Dirty Disaster
Page 18
Her head ticks to the side. “So is this what you meant by taking it slow?” She places my hand back down where she found it, and I claim what’s mine once again.
“I meant emotionally we should slow it down.” I can feel the heat from her body, and God knows once I pull her skin to mine all traces of conversation will be over. “We have a long history of running hot and cold. Let’s tear down those towers we’ve been hiding behind one brick at a time. Once we discover what makes one another tick, we’ll understand the blowouts a little bit more.” I wince when I say the word blowout. It’s a throwback term I wish I never brought up, but instead, I landed it in the room haphazard as a landmine.
“Blowouts, huh?” She grazes her finger over my lips and belts out a soft laugh as if she didn’t mind the reference. God, I love seeing her happy. “So those bumps in the road are inevitable?” She takes a moment to glare at me, and there’s something endearing about that look. Perhaps because it’s the one she’s gifted me most frequently. Lex has always been a firecracker, and I’ve always been a big fan of the Fourth of July. We are essentially a match made in a dynamite factory.
“Each and every one. There’s not a couple on earth who doesn’t go there on occasion.” I brush her hair off her shoulders before picking up a crimson lock and coiling it around my finger. Her sweet perfume calls to me. Same scent she wore way back when—French lavender she once told me. I never forgot that scent. I didn’t need a bottle to remind me of her. I had it ingrained in my gray matter. Lex’s French lavender soul has haunted me in and out of my dreams.
“Even Levi and Low?” She wrinkles her nose when she says their names, and I can’t help but offer a sarcastic smile.
“Even Levi and Low.”
Lex steps in, her breath warming my chest in bursts. “But I don’t want to talk about them.” Her lips graze over my neck, and it feels so good I can’t exhale.
I lean in and brush my mouth over her ear. “Do you want to talk about us?”
“I want to reinvent us.” Her breathing becomes erratic as her hips singe against me, and I suck in a quick breath through my teeth. “I want to shine what we have and watch it sparkle in the light. I want to leave the past hidden under a dusty canvas.” She lands a kiss over my shoulder. “I don’t want the memories. I don’t want the pain—the fear or the rejection.”
And there it is. Rejection is exactly what Lex felt in the end, and I take full responsibility for that.
“I think you’re onto something.” I slide my lips from her ear to her mouth. “Let’s move on to the new us. The better, sparkly version.” A laugh trembles from me as I slip my tongue into her mouth. Lex meets me right where I want to be with meandering passionate kisses that have no end in sight. Carefully, I pull us down to the rug with Lex landing by my side, her body holding a tangerine glow from the fire. “We don’t need to hurry.” My fingers glide over the sharp curve of her hip. “We have all the time in the world.”
“We have tonight.” Her brow lifts with amusement. “I don’t live here.”
“Yet.”
The idea of a laugh bounces in her chest “I’m not one for a series of Southern sleepovers.”
“I know. You’re the marrying kind.” I lift her hair off her shoulder, exposing her to me fully. “So am I.”
She offers a playful frown. Her cool knee glides between my legs and edges up toward dangerous territory. “Is that a proposal?”
“Nope. I promise—when I’m proposing, you won’t need to question it. You’ll know without a doubt.”
“Without a doubt.” She shakes her head, her lime-colored eyes secured to mine. “That’s something we never seem to be.”
“That’s about to change,” I whisper as I pull her onto me. Her chest glides soft and easy as it expands over my flesh. “I’m going to bark out orders without a doubt, and you’re going to follow them.”
Lex tips her head back and belts out a laugh. “You wish, Collins.” That triple X pendant I gifted her dangles just inches from my mouth so I catch it with my teeth. “All right. First, we make love, slow and easy—something exploratory where I get to taste and see every last inch of you.”
Her cheeks pinch with color by the light of the fire. “Every last inch of me?”
