“So, give him one,” I said. “What’s the harm? And how could you deny him that, anyway? You’ve at least got to give him a chance, Alex. You were once close. Maybe you can be close again.”
He shrugged. “Maybe we can.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Dinner was an unexpected delight—lobster rolls, seasoned potato wedges Alex had baked in the oven, and my favorite champagne.
“Veuve Clicquot,” I said.
“From your days at db Bistro,” Alex said while popping the cork with a smile and pouring each of us a glass.
“I can’t believe that you remember that.”
“Kind of like I can’t believe that you decided to be my wife.”
“But to remember such a small detail…”
“It’s not small to me. Everything about how we fell in love stays with me. I remember every moment of it because I’m grateful for it. So, here,” he said, handing me a fluted glass filled with the golden, bubbling liquid. “Here’s to us.”
We touched glasses, and I savored my sip. Then, I put the glass down on the dining room table and went over to give Alex a kiss. But it was more than just a kiss—this kiss was heated and spoke of things to come, when dinner was behind us and the bedroom beckoned us. My lips lingered on his as he gently pressed his body against mine. I tasted the champagne on his lips and on his tongue, which probed into my mouth and edged me toward a kind of delirium before I broke away from him and took a breath. For a moment, we just looked at each other with pure lust and desire in our eyes. The spell of that kiss had nearly overcome me to the point that I would have been happy to have just ditched dinner in favor of going straight to the bedroom, but I couldn’t do that do him. So I deflected, and looked down at the table.
“I’ve certainly never had lobster rolls on a table that looks this elegant,” I said. “It’s beautiful. And the lobster rolls look perfect—you even used lightly-toasted hotdog rolls and there’s no lettuce to be found.”
“The only way to serve them.”
“I think the last time I had lobster was when we first came here. Do you remember?” I checked myself. “Of course you remember. That’s why you’ve done this. We even had this champagne that day. And then, for the first time, we made love.”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve recreated all of it.”
“To a point. I had to make the fries myself—otherwise, they would have been cold and soggy at this point. But somebody else made the lobster salad. I would have done it myself if I’d had time to prepare, but I didn’t. I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. Who cares who made it? It looks amazing, Alex.”
“Actually, it matters to us who made it. Do you remember the restaurant where we bought our first lobster rolls together?”
“I do—it’s just down the road.”
“The chef is the owner. I asked her to make it for us.”
I felt humbled and grateful at once. “You really went out of your way,” I said. “Thank you. And here I haven’t done a thing.”
“The night isn’t over yet,” he said with a wink.
And with that, we sat down next to each other and enjoyed our dinner. Later, as we finished the champagne and relaxed in each other’s company, it wasn’t lost on me—and certainly not on Alex—that with each glass of champagne poured and consumed, it was becoming nearly impossible to keep our hands off each other.
* * *
When the table was cleared and the plates were washed off and stacked in the dishwasher, the sexual tension between us was so thick, it felt almost like my first time again—I was that thrilled. That nervous. That much in love. That out of control. That ready to be in his arms again—properly—and for him to be inside of me.
Completely.
But with my arm in a sling, I wondered again how in the hell it was going to work. I felt at once inhibited by my limitations and uninhibited by the moment. The core of my being wanted to let go and give Alex everything I had. But physically, the fact was that I couldn’t.
It was ridiculous!
After Alex snuffed out the candles on the dining room table, he returned from the dining room and took me by my free hand. He clutched it in his own, our fingers intertwined, and then without a word between us, he led me up to the bedroom, which overlooked the twinkling ocean and the brilliant moon that hovered low upon it.
“Alex—” I said.
“I get it,” he said as he held me close to his body. “You’re concerned that you can’t do this the way that we’re used to doing this. But here’s what you need to know, Jennifer. I’m going to do all of the work. You just need to trust me, OK? You just need to enjoy.”
“But it shouldn’t be one-sided,” I said.
“Why can’t it be this time?” he said. “Why can’t you let go and just let me pleasure you? Because I can tell you this—it also going to pleasure me. In many ways. You’ll see.”
“I don’t—”
He came up behind me and put his arm low around my waist. “Do you remember when I told you that I could make you come without barely touching you?”
I shuddered at the memory.
“I’m going to do that to you again.”
At that, he broke away from me, and I turned to face him as he removed his shirt, his pants, and then his underwear. When he came up behind me again, it was not before I had gotten a good look at him. He was already aroused.
And what was between his legs looked dangerous to me.
Although I was still clothed, I felt him press against my ass as he wrapped his arms around me and began to kiss my neck. “You’re so beautiful,” he said in my ear. “And I’ve waited so long for this. Would you like me to help you out of your dress?”
“I don’t think I have a choice.”
“We should keep the sling on?”
No, I thought. I don’t want to keep the sling on. I want to wrap my arms around you. I want to hold you.
