lube to our bed with a look in his eyes.
If the man wants to be assfucked, fine. Buy me a strap-on or fuck a real man; I don’t judge.
What repulses me is the glare in Gentry’s eyes. He relishes my disgust because he knows I loathe touching him. He delights in making me do something I can’t stand. He even taunts me. “You hate this, don’t you?” He bends his knees toward his chest to watch the frozen look I try to keep on my face. “You hate that you’re a woman. That you don’t have a dick. You don’t have any power. You’re the one getting fucked like this.” He jerks his little pecker off the whole time, his sneer turning into a snarl. “Because I make you fuck me, you dirty little bitch.”
Those words make him come every time, and my numbness is profound. Nothing beats through my veins, emptiness filling my heart.
Once the lights are off. Once he’s cleaned his golf club and safely set it by our bedroom door for tomorrow’s game. Once he’s finally snoring by my side, I look for the moon outside our bedroom windows, hoping her light will bring me some company.
Then, when I close my crying eyes, I imagine the kind of man I wish I had married. The kind of man I thought I was marrying.
But what do you know at twenty-one? What do you know if you’ve only been with one man, and he rules your little world like a tyrant?
Behind my eyelids, I dream about a man who’d make it all better.