Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)

This is the start of our life. This is our choice. We barely have our shit together. I terminated my contract in London, moved home and sold my condo. She sold hers too, and we moved into an apartment near both of our jobs. It’s not even a nice apartment — there is too much linoleum and our neighbors fight constantly. But, we don’t care. We just wanted to ditch the past and be together. We’ll figure it out. Might take some time. We don’t have a plan yet, we don’t even have furniture, but we are both okay with the surrender. We have little fights all the time. She hates that I don’t throw away my trash — water bottles, cookie bags, candy wrappers. She finds them all over the apartment and makes a big show of crinkling them up and throwing them in the trash. I hate the way she soaks the bathroom floor. The woman doesn’t dry herself. Goddamn if it’s nice to look at her soaking body as she walks from the bathroom to the bedroom, but use a f*cking towel already. She always makes the bed. I always do the dishes. She drinks milk straight from the carton and that kind of pisses me off, but then she reminds me that she has to live with my snoring and I call it even. But, holy hell is she fun. How did I not know that we could laugh this much? Or sit in absolute silence and listen to music together? How did I live without this for so long? I watch her sit on one of our two chairs, one from her house, one from mine — her fingers clipping lightly across her keyboard. It still feels like I’m dreaming when I come home to her every night. I love this dream!

I lean over her neck as she works and kiss her on her sweet spot. She shivers. “Stop it, I’m trying to work.”

“I don’t really care, Duchess…”

I kiss her again, my hand sliding down the front of her shirt. Her breath catches. I can’t see her face, but I know her eyes are closed. I step around the front of her chair and I extend my hand to her. She looks at it for a long moment. The longest moment. Without looking away from me, she sets her computer down and stands up. We are still getting to know each other sexually. She’s a little timid, and I’m afraid of being too aggressive and chasing her away. But, here we are. I struck my match, she poured out her gasoline. We burn now. All the time.

I lead her to my bed, stopping at the foot to pull her against me. I kiss her for a long time. I kiss her until she’s leaning into me so much I have to hold her up.

“Do I make you feel weak?” I say this against her mouth.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You take away my control.”

I unzip the back of her dress and slip the sleeves from her shoulders. Every single sexual encounter with Olivia is a balancing act; part seduction, part psychoanalysis. I have to wrestle with her demons to get her legs to open. I love it and I hate it.

“Why do you always need to have control?”

“So, I don’t get hurt.”

I don’t make a big deal of anything she’s saying. I work at taking off her clothes. When I reach her bra, I pull down the cups instead of taking it off completely. I hold one of her breasts with one hand. My other arm is wrapped around her waist so she can’t get away. Not that she would try. I think by now, I have her.

“Do you like feeling weak?”

If I look over her shoulder, I can see the entire rear of her in my dresser mirror. She is wearing a white lace panty.

I eye her legs as I wait for her answer. My heart is pounding; the rest of me is aching. I already know her answer. I know she likes to feel weak. It is a thrill for her to yield, though it costs her something every time she does. I want to eliminate the emotional fear and get her to the point where she just enjoys it.

“Yes.”

“I won’t leave you,” I say. “I won’t ever love another woman.”

I let go of her breast and let my hand trail between her legs. Pulling the material aside, I touch her. I’ve learned that leaving her underwear on until right before I take her helps the process. You have to strip this woman’s defenses away slowly.

She falls back on the bed, and I slide on top of her. She unclasps her own bra and throws it to her left.

“Wanna try something new?”

She nods.

I make her straddle me, and then turn her around so she’s facing away. She can see herself in the mirror this way. I’m curious to see if she’ll watch.

She leans forward, putting her hands flat on the bed between my knees, and begins to roll her hips in a circular movement. It’s times like these that I am unsure of who is really made weak by whom. This woman was made for sex. She’s so inhibited, but when she lets go, I am given the most sensual ride of my life. Both of her hands are flat on my chest. She rocks back and forth as she rides me. She throws her head back and her hair is so long it sweeps my knees. I have never seen anything more erotic and beautiful in my life. When her head rolls forward, her hair cascades into her face. I wrap it around my hand and pull her to kiss me. While I’m playing with her tongue, I flip her over. She protests and I nip her on the shoulder, which seems to shut her up. I am behind her and I have her on her knees, but instead of bending her over, I run my hands down her arms and grab her wrists, guiding her hands to the frame of the bed so she’s half upright.

