Session one.
"So, let me see if I can wrap my mind around your arrangement." Penny Watson, the marriage counsellor Joe and Lauren had settled on, removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. Joe had wanted the counsellor to be a woman, thinking she would be more sympathetic to the unorthodox nature of their problem, but Penny seemed to be struggling with this, and Lauren thought marriage counsellors would have heard everything in their line of work.
"Did you want me to go over it again?" Lauren asked.
"No, no, I need to unpack this myself," Penny said, waving her glasses dramatically, and maybe a bit unnecessarily in Lauren's opinion. Penny seemed to be playing the part of an actor playing the part of a therapist. Lauren thought her ilk were supposed to be calmer, softer-spoken, conciliatory. Penny was abrupt, loud, and not reassuring at all.
Lauren should have done more research on her before they'd booked this first appointment, but she'd been so busy that she'd had no time at all for more off the desk work, and she'd just been so happy Joe had made the effort to look up counsellors that she'd accepted his first suggestion. She thought ruefully that Joe must have just Googled "marriage counsellors near me" and picked the first female in the search results. Research was not his line of work; he owned a construction company with his brother Johnny. This really should have been Lauren's responsibility, but she had the kids to look after as well as her own work as partner at Justiciar Security and Investigative Services; in fact, her mind was only partly in the present with this session. The rest of it was already in the future, a later appointment meeting a new and very lucrative client. It made her feel a little guilty, because her actions were the reason they were here in the first place.
Penny sighed and put her glasses back on. She even had the glamorous look of a movie star; Lauren was reminded of Sandra Bullock when she looked at her, and tried to remember if the star of Speed had ever played a therapist in a movie. Lauren loved Speed. Something about Sandra Bullock in that movie had stirred her in a way she'd never expected, reigniting her interest in sassy, capable women, an interest that had finally been consummated when Rachel had reunited with her a few years ago.
"Okay, so the two of you have been married about twenty... no, twenty-one years," Penny said, reading off her yellow legal pad as if it were a script.
"That's right," Joe said, ever the expansive one, Lauren thought with a smirk. The man had hardly said anything the entire time they'd been here, sitting on the couch together, holding hands, which gave Lauren a bit of hope, even if it was in solidarity against the scary stranger rather than affection with each other. This was the most touch she'd gotten from him in months.
The couch was really a love seat, especially with Joe filling it. The nearly seven-foot, three-hundred-pound former high school defensive tackle always took up the bulk of whatever space he entered, and it was fortunate that Lauren, with five feet barely in her rear view mirror, could occupy the empty spaces he left behind. If she were taller she might have felt irritated about her husband's size, but Joanie was almost as tall as he was and she didn't seem to have any complaints, except for the bed situation, Joanie had once confessed to her; Joanie talked to her more than Joe did, now, and it broke Lauren's heart to realize that.
"And for nineteen of those years," Penny went on, once she realized Joe wasn't going to say anything more; the woman seemed to be as intimidated by Joe as they were with her, because she winced microscopically as she said the next part. "You were happily committed only to each other. Then you reunited with some friends you used to know when you were both kids growing up in Queensborough."
"Yes," Lauren said. "First Sunny back in 2005, then Rachel and Al in 2009."
"And two of those friends, Rachel and Al, after you reunited, took up with each other and eventually married." Penny squinted through her glasses at what she'd written in her pad. "Their getting married didn't stand in the way of you, Lauren, beginning an affair with Rachel."
"Which I'm okay with, by the way," Joe said.
Penny nodded. "Yes, because, in Lauren's words, she and Rachel love each other in a way that's separate and different from the way she and you love each other." She looked up from her pad and said, "Except your love, from what I can see, is in question now, since you're here today."
Lauren felt tears sting her eyes, and she might have broken down if Joe hadn't squeezed her hand at just the right moment.
"It's okay to feel sad about that," Penny said, reading her expression. "The fact that you have feelings about it at all means your situation isn't hopeless. It's indifference that kills a marriage."
Lauren grabbed a tissue from the coffee table in front of them and dabbed her eyes.
