by C. J. Wells
“Go girl!” Emily calls after me, “Shake your bootay.”
Forcing my way through the throng of sweaty patrons, I settle in the middle of the crowded space, closing my eyes to will thoughts of Alex and his message from my mind, my body giving in to the rhythm of the track. I just want to forget. I want to feel numb. Yet I can’t seem to let go. Damn you, Alex Tate.
I love him.
I hate him. For what he’s done. Julia. How could he go back to her?
Even in my drunken state, rationality answers that question - He never stopped loving her. The bitter poisonous bile builds in my throat and I reach to caress it away in the sensual beat, desperate to lose myself to the consumed alcohol, the erotic tempo of the song.
Swiping my hands through my hair, I pull it over my shoulder, the strands cascading along my chest as I sashay my hips in a slow rhythm. I startle at the feel of large hands circling my waist, fingers spread wide, engulfing me. I fight the urge to imagine they’re Alex’s. I know they’re not. His are likely wrapped around Julia Sucks-Cox. That fucking whore.
The vile poison rushes through my veins, contorting my irritation and anger into a meaningless grind against the stranger behind me. I cover his hands with my own, leaning my head back to rest on his shoulder. I don’t open my eyes. I don’t want to. I have no desire to give in to reality. No care to know who’s holding me, dancing with me, his hips mimicking my side-to-side gyrations. I just want him to make me feel numb.
“Yeah, baby…you like that?” the man asks, annoyingly pulling me from darkness.
I say nothing in return. I have nothing to say to him. I don’t care who he is, or what he has to say. I just want him to dance with me. Help me forget for just a moment that the man I love is currently with another woman. Just let me forget…
The abrupt absence of his strong hands from around my waist jars my renewed escape into ignorant bliss, his large body no longer behind me. Jeez…I guess I should have replied.
Although I don’t really care that he’s gone, curiosity wins out and I open my eyes to turn around, no man in sight. Fuck it. I continue swaying to the music, arms raised, losing myself. I don’t need a man’s arms around me.
Sensing a penetrating gaze, my eyes dart in the direction of its pull.
The sight of Alex, standing at the edge of the dance floor, takes my breath away. Dressed in a light beige sweater, lightly tucked into loose fitted jeans, his hands in the pockets, his eyes bore into me. Alexander Tate, in the flesh, a glimmer of anger flashing in his eyes as he moves to make his way towards me.
I stare shell-shocked at his beautiful face, unable to formulate a word in my drunken haze. Am I hallucinating? I’m flooded with emotion, gawking at him, shaking through the beer goggles. I’ve missed him so damn much, his presence is like a knife twisting my broken heart.
“Having fun, sweetheart?” he spews sarcastically, his eyebrow arched.
What the fuck? My momentary forgotten anger instantly courses through my veins, returned full force. Am I having fun? I was! He has the gall to stand here and judge me dancing with another man when he’s…he’s…“Fuck you!” I blurt, pushing past him to march off the dance floor.
Escaping through the crowd, I mutter to myself at his audacity - He shows up after two weeks and thinks I owe him some kind of explanation? How did he even know I was here? The question pops from my bubble of inebriation, before it hits me - Stacey. I throw a dirty glare in the direction of our table - I can surely wager a guess that she’s responsible. I head in the direction of the ladies room, deciding it’s a viable hideout until Mr. Uninvited hits the road as quickly as he came.
“Aby, where are you going?” he calls from behind me.
Ugh. Go away! Screw the ladies room, I need to leave. There has to be an exit back here somewhere…“I’m leaving, that’s where I’m going! Getting the hell away from you!” I yell back, my words slightly slurred as I blindly attempt to maneuver the darkened hallway, praying it harbors an escape.
“You’re going the wrong way, sweetheart.”
“Don’t fucking call me sweetheart! I know where I’m going!” I lie, huffing as I scan for exit signage. Ugh! Where the hell is the goddamn exit?
Reaching a dead end, I’m trapped with no escape as Alex’s large hand wraps around my arm. God, don’t...I’m done if you touch me. Pulling away instinctively in self-preservation, I take a step back. “Don’t touch me! You lost the right to touch me,” my anger and hurt is seething through my every word, biting in its harness.
