She opened her eyes, warm, beautiful eyes, and he saw she was riding the edge. “Help me,” she whispered.
He took her mouth, tweaked her nipple, ran his hand down her ribs to her belly to her clit and he circled the upstanding knot. Pushing her that last step.
She quivered. Cried out against his mouth. He opened his eyes, watched the beauty of Alexa coming, and decided instantly this couldn’t be both beginning and end.
There had to be more. There was going to another time. And yet another. He shouldn’t like the idea of it, but that was just the way it was going to be. Shuddering, he climaxed, the pleasure a meld of Alexa and…and…more.
It took long minutes for their breathing to slow. He held her against him, an odd tenderness causing him to place tiny kisses against her hair from time to time. Finally, he felt her shuddering sigh and a final tremor of her pussy around his cock.
He started to withdraw, carefully, from her body. She’d be sore. The next time he’d have to be gentle. A little soak in his jetted tub would help. That’s where he’d take her now. Home, to pamper her in preparation for more sex.
Her arms were looped around his neck. “This is good,” she said, her voice sleepy.
His mouth touched her forehead. “What’s good, doll?”
“I like your idea.”
“Okay.” Had she read his mind about the tub and a hot soak?
“It’s good, your one-and-done sex thing. Somehow it makes things much less awkward.” Tilting back her head, she smiled at him. Sleepy, satisfied sex kitten. “I’m officially adopting your rule as my own.”
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Alexa told herself she should be in a grand mood. She was in a grand mood, she corrected, staring into her coffee.
A gorgeous man had made her feel beautiful the night before.
He’d made her feel desirable and powerful and then he’d swept over her like a crushing wave and taken her out on a tide of orgasmic satisfaction. She’d beached up on the shore of that Oriental rug and decided the least she could do in return was get the heck out of his hair.
He only had sex a single time with any particular woman and she’d had her shot.
Grand shot. Thus grand mood.
The college boy who she now knew was skill-less when it came to sex was only a hazy memory. Instead she now had the gold standard for good in bed—er, floor. And it shouldn’t make her feel melancholy. No, not at all.
On her countertop, her phone started dancing and her heart leaped to meet the last swallow of coffee. Coughing, she crossed to her cell. Maybe it was him.
Her heart fell to her belly to bounce back into place when she read “Drea.”
She swiped to accept the call. “What’s up?”
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“A favor?” she repeated, cautious.
“It’s my Saturday to take Nona to the cemetery. I need a substitute. You.”
Alexa groaned. “It’s my first free day in ages. And it’s your turn.” As a courtesy to their widowed grandmother, one of the Alessio girl cousins accompanied her to visit her late husband’s grave every Saturday. It wasn’t that Alexa usually minded, but her grandmother had a sharp eye and no hesitation about getting into a grandkid’s business. She didn’t want to take a chance on their talk turning personal on today of all days.
“I called just about everyone else.”
Pulling the phone from her ear, she gave it a suspicious glance. “Just about everyone else” probably meant she was the first cousin on the other woman’s contact list. “A” for Alexa. With a sigh, she brought it back to her ear. “So why do you need a replacement?”
“Nico and I are taking dancing lessons at Stuart’s Studio. This is our second-to-the last rehearsal and it had to be rescheduled for today.”
Alexa automatically bristled. How could Drea? That dancing lesson they were having today should be her dancing lesson! But on the heels of that thought came the memory of her conversation with Cilla at the bridal salon, when she’d figured out something important about herself and the wrong-headed engagement to Nico. Poor Alexa. Poor, fat Alexa, finally getting herself a man.
Well, she didn’t have a man anymore, but she didn’t feel pitiful or fat or any other negative thing either. She’d had a grand time last night and was going to have a grand time today.
“I’ll do it,” she told her cousin. “Enjoy your lesson.”
