Once Written, Twice Shy (The Broken Men Chronicles) (20 page)

In the mood to celebrate, I managed to make a quick
pit stop.

Glad to see that Alissa had gotten out when I
arrived home from meeting up with my parents, I headed up to our room and
placed my fancy packages at the foot of the bed where I knew she’d see them
when she got home.

I wondered what she’d have to say when she saw my
surprise and wished I could be there to see her face when she saw my gifts but
my fatherly duties beckoned me.

I headed to the hospital and stopped in to spend
some quality time with Jasper.  Julie and Todd were there and a few minutes
after my arrival, Doctor Messing walked in.

“How’re you feeling Jasper?” he asked as he made
notes inside the chart he had gathered from the foot of Jasper’s bed.

“Good,” Jasper said and seemed to look like he had
a bunch of ants in his pants, “can I go home now?”

“I think we might be able to manage that eventually
but it’s important to keep you here until we’re sure that you can stay healthy
at home.  That medicine we’re giving you to make sure you get better can make
you feel sick most of the time,” the doctor said.  Jasper nodded with a grimace
on his face.

After a bit of whining, he conceded.  It took a
few promises on my part to get him there but it worked and the fact that Doctor
Messing had brought in a boy about Jasper’s age who was a long-term patient
helped too.  The two boys had decided that they’d have sleep-overs and seemed
to be excited at building forts in their joint room.

“Can I speak with you two for a moment?” Messing asked
Julie and me.

We followed the man into the hall where he led us
to a small conference room a few doors down.  He gestured for us to take a seat
as he closed the door to give us some privacy.

“Is everything okay, Doctor?” Julie asked.

“I’ve observed Jasper closely since he’s woken and
I have to say that I like his sudden boost of energy.  His color seems good and
his vitals are strong.  His speech is still slurred from time to time and I can
confirm that it’s because of the clot he threw in surgery and not because of
the medications we’ve given him since those have long since been flushed out of
his system.  With that said, I don’t think it’ll be a permanent issue,” he said. 
“All in all, it doesn’t seem like he’s getting worse.”

“That’s great though,” I said, “isn’t it?”

“It appears that way, yes,” Messing said.  “There
will be a series of tests over the next few days, weeks and months to determine
if his body is rejecting the transplant or if he’s now making new normal blood
cells.  I introduced Tyler to Jasper because they both have similar issues and
it would be nice for each of them to have a friend during their stay here.  Things
can get pretty boring and lonely after a while.  All I can say is that it’s
worth being optimistic about things despite more time being needed to really
know if our attempt has worked.”

Julie squealed and hugged my arm.  Somehow, I kept
thinking that there’d be a
but
somewhere in this conversation and I was
right.

“But,” Doctor Messing said, “I think it’s
important for you both to know that even though I think Jasper’s speech will
make a full recovery, that there is a chance that he may be left with a few
challenges.  Aside from that, all we need is time to allow the transplant to
take hold, for Jasper to regain his strength and hopefully, a clean bill of
health that’ll clear him of his JMML, in the end.”

“Is that it?” I asked.

Julie on the other hand was now choking back a
sob.  “My poor baby,” she said.

I looked at her as if she had two heads.  “Julie,
it’s a speech issue not a death sentence,” I said.  “We can work with people
for that.  Losing Jasper is what we should be more concerned about.”

“Mr. Lowell is right,” Messing said with a
sympathetic gaze.

***

I walked out the hospital’s doors with no time to
spare.  What should have been an hour or so visit ended up being closer to the three
hour mark.  If I wanted to make it to the lawyer’s office, I pretty much needed
to hit every green light on the way there.

I put in a call with Jake from my hands-free
system and floored the accelerator thus peeling my car out of the hospital
parking lot.

My day felt like it couldn’t get any better.  It
seemed like Alissa and her selflessness might have been the ticket to ensure
that my son would live a long and happy life.  Okay, so I was getting ahead of
things but why not?  My woman’s optimism was contagious.

Jasper wasn’t getting worse, if anything, he was
looking better, my parents were moving on up in life and I found myself elated
that the things I had spent so many years pretending didn’t matter, were
happening at a whirlwind pace.  Dreams I had long ago stifled were becoming a reality. 
Yes, there was indeed a lot to celebrate.

Jake stood in the reception area of his law firm’s
suite waiting for me.  We sat down in his office and after catching up we got
to the business at hand.

