by S. Ann Cole
“Put. This. On,” Xavier gritted out.
Ignoring him, I sat back down in Jake’s lap out of spite.
The referee blew his whistle, giving them a thirty second warning to be back on the court, but everyone was glaring at someone.
Xavier ground out, “Get up, Alina.”
I pressed further back into Jake, and without a word or a smart-ass jab, Jake wrapped an arm around my middle, keeping me to him, understanding.
Most of the time Jake was a joker, but if a fight were to break out right now, Jake had one hero, and that was Davian. He would be throwing punches for Ice Steam and no one else. And as far as he was concern, I was team Ice Steam, not Ninety Miles.
I knew Xavier was just being a jealous asshole, but I wouldn’t allow him to boss me around in front of a stadium full of people. Aggressive possessiveness might be sexy for some women, but for me, it was a no-no.
I didn’t like feeling like I was living in a man’s spotlight, or like I was defined by one.
After being a single mother, I think not.
If Davian and I were together and he found me sitting in Jake’s lap, he wouldn’t even bat an eyelash, because he’d know this was just Jake. We were all like family.
But then again, Xavier wasn’t aware we had an easy connection. Because I’d lied to him. So…
“Why don’t you just drag me up, baby?” I said with a sweet, plastic smile. “Go on, manhandle me in front of everyone. Make the news. It appears you get off on having an audience.”
Xavier’s jaw worked back and forth as his eyes fired a bazillion ice pellets at me. I had never seen him this frosty before, but I could care less at this point.
With a slight shake of his head, he flung the jersey at me then jogged back out onto the court, bare-chested.
My gaze slid to the left and caught Davian’s. He was sporting a chuffed little smirk.
“Ohh-khay,” said Zach, breaking the tense, awkward moment. “Who’s replacing Mark? Tex?”
Leo snorted. “Yeah, that would equate to handing the game over on a silver platter to the rappers. Tex can’t even catch a ball. He’s athletically retarded. Dude’s presence on the sideline is just for show, man.”
Still looking pissed-off at the world, Tex flipped Leo off, while glaring past me and Jake to spy on Xena and Danni. What he saw—Danni feeding Xena some of his soda—seemed to piss him off further, as he pushed past everyone, stalked off to the Gatorade table and began flirting with one of the booty-shorts servers.
Jessica got up and walked up to Davian, wrapped her arms around him, sultrily licked some sweat off his neck and whispered, loud enough, “That’s for good luck.” She repeated the sweat-licking gesture on the other side of his neck. “Don’t sprain your ankle.”
Davian peered down his nose at her with obvious adoration, tipped her chin up, and kissed her thoroughly. “Love you.”
To distract myself from feeling, from caring, I bit the insides of my cheeks until I felt blood.
Davian eyed me over Jessica’s head, expression unreadable, before kissing her forehead and jogging back out onto the court with Leo and Zach.
Jake’s mouth was at my ear, whispering, “Does he know you’re not really his girl?”
“Which one?” I whispered back.
At this point, I didn’t think I was anyone’s girl. No one’s girl but Jacob’s.
Xena leaned across to me, her elbow digging into my thigh as she gave me puppy-dog eyes. “I apologize for my brother. Only when he drinks is he this aggressive and scary psycho. And I’ve been keeping tabs: he’s one hundred percent sober. So I’m guessing his new addiction is you.”
“He might as well choose someone else,” I carelessly told her. “I’m sure there are tons of women out there who’ll find his aggressive craziness oh so hot and sexy.”
“But I don’t want anyone else to be my sister,” she whined. “You’re tough and kickass and I lurrrrve you!”
“Is there booze in your soda, Xena?”
Giggling, she bobbed her head up and down, catching her straw and sucking hard for effect.
I laughed and shook my head at her.
Wait, someone’s hand was in my hair. I looked to the other side of me and saw that Jessica had now claimed the seat beside Jake. Legs demurely crossed, she had her chin in one hand, gazing out at game on the court, but her other hand was absently fiddling with a lock of my hair.
