She winced and bit her lip as if she hadn’t done this in a while. “Baby,” he sang softly, brushing her hair back and nibbling her lips. “Take it slow.”
She filled herself with him, groaned when he lifted them both off the seat, straining for more. “How does that feel?” he asked, gripping her hips with both hands.
“Really good.”
“How good?” He withdrew, not letting her follow.
Her eyes fluttered closed. “Isa?”
“Don’t stop.”
He craned his neck, tasting her mouth like sucking the juice from a fruit. When he pulled away from her kiss, he brought her down over him and she let out the kind of moan that a man liked to hear from a woman. Alex pumped her up and down, racing towards the release that would free him from the burning tension. There was nothing tender or sweet about the way he fused her hips onto his when he came with a guttural cry that twisted out of him.
Sparks lit up in front of his eyes when she finally rested against him. A pleasant hum buzzed under his skin.
“Oh my God,” he managed, his skin tacky with sweat. His open mouth left kisses along her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh,” she sighed.
“Did I make you come?”
She held her breath and he knew she was about to lie.
“Don’t,” he warned. “Just let me—” Electric shocks pulsed through him when he lifted her off of him.
She pointedly drifted her eyes down to his crotch and then cried, “Oh, shit!”
“Isa?” Thinking they had a crowd in the parking lot, he looked over his shoulders at the frosted windows. “What’s—”
“You’re not—We didn’t—” She shielded her naked self with her hands.
“What?” he asked, seeing no one watching them.
“Oh God and I’m not even drunk.”
“Did I hurt you?” he yelled over her babbling.
She jerked to a stop. “No. You didn’t hurt me.”
But he didn’t make her come either, which he was about to rectify when she—
“Look at yourself,” she said pointing at his lap. He did and the languorous haze he’d been in completely cleared. He’d not only tossed his sense of responsibility out the window, but he’d broken the golden rule of singles’ sex. No condom.
12
Alex followed Isa under the trees that dripped fat drops of rain on his head. She’d all but raced away from him after she’d yanked her pants on and ran to her car. But her four-cylinder couldn’t outrace superior horsepower and a stick shift.
He felt fully responsible for her now, but that didn’t stop him from hoping that she was on the pill or that this wasn’t that time of the month. The last thing Alex needed was to get his team mom knocked up, even if her scent burned onto his skin and he had felt those curves hidden under that coat.
With a suspicious eye cast to the twisting junipers and hedges that bordered the four bungalow-style apartments, he made sure they were alone. The diamond-paned windows were dark.
Alex stuffed his hands into his pockets even when he wanted to gather her hair in his hands and kiss her until he purged her from his system.
“You don’t have to follow me,” she said tonelessly over her shoulder, her keys singing as she yanked them out of her pocket. A scrap of paper fluttered to the ground but he knew if he stopped to pick it up, she’d disappear behind that door. He had to say something, even if he had no idea what.
“You really should remember to turn your light on if you’re going out,” he said for lack of anything else.
Isa glared at him over her shoulder, silently inquiring if she’d asked him for his advice.
“Can I call you tomorrow?”
She stabbed at the lock with her key. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Then can we meet for lunch or something?”
She wasn’t having much luck in the dark. “I’m going to be busy—shit!”
Alex knew she just wanted him gone but he couldn’t walk away. Not after the look of terror that had been on her face when she turned to him after the most amazing sex he’d ever had in his life.
He didn’t know her well enough, but he’d guessed she had Andrew around eighteen, maybe nineteen, and the father wasn’t on the scene. She didn’t wear a ring so maybe the asshole knocked her up and then didn’t have the balls to marry her. Alex should be petrified after having sex without a condom, but strangely he hovered in this misty world that resembled more of a dream than reality.
“If you’re pregnant, we need to have a plan or something,” he announced before he could stop himself.
Turning to face him, Isa made a sound as if she was struggling with something. Giving up, she shook her head and then shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Me neither,” he admitted, carefully reaching behind him for the little flashlight he’d worn clipped to his belt. “I’ve been with other women except—”
She looked at him and he shut up.
“Here. Let me,” he said lamely, aiming the beam of light at the doorknob.
Isa had hoped she could make it to her apartment without either of them having to talk about what they’d just done.
She didn’t have alcohol to blame for what happened, only desperation to prove to at least one other person that she wasn’t some cold fish in the sack. Tonight, the bra would be burned.
The light he held up shivered against the lock and since no one was saying anything, the uncomfortable silence burrowed under her skin like the cold damp of the night. Finally Isa inserted the key.
“I don’t know what we’ll do if I’m—”
Alex didn’t say anything so Isa imagined it for him: But she had a kid. But she wasn’t his type. But he didn’t want the responsibility of a kid with a woman he never wanted to date, much less commit to.
It was just sex, she told herself. No wine and roses or promises of forever. Just sex. Just the most incredible sex in which she actually came near an orgasm.
Isa paused and then turned the key. “We’re both adults. I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around doing what we just did. Things got out of hand and we’ll just forget it, okay?”
