Petra wiggled out of his grip with a harshly whispered “fuck.” She sat up and grabbed his hair and attempted to haul him back up the bed. “Now,” she demanded.
He got hold of her legs and tried to dump her onto her back again. “Let me finish.”
“No.” She squirmed out of his grasp and went up on her knees in front of him. “Finish inside of me,” she demanded, pulling on his arms this time.
He was definitely going to be sick. Fate was certainly a twisted bitch, wasn’t she?
At first Petra couldn’t figure out what was happening. One moment she’d been primed to go off, her singular focus getting him onto the bed and inside her, and then nothing was happening at all.
He put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her down so she was sitting on her heels. It wasn’t until he rested his forehead on her knees and groaned that she understood exactly what was happening.
“Still nothing?”
He shook his head.
She covered her mouth with one hand and closed her eyes, trying desperately to control the heat raging inside her so she could think a little more clearly. It wasn’t easy, but Alex’s stalled engine was obviously having a far worse effect on him than putting on the brakes was going to have on her.
After a moment she opened her eyes and brushed his hair to one side.
“Maybe we just don’t have the right chemistry.”
She knew it was a lie even as the words were coming off her lips. If the way he made her feel wasn’t chemistry, then she had no idea what the word really meant.
He shook his head again, just a little twitch of denial that made her smile.
She ran her hands up and down his back as she struggled to find the right thing to say. Then, for the first time in the entirety of their friendship, she told him what she thought he might want to hear. “Alex, honey, it happens to everyone.”
He sat up straight and pinned her with a look so vicious it caused a delicious little shiver of fear to run down her spine. After a moment he leaped to his feet and snatched his pants off the floor, muttering to himself. She caught words like “sick” and “creepy” and “so fucking wrong” here and there, but mostly he sounded like the guy who sometimes hung around outside the hospital, gibbering to no one in particular.
“Don’t you dare walk out on me,” she said, climbing off the bed on shaky legs.
He dropped heavily into the chair next to her dresser and shoved one foot into the wrong leg of the pants. She snatched them out of his hand and sent them sailing over the bed, where they landed out of sight on the opposite side.
Alex was big, strong and the most agile man she’d ever met. If he’d wanted to get his pants back she wouldn’t have been able to stop him, but apparently he didn’t really want them. He sat back in the chair and gave her an angry, dejected look.
She held up her hands. “Fine. ‘It happens to everyone’ was the worst thing I could possibly have said. Please excuse me. I’m not thinking clearly.” His eyes followed her as she knelt between his feet and sat back on her heels again, her hands on his knees. “But I can’t help you if you run out of here without talking to me.”
His eyes were burning into hers. He was silent so long she started to squirm before he said, “Can we put our clothes back on first?”
Self-conscious Alex—someone entirely new to her—was adorable, but it was unlikely he would find it funny if she did something silly like giggle at that moment.
So she simply told him, “No.”
“But—” His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open when she grasped a few of the coppery-blond hairs on his knee and gave them a little tug. “Ow.”
“Tell me what’s sick and wrong about what was just happening, because it didn’t feel like either of those things on my end.”
He looked away but didn’t answer.
“Do you think we’ve been friends too long, that we’re trying to jump from that to lovers too quickly?”
He snorted once softly and his eyes closed. “That’s definitely not it.”
She gave his leg a little shake when he didn’t say anything else.
After a pause his eyes opened and he looked at her. “Petra, I’m in love with you.”
The world went silent, as though time had simply stopped. She heard no sound, felt not a single heartbeat, took in not so much as a breath for a moment.
She knew that, didn’t she? In that second every moment he’d made that clear to her without actually speaking the words came rushing to the forefront of her memory.
“Is that all?” she asked and didn’t know where the words had come from.
He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, elbows on thighs, his face close to hers.
“Is that all?” he repeated. He opened his mouth as though he meant to say something else, then closed it with an incredulous shake of his head. He stood and stepped around her. “I have to get out of here. Everything about this night is wrong, and it’s only getting worse.”
Petra dropped her hands to the floor and hung her head.
“Tell me why.” She spoke loudly so he would hear her over the noise he was making, stomping and muttering as he moved around her room.
“It’s wrong because I should have told you long before tonight. Long before I had you naked and was doing…that to you.” There was a loud snap of fabric. “It’s creepy because I’ve been pining for you, pretending I was absolutely all right with being your friend for years, but all I really wanted was for Jude to go away. And then he did and what did I do about it? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.”
Petra stood very slowly. He was standing on the opposite side of the bed where she’d thrown his pants earlier. She turned in time to see him hop once, then twice, as he pulled those tight corduroys up over his ass. With his back to her she was sure he didn’t know she caught the rear view of him tucking in his business as well.
A quick shiver racked her body as she imagined how different things would be if that business of his had decided to join the party.
He turned and started coming around the foot of the bed. When he saw her standing there watching him he stopped, pants half-zipped and button still undone, and seemed to deflate a little.
