Chapter 1
Dr. Aubrey Prentice loved her husband, Foster, but she wasn’t in love with him.
He was dull. Depressing. Predictable.
And the man she was really in love with, Ian Henshaw III, was married.
Ian was ruthless. Powerful. Dangerous. And he hated Aubrey with a vengeance.
As his psychiatrist, she was challenging his marriage, his relationship with his grandfather, and his chance to rule the world of industry.
So why did she fantasize about seducing Ian and leaving her husband?
Because Ian was so fucking gorgeous.
For a while now, Aubrey had imagined enjoying the new and magnificent life that would come with the virile, young heir to the Henshaw fortune.
And it was the attractive, charming, and absolutely filthy-rich Ian Henshaw III who gave Dr. Aubrey Prentice a reason to start rethinking her whole way of doing things.
Why the hell shouldn’t she?
Every man should be so fucking brutal as Ian.
Her husband, Foster, came from a prestigious family and had inherited one of their homes in Orchard Park, NY, a Westchester neighborhood with sweeping lawns, stately facades, and old-money landscaping. A younger Aubrey had been dazzled; the Aubrey of today was decidedly not.
As a psychiatrist, she had learned a great deal about life.
And despite being married to a relationship doctor, Foster was awful in bed. Slow, hesitant, fumbling. Even after years of practice. Maybe he wasn’t interested in sex at all.
Still, he remained good for business.
As a psychiatrist specializing in sexuality counseling, Dr. Aubrey Prentice could point to a perfectly respectable marriage when she needed to reassure certain patients.
A stable home life. A handsome husband.
Evidence that her expertise extended into her own domestic world.
But only from a distance.
Up close, it was clear that there were too many discrepancies to ignore; their relationship was in trouble. The marriage finally buckled when Aubrey understood that Foster’s only real contributions were his good looks and his family’s money.
He excelled as Orchard Park’s primary city planner, yes. But his devotion to architecture left him incurably dull, a man who could talk for hours about cornices yet not manage thirty seconds of genuine intimacy.
This morning, as Aubrey and Foster were waking up, she felt her husband’s clumsy hands groping for her breasts.
She obliged him and let out a soft moan of pleasure.
Every once in a while, they had sex in the morning before going to work, his poor attempts at lovemaking always testing her patience.
She had to have a fantasy to get through the inconvenience.
This morning, Dr. Aubrey Prentice thought of Ian Henshaw III as she felt her husband draw her closer and press against her backside with his rigid hardon.
She responded by wrapping her arm back around his head and pulling him close to her neck. He started kissing her there, and she began to get aroused while she formed a solid picture of Ian in her mind.
Aubrey hadn’t had a decent conversation with Ian yet. He would rather die than reveal anything about himself.
But that didn’t stop her from fantasizing about him every chance she got.
Oh, Ian. I want you to fuck me now!
Ian was everything her husband wasn’t. Dominant, sensual, and utterly real. His hands were rough from factory work, his shirts tight around his biceps, his trousers fitted just enough to leave her imagination no rest.
He smelled of metal, sweat, and something dangerously masculine.
Foster smelled like expensive aftershave and wool suits.
Ian was sent to her because his grandfather thought he was too hot-headed to run the family’s factories.
Psychotherapy wasn’t a choice for Ian. His father and grandfather had impossibly high and demanding expectations for him to succeed. He was failing, and Aubrey was their last hope.
It was Aubrey’s job to tame him. To shape him. To mold him.
Ian Henshaw III was at a breaking point. So was his marriage. So was his future at Henshaw Industries.
He was having problems with a wife he didn’t love. He was unsuccessful as heir apparent to Henshaw Industries. And the last thing Ian wanted was Aubrey’s meddling.
Suddenly, Ian’s image left her head.
Foster’s smooth hands had brought her back to her shitty reality.
He was fondling her breasts.
So, to keep her arousal going, Aubrey went to a fantasy psychotherapy session she would like to have with Ian. He was like a bad child who had been called into the principal’s office for a scolding he deserved.
In reality, Ian was vile. In her fantasy, Ian made himself available to her.
The first thing she noticed about Ian was his hands.
They were large and rough, a working man’s hands, out of place against the smooth Italian leather of her office chairs. When Ian Henshaw III folded them together, the sound of skin against skin was faint but audible, a low rasp that made her pulse skip.
He sat across from her.
Tall, broad-shouldered, but humbled.
Like a warrior who had been taken to task for losing a battle.
His light blue shirt was rolled at the sleeves, showing the line of his forearms. A man like that was supposed to look powerful, but in her office, he looked uncertain, nervous.
Maybe he wasn’t so tough after all.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said. “
“Never done what?”
“Talk to a woman about my feelings.”
“This is therapy, Ian,” Aubrey said. “You’re not confiding in a woman, you’re talking to a psychiatrist.”
“Well, then what I mean is, I’ve never talked to a psychiatrist before. But you already knew that.”
“Then let’s start with something I don’t know,” Aubrey smiled. “How are you feeling in general?”