All that separated me from my current life and the
one that I had always dreamed of living were a few stacks of papers and an
empty dotted line on all of them.  Taking my pen, I smiled as I spent the next
half hour fulfilling a personal dream with which I knew Alissa would have no
problems following at my side.

This is going to be great.

“So whatever happened to that woman?” Jake asked
as we headed out toward the parking garage.  “Al-something?”

“Alissa,” I said, “she moved to be closer.”

“Really,” he said with his casual skepticism, “don’t
you think it’s kind of fast?”

I shook my head.  “We’ve known each other for
nearly a year before we met face-to-face,” I said.  “No, and before you ask, it
wasn’t a dating site.”

“Hey, I’m not judging,” Jake said and held his
hands up in a peacekeeping gesture.  “I heard about Jasper from your parents
when they dropped in earlier.  I’m sorry.  Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I would have…things have been a little hectic,” I
said.  “He’s doing much better and his doctor thinks it looks like he might
just pull through, all thanks to Alissa.”

Jake eyed me with careful scrutiny.  “You’ve
really got it bad when you think your girlfriend is responsible to curing
everything,” he said.  “She might have cured you of a broken heart but I doubt-”

“Jake, you’re such a fool,” I said, pausing by his
car and playfully punched his shoulder.  “One day you’ll find yourself at a
woman’s feet and when that day happens, I’ll be there to point the finger,
laugh and say
I told you so
.”

“Yeah, right,” Jake said.  “So what did she do?”

I gave him the quick run-down on what had happened
from the time we found out Jasper had JMML, how grim things were, how Alissa
had donated her marrow.

“She did that?”  Jake was wide-eyed.

“Without hesitation,” I said.  “I never thought
I’d lose hope about anything but she refused to let me fall down that slope.”

“Wow,” he said.

I nodded.  “I love the woman, man,” I said and slapped
him on the back.  “Speaking of which, I better get going if I want to make that
reservation I made for us tonight.”

“Give me a call and keep me posted on Jasper.  We
should get together some time soon,” Jake said in a dejected tone.  He seemed
to be preoccupied with pondering everything I had divulged about my current
relationship.

Jake was fantastic in and out of the courts and he
had the pocketbook to prove it.  He might have been a genius with his
investments as well as all areas of personal consumption: cars, homes and
anything else material; but he was shit with women unless it entailed getting
them into bed.

Jake had found who he claimed to be his one and
only woman back when we were in high school.  Danica Withers had been petite
and quite withdrawn from our social scene but he had always been smitten with our
cute tutor-girl-slash-cheerleader friend.  What broke him was what transpired after
their second date.  After divulging his true feelings toward her, she reciprocated
but disappeared.  The next day, she was nowhere to be found.  I had been the
unfortunate one to tell him that her parents had left and taken her with them. 
As to where she headed, who knew.  All I had to give him was the message from a
letter she had left in my parents’ mailbox for me to deliver.  A letter he
still kept with him in his wallet or so I had come to find out about a year ago
when I had to settle his tab with his credit card since he was too drunk to do
so.

From her disappearance onward, Jake and I had been
busy with womanising the rest of the school’s cheerleaders and other notable
interests.  For me, the day came where I put a stop to it or rather Julie had
put a stop to it when I fell for her.  For Jake, it hadn’t been that easy.  He
had fallen in love first.  To be honest, I understand how he felt.  I felt the
same way when Julie had first left me and for months afterwards until I had
begun to chat it up with Alissa.

As an adult, Jake had drowned himself in booze and
easy women.  Women who were only after two things: his pleasuring and the money
in his pocket and he knew it.  If he hadn’t been a best friend of mine, I would
have never paid attention to the look that crossed his face right as I turned
to walk back to my car.  He may have been acting macho but the look of envy in
his eyes when I had spoken about Alissa and I told me that he ached to have a
family life.  He just couldn’t quite get himself to go get it…yet.  Fear is a
powerful thing.

***

I got home and ran up to the bedroom to get ready,
taking notice that the packages I had left Alissa had been opened.  She would
look amazing in my gifts, I had no doubt.

I scrubbed down in the shower, jumped out, wiped
at the fogged mirror with my hand and set to shaving my face with my towel
wrapped around my waist, wondering where she’d gone off to.

I was slipping my arms through my dress shirt when
I heard her.  “Pax?”

“Upstairs,” I called out.

I turned toward the closet and reached for a sport
jacket, took a look at my selection of ties and then shrugged them off since I
wore one every day for work.

