Chapter Six

Jim was halfway inside the house when he heard it: a woman's moan of pleasure. He closed his eyes as his c**k responded and became erect in his swim shorts. It was Rory, of course. 

The delectable way she looked in her dark pink satin nightie imprinted itself in his mind, and he was sure she wasn't wearing panties. Jesus, she was sexy as hell. He couldn't blame his brother for claiming her as soon as she returned to the bedroom.

If Rory were his--well, she wouldn't be leaving his bed in the middle of the night, that's for goddamned sure. But if she'd gone outside and he detected the smell of another male on her upon her return, he would immediately stake his claim to remind her who she belonged to. f**k, he was an animal. How could he harbor these thoughts about his sister-in-law?

He locked the sliding door that led to the backyard patio and headed for his room. He needed a goddamn cold shower, that's what he needed. On his way there, he was struck frozen by another one of Rory's moans--longer this time and a little louder. 

He'd never heard his brother and his wife make love before, but he's usually asleep around this time. Or maybe this was a rare thing and Sam wasn't in the habit of f*****g his wife in the middle of the night. Jim smirked. If Rory were his wife--but she isn't, is she? Get a move on, you pathetic pervert.

Jim reached his bedroom on the other side of the house and closed the door to block out the sounds. It was no use, though. He could still hear Rory in his mind. He wondered if he ever crossed her mind while she made love to his brother.

He laughed to himself and went into his ensuite bathroom, taking off his wet shorts. He wrung them over the sink and hung them on a hook behind the door. He tried to keep his bathroom clean because he knew Rory sometimes came in here to clean and he didn't want her to be grossed out.

He turned on the shower and stepped into the bathtub without bothering to test the water temperature. The cold made him curse up a blue storm, but it helped ease his ardor a little bit. For a few weeks now, he'd been telling himself "Just a few more months and I can get out of here and forget about Rory." That was a joke. He knew now that he'd always been in love with her. He'd stayed away because he couldn't stand the sight of her being happy with his brother.

Jim braced his palm against the tiled wall and allowed the cold water to sluice over his head and face. But even that wasn't enough to destroy the pictures he had of Rory in his head. He needed release if he was going to get any sleep tonight.

He could call Nikki or Jenny, his old mainstays, as they have made it very clear to him that they'd always welcome his company, but he didn't want to bring a woman back to his brother's house. Sam said it was okay, but he couldn't disrespect Rory like that. This was her house more than it was Sam's. It just wouldn't feel right.

Besides, neither of them was Rory. He had never settled for the second-best and wasn't going to start now. He'd rather go without if he couldn't have the real thing.

Easier said than done, though. He was hornier than a Billy goat. He squirted some hair conditioner onto his palm, closed his eyes, and reimagined the pool scene.

Rory walked up to him in her dark pink spaghetti-strapped satin nightie, her hips swaying to her own natural rhythm. Her full mouth curled up in a smirk, she sat next to him by the pool, uncaring that the bottom of her nightie was getting wet.

"Couldn't sleep either, huh?" She took the cigarette from him, took a deep drag, inhaled deeply, and exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. She reached across his body, her breasts brushing his arm as she grabbed the empty Dr. Pepper can he'd been using as an ashtray. She dropped the cigarette into the hole.

"You shouldn't be smoking, my dear. It's bad for you," she told him in her husky, kittenish voice. 

"I have an oral fixation." He was staring at her mouth, which reminded him of fresh, plump strawberries. 

“Oh yeah?” She smiled and the tip of her pink tongue peeked out to lick her upper lip. “So do I.” She put her hand on his arm and stroked upward toward his bicep. “I’ve been thinking about you, Jim. I haven’t stopped.” 

“What about me?” His voice had gone hoarse and he can’t stop gawking at her t**s, straining against the fabric of her satin nightie. He ought to, she was bound to notice.

“Just you in particular. You see anything you like?”

He dragged his gaze to meet hers and saw raw desire glittering in her dark eyes. She wanted him, too. “Everything, Rory. Everything of yours, I’ve always liked.”

She slid closer to him and draped her arms around his neck. “You never said anything before,” she whispered against his mouth.