What an exquisitely beautiful man he was, her Alex. So tall, so strong, so brightly colored with his long red hair and vivid blue eyes. The sadness in those eyes was just about going to kill her.
“I don’t want you to leave,” she told him.
He regarded her for a moment. “I shouldn’t stay.”
“I love you too and you know it.” She took a step and picked up his shirt. “It’s not the way you want me to, I know, but it’s the best I can do right now.”
He propped his hands on his hips and hung his head when she slipped her arms into the sleeves and buttoned one button over her breasts. God, it smelled like him.
She wanted him to stay. He was going to have to walk out of her house and catch a cab shirtless on a chilly October night if he insisted on going home.
“Pete,” he started, then just shook his head.
“I don’t know what else to say to you right now.”
And that was the truth. Most things in life were black or white for her. She had a gift for assessing any given situation and making a quick decision, but this was different. This wasn’t about some guy whose feelings had grown beyond hers, someone she could decide to love or discard. This was Alex, and Alex was just as big a piece of her heart as Rachel and Bree and Momma and her Busha.
She moved close enough to reach up and tuck his hair behind his ears.
“Alex, we can’t go back to being just friends after this, and losing you simply isn’t an option. I won’t promise you that things will change for me, but that crazy thing that just about happened? I still want it to happen.”
She held his face in her hands and went up on her toes to get closer. She could see the conflict of stay or go warring inside him, but he didn’t move away.
“Please don’t leave
.” She tilted her chin up, putting her mouth close to his.
He let her wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him, and he let her help him back out of those awful pants and lead him to the bed. They got under the covers and lay there kissing for a long time, but nothing more happened.
Eventually he turned his back to her and she curled up behind him, spooning him for a change, one arm around his waist and her forehead touching his back.
“Oh, Lex,” she whispered, wishing there was something she could say to make them both feel better, but she had nothing.
He didn’t respond.
Chapter Five
Alex couldn’t imagine having to suffer through anything more humiliating in his life. He’d been denying how much he wanted Petra for years for the sake of their friendship. After Jude left he’d allowed himself a small sliver of hope he might have a chance to be something more to her once she recovered. When she’d pulled his keys, he’d told himself to go easy, to keep those feelings reigned in a little longer, then ended up coughing up his heart like a lovesick schoolboy the moment he’d opened his mouth.
He’d had her. She’d been naked and willing and in his arms, and he hadn’t been able to rise to the occasion. For the first time in his life.
Alex was not intimidated by women. He loved them. Worshiped them, really.
Short, tall, reed thin or big and beautiful—it didn’t matter. Each one he’d been lucky enough to take to bed was a new mystery to be solved. He lived for figuring out what got them off, what made them giggle and sigh and moan, and he’d failed the one he wanted to figure out more than any other. The one he loved with his heart first.
And not only had he behaved like a complete jackass when his cock decided to take the night off, but he’d woken up just a couple of hours later with the hardest erection of his life. The damn thing was so stiff it was practically looking straight up at him, and apparently immune to the icy-cold shower spray currently running over his body.
He looked at it and muttered, “You really are stupid, you know that?”
“Lexi?”
The sound of his name in her voice made it jump as if to say, “Yay! She’s here!”
Alex groaned, braced his hands on the shower wall and let his head hang directly in the frigid water.
“Honey, why does it feel like Antarctica in here?”
He could hear her voice coming closer as she spoke but couldn’t open his mouth to tell her to go away. He flinched at the metal-on-metal sound of the shower-curtain hooks scraping over the rod.
And then she breathed, “Oh wow.”
Alex straightened and pushed his hair out of his face.
“Petra, this is embarrassing enough without the commentary.”
She was staring at his cock, and damn if he didn’t love it.
She looked up and reached for the faucet at the same time. “I’m going to move real slow so as not to frighten it away, all right?”
He started to shiver from the inside out the moment the water turned off.
“There’s really no reason to patronize me.” He swiped a hand over his face and ran his fingers through his hair to squeeze out more water.
“Patronize you?” She unbuttoned his shirt and let it drop to the floor. Goose bumps rippled over her skin and her nipples tightened in the cold air. “I drew your keys fair and square, Alexander Mackenzie Morrison. You owe me a ride on that bad boy.”
Even through the humiliation burning fresh through him, he was caught off guard by how stunningly beautiful she was—black hair, exotic eyes, ruby lips and all that pale skin that practically begged to be marred by a lovebite or twenty.
In places only she would be able to see later, of course.
She stepped onto the side of the tub.
“Owe you?” he asked, pretending to be offended as he put his cold hands on her waist to steady her.
She gasped. “Fucking hell. You’re the biggest Popsicle ever.”
“I won’t be for long,” he said and pulled her warm body against his.