"Before we get to Al," Penny said, "I want to address the other other woman in this situation." She chuckled and shook her head. "I never thought I'd utter a sentence like that. You two get around, don't you."
Lauren flinched as if slapped. "Are you allowed to say things like that?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I was impressed, not contemptuous. The two of you remind me of a pair of jugglers passing bowling pins back and forth. You've managed to keep them in the air this long, but maybe you're faltering now."
"Al is the pin that got tossed in," Joe said rather poetically. "I can't keep it going with him in the mix."
"Let's talk about Joanie first. She was... your classmate, Lauren?"
"That's right," Lauren said. "We went to the Justice Institute of B.C. together. She went the police route, while I became a private investigator."
Penny tapped the pad with her pen. "You're a private investigator. May I assume a lot of your work involves catching people in adulterous situations?"
Lauren sighed and nodded. "I'm aware of the irony. Seeing it for years in my line of work hasn't prevented me from repeating the mistakes I see."
"It might have informed the arrangement you made with your husband, though. You and Rachel. Joe and Joanie."
"I think she allowed me to see Joanie out of guilt that she kept her relationship with Rachel a secret from me for so long," Joe said. It was his longest sentence today.
"You might be right about that," Penny said, and Joe beamed with schoolboy pride at getting a gold star from teacher.
"Maybe at first," Lauren said. "And yeah, I might have acted badly a couple of times because I resented Joanie for having to allow them to be together. But we went through a lot together, lately, and I consider her a sister in arms, now, and a good friend. I don't begrudge her at all now. Joe has..."
Shit. Here came the waterworks. Joe placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, but she shook her head and grabbed another tissue. "It's okay," she said, sniffling. "I just wanted to commend Joe for nursing her back to health these couple of months. I think his actions actually helped Joanie and me become better friends."
Penny's brow furrowed. "I think at this point I'll need you to explain what you mean. This is one of the snags I can't untangle."
Lauren shrugged. "I can't really explain it either. That situation back in August--"
"Right. The kidnapping of Rachel's son... well, at the time, foster son... and the attempted ransom and resulting shootout that caused Joanie's wounds and necessitated Joe becoming her nursemaid, for lack of a better word."
"Yes, exactly," Lauren said, nodding. "That was a very brave thing Joe did, and I wanted to acknowledge that and tell you now, Joe, that I don't have any hard feelings about you moving out." She turned to him as she said this. "You did it risking shame from your family and coworkers, and hurt to your children. It was hard, but it needed to be done, because Rachel and Al and their family are still at home, and you chose to take yourself away from the tension rather than kick them out, which I think speaks a lot for how good a man you are, Joe. It's part of the reason I fell in love with you in the first place."
To Lauren's horror, Joe's face crumpled, and his eyes teared up. She'd never wanted to make him cry here, she knew how embarrassed he got when he showed emotion in front of others, it was part of his fucked up, Northern Italian, stiff upper lip upbringing, where there was no time for self-pity because there was too much work to do. She quickly grabbed a tissue and handed it to him.
He didn't use it though. He crushed it to death in his enormous fist.
"If you love me," he growled, "then why did you fuck him?"
"By him, I'm assuming we're talking about Al," Penny said, "and I want to get to that, but we didn't really flesh out why you and Joanie are closer friends because Joe moved out."
Lauren figured Penny had said this as a distracting tactic, because something in Joe's voice, in his eyes, had scared her. It scared Lauren too, but not because she feared for her safety; Joe had never touched her with ill intent in all the years she'd known him. Even when he'd basically caught her and Al, fully dressed but just having finished fucking, in Rachel and Al's hotel room at Harrison Hot Springs, he'd held himself back, because she knew it was what he feared most, losing control of his anger, because he knew how destructive it could be. What Lauren feared was the hurt she saw and heard, not the anger, because regardless of everything she'd done, the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.