I buttoned and tucked my shirt into my pants and
as I was donning my jacket, I turned to a sight that stopped me dead in my
tracks.

“So,” she said and twirled around to show off the
new dress, shoes and-

Sweet Jesus…the underwear, she’s wearing those
too.
  I had clearly forgotten how my body would react to that knowledge.

It was a simple royal blue halter dress but it fit
her like a glove, hugging her bust, waist and hips in the right places where it
flowed outward to her mid-thigh.  Her legs looked endless in the black
peek-a-boo toed heels she paired with the outfit and I loved the fact that she
had left her hair down.

She walked up to me and that’s when I realized I
still hadn’t said a word.  My lips pulled up into an admiring smile of approval
for how great she looked.

“Well someone was quite busy today,” she said.

“You look beautiful,” I said and pulled her in by
her hands to kiss her cheek.  “I’ll take that as you missed me.”

She nodded.  “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

I watched as she turned and walked out of the
bedroom with me following, hot on her heels.  The accentuated sway of her hips
and her sultry-like movements made me salivate.

Tease.

We were sat in the back of the restaurant which, to
her standards, was the best seat in the house because we were secluded with a
wall covered by curtains on one side and a four-sided fireplace obstructing
much of the view to the trickling in of the patrons on the other.

The waiter had delivered our dessert and Alissa turned
her attention back to me.  “So tell me,” Alissa said and leaned forward on her
elbow as she drummed her fingers on the side of her cheek in suspicion, “why do
you look like the cat that ate the canary?”

I ached so much to tell her everything that had happened
today but it wasn’t in my original plan.  It was hard but I found myself able
to reel in a bit of self-control and opted to tell her about what I was willing
to share.  The rest could wait until the kinks were straightened and everything
was perfect.

“Doctor Messing says Jasper’s not getting worse
and everything points to an optimistic turnout,” I said.  “My son has also made
a new friend to room with during his stay.”

She dropped her fork onto the plate we were
sharing and wrapped her hands around my face and kissed me.  “That’s fantastic,”
she said and my heart fluttered at her reaction.  “Have they said anything
about his slurring?”

“Messing doesn’t think it’ll be permanent but he
confirmed that it was because of the clot,” I said and cupped her cheek with
one of my hands while hers had found their way down from my face to my chest,
“but even if it is…”

“We can work on that,” she finished for me and
kissed me softly.

What started as a soft peck of elation, escalated
to a gentle make out session involving only our lips.

“I don’t know if I should have bought you that
dress,” I said and let out a loud breath over her swollen lips.  I turned and
took a quick bite of the cake set before us.  “All I can think about is what I
got you to wear underneath it.”

She blushed but was quick to recover.  She crossed
her legs and tilted them so our knees touched.  Alissa began rubbing my thigh
as she watched me look down between her well exposed leg and her soft moving hand. 
She leaned toward my ear and the subtle scent of perfume and woman, the one
that was uniquely hers, surrounded me.

A seductive octave lower, she asked, “Do you think
I’m sexy, Paxton?”

I gulped the remainder of my food down and found
myself nodding.  My mouth ran dry.

Alissa wasn’t one to speak like that.  She made
her characters do that stuff in her novels.  I was wondering if that side of
her would ever come out in an unexpected setting and I guess I got my answer.

“Do you crave me like I crave you?”  I gave her another
nod.  “Here’s what I crave, Paxton,” she said, nipping my jaw and pulled away
enough to look me in the eyes.  “I want your lips all over me.  I want to feel
your hands caress my skin.  I need your hard throbbing dick inside my wet
pussy.”  She smirked when my fork fell out of my hand and I was forced to clamp
my dropped jaw shut to swallow the sudden abundance of saliva that had
materialised.  “Paxton, I want you so deep inside of me that when we fall apart,
you can see my very soul and me yours, and when we’re done, I want to do it
again, and again, and-”

I cut her off.  It was all just too much.  Her
words, the tone of her voice, the dress, not to mention the fact that we hadn’t
been half a week which was unusual for us since she’d moved in.  Yes, we were
like a couple of rabbits.  I grabbed the back of her neck with one hand and
crushed my lips to hers.

“Waiter,” I said, lifting my hand up and never
once allowed my eyes to stray from hers.

“Yes, sir?” the waiter asked.

“We’re ready to head home,” I said.

“Is there something wrong with the cake, sir?”