“Sweetheart, I own the right to touch you,” he reminds me, that sexy as sin smirk donning his delicious face, his large muscular body taking over my proximity.
I gasp at his cocky, yet incredibly erotic words, evading him with a backward step, my back hitting the wall. Holy shit. Even madder than all get-out, he can still turn me on in an instant, take me prisoner of his desire with mere words.
I want so much to believe that he’s still mine…to feel that he’s still mine. But it’s a lie. A lie I saw with my own eyes, and I lash against his imaginary binds, “Oh really? Am I branded somewhere?” I spew with sarcasm, searching up and down my body before looking back to him slyly. There’s no need to willingly admit that my implication is a boldfaced lie - I am branded by him, deep down to my soul. Utterly ruined for any other man. Yet, I want to hurt him. I need to hurt him, as much and as deeply as he’s hurt me. “Andrew didn’t seem to think so,” I mutter, my cruel tone unrecognizable to my own ears as I purposely launch the silly kiss in his face.
“What the fuck does that mean?” he snarls.
“Do you really need me to spell it out? It was really good,” I spew, my venom and will to cause him pain in full effect with wicked ambiguity. I don’t care that it was meaningless - a kiss that felt more like sucking face with my own brother than sparking any form of passion. Again, I’m utterly ruined by the man standing before me. What’s worse is that he knows it, and I watch as slight recognition that I’m lying passes across his face.
“You’re angry with me, I see that. And drunk.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, my actions have nothing to do with you,” I inwardly cringe at my desperate attempts to carry on the charade.
His tilted head and knowing grin tell me he calls bullshit. Stepping towards me, he pins me against the wall with his masculine frame, his scent invading my psyche, sending me into a spiral, thickening my drunken haze. I reflexively brace my hands against him to maintain his distance.
My efforts to keep him at bay are for naught, as he pulls my hands from his chest, pinning them above my head on the wall, holding them securely in his large grip. My chest juts out, colliding with his, and I’m panting as his warm breath fans my cheek.
“How good was it?” he questions sardonically, gliding his tongue along my jaw.
On a stifled gasp, my fingers flex within his grip as he glides the palm of his free hand across my ribs and around my hips. His expert touch - the touch I’ve missed so much - is delicious torture, igniting my accelerated breaths. The stutter of my heartbeat in my chest is exaggerated in the echoed beat of the club.
His hand slides along the front of my belly to my aching nipples, the swipe along the puckered flesh beneath my silk top sending a wrack of desire along my spine.
“Did it feel like this?” he growls in my ear, nipping the lobe, his sensual tone and seductive work of my body stealing my gasp.
Oh, God. No, it didn’t…And he knows it.
“We take a break and you think we’re done…you’re over me?” his lips suck and lick along my neck, my pulse careening out of control beneath his magical tongue.
The alcohol burns through my veins, heating to a boiling point of lust. I’m drunk with desire, whimpering as his fevered hot kisses on my searing flesh instantly spike my need for him.
“Are you over me?” he whispers huskily, brushing past my lips with his to continue his teasing along my jaw, his hand slipping under my skirt to slide along my satu
rated core. “Were you this wet for him?” he growls with a harsh grope of my sex.
I moan at the touch, my pussy clenching in desperate need for him, pulsing uncontrollably at the claim of his hand before he abruptly pulls it away.
It’s sudden absence jars my lust-filled haze as he places his hand on the wall, caging my gaze to his, locked onto his brilliant, angry, blue eyes. “You’re mine, Aby. Do I need to help you remember?” his lips take mine, his tongue invading my mouth as he releases my hands to cup my face, tilting my head to give him better access.
I tremble in his grip, falling mercy to his attack. How easily I lose myself in him. I kiss him back with a vengeance, hungry and desperate to reclaim what’s mine - the sudden need catapulting me back to reality. He left me. He’s with her now. Why is he doing this? Playing with my broken heart with cruel implications that all of the torture and heartache was nothing more than a temporary time break. Well, I know different!
