by Donna Hill
Alex played with her clit until she trembled, her hips instinctively arching in preparation and when he slid two fingers inside her she climaxed with such a powerful force she saw lights dancing behind her lids. She called his name over and again. Her body shook, her hips rose and fell against the pressure of his fingers wanting more. Without removing his hand he moved above her and spread her thighs wide. He reached for a pillow and pushed it under her hips so that they rose at a high angle. She wasn’t sure how but at some point he’d put on a condom. He draped her legs over his shoulders and let his tongue finish what his fingers had started.
And just when she thought she would pass out from pleasure he filled her in one long, stiff thrust. All the air rushed from her lungs and she swore she could feel him in the bottom of her stomach.
Alex rode her slow and deep wanting to hit every spot. He reached between the pillow and her hips and pulled her even closer to him so that he couldn’t move in and out of her, only rotate his pelvis until they were both delirious with the pleasure they were getting and giving.
He kissed her hard like a man who was beyond reason, darting his tongue in and out of her mouth taking her breath away. Then he pulled back, lowered his head to her breasts and caught her hard nipple between his teeth and sucked and sucked.
“Oh…my…God…” She lifted her legs higher until they were around his neck and he was in her as deep as he could go. Heat raced through her and the electric currents running from her breasts to her legs was more than she could take.
It didn’t seem possible but he pushed further, hit that spot that she’d only read about and she lost her mind. The powerful explosion that ripped through her shot back at Alex and he went entirely stiff as he came from the soles of his feet until every drop was gone.
By the time they’d pulled themselves together enough to do more than murmur and snuggle, the sun had already set. They were in a tangle of limbs and damp sheets.
“I feel utterly decadent,” Kelly said.
“I love decadent. Don’t you,” Alex murmured and nuzzled her neck. His stomach grumbled.
Kelly giggled. “You need to be fed.”
“I have something I’d love to taste again.”
“Alex Hutchinson, if you touch me in less than two hours from now I’m going to have to hurt you,” she warned. She tried to scramble from the bed, but he grabbed her around the waist before she could escape.
“Don’t deny a starving man,” he pleaded, nibbling her back and Kelly erupted into a fit of laughter as he tickled her ribs.
“No fair,” she squealed.
“My sentiments exactly.” He flipped her over as if she weighed no more than a newborn. He looked down at her, pecked her lightly on the lips. “I’ll give you a play this time.” He rolled off her. “But it’s only because you wore me out, girl.”
“I wore you out!”
“Exactly. Look at me. I’m half the man I was.”
Kelly rolled her eyes upward. “In your dreams.” She got out of bed and half walked, half dragged herself into the bathroom. She used the toilet and stood for a moment looking at her reflection in the mirror. She was actually glowing as if an inner light had been set.
She ran hot water in the sink and gave herself a quick bird bath, enough to feel comfortable while she fixed them something to eat. She turned toward the door and Alex was standing there watching her as she was putting on the robe that she kept in the bathroom.
“Humph, humph, humph. Girl, the things I could do with you in that shower.”
She wagged a finger at him. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Okay you win. Two hours.”
Kelly chuckled. “Come on, let me see how good you are in the kitchen.”
They sat opposite each other after preparing grilled salmon, yellow rice and Caesar salad.
A single white taper sat on the center of the table. Luther Vandross’s Live at Radio City Music Hall CD played in the background.
“I was at that concert,” Alex said. “It was his last one before his stroke.”
“What a loss,” Kelly murmured. She angled her head to the side. “Wasn’t that his Valentine’s Day concert?”
“Hum, uh.”
“Who’d you go with?”
He looked up, the fork midway between the plate and his mouth. He put the fork down on the plate. “Charisse.”
Kelly lifted her chin. “Oh.” She focused on her food. “Have you thought any more about…your situation with Charisse?”
He pushed his plate aside, his appetite gone. “She’s going to keep the baby. That’s what she told me before I left New York. So…I’m going to be a father.” He pushed up from the table and rubbed his hand across the stubble that was forming on his chin. “How do you feel about that?” It took a moment for the shock to become manageable before she could form a coherent thought.
“I wish things were different. I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish it was me and not some other woman. But none of those things are true. When I said I wanted to build this relationship it was with the full knowledge of what I was walking into.” She stood up and walked over to him. She put her hands around his waist. “You stood by me, you helped to turn my life around. You could have kept going when you found out about my dyslexia and the eating disorder, not to mention all the mess with David. And now,” she laughed without humor, “I’m being looked at as a suspect in a death. Can’t get much more serious than that.” She took a breath. “I love you, Hutch. What happened between you and Charisse didn’t happen on my watch. I know you will do what is needed for Charisse and your child, and I’ll be there by your side as long as you want me there.”
