SUMMER SWAP 2 // Chapter 21

She woke to Byron pulling her off the bed—now still pulling, guiding her to one of the archways that led to the bathroom. She’d never felt more vulnerable in her life. Stark naked and exposed. Exposed down to her deepest, hardiest fears. She had shown Byron and her friends more than just her naked body. She’d shown them the places where light never shone. Try as her brain might, her body would not cooperate. Sluggish and slow, leaving her defenseless. But her verbalized complaints were just babbled nonsense.

Byron pulled her to the archway, and she braced her hand on it, coming conscious enough to say, “What are you doing?”

Byron finally looked at her—or at least she finally registered him looking at her—and his expression was not one of anger but one of soft perplexity. “Come with me,” he said.

She pleaded: “Where are you taking me?”

Byron’s perplexed expression deepened further to one of complete bafflement. “Hey,” he said, his voice soft and reassuring. He patted her cheek, then took her jawline in both hands and cupped her face, thumb-smoothing circles under her eyes, and she could read in his gaze nothing but care. She softened, wondering what on earth would make her think her husband intended something nefarious. But that was stupid: she knew exactly what would make her think her husband intended something nefarious. Guilt. Shame. Humiliation. Byron didn’t show her that.

He began to smile as his eyes studied hers, then he guided her face closer, and kissed her on the mouth. She let her body melt into his and he supported her weight with his arms wrapped against the small of her back. They stood in place like they were slow dancing, but there was no music. “Come on,” he said, stepping back and taking her hand. She put a foot forward, shaky and undetermined like a newborn foal. He walked her to the large glass-walled shower, opened the door and, walking backwards, guided her to follow him in.

When they were closed in the shower, Byron turned on the hot water, made sure the temperature was okay before he brought her under the spray. She stood and watched him, marveling. Her boyish young husband, all water-sleek muscle and tanned skin. He removed the shower wand from its overhead cradle and wetted her body. Even though she hated getting her hair wet when she didn’t need to, she dipped her chin forward and let him douse her from above, watching from the curtains of her hanging hair as Byron’s erection waggled back and forth. Only, this wasn’t sex or lust they were sharing right now. This was something else totally. Togetherness. Care.

Her heart bloomed in her chest, and as her pulse thundered with warm love for Byron, that dark part of her opened behind her eyes like a night flower facing sunshine. She was seen. Truly seen. Seen and not thrown away like trash, not disregarded or deemed unworthy of love. Instead, Byron loved her further. Cared for her.

He soaped his hands into a sudsy lather, and she lifted her hands overhead. When that made her feel woozy, she wrapped her grip around the shower-head stem, then let Byron soap her all over. He got all her dirty bits. Her underarms, the creases of her neck, her ears even. Sully’s semen had gone in her ear. He soaped her tummy, finger-rinsed out her navel. He spent a lot of time between her legs. The cleaning he did where that naughty cowboy had ravaged her had her knees shaking and her body sagging. She worried she would pull the shower stem right out of the wall. But Byron hugged her, took her body’s weight, and she fell against him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Byron soaped her backside, his soft hands stroking down her lower back, getting suds between her butt cheeks, making sure the evidence of those other men had been removed from her skin.

What surprised her most was that Byron’s reaction became to her more erotic and heart racing than the things Cody did to her. Cody was all high-horsepower sex engine, driving his big dick in and out of her like the pistons on a drag car’s motor. Pounding and pounding, twisting her frame and squealing her rubber. He’d made her come too many times to count. Sometimes it was like two orgasms at once. But it wasn’t just Cody. She knew that. Because what she’d done in front of her husband was the same thing she done with Cody the night before. And while the night before when she’d been with Cody, she’d received incredible pleasure, it was nothing like what had just happened. And that wasn’t Cody. That wasn’t Cody at all. No offense to that crazy cowboy, but he was a tool in a toolbox. Maybe Byron’s toolbox. Not even hers—or if it was hers, it was Byron who held the key. What Byron did for her now, the loving care he showed, was not something she could share with any other man on this earth but the one who had his sudsy hand in her butt crack right now. Who else would she let do that? No one.

