LuckoftheDraw

by Jayne Kingston

  Still it wasn’t enough.

  She braced her arms and pushed with everything she had. He was so big and so strong he could have held her there and finished what he was doing if he’d wanted, but he let her go with only a grunt of protest as they came apart.

  Somehow she managed to get her feet under her. She stumbled down the hall and turned to look at him when she reached her open doorway.

  “I’m going to make you pay when I catch you,” he told her, slowly climbing up the last couple of stairs on his hands and knees, peering at her ominously through that vivid red hair hanging in a disheveled mess over his face.

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  Despite her feigned indifference, she squeaked and bolted into the room when he sprang to his feet and charged her. She had her dress off when he came into the room and slammed the door shut mere seconds later. He caught her in his arms so fast she hardly had time to register that he’d moved.

  He popped the clasp on her bra and made it go away. Then she was clinging to him naked, holding on for dear life as he took her mouth in a kiss so deep, so all-consuming she would have been hard-pressed to come up with her name if anyone asked.

  “Naked.” The one word escaped her mouth on a pant. “Now.”

  She hooked her fingers into the front of his shirt and pulled. It came open on a series of rapid pops and he helped her get it the rest of the way off. She slid down his body, pushing his pants down as she went, and he stepped out of them.

  While she was there…

  She gripped his cock and raised her eyes to his as she licked him from root to tip. He smelled of man and musk and tasted like her pussy. She licked the salty bead of precum off the deep-red crown of him and he bit out a curse through clenched teeth.

  Petra wrapped her mouth around him loosely and moved back and forth, letting her lips play over the ridge between head and shaft, her tongue touching the slit at the tip with every forward thrust. She ran the hand not holding his cock up his thigh and slid around to cradle the firm curve of his ass as she moved her mouth over him, taking him just a little deeper every time.

  Alex brushed the hair out of her face, the gesture heart-achingly loving. She was so turned-on she could feel her pulse throbbing in her clit. Her pussy flooded with a fresh wave of wet heat as she gazed up his body and watched the look in his eyes become both incredibly tender and fiercely aroused.

  Petra released his cock and ran her tongue over his balls, sucked first one and then the other into her mouth, making his deep, strong chest heave as he fought to catch his breath. She licked the long line of his shaft, then relaxed her throat so she could take him deep. Her reward was his head falling back and a low groan.

  Feeling greedy, she did it all again, her body thrilling when his head came up and those blue eyes watched her with even more intensity. And then she did it again. His balls became tighter every time she lavished them with attention. She could feel how close he was getting to orgasm in the thickening of his shaft and see it in the way his stomach and chest rose and fell with each labored breath. Causing a man of Alex’s size and strength to whimper in ecstasy was heady, powerful stuff.

  She could have spent forever worshiping him that way, but after just a few more minutes he tugged on her hands, encouraging her to stand, and picked her up. She wrapped herself around him, held on tight as he crawled to the center of the bed, and welcomed him gladly when he laid her down and slipped inside.

  Apparently he also felt that the urgency from earlier had passed. The pace of his movements was steady and unhurried, his strokes long and driving. She brought her hips up to meet each thrust, ran her hands over the strong expanse of his back, her body thrilling with each filthy thing he whispered into the curve of her shoulder.

  “I love you,” he told her, catching her off guard and stealing her breath.

  He’d told her he loved her that first night, but he’d never really said the words, had he? He’d said he was in love with her, but not that way.

  Petra saw it then—her love for him. She’d been waiting for some kind of thunder and lightning revelation, but she’d been waiting in vain because it had always been there, quietly waiting for her to notice it existed.

  He hadn’t become her lover simply because some girl fucked up a drawing at a party. They weren’t just friends who were really damn good in bed together. This was the natural progression of what was meant to be, what would have eventually become of them whether the universe had given them that initial push or not.

  He whispered the words again and she answered a gasping “yes” near his ear. It was all she could manage. Her body had become something shimmering and unearthly. The trembling started deep within her core and spread out to her thighs, through her body, out through her fingers and toes. He pumped his hips faster and she came just as his body seized and he moaned deeply, joining her on that long fall into oblivion.

  When he collapsed on top of her she welcomed the weight of his big body and the feel of his heart racing as though it was trying to beat its way out of his chest and into hers. She would have gladly been absorbed into him at that moment if it was possible, because she never wanted to be apart from him again.

  Chapter Eight

  Petra came awake with the bed shaking as though the world was breaking apart. It stopped just as quickly as it started, followed by a flurry of confusing sounds. She thought she heard the thump and scuffle of feet on the hardwood floor and distinctly male grunting. There was a harsh slapping of skin on skin, someone sounded a choked cry and the entire house shook again as something heavy hit the wall.

  Confused and frightened, Petra dove for her phone and the lamp at the same time. She overshot her mark and sent everything on her bedside table clattering to the floor instead. She dove for the other side of the bed just as she heard the same choked but strangely familiar voice that cried out earlier gasp Alex’s name.

