“My relationship with Isabella—”
“Alex, no!” I said loudly, ignoring the surprised looks from people dining around us. Damn it, didn’t he see I couldn’t take any details about him and the Ice Maiden? Not in the frail mood I was in, thank you very much.
“—was never—”
He was a stubborn, stubborn man. I knew he was going to insist on telling me things about himself and Isabella, and I didn’t want to hear them. I couldn’t hear them. One more shot to the heart like the last one he gave me and I’d be through. Finished. Dead as a doornail right there in Stella’s. There was only one thing that I could think of to say that would keep him from finishing that sentence. I took a deep breath.
“Did I tell you I’m not pregnant?” I bellowed across the sound of his knee-melting voice.
Well, I was right, it worked, it shut him right up. Unfortunately, it also shut up everyone in the restaurant. I know because they were, at that moment, all staring with great interest and no little speculation at us. Alex, on the
other hand, just looked like he wanted to throttle me.
I raised my hand and waved it at Giorgio. “Check, please!”
Alex caught up with me at the stroppy front door.
“When I ask someone to go to dinner with me, I usually expect to eat at some point,” he commented as he took my key from where I was trying to gut the lock, and gave it a gentle twist. The door opened. I didn’t know who I hated more at that moment, the door or him. I didn’t have a chance to decide, however, because he took a firm grip on my elbow and hauled me upstairs.
“Hey!” I protested as we passed my landing and continued up. “What do you think you are doing? I’m not going to your flat with you!”
“Why not?” he asked, sounding suspiciously like he was speaking through grinding teeth. I peered at him in the darkness of the stairwell but couldn’t see anything other than the determined set of his jaw.
“Because once I get there you’ll just want to get naked and have me kiss you all over and maybe even bring out that bottle of lemon-flavored massage oil that I love and will want me to oil you up and clean you off again, or worse yet, you’ll want to oil me up and then you’ll slide your—”
“Alix,” he growled, hauling me to his side while he pulled out his key.
“What?” I asked a bit snappishly, annoyed he had interrupted the lovely scene that was building in my mind.
“I brought you up here to talk, not to make love to you, although I’m not excluding that from the list of things I wish to accomplish tonight.”
“Well exclude it, buster,” I snarled, pushing away from
him and stalking through the door to his flat. “Because Mr. Monthly Visitor is here, and I’m crampy and bloated and I don’t want you touching me anywhere south of my chin, OK?”
“Ah. I should have guessed from your petulant mood you were indisposed.”
I whirled around from where I had been looking out his window. “Oh, you do
not
want to go there! Just leave my hormones and moods out of it!”
He dropped his keys on a small table and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “My apologies. Would you care to sit down?”
I sat, suddenly tired of fighting the endless battle within myself to deny the love I felt for him. He sat in a chair next to the couch, turning it so he faced me. “Now, perhaps we could discuss matters calmly, without bellowing intimate details across crowded public places.”
A little blush crawled up my neck and heated my cheeks. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realize everyone would hear.”
He nodded gravely and leaned back, his lovely long fingers steepled under his chin. Oh, how I loved that chin!
“I feel as if we’ve been speaking at cross purposes, and I would like to clear up a few points. First of all, your distress yesterday was not solely due to my being unable to talk to you, was it?”
I was so tired. Tired of feeling horrible, tired of wanting him and knowing he was never to be mine again, tired of trying to figure out a way to change so I would be what he wanted. My body felt as if it were encased in cement, pressed down onto Alex’s couch cushions without
a hope of ever again moving. “Why would you think your rejection wasn’t what bothered me?”
He shifted in his chair. “Alix, I didn’t reject you, I just couldn’t deal with your problems at the time. You’re the only one who sees duty to my job as a rejection.”
I stared at my fingers lying limp on my legs and said nothing. There was nothing to say. His job came first.
“I want to know why you are so determined to destroy what we have between us.”
I looked up at him in surprise. He leaned forward and took one of my hands in his. My fingers curled around his.
“Why have you chosen to leave me? What have I done to make you think that this relationship is anything like the ones in your past?”