I swipe her hair over one of her shoulders, kiss her neck and place my hands on her hips. I lean forward to speak into her ear.

“Hold on tight.”



“You can’t deny we do that right.”

She smiles up at me, her eyes soft and hazy. The only time Olivia’s eyes are not alert and pointedly cold are when she’s pinned beneath me — or when she’s recovering from being pinned beneath me. I’ve trained her to say I love you when she orgasms. If she doesn’t say I love you, she doesn’t get an orgasm — she learned that the hard way. It’s payback for all the years she wouldn’t tell me. Afterward, it takes her at least an hour to return to her normal spitfire mode. But, for an hour after sex I have her soft and submissive. I like to call it the ‘temporary taming of the shrew.’ I live for those hours, where’s she looking up at me like I’m the man. Sometimes, I can even get her to say it.

You’re the man, Caleb. You’re the man.

“As opposed to doing it … wrong?” Her eyebrows lift. “Is there a wrong way to do that?”

“Everything that’s not you feels wrong, Duchess.”

I can tell she’s pleased by my words. She scoots closer, throwing her leg over my waist. I trail my fingers lightly along her spine, and when I reach the ‘world’s greatest ass’ I lay my hand flat and stay there.

She wiggles and I know what she wants.

“Again?” I suck on one of her fingers and she shivers.

“Again,” she says. “And again, and again, and again…”





Olivia and I never marry. We took too many casualties in our struggle to be together. It seems almost wrong to get married after what we did to love. One night while we’re in Paris, we make vows to each other. We’re in our hotel, sitting side by side on the floor in front of the open window. Our view is of the Eiffel Tower, and we’re wrapped in the blanket we just made love on. We are listening to the sounds of the city, when suddenly she turns to face me.

“Mormons believe that when they get married in this life, they stay married in the next. I was thinking that we should convert to Mormonism.”

“Well, that’s most certainly a viable option for us, Duchess. But, what if we’re married to our first spouses in the next life?”

She grimaces. “I’d definitely be less f*cked than you.”

I laugh so hard we both fall over backwards onto the carpet. We shift our bodies until we are lying with our faces inches apart. I reach out to touch the small oval she wears on a chain around her neck. It’s our penny. She had it made into a necklace that she never takes off.

“Wherever we go in the next life, we’ll be together,” I say.

“Let’s not go to hell then, that’s where Leah will be.”

I nod in agreement, then I look in her eyes and say, “I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect you. I’ll lie, cheat, and steal to make you okay. I’ll share your suffering, and I’ll carry you when you’re weighed down. I’ll never leave you, not even when you ask me to. Do you believe me?”

She touches my face with the tips of her fingers and nods.

“You’re strong enough to protect your heart and mine, and your heart from mine. I’ll give you everything I have because from the day I met you, it’s belonged to you.”

I kiss her then I roll on top of her.

And that’s it. Our hearts are married.



We fight. We make love. We cook huge meals and fall into food comas for days. After she defends a murderer and wins the case, she sells her share of the business and we move into our house in Naples. She says if she keeps defending criminals, she’s going to go to hell and she really doesn’t want to spend eternity with Leah. She opens up her own practice, and I work from home. We have a vegetable garden. Olivia has a black thumb and kills all of the plants. I nurture them back to life when she’s not looking and then convince her she has a green thumb. She’s very proud of her (my) tomatoes.

We try to have a baby, but Olivia miscarries twice. When she is thirty-five, she is diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and has to have a hysterectomy. She cries for a year. I try to be strong, mostly because she needs me to be. But, during that time it wasn’t Noah I was afraid to lose her to, or Turner, or herself, it was cancer. And cancer was a foe I didn’t want to f*ck with. Most days I just begged God to keep her alive and make it go away. That’s what I asked him — make it go away — like I was five years old and there was a boogeyman in my closet. God must have heard my prayers, because the cancer never came back and the boogeyman was vanquished. My hands still shake when I think about that time.

I wish I could have given her a baby. Sometimes, when she’s at the office late, I sit in what would have been the nursery and think about the past. It’s a pointless game of torture, but I suppose it’s a consequence of being a flawed, stupid man. Olivia doesn’t like it when I think. She says my thoughts are too deep and they depress her. She’s probably right. And I would hate for her to see what I see; the fact that if we’d just done things right, if I’d fought harder, if she’d fought less, we would have been together sooner. We could have had our baby before it was too late — before her body made it impossible. But, we didn’t, and we’re both a little broken because of it.



