Suddenly she felt him tense. “Oh, shit, Izzy. I’m sorry.” His head snapped up, panic clear on his face.
Palming his face she went to calm him, “I’m not, that was incredible.”
“No, Izzy, you don’t understand. I forgot to use a condom. Fuck!”
His words hit her and she saw an opportunity. “I’m clean and haven’t been with anyone else.” Izzy wanted to hear that there were no other women in his life, even though their month was over.
“Honey, I’m clean too. And I haven’t been with another woman since right before the first night you came back into my life. I am more concerned with getting you pregnant.”
No other women! Yay! Her naïve romantic side clubbed her independent man hating side over the head, taking control. “Alex, I’m on the pill. We’re good, baby.” Without a word, while still inside of her, he carried her down the hall. One hand under ass holding her up, the other holding his pants. “What are you doing?”
He chuckled. “Taking you to bed. I’m not done with you tonight.”
They made it to her bedroom. Quickly stripping each other. Before he could slide into her again, she stopped him with a hand to his chest. Smiling to herself. She kissed his neck, his cheek up to his ear, where she whispered, “By the way, Darren was not my date. He is my friend. My very gay friend. But nice to know you have a jealous side.”
Alex pulled back, to look into her eyes. Amusement and confusion battled for dominance on his face. “So not a date?”
“Nope, but I did see him check out your ass if you’re interested in dating him. I will give you his number.” She giggled.
“Thanks, but the only person I want interested in my ass is you.” He winked. “You know what this means right? Tickle torture for deceiving me.”
With a squeal, Izzy tried to push him off of her, as he tickled her. They wrestled, he tickled, and she cursed. The air between them was fun for a few minutes, until her hand accidentally brushed his cock, then all bets were off.
They spent the next few hours, making slow love. Whispering snippets of their true feelings to each other.
~*~*~*~
Drawing circles on her stomach, Alex laid with his body between her legs and his head on her hip. Izzy ran her hands through his hair. Alex had never felt so content or at peace in his life.
One sentence from last night played over and over in his head. “I’m clean and haven’t been with anyone else.” Did she mean she wasn’t sleeping with anyone else at the moment or that she hadn’t been with anyone else period? The very idea that she hadn’t slept with anyone else since they had been together in Cabo both confused and overjoyed him.
Now how did he broach the delicate subject with a very relaxed Izzy without sending her directly into defensive bitch mode? His mind was going over every scenario, every approach, as though it was a complicated math problem. Easing into the topic seemed the best approach, plus he had a few other questions he needed answered.
“Izzy, I told you why I left the morning after our first night. I need to know why you didn’t tell me you were a virgin. Why did you pick me to give that to?” His voice was soft, barely above a whisper.
Her hands stilled in his hair, her body tensed. Alex was scared she was going to kick him out for simply asking the question. Continuing the pattern of circles on her stomach, Alex waited nervously for a response.
Just as he was about to retract the question, her body relaxed. He ventured a look at her face. She smiled sadly at him. “I didn’t tell you I was a virgin because I didn’t want you to turn me down. I wasn’t sure you would still want me. As for why I picked you, I felt comfortable with you. I was very nerdy in high school. Always had my face in a book, much like now I guess.” She laughed a little. “No boy ever noticed me. The summer between high school graduation and college, my parents died in a car accident.”
She said this so matter of fact that he almost missed what she had said. He moved up her body to tuck her protectively into his side. Kissing her head, he said, “Oh, honey, I didn’t know your parents were gone. I’m sorry that must have been hard.”
Nodding, she continued her story, “Losing them so suddenly was unreal. My great aunt, the only family I had, took care of me that summer. She stepped in and helped me deal with their estate and held me when I cried. But the best thing she did for me that summer was force me to go to college. She explained that my parents would want me to continue to live, experience life, not die with them.
