Page 44 of Where There's Smoke

Simone laughed. “Well, I’d be most comfortable with a ticket back to LA, but…”

“Sorry,” I said with a sympathetic grimace.

She waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Part of campaigning, right?”

“Yeah. Part of campaigning.”

She rocked back and forth from her heels to the balls of her feet. “Well, I’m going to call it a night. Your call about the bed or the couch.”

I opted for the couch. It was uncomfortable as fuck, and I suspected my back would have something to say about it before dawn, but at least it put a little distance between my wife and me. Some breathing room, if nothing else. Not that I was any more likely to sleep than I would have been if we shared the bed. This was going to be one long damned night.

Was Anthony this frustrated? Of course he slept alone, so he could relieve the tension if he needed to. By now maybe he already had. Maybe in bed, with his forearm over his eyes and his other hand stroking his cock, or in the shower, water running down his face while he jerked off to the same thoughts that drove me insane.

I shivered, and even that sent a ripple of panic through me. Deep down, irrational as it may have been, I was terrified that the slightest movement, the faintest catch of my breath, would scream to Simone that I was painfully aroused. And how awkward and embarrassing would that be for both of us? She’d know I was turned on, and she’d know it was someone else. Of course she knew I was gay, but she didn’t need a cruel reminder that we were only staying married for the sake of appearances while I thought myself hard about someone else.

I focused as much as I could on sleeping. Fat lot of good that did me. I’d drop off, then suddenly be awake again. I’d crawl from one end of a restless hour to the next before dropping off again, only to wake up without feeling like I’d gotten a single moment’s rest. Sometimes I ached with arousal. Sometimes lack of sleep had me on the verge of being in physical pain, while the couch on which I tossed and turned made sure I was always in some sort of discomfort. The night went by like a kid learning to drive a manual transmission: jerking awake, dropping off to sleep, jerking awake again.

Eventually it leveled out into consistent, unrelenting insomnia. The body was tired but the mind was stubborn and preoccupied, and Anthony wasn’t here, and Simone was, and I couldn’t. Fucking.Sleep.

Moving slowly and carefully, scared to death I’d wake Simone just by existing, I craned my neck and looked at the clock above the television.

Ten minutes past four.

Good enough. It was an unholy hour, but I didn’t stand a chance of sleeping, so to hell with it. I threw the thin blanket back, swung my legs over the side of the couch, and got up as carefully and quietly as I could.

I went into the bathroom and closed the door before I flipped on the light. As my eyes adjusted to the bright fluorescent, I turned on the shower. The white noise of running water wouldn’t bother Simone the way a light would, so I didn’t worry about waking her up.

When the water was as hot as I could get it, filling the bathroom with opaque steam, I stepped into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain across. Hot water stung my back and shoulders, scalding drops running down my sides and hips like invisible fingernails raking over my skin.

Now that I was alone, I didn’t even try to ignore how aroused I was. I flattened my hand against the wall and fucked my other fist, forcing my cock into my tight grip and wishing to God this came close to soothing this maddening need. I imagined myself with Anthony, on my knees and begging him to touch me, to fuck me, to make me come, toletme come. I couldn’t imagine he was a gentle lover, and in my mind, he shoved me against the side of a bed. His bed? Mine? Didn’t matter. It was a flat surface. And there was lube nearby. Lots of lube. God, he used it too. He was fucking me. Hard. Deep and fast. Growling profanity in my ear. Forcing himself inside me again and again.

I’d never been fucked before, but I’d seen and felt how other men came unraveled when a man was inside them, and I wanted it. I wanted Anthony like that, and I begged my fantasy to be like the real thing, for him to feel as good as I’d imagined as he fucked me hard and fast and deep, until he lost control and I lost my mind.

I dug my teeth into my lip, struggling not to groan as my impending orgasm built, as it reached maddening heights that threatened to drag a cry from my lips and force me to my knees. My breath caught, my knees buckled,and I kept stroking, my semen-slicked hand sliding easily up and down my cock as I held on to this fantasy, and I didn’t stop until I couldn’t take another second.

I braced myself against the shower walls with shaking arms. Closing my eyes, I let my head fall forward, and scalding water raked over the goose bumps on my back and shoulders.

The heat and the orgasm relieved my hard-on, but now I was wide-awake. Way more awake than I should have been after jerking off at four in the damned morning. I wanted that postrelease fatigue to settle in, but it refused, and I was no closer to relaxing enough for sleep than I was before my shower.

Simone was still asleep—oh, I envied her—and I didn’t want to wake her, so I put on my swim trunks, grabbed a towel, and left the room to go get my morning swim out of the way. In theory I should have roused one of my security guards and been escorted downstairs, but…not today. I avoided taking security with me whenever I could, but especially now; I needed to be alone. That included evading the people who were there for my own safety, but also provided a constant, undeniable reminder that I lived under a goddamned microscope. Once in a fucking while, I needed a little time to myself, even if it was more or less in public.

Keeping my head down, I slipped past the sparse early crowd in the lobby and into the pool area. Just as I’d hoped, the pool was open and still deserted at this hour. Still, my skin crawled with that undeniable sense of being exposed and conspicuous. Like no matter how empty the place was, someone was watching. Someone with an agenda and a camera.

I usually opted for something less ostentatious than this high-profile hotel, but Roger insisted on five-star accommodations everywhere we went. Keeping up appearances and all that shit. Personally I’d have preferred a sun-warmed swim behind a no-name hotel off the main drag of some small town, diving into a pool with chipped tiles and the odd floating leaf instead of this perfectly maintained Olympic-length pool. This kind of place just felt too damned much like a fishbowl.

But it was what was available, so I dropped my towel in a rumpled heap on the footrest of one of the poolside chairs, tucked my room key into its folds, and pulled on my swimming goggles. Then I dove in.

The cool water shocked my skin after my hot shower, but I adapted quickly. I started slow to work some stiffness out of my muscles, and on the second and third laps, I picked up speed. Once I’d found my usual comfortable, sustainable speed, I focused on nothing more than swimming. Follow the black stripe on the bottom of the pool until it became a T at the end, turn around, follow the stripe the other way. Back and forth. Up the lane. Turn around. Down the lane. Turn around. Again. And again. And again.

I could only relax so much when I was on a schedule, though. If I’d had the entire day to myself with nowhere to be, I could have spent an hour ormore just going back and forth, back and forth, watching that long black stripe while I cut through the cool water. With a schedule to keep, I had to stay aware of the time. The muscles between my shoulders always insisted on tensing up when I was under the gun, and no matter how much I swam, they refused to relax. They refused to let me forget, if only for a few minutes, that a world existed above this one.

But it helped. It was better than nothing, anyway.

I completed my last lap, then hoisted myself out of the pool and took off my goggles. Chlorine stung my eyes, and as I rubbed them, I yawned. Fatigue set in, turning my legs to putty and pushing down on my shoulders. Maybe now I could get some sleep after all.

Keeping my head down, I once again slipped past the handful of people in the lobby and took one of the back stairwells up to my room. I keyed myself back into the room, quietly changed into a pair of boxers, and eased myself back onto the couch. Between the shower, the orgasm, and the swim, sleepiness finally took over, and in no time flat, I drifted off.

Muffled coughing—more like choking and gagging—drew me out of the fog of sleep. I lifted my head, blinking my vision into focus.

---