The light vanished with a snap.
“That’s not gonna be easy,” Alex said in the dark behind her.
She reached inside, feeling for the switch. “I can barely remember what I wore to work this week. In time, it’ll be just one of those things.”
His hand clamped down on her arm. “Just one of those things?”
“Yes. Now let go of my arm.”
“How can you say it was just one of those things?”
“Because it—it just was—” She looked down at his hand and then back into his eyes. “You haven’t let go of my arm.”
He stepped up, crowding her against the doorjamb. Her breath hitched as he swooped down and kissed her.
The fine bristle of his beard rasped her chin and, instantly, all her systems were a go. Just as quickly as it happened, the kiss was over. His breath pulsed and she felt his muscles vibrating under her fingers.
“Look, you already proved your manhood, so back off.” Swallowing against the pulse in her neck, she nudged the door with her back and then slipped inside. “Good night.”
His palm stopped the door. “If anything happens, I want to know.”
“Nothing happened. It’s highly unlikely this time of the month,” she lied, hoping that like all men, Alex was vaguely aware that women had periods and as far as they knew, ovulation was a bowel movement.
“But you’ll tell me? No matter what, I’m responsible for what we did.”
“We’re both responsible.”
“I know that,” he said impatiently. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I do.”
He lifted his hand and she started to close the door.
“I still—” he clenched his jaw. “I never expected what happened and it was—”
“I know,” she said
so he could stop struggling to say all the right words he wouldn’t have meant. “This stays between us.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.” She waited. “I was going to say that those high school kids don’t know what they’re talking about.”
What kind of freak was she that she was almost flattered by what he just said, that she wanted him to follow her inside and do it again for the rest of the night? Man, five years of sleeping in cold sheets and a soccer ball to the head really screwed a girl up.
Alex’s shoes scraped against the concrete as he stepped down. “Lock the door,” he instructed, and then disappeared from her doorstep.
Isa glared at the “Sex and the Single Mom” article Susan had clipped and slipped into her mailbox. It accused her from the other side of the dining room table, the same table where nearly four years ago Tamara had confessed that she’d made out with Will Benavides. Then Isa had felt so high and mighty that she hadn’t done anything that reckless, not to mention stupid.
What if Sajil had walked out and saw them? What if Susan and John stopped by for dinner after their weekly movie date? God, what if Carlos had taken Andrew there?
What kind of mother did this make her? How would she look Andrew in the face an—
Isa jumped to her feet, remembering how Oprah Winfrey had berated Amber Frey for sleeping with Scott Peterson on their first date. But then Alex wasn’t a murderer. At least not that she knew of.
And then there was the whole p-word issue. Isa tried again to count the days from the first day of her last period. She couldn’t remember and she hadn’t bothered to write it down in her calendar. But wait! Should she call her doctor in case Alex had—you know—diseases? Not that he seemed the type to have diseases and he smelled very clean. Her breath whooshed out and her hands shivered.
“Call him and do it again,” Joan suggested. Isa spun and saw her standing in the shower, holding open the curtain like it was the stage of the Follies. “Well, why not? You can’t lie to me. I saw everything, darling.”
Isa took in Joan’s white goddess gown and matching diamond cuff bracelets. “You know what? I’m tired of you showing up and—” Isa realized she was talking to a ghost, no wait, Joan wasn’t dead, which meant Isa had become like that guy in that movie who—
“Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re a healthy, beautiful girl who needed some fun. Now,” Joan purred. “Go to the drug store and then call him over. Trust me, he’s dying for more.”
“Really?” Isa accidentally blurted. She shook her head and grabbed the top of her head with both hands.
Joan dropped her hands from the curtains and posed them on still firm and fabulous hips. “Men’s needs are very basic. Use him for your pleasure and when you’re done—” Her diamonds winked as she flicked her hand in the air. “Be discreet of course, but then find yourself a new toy to play with.”
Isa forced her eyes back to the mirror. Andrew’s Shrek toothbrush in the holder aroused a queasy sense of guilt that her actions might endanger him in some way. Oh yeah, and she was so irretrievably nuts that she argued with Joan Collins in her bathroom.
“Seriously darling, and if I were you, which—well, obviously I’m not,” she laughed. “I would’ve invited him in so I could be eating strawberries off his naked chest for breakfast.”
Isa wasn’t hearing this. She was upset and Joan always showed up in a crisis. And yet Isa said, “But I’m not like you. I could never be like you.”
“But what about your performance earlier tonight? You took control of the situation and that, my dear, shows great promise for future conquests. You just need to refine your technique.”
“Refine my technique?”
“Well, yes,” Joan admonished.
“What’s wrong with my technique?”
Fluttering her eyelashes, Joan seemed taken aback. “I don’t know how to put it delicately except to say that it was crude but quite adequate.”
“I was not crude!”
“Trust me, darling, in the state he was in, he didn’t notice. You see the next time you’re on top you should take him by the—”
“I’m not hearing you,” Isa yelled, and then turned back to the shower when Joan went silent. The curtains hung there and the pipe dripped into the rust-lined drain.
