Anyone but You

by Jennifer Crusie

  Nina let him pull her toward the bedroom, dazed with wanting him, crazy to feel him inside her, but when they were in his room, and he stripped off his shirt and said, “Really nice bra. Take it off,” Nina came crashing back to reality.

  “No,” she said, crossing her arms over her breasts.

  “Nina—” he began, moving toward her.

  “Turn off the lights.” She took a step back until she was up against the bed.

  “Sure.” He reached back and flipped the light switch and then reached for her again. “Take it off.”

  “Alex, you don’t understand,” she said, and he stopped. She swallowed, trying to explain. “Everything’s lower than it used to be.”

  “Nina, you don’t understand,” Alex said. “I don’t care if it’s on the floor. I want you naked now.”

  “Alex—” But then he was kissing her, hooking his foot around her ankle and tripping her back onto the bed until she fell, bouncing under him as his body moved over hers, his mouth hot on her neck.

  “Alex,” she tried again, holding on to sanity as his hands made her weak with heat, and then he looked down into her eyes, and she was stunned by the passion she saw there.

  “I want you,” he said. “I want you and I need you now. Do you want me?” He slid his hand down her side and pulled her hips closer to his, and she clenched her teeth as she felt him hard through his shorts.

  “Oh, God, yes.” Nina moved under him, crazy at his touch. “I can’t stand it anymore. Yes.”

  “Then you’re losing the bra.” Alex unhooked the center clasp with one hand and pulled the lace away from her body, and before she could wince, his mouth was hot on her throat and then on her breast, sucking hard, and she arched under him, mindless in the blast of pure pleasure his lips and tongue sent through her, any qualms she had forgotten, any fear gone. She raked her fingers through his hair and moaned as he licked and sucked at her swollen breasts, and then Fred barked at her.

  He was sitting beside the bed.

  Nina gasped and blinked, pushing halfheartedly at Alex’s head while she tried to remember her name.

  Alex stopped and looked down at Fred. “Where did you come from?” he asked, and then shook his head. “I don’t care. Go back.”

  “I left the window open,” Nina said around ragged breaths as she struggled to sit up. “I’ll put him back. I’ll—”

  “No, you won’t.” Alex pressed her back down with his body, and she shuddered under him, loving the slide of her breasts against the fur of his chest and the pressure of his body between her legs as he bore down on her. “You’re not getting out of this bed,” he told her.

  “No.” Nina ran her hands down his body and watched him close his eyes in pleasure. “No, I’m not. I’m not getting out of this bed.” She rocked her hips against his and shuddered at how good he felt. “Do things to me.”

  Alex looked down at her, and his eyes were black with lust. “I intend to do things to you.” He looked at Fred. “Pay attention. You may pick up some pointers here.”

  Nina moved against the pillow. “He’s just a child. He shouldn’t be watching.”

  Alex pressed her hips harder into the mattress, letting his hand trail down her shoulder to cup her breast, his thumb teasing her nipple. Nina moaned, and Fred whined, and Alex frowned down at him, his hand still driving Nina into mindlessness. “Think of this as cable TV,” she heard him tell Fred. “Not your mom and dad finally having great sex.” Then he leaned down and licked her nipple, and Nina rolled her head to the side, drunk with pleasure, and saw Fred yawn and lick his lips.

  “Go away, Fred,” she said, but Alex said, “Good idea,” and began to kiss his way between Nina’s breasts and down the slope of her stomach, tickling her and making her shudder, sliding the red lace of her underpants down as he moved his body across her thighs.

  “Oh, God, yes,” Nina said through clenched teeth, and then he reached her hips and licked inside her, and Nina lost all power of speech. Her body went liquid under his hands and his mouth and all she knew was flooding heat and pressure and a tightening deep inside her that Alex was making tighter and tighter. She twisted under him, and he held her still, his fingers biting into her hips while he stroked his tongue inside her over and over again, and the combination of his tongue and his hands and the knowledge that she was with Alex, finally with Alex, and that she was going to have all of him pushed her over the edge, and the heat broke inside her, and the spasms shook her body, moving her against his mouth as she came and came. Then he was kissing his way across her stomach, sucking on her breasts, biting at the hollow of her neck while she wrapped herself around him and rocked away the last of her orgasm.