  “Alex, stop,” she screamed, fumbling for the light switch with an unsteady hand, knowing who it was before her mind could properly form his name.

  Weak lamplight washed over the room. Alex had Jude against the wall near the door, his forearm braced on Jude’s throat and the other arm cocked back, fist primed and ready to strike. Jude’s face was a deep, dangerous red from lack of oxygen and his eyes were huge with fear.

  “Alex,” she repeated, gently this time in case he was still sleeping. “Let him go.”

  A quivering started in Alex’s arm, then shook his entire body. He released Jude’s neck, bared his teeth and roared in Jude’s face like an outraged animal.

  “What the fuck are you doing, sneaking in here in the middle of the night?” he shouted, slamming his open hands against the wall on either side of Jude’s head. “I could have killed you just now.”

  Jude slumped to the floor at Alex’s feet, holding his neck and gasping for air. Alex punched the wall again, jolting Petra out of the shock that had paralyzed her.

  “Alex, honey.” She was trying to sound calm despite the fear making her tremble from the inside out. She crawled off the bed and approached him tentatively, but he stormed out of the bedroom without so much as a glance in her direction.

  She had no idea where he was going. He was stark naked.

  Then she remembered she was naked as well.

  She got her robe off the back of the door, pulled it on and knelt beside Jude.

  “Let me see,” she prompted, taking his wrists carefully.

  He let her peel his hands back, revealing an angry red mark the width of Alex’s forearm across his throat. He was still laboring for air, but it didn’t sound as though he’d suffered any damage to his windpipe.

  “Do I need to call an ambulance?” she asked.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her for the first time. They were full of pain, confusion and sadness. Petra ignored the skip in her heartbeat. She put one hand behind his neck and used the other to check more thoroughly for signs of damage, surreptitiously looking him over in the
process.

  He was thinner, which made his gold-brown eyes seem that much bigger, his high cheekbones that much more refined. His blond hair was cut shorter than he used to wear it and lighter, his skin tanned to a rich gold-brown.

  “Petra, I’m fine,” he croaked, brushing off her hands.

  “Mmm, yes. Perfectly fine.” She sat back on her heels and folded her hands in her lap. “You sound as if you’ve been smoking for a hundred years.”

  He gave her a bitter look, then looked away. “He knew exactly what he was doing. I would have passed out from lack of oxygen before he broke any bones.”

  There was humiliation in his expression, then shock when he looked around the room behind her. She’d changed it completely. He wouldn’t have recognized any of the furniture, the bed linens or the pictures on the wall.

  “Jude.” She spoke his name quietly. “How did you even get in here?”

  His gaze flitted nervously over the room, his hands now folded in his lap, then the room again before he looked at her. “There was still a spare set of keys at my parents’.”

  He used to lock himself out of the house from time to time when he went running. His parents didn’t live far, so they’d kept an extra set of keys at their house just in case. It had been so long between the last time he’d needed to use them and the time he’d left for Haiti that she’d forgotten all about them.

  When she didn’t say anything he added, “You said you would wait.”

  He couldn’t seriously have expected her to still be waiting.

  “And you told me there would be no point, you weren’t coming back.”

  “I was only gone four months.”

  Only? She stifled the urge to laugh in his face, to tell him it might as well have been four decades for as long as those months had seemed to her.

  “Jude, I’m with Alex now.”

  He closed his eyes and rested his head on the wall.

  “Why are you really back?” She had to ask even if she didn’t like the answer.

  His head came back up, eyes unbearably sad. “I missed you.”

  “You could have called to tell me that.”

  He reached out and took her hand and she had to fight the urge to pull it back.

  “I wanted to make sure, Petra,” he whispered, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the backs of her fingers, eyes downcast. “I thought walking away from you was a sacrifice I was going to be able to make. I thought the job, the work, was going to be enough to help me get over you, but it isn’t. I made a terrible mistake.”

  “So what? Are you saying you’re back for good?” she asked incredulously. Even if he had moved back to Chicago it didn’t matter. She’d moved on and was happy without him, but she had a point to make. “Because if you’re not, that was our whole problem to begin with and nothing has changed.”

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I’m on a two-week leave of absence.”

  “And you thought it would be all right to come here in the middle of the night without calling to find out if I even wanted to see you?” She did withdraw her hand then. “To what? Tell me you’d changed your mind about the whole me sitting on my hands waiting around for you thing?”

  He drew his knees up, propped his elbows and ran his hands through his hair.

  “I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, Petra.” He closed his eyes and squeezed his hair in his hands. “I was not expecting to find Alex in your bed, although I guess in hindsight I should have seen it coming.”

  She bristled. “What does that mean?”

  “Please.” He dropped his legs and touched his throat gingerly. “He’s always been your boyfriend-in-waiting. He’s been in love with you since you met.”

  She wanted to smack him in the mouth for even thinking about Alex that way.