Isa blinked her eyes, which felt like they were lined with sandpaper. Even though she was gone, Joan was right. Isa loved what she was doing with Alex in the backseat. In that moment she felt wild, free, and, well, completely unlike herself.
Damn it, she was tired of feeling guilty and bound by some archaic code of conduct. She’d do it again, given the chance.
No, she wouldn’t. That was a once in a lifetime thing for her and it was going with her to the grave. Tomorrow, no, right now, she was going right back to the old, safe Isa who didn’t do stupid things.
It’s just that after being the Isa who ruined Alex for all women, Isa wasn’t so sure which one she really was anymore.
13
ISA’S AURA READING
Shown in abundance is the color blue, representing a teacher, someone who is very caring and will help other people grow. The female silhouette in the background could represent strong femininity.
When Isa registered the third wolf whistle, she tossed a frown over her shoulder. She’d always been the girl with the books pressed to her chest, eyes on the ground as she scurried away.
Her hand flew up to her hair, forgetting it had been cut to barely skim the back of her neck. She felt like the only kid who showed up at school in costume on Halloween.
Clenching her jaw, Isa focused back on her first order of business this morning. After her argument with Joan in the shower—crude but adequate, her ass—she hit upon the answer to Dr. Quilley’s question from their meeting last week. As soon as a decent hour arrived Sunday morning, she called him at home and he gave her idea resounding approval.
But even still, she wasn’t so sure. Her judgment and sanity hadn’t been in prime form lately. What if she pushed her students too far? What if she was setting them up for a colossal failure?
She unlocked the door and not even two minutes later, her students trickled in well before the first period bell. Once they settled in, she stood in between the groups of desks that faced each other in single-file rows.
When she explained the school board’s possible budget cuts and the role she hoped they would play in preventing it, her doubts hardened even more.
“How can what we say change their minds?” Daniel asked as the unofficial leader of the class. “They want to care about money.”
“But their jobs are to listen to the people whose lives they affect,” Isa replied, even though she knew how idealistic it sounded. “Yes they care about money, but they also care about your education.”
“They want us to be something we’re not,” Myrna protested. “I don’t sound American; I don’t act like it or dress like. I don’t want to let go of who I am.”
Although Daniel and Myrna were her strongest students, Isa read the silent distress in her other students’ eyes.
“My brother, he—” Khadija halted when every head turned in her direction. Isa encouraged her to continue, especially since this was the first time she’d ever spoken out loud without Isa’s prompting. “My brother tells me no one listens to someone like us.”
Khadija’s hands were clasped together so tight, Isa could see them trembling. “He says people who come into his computer store won’t let him help them. They say he should go back to his country.”
The others nodded with understanding, having heard the same thing at some point in their lives in the States.
“How can we make them understand when they don’t even want us here?” Daniel asked.
“Well then, you only have two choices,” Isa broke in, needing to get control of the class. “You either give up or you stand up to them and make them hear you. But either way you will be required to write a speech in English on how you feel about the cutbacks
.”
Myrna flopped back in her seat and she avoided Isa’s reproving look.
She refused to back down even though they were pained by her intractable assignment. “If you attend the board meeting, you will receive extra credit. Your fate is up to you.”
When the lunch bell finally rang, her students fled rather than linger like they normally did. Isa wearily locked her door and started for the teacher’s lounge. June was approaching and she nearly walked by Isa. When she realized the woman with the shadowed eyes and snug, but not sexy, blue sweater dress and cardigan was Isa, she began screaming, “Wha—Whe—Oh my God!”
Somehow her wedge espadrilles carried June down the steps without incident. “I heard the rumors but I refused to believe it until I saw you with my very eyes. Who did this to you?” she asked reverently.
“It’s a long story,” Isa grumbled, feeling self-conscious as some students gathered.
June was momentarily bereft of speech. “It’s beautiful.” She took Isa’s hand, turning her around in a dance. “And you’re wearing heels!”
All female eyes were magnetized to Isa’s pointy black mules. They cooed their appreciation as they walked by.
“So you like it?” Isa asked.
“Yes, but—” June loomed close as if she were going in for a kiss. “Are you wearing contacts?”
“No.”
“You have blue eyes?”
How come no one ever noticed she had blue eyes? Well, no one except Alex.
“Girls,” Isa said to the students. “Would you give Mrs. Lujon and me a minute?”
They slouched away with big smiles on their faces.
“I need to apologize for the other day,” Isa said reluctantly, especially after the crack about her eyes.
“Darlin’ please,” June waved it away like what happened was nothing more than a fly buzzing in her hair. “In my family, we do worse damage than that.”
“You’re a good person,” Isa blurted.
June softened and she squeezed Isa’s shoulder. “That’s one of the nicest things a woman other than my mama has ever said to me. Now—” She thrust one hip out, meaning business. “What happened with Alex?”
In Between Men Page 8