But Drew hadn’t liked it either. “We’re okay, Alexis. We’re fine.” Just who was we? Not him, for sure, and she’d been the one to bring on the hurt. She could have left him in the dark. She had a feeling he would have been just fine with that.
Alexis realized her hands were clenched on the wheel, and she hadn’t turned the engine off yet. She pulled out the car key, opened the door, and grabbed her briefcase. Time to face the music, as the old saying went.
But why was she the guilty one? She still hadn’t figured it out, yet that’s how she felt. She was the one ruining everything, the one who couldn’t deal with it.
She found Logan in the kitchen. He’d already exchanged his suit for jeans and a T-shirt. “We need to talk, Alexis. I’ve asked Drew and Cat over.”
As he said it, the doorbell rang. Logan started to pass her in the kitchen entry. “I told Drew,” she said.
Halfway across the foyer, he turned, eyes narrowed, his gaze the hot green of anger. “I know. Thanks. You didn’t even talk to me first, give me a little heads up.”
Well, screw him. Something snapped inside her. “Just like you didn’t give me a heads up you were fucking Cat.” God, she was bitter. In her gut, she was suddenly sure this couldn’t be fixed. They’d crossed a line, and no one could ever go back.
Logan opened the front door. Cat and Drew stood side-by-side, not touching. “Let’s do this in the great room,” Logan said, sweeping out an arm and stepping aside.
Drew’s features were hard, unsmiling, and he didn’t offer a handshake. Logan simply glowered, generally, not at anyone in particular, but Alexis knew it was for her.
Then there was Cat. “Hi, hon.” She smiled; it might even have been a bit smug. Bitch.
Dammit, there was nothing to talk about because there would be no more card games, no more barbecues, no more fucking. She wouldn’t have it, and that’s what she’d say. She was last into the great room.
The late afternoon sun shone through the windows. Logan had opened the curtains. A pain slammed up between her ribs. It wasn’t her heart; it was the sudden blast of images from the last time they were all in this room. The things they’d done. Cat and Logan whispering, nuzzling. And Drew’s kiss.
Logan sat on the loveseat, adjusting his jeans over his knees. Drew and Cat took the sofa, Cat in the corner closest to Logan. Alexis supposed she was meant to take the place beside Logan, but she refused to sit.
“I’m not going to beat around the bush.” Logan, the man’s man, taking control. Didn’t he see the double entendre? He’d already been beating around Cat’s bush.
Oh yes, she was bitter.
“Cat and I didn’t mean for this happen, but after Alexis found us the other day, we talked everything over, and we realize we’ve fallen in love.” From his corner of the loveseat, he took Cat’s hand on the arm of the sofa. They looked into each other’s eyes.
The air in the great room was so still that Alexis could make out each individual breath. A sigh from Cat, a sharper puff from Logan. And nothing from Drew, as if he’d stopped breathing altogether.
“This is a joke, right?” she said.
“No, Alexis, it’s not.” Logan looked at Cat. Alexis remembered that gaze from long ago, the sweetness of it. When it was for her.
She didn’t feel anything. Not one single thing. Except that her body felt like someone had just shrink-wrapped it. And that if she hadn’t been shrink-wrapped, she would have stabbed Cat’s eyes out with a rusty fork, then started in on Logan’s heart.
She glanced at Cat. “Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered. She hated the false pity. Cat didn’t feel any of that. She was happy, triumphant, but trying to hide it behind that smug little smile of hers.
Then Drew exploded off the couch. “Fuck you both.” He was like a tornado rushing through, sucking all the air out with him as he left. The slam of the front door reverberated in the walls of the house. Cat and Logan glanced at each other, then Logan jutted his chin. Cat rose, as if they’d just had some silent communication that only married people should have. Or lovers cheating on their spouses.
This time the front door closed much more quietly.
“I believe it’s better if we separate.” Logan put his hands on his thighs and shoved himself out of the loveseat as if he’d suddenly aged ten years. His knees creaked.
No marriage counseling, no nothing, just suddenly...separate.
“You’re in love with her?” Alexis didn’t even recognize her own voice. It was high, squeaky, even petulant.
“It just happened, Alexis.”
But when did it happen? “How long was this going on? Before Tahoe?”
“Of course not.” He said it exactly the way Cat had. Then he passed her, headed down the hall to their bedroom. “Please, let’s not dissect the whole thing.”
She wanted to dissect herself, figure out what was going on inside her. Because she was numb. She knew he was lying, but she had no feelings about it. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. Forever.
But she had to act like she felt something so she followed him to their bedroom. His suitcase was open on the bed, filled with shirts and underwear. The clink of the medicine cabinet slipped around the edge of the bathroom doorjamb. Logan came out, set his shaving kit in the case, then flopped the lid closed, zipped, and hauled it upright onto the floor.