“No.”

“Oh,” the young man said but didn’t make a move to
leave.

“Pack it up and we’ll take it home with us,”
Alissa winked at me and the waiter scampered off to do her biding.  “I have a
feeling we might be able to use a little sugar boost later.”

“Damn you’re so sexy when you take charge like
that,” I said to her and kissed the side of her neck.

She graced me with a baritone laugh I had never
heard from her before.  It told me that I had no clue what she was capable of and
the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to see what she could do.

“I’m glad, because this is just the beginning,”
she said.  She pulled away, smiled and then nodded her head to let me know the
waiter had returned.

***

Alissa turned it up a notch and it got quite hot
on the drive home despite cranking the A/C.  If anything, it made it worse for
me with her nipples sticking out through the thin material of her dress, making
her look even more irresistible.

The devil woman had her hand under the skirt of
her dress and was pleasuring herself while the other fondled her breasts. 
There was no way we were going to get home if I had assisted her and you better
believe that I was dying to.

As much as the thought of pulling over and taking
her then and there appealed to me, I didn’t want that.  I knew that she was
putting on a show for me and as much as I wanted to take control, I knew that
what awaited us at home would be far better than if I took it from her on the
spot.  She deserved so much more after all that she’d done for my son and I.

“Oh Paxton…I’m so wet for you right now,” she said,
I groaned.  “I can’t wait for you to…Oh…
Paxton!
”

“Baby,” I gulped, “you’re killing me here.”

“Mmm,” she said and when I turned to her at the
next set of lights, she was watching me.  She smirked and took her glistening
fingers and put them to her mouth to suck on one of them.

“God help me,” I said and bounced my head against
the headrest to my seat before looking at her again.

She brought her hand up to my mouth and I grabbed
her wrist with one hand and held her gaze as I tantalized her two coated
fingers with my teeth and tongue like a rabid dog.

“Just so you know, you’ll have to hold off a bit
longer once we get home,” she said and threw in a wicked smile.

“Fuck me.”  I groaned.

“That’s the plan, baby.”

A car behind us honked and I realized that we were
still stopped at the intersection.  The light had gone from green to yellow and
I chose to run the damn thing. 
No more waiting.
  The lantern shifted to
red while we were in the middle of the intersection, leaving the car behind us
stuck at the corner and its driver honking his frustration.  Alissa giggled
while looking through the back window of the car.

One swift and tire-squawking turn around the
corner and we were home.  My woman was out of the vehicle before I could even
close my car door.  “Sit on the couch and wait for me, I won’t be long,” she said
as she unlocked the door and hurried upstairs leaving me to do as she’d requested.

“Baby,” I said up to her from my perch on the
couch, “you better make this quick or I’m going to find you and fuck you
senseless thanks to your shenanigans.”

“I’m hoping you still will,” she said her voice
getting nearer as I tilted my head back and breathed the ever-growing tension
in my shaft and balls to a more bearable level with my eyes closed, “when you
see this.”

I lifted my head and opened my eyes.  There she stood,
between my legs wearing nothing but her black heels, the lace bra and underwear
I had bought her and one of my dress shirts.  The woman was sex on a stick and
I was hungrier now that she had served herself up on the night’s menu.

I pulled her by the hips as she straddled my thighs,
our eyes locking, time standing still.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight but I
do have to say that I like it very much,” I said, my hands grabbed her ass and
squeezed.  “I also have to add that I should go lingerie shopping for you more
often if everything looks that good on you.”

“I have to admit that you have great taste,” she
said.

My hands moved up and under the shirt, feeling the
heated skin along the length of her spine as she tilted her head back.  I
pulled my hands away which brought her gaze forward as I reached to push the
shirt she wore, off of her shoulders.

“I think you’re a little over-dressed,” she said
and her nimble fingers proceeded to unbutton my shirt.

I helped her get the garment off of me by leaning
forward and she captured my lips in a searing kiss.  I let her have full
control, for the time being.  She nibbled at my bottom lip, pulled away and
those bright eyes clouded with lust stared back at me.

“Pax,” she said and with that simple utterance of
my name I knew that she was relinquishing her control to me.

I pulled her face down to mine and kissed her hard,
fisting a hand in her hair to gain better access to her neck.  I heard her
sharp intake of breath as my teeth grazed the tendon in her neck.  When I knew
she would stay in position, I let go of her hair and let my hands roam as I
rubbed a light soothing pattern on her back.  If she wanted my hands and lips
all over her then that’s what she would get.