“You’re my brother’s wife,” he murmured as she began to trace his lips with her tongue. “I don’t want to disrespect anything you have with him.”

Her hand crawled up to bury itself in the thickness of his hair and pulled. “Well, what if I asked you to disrespect me, Jim? Over and over again? Right here and right now?”

“Rory…”

She pulled back away from him so she could remove her nightie, revealing pert, apple-sized breasts with brown n*****s. She tossed the nightie in the pool where it floated on the water, an obscene reminder of his disloyalty to his brother. 

“I know you want me, Jim,” she whispered, caressing her own breasts and flicking the n*****s. “Come and get me. Please.”

Jim couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed her and covered her mouth with his own, devouring those full lips he’d been wanting to kiss for years. He sucked on them, nibbled on them, licked them. “f**k, Rory, I’ve been wanting to kiss you forever,” he said in between kisses. “God, you’re a goddess.”

“Oh, Jim, I’ve just been waiting for you to make a move.” She moved her head, giving him access to her throat and neck. “I watch you swim at night. I watch you play basketball with Hector. I watch you hose yourself off after a run… Oh, Jim… you are so hot…”

Jim lay her down by the pool on his towel and got on top of her. He was shaking. Why was he shaking? Because he was finally kissing Rory, the girl of his dreams, the one he’d been dreaming about since his senior year of high school, and he saw her while visiting Sam at his college. 

“Jim,” she was moaning as he took her n*****s into his mouth. “I need you inside me, please. Jim. I need you.”

He pulled back because he needed to see her eyes before he entered her. He wanted her to know that it was him making love not her, not Sam. Her warm chocolate eyes gazed at him through half-closed lids. f**k, he loved her. He covered her mouth with his once more before pulling her legs open, guiding himself into her, and thrusting in.

“Oh, God, Jim,” she whispered in his ear, wrapping her legs around his hips. “f**k me.”

“Damn,” he muttered, slamming his fist into the tile as he came. Jesus, how horrible would it be if he finally got to be with Rory and he nutted as soon as he got inside her? 

He watched as the evidence of his shame went down the drain before grabbing a towel to dry himself off. In a few hours, it would be Saturday morning. He hated Saturdays. He didn’t have to work, so he was stuck at home with Sam and Rory. He didn’t want to intrude on their private time together, so he usually just stayed in his room and read. Or watched TV. 

He avoided Sam and Rory mostly because he hated seeing them together. These last few weeks, he’d developed a possessiveness about Rory. It was probably because Sam had been working a lot, so often it was just Jim and Rory having dinner together most nights before they sat in the den and watched something dumb on TV or played chess or checkers before going to bed. Separately. Rory had been trying to get him to teach her backgammon, which was something he and Sam used to play with their Grandpa Frederick when they were kids. 

He rubbed his hair with the towel until it was somewhat dry before hanging it on the back of his desk chair. He could try to go to sleep, he supposed. That was a thing he still did sometimes. More often than not, he found himself staring at the ceiling above his bed, with his hands behind his head, recounting all of Beethoven’s Symphonies by memory. Sometimes he did Bach. Sometimes Tchaikovsky. 

There was a piano in the family room that Rory sometimes played around with, but she kept it around more for sentimental value than anything. Rory was a romantic and her grandmother on her father’s side had been a concert pianist who gifted her own first piano to Rory when Rory was a teen. It was a little out of tune and he’d been meaning to take a look at it, but he’d rather do it when he was home alone. 

Sometimes Rory would ask him to play the piano, but he’d never indulged her, telling her he was rusty. He hadn’t had much practice in years, so he’d probably forgotten how. In truth, he was afraid of disappointing her because she thought he was some musical genius. Maybe one of these days, he would play the piano for her. Perhaps she’d ask him to teach her and that could be another thing that they had together that didn’t involve Sam.

Jim looked at the calendar on his wall. Four more months. He had four more months before he could even think about moving out of his brother’s house. That’s when the ankle monitor would come off and he’d be free to leave Calabasas. 

Jim dreaded the day that would come, but he prayed for it, too. One way or another, something had to give.