“You were packing before I even got home.” The words come from a hollow place deep inside her.
“You gave me no choice. You told Drew. We needed to make a decision.” He passed her, entered the walk-in closet, and came out with a suit carrier, already packed with his suits.
“Sorry it turned out this way, babe. I didn’t mean for it to happen like it did.”
Fifteen years and that was all he had to say, sorry it turned out this way, babe?
He hefted the carrier over his shoulder, rolled the suitcase out the door, and left her.
Yeah, that was all he had to say.
Alexis didn’t feel anything. She would not allow herself to feel anything. If she did, she’d never make it through the night.
* * * * *
Drew was in the hallway when the door opened behind him. Cat’s suitcase was in the corner by the door. When he’d gotten home from work, she’d caught him as he came in the garage and told him they needed to talk with Logan and Alexis. He hadn’t even gotten inside.
Without turning, he pointed. “What if I’d walked in to take a leak and saw the suitcase there?”
“I would have told you then,” she said.
Did she even get the callousness of it?
“I’m sorry, Drew,” she whispered.
“This isn’t what we signed on for,” he said, not willing to accept or forgive. “I told you I didn’t want everything fucked up, but you did what you wanted to do anyway.” He didn’t want to know how much more she’d done without him.
“I couldn’t help it.”
He’d fucking helped it. He’d had emotions he’d walked away from. He’d chosen his marriage to Cat over some fleeting lust.
He clenched his fists until they ached. “Don’t touch me,” he said as he felt a shift in the air currents. He didn’t know what he was capable of. He wasn’t an angry man or a brutal one. But he didn’t know himself right then.
“Do you want to talk about it, let me explain?”
He closed his eyes. He wanted to shout. He wanted to do violence. Instead he kept his voice steady, kept the tremors inside. “No. I want you to get out.”
“You’re not going to try to change my mind?”
He turned then because he couldn’t even begin to gauge the note in her voice. She was curiously lacking in expression, just pretty, sexy Cat doing a role play. Only a moment before, if she’d touched him despite what he said, maybe he would have tried. But there was something about this Cat that was so real. So her. She wanted to hear him beg. She wanted to know she still had a hold on him, that his life would dissolve when she was gone.
“Always playing the game, aren’t you, Cat.” He’d let her lead him around by the balls for years. He hadn’t cared. She’d given him all he thought he needed, home, hearth, stability, and off-the-charts sex. He was envied at every company Christmas party. He’d achieved the American dream. It all meant so much to her that she’d fallen in love with the neighbor in a month. He’d been cheated, not just sex, but everything. “Your bag is packed. Take it and get the fuck out.”
“Drew,” she said. For the first time, there was a hint of pleading.
He laughed, a painful rasp in his throat. “Do you want me to wish you all the best, have a great life, all that bullshit?”
“I don’t know what I want. Just for you not to feel so bad.”
He got right down in her face. “Is that what you were thinking when I was buried in your ass and you were kissing him?”
“Drew, don’t be mean, please.”
He backed off, his vision blurred. He blinked to clear it. “You ended it, Cat, not me. You didn’t even have the courage to tell me yourself. You had him do it. It’s time for you to go to him.” He looked at her, let all the emotion drain out of him. “You’re his problem now.”
She stared at him, her gaze stark as if she saw for the first time what she’d done. Then, reaching behind, she turned the door knob, bent down to raise the roller handle of her suitcase. He walked away before she left him. From the kitchen, he heard the front door close.
There were take-out cartons on the counter, the cardboard cold to the touch. Was she going to ply him with dinner first, soothe his savage beast, so to speak?
There were so many questions crowding his head. When did she decide to leave him for Logan? Was it when he called her after his lunch with Alexis? Christ, that seemed like days ago. Had Cat called Logan then, and they cooked up this thing? He didn’t understand anything.
He poured himself a draught of Southern Comfort and sat down on the couch in the family room. What the fuck? His life had just been shot to hell.
Sitting there for God only knew how long until dusk had faded to evening, he thought of so many things. He thought of Alexis in that room tonight. Every ounce of color had literally drained from her face, leaving a ghost of herself. He’d walked out on her this afternoon at the restaurant, left her alone to deal with it.
Christ, he sucked.
But if she’d never walked in on them in the first place. If she’d hadn’t told him. If she’d let sleeping dogs lie. They could have gone on fucking, having a great time, nothing changing. They could have kept everything.
The doorbell rang, a jaunty obnoxious tune that Cat thought was so much better than a normal ding-dong. He hated that fucking bell. Now he could rip it out.
She was a shadow through the opaque glass of the front door. Alexis. He’d wanted her. He’d given her up for his wife who was fucking Logan anyway. Screw Cat. Screw Logan.