“I went through the summer and first year of college numb. If it wasn’t for having Roni as a roommate and her single minded determination to make sure I had a life, I would have never left my room other than to go to classes. I didn’t date at all that year obviously. I barely dated the other three years either. When I met you and you looked at me the way you did. And got my weird sense of humor, I guess, I wanted to feel closer to you.” She shrugged.
Not knowing what else to do, Alex pulled her beneath him. He kissed her and whispered, “I wanted to be closer to you too. I still want to be close to you.” He kissed a path down her neck to her collarbone. Lifting his head, he met her heavy lidded gaze. “I have one more question for you. What did you mean when you said earlier that you haven’t been with anyone else?”
Izzy’s jaw fell open, her eyes grew to the size of the moon, and she stopped blinking. “Shit, did I really tell you that?”
Alex knew now she meant that he was the only man she had been with, period. All the blood in his head rushed south, engorging his cock. He decided to ask to be sure. “Izzy, honey, am I the only man you’ve slept with?”
She nodded, looking down sadly. “After that first time, I couldn’t even make out with a guy without thinking of you. And that thought made me either angry or sad. I would always break up with guys before it got to the point where he would expect sex.”
Alex was giddy! Completely giddy! This moment was the most remarkable in his life. “Honey, look at me.” He waited until she did before he continued. “I can’t say that I have been as faithful to your memory as you have been to mine, however, I dreamt about you every night. And the minute I saw you again in that bar all those months ago, I knew I didn’t want to be with anyone but you.”
To prove everything he had said to her was true, he kissed her. Not the passionate take no prisoners kiss, he normally gave her. This was a soft slow kiss of two people in love. And he did love Izzy. Actually, his old man had been right about knowing your forever from a kiss. It may not have been their first kiss that made him realize Izzy was his soul mate, but it was the first night they were together.
Slowly he slid into her. This time they made love slowly, wrapped around each other. They slept wrapped around each other as well. No matter what Izzy thought, this relationship was going the distance.
Chapter Seventeen
“Hell fucking no Alex! You are to keep your mouth shut! No one needs to know one fucking thing about the two of us! Remember the rules of our agreement?” Izzy couldn’t believe she was having this argument with him. They were on their way to meet their friends for drinks and he wanted to tell all of them about his latest conquest, a.k.a Izzy. She was not having any of that.
Alex tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched. Anger and frustration rolled off the man in waves thick enough to drown Izzy. “We have to tell them. One of these days we are going to fuck up and our secret is going to be out. Plus, the rules no longer apply, our month ended.”
Since the night Alex ruined her night out with Darren, a few weeks ago, they had spent every night in each other’s arms. Sure, they bickered like a little old couple most of the time, but at the end of the night she only wanted to be in his arms.
Of course last Saturday, their secret had nearly been discovered when they walked in to the bar together, his hand possessively on her lower back, and a hickey on her neck. If it had not been for the fact their friends were already three sheets to the wind, you can bet someone would have put two and two tog
ether and come up with the answer Alex and Izzy were sleeping together.
“Our month may be up, but the rules about keeping this shit between us still apply. And no, they are not going to find out, because you my friend are going to keep your hands to yourself. No touching. At all! I don’t care if Roni trips me and I fall at your feet, don’t even offer me a hand up. Got it?” She spat.
Alex’s lips twitched, “Trust me if you’re kneeling at my feet, baby, no matter how you got there, I have no intention of giving you my….hand.”
Slapping him on the shoulder. “Alexander Porter! Get your mind out of the gutter. You will behave tonight.” She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him.
“I was just pointing out that while you are down there you can help a friend out.”
She frowned out the window. “Ugh, you are impossible. I need to know your middle name so I can properly yell at you, because obviously using your first and last name are not doing a good enough job!”
Again, his lips twitched. Izzy thought that instead of showing up with hickeys, he would be showing up with a black eye. “Now what’s funny?”