She held onto her upbeat mood as she headed out to her morning with her grandmother. It was a beautiful one, she thought, as she pulled open the passenger door of her car so Nona could climb inside. Though the older woman usually wore a uniform of sorts at the bridal salon—black slacks and a white shirt—today she had on a pretty cotton shirtwaist dress in a shade of green that had been her late husband’s favorite color. Her hands held a spray of cheerful sunflowers.
Alexa was in navy blue, a sleeveless, knee-length dress she thought appropriate for the occasion until she felt her grandmother’s eyes on her as they drove off. “Um…is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?” she asked.
“Of course not. I remember when you and your mother returned from shopping with that dress. I like it very much.”
But Nona was still studying her, Alexa thought, squeezing the steering wheel in a tight grip. Could she tell what her granddaughter had been up to the night before? There’d been some marks here and there on her body this morning. She’d noted them after showering, but the dress covered them up, she was sure of it. No one could see the beard burn on the underside of her breast or the sign of a man’s sure grip on her hip.
Forcing herself not to wiggle on her seat, she tried calming down. But what if she’d missed something? Did she have a hickey on her neck? She’d kill him if she had a hickey on her neck!
She’d checked, she reminded herself. Thoroughly. Maybe it was something else…maybe just the afterglow of good sex. Would a 70-year-old woman even recognize such a thing?
But of course, she would, Alexa decided. She was a woman who’d loved her man and didn’t that mean—
To cut off the thought, she took a quick right. “Flowers,” she said. If she didn’t divert herself she’d be picturing her grandparents making love or worse… She’d be picturing Bing.
His mouth on her breasts and his hands on her hips.
The florist provided an adequate distraction. With a mixed bouquet on the console between them, Alexa took in great gulps of the flowers’ scent and counted down the scant minutes until they reached the cemetery.
“I had a lovely dinner last night,” her grandmother said.
“Oh?”
“How about you? Did you have a nice evening?”
And there he was again, looming in her memory, the dark and dangerous rock prince who had played her body like an instrument. Who had whispered to her dirty things, exciting things, making her body hum. Vibrate. Fly. “I…it was fine.” Amazing.
Over.
“But your dinner.” Divert me, Nona. “Tell me more about that.”
“I was at my friend Simone’s. She made the most divine polenta.”
“Yum.”
“Your name came up,” Nona continued.
“Me? I could use a good polenta recipe.” They were through the gates of the cemetery. Alexa guided her car in the direction of her grandfather’s plot and pulled alongside it.
“It was in regards to her great-nephew, Josh.”
Alexa remembered the man, with his tousled sandy hair and open grin. She’d met him at a family party or two and he’d been dating a sprite of a blonde at the time. “How is Josh and…what was her name? Valerie?”
“Valerie moved to Tampa a few months ago.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” She helped her grandmother out of the car and then reached inside to swipe up her bouquet.
“Josh is ready to date again and mentioned your name to Simone.”
Alexa straightened so fast, her head hit the edge of the doorframe. “Ouch,�
� she said, rubbing it hard. “I, um, don’t know what to say.”
Her grandmother started walking across the well-trimmed grass. She glanced back as Alexa trailed her. “You remember he’s a veterinarian?”
“Yes.” A healer of furry things. He loved foreign films. And golf, she remembered.
Even in her imagination she couldn’t dress Bing in plaid pants and those weird shoes with the flaps. He was hard runs and pick-up basketball and dangerous dives off cliffs. Dark nights and raw sex.
She shivered despite the warm sun on her shoulders.
And realized she was thinking about him again. Damn it!
“Are you interested?” Nona asked.
Alexa forced her attention back to her grandmother. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you interested in going out with Josh?”
“He’s very nice.” Alexa said, hedging. But then she remembered that afternoon with Cilla. The hunt for a kind, gentle guy to scratch her itch. Somebody decent. Safe. Wasn’t Josh just the type she was looking for? Her mouth opened. “But, uh, there’s Bing, remember?” spilled out.