“Agh…stop,” I mange to pull my lips from his, pushing him away with all my might. Quickly skirting around him, I run back towards our booth. I need to get out of here. I need to get away from him.
“Aby, wait,” he calls after me, catching up as I reach the table to grab my clutch.
“I’m leaving, sorry about your night, Stace,” I offer the rushed apology as she stands in alarm, her gaze ricocheting between Alex and I before I turn for the door.
“Aby…”
“Let her go, Alex,” I hear Stacey interrupt him.
“The hell I will,” he spews, quickly on my tail at the front doors. “Goddammit, Aby, stop.”
“Leave me the hell alone,” I slur, making my way to the curb to flag a taxi.
“Let me take you home.”
“Are you serious?” I lash, spinning on my heels to face him dead on, the motion throwing my drunk-ass off kilter.
He reaches to steady me and I tear my arm from his supportive grip.
“Don’t. Touch. Me,” the order is firm, my eyes screaming a clear warning.
Raising his hands in a sign of surrender, he continues in a calm plea, “Just let me see you home.”
“I have a better idea,” I begin, waving down an oncoming taxi, “Since you really enjoy the view of my ass,” I continue as it pulls to the curb, turning to look him straight in the eye, “…how about I let you watch me leave.”
FUMBLING FOR MY keys, the screeching tires of Alex’s car jar me in a wave of rushed panic, sending them tumbling to the step. He’s out and standing before me in the time it takes for me to scoop them up. He fucking followed me home? Fuck!
The view of the length of him as I straighten to stand is impossible to resist, and after two weeks without him, I struggle to hide his effect on me. Away from the crowded club, the distance between us at this moment allows me to take him in. The beauty of him is like the calm before a tidal wave, but even my drunken rationale tells me that if I give in I’ll drown.
“Wow,” I muster a surge of confident indifference, “…to what do I owe the pleasure of this quick second visit? And more importantly,” I continue quickly, ignoring his sexy clenched jaw, “Are you having trouble hearing? I said LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.”
“Aby, as much as your drunken little temper tantrum is trying my patience,” he pauses for a second round of panty soaking jaw clenching, “…we need to talk.”
“My little temper tantrum?” The need to slap him across the face flashes quickly through my mind - the fury merely adding to the well of lust flooding my system. It’s an overload of primal ravage need, and I fight the urge by turning away to unlock the door. “Well,” I begin, composed restraint returned as I step inside, preparing to close the door in his face, “…I guess whatever it is you think we need to talk about can wait, since I’m clearly not in your required state of mind. You’ve seen me home now, sweetheart, you can be on your merry way, back to wherever you came from.”
“Aby…” he makes a move to halt the closing of the door.
“As a matter of fact,” I interrupt him, “Where the hell did you come from? It was very sweet of you to suddenly show up out of the blue,” my sarcasm is biting, a desperate shield against the gnawing desire to simply bite him, devour him.
“Out of the blue, Aby? I told you I would be back from L.A. in two weeks.”
“Oh, has it been two weeks already? I hadn’t even noticed,” I lie with bitter contempt, cursing my sorry, drunken ass for possibly impeding my performance.
“No? So it was just a coincidence that I received your messages on my way home from the airport. I must say, they were rather…intriguing - for lack of a better description - and they certainly got my attention. Is that not that what you intended of them?”
“So sorry to disappoint, but there were no intentions behind my silly drunken texts - tequila is a chatty bitch. And, yes, it was absolutely a coincidence. Does that make you feel better? You and your guilty conscience can go home now,” I slam the door quickly, leaning back against it, attempting to catch my breath from the adrenaline and alcohol cocktail I’m suddenly spinning in.
“Aby, open the door,” his order is firm.
“I have nothing else to say to you,” I manage, cursing the aphrodisiac effects of the damn tequila coursing through my veins.
“You can open the door, or I can - the choice is yours.”
Are you kidding me? I spin around, pulling the door open to face his audacity head on, “You have some nerve threatening…”
My words are no match to the speed with which he wraps his arm around me, lifting me off my feet as he steps inside, closing the door behind us.