Alex gathered her close, and kissed the top of her head. “That’s why I love you,” he said softly.
“One day at a time,” she said reaching up to kiss his lips. “One day at a time.” She kissed him again. “Let’s finish dinner. There’s something that I want to talk to you about. Something that I’ve been working on.”
Chapter 41
David sat in his living room with his attorney, Melvin Walker.
“It doesn’t look good, David. I have to be honest with you. At worst, they can indict you for murder. At the least they have you on the steroid rap.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I have to ask you this.” He paused. “Did you kill Stephanie Daniels?”
“No. I swear I didn’t.” He got up from the dining room chair and began to pace. “We had…a thing. I know it was stupid. But I didn’t kill her.”
“So what about the loud argument the neighbor heard?”
David blew out a breath. “We had a fight. She was… crazed. I can’t explain it. I’d never seen her like that before. I…grabbed her, tried to keep her off me. But I swear, when I left she was as much alive as me and you.”
Mel nodded. “And what about the steroids they found in your apartment?”
David lowered his head in shame. “I got them from a supplier in Smyrna.”
“Did you give them to Stephanie?”
“No! Absolutely not. I…gave them to Kelly Maxwell,” he confessed.
Kelly slowly hung up the phone. She and Alex had built their own private island within the confines of her apartment over the past two days. But that idyll had just been shattered.
“You w
ant to tell me what has you looking so panicked?” Alex asked, walking over to her. He took the phone from her hand and hung it up.
“That was Mr. Mobley from the Sports Commission,” she said as if in a trance.
“And?”
She sat down then looked up into Alex’s concerned face. “He said my tox screen came back positive for steroids and that I’ll be brought up on charges.” She covered her mouth with her hand.
“There has to be a mistake.”
“I…I can’t believe it. I’ve never taken anything.”
Alex rushed off to the bathroom and pulled her medication bottles off the shelf. One by one he opened them. He frowned when he looked at the bottle filled with what should have been her calcium supplements. He brought the bottle back to her and showed her the contents.
“These are not your pills.”
She snatched them from his hand. “What are you talking about? These are what I picked up from the pharmacy from the prescription that you wrote.”
“Trust me, these are not what I prescribed.”
“Then…”
“Who filled the prescription?”
She thought back to the day in the pharmacy and how adamant she was about taking care of it herself and the argument with David that followed. “I did,” she murmured.
“Well, one of two things happened, either we have an idiot behind the counter that is pushing illegal drugs or your pills were changed.”
“David?”
“He had access.”
“But why?”
“Steroids have incredible powers. They increase muscle mass, physical strength, build adrenaline, the list goes on, not to mention the downside. They alter personality as well, making the user overly aggressive. Over time they can cause heart and kidney damage.”
“David—” she shook her head “—he wouldn’t do that to me. For what reason?”
“He wanted you back on that track. He wanted a winner.” Alex hung his head. “I should have known. Your recovery from that kind of injury was remarkable to say the least.”
“So you’re saying without these drugs I wouldn’t have gotten better?”
“I’m going to be honest with you.” He looked her in the eye. “In my professional opinion, you would have never run again, not competitively. I simply thought I was wrong. I wanted to be wrong so I didn’t…” He slammed his fist into his palm. “I didn’t think of doing a toxicology screening.” He sat back. “I want to tell you something, something I should have shared with you a long time ago....”
Slowly he told her about Leigh Wells, and his subsequent bout with alcohol. “I blamed myself. I thought I should have been able to make her well, go against everything that I knew to be true about her injury. And when I finally told her the truth…she couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t deal with the reality that she would be crippled for the rest of her life. She blamed me for giving her false hopes, filling her head with promises that I ultimately was unable to keep. I didn’t want that to ever happen again. Not with you, Kelly, not with us.”
“You never lied to me.” She took his face in her hands. “You never gave me false hope.” She paused then added, “I’m not Leigh, baby.”
His gaze ran over her face. He saw past all the flaws and the mismatched features to the genuine spirit beneath, to the woman who had captured his heart and soul. To him she was the most beautiful woman in the world. “I love you, Kelly.”
“I know and I love you, too.”
“We’ll get through this. All of this.”
“One day at a time.”
He took her hands. “We need to go to the police with this information about your pills.”
She lowered her head. “I know. I don’t want to turn on David…yes, even after all of this. I want him to have the chance to come clean.” She looked into his eyes. “Can you understand that?”
“I don’t like it but I understand. So what do you want to do?”
“I want to meet with him, face-to-face.”
“It will be a media circus.”
“I know.” She bit down on her bottom lip in thought. “Maybe this time we can let the media work for us instead of against us.”
“How?”
“I have an idea.”
Chapter 42
“Are you ready?” Alex asked as they sat hand in hand in David’s attorney’s office.