“Yes, Lex.” Sure, we’ve had countless sessions that qualified as damn near pornographic, but Lex has always made sure the lights were off, the covers were on. For as brazen as she can be, behind locked doors she’s quite shy about her body. “Every last inch.” My hand slips between her thighs, and I can feel her knees lock together in protest. Then in an instant she loosens. Lex opens for me like a flower under the warmth of the sun, like a dare.
“Every last inch,” she says it just below a whisper. “I’m giving it to you.”
I pull her mouth down to mine, and we begin in on something that feels entirely new. Lex and I aren’t dragging the past into this room tonight. We’ve finally managed to unleash ourselves from our baggage—if only for one night. The problem with denying the past is that you’re destined to repeat it. And God knows I have no intention of repeating our thorny past. Maybe just the best parts.
Lex glides over me, landing that sweet spot between her thighs square over my lap.
Yes, this part for sure.
It wasn’t all so bad.
Was it?
Pretty Little Lies
Lex
Six Years Earlier…
Manhattan in springtime is still far too icy to wear a skintight dress with its hemline just below the crotch—not to mention the plunging neckline, but that didn’t stop me.
Over the last three months, Axel has actually convinced me to explore a friendship with him, one he said that I promised. I did no such thing, but of course, he and his manipulative ways won out once again. And for once I’m glad about it.
I didn’t tell him I was coming to the city. After that horrible pre-holiday debacle at the Witch’s Cauldron—the hot spring I was tempted to drown him in—Axel decided that maybe it was best if he went to NYU. It was a relief to me, but it gutted me on a primal level. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I won’t lie—it stunned me a bit to learn he was actually packing a suitcase and finishing out his law degree in New York. All sorts of crazy thoughts entered my head, socialites climbing their way up his chest, scantily dressed girls in flashy Manhattan nightclubs making their move right onto his crotch, and the worst female perpetrators of them all—the all too eager to please coeds who would be surrounding him in number. Axel Collins was a sexual sitting duck, and I knew it. Perhaps that’s the real reason I broke it off with him. In the deepest corner of my black dusty heart, I knew Axel would up and leave me one day. People leave. Relationships end. That’s what happens. It happens to everyone. And it inevitably happened to me.
“Room 205,” I whisper as I head toward the apartment he shares with two other guys—cellmates as he calls them. Axel has no clue that I’m showing up tonight, but he’s filled me in so succinctly on the mundane details of his life I feel as though I can find him in—yes, a New York minute. The door is slightly ajar—typical frat boy move, or more appropriately ex-frat boy since all of these boys have moved on to legal scholastic pastures.
A girl sits on the couch giggling while her dark-haired suitor runs his arms wildly over her back, and my stomach drops as his deep voice strums through the air like an erotic melody.
I give a hard knock over the door. I will gut Axel like an unwanted pale bellied carp for telling me I’m the only girl on his mind.
The two of them sit up straight as pins, the girl looking every bit the sexed-up coed, and her male suitor looking every bit nothing at all like Axel.
A huge weight lifts off my chest. That right there was my worst nightmare playing out in real time. Axel with his arms around another girl. The thought is enough to make me want to break every window in this high-rise with a baseball bat. Knowing me, I’d rip the girl’s leg off and smash windows with her stiletto instead.
The two of them send me to a club in the basement called the Moulin Rouge—that’s where you can always find him on the weekend, the girl chirps—and I head in the direction they suggested, wondering why Axel never mentioned a nightclub in his building at all. Probably because it shares its moniker with an infamous Parisian strip club. And he’s there every weekend? He let me know all about his favorite coffee shop, the one that reminded him of Hallowed Grounds where we logged countless hours discussing Spanish Influenza during World War I and just as easily our favorite childhood cartoons. Everything was so easy with Axel. We meshed well on an intellectual level as much as we did in bed, and how I miss meshing with him in bed. That’s exactly why I’m here. I pull down the hem of my skirt as I bypass a group of presumably NYU students on my way down the navy carpeted stairs. A sign reading Moulin Rouge points left, and just as I round the corner on the final flight, the lights dim to nothing with spastic red and blue strobe lights. The sound of techno dance music fills the air with its obnoxious presence, and the smell of malt liquor streams from the clusters of laughing coeds. Blondes, brunettes, stunning redheads—the latter of which Axel has a self-proclaimed affinity for—make my stomach turn. It’s one thing to envision him surrounded with beauties from the Big Apple, but it’s another to witness the event.