The feel of his evident arousal pinned against me is intoxicating. Damn him and the alcohol. “Let me go,” I demand, hammering his chest, each pound of my small fists against the sculpted mass echoed in the clenching of my core.
“I couldn’t do that if I tried,” he whispers huskily, setting me down on my feet against the wall before grabbing my face in his hands. His kiss is paralyzing.
I ache to touch him, to feel him again, but I can’t move. I’m lost in the dizzying, slow, erotic brushes of his tongue, the delicious taste of him. I want him. Need him.
Gravity twists at my spiraling haze as he pulls back to look into my eyes, his cradling of my forced gaze in his hands seemingly holding me upright. I brace my hands back against the wall in desperate search of support, afraid that if he let’s me go I’ll fall.
“God, I’ve missed you…” he grabs my hands, pinning them up in his hold, his lips crashing back to mine.
I moan into his kiss, my body arching against his, the erotic pull too strong for my will. I couldn’t fight it if I tried.
Releasing my hands, he grips my thighs to lift me, groaning as I wrap my legs around him, his arousal brushing my core in the movement. “Fuck, Aby,” he whispers, wrenching me against his erection with a repeated sensual, rolling grip of my ass.
“Oh, God,” I moan. The absence of his lips is too much, and I grab his nape to force the return of his tongue as he carries me effortlessly to the sofa. I grind into him, our bodies unlinking as he lays me down. I can’t get enough of him. My primal need to feel him inside me is savage at the hands of my drunken arousal. I’m drunk from the consumed alcohol. Drunk from the love I feel for this man.
My hands devour his strong back, reaching for the hem of his shirt, pulling it up in desperate need to feel his flesh. His assistance in leaning up to grab it from behind and pull it off gifts me with the delicious view of his incredible abs and chest, my fingers greedily consuming every ripple. The perfection of him is sinful.
I’m unable to contain my moans as he grinds into my core, my legs gripping him, begging for more as he glides my shirt up, bending to lick along the exposed flesh. He palms my breast through the lace cup of my bra, massaging it in his grip as his lips find mine once more.
“I’ve been thinking about this for two long weeks,” he mutters, moving to lick and nip along my neck, his words clipping the aura of
my euphoric daze.
I’m suddenly falling, crashing down to earth, shattered reality rearing its ugly head. The image of him leaning into Julia’s ear, the flirty smile his whispers evoked flash repeatedly behind my closed eyes, forcing them open to escape the nightmare of what I’ve lost, only to see it head-on laying over me. “Why are you doing this?” the question escapes in my desperate plea to understand.
Confused pain fills his gaze as I attempt to push him off of me.
Tugging my shirt down into place, I sit up, my hands reflexively crossing my chest in protection of my heart. “I know about Julia,” the admission escapes on a whisper.
“What?” he pulls back to look into my eyes.
“I know you chose her.”
“Chose her?” his body recoils as though stung by the words. “Aby, there wasn’t a choice to make. You think that after everything that’s happened, knowing how I feel about you, that I...”
“Don’t…” I stand to distance myself from him. “I saw the pictures.” I shiver from the visual, from the pain of knowing that even after the choice she made, I lost him to her anyway. “You were holding her closely at your side, smiling at each other…” I look away from him, the images in my mind morphing into the reality of his presence before me.
“You see a few photos of Julia and I, and you draw the conclusion that we’re back together? Aby, that’s ridiculous.”
Ridiculous? The word slaps me, his use of it reigniting the heat of my alcohol infused blood. “Oh, it was a lovely collage that led to said conclusion, particularly the one of you leaning into her ear - the smile she wore from the sweet nothings you were whispering may have sealed the deal.”
“And what is it that you think I was saying to her, exactly?” he asks, standing, gripping my arms gently to force my gaze.
“You left the door open for me to think anything my breaking heart wanted to. Perception is everything, right?” I bite.
“Jesus, Aby, how little do you think of me?” he searches my held gaze. “It was a peace offering - a negotiated agreement to save face with Julia and the agency before the announcement of my new publicist. Fuck,” he releases me, turning away, running his fingers through his tousled curls before retrieving and donning his shirt.
