Page 54 of His Wild Seduction

I admit, I was shocked at the donations Josef had sent in my name.

In. My. Name.

He’d sent over two hundred thousand dollars in cash, ear-marked specifically to help those who needed immediate re-housing accommodations.

I didn’t understand. Not one bit. He’d ignored me all week, but then made this grand gesture.

What did it mean?

He’d also sent Mario and a team to install Sigma Security approved locks, doors, and windows on every entryway and exit of St. Elizabeth’s.

And not just the Jersey City location. Sr. Elise let it slip that Josef had done the same for all eight of their shelters.

“Did you need anything while we are out, Mrs. Aziz? Or would you like to go straight to the home?” Mario asked.

“Just home. Please,” I replied, not even questioning why I’d called it that.

I was exhausted. Every revelation I learned about my husband seemed to be from others.

He shared nothing of himself with me. I knew it was early days, but given his attitude, I feared the worst.

This is a mistake. I shouldn’t have married him.

Whatever dreams I’d had about this second chance we’d seemed to be given were crushed. Josef was a good man.

But he wasn’t in love with me.

No matter how sweetly his body had joined with mine. One night was obviously enough.

Sex was just physical for him. Even so, I’d obviously come up short. Hence the whole spending each night since alone.

Oh well. I was done pining for a man who didn’t want me. A week was enough.

There were boxes with my belongings stored for the time being in the hall closet. One of them was marked bathroom.

When Mario drove me home, I was going to march myself right to that closet, and I was going to find that box.

Next, I was going to pour a glass of white wine and put all thoughts of Josef and his lack of desire for me right out of my head.

I was going to go inside the master bathroom, fill the luxurious tub, and me and Walter, my waterproof clitoral suction and thumping vibrator, were going to have ourselves a night.

It took an hour of sorting through boxes Josef’s team had packed from my old apartment.

But finally, I found what I was looking for inside a small plastic box, labeled Band-Aids. Only there weren’t bandages inside. There were adult sex toys.

It was a private joke between me and a woman I’d met in England years ago. Peggy was a fun sort of woman, and she’d joked that vibrators were like plasters for relationships.

“They hold together the broken bits by giving the woman a little relief whenever her man runs her down.”

God, I missed her. I should probably write.

After years of moving from place to place around Europe, and living with the bare minimum, I thought I’d learned better than to acquire so much useless crap. But apparently not.

I sighed and put the top back on the final box I’d been looking through.

I hated going through stuff.

Much of what was there could be donated or tossed, but I’d likely wait to see what the residents at St. Elizabeth’s needed before I did that. That reminded me I still had my stepfather’s house to sort through.

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