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  Just This Once

  L.E. Chamberlin

  Sara and her husband Jason are more like roommates than lovers these days. So when the couple attends their friend’s wedding, Sara dresses to attract some male attention and show Jason the heat he’s missing. When Sara catches the eye of a sexy young law student, Jason suggests that his deepest desire—watching Sara with another man—might be just what the couple needs to reignite the blaze between them. But what Jason doesn’t know is that Sara has a secret fantasy of her own. She’s determined to save her marriage but will just one steamy three-way romp be enough?

  A Romantica® contemporary erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Just This Once

  L.E. Chamberlin

  Chapter One

  “Sometimes I think of you like a sister,” he blurted, his eyes straight ahead of him, gripping the wheel.

  Care to quantify that? I thought but my initial indignant attitude gave way almost instantly to misery. I could feel my neck and ears getting hot and my stomach beginning that slow roiling. These days Jason’s every word elicited a hair-trigger response in my body and not the sexy kind I used to experience. I held my breath and waited for the words he couldn’t seem to stutter out. At that moment my husband seemed like a stranger to me. And as shocked as I was about him making such a statement, I knew exactly what he meant. Our marriage had hit a brick wall.

  After eleven years together and two beautiful children the passion we’d once shared for one another seemed like a distant memory. In its place were drudgery, resentment and irritation. Most nights I fell asleep with our younger daughter when I put her to bed and he stayed up late working in the garage. If we both still managed to be awake in the evenings there were bills to sort out or decisions to be made. After a long day at work, time with our children and the business of our marriage, we usually tumbled into bed grumpy and exhausted and turned our backs to one another. It had gotten so that I couldn’t even miss the Jason who couldn’t wait to ravage me, I couldn’t even miss the self who was desperately horny for her husband, because I barely remembered those people. These days the thought of making love to him was wearying at best. And by the way he carefully avoided touching me and averted his eyes from me during those few occasions he saw me getting undressed, I guessed he was feeling about the same.

  I had brought it up in an attempt to figure out my own next move. I was tired of acting like roommates, tired of the way we stepped politely around one another in our marriage. I’d intended to save this talk for a big sit-down the following weekend when my mom had the girls but I saw my opportunity and I took it. We’d been in the car ten minutes with thirty to go and I was already at my limit with the small talk. It was insane to me that we should be talking about the weather while our marriage died a slow death in the car between us.

  So I asked. I took a deep breath and said in as neutral a voice as possible, “Jason, what do you think about our marriage right now?” He had stammered and hemmed and hawed but finally… Finally he was honest.

  His honesty was like a kick in the chest. A sister? For the first few seconds I was furious. I fought the urge to grab the wheel and run us both off the road so I could claw his eyes out in the ditch. There was no way to measure the amount of anger I felt. It bubbled up in me like lava and I threatened to spew it forth. I was resentful of his words, of the implications, of the way our lives—our best-laid plans, started as naive college sweethearts—had turned into this yoke of soulless monotony.

  “I—” He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Maybe that didn’t come out right. I guess what I mean is that I feel like our relationship has changed. That we’re not so much husband and wife as…as…”

  “Siblings?” My fury had felt so huge within me but my voice came out thin and anxious over the quiet hum of the engine. It wasn’t a battle and I knew it wasn’t but somehow I felt I was surrendering. I was surprised at how much his words had suddenly wounded me, when I had felt so numb for so long. Maybe that pain was a good thing but at the moment it just hurt.

  “Well… No, not exactly. But, I mean, it’s been pretty platonic between us lately…” Now it was his turn to flush. He kept his eyes straight ahead on the road, not daring to look at me. I watched his jaw working and I realized this was the moment. We’d been warned, long ago when we were cocky enough to believe it wouldn’t happen to us, that we would have a crisis of faith. We were told we’d hit a point in our marriage where we needed each other more than ever and had less than ever to give. And this was it. I couldn’t fix it and I needed him to fix it but he didn’t know how either. We were stuck.