I head into the club, no cover, no carding. Great. That means this place is most likely crawling with high school girls, too. God knows a seventeen-year-old has the capability to look twenty-six with a little mascara and Mommy’s red lipstick.
My heart thumps in rhythm to the caustic music, and it only seems to get louder, booming with intensity until I can feel it thumping through my chest.
Bodies glide over one another on the dance floor, off the dance floor, on the bar, behind it. My God, is this what he’s been up to? Wooing me back by day, shaking his hips at underage high schoolers by night? It’s true. Axel was wooing, but I’ve done my best to reassure him we were never to be romantically linked again. The more he pleaded, the more I insisted—all the while buying my plane ticket, having my lady parts waxed by a professional—something my roommate swears is a modern-day necessity. Not only am I going to surprise Axel with my proclamation of love—and I’m loathe to toss around that heart-shaped word so he had better appreciate it—but I’m going to surprise him with my new hairless kitten.
I twine my way through endless bodies. Men with leering gazes track my every move. An overgrown frat boy offers my bottom a healthy pinch, and I’m quick to slap him away. Just as I’m about to unleash my fury, my budding frustration his way, I spot a familiar dark-haired boy just over his shoulder and my stomach drops.
My feet carry me forward a few steps until I have an unobstructed view and my heart—the one I foolishly gave away—drops right through the floor. It’s fine. I won’t be needing it back.
Straddled between his legs is a petite blonde with a silver sequin skirt that hardly qualifies as the aforementioned accouterment. Her hair is perfectly tousled, her tanned legs perfectly toned, her stilts perfectly Louboutin. And instantly I hate her. But not as much as I hate him.
They’re laughing, cuddling, he’s caressing her hair, she’s sniffing, licking his neck, claiming him for the night.
I suck in a sharp breath as a horrible thought comes to me. Sure, he’s landed himself a skank, but my God, what if he’s gotten himself a girlfriend? I had even suggested it. Stupid, stupid me. But the audacity of him to listen simply blows me away. And courting me on the side? I’ll show her the texts. I’ll show every girl in here his lovesick messages. I’ll make sure he never gets laid in this town again.
The blonde does a little bunny hop to the rhythm of the music before gliding her leg up his thigh. She whispers into his ear, and his arms wrap tighter around her back. Axel looks up, a laugh dying on his lips, and just like that, his eyes lock with mine. His features quickly morph to horror as he gently guides her out of his way and speeds on over.
I turn to run. “Oh no, you don’t,” I say to no one in particular as I try desperately to weave through the bodies on the dance floor.
But Axel spins me back by the arm, his face fills with far more horror and surprise than should ever be legal.
“Lex, is this really you?”
“Who the hell cares!” I bite the expletive in his face, and he inches back at the sound. His face contorts into twelve different stages of astonishment.
“I care.” His tone softens as he struggles to pull me in close. The scent of his cologne lies heavy between us, and it makes me that much more insane.
“Is that what you’re doing now?” I shout, pushing him hard in the chest. “Putting on cologne, looking your best while trolling cheap girls on a Friday night?” My voice pitches as tears come uninvited. I hate how I must look to him, to everyone around us who suddenly seems interested. I’m sure they all want to know why some crazy girl is screaming at their favorite gigolo.
“No.” He shakes his head slowly, the denial ripe on his face. “I swear on all that is holy, it’s not what you think. I have no idea who that girl is. A friend of mine put me up to it.” He grips his hair by the temples and spins in a circle. “God.” He glances up as if he were actually summoning the Almighty. “I swear to you, Lex, it looked way worse than it was. My buddy, Keith, is standing right over there.” He looks to the empty bar, and a string of expletives runs from his lips. “I’ll find him. We’ll go right now and find him together.”