"Joanie took Joe in when it was about the last thing she ever wanted," Lauren said, choosing to answer Penny's question first, because it allowed her to formulate the answer to Joe's more complicated question. "She didn't want anyone living with her and waiting up for her while she was at work, worrying that she might not come home. She knew, though, that he needed space, and she called me whenever he wasn't around to see how I was doing, can you believe it? She knows what a unique arrangement we have, and she doesn't want to ruin it for anybody. We've bonded over this time she's been at home recovering. Maybe she talks to me because she's bored, but I like to believe she needs women friends, since she's in such a hyper male profession."
Penny nodded thoughtfully. "Okay. We may have to revisit this relationship you and Joanie have, Lauren, but because you seem to have accepted the relationship she has with your husband, we can put this conversation aside for now." She wrote a few notes in her pad, looked up and took off her glasses. "Okay. Al. I think we'd better talk about Al."
Lauren steeled herself and took a deep breath. She took Joe's hand, the one in which the tissue was smothered. "I'm going to begin by telling you something that will make you angrier at me," she said, "but it might give you some clarity as to where this came from, that it wasn't out of the blue."
His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
"Okay," she said, sighing. "When I first reunited with Rachel, I knew very early that I wanted her sexually. So, first we sexted, and we recounted the time she and I had that first experience when we were thirteen. Then I told her that your attributes, which were the subject of our fantasizing while we pleasured each other that first time, were every bit as impressive as we both imagined, and that I loved how much you filled me when we had sex." In fact, it was near the top of the list of things she missed about him; however much she enjoyed Al, he could never come close to filling her the way Joe did, but she would never tell him that. She tried to convey this to Joe now, through her eyes; hopefully he could see the smoulder in them and know what she wanted.
Apparently he did, because he cleared his throat and blushed, and sneaked a glance at Penny, who also blushed and tugged at her collar. Holy shit, they were turning on the Sandra Bullock lookalike. Maybe this session wouldn't be a bust after all.
"So, anyway," she continued, "that was fine for a while, but I needed more, because I wasn't yet sure she wanted me the same way. It was all well and good to rub off together while fantasizing about you, Joe, but I wanted her to rub off fantasizing about me."
Penny had her glasses back on and was scribbling furiously, and Lauren thought she was just doing it for something to do to occupy her hands, so maybe they didn't find themselves slipping under her panties. Even Joe was breathing heavily, and he never seemed to understand her relationship with Rachel.
"I found the perfect way to do it," she said. "I Skyped her, then instructed her to go dark and mute herself, and then I put on a show for her. With you."
Joe took a moment to understand what she was saying, and then his mouth dropped open. "Do you mean we had sex while Rachel watched?"
"Yeah," she said, biting her lower lip. "So, anyway, that was a huge success, because Rachel and I were in bed together shortly after."
"Let me just pause here," Penny said, raising her pen. "Rachel watched the both of you have sex. We can see it clearly made her want you. I wonder if that first planted the idea in her head that she wanted you too, Joe, since I think we need to talk about the time you had sex with her when you were out in Aldergrove."
"That really was a one-time thing," Joe said. "We were cold and hurt and not sure we would survive. It never happened again."
"Because you had Joanie."
Joe blinked in surprise. "I don't think it's that simple. Rachel is married to Al and, that one time aside, I don't think it's right to sleep with someone else's spouse." This he said while looking pointedly at Lauren.
"Still, it's nice not to have your convictions tested, especially when you have a convenient substitute," Penny said, and Lauren thought maybe they'd made a good choice after all. "Anyway, back to Lauren's sexual conquest of her dear friend."
Now it was Lauren's turn to flinch. "You make me sound like a predator."
"You continued to pursue Rachel even after she informed you she and Al got together. She must have been some prize for you to continue to press your cause."
"I love her!" she protested. "You don't understand! I wanted to show her how much I loved her! I never intended to steal her from Al, or walk away from Joe."
"Yes, yes, we established that. You're all perfectly comfortable with sharing, which is what impresses me so much."
"Except Al," Joe reminded her. "I never agreed to Al."
"Okay, so is your story going to explain Al at some point, Lauren?"
She cleared her throat, tamping down her annoyance, and said, "Yes. So, after I gave Rachel a show, she put on a show for me. That was when I saw Al and how he performed."