“Who can ever be ready for something like this? I’m as ready as I can be.”
He squeezed her hand and leaned over and kissed her lips. “Did I tell you how proud I am of you?”
She smiled. “No. Tell me.”
“Kelly Maxwell, I am incredibly proud of you, more than you will ever know. What you’re about to do takes heart, determination and plenty of guts. All of which you have enough of to share with the world.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She sniffed. “You’re gonna make a girl ruin her makeup in front of millions.”
“You’d still be beautiful.” He wiped a tear from beneath her eyes.
Mel opened the door to his office and stuck his head in. “We’re ready.”
Kelly drew in a deep breath. “Where’s David?”
“He’s already out front.”
Kelly nodded and stood. Together she and Alex went out to face the media.
When they entered the atrium of the office building, the entire floor was filled with news crews with their cameras and microphones and curious onlookers. She saw David with his head bowed seated behind the podium that was set up for their announcement.
She and Alex walked up to the seating area. David looked up at her and it appeared that he’d aged ten years since she’d last seen him. In that moment she recalled their first meeting, his persistence, his unwavering belief in her. She remembered him pulling all kinds of strings to get her into a good school, taking care of her, being her friend and mentor. She didn’t want to believe that it had all been an illusion, rather than there was some truth to the years that they’d spent together. She had to believe that. She sat down and Alex sat next to her, holding her hand tightly.
Mel stepped up to the microphone.
“I want to thank all of you for being here. The past few weeks have been difficult for my client and for everyone involved in this unfortunate incident. As you all know, the medical examiner, yesterday morning, has clearly determined that Stephanie Daniels’s death was caused by the ingestion of steroids over a long period of time and the combination of large quantities of alcohol caused the heart attack that killed her. There have been allegations that my client provided the drugs that killed her. That too has been proven to be false.” He took a breath and glanced down at his notes. “In the midst of this tragedy, Kelly Maxwell, one of the stars of the track team, has been found to have been using steroids as well, and was subsequently discharged from the team. At this time, I want to let my client David Livingston speak to that.” He turned to David and nodded in encouragement.
David approached the podium. He looked over his shoulder at Kelly.
“Thank you,” he murmured into the microphone. He lifted his head and looked out onto the faces in the crowd. “For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a coach. I wanted to mold a team that was unbeatable. That ideal became all I lived for at any cost.” He looked down then back at the audience. “I allowed my desires to outweigh good sense and it cost me a good friend, my reputation and the career that I love.” His voice broke. “As you know, several months ago, Kelly Maxwell sustained a major injury that required surgery and rehabilitation. She was my star, my ticket to my dreams coming true and I didn’t want to lose that. I knew the power of steroids…and I switched Ms. Maxwell’s supplements with steroid tablets. She knew absolutely nothing about it and should in no way be pu
nished for my selfishness and greed. I will deal with whatever the law sees fit, but I can’t let what I did ruin an innocent person.” He looked out on the audience one last time. “Thank you.” He returned to his seat as flashbulbs popped and cameras whirred.
Mel turned to Kelly. “Ready?”
She nodded her head and stepped up to the microphone. She cleared her throat and took a moment to gather her thoughts.
“I know what David did was wrong and it was illegal, but he would have never been able to do that…if I had been able to read.”
To a stunned audience she told them of her battle with dyslexia and her eating disorder, the struggles that she’d endured over the years, the shame, and the alienation. “Had it not been for my injury and going to New York, and meeting Dr. Alex Hutchinson, I may have never faced or attempted to deal with either of these weights that I’ve been carrying. I would have simply gone on living a half-life of shame and deceit. I cannot thank him enough for his encouragement and for forcing me to come out from behind the protection of my own illusions. But the only person I was fooling was myself. I’ve taken charge of my life and I know that what I am dealing with and what thousands of others are dealing with will not fix itself overnight.” She looked over her shoulder at Alex who was smiling with pride and encouragement. “It will only happen one day at a time.” She drew in a long breath. “I’ve begun the steps necessary to set up a foundation for athletes and young adults across the country who are dealing with these problems and I will be turning in my track shoes to personally run the foundation. I welcome your prayers, your support and of course donations.” She smiled and walked away from the microphone and into Alex’s arms.
In the back of the crowd, Charisse listened and watched. What struck her most was not so much what Kelly said, but the look that passed between her and Alex. He’d never looked at her like that and he never would. That much she had finally accepted. She turned to leave before they spotted her. There was nothing for her here. She was going home to pick up her life. She’d done what she’d come there to do. Upon her arrival in Atlanta she’d gone to the police and told them about Stephanie’s erratic behavior, which helped to cinch their case about steroid abuse. No, there was nothing for her here.