  She lay with her head back, trying to breathe, trying to hold on to the glow, vaguely aware that he was reaching across her to open the drawer beside the bed, feeling his hip against hers as he stripped off his shorts, and then hearing foil tear. Thank God; a condom meant he’d be inside her soon. She rolled against him and breathed, “Hurry,” in his ear, and he laughed a little, low and lazy, and then pulled her on top of him.

  “That’s the last thing I’m going to do,” he told her, and she put her hands on his chest and pushed up enough so that she could see into his eyes. “This is going to take all night,” he promised her. “I’m going to watch you come over and over again. You’re going to come seeing the dawn, I swear it.”

  She shivered, and his hand slid up her neck, and his thumb moved across her lips, and she licked at him and then bit him as he moved underneath her. He eased his hand down her side and between her legs and slid his finger into her, stroking her until she moaned against his chest, and then she felt him move hard against her stomach. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, crazy with anticipation. He pulled her up to him and she helped, moving against him, wanting him between her thighs, filling the emptiness there, and then he was inside her, hard inside her, and she jerked against him as his fingers pressed into her flesh, pulling her against him. She was slick and hot, and she moaned at the slide and the friction and the pressure and the shudder in her blood as he moved inside her.

  “Oh, Nina,” he said, and pulled her face back down to his, his mouth on hers, licking into her mouth as he rocked up into her body, and after that, there was nothing for the rest of the night but Alex and Alex’s hands and Alex’s mouth, and Alex’s body over hers, under hers, inside hers, making her mindless with need and speechless with release over and over again.

  They stopped once for Oreos—“I’ve never eaten Oreos naked before,” she told him when he brought the package and two mugs of milk back to bed, and he said, “From now on, we eat all our Oreos naked”—and they showered together at three in the morning, almost too exhausted to stand but too crazed with need for each other to stop. Then they fell asleep, wrapped around each other, but a few hours later Alex stirred against her and said, “I’ve wanted you too long not to have you again,” and his hands pulled her closer, and groggy with sleep and desire she said, “I’ve wanted you, too, so much.” Then she kissed his shoulder and then his nipple, moving down his body this time, feeling his fingers clutch her shoulders and then wind into hair when she found him and took him hard in her mouth, loving the way he moaned when she did and the way he felt, smooth and hard against her tongue. And when he pulled her back up to him, he kissed her roughly, bruising her mouth and making her crazier for him than ever. He made love to her again then, taking her high and hard this time so that her climax crashed over her and left her shuddering and gasping against him as he came, too.

  And the last thing Nina saw, while she was still trembling from the aftershocks of her climax, just before she fell asleep with Alex’s arms wrapped around her, was his bedroom window turning light with the dawn.

  “YOU LOOK LIKE HELL,” Max said to Alex when he ran into him at the hospital the next day.

  “That’s funny, I feel great.” Alex yawned and shook his head to stay awake. “I just told Dad I’d take the cardiology spot.
I am now the number one son. Sorry about that.”

  “Be my guest.” Max frowned at him. “I don’t get this. You want to be a cardiologist about as much as I do. What the hell are you doing?”

  “You want to know the truth?” Alex said. “I’m not sure about cardiology, but I’ll be an ax murderer if that’s what it takes to keep Nina.”

  “To keep Nina?” Max raised an eyebrow. “Which means you think you have Nina.”

  Alex thought of Nina, warm and naked and loving in the dark the night before. “I have Nina,” he said soberly. “Now I have to make sure I keep her. She was married to Guy Adams. She’s used to money and parties and real houses, not apartments in chopped-up old Victorians. She’s used to real life.”

  “Sounds boring,” Max said.