  I sighed. “And I suppose that’s my fault, right? Because I sleep with the girls? Natalie likes me to read to her, and I’m just so tired at night.” I was suddenly defensive and tearful. “You spend all your time in the garage, anyway. What difference does it make?” I hadn’t expected my anger to dissolve so quickly into painful weeping. The truth was, underneath all my anger I loved my husband. I needed my husband. I felt as if I was simultaneously disappointing myself, Jason and our marriage. And I knew by the sadness and confusion in his voice that he felt the same way.

  Granted, we’d tried. My mom babysat for us once a month and in the beginning we always made plans for that weekend, even if it was just to go to the Best Western across town to be alone. We needed that time away from the house and our daily pressures, time to reset and get back to what had brought us together in the first place. And we were great about it at first. After Emily was born we were packed and ready every Friday morning before we even left for work. I slipped him naughty notes into his lunch. He called me and left me steamy voicemail messages that left me breathless with anticipation. By the time we were on the road we could barely refrain from stopping at the first dicey roadside motel and ripping one another’s clothes off.

  In those days we planned little trips up the coast, toured vineyards and made love in the car by the beach. In lumpy hotel beds we woke each other up just to fuck and feed each other leftover takeout, giggling and feeling as if we had all the time in the world. When we returned from our trips the magic spilled over into daily life, the extended buzz lasting nearly until the next getaway. But then Natalie came and Jason started working more overtime so we could pay for family vacations and school tuition and safer cars. And I took a promotion that gave me more duties and earlier mornings. I kicked into overdrive every afternoon, picking the girls up from aftercare and shuttling them to swimming lessons and ballet and doing dinner and homework and baths all before laying eyes on my husband in the evening. Soon our weekends alone became about getting things done around the house without having to take care of the kids. But there was no connection, no taking time for us. We were stuck in a quicksand of our own making.

  And it was only by a fluke that we’d come to be in the car alone, driving to a wedding. We were supposed to be driving with another couple and I’d been frankly more than a little relieved when Jason offered them a ride. Another couple gave us the excuse to leave even earlier—because they had an infant son at home and had only hired the sitter for a few hours. As much as I loved weddings, I didn’t think I could stand to keep the facade up for so long. Jason and I hadn’t so much as touched one another by accident in nearly four months. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d even kissed. Weddings were so public, and so happy, and I just didn’t think I had it in me. But then the other couple called to say the baby was running a high fever. We’d headed out alone and I could feel the anxiety simmering in my chest, a hot rock of angry worry just burning me up. And then the sister comment.

  But I knew what he meant. We weren’t like spouses anymore.

  “What can we do?” My voice must have sounded full of de
spair because he looked at me then, his brown eyes gentle and sad. And then he blurred as scalding tears spilled from me. I turned toward the window and swiped at them, suddenly embarrassed by my vulnerability.

  “Hey… Don’t… I love you, Sara, I do.”

  I just shook my head, my eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking between my lashes. It wasn’t going as planned. Not at all as planned.

  I felt him take my hand in his and squeeze it. When I turned to look at him he gave me a crooked smile and pressed my fingers to his lips. “I don’t know what we can do. But we have to do something. Okay? We’ll do something. Whatever it takes.” And he tucked my hand up inside his jacket, over his heart, and held it there for the next twenty miles to the church. I felt his warmth, the solidity of his chest, that familiar thumping of his heart, and I ached for what we had lost and couldn’t seem to get back.

  Chapter Two

  Jenny and Christopher’s wedding was a massive affair. Both sides of both families were huge, so distant cousins and friends of friends had all been invited. We rolled into the parking lot of St. Joseph’s and through a sea of well-dressed groups, all squealing and clutching on to one another, since some of them hadn’t seen each other since the last big family affair. As a college roommate of the bride I was thankful for the number of relatives because it meant I was off the hook as a bridesmaid. They had a wedding party of twenty and it was an overwhelming concept to us. Jason and I had only invited a hundred guests to our own wedding. This wedding was reported to have nearly five hundred, and as I looked at the throngs I wondered how Jenny and Chris would even get to say hello to all these people let alone interact with them in any meaningful way. Jason and I exchanged glances as we got out of the car. I was surprised, too, when he took my hand again, though I figured he didn’t want us to appear unhappy in front of other people.