She looked askance at Joe, whose lips tightened. "I was in the middle of watching them when suddenly something happened, and they had to stop early. A crisis arose with another friend of Rachel's, and I turned on my camera feed and unmuted myself to give them advice."
"Shit," Joe breathed, recognition dawning on his face. He knew she meant Julia and the CEO, and that she didn't want to go into specifics because they didn't want to incriminate themselves.
"So... that was when Al discovered I was watching them," Lauren said in resignation. "The game was up, and from then on we couldn't not involve him in our shows."
"Wait, what?!" Joe sputtered. "There were others?! You continued to make shows?! I was in these shows?!"
"Yeah. Sorry, babe. They loved them, if it makes you feel better."
Joe paled as he interpreted what she'd said. "Rachel and Al were watching us?! And then... what... you watched them, without me knowing?!" He gasped as another thought dawned on him. "That time I saw you come out of the downstairs bathroom with the laptop and headphones! That was one time, wasn't it!"
She sighed and nodded. "Yeah... and, well, there wasn't any point to me going dark and mute anymore, so they performed, and they got to see me watching, and... um... touching myself..."
"Jesus Christ," Joe growled. "No wonder Al started wanting you. I never understood it before, because I could have sworn Rachel was the only woman he ever loved, and meanwhile he's getting a free peek at your--"
"Okay, okay," Penny said, hands in the air, face flushed with colour. Lauren smirked as she wondered if the poor woman was going to have to change her underwear later. "I think we've now found the origin of this relationship."
"It was still about me and Rachel, though!" Lauren protested. "I didn't want Al that way yet. I was masturbating to the two of them, but mostly to Rachel and how she performed with him."
"Something must have changed, though. Otherwise you and he wouldn't have happened."
"I guess it just developed over time. Two years, almost. I guess I just began to see him through Rachel's eyes, and because I love her so much, I began to love what she loved and want what she wanted."
Joe threw up his hands in frustration. "That's... just... I don't even know how to describe it. It sounds like you just wanted what she had, even though you already had me. Greener grass on the other side of the fence, it's the oldest story there is."
Penny scribbled a few more notes and said, "I don't know if I'd characterize it that simply, but you do make a good point."
"But then you and Rachel went missing, and Al and I searched for the two of you," Lauren went on. "I think that was what finally sparked it. We bonded, we were there for each other in our darkest time." She shrugged. "It's kind of like what happened with you and Rachel."
Joe's mouth twisted in disgust. "Oh, fuck off, we did it one time, and you and Al, and Rachel apparently, have been happily doing this for months, probably."
"Joe, I'd like you to refrain from using aggressive language against your wife," Penny said calmly. "It doesn't help matters, and might actually make her close up when we've been so open and revelatory up to now."
"Sorry," Joe said, looking chastened. He always deferred to authoritative women.
Penny looked at the slim watch on her wrist. "We're coming to the end of our first session. I think I'd like to stop here, now that we've come to the source of your conflict. Before you go, I'd like to ask both of you what outcome you'd like to see from our sessions."
"Outcome?" Lauren asked.
Penny removed her glasses and said, "What do you ultimately want, both of you? At least in the immediate future."
Lauren blinked in surprise and said, "I thought that was obvious from our coming here."
Penny smirked and asked, "Is it? Why don't you tell me anyway?"
"I want Joe to come home." She turned to Joe and said, "When Joanie's a hundred percent, or at least back at work, I'd like you to come home."
Joe blinked at her but said nothing.
"Joe?" Penny said. "What do you want?"
"I want that too," he said, "but they're still there."
"The insurance payout is coming, and they're looking for housing as we speak, something still in the area," Lauren said.
"Close enough to be convenient to you again?"
"You say that, Joe," Penny said, "and I take it you're worried that Lauren will keep seeing Al."
"Damn right I am."
Lauren threw up her hands in frustration. "But I haven't, not in all the time they've been staying at our house!"
Joe harrumphed and said, "Too many witnesses."
