Read Spiral of Bliss 03 Awaken for Free Online

stomach. Liv leans closer to the camera to look at me, her eyes dark with lust and lingering pleasure.
    “You are so damn sexy,” she whispers.
    “It’s all for you.” I rub my cock until the sensations ease, not taking my eyes off my wife. I swear I can almost taste her heat, smell her arousal.
    Liv pushes up from the chair and presses a kiss close to the camera. I smile and put my finger against her puckered lips, wishing I could feel them, feel her.
    A stab of irritation hits me suddenly that there’s an ocean between us, that we’re on different continents, that she’s there and I’m here.
    Liv moves back from the camera. Her pretty face fills the screen, all brown eyes, thick lashes, that luscious mouth.
    “I love you,” she says. “Call me tomorrow?”
    “Right at ten.”
    We exchange goodbyes, and I go to clean up. I get dressed, organize my work for the day, and put file folders in my backpack.
    Before leaving, I draw a quick picture and scan it into an email:
     
    TO: The Queen Bee
    FR: The Frog Prince

    I press the send button, then pull on my jacket and head out into the dawn.

CHAPTER THREE

     
     
     
    Olivia
     
     
    y husband doesn’t just love me. He knows
how
to love me. He knows what I need and when I need it, sometimes even better than I do. He knows how to unfold all the tight, rough parts of me and smooth them out with one glide of his hand. He knows how to prove that he—and only he—understands every crevice of my soul. He knows how to remind me that I am forever safe within his heart.
    And all of this has never been more apparent to me than it is now, as Dean continues wooing me under the precepts of his own version of courtly love.
    I know. Could not be more dorky. And yet, after all we’ve been through, for us it is also intensely personal and beautiful.
    Over the next week, Dean sends me emails at least three times a day with poems and quotes:
     
    TO: Olivia West (aka exalted mistress)
    FR: Dean West (aka lowly servant)
     
    Miss you.
    Want to kiss you.
     
    (for the record, Mrs. West, I wrote this one myself)
     
    He attaches Internet pictures of smiling cartoon hearts and fluffy, big-eyed animals snuggling with each other. These adorable images are often followed by notes about the archeological discovery of a post-medieval building north of the transept wall or the aboveground structural analysis of a church.
    Our messages never fail to make me smile, and the warm feeling lasts all day as I run errands, take walks along the lake pathways, and work at the library, bookstore, and museum.
    One morning almost three weeks after his departure, I return home for lunch, taking a few letters and bills from the mailbox. There’s a small box outside our apartment door with a printed label reading:
Mrs. Olivia West.
    I go inside and open the package, which contains a slender gold ring with a ruby embedded in the band. The accompanying note instructs me to wear the ring on the little finger of my left hand with the stone turned toward my palm, symbolic of our intense, secret love.
    I glance at the clock and calculate that it’s about nine p.m. in Tuscany. Picking up the phone, I dial Dean’s cell number. He answers on the second ring.
    “Good one, professor,” I say.
    “You like it?” He sounds pleased.
    “I love it. Thank you.”
    “Are you wearing it?”
    “Just like you told me to.” I spread out my hand to admire the gold band. “It fits perfectly. How did you know the size of my little finger?”
    “I know exactly how you fit into things and what fits into you.”
    Warmth floods my chest at the faint huskiness of his voice. “Oh.”
    He gives a muffled laugh. “Gotta be at a review meeting in five minutes. I’ll call you later tonight.”
    “Tease.”
    “Just trying to prove my adoration for my lady.”
    “You proved that years ago.”
    And every day since.
    After we hang up, I enjoy the warm fuzzies for a few minutes before I gather the mail I’d left on the foyer