  The ceremony was surprisingly intimate despite the massive audience, and perhaps since I was especially sensitive from the car ride over I misted up right along with every other woman there. Try as I did to remain composed, I had always been a terrible sap for weddings, so by the time Jenny’s father lifted her veil from her beaming face I was doomed. It was especially difficult to sit next to my husband—with whom I had made the same joyful vows only ten years earlier—and acknowledge that we had failed to live up to our promises. But because he knew how weepy weddings made me, Jason kept his hand on my knee and automatically handed me his handkerchief as soon as the music began. I was grateful for his remembering and even more grateful for the warmth of his hand on me. It was an unexpected comfort.

  It was even more unexpected that he kept looking over at me in a way he hadn’t done in ages. A couple times I even caught him peeking at my cleavage. And once I met his eyes and he looked…hungry. It was surprising and exciting and the only thing I could chalk it up to was the dress.

  It was a great dress, a blue stretch satin sheath that clung to my curves but still managed to look classy. I hadn’t thought for a second my husband would even notice it. Jason seemed so disinterested all the times I walked around in the nude that I hardly thought a dress would turn his head. No, I’d been hoping for a response from some of the younger men. I was a bit more lushly padded than I was in my twenties but I still looked pretty good for thirty-six, and weddings—particularly this one—were full of young, virile men looking to score with single bridesmaids and lusty cougars. Though I was technically neither, I hoped I might at least attract the attention of one of the young guys and flirt with him a bit that night, perhaps regain some of my lost confidence. I had no real intentions of doing anything but I thought it would be a tremendous ego boost to attract the attention of another man.

  And I wasn’t acting out against my husband—technically I was doing exactly what he wanted me to do. When we first started dating he’d confessed to me shyly one night that his biggest fantasy was to watch me with another guy. He wanted to watch the whole thing—the pickup, the foreplay, the sex. For some reason he was obsessed with the idea. Where other guys I’d dated were annoyingly possessive, Jason loved to see other men showing interest in me. It was the only fantasy we’d never indulged in all our years together.

  The first time he mentioned it I’d thought it was outrageous but over the years we’d incorporated that taboo desire into some pretty steamy sex, usually after we’d both been drinking and felt free enough to discuss it. It was guaranteed to drive him wild if I started whispering in his ear about him watching me with someone else. I would ask him to tell me what he’d like to see me doing with the other man and what he’d like to see the other guy doing to me, and Jason could barely control himself as he described his explicit fantasies to me. Our game had led to a secret fantasy of my own—being taken by two men. These days, with no sex between us, there were nights my husband lay snoring beside me and I thought of what it might be like to have a strong young guy pumping me while my husband looked on, filled with lust. In my fantasies I was voracious, having first the young stud and then both men at once. I’d never dared to consider really doing it and I hadn’t even told Jason about it but the thought of being pleasured by two men at once got my blood boiling every time.

  It was an unexpected bonus to have my husband looking at me appraisingly. I caught him once and gave him a little smile, cutting my eyes at him in the way that used to drive him crazy. And I saw, for the first time in forever…something. Some spark. Something that told me that the horny, I-don’t-give-a-fuck Jason (who had once brought me to not one but two screaming orgasms on the diving board of his family’s pool during his father’s retirement party, while I was pregnant with Emily no less) was still there.