I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no set rules in life. You do what you have to do to survive. If that means running away from the love of your life to preserve your sanity, you do it. If it means breaking someone’s heart so yours doesn’t break; do it. Life is complicated — too much so for there to be absolutes. We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you’ll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves. Olivia has stopped rattling quite as much as she used to. Love is a God-given tool, she tells me. It screws things back in place that were loose, and it cleans out all the broken pieces that you don’t need anymore. I believe her. Our love has been fixing each other. I hope to only hear a tiny jingle when I shake her in a few years.



Leah remarries and has another baby. Luckily, it’s a boy. When Estella is nine, she comes to live with us. Despite the “stepmother” status, Estella loves Olivia. They share the same sense of humor, and too often, I find myself the target of their jokes. Some nights I come home and they’re sitting side by side on the sofa, legs propped on the coffee table, MacBooks open, stalking boys. Olivia wishes she’d had Facebook when we were young. She says so every day. I’m not sure who’s more confused by their immediate chemistry — me or Leah.

Leah still hates Olivia. Olivia is grateful that Leah gave us Estella. Fortunately, Estella is nothing like her mother, aside from her red hair, of course. It’s a joke in the family that no one has the same hair color. Raven, red and blonde. We’re an odd sight in public.



We are raising a really beautiful little soul. She wants to be a writer and tell our story someday. We are gonna be okay. That’s what happens when two people are meant. You just work it out until you are okay.



We make love every single day — no matter what. She is the only woman I’ve seen that gets more beautiful with age. She is the only woman I see.





And the journey is over. After eight years and loving my characters through their lies, I can finally move on. To mothers, and fathers, and friends and foes. I steal snippets of your words and lives to thread through my stories.

I owe all to my readers. Passionate, dedicated, mildly insane. Just like me! Thank you. I wrote this for you. I will never forget the book signings, the gifts, the scrapbooks, the e-mails and the harassment. Thank you to the blogs for empowering the writer. And to the writers who empower other writers through their intoxicating words. I am ever so grateful for all of it.



Tarryn





I packed, drove, and showered quickly so I could make the morning meeting on time. I wondered if April would be there now that she seemed close to being brought on as a full-time teacher. Hopefully she would be. I’d have to decide whether to sit next to her and breathe in her intoxicating floral scent or if I wanted to sit on the opposite side of the room so I could simply gaze. Or stare. Let’s face it — I would probably stare.

The room was half-full when I arrived with five minutes to spare. A few of the teachers looked up when I came in. Their faces registered surprise, clearly not expecting to see me back so soon. I got a few nods in my direction but no one spoke. Teachers aren’t usually morning people unless they’ve had their cup or two or six of coffee. Their silence made it evident that the liquid brown drug was not yet coursing through their bodies. Or that seeing me was a little awkward, considering the state I was in when they last saw me.

April was seated on the second row, and seemed to be lost in a pile of paper on her lap. She was wearing a long-sleeve white button-up shirt, sleeves folded halfway up her forearm. Her skirt was black, and her hair was back in a ponytail. Her outfit brought to mind just about every teacher fantasy I had ever allowed myself to indulge in while growing up. Because her hair was pulled back, the pearly white skin of her neck was exposed. I was starting to have serious vampire thoughts.

I will kiss that neck, I told myself. More than once.

I had never promised myself that I would kiss the body of a married woman before, but there’s a first time for everything, I guess. There was something about her neck that made me want to claim it for my own. So Maniac Marco could go f*ck himself for all I cared. Knowing what I did about him, he probably wished he could f*ck himself. Arrogant prick.

I snuck my way into the third row and took a seat behind her, one seat over to her left. When I sat down, I felt like I had immersed myself in a field of lilies, her soft, sweet scent filling my nose and lungs.

Yeah, her neck is mine.

Among other things.

“Good morning,” I said, not wanting to stir her from her paper reading. But very much wanting to also.

She turned around.

“Oh, hey you,” she said with a sense of familiarity that made my nerves tingle. “Good morning back.”

All she had to do was smile and I swear I would have done anything she asked. Including commit serious crimes.

“Is this your first meeting?”

“No, I came to the meeting on Tuesday also.”