  “Maybe to us, but not to her.” Alex drew a deep breath. “She still thinks I’m a kid, and she’s right. I stay in the ER because I like it, not because it’s a good career move. I’ve never given a thought to the future because I thought the future was going to be like yesterday. I’ve been acting like a kid, living like a kid, and Nina’s not going to want to live that way.” He thought of Nina again, but this time it was the old Nina, the one who’d treated him like a younger brother, platonic and loving. Last night, he’d demolished the brother problem. Now all he had to do was prove to her that he was mature, that he could keep her safe, the way Guy had. The memory of Guy in Nina’s apartment flashed back to him, Guy sneering and saying, “So this is what an up-and-coming young doctor wears these days, is it?” Back off, buddy, Alex snarled in his thoughts, but he could see why Nina had married the creep. Big, handsome, rich, successful. He set his jaw. It was time he stopped being up-and-coming and came. That made him think of Nina again. He couldn’t lose her. “It’s time I got my act together,” he told Max. “Started a secure life. Nina deserves it.”

  “Have you discussed this with her?” Max said. “She may not give a damn about the money.”

  Alex set his jaw. “I give a damn. She’s going to have everything she had before.” He clapped Max on the shoulder. “Thanks for the advice, by the way. You were right.”

  “I’m always right,” Max said. “Which advice?” When Alex laughed and began to walk away, Max added, “Well, here’s some more. I think you should talk to Nina about this cardiology thing. You know, she left the guy with the money the last time.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Max,” Alex said over his shoulder. “She’s going to have everything.”

  “Whether she wants it or not?” Max called after him, and Alex ignored him.

  He had enough qualms about what he was doing. He didn’t need Max adding more.

  “LATE NIGHT?” Jessica said brightly when Nina staggered into the office two hours late.

  Nina nodded. “I was, uh, up with a friend.”

  “Lucky you,” Jessica said, and Nina started, not quite sure she’d heard such a non-beige comment from her boss. “How’s Charity’s book coming along?” Jessica added, and Nina caught an underlying note of tension in her voice.

  “She’s in rewrite,” Nina said. “I should have it edited within a couple of weeks.” She swallowed. “I can show it to you then. There are a few things—”

  “No.” Jessica held up her hand. “You don’t need to discuss it with me. I trust you. In fact, I don’t even need to read it at all.”

  Nina gaped at her. Jessica read everything that went out from Howard Press, not because she didn’t trust her editors but because she loved the Press and its books. Something was wrong here.

  “You did say you thought it was going to be popular, didn’t you?” Jessica asked, and this time her intensity was unmistakable.

  The wolf must be at the door. And judging from her intense interest, Jessica must be hoping that she could throw Charity’s book at it and scare it away.

  “I think it’s going to be very popular,” Nina said.

  Jessica nodded. “Well, then. Not that popularity matters, of course.”

  Nina nodded. “Of course not.”

  When Jessica had gone back to her office, Nina collapsed into her chair and thought about the situation.

  Jessica knew there were going to be things in Charity’s book that she wasn’t going to like.

  Jessica needed a bestseller.

  So Jessica was going to ignore the book until it was published, and then tell people, “Well, I hadn’t actually seen the book before it went to press so I was surprised, of course, but it’s doing very well for us, so…”

  But Jessica didn’t know that the book had turned into fiction. Howard Press didn’t print fiction.

  Nina thought about the problem from all the angles. What it came down to was that Jessica had stuck her head in the sand, so it was Nina’s decision. And Nina’s decision was that it was time for Howard Press to print fiction.

  She took a deep breath and called Charity. “When can you have that book done?”

  “The end of the week,” Charity said. “It’s going like wildfire now that it’s fiction.”

  “Shhhhhh!” Nina hissed. “Good. Get it to me this weekend. This is going to be the fastest edit any book ever had. We want this out fast.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to save our butts, babe,” Nina told her. “Write good.”

  “I am,” Charity said. “What’s wrong with you? You sound like you’re on speed.”

  “My life has been very exciting lately,” Nina said.

  “It’d be a lot more exciting if you’d go downstairs and jump Alex,” Charity said.