There was nothing stopping him now.
Chapter Eighteen
Opening the door, he pulled her to him, then closed them in against the night. She’d changed into her favorite sweats and a tight shortie top that made him hard. That casual outfit had always made him hard.
“Drew.”
He didn’t give her a chance for more. Shoving her up against the foyer wall, he cupped her chin in his hand and took her mouth the way he’d wanted to for so long. Christ, she tasted good, all salty and sweet. Her skin was wet against his fingertips. He delved deep until she moaned and fisted her hands in his shirt, pulling him flush to her soft breasts. He kissed her until he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember, could only feel her and nothing else.
Without taking his mouth off hers, he planted his hands on her ass and lifted her. She spread her legs, locking her ankles around his waist, her flip-flops falling to the floor. He rubbed his cock along her pussy, and she was already warm and wet through the fabric between them.
“I want to fuck you,” he murmured against her lips, then took them again, driving his tongue deep, savoring her.
She moaned, and he felt like his insides would burst with how badly he wanted her. Fuck, he deserved this, he needed it, and he’d take it.
He dropped her feet back to the floor, then tore at her sweats and the tiny panties beneath, shoving them down her legs.
“Tell me you want it,” he demanded, “you want me, it’s all you’ve thought about.”
“Yes, Drew, yes. I want you so badly.” Her eyes were dark as a stormy sky, her hair tumbling over her shoulders.
Sliding his hands under the shirt, he held her breasts. They were bare, nipples hard. He pinched. She laid her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, licked her lips.
“Undo my slacks, take me out. Do it now.” He felt the need to subjugate and command.
Eyes wide, lips parted, she unzipped him. Fumbling a moment, she found him through his briefs, then her warm fingers wrapped around him. His eyes damn near rolled back in his head. “Fuck. That’s so good.”
He bent his knees, reached between her legs and stroked along her apex. Jesus, she was wet, ready.
“How do you want me to fuck you? Against the wall, on your hands and knees, flat on your back?”
She tipped her head back. “I—”
He didn’t let her finish. “I want hands and knees.” He turned, pulled her down to the front hall runner, positioned her. “You’re going to be so tight around me that way.”
He didn’t even take off his pants, just reached between her legs, found her, and shoved his cock inside.
“Oh Jesus.” He wanted to die in there, she was so good and tight.
“Drew,” she cried out.
“Tell me how good it is.”
“You’re so good, Drew.”
He pushed her down to her elbows, took her with long, slow thrusts. Then he draped himself over her, wrapped his arm around her waist, and played her clit. Beneath him, she shivered, then her body quaked. His lips to her ear, he whispered words, how pretty she was, how hot, how wet, how good. He fucked her into the floor, fucked her into the heavens, fucked her until he came so hard that he couldn’t hear Logan saying he and Cat had fallen in love or the sound of Cat rolling her suitcase across the hall floor.
* * * * *
Alexis lay on her stomach with one knee pulled up and her cheek resting on Drew’s arm. She still wore her top, but was naked from the waist down. Her pussy throbbed from his delicious penetration, and she floated in that orgasmic aftermath where she felt every muscle tick and every inch of his skin along hers. He hadn’t removed his clothes, and he’d pulled out after they’d both collapsed to the floor.
God, that was good. She thought maybe she’d said that aloud, but she was so delirious, she couldn’t be sure.
She’d never been taken like that before, as if he’d die if he didn’t get inside her right that second. Not even Logan had done her with that same urgency or ferocity.
Logan. In addition to all the other sensations, she could now feel the hardness of the floor beneath them, the scratchy carpet runner, and hear the death knell of her marriage.
The only consolation was this, Drew’s arms around her, his breath fanning her hair, his solid warmth.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice so low it was almost masked by a car rushing by outside.
For what? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask. But she was afraid.
“I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
That was exactly what she’d been afraid he’d say. If he’d commiserated about Cat and Logan, she could have handled it. Or about the fact that they hadn’t used a condom, that would have been fine, too. She was on the pill. She trusted he was clean.
She couldn’t handle that he regretted the lovemaking.
“I’m fine,” she said softly, hoping he’d stay as he was a little while longer. Please don’t take this away, too. It wasn’t what she’d been looking for when she rang his bell. She’d intended to offer comfort, support, whatever he needed. He’d needed sex,
and the moment it started, she’d known how much she needed it, too.
“It was the wrong time to jump you like that.” He started to pull away. She felt the brush of his fingers as he straightened his clothes. The rasp of his zipper cut her on the inside, as if it were as final as Logan saying, “Sorry it turned out this way, babe.”
“Drew, it was fine. I wanted it, too.” She was forced to sit up and scramble for her panties and sweats.
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