I stared at her, and then at her hand in my hair, before slowly turning back to Xena.
This girl was strange. Really strange.
Half-an-hour later, the rappers were celebrating their victory on the court in an extreme inflammation of shouts and dancing, while hip-hop music blared around the stadium with Dustin Latimore free-styling all around the court. They’d defeated the rockers by six points.
Jake had been booing annoyingly loud in my ears, until he got up, set me down on the chair, and said, “I need to learn the Dougie better,” and ran out onto the court to cheer along with the rappers—the same team he was booing only a second ago.
“Jake should be in the loony bin,” commented Jessica through a giggle, in the same time Davian jogged over to the sidelines wearing a cocky grin, even though he was on the losing team.
For one silly moment, I let myself imagine he was jogging toward me, grinning so proudly at me. For one silly moment, I imagined him wrapping his arms around me, sweeping me up and spinning me around, muttering the words, “Love you” to me.
Me.
The reality? He ran right by me and did all that with his fiancée, before plopping down with her straddling his lap. “If only you had licked me one more time…”
I tuned them out.
I was pathetic.
I was the only loser here.
Ignoring the drip, drip, drip sound of the blood leaking from a puncture wound in my heart, I shifted, turning my back to them, and sang along to the words of Rihanna’s Cheers pouring through the speakers.
Down at the Gatorade table, the rest of the rockers were flirting around the booty-shorts servers. Tex had his arm around the waist of one with black hair, and Xavier was decidedly giving his attention to Blondie this time around.
He was still shirtless, and hadn’t glanced in my direction even once. A bit cold and callous of him, considering it’s been two weeks since we’d last seen each other.
Hell yes, it hurt.
When Blondie scraped her nails down his sweaty arm and he made no attempt to caution her, I stood, slung his jersey around my neck, and told Xena I was heading back to Beach Rock.
See, I excelled at tuning out others, at squelching my pain, at laughing through embarrassment, at feigning nonchalance, but when it came to Xavier, I could do neither.
Inexplicably so.
I couldn’t tune him out, I couldn’t turn my back, I couldn’t close my eyes and pretend not to see.
And I didn’t know why.
Xavier, when he was present, was present. He couldn’t be ignored. You felt a compulsion, a draw, a tug, to look at him, speak to him, touch him, climb into him, be him.
And since I could do neither right now, it was best I left. Staying would be tantamount to launching myself headfirst into the basketball hoop and, with legs sticking up in the air, yelling, “Hey, somebody, pick me! Choose me! Me! Me! Meeee!”
Pathetic.
I was almost near the door when Dustin Latimore caught up to me. “’Sup, Alina.”
“Dustin,” I perfunctorily acknowledged.
“So, I been hearin’ rumors that you be Xander’s girl. Those true words?”
With a roll of my eyes, I informed him I was no one’s girl and resumed walking.
He stopped me again. “So, you single?”
“And free.”
“Cool. Cool.” He rubbed his hands together and licked his lips. “Usually, I’m an ass man. But for a white girl, you bangin’. What’d you say we, you know, chill somet
imes?”
“I don’t know how to do the Dougie.”
He busted out laughing. “No prob. I’m the man. I could teach you...” He moved in close to add, “…with a lot less clothes on.”
Twice. Twice I’ve turned down this guy. He was shameless.
“Tell you what,” I began, “do it the old-fashion way. Break it to Lion that you want to ‘chill’ with me. And if he approves, it’s a go.”
Tossing his head back, he bellowed out a laugh. “You’re sending me into the Lion’s den?”
Shrugging, I told him, “If you can’t win over the father, you’re not man enough for the daughter.”
This time when I resumed walking, he didn’t stop me.
On the way back to Beach Rock, I tried ringing Saskia. She hasn’t spoken to me since our Whatsapp tiff, but I still sent her email updates every single evening, giving her the full rundown of each day, of my misdemeanors, mistakes and misjudgments.