"So, for Joe to come home, Lauren, he's telling you you have to stop seeing Al," Penny said. "This whole conflict has been about broken trust, and for you to win him back, you have to earn his trust again."
Lauren sighed in resignation. "I understand that. I do."
"So, to be clear," Penny said, "The two of you will return to your original arrangement if and when he returns to the family home. He has Joanie, and you have Rachel."
"I don't know," Joe grumbled. "It all started with a threesome with Rachel. I can just see Rachel inviting him in again. It's a slippery slope with those two."
"I think this suspicion is going to have to be addressed in our next session, because we really are done now."
Lauren stood and stretched, and offered her hand to Penny. "Thank you for today, it was good to get that all out in front of a disinterested third party."
Penny held her hand for far longer than was necessary, holding her glasses in her other hand, one arm of them hanging provocatively from her lip. "It was my pleasure," she said, flushing again. "I look forward to our next session."
I bet you do, Lauren thought. I see you making a quick trip to the bathroom before your next session, too.
She left the office with Joe, who turned to her and said, "So, are you going back to work?"
"I have a meeting with Ron Schneider, Director of Corporate Services at Vancouver Public Library, and Jack Barnes, Manager of Security. They've contracted us to provide guards for the library, and I'm doing a final walk through with them and consulting on procedure."
Joe's mouth dropped open in amazement. "That's incredible, Lauren. A big client. That's where Al works, right? The one downtown?"
"Yes, and he had absolutely nothing to do with us getting it. It went to a full competition. This is a municipal body, and they have to be completely transparent."
"Even better," he said, smiling. "You're one of the big boys now."
"This big boy has a girl at the helm," she said, punching him playfully on the arm. "Gary Somers is a partner in name only, and Sanderson is junior to me. I run this show."
"Yeah, you do. Go get 'em, babe."
She smiled and walked into him, feeling the need to be lifted into his arms for a kiss, the muscle memory of thousands of such actions imprinted on her.
She gripped his arms, but he didn't lift her.
"As much as I'd like to," Joe said sorrowfully, "I don't want to send the wrong message. It's early days, Lauren."
"I'd like to know how I can prove to you that I'm not seeing him," she said, suddenly angry. "How do I prove a negative?"
"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "I need him out of the house, at least."
She sighed and nodded. "Okay. Then we revisit?"
"Deal."
"Oh, before you go, will I see you at Sunny's shindig tomorrow?"
He nodded, grinning. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. The boy's really going for it, isn't he."
"He is. I'm so proud of him. I hope he wins, even if I can't vote for him."
"Me too. Is it okay if Joanie comes? This will be her first time out and about since her injury."
"You don't have to ask me."
"Actually, I do. Joanie made me."
Lauren chuckled, and she really wished she could kiss her husband. If only they could get past this somehow. "Is she walking without assistance now?"
"Just a stick, but even that won't be needed soon."
"Fantastic! I look forward to seeing both of you."
He nodded and didn't ask if Rachel and Al were coming. Of course they were. They were the LSDC after all, coming to support one of their own.
They parted ways in the parking lot of the building that housed Penny's office, he to his vehicle, which was no longer her Nissan Versa (he looked ludicrous driving it, a bear in a clown car,) but a newly leased black Dodge Ram, which looked remarkably like Joanie's pickup truck. She still had the Highlander, which was bigger than she needed for daily work but necessary to cart the kids around. She drove downtown from Burnaby, and parked in the loading bay of the library, where a space was reserved for contractors to park temporarily. It was odd for her to enter where she saw Al enter many times after dropping him off for work; she'd commuted in with Rachel and him ever since they'd moved out to Burnaby from their little one bedroom apartment downtown. This contract really was serendipitous. She climbed the metal stairs to the loading bay doors and pressed the button for the security intercom.
It was an intense few hours of signing documents, meeting the Chief Librarian, touring the building and evaluating blind spots where people out of sight and sound could perform activities not allowed by library policy. She found that there were quite a lot of them, and when she developed a plan for the guards to do their rounds, she would have to take them into consideration.