“Oh, nice.”

She lowered her head and her voice, “They are so much fun!”

This time I smiled. Sarcasm almost always made me smile.

“Why are you sitting back there?” she asked. “You’re dumb. Sit next to me.”

She patted the chair to her right and I went straight for it, like a dog being called to the side of its owner. There hadn’t even been a second thought, just an immediate response. Surely, anyone paying attention would have thought I was pathetic.

Sitting next to her brought the sensation of diving headfirst into the aforementioned lilies. She wasn’t wearing too much perfume by any means, but what she had sprayed on was severely dangerous to my brain.

The meeting better start soon or I can’t be held responsible for what I do next.

“What are your thoughts on James Joyce?” she asked as more teachers shuffled in.

Her question caught my lily-obsessed mind off-guard.

“Uh...”

“You’ve read him, yes?”

I could read the look on her face as she read the look on mine. I had never read him, and she could clearly read that on my face.

“Oh my God,” she said under her breath. I couldn’t tell whether she was mortified or repulsed.

“There are plenty of authors, April. I haven’t had a chance to get to them all!” I said, feebly trying to defend myself.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “No. That doesn’t fly with me.”

My mind was trying to race through a list of authors I had read, ones I thought maybe she hadn’t.

“Well, what about Michener? Have you read him?” I asked.

She looked at me with a look of incredulity. And then she laughed.

“Are you asking me if I have ever read a Pulitzer Prize winner?”

Shit.

“You’re going to have to try a little harder with me, Luke.”

God, I loved this woman.

“What about Joseph Conrad?”

More snickers.

“Heart of Darkness, Nostromo. Come on, Luke.”

The meeting started, and we had to stop. But my mind continued. I started compiling a list in my head of authors that I could try to use against her. I wasn’t about to lose this easily. I paid attention to nothing that was said during the meeting. A passing mention was made about my return, I think. But my mind was occupied.

As soon as we got out into the hallway and started our walk together to our classes, I picked up again where we had left off.

“D.H. Lawrence?”

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I read that in high school because I thought it would be particularly scandalous. It wasn’t what I expected.”

“E.M. Forster?”

She actually stopped when I said his name.

“Any person worth a damn has read Howard’s End. Fact, Luke.”

I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was around to hear the “damn”. Thankfully, no one was on our end of the hallway.

“Less casual swearing in the hallway, ma’am. You don’t want to get fired before you even get hired.”

“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked, and I could have sworn she batted her eyes.

“No ma’am,” I said, knowing that even though I wasn’t a blusher, I was probably blushing now. She was sultry.

“There you go with that ‘ma’am’ shit again,” she said, putting very clear emphasis on the word “shit”. She wasn’t going to back down.

“Are you normally this defiant?” I asked, wanting to jump her right there in the hallway and claim her neck and every other part of her as mine.

She shook her head, slightly.

“I guess you just bring out the best of me,” she said.

With that, she turned, and walked into her classroom, giving me a splendid look at her ass.

When did I become an ass guy? Better yet, when did I become the kind of guy who had the hots for a married coworker?

Classes may have started but that didn’t keep us from communicating. I felt a little childish for basically texting her as soon as I sat down at my desk.

Wharton...

I figured I could judge by the amount of time it would take her to answer whether or not she was looking the author up. Even if she had read it, if she took a while I would just assume so and hold it against her.

Her response was immediate.

I thought we already discussed you asking me about Pulitzer winners? ;-)

Dammit. Age of Innocence.

I needed someone who hadn’t received any significant awards. Time for a curveball.

Collins.

Who?” she asked. Then followed with, Jackie Collins? Do you take me for a reader of trashy novels?

No, not Jackie. Suzanne.

I’m not familiar with that name.

This time I was shocked.

If you tell the students that, they might lynch you.

Why? What did she write?

Oh, just this little series about games. And hunger.

Huh?

The Hunger Games!

Oh God. I think I knew that.

And you haven’t read the series??

No sir...you can’t judge me for not reading a book written for teenagers.

Sure I can, if you are working with teenagers. Which you are!

Well, that didn’t happen until just recently! Are you giving them your seal of approval?

How should I know? You think I’ve read them?? ;-)

God, you’re such an ass. Stick with classics, Luke!

The bell chimed to let the students into the building.

I would have to look up some authors, books that I might have forgotten reading. Yeah, she was an English major also, but she hadn’t read every book ever written. I would find one.