  That was how he had looked at me, before. Before it had all gone cold we’d had passion and a deep connection and we were each other’s best friend. It had hurt so much to lose it, so to see that spark in him again—to have his undivided attention and feel him respond to my flirtation—elicited a powerful reaction from both my brain and my body. When I felt his fingertips trail along the hem of my dress I nearly gasped aloud. I hadn’t been touched in so long, and his teasing fingers just stroked softly against my thigh, almost casually. I felt myself heating up, a flush rising in my cheeks, an instant dampness spreading between my thighs and soaking my panties. I bit my lip and tried not to look at him as his fingers brushed back and forth, back and forth, barely under the hem.

  When everyone got up to file into the receiving line I covered his hand with mine, holding it firmly to my thigh while the grandmothers and small children passed us by, and we just looked at each other, a heat building between us. We were nearly the last ones in line because I didn’t want to break the spell. I didn’t want to let go of his hand, that moment, that fragment of intimacy.

  * * * * *

  The country club where the reception was to be held was just around the corner, and by the time we all fought through the bottleneck out of the church parking lot it was nearly starting. I went straight to the bar for my glass of chardonnay and Jason’s bourbon while he said hello to some former coworker of his who he’d seen in the hallway. I managed to slide into the line with only one other person ahead of me.

  “Surely you’re not planning to chase your wine with that fine bourbon,” drawled a voice from just over my shoulder, just as I had put the glass to my lips. I turned and found myself face-to-face with a younger man I’d never seen before. Without waiting for me to reply he continued, “Where I come from that’s considered a crime.”

  “Oh? And where is that?” I responded, sipping my wine and drinking him in at the same time, his broad shoulders and bright grin. He looked like old money—an expensive suit and watch worn with too little care, the telltale air of confidence that all rich, pretty young men had. And was he ever pretty—dark hair, blue eyes, perfect teeth, a great body obvious through the perfect drape of the suit. He oozed charm. A prep school prince, I thought, and briefly wondered what he’d named his sailboat.

  “Well, right here, technically. Though at
the moment I’m in law school. Tulane.” He, too, had ordered bourbon and took it, sliding a tip across the bar without his eyes leaving mine. He grinned at me again, an all-American boy in his prime, and I was shocked to pick up the signal that he was flirting with me.

  My pulse quickened a little and I didn’t move away as he leaned a bit closer. I could smell him, expensive cologne with earthy notes. “Law school! Good for you. And what are your plans after law school? Will you be back in the area?”

  He grinned. “Haven’t thought that far ahead. In fact, I try to make it a practice not to think that far ahead unless I have to.”

  “I see.” I couldn’t help but smile at him, this cocky kid, twenty-five if he was a day. He was cute, that was for sure, and in my single days he would have broken my heart. Or maybe I would have broken his. But now I was a wife and mother, far too old for games with good-looking rich boys. “You’ll have to excuse me. I have to bring this to my husband.”

  “And here I thought maybe you had bought that for me,” he teased, his voice lower, his smile private and unmistakably inviting. My entire being responded. I felt pulled to his lean length, bewitched by his scent and his smile and the promise in those blue eyes. Stop it, I thought. This is your body talking. Don’t make a fool of yourself.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that, proud of myself for playing it cool. “How would I have known to buy this for you? I don’t even know you.”

  “I’m Andrew Morrison, first cousin of the groom, and I’d shake your hand but it’s holding some other guy’s drink.” His azure eyes twinkled. To be that young and cocksure again, I thought.

  I giggled again. I had to hand it to him, the kid was on his game. “I’m Sara Ellis, college roommate of the bride. And yes, this drink is for my husband, Jason, who’s standing right over there,” I motioned to Jason, who was watching us with an amused smile on his face, “and probably very thirsty. So I’m going to go. But it was wonderful meeting you, Andrew Morrison.” I flashed him another quick smile and turned on my heel. I could feel him watching me as I walked away and I put an extra little swing in my hips as I brought Jason his bourbon. The thrill of being watched by both the man behind me and the man in front of me was electric. My skin prickled and my nipples hardened as the satin rasped against them with every step.