She whispered in his ear, her voice quieter than expected and she hoped he could hear her over the water’s hiss: “I love you so much, baby.”

Byron stepped back, a small smile tilted to one side. His eyes flickered over hers and down her body. He cupped her face again like he would kiss her, but he said, “You were so beautiful.”

She smiled, then the smile faltered as coldness gripped her heart. “I’m not beautiful anymore?”

Byron showed that confounded look again and smiled. “You’re more beautiful now. I just want you to know that I saw you.”

Part of her brain felt so much guilt she thought she deserved his scorn. In many ways couldn’t believe he had no scorn for her, or at least didn’t appear to. Scorn made far more sense than Byron’s reaction.

She said, “I like you watching me.”

“It showed,” he said, circling thumbs under her cheekbones again.

It was her kissing him this time, glycogen reserves popping up and flooding her muscles well enough she could use them to do that one simple act that her heart demanded. Then the shower was off, and Byron guided her out of the stall, got her to sit on a leather padded stool in front of Carla’s makeup mirror. He took clean towels off the rack, put one over her head like a nun’s cowl, then dried her body, getting all her creases. She lifted her arms, wound the towel to bind up her hair and soak up the wet. When Byron was done, she showed him she could stand.

Now both of them assumed tentative high-schooler expressions. Two unsure lovers wondering what the other thought and what they might do next. Which was crazy, because after all they’d done, what was there left to be timid about? But, she supposed, what they shared with imaginary teen lovers was an excitement for what the future might hold. It was the first time she’d thought of it. What would their future hold? What would it look like? And while the first thing she thought of was being with Cody again while Byron watched—wondering if they would ever do it again outside of this yacht, wondering if they could find someone in the city near where they live—she realized then they’d become swingers for real. Cheyenne and Byron. But what twisted at her most was an unseemly residue underneath the glowing aftermath of the act they’d just committed. All her own sins. All the switches and buttons on the dashboard of her spy car that she’d flicked and pressed, racing along the road and spritzing out oil slicks behind her, tumbling little spiky traps that would burst Byron’s tires and send him off the road. Why the hell would she have been so mean?

Byron guided her to the bed, stopping for a moment to snap away the bed cover where Cody had fucked her and Sully had shoved—no, Scarlet had done that—his cock into her mouth. The bedding where all that bad had happened was tossed into the corner like it wasn’t going to be mentioned again. He folded back the sheets and held out a hand. She put a knee onto the bed sheet and collapsed on the bed. Byron slunk in next to her and pulled the sheets over, covering them. They were face-to-face on the pillows. It was her cupping his cheek now and running a thumb-circle under his eye. She said, “I mistreated you.”

He frowned again, but showing only a fraction of that former perplexity.

She said, “I did you wrong, but I think I know why.”

“What did you do to me?” he said, like he was thinking he had missed something, and she was about to reveal some new tragic event she’d performed behind his back. But she continued to stroke him with tender care, saying, “You know what I did. I made it hard for you to be with Carla.”

“You did?”

“Carla said all you did was talk about me.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“It’s a sample of how jealous I am. I made you afraid to enjoy it.”

“I really was thinking about you. You didn’t make that happen. I did that on my own.”

She sighed, closing her eyes and looking back to earlier in the evening with a measure of regret. “That thing we did—”

“Who’s we?” Byron’s voice was firm and concerned.

She opened her eyes again. “All four of us. You, me, Sully, Scarlet. That was dumb.”

Byron shrugged a shoulder. “It was all right. It was fun to try.”

“It wasn’t going to work because it was forced. I forced it.”

“You forced it?”

She kissed the tip of his nose, thumbed away the creases between his brows, then ran her fingers through the hair above his ear. “I’m super jealous, baby. I’m super jealous and I was afraid of you with Carla, and that sounds really stupid now.”

“A little stupid,” he said, smiling in agreement.

“I don’t know why I did that. I guess I did it because I could. Maybe it’s because I was prepared to reveal something so hidden to you that it was too much for me to handle all at once.”