His grip intensifies over my arms, and I struggle free. “Get away from me.” I beat him off with my purse, a Chanel clutch I found in a thrift store back in Hollow Brook named Karen, after the girl working the register. And to think I spent an entire afternoon envisioning how cosmopolitan Karen and I would look strutting around New York and here I’m nothing but laughable. “I was afraid I’d get accosted in this low-down and dirty town.” I beat him over the chest with my thrift store find. “And here it’s you doing the accosting!” I smack him hard over the top of the head, and a couple of beefed-up bouncers come up alongside me.
“Ma’am, is this dude bothering you?”
“Yes,” I seethe over at Axel with my newfound hatred for him. It’s always been there beneath the surface, and tonight it’s honored to make its official debut. “He most certainly is. Please escort me out of the building. I’d hate for him to follow me.”
The wrestler to my right cinches his arm through mine while the one to my left holds a hand out to Axel in the event he tries to make a move.
“Lex—wait!” he shouts over the music so loud even the DJ pauses his mixing moves to acknowledge the commotion. “This is a huge mistake! Don’t go!”
His voice grows small as I speed up the stairs, taking them on two by two.
No sooner do I get to the ground level, feel the rush of stale New York air hitting me in the face than a familiar voice roars from behind.
“Lex! Lex—please! Come back to me, Lex. I love you! ”
And those are the last words I ever hope to hear from Axel Collins.
I sob like the weak-minded moron I had become all the way home.
As soon as I set foot back in Hollow Brook, I knew Cupid and his stupid fictional arrow would never be a part of my life again.
I would never allow it.
Present Day
Lex
As if having a constant flock of protesters clamoring on the sidewalk in front of my home weren’t enough, they’ve managed to migrate to The Sloppy Pelican, filling in the lot with their ridiculous banners and homemade, mostly illegible third grade art on a stick.
“Oh ma gah!” Raven strums it out, doing her best country girl impersonation. We drove in together since she’s agreed to help me with the working end of Teagan’s official Freedom Fest. It’s slated to begin in less than an hour. I’ve been doing a lot of back and f
orth today, helping to decorate the banquet room to make sure the details were just right.
“They must have followed me this afternoon.” I click my tongue in disgust at the smarmy group, chanting boycott The Pelican!
“Oh my God.” Now it’s me exclaiming my horror. “This isn’t right.” My feet pivot in the small crowd’s direction, and Raven wastes no time in twisting me back toward The Sloppy Pelican.
“Never mind them. We’ll deal with them later. They’re old news anyway. We’ve got a Freedom Fest to tend to!”
“Right.” We speed in through the oversized front doors, and each time I enter this place the butterflies in my stomach still take flight. It’s true. Axel Collins has never stopped having that effect on me—and just the prospect of being near him does the same.
I’ve spent the night at his penthouse more times this week than at my own place. I guess it’s safe to say I’m warming to those Southern sleepovers quite nicely.
The Pelican is usually full to the hilt for a Friday evening, but tonight it’s shockingly empty.
“Looks like a slow night.” I head over to the bar where Mojo stands alone, polishing glasses instead of wowing the barflies with his mixing moves. “What’s going on? Is the Black Bear offering free food and booze tonight?” Everyone knows that the Black Bear is the only real competition for The Sloppy Pelican. But they’re located all the way on the other end of town. Even if the free scenario were true, I can’t imagine we would have such empty tables. The Pelican might be new, but it’s amassed a loyal following.
“The Black Bear doesn’t do anything for free. Heck, they charge to take selfies with the bartenders. But, hey—we all know bartenders are worth the price of admission.” He gives a quick wink along with the cheesy line. “Seriously though—” Mojo flexes those behemoth biceps without meaning to. His features morph to something just this side of pity as he ticks his head toward the front. “I have no clue why we’re so dead tonight. But I doubt the Black Bear has anything to do with it. It’s probably just the calm before the storm.”