And how was James Joyce the determining factor on whether or not I’m an imbecile??

H.G. Wells, I sent next, thinking perhaps science fiction wasn’t her forte.

A few of my first period students started making their way into the classroom.

“Hey, Mr. H!” a few of them simultaneously said.

One of my students, Warren Gold, stopped at the door, saw me, and shouted down the hallway, “Hey guys, Mr. Harper’s back!”

I wasn’t entirely sure if he was excited to see me, or warning everyone else that they needed to get to class on time and not expect a substitute again.

My phone vibrated.

Wells does not belong in the same category as the aforementioned names. But, I begrudgingly read War of the Worlds freshman year.

The bell to signify the start of class was about to ring, so I shot out one more name.

Maugham was my next attempt.

I had read Of Human Bondage in high school because I was bored and found it at the library. I was most definitely not a fan.

I HATE Maugham. Hate, hate, hate!

Wow...such strong feelings.

If you bring him up around me, I’ll spike you in the face with my heel.

Fair enough! Frequently bring up Maugham in your presence...

There will be serious consequences for breaking my rules, buddy!

Oh yeah? Like what?

You’ll see. Don’t underestimate me.

The morning flew by, thanks to movies and a texting partner that was as into the conversation as I was. My classes were all occupied watching videos, but I had no idea what she was doing over there that allowed her to be on her phone the whole time. I hoped she wasn’t interrupting class every two minutes to text me. I could just hear it now, kids wandering the hallways and lunchroom saying “Mrs. Batista and Mr. Harper texted alllll morning!” Then the glances would come from other teachers, then someone would inform the principal, and then pretty soon we would be called in for meetings and threatened with punishment if we continued this little texting game. I could try to convince them it was harmless. “It was an author game!”— I would say — but they would kick me out, fire me. I’d end up homeless, living out of my roller skate, begging Holly to take me in along with her delinquent alcoholic of a brother. She would say family comes first, and I’d be stuck in my car until Marco eventually found me and shot me in the head. Or had one of his Cuban cronies do it for him. At my funeral, they would all be muttering “Supposedly it was just an ‘author game’... if you can believe that!” I’d be dead, and it would all be James Joyce’s fault.

Yeah, so maybe my mind can turn everything into the worst-case scenario. My mother was a worrier.

But, these thoughts of being murdered in my house-car didn’t stop us from talking. We continued the game, back and forth with authors we had read: London, Hughes, Achebe, Stein, Chesterton, Dostoevsky, Browning, Longfellow. On and on we went, and she seemed to have a story behind every author she was familiar with, every story she had read. I hadn’t met anyone who shared my love of literature to quite the extent that she seemed to.

As the lunch bell chimed and my class dismissed, she was immediately at my door waiting for me.

“You are a persistent man,” she said, smiling. She was doing bad things to my mind. I was contemplating a throw down on the death couch with her, but if I was worried about texting getting me fired and killed, having sex with her in my classroom would probably achieve that end much more quickly.

“Can you blame me for trying?” I asked, getting up from my desk to meet her at the door.

“No,” she replied, “I’m just not used to someone so competitive.”

“Please,” I said as we began walking down the hall, “You are married to a professional athlete. I am fairly certain he’s competitive.”

“That’s different,” she said.

“So, you need to read James Joyce,” she added, clearly wanting nothing to do with the fact that I brought her husband into the conversation.

“Okay. I will.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, tell me what to read and I will.”

“Okay. Well, you have to read Dubliners then. Short stories, mostly depressing.”

“Sounds like my kind of pleasure reading.”

“Oh shut up. You’ll love them. He’s my favorite author.”

“That’s a pretty bold statement coming from someone who has read so many different books.”

“I can be a fairly bold person.”

“I can see that,” I said, wondering why certain things she said gave me goose bumps — the good kind.

“So you promise you’ll read it?” she asked as we neared the lunchroom. The sound of the students waiting in line was almost as offensive as the smell of fried food wafting through the halls.

“I do. I’ll just have to hit up my local public library and find it. It’s probably covered in dust.”

She jabbed me with her elbow.

“I have two copies at the house. Come by after work sometime tonight and I’ll let you borrow one.”

“Are you sure your husband won’t mind if I stopped by?”

“He won’t be home.”

And with that, she smiled and walked into the lunchroom.