“Or maybe...”

She looked at him, wondering what he would say, then realized what it would be from his sly smile. “Or maybe what?”

“Maybe you’re just kind of mean and selfish.”

If he wasn’t smiling, she would’ve been hurt. She patted his cheek lightly, but with enough strength to show the threat of a full-on slap. Byron laughed, then bit her hand.

“Ow,” she said, pulling it away.

He showed an exaggerated and fake sad face. “Oh, did I hurt you?”

“Ow,” she said again, “look what you did,” and showed him where he’d left no mark on her at all. He kissed the heel of her thumb. She said, “I don’t know why I was so devious. That’s me. That was all me. What you were willing to do is something I’m not. Or wasn’t.”

“I didn’t ask you to. I didn’t even—”

She plugged his words with an index finger pressed to his lips. “I don’t want to be there.”

“Be where?” he said around her fingertip.

And still unsteady accepting what she was suggesting, she joked: “Beware of what?”

Byron smacked her hand away from his mouth and tsk-ed. “Come on. Be where?”

“I want you to get what you’re looking for, Byron.”

“You’re what I’m looking for, Cheyenne. I found you.”

“When you say that, you make me feel bad—like you’re not what I’m looking for.”

“Tell me I’m what you’re looking for,” he said, eyeing her with undeterred amusement.

She steadied herself so he would take her seriously. “You’re everything I could want. And I mean that so much. I knew it before, but I never could dream of how I feel about you right now.”

Byron smiled, his warm eyes on hers. He said, “I like to hear that.”

“I thought you might,” she said. “But I really do mean it.”

He heard her, his features softening. Then, as if there were too much seriousness, he lifted his brows and assumed a faraway look. “Wow, so I get all that and I can sleep with Carla?” He lay back and pretended to think dreamily of Carla. She pinched his nipple, and he squashed his arm down like a chicken wing so fast his elbow brushed her nose.

“Holy cow,” she said, grabbing it.

He laughed and rolled toward her, hugging her head to his chest. “Well, don’t pinch my nipple,” he said.

“Don’t break my nose,” she said.

“I would never. Not that pretty little nose.”

He held her head to his chest for a while, brushing the backs of his fingers on her bare shoulder. When they were quiet for too long, she stirred. “Whatever you want to do, I want you to do it,” she said, putting both palms on Byron’s bare chest and pushing him back so she could look into his eyes.

“Anything I want?” One of his eyebrows cocked high and sly.

“You’re being funny, Byron, but I mean it. And it’s not like a freebie—I’m not saying hey you get this one shot, and I won’t give you any shit for it. What I mean is you can do whatever you want. I don’t imagine— I can’t imagine another way for a person to show love for another than what you just did. And I know that sounds crazy because what you did was share me and logic would dictate that sharing somebody was showing that you don’t love them and yet—”

Byron gripped both her wrists and shushed her. She had been getting quite talkative.

He said, “Anything I want?”

“Anything,” she said.

“Anytime I want?”

She nodded.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, and rolled her onto her back with her wrists folded across her chest, getting on top of her. “I want what’s mine.”

“And what’s yours?”

He opened the X of her folded arms and pinned her hands above her head. The move was funny and surprising, yet wildly exciting at the same time. Her nipples hardened, and she looked into his eyes, knowing exactly what it was her husband wanted.

“I’m taking back what’s mine. You get it?”

“I get it,” she said, beginning to shimmy her hips underneath him, trying to get him further down her body. His dick pointed straight up between them.

What Byron wanted made sense. He’d just watched her with other men. A sexual subject. In some ways, to Byron, it must be a violation and he wanted surety of his position in their relationship, to resume his masculine role.

She ran the fingertips of one hand from his neck down his chest to his tight stomach. She whispered, “You watched me. But did you like it?”

“I loved it,” he growled, easing his hips back and bringing the point of his erection between her thighs, his cock head ruffling through her pubic hair.

Her hand dropped to her own stomach, but her brow furrowed. She slipped the hand down to cover her pussy, saying to him, “Wait, Byron, I can’t.”