Their tour wound up on the seventh floor, outside Administration, where the Chief Librarian bade her a good day, off to save the world with literacy. The woman was glamorous and wickedly smart, and when Lauren had researched her, she'd discovered the woman had once worked at the Hague as a member of an international library organization; she was also married to a writer who looked like a model, and the two of them danced Flamenco, and Lauren could just imagine the hot nights they shared. With her and the Sandra Bullock lookalike therapist, she could cast herself a fantastic lesbian soft porn daydream.
When she was gone, she turned to the two men, who seemed quite taken with her, the Director of Corporate Services an older man who looked like a banker, the Manager of Security a younger man, as tall as Joe but slimmer. She could tell they were impressed that this small half-Japanese woman in the black pantsuit and pink blouse spoke for a security firm that mostly employed large and necessarily aggressive men. "So, up here, we have the server room, the IT staff offices, and then the staff lounge and the gym?" she asked.
"Yes, let's show you them quickly," Jack said, walking toward the staff lounge. She made the usual complimentary noises. As they approached the gym, the door opened, and a man stepped out, taller than Lauren but not as tall as the Manager of Security. He had brown hair with a few strands of grey, so he was probably in his forties. He had obviously just finished using the gym, because he was sweaty, and he carried a towel and a tote with shower products and a change of clothes. He'd probably used the treadmill, Lauren thought. He had the legs of a runner. The man started when he saw them, gave a curt nod, and walked away.
"When people use the gym, where do they clean up after?" she asked, following the man's movements.
"There are showers in the washrooms over here," Jack said, indicating separate men's and women's locker rooms. "And over by the IT room, there are two bathrooms. One of them is an accessible washroom that has its own shower stall for people with mobility issues."
Lauren nodded, and asked to see the IT room and servers, which had their own cold room because they ran so hot. Once she was satisfied, she turned to the two men and said, "Can I do a final walk around on my own so I can make more notes?"
"Of course," Ron said. "You have your contractor badge. That will get you into any door. When you finish, stop by the security room on Level Two before you leave and drop it off." Level Two being the main floor, oddly, the term necessary for fire and emergency services to distinguish it from the Lower Level, the floor where she'd first entered from the loading bay, which was supposed to be the first floor. Al worked on that floor, in Technical Services, but she hadn't seen him when she'd been met by security and escorted to the security room on Level Two.
She waited until they were gone from sight, Ron out the door to walk to the section that held Human Resources and Accounting and Finance, Jack to the elevator to go back to Level Two. Seeing no one else in the hallway, she crept over to the bathroom door marked with the wheelchair and knocked three times, just the lightest tapping.
She heard a deadbolt turn, and she pushed on the door, slipping inside just enough to close it behind her and turn the deadbolt again. She turned and saw Al behind the door, still in his sweaty workout clothes.
She smiled and shook her head, putting a finger to her lips to forestall any speech. This was not the time for talking or making any noise whatsoever. No one could know they were in here together.
He smiled too, and she pantomimed waving her hand in front of her face, wincing at the odour she smelled, coming from him, apparently. He nodded and promptly began stripping. She watched him until he stepped naked into the large curtained off shower stall and turned on the water, and then she carefully removed each piece of her relatively formal clothing, which she normally reserved for special occasions or for greeting important clients, and hung them on the hook on the inside of the door; the pants she draped over the vanity. She left her lavender bra and panties on the floor. They could be as dirty as she felt right now.
She pulled the curtain closed and pressed her naked body against his, and luxuriated in the shower spray that soaked them both. They were both quivering with lust, in withdrawal from months of no contact; all she wanted to do was climb him, wrap around him like a clinging vine. As if he'd read her mind, he lifted her off the ground, and she wrapped her legs around his waist in a vice grip as they tried desperately to eat the other's face. This was what they'd been reduced to, sneaking behind the bleachers like a couple of teenagers. They'd tried to be good, they really had, for everybody's sake: Joe's, Rachel's, the kids', even Sunny and Tej's. Then she'd told Al about this contract, and he'd told her about the bathroom with its own shower, and then they'd made their plans, as if all this time they'd both been looking for the same thing and hadn't told each other. Al sometimes ran on the treadmill during his lunch break, but he cut his run short to time to her visit, and here they were, finally in each other's arms again.