She never once replied.
JK refused to get involved. He said she was a hormonal mess right now and I should just give her some time to come around.
I was about twenty-feet away from my destination when someone grabbed my wrist and yanked me to the left.
I stumbled, then found myself smacking right into Davian’s side.
“Wha-what are you—”
“Shh,” he shushed, as he continued tugging me down a grassy narrow gap between Beach Rock and an open lot with a bunch of golf carts, four-wheel bikes, scooters, skateboards, and two massive RVs.
The gap belched us out to the beach front, and Davian went right, toward the huge cluster of rocks below Beach Rock.
Ducking under the house’s long-lipped balcony, he pulled me around the back of a giant black rock that had a cavernous gape one could walk right through.
Silly as mice, I let him lure me inside the cave.
Before I could get a word out, Davian had me against the gritty wall inside the rock, and next, his tongue was rubbing against mine.
He kissed me like a man dying of thirst and I was a tall glass of ice-cold water.
Moaning, I traveled my hands up to his neck and kissed him back, not caring that his lips had been on Jessica’s mere minutes ago.
His kisses to her were sweet and romantic, but this kiss, right now, was of a man starved, craving and clawing, a man begging to be let out of his cage, out of his body, desperate and frustrated and enraged all at once.
And that was how I could kiss him without a single jealous thought of Jessica. Because this, what Davian and I had, Jessica would never have. Not this all-consuming passion, this soul-devouring intensity, the burning, rabid, uncontrollable need for each other.
When Davian pulled back to give us time to breathe, he bumped his forehead to mine, breathing sharp and jagged. “I’ve wanted to do that since the second I saw you walking down the sideline with her.”
“You—” I stole another second to catch my breath. “You saw when I came?”
“Of course I did.” His eyes opened and stared down into mine. “The air is different when you’re near, Ally. You were walking with the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with, yet the woman I truly saw, wanted, ached for… was you.”
Rubbing his palm up my bare stomach, he dipped his head and sucked my neck as his hand moved up under my crop-top and squeezed one of my breasts.
My mouth fell open and a whimper tumbled out when he pinched my nipple and bit my neck at the same time.
“Davi…” I gasped out, “I thought…I thought you said this couldn’t—”
“I know, but…” He licked across my collarbone, and sucked at the little dip at my throat. “…the ache won’t go.”
I arched into his hands squeezing, kneading, pinching my breasts. “Choose me then.”
His hands left my breasts as he croaked out, “I can’t.” Then he knelt down on the granular ground, swirled his tongue in my navel and began undoing my shorts.
“Davi, no, w-we can’t do this here,” I hissed, even as my hips involuntarily thrust outward so he could yank my shorts and underwear down. “His room is right above us.”
He paused, sighed, then peeked up at me under those long lashes. “Just let me eat you out. Just let me see you come. And then I’ll stop, I swear.”
Taking my silence as confirmation, he covered his mouth over my clit, and I sagged back against the rough wall and let him eat me into a quaking orgasm, hands gripping tight in his hair as he lapped up every last drop of my cum.
True to his word, he pulled my underwear and shorts back up before rising to his feet.
“Leave him.”
I stilled for a minute, processing his demand, before asking, “You’re leaving her?”
Disregarding my question, he went on, “I can get you out of the deal with Lion. Go back home and I’ll take care of you. Give you whatever you want. Anything you need. Just…leave him.”
“Why?”
“Why the hell do you think?!” he snapped. “And I don’t believe he’s with you for the reasons you think he is.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s hiding shit, Alina.”
“Much like you are?”
Much like I was?
He growled low in his throat and scrubbed his hands down his face. “I don’t like hurting you with Jess, either.”
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, pushing him back a little. “You’re asking me to walk away from someone who actually makes me happy, just so you can be happy?” I straightened my crop-top. “You’re asking me to sacrifice my happiness, then sit back and watch you marry and find everlasting happiness with someone else?”
“Typical of you to twist good intentions into ugly schemes, Ally.”