A familiar pricking sensation behind my eyes heralded trouble. I swallowed back the lump forming in my throat. “What are you trying to do, make me cry by being so nice to me? I warn you, it’s not pretty when I cry. My eyes get all puffy and red, and my nose runs, and sometimes I get the hiccups. So I’d think twice about making me cry if I were you.”
He slid to his knees and pulled me down until I was resting against him. I was as boneless as rubber, not wanting to be so close to him, close enough to smell that wonderful spicy scent that was exclusively Alex, but I lacked the strength and will to push him away. It was just so much easier to give in than to struggle to maintain my indignation.
“Ah, sweetheart, I don’t want to make you cry. I just want to understand what I’ve done wrong. I want to know why you’re hurting so much, and how I can make it stop. I want to know what it will take to prove to you
that I won’t ever leave you, no matter how terrible you think your life has become.”
The tears were building again, filling my eyes as I leaned into his chest and felt my hair ruffle as his voice slid softly, so softly over me.
“I want to love you, Alix, but you won’t let me.” His lips, warm and soft and indescribably delicious, were nuzzling around the nape of my neck. My breath caught in a half sob as I closed my eyes on the tears. It was wrong letting him melt me like that, but I couldn’t stop him, not even if I wanted to. Still, I should at least make a token effort.
“Alex, please…” The words dried upon my tongue when I opened my mouth to speak.
“Please what, sweetheart? Please stop, or…” He tipped my head back and steamed my lips. All those little pieces of my shattered heart started glowing with a burning white heat as his sensitive lips swept across mine, caressing, teasing, seducing my mouth. My eyes opened briefly when he persuaded my mouth to part for his seeking tongue, but his emerald gaze was too hot to look into for any length of time. It scorched my eyes just as his mouth scorched mine. “…or please make love to you? Which is it, love?”
“You’ve got something magical in your saliva, don’t you?” I mumbled as I pulled away long enough to draw some air into my needy lungs. “You’re not human—you’re some sort of god with magical, seductive spit who brings women to their knees with just one touch of your tongue.”
Amusement and desire and warmth danced through his eyes as he grinned, then dipped his head to my jaw and began nibbling a line that made me melt into a big
puddle of desire. Warning sirens went off in my head, but I was powerless to do anything about them. Despite our ruined relationship, despite the fact that what existed between Alex and me wouldn’t last, I couldn’t fight the feeling of rightness with him. I slid my hands over the wonderful terrain of his back and buried my face in his hair, that wonderful soft, silky, chestnut hair that smelled so Alexish. He nibbled a trail down my neck to the bodice of my dress, sliding both of his hands up my sides, pausing to span my waist while he nibbled on the spot on my collarbone that never failed to make me tremble.
“Alex,” I whispered into his ear, then bit gently on the outer edge. “Alex, you have to stop.”
His hands teased the underside of my breasts for a moment before sliding around behind me, his fingers hot on the skin exposed as he pulled the zipper down.
“Why? You’re not still angry with me?” The words were spoken against my lips as his tongue dipped inside again while he peeled off both the top of my dress and my bra. Flames followed his fingers as they stroked my spine, tracing along my ribs, his mouth never once releasing me from the terrible, ceaseless, mind-meltingly wondrous havoc he was creating.
“What?” I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t catch my breath, let alone my thoughts. I suckled on that delicious spot where his jaw met his ear and heard him groan.
He pulled two cushions down from the couch and laid me back on them, his mouth claiming mine once more before answering me. “Why do I have to stop?”
I tugged on his shirt until he stopped kissing me long enough to pull it off. A sigh of satisfaction escaped me as I curled my fingers into the lovely hair on his chest,
teasing little circles around his adorable nipples. He slid down my body, pulling my dress with him until I was wearing nothing but my underwear and sandals. He lifted one foot and looked at the sandal with the sparkly ankle strap, lifted an eyebrow at me, then kissed the sandal. “Shall we be naughty and leave them on?”
I shivered at the look in his eyes, but remembered my objection when his hands moved up my thighs towards my undies.
“I can’t Alex. Mr. Monthly Visitor, remember?”
