Authors: Kari Ware
"She's a trade up," I heard Freddy say to Alex, glancing me up and down as Alex raised an arm around my waist and poked my side with his fingers. I wiggled under the tickling touch, and he kissed my hair. I raised an eyebrow at him, Freddy's comment making me curious.
"A trade up from my ex, he means." Alex sipped his smooth vodka, and I nodded my head like I knew completely that I was. It was way too soon to even want to know about his exes, nonetheless start comparing myself to them. I had already convinced myself that he had assuredly dated many goddesses among women, and I wasn't so sure that I wanted to be proven correct yet. But still, the compliment was reassuring.
"Well that's always good to know." I forced a smile on my face to hide my internal concern, and it was at that moment that I heard a familiar excited squeal, and before I knew it I could see Anna dragging my darling brother through the crowd. Her brunette locks were positively the flauntiest curls I had ever seen, and her skin tight black dress accented her lean figure and large breasts immaculately. Calder looked baffled at my presence, his eyes shifting from me to Alex warily. He looked good, actually: A long sleeved gray silk shirt with a pair of fitted black jeans. It was so nice to see him look like a human being instead of someone who had just rolled out of bed.
"Winnie! What are the odds, huh? Hi, I'm Anna. I live down the hall from Winnie," she eagerly outstretched her hand to Alex, who seemed delighted by the ray of sunshine Anna seemed to spew when she spoke. Alex took her hand gently, as if afraid he would break the fragile thing, and shook it politely.
"Alex Desmond and any friend of Winnie's is a friend of mine." He replied with that adorable boyish grin I was so endeared to, and he turned his attention to Calder, who seemed to be trying his best to seem polite. His big brother routine was a little bit delayed, but better late than never, I supposed. Alex held out his hand to him. "Alex Desmond."
"Calder Vidalia, Winnie's brother." He gripped Alex's hand firmly, glancing at me as if to say 'See? I'm playing nice.' I gave him a thankful nod as Anna wrapped her arm around me in a half-hug.
"My ex step brother," I corrected him, and Alex smiled knowingly but said nothing else. Freddy was quick to beat him to the punch, his smelly cigar dangling from his lips as he spoke.
"Calder here is my biggest money maker! Don't know where I'd be without this boy." He clapped a hand on Calder's back in a fatherly way, something Calder almost flinched away from. Anna noticed his discomfort.
"Hey, let's take Winnie to meet the guys. Mind if we steal her for a few minutes?" She sweetly turned to Alex, gripping my upper arm in her well-manicured fingers. He nodded as Anna practically pulled me to my feet before he could even respond. I didn't really want to meet Calder's stripper friends, but I could never say no to Anna. She was entirely too sweet. It seemed that Alex felt the same way.
"Just don't forget to bring her back to me."
Calder's friends were interesting to say the least. Chase, a very brawny blonde with bright blue eyes and a boyish grin much like Alex's, was in his late twenties and had been stripping at Showponies since day one. He thrived on the attention, very quick to try and flirt with Anna and myself, causing his own date to throw her fruity martini on him very shortly after introducing herself to us. Then there was Rob, with spiky black hair and dark blue eyes and thick forearms like a real life Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. He was quite quiet actually, rolling his eyes at Chase's attempts to impress everyone. I decided that I liked him the best.
"So, it really doesn't bother you at all that Calder's a stripper?" I asked Anna, sipping the water that Rob had brought me over after being called a Nancy boy by Ethan, a scrawny blonde with a sensual green gaze that Calder continually felt the need to put in a headlock. Anna glanced at me with a smile, nodding her head.
"Nah, it's fine by me. I mean, I'm an actress. I'm probably gonna have to get naked at some point in my career, or at least do a sex scene. And Calder would be okay with that. It would be hypocritical of me to be like 'No you can't get naked for money but I totally can', wouldn't it?" She shrugged her shoulders. "But I guess it's still probably too soon to think about that, huh?"
"I kinda thought you guys were getting serious," I broached the subject carefully; Her words had sounded somewhat disappointed, her gaze flicking up to Calder as she got a drink at the bar with the guys. Freddy and Alex were up there, too, and Alex gave me a wink and gestured to his watch. I nodded, my cheeks getting hot as I did so.
