Embracing Ellie: Chapter 27

Ellie didn’t fall for it. He hadn’t suspected she would. Despite that, he fully committed to the bit, pretending to be poisoned, dying a slow, agonizing death at his wife’s bedside. Ellie lifted the drink from his grip as he sat slumped against the bed, his face on the bed.

A bed she’d slept in with another man, and her—

Cold drops splashed on his neck, and he jumped back, slapping a hand over the cold spot like he’d been stung by a bee. “Very funny,” he said. “That’s ice cold.”

The way she posed in bed—bare shoulders, sex-tousled hair, the frosty cocktail glass in her hand—hit him hard. A soft beauty. All natural. Not stark and composed; Ellie’s beauty shone from the inside in a way she couldn’t hide. Even now, perhaps at her worst: after a night with a man outside their marriage. It was a way he’d never seen Ellie, and it fascinated him. He watched her mouth move, the tendons in her neck, and the sparkle in her eye—

She raised the glass over his head now like she would pour it over him. He protested and took her wrist. They wrestled. She got it higher overhead but didn’t have the guts to spill it. He told her so.

“Oh yeah?”

The new sparkle in her eye alarmed him. “Don’t, Ellie, I swear—”

They wrestled more, but she had him where she wanted him. About two spoonfuls of ice-cold Manhattan streamed onto the top of his head and raced forward in ticklish rivulets, heading down his brow. Ellie’s arms went around him, hugging him hard and laughing before locking her kiss on his mouth. He held her, his hands going up and down her bare sides. The blanket shroud had puddled at her thighs while they’d tussled. This time the embrace wasn’t tentative and unsure, wary in light of new truths between them and their sexualities, and how changed they might be. This time the embrace was passionate and charged. They writhed together like hot intercourse was imminent, and he took her down to the bed like submissive prey. She was naked under him, and he wore his coat and a sweater and jeans. She held the drink out to the side while their hips moiled and roiled. He wanted to claim her as his own, to drive his manhood into its rightful scabbard and set his kingdom straight.

Hemi interrupted their session from the doorway, saying, “Hey, hey, not yet. Come on, guys.”

But Danny didn’t want to stop. He wanted his fly down and his weapon sheathing in his wife’s hot wet interior. Ellie didn’t stop him either. Like she wanted it as well.

But Hemi didn’t give up. “Come on, cool it, aye. Calm your farm, calm your farm. You’ll cane it all at once.”

They both heard it, and neither of them understood it, only the intention. They both started to chuckle, and their kiss separated. Hemi had a point. Or at least, they thought he had a point.

Ellie said, “Canes and farms? What are you talking about?”

Hemi laughed too, standing at the foot of the bed, hands on hips like an annoyed mother. “Pace yourselves. The night’s still young.”

Danny regarded Ellie, looking in her hazel eyes, loving her, seeing mirth and good and nothing bad. This whole adventure could have gone the wrong way. It had been a risky move. But hovering over her this way, hearing so much unspoken, knowing it by reading her eyes. Their union was unmarred. They were in this together. He was doing this for her. He warmed his hands by the fire’s heat, but Ellie was the flickering flame.

“The night’s still young,” he said.

She smiled. “What time is it?”

He told her it was midnight, and she said, “That’s not young.”

He loved the cute crinkle in her brow. “I heard you’ve been napping.”

She said, “I’m wide awake.”

They stared and smiled, and something electric zipped back and forth between them.

Hemi took the glass from Ellie’s outstretched hand, and they didn’t break their connected gaze. Hemi said, “You know, I made that special for you, Danny.”

Danny said, “You didn’t poison it?”

Ellie chuckled, her eyes narrowing.

“Poison it? That’s a prime-made cocktail, Danny. You’d be pleased to get a mix as good as that at the Huka Lodge.”

“It was delightful,” Danny said, at last rising from on top of his naked wife. “I sipped it. It was fantastic.”

“Ellie, come on and get dressed. I’m making you one as well.”

“Thanks, Hemi,” Ellie said, gathering the surrounding bedding, covering up—though she’d been in bed naked with Hemi when he arrived. And she’d been in the hot tub with him too. Wearing nothing but that skimpy bikini. And sometimes even less, according to some of the photos Hemi had sent.

Hemi went to leave, then whipped back, looking at the bed’s edge where the wrestling match with Ellie began. “Did you spill it? You’ve got the sheets all wet now.”

Danny laughed, saying to Ellie, “Has he been a mother hen all day like this?”

Ellie said, “You disrespected his cocktail.”

Danny regarded her. Aroused already, this little interplay was striking taut lines in his body that thrummed wicked vibrations right through him. Her just saying Hemi’s name and “cock” in the same sentence seemed to jolt him with an almost juvenile giddiness. He said to Hemi, “She’s right. I played around, and it spilled. Let’s let this gal get dressed, and you and I’ll convene in the kitchen.”

“Thank you for letting this gal get dressed,” Ellie said. “I hope you brought me some clothing.”

“He brought all sorts, Ellie,” Hemi said. “Come out like you are or get into your bag. I’m sure Danny’s packed your trackies. This guy thinks of everything.”

