Hot and Bothered Read online

  He didn't think so. First of all, Tamara would never find out. And second of all he would never see the other woman again, that much he was certain of.

  He couldn't really even remember her name now. It was all some big haze.

  “I've got to wake up,” Jude said to himself. “I've got to wake up, I've got to wake up, I've got to wak—”

  The house dissolved into a swirl of snow around him, lifting up in great sheets that whirled counter-clockwise into the heavens. Jude couldn't believe what he was seeing, for a moment forgetting he was dreaming because everything seemed so real.

  Even the furniture was dissolving into little flecks and being sucked up into some unseen vortex high above him. Jude held his hand up in front of his face to see little holes start to form in it. He shook his hand like a bug had landed on it, but when he held it in front of his face again the holes had grown larger.

  For a second he could see his own bones but then they too started to turn into a fine dust that seemed to turn to smoke and float away from him into the mass swirling aroun

  d him.

  Chapter Eight

  JUDE SLOWLY OPENED his eyes to the glaring light of the sun.

  It took him a second to realize where he was and what he had been doing, and then another moment to feel around for the woman he had fucked silly that afternoon.

  She seemed to have gone somewhere else. Probably back to the resort, he reasoned, since there was literally nowhere else for her to go.

  Jude got up and went back inside, dragging both robes after him as he went. After poking around his little house for a second, he checked his tickets to make sure everything was set for his departure tomorrow morning. Although it was probably a little bit anal retentive for him to constantly check and recheck his plane tickets, but he just hated the thought of somehow slipping up on some little thing to have to wait another few days here on the island.

  Sure, he loved it here but he also missed his fiancé more than anything.

  At the thought of Tamara, the dream came flooding back to him. Jude stood still and leaned against a cabinet and massaged his temples.

  Shem">What the fuck had the dream meant? Jude was the kind of person who kept some stock in dreams, not that he thought they were the end all be all of the future or anything. Just that he thought that it was good to pay attention to them if you had one that was particularly hard to forget.

  Jude ran over the dream again and again. He tried to remember if at any point of the dream, he had said his two future children's names. Or if he had thought them clearly enough to be remembered.

  He didn't think that he'd really known their names. It was like they were stand-in actors on some set that had been filming off in Hollywood.

  “Have I fucked my life up?” Jude thought to himself idly. He couldn't see how his actions would have any real impact or significance on what went on in his day to day life.

  “Fuck it. Oh well,” Jude said to no one as he went to bed for the night, setting his alarm to wake him bright and early so he could catch his plane out of there.

  * * *

  ELIZE FELT BORED as Gerald maneuvered her around while he showed her off to the many people dressed up for the cocktail party at the governor’s estate. Gerald kept introducing her to person after person, but Elize had realized early on that Gerald really didn't want her to say anything back.

  She was there only to be seen on his arm as a trophy, nothing else. In a few months, when spring came, this would become her life for the long term.

  After being wed to Gerald, she wouldn't have much else to worry about in the rest of her life. He would take care of her as long as she played the part Gerald wanted her to, and that included smiling as he introduced her to person-after-person and she said nothing but simply smiled and nodded as if agreeing with whatever was said to her.

  The governor’s estate was pretty swank, that much was obvious to anyone who had spent even a minute of time on the grounds. Elize yearned to walk around and explore but instead, Gerald posted up on the path that led in from the coat room and entry way of the mansion so he could shake peoples' hands and keep introducing Elize again and again.

  It was like they were some kind of politicians, which, in all reality, they kind of were and Elize knew it. Being a high profile lawyer wasn't exactly hard science, and there were plenty of people that charged less and did more.

  But those people weren't here right now. Gerald was with her. She had to admit he did look particularly regal tonight all dressed up. He tended to go a little retro when he got snazzy, with old school cuff links and a hair cut from the fifties. His horn-rimmed glasses and silver hair made him look like he belonged back in the fifties along with his haircut.

  Elize watched Gerald shake hands with important power couple after power couple and realized what really set Gerald apart from the rest of the people in the room was the intensity of his gaze. When he looked at you, you really knew there was something going on behind those ice blue eyes of him.

  It was like how Bukowski wrote about a man who had the gaze of a tiger in his poem “Poverty.” Elize couldn't help but admire Gerald even if she didn't exactly admire the future they would have together.

  She felt resigned to the fact that it was what it was, though. She was getting what she wanted out of it as well, she had to remind herself sometimes. It was easy to forget how much money she could play with now, and how she had absolutely no financial troubles except not being able to spend the money fast enough.

  As more and more couples said their greetings and moved past them, Elize couldn't help but smile to herself about how happy she was that she had gotten a little adventuring down in the Caribbean.

