Page 58 of Holding Penalty

Pride thrums in my chest. “None for me?” I ask.

“I thought you needed to get more serious about your diet.”

Something I said that night we watched a movie and ate a frozen pizza together—granted, I said that while stuffing my face with it.

“For an experimental cupcake made by my wife? I’d have to make an exception.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll bring you home one tomorrow.”

Those words really shouldn’t make my stomach somersault the way it just did.

Piper steps onto the porch, and I notice a speck of flour dust on her chin, just under her glistening bottom lip. The lip I held between my teeth when she moaned into my mouth.

“You have something,” I tell her, “on your face.”

“Hm?” She rubs her index finger next to her mouth.

“No. Lower. Below your lips.”

She scrubs her hand along her chin, but still ends up missing it.

“Here,” I say, my voice thickening too much. “Let me.”

I step toward her, feeling a wave of electric charge wash over me as I enter her personal space. My hand rises to her face, my index finger curling underneath the soft curve of her chin while the pad of my thumb brushes across the skin under her mouth, swiping away the flour.

Just the tip of my thumb grazes against the soft pink of Piper’s bottom lip, and a rush of intensity spreads through me. I feel my eyes darken as my gaze catches on her mouth, and my own lips buzz.

My hand should drop to my side, but it doesn’t. Now that Piper’s face is clean, my thumb shouldn’t sweep over her soft, glowing skin again, but it does.

I shouldn’t imagine those lips parting for me while she sinks to her knees right here on our porch, but I do.

I feel the seal of my lips opening, just minutely. I feel my hand levering up, tipping Piper’s face so her mouth is lined up with my own. I feel my own head move, tugged towards her like a magnetic pull …

The danger center of my brain activates, shaking my judgment back to life.

I drop her chin, stepping backward. “I got it.”

She blinks, the motion of her eyelids heavy, like she’s shaking herself out of a daze, too. “Oh. Thanks.” Her voice is a squeak.

Awkwardness settles over us like a heavy blanket, so I randomly ask a question that’s been in my mind for the last couple days.

“What’s with all the boxes still in your car? You need help moving them inside?”

She glances over her shoulder. “Oh, those are just my books. You don’t seem to have any empty shelf space, so I’ll just leave them in my car until I move. It’s fine.”

Until I move. Until we get a divorce. Until she leaves. An unpleasant feeling swirls in my stomach, weighing it down like a ball of lead.

Piper’s hand absentmindedly goes to her face. To where my hand just was. I wonder if she feels a buzzing—even a burning—on her skin where I touched her.

“I need a shower,” she says, stepping past me and heading inside, “I feel gross after running around all day.”

When I hear the shower start, and I know that my wife is stripping off her clothes and stepping naked underneath the hot stream of water, it takes everything I have not to shove the hand that I touched her with into my pants.

27

PIPER

“What the …?” I mutter to myself as my car slows to a stop in Nash’s driveway.