  “You never said one word to me about Alex before today.”

  He faced her openly. “If I would have put my foot down and told you I didn’t like you spending so much time with him you would have gone running into his arms.”

  Shock rendered her speechless. He looked like that man she’d once thought she was in love with, who she thought she’d wanted to grow old and spend the rest of her life with, but he was talking as though he was someone she didn’t know at all.

  She and Jude had loved and supported each other through the years they’d had an open relationship, which hadn’t been easy. When one or the other of them had felt insecure about someone the other person had been seeing they’d talked about it openly.

  She stood. “I need to go make sure Alex is all right,” she said and left the room.

  She searched the house but couldn’t find him. His car was still in his spot in the alley behind the backyard, so he hadn’t left. She just didn’t know where he was hiding.

  Jude was standing near the front door when she got back to the living room.

  “I’m sorry I came back,” he told her quietly, and her heart broke at his expression. “I’m sorry I thought it would be all right to come here in the middle of the night and surprise you.” He held up the keys he’d used to get in and made a show out of laying them on the table in the foyer. “I’ll go now.”

  She did nothing to stop him when he turned and left, closing the front door behind him with a quiet click. She stood there a long moment, turned in a circle in the middle of the silent house and asked no one in particular, “What the fuck just happened?”

  No one answered.

  Eventually she found Alex sitting in a chair in a dark corner of the back deck. He was mostly wrapped in an afghan from the living room, but his long legs were exposed to the cold early-morning air. Petra’s robe was long and warm, but no help for her bare feet, which instantly became frozen when she stepped outside.

  “Is he all right?” Alex asked without looking at her.

  She took a couple of tentative steps toward him.

  “His neck is fine. I believe his pride took the hardest hit.”

  He didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything else. The lack of light was making it hard for her to see his expression clearly, but he didn’t seem to be as angry anymore.

  “Come inside, Alex. He’s gone.”

  There was a long pause. “What did he want?”

  She took a couple of steps closer, then perched next to him on the lounge chair.

  “He said he came back because he missed me,” she told him, running her hand over his leg. His skin was freezing. “He was hoping I was still waiting for him.”

  He huffed out a derisive sound and shook his head. “If he’d have come back a few weeks ago you would have been.”

  She couldn’t tell if the bitterness in his voice was aimed toward her or Jude. Probably both on some level.

  “But he didn’t. He came back tonight.”

  “And what would have happened if he’d come back any time before tonight?” He turned and their eyes met.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature slithered down her spine. She stood and went into the house without answering.

  He followed.

  “What does that mean, Petra? What if he’d shown up in the middle of the night a week or a month ago? What if he’d shown up on a night when you’d been alone? Would you have dropped me for him?”

  She stopped and turned to face him.

  He blanched. “You would have.”

  “Do not put words in my mouth.”

  “Then you put words in your mouth, because your silence is telling me my worst fear has just been realized.”

  She was starting to crash from the adrenaline rush of almost witnessing her old love get strangled to death by her new love and her brain was shutting down. A small part of her mind knew Alex was experiencing the same thing, but she couldn’t form a coherent thought, and the way he was looking at her was fueling the anger Jude had triggered earlier.

  She wrapped her arms around herself to quiet the shaking in her body. “What I would or would not have done doesn’t matter, Alex. He cam
e back tonight.”

  “Well lucky fucking me,” he snarled.

  Something inside her snapped.

  “What do you want from me?” she yelled. “I wasn’t expecting this any more than you were. I can’t think straight right now, let alone tell you what you need to hear to feel better. I don’t fucking know what would have happened, and I never will because it didn’t happen in the past. It happened right fucking now.”

  His expression became unreadable and he pulled himself up to his full height.

  “I should get out of here so we can both get our heads on straight.”

  Stellar idea, she thought but didn’t say out loud.

  He took her silence as agreement and went upstairs. She listened to him moving around in her bedroom, immobilized. She wanted to go to him, to put her arms around him and promise him everything was unchanged between them, but she couldn’t force her legs to carry her up the stairs.

  Petra was standing in the same spot when he came back down dressed. She felt paralyzed as he brushed past her without looking back and let himself out, then watched helplessly through the window on the back door as he crossed the yard in long strides and then drove away.

  And oh God she missed him in a way that was physically painful the moment the red of his taillights disappeared and the alley went dark again.

  Petra made it as far as the couch, where she curled up in the corner and tucked her feet under the hem of her robe. She sat staring out the window until the sun came up. Eventually she rested her head against the arm and fell asleep. When she woke up there was a pillow under her head and she was covered with a blanket.

  She heard Rachel and Bree talking softly in the kitchen and remembered they’d made plans for brunch that morning. They were supposed to go out to one of their favorite restaurants within walking distance of the house, but the house smelled of bacon and cinnamon rolls and coffee.

  “Rough night?” Bree asked, eyebrows raised and a little smirk on her face.