“Yes, of course. But I wasn’t sure if you two were exclusive—”
“I’m seeing Bing.”
Argh! What was wrong with her? How could she say she was “seeing” Bing when the only thing between them now was a fake romance? She’d never, ever see him again in the way of last night. Never again naked and masterful. Never again hear him whisper, the words both wicked and indecent in the way they made her feel. Don’t make a sound.
She and Nona reached her grandfather’s grave. She banned Bing-thoughts as Nona placed the sunflowers in the vase at the base of the headstone and Alexa nestled her own bouquet next to it. They stood in silence.
Her grandmother bent her head and Alexa knew she was praying. In the continued quiet, she brought up her memories of the man who looked so much like her father. She thought of his booming laugh and the way he could go for a short walk and inevitably return with some special treasure he’d found: a five-dollar bill, the nest of a hummingbird, a broken-down chair that someone left on the curb that he’d turn into a piece of art.
Her eyes stung as her grandmother made the sign of the cross then ran her palm over the top of the marker, as if it was the shoulder of her husband of nearly fifty years. “You must miss him so much,” Alexa murmured.
Nona looked around, her eyes soft, a half-smile on her lips. “Yes.” Then her gaze sharpened. “What’s troubling you, darling?”
Alexa shrugged, aware she was a little undone. So many emotions she’d run through in the last twenty-four hours.
Her grandmother tucked her hand in Alexa’s elbow and leaned on her a little. “Is it about that very good-looking, very interesting young man you’re now ‘seeing’?” Nona accompanied that last word with a gentle prod of her arm against Alexa’s side.
“I don’t have much luck with men,” she muttered.
“Nico—”
“He’s Drea’s. I get it.”
“I’m glad to hear you do. I know the means to the end was painful, but he wasn’t right for you.”
Alexa let out a breath and started for her car. “I’ve never thought romance was right for me anyway,” she said, her voice light. “Dangerous stuff, love.”
Nona’s next step faltered. She looked at Alexa closely. “What is this about?”
Alexa shrugged. “People get hurt. You know.”
“Is this about Jude? About the accident? Your mother has always believed you brood over that.”
“I never brood.” Brooding was Bing, his whole body tense as he wielded the drumsticks. His expression austere as he swung around and caught her staring at him. His face beautiful in its intensity, his blue eyes setting her on fire. Crap. She was still thinking about him. “I’m just saying smart people might steer clear of laying their heart on the line,” she muttered.
“Everyone’s afraid of love, darling. Don’t you think your grandfather and I worried, when we were so very young, about making a happy life together? Don’t you think your mother and father had reservations?”
Before Alexa could answer, her grandmother kept talking. “We did. They did. For short or long, anyone with a scrap of self-preservation tries to talk themselves out of it. But there’s no way for that to work. Love happens whether you want it or not.”
Alexa thought of Cilla’s Ren. What he’d said to her brothers. Written in the stars.
Rolling her eyes in the direction of the cloudless sky, Alexa stifled her groan. Love happens whether you want it or not.
What a gloomy thought to ruin a glorious day.
Bing met his twin’s eyes in the bathroom mirror as he stepped into the room and pretended that guilt wasn’t digging a hole in his belly. “Come on in. Don’t bother knocking.”
His brother leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “Hot date?” he asked, eyeing the shaving cream swathing his face.
As an excuse not to answer, he poked his tongue into his cheek to get a better swipe with the razor.
Brody moved to the shelf of colognes, uncapping one to sniff. He made a face. “This is crap. Smells like disco polyester.”
“Your last girlfriend gave it to me. She said it reminded her of my smooth moves.”
Without a change in expression, Brody pitched the bottle into the trash.
Bing raised a casual eyebrow but braced for what was coming. “Something on your mind?”
“I promised myself I wasn’t going to say anything.” The struggle in his brother’s head played itself out on his face. “I realize you’re two grown people.”
