Sexual Persuasion (17 page)

“I like the last part.
A lot.”

~~~~~

Even over the phone, Alex could tell Gianni pouted. It was an attitude he’d become too familiar with.

“But I had a nice dinner planned,” Gianni said. “Now you’re telling me you can’t come?”

“I told you I needed to study at the library tonight.”

“I thought you’d change your mind because I promised to make the
tilapia-stuffed-with-shrimp dish you like so much.”

Gianni’s feelings for Alex were much more intense than the reverse, and Alex began to feel pressured. “You hear what you want, Gianni, because I specifically said I’d be busy tonight. If you insist on making it, wrap it up and save it for me.”

“It’s not the same. Shrimp gets rubbery and tough if you reheat it.”

“Well, make it another night if it’s that important to you.”

“I thought it would be important to you.”

Alex wanted to slam down the phone. This went on a couple of times a week. He had a heavy course load and needed to study to keep up, not to mention projects that needed his attention. He couldn’t rearrange everything to suit Gianni. “We need to talk, Gianni, but I don’t want to do it over the phone.”

“We can talk over dinner.”

“Not tonight.
Tomorrow.”

“You’re making my life difficult,” Gianni said. “But okay.
Tomorrow. I’ll make the dinner tomorrow.”

Alex hung up. He rubbed his temples. This wasn’t working out at all. Gianni was suffocating him. Ever since Gianni’s roommate moved in with his girlfriend, Gianni wanted to spend all his free time with Alex. When their free times didn’t coordinate, Gianni thought that he should be Alex’s priority. Well, it didn’t work that way, and Alex needed to make it clear. He’d done that in the past, but his lover refused to understand his need for independence. Gianni said he understood, but he didn’t.

Alex hadn’t planned to fall in love when he met Gianni six months ago. It just happened. Then things changed, and now even the sex had lost its excitement. He was ready to move on. To what, he didn’t know. But now he had a problem, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

He went off to the Harvard law library to meet a classmate―a sharp gal from Upstate New York. She was also pretty, in a natural, unadorned way. She waved to him when he arrived, and they immersed themselves in quiet discussion. Alex gave little thought to Gianni until he looked up after a couple of hours and saw him standing there.

“So this is what you call studying?” Gianni said. “Huddled close to a date?”

Alex sat with his mouth open, horrified that Gianni had come to the library to check him out. His study partner, Callie Davis, didn’t know what to think and excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.

Alex’s controlled voice belied the rage festering within. “How dare you check up on me, Gianni. We are not at that place where you have the right.”

“No? I think I have every right.”

His voice carried enough that other students turned around. Alex got up to face him. He stood two inches taller, at six-two, and bent down to speak in Gianni’s ear. “You leave now, or you’ll never see me again. Do. You. Understand?”

The color drained from Gianni’s beautiful face. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“Do you?” Alex repeated.

“Yes, Alex. I’m sorry.”

“Now go, and don’t ever do this to me again. I said we’d talk tomorrow, and we will. Good night.”

Gianni looked like a little boy chastised by his father. Callie returned to the table, and Gianni slunk away.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Callie said. “I didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever you have going with him.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. He’s been after me since we met in a bar a few months ago. It’s almost like he’s stalking me.” Alex felt like a shit for explaining away a man who’d been his lover as if he were some deranged pervert, but he didn’t want word to spread that he was gay or even bi. He hadn’t come to terms with the fact himself and wondered if the sexual identity he’d established with Gianni would become his future.

“Is he a student at Harvard?” Callie asked.

“No.
MIT.”

“Then you should let them know. You can’t tell about these nutcases, although this one looked like a Greek god. A guy who looks like that can get anyone he wants. Hell, I’d bite if he weren’t gay. Maybe he’s bi.” She stopped as if something popped into her mind. “Hey, you’re not gay, are you? I mean if you are, that’s fine. I didn’t think so, but
you never know.”

He looked her straight in the eye. “No, I’m not gay.”

“Good, because I’ve always wanted to do more with you than study, but you always seem so aloof.”

Was he? He’d been told that before. Alex looked at Callie. She was tiny and appealing, and he found himself aroused. “Well, I guess we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

“Absolutely.”

* * * * *

The answering machine blinked five messages when Alex got home. He listened. All were from Gianni. They sounded desperate as he begged forgiveness for being so intrusive and demanding. Alex didn’t want to deal with him tonight. He needed to think how to extricate himself from the relationship. How different could it be from breaking up with a woman?

The phone rang again. He listened to the message and picked up while Gianni pleaded for Alex to call him back. Otherwise, he’d call all night long.

“I just got home,” Alex said.

“I acted like such a bitch. I don’t know what got into me. Forgive me?”

“I won’t talk about this tonight. Go to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow after my classes. We’ll have dinner.”

“Okay, Alex. I promise I’ll never do anything like that again.”

~~~~~

Alex nestled in the corner of the sofa.
Charlotte sat between his legs, her back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her naked body. He had poured amaretto over ice for Charlotte, a glass straight up for him, and they drank as they watched the blinking lights of Boston’s skyline.

“You were so quiet,” she said. “What were you thinking?”

His thoughts had run away from him again. He knew why now. For the first time in all the years since Gianni, he was facing his past so he could move on. “How perfect life can be sometimes.”

“Is it?”

“Uh-huh. Good dinner, erotic sex, winding down with a nice cordial, and the warmth of a special person close to me.” Her hand stroked his thigh. It didn’t take much for her to arouse him.

“And scenery to take one’s
breath away.” She put her glass on the table and turned around onto her knees to face him. “I promised myself I would do this before the night was over. Now that I know for sure you’re taking me home, this is the perfect opportunity. Remember our sexcap?”