"So did I," Anna replied, rolling her eyes. "Turns out he's a commitment-phobe."
Normally, I would have been sympathetic to her, engaging in girl chat and telling her the usual 'He doesn't know what he's missing' jazz, but my brain was clouded with thoughts of going home with Alex, finally getting to see him naked and touching that firm body I had gotten a taste of through his clothes. A shiver went up my spine, my toes curling uncontrollably.
"I'm sorry, Anna. Things will get better."
Alex shoved me onto his massive four poster bed, the dark mahogany wood accenting the burgundy shades of the walls and the candle that illuminated us in the darkness. His dark silk sheets felt cool against my bare skin, and I shut my eyes as I felt his warm chest press against my breasts and flatten my back against his mattress. His tongue slithered up the nape of my neck and along my earlobe, and I couldn't suppress a moan as my lower muscles clenched with pleasure. I felt the head of his erection rub against my clitoris, teasingly slow and agonizing in its pleasure. "Stop being such a tease," I tried to encourage him to just do the deed, but he leaned off of me and reached for the nightstand beside us, searching for a condom.
I grazed my fingers against my nether regions, waiting very impatiently for him to roll the damned thing on and enter me. "Better safe than sorry," he chastised me as I felt him press against me again, and I slid me hand against his lower back, pushing him against me and feeling him rest at my entrance. My breath hitched in my throat as he slid inside of me slowly, filling my up perfectly and stretching me just enough to feel good. He groaned, his arms shuddering as he held himself up over top of me, and I rocked my hips against him encouragingly.
"I'm so glad I met you, Alex," I said a little more breathily than I intended, and his response was a groan as he began to thrust into me at a consistently quicker speed. "Oh, you're so good..."
We spent the next morning having breakfast (and more sex) in bed, lamenting the fact that we wouldn't see each other for the next few days. I nibbled on a strawberry, tucked warmly beneath Alex's down comforter with my bare breasts only slightly exposed, and Alex sat cross legged by my feet, watching me eat as if I were some rare butterfly he had just spotted on an expedition. “I’m not opposed to phone sex, so you know," he informed me, and I giggled at the prospect. I'd never done phone sex before, but it seemed like an exciting prospect. Especially with Alex. I found that I was up for anything as long as it involved him.
"Sounds good to me. And we can do this all again when you get back?"
"I wouldn't have it any other way, Miss Winifred."
I couldn't go with Alex to the airport the following morning and see him off because I had to work. I was disappointed to say the least, but we had spent all of Sunday in bed together watching horrible 90's Lifetime movies and having sex every time a babysitter became obsessed with her charge's family or when a woman recalled running away from tragedy and how it was coming back to haunt her, which led to a very exhausting afternoon.
Returning to my apartment on Monday afternoon after work was bittersweet. I felt like I had nothing to look forward to; Alex was getting off his plane and going straight into meetings, so I couldn’t call him until later on. I thought about calling Calder and seeing what he was up to and chastising him for not just admitting his obvious feelings for Anna. A knock on my door was a surprise, indeed. I opened it slowly, not entirely sure who would be coming by so quickly after I had just arrived myself, and I was quite surprised by who was standing on the other end.
"Are you Winifred Allmer?"
VII.
I felt incredibly homely standing before the statuesque beauty in my doorway. She towered over me, easily more than six feet tall with her incredible red Gucci heels on, and her long tan legs going on for what seemed like years. Her slim yet perfectly curvy body was toned in all the right places as her red thigh length dress accented clearly, and natural blonde waves hung loftily around her shoulders. It was like she walked out of magazine.
"Um, yeah, I'm Winnie. And you are?" I probably sounded a lot more defensive than I actually felt, her incredible beauty making me feel very inadequate. She smiled a very false looking smile that I didn't like.
"Macie Desmond. I can see why my husband's been fucking you. You're... cute." Her words were as condescending as humanly possible, but that wasn't what I was hearing at that exact moment. The word 'husband' was ringing in my mind, burning my eardrums and making my stomach turn. Husband? Alex was somebody's husband?