“Uh-huh.” He continued moving the razor over his face.
“I told her where to find you the other night.”
“Yeah.” And it had surprised him, that Brody had sent the lamb straight to slaughter and then never brought it up to him. Until now.
“We ran this morning. She was quiet.”
“What? No nonstop commentary on the cat across the street, the color of the house on the corner, the rude driver who didn’t give you two the right-of-way?”
“Like I said, she was quiet.”
A pang of concern stabbed at him, a bitter spice added to his stew of self-reproach. Two nights ago she’d been crying during sex. He hadn’t gotten to the bottom of that, had he? Then afterward, he’d let her leave and go home on her own because he’d been still half-drunk on booze and her taste and because she’d been right, damn it, to walk away from him.
Lifting a towel from the counter, he wiped at the remains of the white stuff from his skin. “We were together.”
His brother met his eyes in the mirror. “So?”
Did he need to clarify? “I mean Alexa and I had sex.”
Brody snorted. “Figures.”
When his twin didn’t move a muscle or even raise his voice, Bing lifted a brow. “Don’t you want to hit me?”
“Only when you go all insisty about measuring twice.”
“Insisty?”
“It’s an Alexa word.”
Bing half-smiled. “Figures.” Then, sobering, he rubbed at his brow. “I’m going to dinner at her parents’ house tonight.”
“Have fun.”
“That’s all you have to say?” He stared at his brother. “I’m the bad twin, remember? Further contact with me might mess her up.”
“You could avoid doing that.”
Yeah. Like how? “I don’t get close to women…and Alexa?” He blew out a breath. “She’s…you know. You’re the one who said it. She’s a babe in the woods.”
“Be the big bad wolf that’s going to protect her then.”
“That’s supposed to be your job,” Bing told his brother. “Not mine. I’m emotionally unavailable, remember?”
Brody laughed. “Have you been reading women’s magazines in the grocery line again?”
He pushed past his twin and stalked into the bedroom to begin pulling on clothes. “I’m a user.”
“So you tell yourself
.”
“I’ve got dirt on my hands.”
“No more than me.”
Bing ignored his brother. “No soul. No heart.”
“Which explains why you’re raking yourself over the coals,” Brody said dryly.
“All those things we did, those things we saw…”
Brody sighed. “We were kids. We had shitty role models.”
“Any decency that was left after that… It belongs to you.”
“Yeah, me, the height of sane respectability.” His brother grimaced.
Bing sent him a sharp look. Brody looked tired. Unsettled. About to head out on one of his benders. “I wish you’d just punch me.”
“You’re beating yourself up without me having to lift a little finger.”
“I should make an excuse, right? Not go tonight.”
“And miss out on the best pasta you’ve ever eaten?”
“Damn it, Brody! You’re not helping.” He raked both hands through his hair, trying to smooth it. “Alexa… She believes in happy endings.”
“She’d tell you she’s not looking for one.”
It’s good, your one-and-done sex thing. I’m officially adopting your rule as my own.
What the hell did that mean? He thought he knew, and he didn’t like it at all. He should go to her tonight just for that, to get some clarification. With Alexa’s pretty face between his hands he’d pin her with his eyes and make his next demand. What the hell did you mean about adopting my one-and-done rule when you were lying naked next to me?
Of course, bringing up sex would be a stupendously bad idea.
But following through with his promises was not. Of his own free will, he’d offered to be her wedding events-escort. When her mother had asked him to dinner, he’d assured her he wouldn’t miss it.
So he was going, and once there, he’d pretend he enjoyed it. Her family would see him as a good guy with a clear conscience and clean soul who was boyfriend to their Alexa.
Meanwhile, he’d keep all his dirty thoughts to himself.
It was going to be a hell of an evening.
His twin trailed him as he headed out his front door. Bing tossed him a salute.
“Hey, Bing?”
Still walking, he glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
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