The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel Read Free

his suit shirt, googyouthful muscle gave him definition. His hand was extended, and after pausing idiotically, I took it. He gripped my fingers in a firm handshake. A wiry strength pulsed in his squeeze, hinting that he could crush my hand if he wanted to.
    I stared.
    “John Smith? I'm...Mark Shapiro's cousin? He recommended this place to me as a rental?” the man continued, in response to my dumb stare.
    His voice was calm, a tone of self-assured professionalism about it. He had released my hand and returned to his agile stance, his brown eyes revealing not a trace of discomfort with my awkwardness. He waited patiently.
    I heard Anna walking up behind me. I felt her hands on my shoulders, stopping me from speaking. Anna frequently saved me from saying something stupid. Her career had trained her well in smoothing things over.
    On the other hand, she sometimes jarred people with her directness, which I had a feeling she was about to do.
    She scrunched up her nose, and extended a hand, which John took in his long, large fingers. His face had brightened at the sight of my wife, and he smiled. A smile of bright, straight teeth. “I'm Anna,” Anna said, and she gave him a smile that sent my stomach into a tailspin right through my feet, because I knew something “direct” was coming.
    Something “so Anna.”
    I worried, sometimes, that Anna was going to get someone punched in the face. Anna. She possessed a not-so-secret desire to make people uncomfortable with her directness. In her defense, she claimed that her directness (better described as a tendency to bring up anything and everything that everyone else in the room preferred to leave unspoken) eventually made everyone more comfortable. 
    But Anna was beautiful. She could say whatever the hell she wanted.
    I was the one who was going to get punched in the face.
    I could tell “directness” was coming because she always had a particular, wooden smile on her face right before she dropped something like this:
    “He's just surprised that you're black.”
    Oh lord.
    The brown eyes, set in rich chocolate skin, turned to me. John cocked his head, and the teeth flashed again. A quiver of fear snaked through me. For a moment I was unsure if his smile was friendly, or the smile of a wolf right before eating a meal.
    It was true: I was surprised that John was black. Okay? I was surprised that he looked like an NBA player in his physique, I was surprised that he looked like a model, and again, I was surprised that he was black. This is because Mark Shapiro was a stout Italian man with a stout Italian family.
    John didn't miss a beat. “Not as surprised as my daddy was.”
    My mouth hung open. This shut even Anna up for a second, and John let us stand there, unsure what to do, for a good half a minute, before he reached out and slapped me on the back. “No man, I'm just kidding.”
    I could feel Anna's delight with his edgy humor. It was sort of radiating off of her. She loved a quick mind and she loved a sharp joke that was almost over the line.
    Surprisingly, John put me at ease with his slap. His smile was friendly and immediately took the edge off his joke. Somehow, it also communicated that it was okay that I was a stupid white man who had acted like a fool when someone's cousin turned out to be black in the year 2015. 
    Anna pulled the door open and waved John in. “We're happy you're here. Come in, please.”
    “You know,” John said, and his voice was friendly but authoritative. He straightened his tie. “It's nice of you to invite me in, but I have a ton of work this evening for a deposition. Do you mind if we just go down to the place?”
    It was a Saturday. Anna's eyes sparkled with recognition of another person just like her, a person who wore a suit on a Saturday and made plans to do work all afternoon.
    “Sure,” Anna said. I could tell by her voice that she liked him very much and would rent him the apartment without even checking his credit. “Let me