"I-I think you're mistaken," was all I could manage to say. I wanted her to be sorely mistake, her to just admit that this was the mean prank of an ex-girlfriend. How could he have a wife and not tell me? I'd stayed the night at his house, for Christ's sake! This woman, this ridiculously stunning woman with the cool blue gaze and perfectly upturned nose, was lying to me. There was no other reasoning in my mind. She was just jealous that a girl like me could have Alex, and not a woman like her.
"This ring says otherwise, sweetheart." She held out her hand to me, immaculate diamond band glimmering around her ring finger as a larger diamond set in the center seemed to wink at me accusingly in the light. My heart thudded emptily in my chest.
"Anyone can say that they're someone's wife and wear a ring on their finger," I combatively stated to her, my sweating palms resting on my hips. I had seen my mother do the same thing to scare women off from her potential boyfriends; it wasn't an uncommon thing for crazy, obsessive women to do. Besides, Alex wouldn't do that to me. He wasn't that kind of person.
"Well what is it you would like? Pictures? Phone messages? The fact that I have a video of you two having sex in the bed that I bought for myself and my husband? I can get Cliff to come up and vouch for me if you prefer it." She smiled wickedly, like this was a game to her. She was enjoying the fact that my heart was sinking into the soles of my tennis shoes, fishing through her purse and pulling out an SD card and tossing it to me. "Your sweet little Prince Charming made this during your little sleepover in my house, just so I could find it when I arrived home from my trip to New York, and then took off to London so he wouldn't have to explain himself."
I looked at the small black chip in my hand, my fingers twitching around it as doubt crept through my whole body. She wouldn't be just throwing me evidence if it wasn’t for real. I stepped away from the doorway, grabbing my phone off the couch and dismounting my own SD card and swapping the new one in. It opened up my media, and once I clicked the file, a video began to play. It was Alex and I in his (his and his wife's) bed, the angle of the image telling me that this hidden camera had been placed somewhere on the nightstand. I was on all fours with him behind me, my face perfectly visible and both of us moaning and panting. Shame suddenly coursed through me. He had lied to me.
Macie had invited herself inside, glancing around my apartment and crinkling her nose in distaste. "I guess it's not really your fault. Alex is a real bastard."
"Why would he do this?" I asked, my voice coming out shakier than I had wanted it to. I had never felt so stupid in my entire life, and I found myself thinking that I was just like the thing I had been trying to run away from and not become: My mother. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I dismounted the SD card and set it on the end table. I turned to look at Macie, who was sitting on the arm of my couch.
"Because he wants me to divorce him." She said simply. "See, we've been married for nine years now. Long before Alex started hitting it big. We were dumb and in love, thinking we were just gonna last forever. But my Daddy, he was a lawyer at the time, knew we wouldn't last, and he wanted me to be taken care of. So he drew up an agreement for Alex to sign before he could marry me stating that if he were to ever leave me, I would automatically get three quarters of whatever he owned no matter the circumstances."
She paused for a moment as if she were musing on the memory. "We were so dumb and in love, we thought we would last forever. Signing a stupid paper to appease my Daddy was no big deal. But once the money starting rolling in, Alex got greedy. I did, too." I looked down at her ring, watching it reflect from the sunlight shining into my meager apartment.
"So if he gets you to divorce him, then he doesn't have to give you anything," I found myself saying. "So he cheated."
"Well, not as much. But what a sweetheart, right?" Macie didn't seem upset like I did. It was almost like she found this all very humorous, which truthfully made me want to slap her. I was heartbroken, distraught, and she's sitting here absolutely amused by the way this situation was panning out before her. She seemed like she was holding back a chuckle. "I'm not going anywhere, though. My handbag line is ready to launch next week, and a divorce would just be stupid. It's not like we spend any time together anyways."
No wonder he wanted a divorce. Part of me wanted to reason that Alex was doing this to free himself from his wicked wife, this spoiled bitch sitting in my house. But on the other hand, he'd lied to me. Used me, completely made a fool out of me, and not to mention recorded us having sex without my knowledge. I wished I had never spilled coffee on that asshole for all the pain he was currently causing me. "Can you just leave now? This is kind of a lot for me to take in." I glared at Macie, who looked at me with feigned sympathy. She got up from her spot on my couch, long legs gliding shortly to my front door.