Page 7 of Opening It Up (Humbled Superstars #2)

Harley

T hat afternoon I distracted myself from worrying how angry my wife was by making a dating profile and checking out my matches.

It was hard to find good pictures of me, though.

The professional ones looked kind of stuffy, and any pictures of me without Lily-Mae in them didn’t look very good either, my mouth downturned or a frown line perpetually between my eyes.

The ones with my wife were the best, where I looked happy and relaxed, but of course I couldn’t use those.

But once I finally started chatting with my matches, my depression only grew.

One woman messaged me excitedly and wanted to know if we could have sex while her husband and several of his golfer buddies watched.

I politely declined, but the rest of my interactions didn’t go much better.

A few women recognized me and immediately sent snaps of their breasts, but when I asked if they liked board games or old movies, they did not, and I couldn’t sustain any interest in the conversations.

What was wrong with me? Did I need more iron? Because these breasts were doing nothing for me.

Oh well. At least tonight I could look forward to a relaxing evening in with my wife.

Tuesday night we always watched our shows together, cooked popcorn and ate cut up fruit with tajin seasoning.

When we got home, I took Teagan and Rowan outside to play.

Was I doing enough to help out Lily-Mae? She had been looking tired lately. There were a few days I had spent a little longer at work, gotten home a bit later than I wanted, just to catch Makayla as she left the office.

That way it wasn’t weird. . .we just both were grabbing an evening chai tea from the café, so there had been nothing sinister in sitting and talking. . .nothing at all.

Of course, there had been a few dirty thoughts that had popped into my head. Things I wanted to do under her bustier, up her silk stockings. . . the hot sex we could have had. . .

Of course, now I had been up those silk stockings and found them shockingly uninteresting.

In fact, I was thinking way more about having sex with Lily-Mae than I was with anyone else. It had been several days. Maybe a week? More? I’d just been so occupied thinking about opening up my marriage. And maybe, if I was honest, I’d been a little too preoccupied with Makayla.

Well, now I would do better. I would be more present for my wife.

But after dinner when I brought the bowl of popcorn up to bed, I found her sitting at the mirror putting on hoop earrings and wearing a little pink dress she had bought for her dad’s most recent wedding.

“Honey, what are you doing?”

My wife was scrunching up her curls and I hadn’t realized how long they had gotten, falling in strawberry blonde ringlets all down her back.

“You look beautiful,” I added, taking one shining curl in my palm. “But why are you all dressed up?”

“It’s Tuesday,” she laughed, applying a pretty, deep pink lipstick.

“Tuesday?”

“I’m going out on a date,” she said casually. Like it was the most usual thing in the world for my wife!

“A date?” I asked stupidly.

“You did say Tuesday was my night, right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me in the mirror.

Her pink lips looked so plush and pretty, and I felt my cock twitch as I imagined that color on my shaft.

“Well, yes, but?—"

“But what?”

I could not think of a damn thing to say. Tuesday night was her night, according to the calendar. But who the fuck was she going out with?

“But tonight is our night to watch our shows,” I protested.

“Ah, but that was before our open marriage,” Lily-Mae said. “Now I’m busy.”

“But it’s almost 9:30 pm!” I said, uncomprehendingly. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for going out?”

My wife was concentrating on her neckline in the mirror, and I suddenly realized that the attractive low scooped neckline hugging her cleavage, that had been so alluring at the wedding, was no longer just for me.

“Don’t worry,” she said, patting me gently on the arm. “I’ll set an alarm in the morning. And don’t wait up, we might be back late.”

“ We? Wait, who is this guy?”

But she was already heading down the stairs, a pair of strappy pink high heels in her hands.

“I already made the popcorn,” I bleated.

Suddenly I heard some type of loud noise outside.

What the fuck?

“You’re going to wake up the kids,” I protested, but she didn’t even turn around.

“They sleep through Dad’s snoring, I don’t think this is going to wake them up.”

I couldn’t help noticing the way her ass looked like absolute peachy perfection in that dress, how it clung bewitchingly to her curves.

Why couldn’t I think of anything smarter to say? What was wrong with me? It was just because I had never been in the position of chasing my wife and begging her to spend time with me that I was completely poleaxed.

And who is in the world was taking her out at this hour?

As I reached the bottom of the stairs, the loud and mysterious rumbling noise only grew until it shook the front steps.

Lily-Mae ignored my bleating as she flew out the door.

“What are you in such a rush for?” I cried, but she couldn’t hear me over the noise.

To my astonishment, when I tumbled after her onto the lawn, I saw Leopold Beauchamps, the extremely powerful businessman and owner of the entire office building I worked in, standing in my yard next to a massive helicopter.

I had been wanting to work in a way to network with him for a while, but I didn’t expect it to be because he was taking my wife out on a date.

“Bye, Harley,” she said, giving me a quick wave over her shoulder before she danced lightly through the grass toward him.

“What about a kiss?” I called, but she didn’t even hear me over the sound of the chopper, and I felt a sudden spasm of jealousy as he gave me the merest nod of acknowledgement before his craggy face split into a huge grin at the sight of Lily-Mae.

Well, of course, who wouldn’t smile at her? She was like a little bottle of sunshine with all those strawberry-blonde curls and the light blue eyes with long lashes.

Leopold put both hands around my wife’s waist to lift her into the helicopter, and jealousy roared through me then.

I must not be as evolved as I had thought, because I did not like this.

Moving down the steps, I thought I might say a few words to them, just something casual like “for God’s sake be careful with my wife,” but Leopold clearly was in a hurry because before I even got there, the chopper was up and away, the air blast knocking me flat on my ass on the lawn.

The automatic sprinklers went off and the last thing I saw was Leopold looking down at me, raising a finger in salute in a goodbye that felt offensively smug.

I had never seen the old bastard smile like that a day in my life.

He was a notorious hard-ass and tough businessman, so what was he doing with my warm, bubbly wife?

As I picked myself up in my wet pajama pants, I tried to get my mind right.

It was good for us to have new experiences.

Right?

This was what this whole open marriage had been about.

Us dating new people.

Right?

Then the contents of my stomach suddenly heaved, and I bent over the bushes and threw up my supper as the chopper scythed gaily away into the night sky.

What had I done?