Tempted (21 page)

“Think about that,” I said.

“No. I don’t want to.” He shuddered.

I went over to the bed and straddled him, grabbed up his wrists and pinned them above his head. That he could have easily pulled away was not the purpose. Making my point was.

“If I ever find out that you did something like this again,” I said sternly, “I will never forgive you. Do you understand?”

He looked up at me. “Yes.”

I moved my hips a little. The shift of his cock as it began to get stiff rewarded me. “If you’re going to talk about things like this, you have to include me.”

“Done.”

I moved again. His pupils dilated a bit. His hips lifted, and I pushed down, squeezing his sides with my thighs.

“And when he leaves, it’s over,” I told him. “It’s a few weeks, only. Just for the summer. It’s not something you’re going to offer to anyone else, you got it? No inviting Dan Martin back here for some wine, cheese and a hand job from Anne.”

“Jesus, no,” James said. Dan Martin was one of his crew members. A nice enough guy, although I preferred men with teeth.

He lifted his hips again, but I wasn’t ready to give him what he so plainly sought. “I don’t want this to come between us, Jamie, I’m serious.”

He smiled, and I realized I’d called him by the name Alex gave him. I let go of his wrists, and he put his hand on my cheek. We sat that way for a moment.

“It won’t come between us. But if you want it to stop, all you have to do is say so. And it’s done.”

I considered this. “I just need to know why. Really why.”

“I told you why.” He shifted under me, his cock still hard and probably getting uncomfortable. “Because I thought you wanted it.”

I shook my head. “Not the answer you think I want to hear. The real reason.”

His hands on my hips tightened. “Why did you do it?”

“Because I wanted to.”

He moved me against him, rocking. “You wanted him to touch you?”

“Yes.”

“Like this?” His hand cupped my breast.

My breath caught. “Yes.”

“And here?” A hand went to my ass, squeezing.

“Yes. There, too.”

“And here?” He touched between my legs.

My back arched a little as I pushed forward at his touch. “Yes, James. There, too.”

He pulled me down and rolled me beneath him. His mouth found mine, already open. His tongue plundered me, tasted and retreated. He pulled away to look into my face.

“You wanted him to kiss you. And touch you. It got you hot.”

He was doing all of those things as he spoke, and I was getting hot. “I already told you, yes.”

His expression was closed to me. He stopped his exploration of my body with his hands and looked into my eyes. He brought his mouth close to mine, but though I strained to reach him, he didn’t kiss me. His breath gusted over my face.

“Watching him go down on you, I knew just how you tasted. How you felt inside when he put his fingers inside you. How you get so hot, so wet. And tight. And I knew how good your mouth felt when you put it on his dick. Seeing you suck him while I fucked you…”

His voice hoarsened, got deeper. “You have no idea how beautiful you look when you’re coming.”

I wanted to dig deeper. Ask him more. I wanted to get under the surface, the shiny. “If we’re going to do this, we have to be honest with each other.”

“Of course.” His whisper in my ear made me shiver. “Absolutely. I promise I won’t talk about you with him again…unless it’s to plot new ways to get you naked.”

I smiled automatically. “I mean it, James.”

“Call me Jamie,” he murmured, licking my throat. Somehow, he’d unbuttoned my jeans and slipped a hand inside. “I like it.”

“Jamie,” I whispered. “I mean it.”

He reached for my hand, and I let him take it. “I’m not gay.”

I started to tell him it didn’t matter to me if he was, that it wasn’t his preference in genitalia that made me love him, but a noise from the doorway made us both turn. Alex stood there, watching. How long he’d been there, I didn’t know. He looked at our hands, linked, but he showed no expression.

“I came to see if you guys were ready to leave,” he said, tone as beige as the walls.

James got up, his arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, man, give us a minute.”

Our eyes caught and held. Alex nodded once. Then he turned and left us alone again.

“We need to talk.”

He looked up, then closed his laptop. “Okay.”

“James told me everything.” I wasn’t going to gild this conversation, or keep it pretty for the sake of peace. There were things I needed to say.

“Did he?” Alex crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.

“Yes. He did.”

Aggression doesn’t come naturally to me, but I must have seemed threatening despite my pajamas and equally disheveled hair. Maybe it was the mug of coffee I brandished like a weapon, or the way I towered over him while he was seated.

“What did he tell you?” He could say so much with just the slightest quirk of brow and lip.

“About the rules you two laid out.”

He waited a beat before answering. “Did he tell you that, or did you ask him about it?”

“A little of both.”

He made a small noise. I sipped my coffee. He looked somewhat blank, but I thought that was on purpose, not because he didn’t get what I was trying to say. Not that I was, at that moment, saying anything.

It was hard to force a discussion like this, but like ripping off a bandage all at once, I figured I’d better give it a shot.

“He told me about how you talked about what you could and couldn’t do.”

Damn him. He wasn’t giving me an inch, not doing one damn thing to make it easier for me. He didn’t even nod.