But of course, I couldn’t—and that killed me.
“Well,” I said, trying to navigate a situation that was about to reach a boiling point. “One time, when Bernie and Blackwell were making me up for whatever event I was attending, he said to her how much he missed having sex in a sling. I didn’t entirely get the context, but it was clear that he’d enjoyed it. He kept saying, ‘God! To be young enough to be the boy in the sling again!’ Or something like that. So, maybe I should leave the sling on?”
For a moment, Alex just blinked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Uh, I think Bernie was talking about another kind of sling, but that said, I do think that you should keep yours on. So, here—let’s take it off for a moment, and then we can remove you from your dress and put it back on. Because I think that you do need it on. So, how’s this? See? Just like that, your sling is gone, your dress is gone, and your sling is back on. Now, let me have at your panties.”
His breath was low against my back as he pushed them down to my ankles, so I could step out of them, which I did. “And now your bra.” With a flick of his wrist, it was a shadow tossed across the room—and now I was naked to him.
“Can you lie back on the bed?” he asked.
“I—”
“Let’s try that. All you need to do is lie there—and let yourself go.”
And so I did.
With an expert’s ease, Alex maneuvered my body on the bed so that when I was on my back, I felt no pain in my shoulder.
“Watch me make you come without barely doing anything to you,” he said to me in a rough whisper. “Just watch. You’ll see—and you’ll also remember what else I can do to you. Because with you, Jennifer? It’s easy for me.”
Oh, my God…
He kissed me gently on the mouth, and then harder until I could barely breathe. I felt the stubble on his chin again. It was rough against my cheek and then against my neck and the tips of my breasts when he lingered there. His tongue tasted me, and his lips covered me. Low murmuring soun
ds came from his throat until he found one of my nipples and attended to it with his mouth.
And already it was almost too much, perhaps because it had been so long since we’d been intimate. We’d barely even started, and yet already I felt as if my body couldn’t take much more, which was pathetic. I writhed beneath his touch. I struggled against it as he lowered his mouth to my ear, pressed his chest ever so lightly against my nipples, and began to rub them with his own nipples and whispered everything he was about to do to me.
It became sensation overload. I fought against him, but he told me that it was in vain. Again and again, his nipples brushed against my own nipples. Again and again, he said unthinkable things to me. Again and again, he pushed me further against an edge that was at once familiar—and somehow brutal, because at this point, he was denying me an orgasm.
This edge was cutting. It was raw, and it was primal. His chin dipped down to my wetness and his stubble brushed against my naked flesh, which left me writhing on the bed and feeling like I was going to explode.
“Alex,” I said.
He didn’t respond. He just kept doing what he was doing. The same motions, over and over. Barely touching me, yet always taunting me with his tongue. I wanted his hands on me, but he refused to do so. This was so close to torture that I wanted to slap him for it.
With his tongue and his stubble brushing ever so lightly across my clit, I reached a point where I became wild. I felt as if I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I wanted to beat him for what he was doing to me now. I wanted to float above my body and look down at us from the ceiling so I could witness what he was doing to me. I wanted to flee. I wanted to stay.
But most of all, I wanted to come.
And then, when the length of his tongue plunged into me, the room became dim, the ceiling started to spin, and I arched my back as my first orgasm of the night slammed through me.
Before I could say a word, he reared up and covered my mouth with his own, in a sense absorbing my orgasm into his own body, which only made him become more inflamed. Although his tongue went deep into my mouth, his arms were pinned on either side of me, and never once did he rest his chest against my arm, which laid just beneath my breasts.
With the heat escalating between us, we kissed each other feverishly, leaving me feeling powerless against him—and also completely turned on. I met his kiss with my own and I went for it, pulling his head toward me with my free arm, and kissing him so deeply that we became one.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I said when our lips parted.
“I’ve missed you more.”
“Make love to me,” I said to him. “I need you inside of me. Now. You have no idea how much I need this. Please.”
“Are you sure? Because I was thinking that you needed a bit more of this.”
Before I could stop him, his lips were on the tip of my right breast, which he sucked on languorously before covering my other nipple with his lips and his tongue. That alone drove me toward another climax, which struck so hard, I called out his name.
Had I been craving sex with my husband this much? Apparently, I had—not that that surprised me. Alex knew exactly what to do to me to bring me to the greatest relief. It was ironic. There was no longer a mystery between us when we made love—we each knew what pleased the other—but in another way, knowing what turned the other into a fireball of lust was perhaps more powerful than it was when we’d first made love.
Tonight was proof of that.
In the end, I wound up riding him—that I could do. When I saw my chance, I pushed him onto his back, positioned him so he was deep inside of me, and just started to ride him while he looked at me with a mix of astonishment and delight.
“You think you’re the only one who can get someone off?” I asked.