She gasped again as though she couldn’t catch her breath, but she wrapped herself around him anyway, her arms gripping his shoulders and one leg coming up around his waist. Alex shivered harder as their lips came together, his jaw trembling so much he was afraid he might accidentally bite her.
His cock was trapped between their bellies. He got his arms under her ass and she brought her other leg up to squeeze his waist tight. She shifted so his cock fell free, the ultrasensitive head sliding along her slick heat as it did.
Holding her close so she wouldn’t slip out of his wet arms, he turned and pinned her to the shower wall so hard they both sounded a quiet “oof”. God bless Busha and her obsession with non-slip bathtub decals, he thought absently, feet braced solidly on the bottom of the tub. He could hardly breathe when she maneuvered her hand between their bodies and guided the head of his cock to her hot, wet little cunt.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment. He went completely calm and the trembling in his body subsided. She ran her hands over his face, smoothed them over his wet hair, while they simply looked at each other for a long moment.
She bit his bottom lip as he pushed inside of her a little. The sharp edge of pain mixed with the heart-stopping feel of her squeezing him tight, her pussy resisting him at first, brought out a moan that started deep in his chest. He had her. She was his.
His.
He kissed her as roughly as he wanted to take her body. She was tight but hot and wet and he could wait as long as she needed to get ready for him. She dug her nails into his shoulders when he started rocking his hips, stroking her with the head of his cock in short, tight movements that were surely going to kill him.
He got a good hold on her ass to support her and brought one hand up to cradle her breast in his palm. He brushed his fingers over her long, hard nipple and then twisted gently, making her squirm against him, taking him a little deeper.
A shudder racked his body and he lengthened his movements, pushing farther into her each time, feeling her open up for him on every thrust. Spurred on by the soft, desperate sounds she was making, he buried himself balls deep in one long, persistent stroke and then had to hold very still.
Every single one of his nerve endings began to tingle. There was nothing, and he meant absolutely nothing, in the entire world that felt as good as Petra—her tight cunt, her body wrapped around his, her heart beating fast against his where their chests were pressed together.
“Oh, Pete,” he whispered, burying his face in her neck, completely lost in her and afraid to move for fear he’d break the spell of the moment by coming too soon.
She traced the wet tip of her tongue around the outside of his ear, then bit down lightly on his earlobe, which did nothing to help his self-control. When she whispered his name, her lips touching the side of his face, he lifted his head and looked at her.
Her beautiful pale eyes were bright with arousal. Her cheeks had gone pink and her slightly parted lips were swollen and blood red. She spoke one word. “Hard.”
“This hard?” he asked, crushing her sweet mouth again and for a long time.
She groaned so deeply he felt it all the way through his body.
“Or hard like this?” He pinched her nipple and her hips bucked as much as they could with him between them, pinning her to the wall. “Or do you mean hard like this?” He pulled half out of her and thrust back in so fast their bodies slapped together.
“All of it,” she panted. “Please.”
Teeth ground together and eyes locked on hers, he fucked her. He fucked her hard, using long, relentless strokes to plunge into her body over and over, making her gasp and then cry out, the pressure building quickly for both of them.
They were surely waking up the whole house, slamming into the shower wall, both of them moaning and carrying on the way they were. He couldn’t care. He had one mission in life, and that mission was to make Petra Romanov come.
Preferably screaming his
name loud enough for the entire city of Chicago to hear.
It happened fast, but she didn’t scream.
She pulled his hair to the point of pain. “Come,” she demanded.
He was so incredibly close he could feel it in his back teeth.
“No,” he said and fucked her harder.
Her eyes closed and her head dropped back against the wall. She whimpered his name, then repeated it in a deep moan, and that undid the last of his self-control. He came with a growl so deep he felt it all the way down to his toes.
Alex rested his head against the wall behind her and fought to catch his breath as his body came down from the high of his life. She smoothed his hair back and kissed his neck gently, sending an aftershock through him.
“We broke the condom rule,” he muttered stupidly.
“It’s all right.” She kissed a path to his shoulder. “You know that.”
Right. He did know that. He’d had a condom break during a questionable, drunken one-night stand once. As a show of support, Petra had been going with him to get regular tests for STDs since then. They were both disease free, and he knew she took birth control. Some part of his lust-addled brain must have remembered it was all right or he never would have taken her without protecting her.
He turned his head until their mouths met. She tightened the hold she had on his waist and levered herself up so his spent cock slipped out of her. He held her steady as he set her on her feet but never lost the deep connection he had with her mouth.
She put her hands on either side of his face and gently broke free. “Come to bed.”
God yes.
He was ready for her again by the time they got there.
She pushed him and he dropped like a felled tree onto his back across the bed.
“There’s so much of you,” she said, standing between his knees, looking him over as though she’d never seen him before.
He wanted to tell her every inch of him was hers, hers, all hers forever and ever, amen, but thought it might be too much after his confession the night before.
He folded his arms behind his head. “Help yourself.”
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