Married To Her Ex

by Cantrell, Kat

  She jabbed the power button on the radio mounted to the underside of a cabinet, and soft jazz filled the kitchen. Not his first choice, but it seemed he was along for the ride so he didn’t argue. The horns were mournful and sensual and fit his mood in a strange way.

  The hideous Martha Stewart apron she slipped on covered up the sheer blue dress which clung to her every curve like white on rice.

  He did protest that, but she shushed him. “This dress was expensive, and I’d like to wear it again.”

  There were other, more important battles so Jesse let it go. He perched on a cushioned stool behind the bar and amused himself by watching her. She stuck a chilled glass under the tap mounted in the granite countertop and expertly drew a Guinness. Impressive. When had she learned to do that?

  She handed over the mug, trailing one finger across his knuckle as he took it. The spark zipped right to his midsection. And then some. Every ounce of his self-control screamed in complaint.

  He was home. Why wasn’t she naked?

  “I’m making chicken Marsala and steamed vegetables,” she announced as she pulled the covered dishes from the subzero refrigerator and placed them on the counter.

  Oh, no. She wasn’t kidding about cooking.

  He glanced over the platters of chicken and sliced vegetables. Thank the merciful heavens. It wasn’t as bad as he’d assumed. “I thought you meant you were making it all from scratch. At least there’s a fighting chance since all you’re doing is heating up what Moki’s already put together.”

  At his sigh of relief, she fisted a hand to her hip. “For your information, I spent almost the entire day doing this myself. All Moki did was peer over my shoulder occasionally to make sure I wasn’t going to slice off a finger. And I guess he picked out the groceries, but I helped.”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “I stand corrected. I’m awed you went to so much trouble just for me. Can I help?”

  “You don’t think I can do this, do you?”

  For crying out loud. He drained the last third of his beer. The reinforcement probably wouldn’t help. “It wasn’t a vote of no confidence; it was simply an offer. Don’t take me up on it.”

  Mollified, she returned to the chicken and glanced at a sheet of paper on the counter. She picked up the pan and eyeballed the stove.

  “How was your day?” she called over her shoulder and hesitated, one hand hovering between the knobs in indecision.

  She might have spent all day chopping vegetables, but apparently the scribbled instructions didn’t cover wrangling the stove into submission. The evening held such promise, and after the reprieve over his tardiness, he wasn’t about to let a simple-to-fix problem like cooking dinner ruin it.

  He came up behind her. “Seriously,” he said into her ear, and the fresh smell of her hair almost rolled his eyes back into his head. “Let me help you. I want to.”

  He loosened the pan from her death grip and set it down, then dragged his hand up her arm as he fitted his body to the curves of her backside. Really, he meant to help, not morph it into a seduction. Too late now. Only a thin layer of dress lay between his jeans and her bare bottom.

  It was a thong night.

  He groaned and swallowed it. “Cooking will be much more fun this way.”

  “If you say so,” she murmured, her voice as fragmented as his.

  They stood spoon-style in front of the stove. As he helped her heat up the olive-oiled pan, his hips moved in concentrated sways, nudging hers. Every movement was slow anguish, and every deliberate touch a language all its own.

  The chicken browning in the pan blurred as his eyes glazed.

  Without warning, she turned in his arms, and the overt invitation spread across her face punched him right in the gut. It said I’m hot and ready, and I want it now. Peaked nipples ground against his abs, and way too much fabric was in the way. Quickly, he yanked on the strings of the useless apron and pulled it from between them to let it fall to the floor.

  As additions to the menu went, he couldn’t find a thing to complain about.

  She met his lips hungrily, undulating against him until he slid a hand under her knee.

  He hauled her leg up and wrapped it around his hip, tasting her with every fiber of his body. He fingered the hem of her skirt up a notch and cruised under the thong from the back until he touched soft curls, seeking the heat radiating below. Aching to touch her intimately.