  “I did.”

  “What? Oh, for joy, for joy, for joy!” The phone bumped and Nina pictured Charity doing a modified bunny hop around the boutique, Charity’s time-honored method of showing happiness beyond expression. Charity came back on the line. “This is so great! This is beyond great!” Then her voice grew cautious. “It was great, wasn’t it?”

  “The earth moved, the stars wept and the sun turned cartwheels ’ cross the sky,” Nina said. “The greatest sex since time began.”

  Charity moaned. “Oh, terrific, now I’m jealous.”

  “He has a brother,” Nina suggested. “Looks just like him except with dark hair.”

  Charity snorted. “Max. Him I’ve met. No thanks.”

  “Well, you can’t have Alex,” Nina said. “He’s mine.” Then she realized what she’d just said and stopped.

  “Oh,” Charity said. “Like that, is it?”

  “Probably not,” Nina said, but when Alex came home that night, it was exactly like that.

  “This is not just a two-night stand,” he told her sternly when they were lying exhausted on her hall floor, having made love inside her door because they couldn’t wait to get to her bedroom. “We have a future.”

  “A future,” Nina echoed, still trying to regroup her senses after orgasm. “Futures are good.”

  “You, me and Fred,” Alex said. “Forever. Except from now on we find something softer to do this on or my knees will be shot.”

  “Okay,” Nina said. “A future, huh?”

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Alex sat up, and Nina watched the muscles in his back flex and thought, If you knew what I was thinking, you’d be back down here with me. “You’re thinking I’m not responsible enough for you,” Alex went on. “That I can’t give you the life Guy gave you.”

  Nina sat up. “I don’t want—”

  Alex put his hand over her mouth. “I know you’d never say anything about the money, but it’s important to me. I want you to have everything.”

  Nina peeled his hand away. “I have everything.”

  Alex ignored her. “So I told Dad I’d take the cardiology position.”

  Nina blinked. “I thought you didn’t want it. I thought you wanted the ER. I thought—”

  “This is what I want,” Alex said, and Nina shut up.

  Great. He was going to be a cardiologist. A lifetime of cocktail parties and conventions stretched before her
. Fund-raising for the cardiac unit. Opening nights. All the garbage she thought she’d escaped when she left Guy. All starting all over again.

  And that was the worst part. It was starting all over again. She’d helped Guy build a career, and now she got to build another one. If she’d stayed with Guy, at least she wouldn’t have had to do this garbage all over again.

  Then she looked at Alex and felt terrible. It wasn’t his fault she was a retread. If she’d been in her twenties instead of her forties, she’d be champing at the bit to help him out. If this was the price she had to pay for loving Alex, it was worth it. Alex was worth anything.

  Even wearing that damn Incredibra for the rest of her life.

  “Great,” she told him. “This is great.”

  “CHARITY, this book is really great,” she said two weeks later when she and Charity were sitting on the living-room floor drinking Amaretto milk shakes, celebrating this time. “I had to do practically no editing. It’s wonderful. It’s tight and it flows and it’s funny and the sex scenes are incredible. I read one to Alex last night, and he jumped me.”

  “You could read the phone book to Alex and he’d jump you,” Charity told her.

  “Not necessarily,” Nina said, and Charity stopped with her milk shake halfway to her mouth.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “Trouble in paradise?”

  “He’s working with his father,” Nina said. “Getting ready for this cardiology thing. Long hours. He’s a little tired.” Actually, he’d fallen asleep in front of the TV before Harrison Ford had found the Holy Grail. She’d tried to be understanding, but it was definitely a bad sign.

  Charity nodded. “Kenneth.”

  Nina closed her eyes and groaned. “Don’t say that. I want this to work.”

  “It will.” Charity slurped some of her milk shake. “That’s what I found out writing this book. I gave up on him too fast. We might have made it work. I mean, he was a great guy, he was just trying to start a big career.”

  Nina thought about Alex. “I’m sure you’re right.” Then she realized what Charity had said. “Are you sorry you divorced Kenneth?”