“To be honest,” he said. “I feel run down, defeated.”
“Is this a general feeling, or do you feel defeated about one thing in particular?”
“Let me see,” Ian said. “I’m upset that I’m here to set an example for the men who work for me.”
“That’s a start. Go on.”
“I want them to respect me, not see me as vulnerable. I’m a hard-ass boss, and I want it to stay that way.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I can’t do my job. I want my men to fear me.”
“And what about your wife?”
“What about my wife?” Ian tensed up.
“Do you want her to fear you, too?”
“No,” Ian said. “But I do want her to obey me.”
“Do you see where that might be a problem?” Dr. Prentice asked.
“It’s a lot of pressure, and I always feel like I’m not tough enough. Not tough enough on others and not tough enough on myself.”
“It sounds like you have unrealistic expectations for yourself and those around you.”
“You can’t blame me,” Ian said. “That comes from my grandfather. He taught me how to be a fighter and how to win.”
“No wonder you feel a lot of pressure and feel defeated,” Aubrey said. “It takes a tremendous amount of effort to win every day, and if you don’t, then you’re a loser.”
“That’s how my grandfather sees it.”
“And yet,” Aubrey said, “he sent you here to work on your feelings.”
“Yes, but you’re a woman. An attractive woman, and you make me feel vulnerable. But I don’t want to let my guard down to a woman.”
“Is that how your marriage works?
“I guess so,” Ian said. “But my marriage is falling apart, because I don’t know how to talk to my wife. Everything in my life is going to shit because I don’t know how to communicate.”
Ian looked up at the ceiling. Then he sighed a long sigh.
I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You probably get this all the time. Men telling you things they can’t say anywhere else.”
“It happens,” she said lightly. “It’s part of what makes therapy effective.”
He nodded, but his mind was somewhere else. Probably reliving some painful memory he wanted to share but couldn’t.
“Right. Effective,” he said, staring off into space.
Aubrey tapped her pen on her notepad, breaking the moment. “You said you feel like you’re performing. What would it mean if you stopped?”
Ian exhaled slowly and relaxed his shoulders, thinking about what to say.
“I think I’d finally figure out who I am when no one’s watching.”
“Maybe that’s something we can work on together,” said Aubrey.
He looked at Aubrey, defeat in his eyes. Longing in his face. He was a beautiful and broken man.
And in that instant, Aubrey Prentice understood that she might fall in love with him if she didn’t keep things strictly professional.
She looked into his eyes and got most in them…
Not for long, though. Foster was back. He was thrusting into her hard now. She knew he was about to come, and right on time, he exploded and fell off her. He lay there for a few moments, breathing hard, head tilted back.
He got out of bed, mumbled, “I’ve got to get ready for work, and left Aubrey unsatisfied. There was no vibrator in her bedside stand. Foster would question the hell out of that.
So Aubrey was left alone with her thoughts, replaying a conversation they had last night.
“Foster,” she had said. “Are you happy?
Foster had some design plans unrolled across the dining room table, where no dinner had been eaten that evening.
“Of course I’m happy,” He said. “We just got the funds for the new children’s museum. Come look, I have the preliminary plans right here.”
Aubrey looked at the plans and frowned. “It’s nice, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about us, our marriage.”
“What about our marriage?” Foster looked perplexed.
“I mean, every night when you come home, we talk about something you’re doing at work. We don’t talk anymore. You don’t come home for dinner, and the only thing we talk about is what happened during the day.”
“I didn’t realize anything was wrong, honey,” he said. “Why don’t we go away for the weekend and put some romance back into our sex life. Pick a place, and we’ll go.”
“When will that be?”
“Anytime, honey, and anywhere you want to go.”
“I’d like to go to Paris for a week.”
“That’s great, honey. Did you know that it takes a year to build a museum properly? And one of the main things is to make sure the HVAC system works perfectly to preserve any artifacts that might need to be kept at a consistent temperature?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Aubrey replied. She knew a lot about architecture, being married to Foster, but not that particular fact.
Great.
“Foster, stop,” Aubrey said. “Can we not talk about one of your projects for once? I want to talk about us.”
Foster clued in, finally. “Are we in trouble, babe?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I can listen for a moment. You’re right. We don’t spend any time talking about us.”
He led Aubrey to the living room sofa and sat with her. He looked into her eyes, searching for a sign as to where to start, but he found none.
“Aubrey,” he said. What’s really wrong?”
“Everything,” she said. “I feel like I don’t know you anymore. Like we just go through the motions and don’t feel anything for each other.”
“But that’s what a marriage is, honey.” Foster stroked her face with the back of his hand. “Marriage is about security and routine. You can’t expect a deep conversation every day,” he said lovingly. “It’s too much pressure.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, it is. Besides, we have our date night every Wednesday. I committed to that because I love you.”
“You’re right, you did.”
Foster was right as always, but Aubrey was tired of him being right. She wanted things to be wrong every once in a while, too.