We’d been here before—this naughty banter of who was better at pleasing the other. So, Alex just went with it with a glint of humor in his eyes.
“It’s because of my big cock that you’re going to get off.”
“Please,” I said, whirling my hips while I rode him. “You know it’s because you’ve never had anyone so tight around you. Few of the other women you’ve been with can claim that.”
At that, he gripped my hips with his hands, lifted me up so the tip of his cock was just at the base of my sex, and then slammed me back down onto him in an effort to prove that he was still in control. That he was in charge of what was happening between us now. I took that as an offense—this should be equal. So, I withdrew myself from him, writhed down between his legs, and took his cock into my mouth.
The flesh of Alex’s penis was unusually soft and subtle, regardless of how hard he was. I lifted myself up and deep throated him. He was too big for me to take all of it, but I was nothing if not determined. I used every skill I’d learned in the year that we’d been together, and I knew when his hand pressed down against the top of my head that I was giving him just want he wanted.
“Jennifer—” he said.
“I may have a bum arm,” I said when I lifted my head to meet his eyes, “but that doesn’t mean that I can’t give a good blowjob.”
At that, Alex started to laugh, which made me laugh, and it was good to laugh again. Really laugh, as we often did when we made love. But this laugh was even more important than any other laugh that had come before it. It said that despite all that we’d been through—losing our child and losing Wenn to Stephen Rowe—that we could find a way back to us, which was critical to me, as I also knew it was to Alex. With one careful scoop of his arm, he lifted me toward him and kissed me harder than he had all night.
“I love you so much, Jennifer,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
“I do know it,” I said. “And I hope that you can feel the same from me.”
Gently, he pulled me on top of him again, and I began to ride him, which seemed to both of us the most sensible position given my current condition. Soon, the heat we generated was so far off the charts, that each of us climaxed in such a way that I had to wonder if Drake was going to burst down the door to see if anything was wrong.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Over the next week, our lives changed incrementally as Tank, through a series of telephone calls, told Alex exactly where he stood in his investigation of Janice Jones.
The first call came the morning after we’d made love. We were walking hand-in-hand along the beach when Alex’s cell rang. He removed it from his shorts pocket, answered it, and hit the ‘speaker’ button so I could listen to the conversation.
“Tank,” Alex said. “Have you learned anything?”
“Let’s just say that finding Janice Jones isn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped.”
“Have you spoken to your friend? Rowe’s head of security?”
“He won’t talk with me now—and to be frank with you, I don’t blame him. Rowe is no fool. He knows that someone close to him ratted him out, and Brian is not about to risk his reputation or his job now. The only reason he shared anything with me in the first place is because he can’t stand the son of a bitch.”
“If he’s afraid of losing his job, I’ll hire him at once—and double his salary. Please tell him that. He will always have employment through me.”
“I’ll let him know. He’s a good guy. He’ll appreciate it. But if he jumps ship now, it would look too obvious, so he won’t bite. He won’t risk being found out, if only because his reputation is on the line, which means everything to people in our field.”
“Fair enough. So, without his help, what do you know?”
“It’s only been a day, but we haven’t been idle. First, we talked to the doormen at Jones’ apartment, all of whom gave us nothing, which suggests to me that Rowe has already paid them off.”
“What did they say?”
“That they all know Jones, of course, and they all said that, as far as they’re concerned, she’s a lovely person. When I asked them if they’d ever seen her with Stephen Rowe, each of them said that they had
n’t, even when I provided them with a photograph of Rowe, which they scrutinized a bit too long for my tastes.”
“What does that mean?”
“They were buying time to figure out how to answer my questions. But here’s the thing,” he said. “When someone lies to you, their eyes will go up and to the right, which points to the creative side of your brain. It’s a fleeting gesture, but if you know what to look for, you never miss it. On the other hand, when you need to retrieve a fact, your eyes will tend to flick up and to the left, as if you’re searching for a memory, which you are. With each question I asked them, all of these men looked up and to the right.”
“So, they were lying to you.”
“It appeared that way to me.”
“What other questions did you ask?”
“I asked if they knew where Jones had gone. A few said that they couldn’t reveal that information, which is true due to privacy concerns, but two gave themselves away by challenging me with a question of their own: ‘What makes you think she’s gone anywhere?’ I told them I knew that she was gone, and if they could help me out by telling me where she was, I’d make it worth their while. Each declined, though one man did hesitate before he refused the offer. So, once again, I know that they’re keeping quiet because of Rowe’s involvement.”
“Any way to shake them down?”
“I have my ways, but I’ll save them for later—when and if we become desperate. If we do, I’ll have a little talk with one of them. Since I wouldn’t want that conversation to occur at Jones’ building, which is outfitted with surveillance cameras, I’d need to do it where one of them lives.”
Annihilate Me 2: Omnibus (Complete Vols. 1-3, Annihilate Me 2) Page 47