by Mari Carr
But this?
This was something else.
Charley wasn’t holding anything back.
And the crazy part was…she seemed to be equal parts turned on and shocked.
He crooked his fingers one more time, pulling the trigger.
She went stiff for a second, her mouth opening, though no sound came out and no air went in.
Then she cried out—a little too loudly for their surroundings—so he bent his head and kissed her, trying to muffle the cries no one walking by outside would mistake for anything other than what they were.
He pulled his fingers free as her orgasm started to subside, her pussy muscles twitching in the aftermath.
She was leaning against the bathroom door and that, plus his hand on her waist, were probably the only things holding her up.
“I,” she started. “I never come that fast. It always takes…”
“Takes what?”
She gave him an embarrassed grin. “A long time.”
“Mmm hmmm.”
He had an opinion about that, something he fully intended to discuss with her, but they’d already been gone too long.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, though he could see her strength had returned, and guided her to the sink.
They stood there, looking at each other through the reflection in the mirror as he washed his hands and she attempted to fix her makeup. Her lip gloss was practically gone at this point, so she wiped the rest off.
They grinned at each other like a couple of giddy kids.
The whole moment felt almost domestic, as if they were an old couple getting ready for bed together. He’d never really experienced that or even felt like it was something he wanted.
Now, well…now he did.
The idea of having someone standing next to him as he brushed his teeth for bed sounded pretty damn nice, and he recalled once more how lonely his house had felt after losing that game.
For a second, he considered what it would have been like if Charley had been there with him. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, she would have known how to make him feel better, would have known how to help him shake off his anger, his disappointment.
He shook those thoughts away.
If he was thinking about a woman—about Charley—living with him, he was more fucked up over the loss than he realized.
“You ready to go back?” he asked.
She hesitated for a moment before nodding. “How much longer do we have to stay?”
He chuckled. “Think you can make it until they cut the cake?”
She considered that. “Yeah. But I don’t want to stick around to eat it.”
“Deal.”
She unlocked the bathroom door, glancing both ways along the corridor. “Coast is clear,” she said.
He rolled his eyes as he gave her a push out.
They held hands as they walked back into the ballroom and directly to the bar.
They’d lost their drinks.
Two people along the way mentioned the game and offered him the words he was starting to hate above all others. “You’ll get ’em next year.”
So, in keeping with the game, they did two more tequila shots together.
The alcohol was warm and numbing.
Between that and Charley, the tension in his shoulders and back was completely gone.
He felt loose, fuzzy, happy, and…ready to take on the world.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was going to happen tonight. He didn’t have a clue what exactly.
But he couldn’t wait.
Chapter Six
Alex and Charley grabbed another tequila shot each, carrying them back to the table. At this point, she’d decided it was smart to just commit to the liquor and stop trying to look hoity-toity with the wine. Mixing them would only lead to disaster and she preferred the shots anyway.
Her whole body was buzzing—her head from the tequila—and her body, even her skin, from that orgasm.
Holy shit.
She hadn’t lied to Alex. She never came that quick.
When he’d told her what he wanted, she’d had a brief moment of panic, wondering if she could fake an orgasm well enough to fool him. She figured it was either that or hang out in the bathroom the rest of the night.
With Ben…her climaxes were hit or miss.
Sometimes, he’d go the extra mile to get her there—actually finding her clit and the right rhythm.
Other times, he was just sort of all over the place, and when it became obvious he wasn’t going to find that magic button—even with her giving explicit directions—she’d just give up and fake it.
On those nights, she’d sneak to the bathroom with her vibrator after he was asleep and take care of business herself.
She’d tried to do that a couple times in bed, but Ben had gotten his feelings hurt, viewing the toy as an insult to his masculinity. Of course, at that point, he’d start blaming her, insisting it wasn’t his fault she was so uptight.
She silently added another item to her perfect-guy list.
Orgasms.
She wanted them.
All of them.
After all, Alex knew where all the sweet spots were. He couldn’t be the only guy in the world with that knowledge.
Alex pulled her chair out and they sat back down at their table. The other three couples were still on the dance floor. They scooted their chairs closer together, so they could talk over the music.
“I can’t believe we just did that. I can’t tell you the last time I did anything that spontaneous or crazy.”
Alex grinned. “Stick around. The night is still young. I’m pretty sure there are a few more impulsive tricks up my sleeve.”
“You know, I’m not sure how me coming helped you,” she said, feeling slightly guilty for this post-orgasmic bliss when Alex hadn’t gotten the same relief.
“I needed to work off some aggression. And there’s nothing hotter than watching a sexy woman fall apart in your arms.”
Charley rolled her eyes.
No one had ever called her sexy.
Alex scowled. “You roll your eyes at one more compliment, and I promise you won’t be able to stop me from going over to Ben and handing his ass to him.”
The genuine malice in his tone took her aback, and she realized her response to his kind words only served to prove how much her confidence had taken a beating this past year. “He only knocked me down for a little while, Alex. I’m getting back up. Don’t worry.”