She made love to him with the same urgency they'd shared that disastrous time at Harrison Hot Springs, but without the anger that had made her ride him on that bed as if he were a horse she'd needed to break (she might have even left bruises on his hips and abdomen, as if she'd clobbered him with a sack full of ball bearings.) Her anger at Joe then had been replaced by a cosmic sadness that made her yearn to grasp at anything that could lift her spirits and, heaven help her, Al was within her grasp when she needed him most.
Al manipulated himself inside her and barely lasted a minute before he came, fucking her standing up, holding her against the wall of the shower. That was all right. That was just the opening act to make up for lost time. Now they could take their time. He had shampoo and body wash, her brand, of course, so no one would suspect. They washed each other and got each other hot again, pawing, kissing and worshiping each other's bodies. They traded off going down on each other; the accessible shower stall had a convenient fold-down seat on which she sat, with her legs spread wide apart and shaking, while Al made a feast of her, biting into one hand and gripping his hair with the other to keep herself from screaming. Once they thought Al was ready again, she rode him on the floor of the shower in lotus position, legs around his waist, arms wrapped around his neck, squeezing him tightly to her, his hands locked on her lower back, her face tilted up to drink in the shower spray, lips parted in a great big smile. This was not the bruising ride of Harrison Hot Springs, but the blissful, indulgent grind they'd both been waiting for for a long time, and once her clit sang in response, she pulled him on top of her, and they finished the way she wanted, his body pressing hers into the shower floor, not very comfortable but it was better than nothing. She bit into his neck as she came, a squeak the only noise she made, and all Al let loose was a strangled grunt as she milked him dry, gripping his cock with her pussy in the way that always amazed him.
They said nothing to each other after, either, drying off with his towel and dressing in complete silence, both of them knowing they would see each other at home and could talk all they wanted then; sex was what they couldn't do, because Joe was right, there were just far too many people in the house, and Rachel, to Lauren's annoyance, was doing everything she could to bring Lauren and Joe back together, and that meant keeping Al away from her like a teetotaler locking the alcohol cabinet whenever she came around. Lauren could also tell Rachel loved having Al all to herself, as was her right as his wife, but she never said anything about it because she still loved Lauren and didn't want to hurt her. She also liked having Lauren all to herself; they'd shared Lauren's bed the entire time Rachel's ribs had been healing after the shootout at Barnet Marine Park, and they'd made good use of it, quietly of course, because the kids slept on the same floor. Oddly, none of the kids had remarked on all the time Mommy and Auntie Rachel had spent in her bedroom. Either they were naive or more enlightened than she imagined.
She quietly opened the bathroom door and peeked out, making sure the coast was clear. They left without a word to each other, a blown kiss all Lauren would give him, which luckily no one saw. She finished her day at the library actually doing what she told Ron and Jack she would do, partly because it was her job, and partly because she wanted to give her hair time to dry before she went back to the office; Rachel worked at Justiciar too as a forensic accountant, and she didn't want to make her wonder why her hair was wet, because Rachel also knew she was at the library today.
Anyone encountering her in the stacks would remark at the enormous grin on her face, her trademark dimples popping, and wonder what could have possibly made her so happy.
Hi there! Thanks for finding this title! I kind of started it with a bang, didn't I. This is the fourth novel in the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club series. You might be able to read this as a standalone, but it will help you to get background on the characters in this series, and why they do what they do, by starting with the first novel in this series, "We Find What is Lost," using the following link:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/233732301-we-find-what-is-lost-a-novel-of-the-terribly
You can then continue with the second novel in the series, "Rude Awakenings," using the following link:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/245260993-rude-awakenings-a-novel-of-the-terribly-acronymed
You can then continue with the third novel in the series, "Err on the Side of Violence," using the following link:
https://www.wattpad.com/story/255904211-err-on-the-side-of-violence-a-novel-of-the
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To read about what happens at Sunny's "shindig" click on "Continue reading."