by Clara James
Patrick’s hips jerked, before he found himself compelled to pull back and thrust once again. However, he couldn’t bring himself to hold within her on that occasion and, suddenly, he was moving in a rhythmic piston action. Pumping into her with sweaty, pants of breath.
Allie made the appropriate noises, gasping and moaning with each ram of his member. However, she knew that he was leaving her behind. In truth, she didn’t mind. After all, she now suspected Patrick would not be able to top what he’d done to her in the living room. More importantly, she was left behind in more than just the physical sense. Emotionally, mentally, she was somewhere very far away from Patrick’s bed.
“Oh, yeah,” he growled. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he repeated with each bump of his hips, until finally, his strength seemed to give out and he flopped listlessly on top of her. A spasm in his leg caused his foot to wriggle like a dog dreaming about chasing rabbits.
Breathing heavily, Allie remained still beneath him, not complaining about the fact he was squashing her breasts. And, for a few moments, allowing herself to pretend that it was someone else’s weight bearing down on her; a more comforting bulk.
“Fucking hell, Allie,” he gasped, lifting his sweaty face and peering down at her. “I’m sorry that was over so quick,” he added, pulling back and disengaging from her, while rising to his knees.
“Don’t be,” Allie replied, already pushing herself up.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he assured her, wriggling his eyebrows as his fingers wrapped around her knees and kept her legs spread wide.
“It’s okay,” she said, carefully pushing his hands off her body and shuffling off the bed. “I’ve got an early start tomorrow,” she added by way of explanation. “And you did more than enough for me earlier.”
“Well,” he chuckled, edging off the bed with weak legs. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
Allie didn’t turn to look at him, as she picked her dress up from the floor and slipped her slender figure back into it. “Thanks,” she spoke. “But I really do have to go.”
“Okay,” he relented, bending to scoop his pants from around his ankles. “Can I see you again?” he asked, peering down as he carefully removed the condom, before buckling his belt.
“I thought you said, you wouldn’t call?” she asked, assuming that he was joking.
“We could do that again though, couldn’t we?” he stated, straight-faced and with a hint of desperation. “I mean...Damn, Allie, that was fucking fantastic.”
“Umm, things are pretty hectic,” she quickly responded. Deciding she didn’t want to take her panties home, she kicked them under his bed with the toe of her red stiletto. “This was fun, though,” she assured him, leaning forward and kissing his cheek. “It was good to see you again, Patrick.”
With that, she exited the bedroom. He followed her, watching from the doorway as she strolled down the hallway, made a quick detour to the living room to retrieve her purse and then headed straight out the front door. “Wow,” he breathed, as he watched the door swing closed behind her. He smiled, shaking his head. Many was the time he’d gotten straight up and left after a one night stand, but the tables had never been turned on him before. It appeared to Patrick that Allie McLaren had a dark side she kept hidden from most people.
CHAPTER SIX
GUILT
It was a little after two in the morning when Allie got back to her apartment. Sighing, she closed the door and leaned against it. Her eyelids drifted shut and she breathed slowly, trying to calm her jangled nerves and figure out why what she’d done that night felt so wrong. After several seconds, she felt no better and had no answers.
Peeling her eyes open, she pushed herself away from the door and began to kick off her shoes. She flicked them off her feet not caring that one landed beneath the coffee table and the other whistled dangerously near the TV screen. Moving with purpose across the room, she strained behind her back and yanked the zip of her dress.
When she reached the kitchen, she paused briefly to tug the dress down, then stepped out of it and turned to her right, continuing her stride to the bedroom. She didn’t stop, moving her slender, naked body through to the bathroom and immediately stepping into the tub. She leaned forward, turning on the shower and let the freezing cold jets strike her chest and abdomen. Flinching under the chilly water, she forced herself to remain there, before dipping her face beneath the stream.
As the temperature began to lift, she stood motionless, hoping to find absolution in the water. However, she kept replaying the night in her head, wondering desperately why she felt so differently from the other one night stands she’d experienced. Patrick didn’t do anything wrong; he was sweet, if a little driven when they actually got to the bedroom. Nevertheless, he’d been keen to make up for the speed with which he’d climaxed. And, in fairness, he’d made her come before he’d even got her clothes off. She couldn’t lay the blame at his feet. She couldn’t claim he was a bad lover, because that simply wasn’t true. He wasn’t a fantastic lover of course, but he had been considerate and had given her an incredible orgasm.