  Moaning, she tilted her hips, and he didn’t hesitate to sink a finger into her wet heat. She gasped into his mouth, which had always driven him wild. Deeper he plunged, again and again, adding a second finger until her head tipped back and she arched against him. She was close to climaxing already, and the wash of satisfaction at getting her so hot so fast poured through him.

  God, it had been so long since he’d touched her like this. So long since she’d been fluid in his arms, surrendering to him in this way. His erection strained against the fabric binding it, begging to be free, to sink into her.

  Crash.

  His brain snapped back into focus like a rubber band. He pulled away and bit out a curse. The chicken pan lay upside down on the tile, and olive oil was spattered all over the white cabinets. The acrid scent of scorched meat saturated the air. One of them must have hit the pan.

  Alexia laughed as they broke apart, her breathing as ragged as his own.

  “I’m glad you find this funny,” he told her. “Now we have no dinner, and I think I’m too cross-eyed to drive.”

  He shifted, situating his too-tight jeans, and then stooped to pick up the pan. The whole mess went into the sink. So close. He’d had her in his arms and so ready for him. It wouldn’t have taken another minute to have her eyes glazing over as she shattered. And then when she was good and sated, he’d start all over again. There was nothing he liked more than making Alexia lose control while screaming his name, and she needed the reminder of who held the keys to her pleasure.

  “It’s not funny. It’s ironic.” She sobered, her gaze everywhere but on him. “I should have known better than to try something like cooking.”

  “It was really a nice gesture. The dinner, I mean,” he clarified and reached for a paper towel. “At least I got to enjoy the appetizer.”

  He wadded up the paper towel and swiped at the olive oil while she rooted around in the freezer. Triumphantly, she held up a frozen pizza box and twisted the knob for the top level of the double oven. Pizza she could cook, so he left her to it.

  When the preheat timer beeped, she put the pizza into the oven with no pan to get the crust crispy, just the way he liked it. Jesse handed her a beer and tapped the glass with his own newly refilled mug.

  She collapsed onto a bar stool. “Cooking is exhausting. I’m not sorry I avoided it for so long.”

  He eased onto the next stool. The sharp, fresh scent of her arousal still clung to his senses, which made thinking of anything else but the paradise between her legs impossible. “Me neither. Next time you’ve got a mind to seduce me, skip dinner and get right to it.”

  Her cheeks heated as she made a great show of drinking her beer and not looking at him. “Yeah, that would have been a better idea, wouldn’t it?”

  At least she wasn’t playing dumb. This had been a seduction, and their relationship’s progress was so sweet he almost had a lump in his throat.

  His leg bumped hers companionably as he swiveled toward her. “Aw, come on. I’m really digging it. I especially like the dress.”

  He skimmed a fingertip along the neckline, raising goose bumps on her fair skin, and she flinched.

  Mystified, he let his hand fall away. After the kiss against the stove, surely they’d moved into new territory and touching was okay. Was she embarrassed by the fact that her dinner had been ruined? Or was something else bothering her, like the fact that she’d almost had an orgasm in the kitchen with the man she’d sworn to never let touch her again?

  Since he didn’t know what to do with his hands now, he tossed back anothe
r swig of beer, gratified that she still sat on the next stool.

  They sat in silence, not quite awkwardly and not quite relaxed, legs still touching. Underlying awareness stabbed the air, at least on his side. He was still throbbing and short of breath and had no clue why they were both fully dressed when she should be arched back on the bar, thongless, and spread wide open under his mouth right now. But the chicken on the floor had shifted the tone, and he was back to being along for the ride.

  The oven timer beeped. The yeasty smell of fresh bread wafted through the kitchen, mingling with sharp garlic.

  “Now this seems familiar,” he joked, with a wave at the pizza, beer and two seats at a bar.

  So familiar, the lump in his throat grew and kept the pizza from going down as easily as it should have.

  She didn’t pick up her pizza. With crystal-clear hazel eyes, she pierced him straight through as she gazed at him. “All joking around aside. You could snap your fingers and have any woman in your bed you wanted. I can’t cook. I’m unemployed. I drop every ball I’ve ever picked up, including you. What’s so irreplaceable about me?”

