Page 29 of Unmatched

Together, we watch Lydia excuse herself from her conversation and disappear down a hall. Myra turns to me and pats my cheek. “You two go enjoy each other. I’ll set up an appointment about my boring money next week.”

I hesitate, but she steps away with that instruction, and somehow I’m certain of what I need to do, if totally unsure how to proceed. I catch up to Lydia outside the open door of what must be Carl Wallace’s study, judging by the heavy-looking furniture and bookshelves. She turns when she hears my footsteps, and her face lights up, sending a surge of affection through me. Suddenly, I’m confident. We both feel this. It’s always been there. What we have has to be special.

“Anton! I was just coming to find you,” she says, and her tone is so warm, I decide to make a move.

Rather than reply with words, I reach for her, pulling her into the quiet study as I press my lips to hers. She’s clearly surprised, but as I push her against the back of the closed door, she opens her lips to mine, reaching up to pull me close. I shut my eyes, allowing myself to relish the moment, breathing in her vanilla scent. My hands drift down her waist, over her hips and ass wrapped up like a present in this dress, until my fingers slip beneath the hem.

She jerks slightly when I make contact with her skin. “We can’t do that here,” she says with a nervous giggle.

“Why not?” I mutter, dipping down to lay kisses along her neckline. “There’s a lock on the door.”

“It’s your boss’s house,” she says in a playful but slightly higher voice.

“Then let’s go home.” I breathe into her neck, pressing evidence of my growing arousal against her hip. “We don’t even have to do that—let’s get a hotel right here in Castle Rock.”

She doesn’t reply right away, pulling me back to her lips, sliding her hand into my hair. I take it as a sign that she’s considering, that she can’t deny she’s as turned on as me. I slip my hand farther up inside her dress, tracing the edge of her panties.

But then she twists her hips away, and my hand is forced out from under her skirt. She places her own hands gently but firmly on my chest. “We can’t get a hotel. We have to get home to Heartthrob.”

I stand there staring at her, her sweet taste lingering like a ghost on my tongue.

She must read my expression because she quickly says, “Let’s plan something, though. A getaway where I can leave him with Tomás.”

“Like a weekend at a hot springs?” I can’t help it. My voice is sharp as a knife.

She opens her mouth, then has the humility to frown.

I exhale. “I can’t keep doing this, Lydia.”

“Doing what?” she asks, smoothing her dress, looking everywhere but at me.

I grab her hand and bring it to where my hard-on presses painfully inside my pants. “I need you.”

For a second, she stares at me, her hand lingering on my cock. And I’m so desperate this is almost enough to make me come. But then she jerks away like she touched a hot stove.

“I—I need to go.”

“Lydia—”

I reach for her, but she’s out the door so fast I barely say her name before the latch clicks.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I slump into a deep leather chair to adjust my pants. Myra was obviously wrong about us. I might be overflowing with lust for my wife, but she is clearly not interested in me.

On my boss’s desk, there’s a photo of his family, his wife and daughter smiling at his side. I stare at this and think about the photo of Lydia and me—the one I cropped her out of to use online. And then, deep in the pocket of my pants, my phone vibrates. I pull it out and glance at it, just to make sure it isn’t Seth with some update about Mom. But when I see the screen, my mouth goes dry.

You have 5 unread messages on Unmatched

I thought I’d turned off notifications. I glance at the door, listening for footsteps or voices. Then I tap the screen to open the app.

Five new messages from four ready-to-fuck women. At least one of them appears to be a bot, with some cut-and-paste note about cannabis sent twice. The others seem real, but the messages are all the sort of generic stuff you see in porn ads: I’m hot tonight. Let’s fuck at my place. Can you make me cum? I click on their pictures one by one, and they do look beautiful, but nothing really stands out and makes me want to reply.

I click back to the inbox, scrolling to the message exchange with LonelyGirl8. It’s not like we had a super in-depth conversation, but she at least felt like a real person. One willing to do things Lydia would never dream of—starting with getting into bed with me.

Just reading through the thread brings my cock back to life. I click her profile, re-reading her stats and turn-ons, then enlarge the picture to admire those big, glorious tits again. Tits I was invited to not only touch, but do all manner of things to. I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to recall why I chickened out.

Then my gaze falls to the gold ring on my left hand.

I think of what Myra said about keeping romance alive over the years. But what if it was dead to begin with? I love Lydia, and I know she cares about me, but can we go on like this? Playing the happy, successful couple at work and at parties, but never in the bedroom? What would we be to each other in a decade?

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