Turning his brilliant megawatt, panty dropping smile on her, he simply said, “Baby, you already know my middle name.” He turned his attention back to the road.
“No, I don’t you never told me.” Ok, now she was pouting.
“Yeah, I did. Think for a minute.”
Completely lost, Izzy replayed all of her conversations with them. They had never once talked about middle names. He was being an asshat, like always. After a few moments, the light bulb went on. “You’re shitting me?”
“Did you figure it out?”
“Alexander Jeremy Porter? Really?”
A deep, throaty laugh filled the car. “Yep, I had to have something I remembered, so I used my middle name.”
She punched him in the shoulder again, much harder this time. “Asshat!”
“Ow, that hurt. I’m going to have a bruise.” He whined as he pulled into the parking lot.
“Good!” Izzy grabbed her purse and headed for the door, not waiting for him. This entire time she had his real name, or most of it.
Walking into the bar, she threw herself into the empty seat next to Caroline. Derek’s sister had become one of her good friends over the past few months. One look at Izzy, had Caroline laughing. “What did Alex do, now?”
Izzy glared at the man as he made his way over to the pool table the guys were clustered around talking trash to each other. She didn’t know how to answer C, after all no one knew about their history or what they were currently doing. “Alex was being Alex that’s enough.” Vague, but true.
C, laughed again. “He has been like that since we were kids. He could piss off a girl in 30 seconds flat. Of course he could also have her on her back 30 seconds later. I suspect it isn’t long before he has you in his bed with how often you two are pissed off at each other.”
Izzy almost choked on the soda the bartender had just handed her. “That will never happen.”
C, narrowed her eyes at Izzy. Assessing her for a moment. Making Izzy nervous that she already knew. C shrugged, “Maybe not. It will be good for him not to get the girl this time.”
Izzy was doing her best to keep her face neutral. “Yes, it will be good for him. Come on, let’s go over and help out Roni and Gracey.” The other girls were challenging the guys to a pool game. The guys were turning them down. Male egos didn’t do well when losing a pool game to a bunch of girls.
“Who has Netty tonight?”
“Mama Porter, of course. I swear the woman goes through grand baby withdrawal if she doesn’t see her once a week.” C explained smiling. Caroline and Derek’s parents were always too busy with their careers to care for their own kids. Along with a multitude of nannies, the two kids were raised by their neighbors the Porters. Alex’s parents were still the closest thing Derek and Caroline had to a set of caring involved parents.
“I bet she does. She is probably eyeing Derek and Roni for another grandchild now that they are living together.”
“You don’t know the half of it. When Derek brought Roni to dinner a couple of weeks ago, Mama Porter, went as far as to tell them that times had changed and they shouldn’t feel the need to wait until they got married to have a baby. They could go right ahead and have one now, with her blessing.”
The two women fell into a fit of laughter. “Oh, I would have loved to see the look on their faces.”
“Priceless, I tell you.”
“What’s priceless?” Roni asked.
“Mama Porter telling you to go get knocked up.” Izzy snickered.
Roni shook her head, groaning. “I wanted to crawl under the table and die. Poor Derek almost choked on his drink. I am tempted to double up on my birth control pills, to ward off any baby juju her little speech may have created.”
The entire table laughed at Roni. Poor thing was convinced Mama Porter had some hidden power to conjure up another grand baby. “You’re going to have to become abstinent to ward off Mama Porter’s baby juju powers. Poor Derek.” Izzy feigned sympathy.
“Never going to happen my friend. If you had seen that man naked, you would never suggest such a thing.” Roni winked.
“Gross, that’s my brother!” C whined. “We all know that Alex is never going to settle down, so Mama Porter is never going to let up on you. You better watch those birth control pills, she may sneak into your house and switch them out with sugar pills.”