  It was the first time she’d ever admitted fault in the destruction of their relationship. Apparently, the lump in his throat wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  Chewing thoughtfully, he stalled for time. “Irreplaceable. I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way. But it’s true, you are irreplaceable.”

  “Why?” she pressed. “What’s so unique about me?”

  “Are you fishing for compliments?” he teased in another lame avoidance tactic.

  He knew what she wanted him to say. Rarely did she demand more than he could give. And the one time she had, after the miscarriage, he’d walked out on her. While she had some fault, the worst stuff between them was his.

  Tell her the truth. What was so hard about letting go of simple words? Nothing. And everything.

  His tongue balked, straining against the dual forces of a desire to do things differently this time and the ingrained need to keep his true thoughts under wraps. The more ammunition others had, the less leverage you had later. But this was his wife. She wanted pieces of him that he’d thus far denied her, and he couldn’t block her out forever. Not if he wanted her back.

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s a match for me.” His scratchy throat wouldn’t clear, no matter how much beer he poured down it. “I have a tendency to swallow people. You don’t let me. You stand up to me.”

  Rapt, she watched him, her eyes the warmest he could recall. Since the miscarriage anyway.

  His pizza dropped back on the plate, forgotten. He’d told her variations of this before, but never with this much honesty. It took on new meaning to articulate it here, in the house he’d built for her, teetering on the brink of a new beginning.

  “You’re a gorgeous, smart woman who sees past my surface. You have this uncanny way of knowing exactly how to handle me. What my mood is, how to tread. You get me, and we fit each other. I can’t replace you. I don’t want to. ”

  Alexia nodded with a small smile. “That’ll do.”

  Like a hurricane, she shifted again, carrying the empty plates to the sink while sending invisible come and get me signals in the sway of her hips. He caught the signals straight in the groin. After placing the plates in the sink, she stabbed off the jazz music and glanced back at him. Waiting.

  And he’d be happy to come and get her. He recessed the glass panels leading to the pool into the wall, opening the family room to the sultry twilight. Lights around the pool snicked on, and their quiet glow reflected in the still, dark water.

  Dinner was over, and he’d agreed to the new terms. Since she read his moods so well, his next move wouldn’t be much of a shock.

  Alexia had forgotten to make dessert. Should she do it now? She started to ask Jesse if he’d like some when with no warning, a synthesizer throbbed through the heavy atmosphere with enough volume to startle birds into flight from one of the trees on the patio.

  Instantly, she recognized the beat Jesse had selected to blast through the sound system as it thrummed across her breastbone. Stalking music. He was in the mood to play with her for a good long while before he devoured her. And experience told her that meant it would be very, very good indeed.

  Jesse came around the corner, his gait slow and sensual and deliberate. He halted when he caught sight of her, his gaze burning along her flushed cleavage, then sweeping lower to take in her bare legs. Her pulse surged, thudding in her throat, behind her ribs. Deep inside her already-damp center.

  She was still raw and achy with need from the almost-orgasm earlier that had shifted the game. But she still hadn’t figured out what she’d conceded by letting him put his hands on her, and she didn’t like the ambiguity.

  “Alexia. Come here.”

  Danger, danger! Involuntarily, she backed away. This ambiance of profound significance wasn’t at all what she’d had in mind when deciding sex would be a good way to get a confession out of him as to his real agenda. There was nothing in Jesse’s expression except raw purpose. He wanted her. To possess her in the truest sense, to be inside as if they were one.

  He didn’t move any closer, and he wouldn’t. This was all about who had the power and who didn’t. Who was the one in control. And she would not allow it to be Jesse.

  “Remember,” she purred. “We agreed no sex until I flashed the green light.”

  That was the wrong thing to say and she recognized her mistake instantly as he chuckled.