“No, Davi,” I said, stepping up to him, pushing at his chest. “I see now this has nothing to do with love. This has to do with you getting one up on Xavi. I go away, you win. Because everything is a competition for you, right? You’re so full of yourself, so sure I’m head-over-heels for you that all it would take to get me to do what you want, is to whisper a few sweet words and suck on my clit.”
“Come on!” he threw his hands up. “You know damn well there’s no competition. I own you, Ally. Orgasms and screams. Sweat and tears. Body and soul. All of you belongs to me. You know this, I know this, the rest of Ice Steam knows this. So don’t come with that competition bullshit.”
He glared, inhaled deep, then sighed. “I want you to go because I can’t see you without wanting kiss you. I want you to go because I’m thinking about buying a gun to shoot that asshole. I want you to go because I’m losing sleep. Knowing you’re here and I can’t be with you drives me insane.”
Basically, what I gathered from all that was, I was inconveniencing him. And I wasn’t worth the risk of him facing jail time, dark circles under his eyes, or his engagement falling to pieces. Therefore, I needed to go. And he was willing to pay me to go. To disappear.
I sucked in a deep, long breath, exhaled steadily, opened and closed my fingers, then chose. “You’re right. You own me. In ways Xavier never will. It honestly makes no sense stringing him along.”
Davian closed the gap between us, circling his arms around my waist. “You’ll leave him?”
I reached up and scraped my nails over the dark stubbles on his jaw. “Yes.”
It was his scent that woke me.
A rich, earthy scent I’d grown obsessed with.
Or maybe it was his heat. A head-to-toe heat only his blessed proportions could provide.
No, I think it was the stubbles from his angular jaw scratching my bare shoulders, or quite possibly his contented exhales caressing my skin.
Biting my lip, I flipped over to face him.
Cautious eyes searched mine.
Using two fingers, I smoothed out the anxious creases between his brows.
He captured said two fingers and pressed them to his lips, kissing
them. “Thought you left…me. After…” He shook his head, as if besides himself. “Thought I blew it, Chino. Thought I blew it with you for good this time.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Xavier.” I offered him a censorious quirk of my eyebrow as I added, “Yes, you do need to work on being a bit more tactful with me in public, but…I’m yours.”
Slipping a hand under the covers, he cruised his palm up between my naked thighs. “Used to chicks with soft curves, you know?” he explained. “But you, you’re all muscle. Hard to bend. Can’t control. Too powerful for me.” His hand, reaching its destination, cupped me. “You do my head in, Chino.”
“So, you prefer someone you can bend easily? Control?”
Noncommittal, the corners of his mouth dipped. “Would definitely mean less headaches.”
“There is an upside to headaches, you know.”
“Upside?”
Flipping the covers off us, I pressed my hands to his chest and urged him onto his back, then leisurely kissed down, and even further down, until I got to his baseball bat. Long since hard and waiting for me.
Fisting his length, I looked up at him and sultrily drawled, “Headache is the ultimate excuse for getting a dick-shine.”
As he dropped his head back on the pillows and exhaled a pleasure-filled sigh, his fingers curled into my hair while I sucked his headache away.
Here’s the thing, Davian’s demand that I leave Xavier to appease him, was, in my view, equal to Xavier’s jealous/possessive display at the gymnasium earlier.
Sure, I was in love with Davian, and it was true, the man owned me. But not so completely that I’d be stupid enough to leave Xavier while he flat-out, pointblank, no apologies, refused to leave Jessica for me.
Maybe the Alina O’Hara pre-Jacob would have been jumping at anything he requested to please him. But post-Jacob Alina was a stronger, more sensible woman.
I couldn’t ignore the fact that each time I saw, touched, or kissed Xavier, I felt a little bit more than sexual attraction for him. I honest-to-God liked the man.
Saskia would comment that I was stringing him along, but that was far from what it was. I realized, only hours ago, that I wanted Xavier just as much as I wanted Davian.