He laid down a line of kisses on my belly. “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”
I couldn’t keep from making a face at that offer.
“Are you in pain?” he asked, his fingers pausing in the act of caressing beneath the waistband of my underwear.
“No, but I think I’d rather not.”
He sucked on one of my hip bones, the silk of his hair and heat of his mouth against my bare skin setting me ablaze. “There’s more than one way to make love,” he murmured as he nibbled his way over to the other hip bone, then headed northwards.
“No fair,” I complained, rubbing my leg against his and fumbling with his belt. My life as I knew it might be over, my heart destroyed with no chance of repair, and I wasn’t feeling fit enough to indulge in our usual between-the-sheets fare, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to do wicked things to his body. All of it. Every sweet inch of it.
He rose up off from where he was just about to torment my breasts and quickly stripped.
“Better?” he asked as he knelt beside me.
“Much better,” I cooed, tracing the long line of muscles in his thighs. I put a hand on his chest to stop him
when he leaned forward over me. “Alex, you realize that this is just a temporary cease-fire brought on because I have no immunity to your magic saliva, and that it in no way implies that we’re getting back together. You understand that, don’t you?”
“No,” he said, then ignored my restraining hand and leaned over to take one of my nipples in his mouth.
Words stopped in my throat as heat coursed out from my center to the farthest points on my body, then slammed back, centering in the deep, hidden core of me. I opened my mouth to object, to make sure he understood that this meant nothing, but gasps of pleasure came out instead of words, gasps that soon turned to moans when one of his hands teased its way down my chest, over my belly, and down farther, nudging aside my underwear to stroke gently at that one tiny little spot of utter bliss.
“Alex!” I protested, bucking under the effect of his fingers. “You…can’t!”
“Let me love you, sweetheart,” he murmured against my nipple before tugging on it gently with his teeth. I gasped again and arched up beneath him. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
I wanted to cry out that the ache he had created deep inside me was too much, but the hot, dark words he whispered against my breast wiped all thoughts from my mind but of the wonderful magic his hands and mouth were creating. The pleasure inside me coiled tighter and tighter until I couldn’t distinguish it from the ache of want he had generated; then suddenly his lips were on mine and I was shouting my joy into his mouth. I trembled with the power of the pleasure he gave me, tears
slipping from my eyes as he held me tight and kissed my cheeks, my eyes, my mouth.
An eon later I had collected the shreds of my being that had come apart under his seductive spell, and had recovered enough to speak. Alex was lying facing me, one muscled thigh pressed between mine, his lips teasing my temple as his hands stroked my back.
I gathered my wits together enough to make my mouth work. “Why?”
“Hmmm?”
I swallowed to ease the ache in my throat. “Why did you do that after everything I’ve said to you? After I stood you up? Why did you want to…”I choked back a moan as he bit my neck, then licked a path up to my ear.
“Because I wanted to.”
I pushed him until he rolled onto his back, propping myself up on an elbow to frown at him. “But why did you want to after I explained to you that we were through? After I told you how I feel?”
His lovely lips curved upwards as his wicked green eyes mirrored amusement, patience, and something warm and fuzzy that I didn’t want to put a name to. “Alix, sweetheart, it’s about time you realize that I don’t back down from a challenge. I never have, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t let you slip through my fingers over something so ridiculous as—”
Oh, how I loved this man! I put my hand over his mouth. “Don’t say it.”
“Mmmarf?”
“Because,” I told him, my hand lifting enough to trail my fingers along his wonderfully warm lips, “if you do,
you’ll make me angry, and that would be a shame. Say uncle instead.”
“Uncle?” His brows came together in a puzzled frown as I let my fingers drift down over the muscled plane of his chest. I tickled a finger in his belly button. His stomach contracted in response. “Why would I want to say uncle?”
“You need to say it now because you won’t be coherent later.”
His frown deepened as I slid away from him and avoided his grasping hand. I nudged aside his legs and knelt between them, my hands on either side of his hips. Comprehension flooded his lovely eyes, desire turning them almost black when I leaned forward and rubbed my cheek against the full glory of his dangly parts.