Free Kept by Carolyn Faulkner Page A

delegating more things at work than he ever had in the past so that he could spend as much time as possible with Trish.
    But the wild, explosive sex was not the only reason why he liked to be with her. She made him laugh, and sometimes even laughed at him or things he said, which made a bubble form in his chest that was almost painful. They could discuss anything, and did
    - loudly, but neither bent to the other’s position. Sometimes, though, when things were very quiet and they had finally settled into what he had come to think of as their home, he would sometimes catch her staring out the window with the most melancholy expression on her face, as if she had never smiled in her life and never expected to in the future. It ripped his gut open from the inside out, and he wanted to fix it, to banish that look from her face forever, and his most immediate solution was to throw money at her in hopes of making her happy. Reed found though, that he was involved with a very stubborn and independent woman, and his attempts to smooth her way through life with his money only seemed to truly annoy her.
    The worst arguments they had were over money. He wanted to bankroll her life, but at the very least, her redecorating. She refused to even consider it. The money he was paying her every two weeks was just sitting in her checking account, because he was paying for absolutely everything. Trish was not about to allow him to pay for that, too. Reed countered that, since he was living there, too, shouldn’t he have some input into what the inside of the house looked like?
    Tricia was only too happy to inform him that he was more than welcome to come along with her as she looked at endless samples of wallpaper and paint, but that the final decision was hers

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    BacksideOfLove.com

    KEPT
    alone. Reed managed to conjure a fake injured look, but she wasn’t buying it. In the end, she did a beautiful job, and did it herself with only a little help from her cousins and their friends. He had arrived home one afternoon and interrupted a painting party, where she’d supplied the beer and pizza (after the painting was done, of course) and everyone chipped in to paint. All of the painting that needed to be done was accomplished in one longish day, and by the time he got there they were just breaking into the keg and placing an order at Pizza Slut.
    That night, after everyone had gone home, he joined her in a long, hot shower, gently helping her get speckles of melon madness paint out of her hair and her ears and off her elbows and knees. Then he dried her and lifted her into their bed, where Reed stretched out on his back and arranged her on her back on top of him. He was already hard, as usual around her, and joined her body with his immediately, then spent a long time leisurely stroking his palms up and down her tummy and over her oh-so-sensitive breasts while he buried his mouth at that very vulnerable spot where neck became shoulder and slowly, very slowly, he drove them both absolutely crazy.
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    BacksideOfLove.com

    Carolyn Faulkner

Chapter VII
    everal months later, they were very happily settled into their lives and their routine. At least he was, he S thought, leaning back in his desk chair. They had no real need for a formal living room – Reed had retained his place, and if he needed to do any business entertaining it would be done there. She had not backed down one iota about not wanting to act as his hostess, but he was learning that when she said something, she stuck to it. But he was working on her. So they had turned what had probably been intended originally as the "back parlor" or family room into an office, which they shared. Trish was busily typing away on her desktop just a few feet away, and Reed found himself sighing contentedly as he watched her.
    Despite his own deep sense of contentment, though, he was truly concerned about her. She was listless and quiet and sad, and that was definitely not her. For a while