They all laughed again. Izzy was laughing along with the girls, but her mind was racing a million miles an hour. Caroline was right, Alex was never going to settle down. This friends with benefits relationship they had was never going to turn into more. Did she want it to turn into more? Stupid question, of course she did. The naïve girl in her was at this very moment sitting in her pajamas with wedding planning books in hand. She needed to put some distance between the two of them.
Unexpectedly, Gracey shoved her. “Earth to Izzy? Come on, let’s go kick the guy’s asses at pool. The drinks are on the loser.”
“That’s not fair. They get off easy tonight. All I am drinking is club soda.” Izzy whined.
All eyes turned to her. All the conversation stopped. “Why are you only drinking club soda?” Alex inquired, casually leaning his hip against the pool table. His eye betrayed his casual stance, he looked angry.
“What?”
“You always drink wine or if Alex pisses you off you do shots. Why club soda?” It was Jemma this time who was questioning her.
“Not sure what the big deal is about me drinking club soda, but if you must know I have my marathon in a few weeks, I don’t drink alcohol leading up to a race. I want to beat my time this year.” Izzy explained, Alex visibly relaxed.
Laughter came from behind her. She turned to see C and Roni almost falling over into each other. Roni wiped the laugh tears from her eyes before she spoke. “I think he thought Mama Porter’s baby juju powers had somehow knocked up! Alex would have had to be nice to you and kicked some guy’s ass had that been the case.”
That’s when it hit her, the look of on Alex’s face, was terror not anger. He thought she was pregnant. Oh sweet baby Jesus! Izzy looked at him, relief clear on his face. “Sorry, her baby making powers have nothing on me. Let's play. But when we win you guys buy dinner not drinks.”
~*~*~*~
The car ride home was quiet. She was being too quiet for Alex. Izzy should have been gloating over her two victories. Instead, she had quietly stared out the window. He pulled into his spot in the parking garage of their building. Even as they walked to the elevators, she did not speak.
Once inside the elevators, he wrapped his arms around her waist. Kissing her neck. “Keeping my hands off you all night was torture.” He needed to touch her. To taste her. To be inside of her.
“Stop, Alex.” She spoke the words, but at the same time she leaned further into his body and tilted her head.
Licking her neck a li
ttle, he whispered, “Do you really want me stop?”
The elevator reached her floor, and she was out the doors the second they opened. He went to follow her, only to be met with her hand in his face. “No, Alex. Not tonight.” She turned on her heel and went down the hall to her apartment.
The doors of the elevator slid closed. Alex was so confused. Sure, she was mad at him for wanting to tell everyone, but the night had gone fine. No one knew a thing. The look on her face, told him she was thinking too much again. The look almost killed him. Sad, defeated, withdrawn were the only words to describe the look. Even her body language screamed, she was upset. As she had walked away from the elevator her head was down and shoulders slumped.
Maybe she was tired? He laughed a little that is what men always wanted to think when a woman looked upset. That they were tired not mad. He knew better. He knew Izzy wasn’t mad at him but at something that happened at the bar. Maybe one of the other girls had said something to upset her. Or maybe one of them had figured out they were sleeping together.
The elevator stopped on his floor, he walked to his penthouse condo. Letting himself in and tossing his keys aside. He walked to the fridge for a beer, opened the fridge, and closed it when he decided that wouldn’t help. He walked into the living room, sat on the couch, flicking on the TV. He watched five minutes. Nope that wasn’t holding his interest. He paced to the French doors leading to his patio. Walking out into the cold, he sat down on the end of the chase lounge. Head in his hands.
With a deep breath, he pulled out his iPhone. Needing to at least check on her.
Alex: Hey, babe. You ok?
Izzy: Yep
Alex: Liar! Tell me what’s wrong.
Izzy: I’m fine.
He shook his head at that response, no women who ever uttered “I’m fine” meant those words. And any man who took thought a woman who said “I’m fine” was really fine, was an idiot.
Alex: I call bullshit.
Izzy: Call whatever you want.
Frenemies With Benefits (Geek To Chic Book 2) Page 14