“I don’t like it,” I finished firmly, albeit lamely.

This got a reaction from him. Scornful charm trickled into his eyes and tilted his mouth on one side. He leaned back more in the chair with a small shake of his head to clear the hair off his forehead.

“You don’t like what?”

I gripped my coffee mug in two hands and tried to keep my voice neutral. “The rules the two of you made.”

I stood my ground even when he was on his feet with one smooth motion, like a cat. He took the mug out of my hands and put it on the table. I didn’t back up, not even when he stood so close I could count the individual hairs surrounding his nipples.

“Which ones don’t you like?”

He moved forward and I back, slowly, like ripples in water. We stopped when my back hit the small section of wall between the window seat and the door to the deck.

My heart began a familiar thump-thumping that echoed in my wrists and odd places like the backs of my knees and behind my ears. The places I’d put perfume, if I wore it. The places I’d want someone to kiss.

Alex put a hand on the wall next to my head. “Tell me something, Anne. Do you not like the rules or the fact you didn’t make them?”

I took a breath to steady my voice. “You negotiated me like it didn’t matter what I wanted.”

He was looking down at me. The weight of his gaze surrounded me, but I didn’t look up. Warmth rose from his skin, but gooseflesh humped my arms.

“You’re right,” he murmured. He didn’t sound smarmy or condescending, but it wasn’t quite sincere, either. “We should have asked you what you thought. So tell me. What do you think?”

He was waiting for me to look into his face, but I cut my eyes away. Sunlight and shadow dappled the deck outside the windows. A breeze swung the chimes Patricia had made for me out of old silverware. I saw them move but couldn’t hear them.

When I didn’t answer, he moved his hand closer to me, the heel of it brushing my shoulder. The other one went to the wall next to my hip. He caged me with his arms.

“Is it all right if I kiss you?”

I swallowed, my mouth dry. It didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t answer. His breath stirred a loose tendril of my hair.

“Is it all right if I touch you?”

But he wasn’t touching me, the bastard, though my entire body vibrated with the tension of waiting for it. I could have moved a hairsbreadth in any direction and met his skin with mine, but I was frozen. Between my legs, my pulse throbbed. I was bare beneath my thin pajama pants, and every small shift, every breath, shook the fabric against me.

“Is it all right if I put my mouth on you?”

My clit leaped. I remembered the feeling of his tongue against me, his lips pressing my flesh as he slid a finger deep inside to stroke me. My lips parted. A sigh escaped. I could have inclined my head an inch and kissed his chest, could have licked him without even straining. I felt like I was shaking all over, but my body remained still.

“Anne,” he whispered, bending his head to speak directly in my ear. “Is it all right if I fuck you?”

I jerked my head up at that, looking at him at last. “You know it’s not. That’s the one thing he said no to.”

Then he touched me, oh, God, and it was good, the way he cupped his hand against my cunt and pressed just hard enough. “Then it’s a good thing there are so many other things to do than fuck.”

I think I said his name, but it might have only been a moan. Whatever it was, his kiss swallowed it up. My arms went around his neck. He crushed me to the wall, every part of him pushing against every part of me. His mouth slid from mine to my neck, my shoulder. His hands roamed my body, kneading and squeezing, hooking under my leg to pull it up around his waist, reaching around to cup my ass.

Is it adultery when it’s not a secret? When there are rules? Can you be unfaithful to someone who’s given his permission?

Alex moved down my body with his mouth, his hands tugging the pajamas down my hips and thighs. He bared me to him, and parted my legs. He knelt in front of me and put his face between my thighs.

I covered my mouth to mute the cry when he kissed me there. When he licked my clitoris and forced my legs open wider to accommodate him. The wall was smooth and cool on my back and rear, and he pinned me to it with his tongue.

Orgasms are like snowflakes, no two alike. The first one jittered up and down my legs, making them shake and curling my toes. My fingers twisted in his hair, soft and thick. I watched him as he memorized my pussy with his mouth, as his eyes opened and he looked up at me. He smiled, and I came again in slow, rolling bursts of pleasure.

I tasted myself when he kissed me. Me, mingled with him. His tongue stroked mine like it had stroked my clit. He pulled back, breathing hard. So was I.

His cock demanded my attention and consideration, and with my body still boneless from climax I was eager to return the favor. I rubbed him through his pajamas. I liked the way my touch made him shudder, how he put both hands on the wall like he needed the support.

“Fuck, you have a gorgeous mouth.”

I can’t adequately describe how freeing it was to get on my knees in front of him. We had no baggage. I wasn’t thinking about the mortgage, or laundry, or an argument we’d had. All I had to think about with Alex was how he felt in my hand when I stroked him, and how he tasted when I opened my mouth to take him inside. There was nothing but the yearning, and I gave in to it as I sucked him.

I did my best for him. He came with a shout before my jaw had time to ache, and the speed surprised and pleased me. I swallowed him as his balls pulsed in my cupped hand. Then I got to my feet.

