AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I’d gotten everything I wanted and achieved everything I’d hoped for. With my good looks and bank account, I was the man every man envied. Every man wanted to be. But now, they’d be fools. Hell, I didn’t even want to be me. My world was falling off its axis. Falling apart.
I’d messed up again. Big-time. While I was disciplined to a fault, my dick had a mind of its own and was insatiable. After the Alexa incident, I’d started seeing a shrink, both to deal with my grief—the loss of Anabel—and my infidelity. He said I had a personality disorder. CSBD. Compulsive sexual behavior disorder. In layman’s terms, I was a sex addict. Likely caused by an overbearing mother and controlling father. My way of rebelling against them.
He was right. The impulses had started at a young age; I wasn’t even an adolescent when I’d sneaked peeks at porn magazines (something you’d never find in the esteemed Merritt household) and played with myself incessantly, fantasizing about my hot sixth-grade teacher, Miss Turner. Blonde with legs up to her armpits—soon to become my type. In high school and college, I got to live out my fantasies with the most gorgeous girls on campus. Between getting laid, watching porn videos on my computer, and acing my coursework, I managed to get a stellar Stanford education. Following my graduation from the business school, I moved to LA and started my own company. Hot babes—the blonde, leggy, and smart kind—were hard to find at Stanford, but in the City of Angels, they were a dime a dozen, and with my looks, charisma, and success, I had my choice of models, starlets, and assistants.
I was one of those guys who had an agenda. A life plan. By the age of thirty, I wanted to make my first million. I did. By the age of thirty-five, I wanted to have five million in the bank, get married, and start a family. I hit the jackpot when I met Natalie Taylor. The company she literally turned me on to netted me twenty million when I sold it and she gave me three amazing kids.
Yet as much as I loved my wife and kids, I still couldn’t keep my pants on. And my beautiful wife’s equally beautiful friends (among others) couldn’t wait for me to take them off. My life was perfect until it wasn’t when Natalie found out about my transgression with her best friend. Alexa Roth. A woman with whom I’d had a fling—I’d screwed her brains out—while on a business trip to London when she was a hot twenty-year-old American exchange student. Though that part my wife didn’t know.
My shrink sessions lasted a couple of months. He put me on some drugs that were supposed to suppress my sexual appetite, but they made me depressed and interfered with my concentration at work. The other alternative was group therapy, but there was no way in high holy water I was going to sit around, holding hands with a bunch of sociopaths, and talk about my sexual fantasies and escapades. So, I ditched my shrink and fell off the wagon. If you asked me, it was justified. With Natalie in a near-comatose state following the death of my oldest daughter, I wasn’t getting any. There’s only so much your hands can do before you want to jump out of your skin. And her sympathetic friends made it so easy. It didn’t end with lunch. And it didn’t stop when she recovered from her mental breakdown.
In hindsight, I wish it had. A familiar, sugarcoated voice interrupted my wishful thinking.
“Oh, hi, Matt!”
Before I could turn my head, Tanya was curled up on an overstuffed chair next to me. She was dressed in an all-pink hoodie outfit and chewing a wad of gum.
“What are you doing up so early?” I asked, not overjoyed to see her. Ever since the pearl necklace incident our relationship had grown strained. Distant. With all I had on my plate, I was glad she was going back to the UK soon.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Can I get you something?”
She kept her gaze on me. “No, I’m good.” Then a pause. “You screwed up, Matt.”
There was a wild look in her eyes I’d never seen before. A menacing tone to her voice. I took a steeling breath.
“You mean because I didn’t stand up for you when my mother accused you of stealing her pearls?”
She snickered. “That would have been nice, Matt, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then, what are you talking about?”
Her lips curled into a smirk. “I know about you, Matt. What you did.”
I felt my skin bristle. “Know what?”
A diabolic smile slithered across her lips. “I caught you at your office with a friend of Natalie’s, who was at her gala. The time I went to Century City to buy a new laptop.”
Balls.
“You were going at it like rabbits. You didn’t even know I was there.” She laughed. “No wonder you were in such a good mood when you met me at the Apple Store.”
I felt heat creeping up my neck and seeping into my cheeks. A sheen of sweat swept across my forehead as my chest clenched with dread. “Tanya, let’s keep this between us. Please don’t tell Paige or Will.”
“Maybe.” She cracked her gum. “Can I ask you a question?”
I hesitantly said yes.
“Have you ever noticed how much we have in common?”
“Yeah,” I hedged with caution. “We like a lot of the same things.”
“Yeah, that too, but have you ever noticed how much we look alike?”
There was a faint similarity. We both had long-lashed brown eyes, distinct brows, and dimpled chins. And her long-fingered hands were a lot like mine. And Paige’s.
“Not really.”