“Try as I may, I can’t figure out what you saw in the dick to begin with.”
“Trust me, I have no answer for that right now.” She looked around the room, seeing it through a tequila haze.
Things were starting to go a bit foggy, everything unfocused flashes of color.
The last shot seemed to have pushed her out of tipsy range.
She was drunk.
She reached for her glass of water.
Better hydrate.
Best to have her wits about her for later.
“It’s funny,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to this wedding for months, but tonight hasn’t turned out at all like I expected, what I’d hoped for.”
“Better?”
There was no denying tonight was beyond anything she could have imagined. This night with Alex was like something out of a dream.
But the problem with dreams was you had to wake up.
Come morning, her notch was going to be in his bedpost—something that didn’t feel abhorrent at all anymore—and Alex would be on a flight back to Baltimore.
And then, it was Operation Perfect Guy.
Which in reality meant it was most likely going to be her and her vibrator for the foreseen future.
At least, she’d have the memory of tonight to help get her off.
“What did you hope would happen tonight?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
Charley lifted one shoulder.
She didn’t want to
confess what she’d really thought because it would be too embarrassing to let Alex see how stupid she’d been.
“Tell me,” he urged.
Unfortunately, the tequila loosened her tongue, pushed her inhibitions out of the way. “Honestly? I kind of planned to convince Ben to elope with me tonight. It is Vegas after all.”
Alex frowned. “You really would have married that guy?”
Damn.
She shouldn’t have started this conversation.
Now that she had, there was no turning back.
“Yeah. I mean obviously that plan dissolved the second I found out he was cheating on me, but I want to get married. Want to settle down, have kids.”
Alex scoffed, and the sound tweaked her temper for some reason.
“What do you have against marriage?”
Alex crossed his arms. “This conversation isn’t about my life choices. It’s about yours.”
She didn’t like the way he dodged her question. It was a perfectly valid one.
She’d heard enough about Alex from his sister over the years to know the guy was a serious commitment-phobe.
“Fine,” Charley said. “Yes. If Ben hadn’t dumped my ass for Beverly, if we’d still been a couple, I would have married him. We would have come to this wedding, danced, gotten tipsy on red wine, and I would have suggested we go to one of those tacky little Vegas chapels to elope.”
“I thought women wanted the big white wedding, the expensive dress, the flowers.”
She crinkled her nose, disgusted by what he described. “Jesus. Can you see me in a fucking wedding gown? Carrying a bunch of froufrou flowers?”
He laughed. “I can’t. But I also can’t stand the thought of you standing in front of some Elvis lookalike, vowing to spend the rest of your life with fucking Ben Jerome.”
“Yeah. That would have been a huge mistake. Ben did me a favor.”
“Hmph. When you put it like that, I’m actually a lot less pissed off at the dude.”
“Saved me from myself?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
“You’re gonna laugh, but I’m not so different from other women. I did dream about my wedding growing up. I’ve imagined it countless times.”
What she didn’t say was pre-Ben, the groom always changed.
Sometimes it was Zac Efron, sometimes Ryan Reynolds, and—God help her—more than a few times, it was Alex standing next to her at the altar.
“I knew it,” he said, smugly enough that she couldn’t wait to let him know he didn’t know a damn thing. “So you did want the dress, the big dog and pony show?”
“Nope. My dream wedding is—and always has been—eloping in Vegas.”
He studied her face, clearly waiting for her to say “just kidding,” but she wasn’t.
Cliché or not, she’d always pictured herself catching a flight to Vegas on a whim, racing to one of the chapels, and exchanging vows with the man of her dreams.
“Why the hell would you want to elope?”
“Big white weddings are exactly what you just said. A big-ass production,” she explained. “I’ve never really understood why people stress themselves to the max, trying to prove to their family and friends that they love each other enough to stick it out for the long haul. Weddings should be just for the couple and, honestly, if you care about someone so much that you’re willing to say something as serious as ’til death do us part’”—Charley didn’t miss Alex’s slight wince as she said the words, but she ignored it—“you should have fun while you do it. I want to stand in some cheesy chapel, pledging my love to the man I want to spend the rest of my life laughing with, joking with, growing old, but not growing up, with.”
“And that was Ben?”
Alex was on the wrong end of her broken relationship. “At the beginning…yeah. I mean, come on, Alex. I’m not without any self-esteem, not a complete moron. Though I’ll admit the last few months haven’t been my finest moments.”
He leaned back and considered that for a minute. “Good. I’m glad to know it wasn’t all bad. I still think the guy is a tool, but if he made you happy for a little while…”
Charley glanced Ben’s direction, allowing herself to recall the first couple years of their relationship—the pizza nights, watching hockey, the spur-of-the-moment road trips to Niagara Falls and the Finger Lakes, as well as their standard Friday night date night.