James would have kissed and hugged me and we’d have shared a moment of intimacy, but Alex and I didn’t reach for each other. We hadn’t broken any rules, but it still felt illicit, which was probably part of the appeal. We weren’t strangers but we didn’t really know each other, either. I wondered if he wanted to know me just then, or if it really only is women who let their minds work overtime.

“I’m sorry,” he said, surprising me. “I didn’t know he hadn’t told you. I thought you knew.”

This piece of information didn’t sit any better with me than learning about the whole plot in the first place. “I’m not sure I’m glad I found out. It’s not nice to find out someone you love hasn’t been truthful.”

“Jamie’s never been a good liar,” Alex said with a grin. “He’s not a rascal like me.”

I smiled a little. “Maybe not, but he’s not as good as he thinks he is, either.”

The words came out sounding more bitterly than I’d meant them to. Alex looked confused.

“I also didn’t know you’d been in touch after our wedding. As far as I knew, you hadn’t spoken since your big fight in college.”

“He told you about that? The fight?”

“Yes,” I said. “He told me that, too.”

“And you’re—”

I didn’t get the chance to find out what I was, because the backdoor handle jiggled. I think we both jumped ten feet in the air. We scrambled to rearrange our clothes and sprang apart like polarized magnets.

It probably wasn’t far enough, but the door flew open and Claire stumbled in with her arms full of bags. The door banged against the wall and started to close on her, and Alex moved forward to catch it.

“Thanks, handsome,” my sister said automatically, without even really looking at him. Flirting by rote. “Can you give me a hand with these?”

He did, handling with one hand the bags she’d needed two to hold. The plastic looped over his fingers and he lifted them. “Where should I put them?”

“Ooh, nice pecs,” Claire said a little more perkily. “On the island, I guess. Hey, Anne, do you have any ginger ale?”

Alex deposited the bags while I gestured toward the small closet. “In the pantry.”

“Thanks.” She opened the door to help herself.

Alex and I shared a look, half relief and half amusement. His hair still looked rumpled, but now I knew it was from my touch and not from sleep. His mouth was still wet from mine.

“Jesus, it smells like burritos in here.” Claire wrinkled her nose and popped the tab on her soda. She looked at both of us, back and forth.

We stopped looking at each other. Alex went back to his computer. I busied myself with emptying the bags. Claire had brought bags of balloons and spools of curling ribbon, along with several boxes of plastic utensils that looked like metal.

She sipped from her can. “I found them at the party supply place. They look like real silverware.”

Alex picked up the laptop. “I’ll get out of your way.”

“You don’t have to leave on my account,” Claire told him. Again, she looked back and forth between us. “Don’t mind me.”

“I don’t mind you at all, sweet thing,” Alex said with a wink and a saucy grin. “But I’ve got to take a shower and get on the road. I’ve got an appointment.”

“Oooh,” she flirted back. “Hot stuff.”

They laughed, mine trailing half a second after, like a badly timed soundtrack. Alex walked behind me, barely brushing me as he passed, and headed down the hall toward his bedroom. Claire waited until we heard the door shut before she turned to me.

“Does James know you’re fucking his supposed best friend?”

I squished the plastic bags into the holder in the cupboard under the sink. I wasn’t ignoring her. Just answering with silence.

“Anne!” Claire sounded shocked, no small feat.

“I’m not fucking him.” Technically speaking.

“You are doing something with him. I know that look. That just-fucked look. And you’ve got DSL.”

“What?” I turned, then.

“Dick-sucking lips,” my sister said. “Holy shit, Anne. You were giving him a BJ, weren’t you?”

“Claire…” I sighed and forced my hands not to stray to my face and hair or to straighten my clothes as evidence of a guilt I didn’t even feel. “It’s really none of your business.”

“Well, excuuuuuuse me!”

From elsewhere in the house we heard the creak of doors opening and closing, and the far-off hiss of running water. I looked back at her. Faint shadows circled her eyes, a very goth look but one I didn’t think she was affecting on purpose.

I thought of how she’d been acting lately. “Are you okay?”

She drank soda and avoided my eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not acting fine.”

“Is that your spidey-sense acting up again?” She scoffed, but it sounded forced.

“It’s a big sister’s prerogative.”

She smiled but rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”

“Claire. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Her face crumpled. A sob snuck out, though I could see she tried to hold it in. Alarmed, because Claire never cried, not even at sappy movies or at Hallmark card commercials, I moved around the island toward her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, but as she broke down against her will, even pressing her hands to her eyes to keep the tears from coming, I thought I knew.

“I’ll be fine.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than me. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Come here. Sit down.” I took her by the elbow and forced her over to the table’s bench seat. I sat beside her, my hand on her shoulder. “Are you in trouble?”

Trouble covered a lot of ground. But when she didn’t answer at first, it was obvious the kind she was in. My heart sank, and I rubbed her shoulder gently.

“Claire?”