Ellie smiled, eyes warm and happy, rolling her head to look at Danny. She said, “Did you pack my trackies?”

Danny shrugged. “I have no idea.”

#

Danny and Hemi stood in the small cabin kitchen, cramped together. There was a familiarity he felt with Hemi—not just from the tours Hemi had taken them on, but also via text with Hemi during the concoction of his ridiculous plan. An impossible plan to have pulled off. If it were ever to happen, they were lucky to have found Hemi. Without him, none of it would be possible. But how much of it should be possible was another question. Despite the excitement, Danny couldn’t put off this unshakeable sense of wrongdoing. But that sense of wrongdoing was perhaps the best part. It created awful excitement inside him that his mind told him he should hate. But he didn’t hate it. The excitement it provoked raced his heart and tightened some erotic able that ran through his upright body with the same elastic strength of his spine. It seemed fundamental. 

That fact that he seemed to have this desire hard-wired into his system—that it wasn’t lodged in his erotic psyche like some sliver that might lead to a surrounding infection—showed him who he should most be thankful for. Ellie.

Most of this gift he’d arranged for Ellie wasn’t just for her. Sure, he’d wrapped it in paper she liked and wrote on the little card that it was “to Ellie with love, Danny.” . . . But it was also one of those gifts he figured in short time he might pull out and use for himself. 

Hemi mixed another Manhattan, almost done and cutting another slim slice of lemon, when Ellie finally emerged from the bedroom, where they’d left her. She came out looking sheepish, tucking hair behind an ear. Hemi had his back to the door, and the moment was only for husband and wife. She made an expression of amused perplexity: eyebrows raised in wonderment, mouth twisted in cute and comical stupefaction. She looked sweet and innocent and not like a wife who’d messed around with the hunk of her fantasies today. Whatever the look meant, it tightened some sort of bond between them; reminded him how they were a team and how they were in this game together with the same goal. Then she gave him a small wave, only her fingertips showing above the hem of her oversized sweatshirt, before disappearing down the short hall, on her way to the bathroom. Probably wanted to fix herself up. Brush her teeth. Why would she brush her teeth, Danny?

The question made him shudder. Despite the horror of the implication, he smiled and sipped his drink.

#

Ellie’s Manhattan was ready when she arrived in the kitchen at last, but she bypassed it, Hemi offering it to her as she entered the small kitchen, coming straight to Danny and leaning against him and lacing her arms around his hips. He put his arm around her shoulder and took the drink Hemi offered. He gave it to Ellie, and she thanked Hemi, her cheek on her husband’s chest.

Then they all stood for a moment with their cocktails, a little unsure, but all of them happy. Danny’s guts churned, and that erotic cable zinged like a guitar string. They hadn’t even begun yet. Something had begun, but it had all been Ellie’s private day at the spa, worked over by Hemi’s large hands, most actions unknown to Danny, the provider.

Had Hemi touched her? Did he put his hands on her skin? God, what if he’d touched Ellie’s breasts?—the thought sent another twang up his spine with a discordant jolt.

Hemi had probably touched Ellie’s breasts. The only other man outside of the medical profession and her marriage. 

And though he wouldn’t commit to the whole thought, his mind let him tease the edges of a possibility: Hemi might have touched between Ellie’s legs. Might have slipped a big finger up inside her. Might have fingered Ellie . . . 

This thought widened Danny’s eyes and sent his heart absolutely galloping across the plains. He shook his head to clear it before he went lightheaded, and he’d have to support his weight from crashing to the floor.

Out of the blue, Hemi addressed the situation as though it weren’t fraught. He said, “You two sort out your differences? Looks like you have.”

Danny took another swig of Hemi’s amazing Manhattan and nodded agreement. “Just some mild differences of opinion.”

“No big deal,” Ellie said, practically clinging to him.

Another crazy thought came to him, and he hated it as much as he loved it: his wife acted submissive and needy before her man—her owner. Acted that way to counteract his natural inclination to be jealous or possessive. She naturally served his ego; if she’d been bubbly and hanging off Hemi, it might have crushed his heart.

Hemi said, “I’m glad we’ve made it this far,” and raised his glass as a toast. They all drank.

Ellie slipped away from Danny and moved so they were like the three corners of a triangle now. She addressed Hemi in a somewhat formal fashion: “Thank you, sir, for playing along with my husband and keeping me on my toes all day.”

Hemi smiled and nodded, his cocktail glass looking small in his large hand. “He set the table,” Hemi said, nodding his head to the side at Danny.

Ellie bowed her head, smirking, saying, “Well, thank you for being such a . . . fun table today.”

Danny frowned, considered her tone and her quiet reverence. Polite and formal. A farewell. He said, “Remember how I said you started without me?”

Ellie rolled her eyes and then smiled at Hemi. “How could I forget? You know he—”

Danny said, “Ellie, I meant we were only getting started.”

Ellie cocked her head and scrunched her brow in the adorable manner of a golden retriever watching a magic trick.

He fixed his eyes on hers. “Hemi’s not leaving. He’s staying here with us. I booked this cabin for two days.”