Page 8 of All At Once

Back at Mama’s, she’d convinced an irritable Eva to take a nap, and he’d used the excuse of putting her down in Tori’s old room to take a few minutes away from the crowd.

He’d been too close when she’d straightened from covering Eva with a throw, her ass brushing his groin, her hand on his thigh, scant inches from his balls, and his intention to wrestle his emotions under control had detonated.

In the hallway, he’d tangled a hand in her hair and pulled her in for a hard kiss.

They’d barely made it to the bathroom off his old room.

She’d been so damned tight on that first drive into her, her body clenching around him, not quite ready, and he’d known it.

He struggled to lose the nagging sense of guilt, unable to align what they’d just done to his ideas about how he should treat the woman he loved. He was supposed to guard and care for her, not—

“This was a mistake.” He zipped up.

Hands lifted to smooth her hair, she stilled. “A mistake.”

They’d been together long enough he recognized the cool edge to her voice, and damn it, he’d been here before . . . not with her, but that exact same phrase had triggered an epic screaming fit by his high school ex in a hotel room in Panama City. He lifted both hands, a conciliatory gesture that did little to soften her stance. “A bad idea.”

Leaning on the vanity, she studied him, gaze roving his face like he was a riddle she knew every possible answer to.

Itching under that steady regard, he scuffed a hand over his nape. “Can we hash this out later?”

Like maybe when he could put a rational thought together.

One of her brows arched. “I believe it’s hashed.”

Son of a bitch, now that cool tone shifted into something gentler, something like rueful affection, and that made him feel like a heel.

Which he was because he’d just fucked his wife — hell, what other word existed for what he’d just done? — less than an hour after he’d played pallbearer for his grandmother.

And hell.

His entire family was downstairs.

He was no better now than he’d been at nineteen.

Worse, maybe, since those torn panties would spend the rest of the day in his pocket. Leaning down, he snatched up the piece of silk and crammed it into his inside suit pocket.

Her audible exhale scraped over him. She levered off the vanity with a series of taut movements, colored with something other than annoyance or hurt. Resignation, maybe. “I believe you need a moment. I’ll see you downstairs.”

The door snicked shut behind her.

“Damn it.” Head bent, he gripped the edge of the vanity, breathing hard, irrational anger burning his nape. He flexed his right hand, long-healed metacarpals aching. He would not put his fist into the wall.

Or the mirror.

The scar from that little escapade ran over his middle knuckle, after he’d taken out the mirror in the Athens apartment, a couple of weeks after they’d buried Daddy and he’d had a knockdown with his college girlfriend. His buddy Mackey had practiced suturing, stitching him up.

What the hell was wrong with him? He knew plenty of guys who’d walked way worse and didn’t melt down like this. His wife had walked worse.

He couldn’t even lift his head and look himself in the eye. Squeezing his lids shut, he expelled a long breath. An inhale sent a cringe over him — the air about him smelled like arousal and sex. His stomach cramped, and he gripped the counter so hard his fingers ached

He’d held onto the silver rail on Daddy’s coffin that hard, nightmarish images beating in his head.

Shealy had been with him then, had held onto him at the cemetery, squeezing his still-healing hand until his knuckles hurt, come back to this house with him, trying to comfort and soothe him.

He hadn’t fucked her in the bathroom to make himself feel better. They’d taken his truck to the back of the farm and she’d gone down on him.

The making-himself-feel-better sex had come later, when they’d gone back to Athens and she’d tried everything to hold them together.