  “Oh, sweetheart. Trust me, your lights are green.” His voice scraped at her core, low and sensual. “I felt how hot you are for me with my own fingers. Your body doesn’t lie. You want me. You’re going to plead with me to touch you. To kiss you. To use my tongue between your legs. You’ll want it so badly you won’t be able to stand it.”

  Jesse’s powers of precognition hadn’t dimmed. White-hot lust flooded through her, dampening her panties all over again, when she’d barely recovered from the first foray into madness. Unfulfilled need weakened her knees.

  Who was she kidding? He wasn’t predicting the future, he was reading the unabashed hunger radiating from her pores.

  “Alexia. Put one foot in front of the other. Now.”

  Her feet moved without her permission, and before she could blink, she was but a breath away from the place she most wanted to be. Stupid idea. Stupid, stupid idea. He knew how to hit her reflexes, to provoke her surrender. But that didn’t mean she had to let him, did it?

  She could still control her emotions. Domination could go either way, theoretically. All she had to do was reel back out of this danger zone of pure, driving need, of yearning for him to fill every hollow, empty Jesse-shaped hole inside.

  Just sex. Not making love. That was the ticket.

  In one motion, he hooked both straps of her dress and yanked them off her shoulders, pulling the fabric to her knees. Her nipples hardened as his hot gaze drank them in, and silently, she stood there, letting him look his fill. She waited for him to make a move, to touch her or command her to kiss him. The longer he didn’t, the greater her awareness of him grew until she could hardly stop herself from squirming.

  “Jesse.” Her voice broke on it, betraying far more of her mental state than she’d intended. The goal here wasn’t to let him get into her head. The goal was—

  His arm shot out and grabbed her hand. The motion propelled her forward, into his arms. Startled, she cried out, but his mouth was on hers, swallowing the sound. He kissed her, sucking and shaping her lips to his as his hands raced up her spine, driving her mad as he went the opposite direction of the fire down below.

  He mouthed down to her neck, tasting her skin, working his way lower before she could protest. Or think, even. With one wet swirl of his tongue around her nipple, he drove her to the threshold, where she teetered on the brink of that orgasm she’d been denied earlier.

  No. A voice in her head shrieked at her to step away, stop this right now
before she lost the upper hand. Of course, she’d have to have it in the first place in order to be in the position to lose it.

  This was supposed to be her seduction—a way to figure out his real agenda. How could she do that when she couldn’t think?

  As he switched sides and scraped teeth across her tender flesh, rationality dissolved. She shoved fingers through his hair and held his head in place against her sensitized breast, reveling in the mind-stealing pull of his lips.

  Nonsense words tumbled from her mouth. With a firm push to the small of her back, he arched her breasts closer to his wicked mouth. Fire licked through her veins, burning and feeding, eating her alive. Wanton music pulsed in tandem with the soaking heat between her legs. The arm of the couch hit her thighs as he hustled her backward and lifted one of her knees to spread her.

  He stepped into the open valley of her thighs. Still fully clothed, he rubbed back and forth, his stiff jeans stroking against the drenched scrap of lace at her core. Stars exploded behind her eyes as he ground against her. She thrashed, frantic for relief, the kind only he could give her.

  He drew an earlobe between his lips and sucked, then bit down at the same moment he traced the line between her buttocks with the tip of his finger.

  “Say it,” he murmured. “Tell me how bad you want it. Say it now.”

  “PleaseJesseplease,” she sobbed, begging for release. Begging for him, exactly as he’d predicted. She didn’t care. “Touch me.”

  Quicker than she could register, he had her underwear off and discarded. The arm of the couch met her bottom as he eased her down, and then he knelt in the valley of her thighs, draping one leg over his shoulder as he drove his tongue straight into her center.

  She bit off a scream as her body convulsed, but he wasn’t done. Holding her folds open with his thumb and forefinger, he licked her from bottom to top, concentrating on hitting every last millimeter of her fevered flesh. Moaning as heat zigzagged under his tongue, she spread her legs wider, urging him on with little jerks of her leg against his back.