Best Erotic Romance 2014 Read Free

touch you?” she asked.
    â€œSeems that way.” His voice was low and quiet. This was all wrong.
    â€œJohn?”
    He stopped brushing the dirt off his boots and let his hands rest on the edges of the sink.
    â€œI can’t do this, Lucy.”
    â€œDo what? Clean your shoes? What next—you want me to blow your nose for you?”
    She was trying, but her voice was failing.
    â€œThis. Us. What we’re doing. Or what we aren’t.”
    She forced a laugh.
    â€œIs this about the sex again?”
    He looked down into the sink, at the chips and flakes of mud and grit. His jaw worked.
    â€œIt’s…just for now. Things will change.”
    â€œThat is true,” he nodded, still looking into the sink like he was reading tea leaves. “Lucy, life goes by.”
    He looked up at her, then. His eyes, blue as a willow-pattern plate, flecked with gold, his long lashes. Even then, when her heart was starting to hurt quite badly, the beauty of him was stunning.
    â€œMummy, where are my shoes?” Robin ran into the room and slammed against her mother, hanging from her shirt.
    â€œNot now, love,” she said, pushing her daughter back toward the stairs. “Look in your room.”
    â€œSpeaking of rooms.”
    â€œI’m sorry?”
    â€œI can’t sleep in there another night.”
    â€œOur bed? We don’t sleep anyway, so—”
    â€œLucy. Please.” He pressed his lips together. The room looked weird. Everything was placed wrong, like a stranger’s house. The Dutch-blue walls. She struggled to focus. It hurt to stay present, but something in her was screaming, and she thought that for once, maybe she had no choice.
    â€œI wake up sometimes and I don’t know how it all happened. I’m lying there next to you and you’re in that fucking dressing gown.”
    â€œIn case she wakes up. Or the kids, one or the other. Christ, John, you know why.”
    â€œAnd I don’t even recognize you.” She lifted her head, startled. He was looking at her and it was actually painful, she could feel cold anger in her belly.
    This wasn’t John. The man who thought he could take on the world, including her mother’s snobbish relations, and not only charm them but make them happy at the same time.
    â€œI—I love you.”
    â€œYou love everything day in day out without even thinking about it. It’s your job.”
    â€œAre you sneering at me?”
    He didn’t answer. The rage rose in her like something out of control, like an animal finally driven out of its hibernating place. She heard the kids arguing next door and the front door opened and her mother’s gentle, bewildered face floated in, looking at her like she’d seen a ghost she didn’t quite recognize.
    Lucy turned and ran. Ran to the bedroom, and threw herself in among the crumpled sheets and the clothes and the mess. The door opened and without looking to see who it was, she screamed over her shoulder.
    â€œGet out. Leave me alone.”
    There was the crack of a door closing, Stephen’s voice raised short and sharp. She waited for the wails, and the kids to burst in, and her mother to start saying, “Excuse me,” over and over again, voice spiraling, as she did when she got distressed. They never left her alone. Never had, not for years. She buried her face in the pillow and felt her own hot breath absorbed by the feathers.
    And then they did. The house that was never quiet became suddenly, weirdly so. She could hear a voice, murmuring, moving back and forth. Footsteps. Doors closing, gently. Outside thecar’s engine started up and she lifted her head. Where was he going? Was he taking the children? She stumbled out of bed, ran to the window, clawed back the blind. Outside it was gathering dusk, the sky stained the color of strong tea.
    â€œJohn!” She practically screamed it, voice strangled.
    â€œI’m here,” he