There had been a lot of laughs at the beginning…before shades of his father started emerging, and climbing the ladder at work became the primary focus in his life. “He did make me happy. But I guess now that my eyes have been opened to some hard truths, I can see he’s not the type to do the Vegas wedding. He would have wanted the show. And that should have been my first clue that we’ve spent the last three years growing apart, not together.”
“Three years is a long time to figure something like that out.”
Charley grinned, even as she shook her head at the obvious horror in his voice as he said the words three years like it had been some life sentence in solitary confinement. “Which brings us back to you. Seriously, dude. What’s your hang-up with marriage? Your parents have a great one. So do your brothers. It’s not like you don’t have ideal role models in wedded bliss.”
“Why is it a hang-up to say you don’t want to get married? Why do people act like it’s some shortcoming, some broken strand of genetic coding? Who says people have to live in pairs? Jesus, between my parents, my sister, my brothers, half my teammates, and now you…you’d think I had some major character flaw.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
Because he was right.
“You aren’t flawed. I’m sorry. I guess we tend to view others through our own desires. I want to spend my life with the person I love, someone who will love me back, warts and all. So it’s hard for me to understand someone who doesn’t want the same. But you’re right, Alex. If you genuinely want to live your life alone, then that’s your decision, and the rest of us should respect it.”
Alex leaned back, blinking a couple of times. “Wow. You’re the first person to ever listen to me.”
She grinned. “Yeah, well, I figure I owe you…for agreeing to bring me to this wedding, for defending me, for the orgasm. Tonight is turning out to be one of the best nights of my life.”
“Even without the cheesy wedding?” he joked.
“The night is still young, and most of the single guys here are getting pretty wasted.” She pretended to scout the room, searching for Mr. Right. “Since you’re not on the market, maybe I can convin—”
Alex took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her gaze back to him. “You’re leaving here with me tonight, so you can stop looking around.”
She took his hand in hers. “Seriously, Alex, I can’t thank you enough for…everything.”
His eyes softened, the look he gave her one she couldn’t quite recognize.
Before he could respond to her thanks, Bella came back to the table, grabbed a glass of water, and chugged the whole thing. She’d clearly worked up a sweat on the dance floor. “Why aren’t you guys out there?”
“Taking a break,” Alex explained.
“Deep discussion going on,” Charley joked.
“Oh,” Bella said, sitting down on the edge of her seat. Her bestie loved to dance, so Charley knew she wouldn’t hang out for long. “Do tell.”
Charley laughed. “Thanks to the tequila, we’ve just about figured out the meaning of life and love.”
“Alex?” Bella asked. “Love? That must have been a short conversation.”
“Tread lightly, Bella,” Alex said. “I know all your dirty secrets.”
She waved her hand, unconcerned. “So does Charley. So tell me, brother dear, what did you contribute to the discussion on love?”
Charley started to hop in, to tell Bella she was wrong to condemn her brother for not wanting to get married, but it suddenly occurred to her that wasn’t what Bella was say
ing.
“I mean,” Bella continued, “have you ever said those three little words before?”
Alex grimaced. “I tell you and mom I lov—”
“Someone you aren’t related to,” Bella hastened to include.
He waved his hand at her. “Go away, Bella. You’re ruining my buzz.”
She laughed, completely unoffended, as she turned her attention to Charley. “Get a dog,” her best friend advised her. “Unconditional love and acceptance.”
Charley enjoyed the annoyed look on Alex’s face. “She has a valid point. Life would be much simpler if I went that route. A dog for companionship and a vibrator to take care of all the rest. No muss, no fuss.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “You don’t need a dog.”
Bella laughed. “Don’t worry, Alex. No one here is suggesting you do anything as radical as let some living being—human or canine—into your cold, cold heart.”
“Seriously, sis?”
Bella winked at Charley. “See? Merely mention the words love or relationship and he gets uptight.”
“You’re a pain in the ass,” Alex said, though there was no heat behind his words.
Charley hadn’t seen Bella and her brother together in nearly eight years, but she was glad to know their relentless teasing was still in place, as was their genuine affection for each other.
“I’m just kidding, hotshot,” Bella said, kissing her brother on the cheek fondly. “My deepest desire is that one day you meet a woman and fall helplessly, madly in love.”
Alex gave his sister a horrified look. “Well, now you’re just being a bitch.”
“I’m glad you two are having a good time. Kudos to me for saving both your weekends. And see,” she said to Charley, “Vegas can be great even without eloping.”
With that, Bella was gone again.
Charley glanced at Alex, and she could see Bella’s comments had struck a nerve. She tried to figure out some way to lighten the mood again.
Before she could come up with something, another person walked up.
“Hey, Charley. Alex. Good to see you.”
Charley turned around to find Marcus Webber, three sheets to the wind, standing next to them.
“Hey, Marcus. Long time no see.” Alex stood up and the two men shook hands. Marcus was yet another high school friend and former hockey teammate. He’d moved to Chicago after college.