  It had been fun to fuck someone she had never met before and watch as he shot his spunk all over her. She wasn't really sure why it turned her on so much, but it did. She could feel herself becoming moist as she thought about it even while she was shaking a hand attached to some important person that she wasn't supposed to talk to, only nod in agreement of something the person never said.

  Over and over again, this happened, and each time Elize became a little more happy that she had fucked around on Gerald while she was away.

  She was sure that he had done it to her, so why not? It wasn't like they wer

  e absolutely madly in love, anyway.

  Chapter Nine

  “DID YOU HEAR?” one of Gerald's cronies asked him loud enough for Elize to hear what was being said.

  “No, what?” Gerald replied.

  “That Jude guy is going to be here, what is his last name... fuck. I don't remember now. Oh yeah! It's Jude Hayle,” Gerald's friend said. “The playboy billionaire who runs his father's banking businesses for him.”

  “Businesses as in plural?”

  “Yep, plural. Daddy owns a number of them and has his son running them all,” Gerald's friend said.

  That name sounds familiar, Elize thought to herself.

  She thought about it as time slowly ticked by, and realized that the person who had owned the beach house she had fucked had gone by that name. Or had Joey said that the owner’s name was something else?

  No... she was pretty sure that he’d said the owner’s name was Jude and that his father owned a bunch of banks or something. He mentioned Hayle after the sex, while they lounged at the recliner, but she did not mind the name so much because she was having such a good time relaxing with him.

  Suddenly her mouth went dry. She tried to lick her lips as she thought frantically. What if this Jude character had seen her fucking that day? Would Gerald care? Probably if it got brought up to him in an embarrassing way.

  “Another thing,” Elize overheard Gerald’s friend talking again. “I've heard that his fiancé lets him play around as long as he keeps his father’s money flowing, which I'm sure he does considering how much of it he has access to.”

  Gerald laughed. “She’s marrying into an elite family. Let him play around any which way he wanted as long as she�
��s keeping his ring on her finger.”

  Her eyes darted to Gerald’s face, a bit surprised at his harsh words. If she hadn’t had her own money and her own career in her father’s law firm, would he think the same way about her?

  On the other hand, she might be letting him play around, but he pretended she did not know it. And when push came to shove, she knew she’s not doing it because he was wealthy. She’d just... it was just how things go. Whatever her credentials were, to people like Gerald and her father, she was the trophy wife and the trophy daughter. Nothing more.

  Suddenly, a quiet murmur ran over the crowd as a couple stepped from the mansion onto the path that led into the general estate, the same one that Gerald and Elize stood by.

  The couple slowly made their way down the path as people turned to greet them.

  Suddenly, Elize recognized the man, and it all snapped into focus for her.

  Fuck. Joey and Jude were the same person.

  And he was looking at her in such a way that she knew he had already seen her. He already knew who she was.

  Her mind spun with the possibilities. Had Jude known all along she would be here? What would he say to Gerald?

  “Well, Geral Vv wcoher credend, a pleasure to meet you in person,” Jude said after they were introduced by one of Gerald’s circle of friends, who’d been quite ecstatic that Jude zeroed in on their group as soon as he was near them. “And... Elize? Is that you?” he asked in mock surprise, while his eyes seemed to be telling her something important.

  “Oh, you remember,” she hedged before Gerald could say anything while she kept an expression of pleasant surprise on her face, too, instead of the confusion and panic that she was feeling. What game was he playing?

  Jude took her hand and kissed her fingers while staring her right in the face. Elize blushed a deep red and glanced at Jude's beautiful fiancé, wondering what she thought of the entire thing. She didn't seem to mind though, and in fact seem to not care at all.

  “Who is your wonderful wife?” Gerald said, without seeming to notice or care about the kiss, though Elize didn't know if she could really count on him being okay with it. Gerald tended to keep his cards fairly close to his chest. It was really hard to tell, but Elize figured she was safe as long as she was in public. If things got dicey and Gerald started asking questions while they were alone, she could just deflect and point out how he had asked to meet Jude's fiancé.

  “My name is Tamara,” the other woman said. “It's a pleasure to meet both of you. Jude knew Elize from school or something like that, isn't that right, honey?”

  “Completely right, sweetheart,” Jude said, grinning wide at her now while she sighed in relief. “We went to highschool together briefly before I moved to the east coast due to my father's work. I and Elize even saw each other for a little bit.”

  “Really?” Tamara said. “I didn't know that. Oh, isn't that neat!”

  “Quite quaint really, but you know how old time things are like that,” Jude said, and then gave Elize a wink for all to see. Tamara laughed at her fiancé’s antics before they moved down the path.

  “Really, you two were a thing?” Gerald asked her in surprise.

  “I guess so, dear. It was too short a time and I didn't really remember ‘til he mentioned it,” Elize said. “I mean, I kind of remember a boy I maybe kissed before he left for the east coast with his father for business.”