As I tasted, kissed, licked and nipped the skin
above her breasts, my hands unlatched her bra.  I pulled it off of her, my
fingertips skimming her bared skin in the process.

“You’re beautiful,” I said.  Her curl-tipped hair had
fallen over her front to cover her breasts and with the flushed look on her
face, the sparkle in her eyes and the fact that she straddled my waist, she was
like my very own version of Lady Godiva.

After a few self-indulgent kisses, her hands undid
the buckle to my belt in a hurried fashion.  Her lips had taken control and my
body flushed with heat—I wanted her, true, but I needed her that much more.

When she pulled away, I saw the pain of her lust
raging in balls of fire in her irises.  She ached for me as much as I ached for
her.

She pulled at the button to my pants and I stilled
her hands.  “Not here,” I said.

I grabbed onto her ass and she wrapped her legs
around me as I rushed us up the stairs.

I threw her down on the bed while I hurried out of
my trousers and crawled up to her sprawled form.  She had backed up so that she
sat with her back against the headboard, a seductive smile on those swollen
lips of hers, donning nothing but the tiny bit of lace at her hips and her
high-heels.

Allie squealed when I pulled at her ankles to
bring her closer to me.

“You want my hands all over you, huh?” I asked in
a husky tone and she nodded her response.

I ran an open palm starting at her knees and up
her legs to the inside of her thighs.  Her hips arched up when my lips added to
the mix by kissing her belly.  I divested her of her lacy thong, letting my
hands and lips do all the stimulating as I tortured her skin.

“And is this what you were looking for by wanting
my lips on you?” I threw in a few licks to go with the continuation of my oral
ministrations as I climbed back up her body.  She answered me with a whimper when
I traced her navel with my tongue.

I hovered on my elbows, my face mere millimetres
from hers as my fingers played with her hair.  “How was that?” I asked.

“I think you forgot something,” she said and smirked
up at me.
  Smartass.

“I did?” I said, aloof because I wanted to see
more of her taking charge and she nodded in response.  Our power exchange was
intoxicating.  She didn’t disappoint.

Sliding her hand between our bodies, she took hold
of my cock and began pumping it with a firm grip.  My take charge attitude faded
fast and she knew it just by the confident gleam in her eyes.

“Oh,” I said with my voice a quiver.

“I want you to take this dick of yours, baby,” she
said and licked her lips.  My eyes followed the movement.  “I want you to slide
it into my pussy.  I want you to feel me surround you, clamp down on you as you
make me wetter with each…long…full…stroke.  I want you to bury yourself so deep
inside me that we don’t know where one of us ends and the other begins.  I want
you to-”

I slammed myself as far as I could go inside her—I
was done listening to her loquacious torture.

“Oh, God,” she half cried and half moaned.

Our eyes fused together as she took me to the
hilt, my balls slapping the crease of her ass with each penetration.  With slow
but strong and controlled thrusts, I pulled myself almost out and then plunged
right back into her sopping heat.

Our mouths ate away at each other like men starved
of water after spending a lengthy time in the desert.  There wasn’t enough of
each other to quench our thirst.  The flames were fanned and built to an
unbearable inferno.

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as her
lids fluttered to a close.

“Open your eyes, baby,” I said in a desperate pant.

I rammed into her with so much fervor that each bottomed-out
motion was accompanied by the sweet sound of her moans and my grunts.

It wasn’t long before I managed to push us both
over the edge of that cliff, into the pit of carnal rapture.  I could have
sworn I saw the sparks fly in her eyes as if it were my own rendition of the
Fourth of July.

As we came down from our high, I rolled over and
draped her over my body, allowing us to bask in the afterglow of our passion. 
She started to get up and I pulled her back down.  “Where do you think you’re
going?”

“Dessert,” she said and gave me a chaste kiss.  I
released her from my arms and smacked her bare butt as she backed away, which
made her turn to eye me over her shoulder.

I smirked.  “Hurry back,” I said and watched those
naked hips of hers sway out of the bedroom.

I don’t know where her sudden confidence had come
from but I enjoyed this metamorphosis into a more vocal and confident version
of Alissa.  Her meek and demure side was a definite favourite of mine, especially
when it was accompanied by her blushes which she still graced me with at least
once a day.  But this self-assured side of hers was a plus.  It was a side I hadn’t
witnessed with any of the women I’d been with.