A warm smile played across her lips, and he put all thoughts of his past away to enjoy the moment. “I won’t argue. It would
cap
off a perfect evening.” He lifted her toward him. “Come here.”

She shimmied up on her knees.
“Yes, Sir.”

He put his hands on her cheeks and brought her face to his in a soft meeting of their lips. A faint trace of Opium on her neck mixed with a whiff of something fruity in her hair and the unique musky scent of female sexual arousal. He reached for her pubic mound, but she shook her head and retreated.

After getting off the sofa, she placed a soft, down-filled cushion under his neck in such a way that his head tilted forward so he could watch what she did. She sat at his feet and began massaging her breasts, pulling and twisting her nipples, offering them to him, but purposely out of his reach, not that he stretched to touch her. He didn’t. He figured she planned to give him a taste of the erotic torment she’d received earlier, when he let his cock dangle near but out of her oral reach. Of course, he endured a similar torment too.

Charlotte seemed to delight in the obvious tightening of his balls, the incremental hardening of his cock in slow, erotic pulses. Alex took as much pleasure in that as he did from the glorious sensation in his groin. A satisfying sexual encounter entailed taking as much as giving, being pleasured as well as pleasuring. It consisted of a full buffet of the senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, and sound.

Her hands glided over the soft, luscious iridescence of her skin, down her torso to her pussy. Three fingers caressed her mound, eliciting low, singsong hums from her throat. Alex was so turned on he reached for his cock, resulting in a finger-wagging from Charlotte.

As if she read his thoughts, she spread saliva on her lips to moisten them and now set her attention on his erection. With her hand gently encircling his shaft, she slowly
wanked him. He almost had to sit on his hands, but she robbed him of control when she captured them and held them down as she bent over to enclose her lips around his glans. The glorious liquid sensation had him groaning. The teasing of her tongue. The sensual, steady lapping down the underside to his balls and up again. Down and again. His hips rocked with her motion.

The divine torment, he thought, as he threw back his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he caught the slight upward tilt of her head and her eyes flashing him the equivalent of a wicked grin. He nodded his satisfaction, smiled back, and closed his eyes again as the delicious consummation of her cock sucking surfaced like the built-up pressure of a volcano. She drank him, licking the residue off his tip when he finally breathed a contented sigh. He pulled her up on top of him, aware the
kettle-drum beating of his heart must be audible.

“Ah, my first
sexcap,” he said. “And now I need another nightcap.”

“I enjoyed it every bit as much as you. Maybe we should patent the word.”

“As long as no one else has the pleasure of the perpetrator.”

“That sounds proprietary.”

He wiped a bit of melted mascara from under her eye. “I know.”

She studied him, waiting. When he didn’t speak, she said, “I’d better go. I have work tomorrow.”

He kissed her long and hard. They dressed, and he drove her home. He followed her up to her apartment, made sure she was safe, and kissed her once more. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Another peck on the cheek, and he hurried down the stairs.

Though she didn’t verbalize it, Alex knew Charlotte was disappointed that he put off the promise to bare his soul this evening. Maybe he’d taken unfair advantage. Still, he accomplished one of his goals.
One element of trust if not the other. She knew what he’d avoided, what it entailed. Just not the extent, with whom, or how many. He wanted to ask if it would make a difference if the rumors she’d heard were true. But he didn’t.

It had been a long time since he’d felt this way about anyone, and he didn’t want to screw it up. Yet the word
proprietary
rang out like a gong clanging in a closed room. He needed to be careful.

The scent of blood still lingered on his hands from that time so long ago.
When he was young and reckless. When he played with another man’s heart.

Strange Bedfellows

Alex took a sleeping pill the night before and woke with a headache. He knew he’d never sleep after the wonderful, confusing, erotic, disturbing―name a thousand conflicting adjectives―evening he’d spent with Charlotte, complicated by all the thoughts of Gianni that cluttered his mind.

You’re fucked up,
Andros.
The fear that had attacked him earlier returned. Always confident, sure-of-himself, arrogant Alex Andros didn’t have a clue where to go from here, but he knew where he wanted to wind up. That would have to do until he figured it out later. He had business to attend to today.

By the time he showered, dressed, and drank two cups of freshly brewed coffee, it was nine thirty. He took the chance that Branigan was home and dialed his number. A woman answered, but it wasn’t Emily Fallon.
Housekeeper? He asked for Branigan.

“He’s upstairs, and I believe he’s busy. Who’s calling?”

“That’s all right. I have another call. I’ll get back to him.”

“Suit
yourself,” the woman said.

Branigan’s house in
Brookline looked like most of the small English Tudors in the area with immaculate grounds. Alex pulled up in front. A sports car similar to his sat in the driveway, next to a luxury SUV. He doubted he’d be there long. The housekeeper answered the door, but as she did, Emily Fallon barreled through with a leopard-print suitcase, a red nose, and a burgeoning black eye. Alex noted the absence of the garish bauble she had worn on her finger the night at the museum.

“Hey, wait,” Alex called.

“Let her go,” Branigan said, appearing as his housekeeper vanished inside. He wore a suit custom made to fit over his protruding belly. His angry, flushed face and slivered eyes portrayed a man with murder in his heart.

“Sorry,” Alex said. “I guess I came at a bad time.”

Branigan cocked his head toward the retreating Ms. Fallon, who was wiggling her spandexed ass into the expensive roadster. “There’s the leak. She was fucking Davidson, telling him all about stuff she overheard on the phone. After all I gave her, the little slut. The ring alone cost me more than the car she’s driving away in. I’ll get that back too when my man picks it up in the morning. She can go back to the little economy car she tooted around town in when I found her hostessing in a restaurant.” He waved a dismissive hand in her direction. “Good riddance.” Branigan puffed out something under his breath Alex couldn’t understand. “Come on in,” he said.