  “Well, you know how boys are, dear,” he said as if he knew. “What isn't a big deal to you is to them sometimes.”

  She had gone inside again, thinking, and didn’t answer.

  Why had Jude made up the story of how they had seen each other in high school and why tell it so both of their significant others could hear it?

  It just didn't make sense to her, unless maybe Jude had seen her first and had planned ahead to make up some kind of story in case they meet each other with their significant others on the path.

  Or maybe he was just being a dick and he was yanking her chain so that she would stay away from him for the rest of the night.

  Elize decided all she co

  uld do was to wait it out and see what would happen.

  Chapter Ten

  THE REST OF the evening, Gerald drifted around with Elize on his arm while she couldn’t help but think about what had happened in the Caribbean.

  Strangely enough, instead of feeling ashamed, she felt very turned on. Like she wanted to fuck right this second. For a little while she considered trying to pull Gerald into a bathroom to find a stall where he could rail her out, but then she decided against it.

  Even though the thought of immediate sex sounded good, it wasn’t something they would normally do. He wasn’t the adventurous type. He would always thi ^v wcomediatenk about how embarrassing it would be if they got caught.

  On the other hand, she just knew Joey — Jude — would be on for something like this, depending on how they fucked each other in the Caribbean. At least, he was discreet and didn’t tell his fiancée about it, since she let him play around and she did not mind, as long as they were the ones officially together.

  They spent the rest of the party moving freely around the estate. At one point, they were shown through a hedge maze with Jude and his date a little ahead of them on the path.

  Jude kept throwing hooded glances at Elize that she kept pretending not to see. Gerald seemed absolutely oblivious to the whole thing, which made Elize feel fairly terrible for having to lie to him about it.

  She wondered if she really meant more to Gerald than being a trophy wife, like maybe he actually felt feelings about her that were much more than the average feelings a rich husband had for his fiancé.

  He didn’t seem to be thinking of serious thoughts like her, though. He seemed to love the water fountain and how the governor allowed wild geese to play in it whenever the mood struck them. The governor was nowhere to be found the entire party, evidently, from what the rumors said, busy checking on some kind of investment overseas. This, however, did not let the guests of a party he was absent for escape his eccentricities.

  Streamers shot out of poppers at midnight and flooded the party with a swirling mass of motion and texture that almost made Elize sick.

  It almost made Jude sick as well, as it reminded him so much of his dream after he'd fucked Elize silly. He hadn't expected to see her here, but when he'd seen her from afar he figured that he should make up some kind of story that would allow him to get closer to her later in the night without Tamara pegging her as someone he must have played with. Making her a former classmate and not a recent acquaintance was the answer.

  Jude hadn't really hammered out the idea in his head but he knew that it wouldn't be too out of line to ask Elize to walk around the estate with him and talk about old times. Hell, Gerald would probably insist that she do it if only to ensure that they be picked ahead of their peers in future business transactions.

  He knew this could happen, because it happened all the time.

  The two pairs of couples danced around each other at the party in long orbits that never really seemed to quite intersect. Both couples wondered if the other was purposefully doing this but no matter what the other did, they never really seemed to be able to get their orbits to cross each other.

  Gerald finally got tired and sat down outside on a bench by the fountain. It was one of those parties that would go all night until the sun came up, so he figured that if they took a breather it wouldn't matter.

  There would be plenty of time for them to make a very good impression on everyone that had been invited to the party.

  Elize thought the same thing, but wondered why the plan was on Jude's end of things. She hoped he didn't plan on doing anything to obnoxious or crazy.

  But when she thought about the crazy things they could do — and enjoy it — she got all moist in her panties. Oh God, what a night it would be!

  A night punctuated with streamers popping out of poppers and people drinking too much.

&nb
sp; Maybe punctuated with more than that, if she were lucky, she thought as she saw him again from across the lawn.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Read the next book by C.J. McLane:

  If you like this book, you will also like Frenzied And Excited...

  CHANCE ENCOUNTERS AND TRYSTS IN THE DARK

  A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A BASEMENT IN A MANSION

  Elize has returned from her vacation in the Caribbean to be, once again, the trophy daughter and the trophy girlfriend. In a party in the Governor’s Mansion, who else is she and Gerald, her fiancé, to encounter but Jude and his fiancée, Tamara?

  The secret here is that Jude and Elize had a chance encounter in the Caribbean as “Joey” and “Anna”. They parted ways after their wild adventure, and now has met each other again without their masks -- and with their significant others in tow. Jude has to make up a story about their being former classmates so Tamara will not get jealous. But that’s not the only secret.

  The other secret here is that they aren’t the only ones who’d had illicit encounters. And the other two aren’t complaining at all when they are left to themselves while Jude and Elize “catch up” on old times.

  Who else would like to be in on the secret?

  Find out by reading on!

  Unravel more of this fascinating boo