So, the problem hadn’t been his technique. She wondered whether it was just that she wasn’t as attracted to him as she had been. Briefly she contemplated the possibility that the night felt like an anticlimax because she had several years to imagine what it would have been like. But then she was quickly forced to remind herself that was true of every encounter she’d had over the last few weeks.
Inhaling steadily, she opened her eyes and tipped her head back so that it was no longer directly in the shower’s stream. Deep down, she knew exactly what the problem was, knew the precise moment things that night had begun to turn from thrillingly exciting to a gnawing sense of wrongness: the second she’d let her thoughts slide to Reece. Allie’s instinctive response was to blame him, although logically she knew that was ridiculous.
Leaning against the frigid tiles, she felt a heaviness in the pit of her stomach and a rising lump in her throat. Slowly, the tears came and, as they did, she sank to the bottom of the tub. Drawing her legs up, she wrapped her arms around her knees and gently rocked herself while she sobbed. She wept because she missed Reece and wished she didn’t. She also cried because, for the first time since she’d found out about her cancer, she was angry at whatever had caused her to be sick. If she’d been religious, she would have railed at God. As it was, she merely wept hot, bitter tears at fate or dumb luck.
***
It was a very different Allie McLaren, who emerged from her bathroom, wearing only a terry robe. There was no trace of her earlier emotion. She was, she’d decided, done with feeling sorry for herself. Her life was what it was, and no amount of rage against the world would change that. Instead, she chose to get straight back on the horse. After her tears had drained her of all volatile emotions, she’d come to the realization that whoever she’d slept with after Reece would have affected her in the same way. After all, she’d admitted she loved him. The fact that a relationship with him would be impossible couldn’t alter her feelings overnight. She was expecting far too much to hope that she’d be able to simply pretend the previous two weeks hadn’t happened. So, naturally, sex with Patrick was tainted by that.
What she need, she decided at half past three in the morning, was to rinse the taste of Reece from her mouth. She needed to get back in the game, so to speak. However, after an hour on Facebook, thirty minutes on her college’s alumni website and a halfhearted ten minutes flipping through the two professional newspapers she’d worked for since her internship, she had come up dry. There were a few men she would have liked to have hooked up with, but they were either married or in long-term relationships. Whether or not that would affect those men’s decisions to sleep with her, she didn’t know, she suspected in at least one of the cases that it wouldn’t, but she wasn’t prepared to be the ‘other woman’, even if it was just for one night. The single men she came across, she either barely remember, or remembered well enoug
h to know that she didn’t want to see them again.
A part of her wondered whether she was being deliberately pickier than she would have been in previous weeks, because somewhere in her subconscious she didn’t want to continue with this. She quickly shook that feeling away, though. Yes, she was being picky, but she had always been picky. The idea of finding sexual freedom was never about having sex with just any man. The problem perhaps was that she’d shunned a social life and, therefore, hadn’t met as many men as she otherwise would have. Still, she found it difficult to believe that she’d already had sex with every unattached man she’d ever been attracted to. There had to be someone else.
Slamming the lid of her laptop down, Allie pushed herself off the couch and padded through the darkened room. Rubbing her tired eyes, which had bright spots dancing in front of them, she dragged her leaden feet to the bedroom and flopped face down on the covers. She remained that way for a minute, until she awkwardly, tugged the sheet and blankets down while lifting small sections of her body at a time. Once she’d found her way into the bed, she rolled onto her back, unfastening the bathrobe, slipped out of it and pushed it toward her feet. Finally, she sat up just enough to grip the bed clothes and yank them up around her chin, curling into the fetal position as she did so.
She didn’t expect to sleep; felt sure that she would spend the entire night, just as she’d done after her fight with Reece, staring at either the wall of the ceiling. However, her heavy lids were quickly drooping, and it wasn’t long before she was slipping into a delightful and soothing form of unconsciousness.
Comforting arms were encircling her from behind and she felt protected and warm. The palm of a hand was stretched out on her abdomen, moving in small circles while the fingers of the other hand were stroking up and down the curve of her waist and hip. Her name was whispered tenderly, reverently and she could feel the soft breath on the nape of her neck. Allie would also have sworn that she could feel the weight of a head resting against hers, the warmth of a body stretched out along the length of her own and the scent that she could never quite define, but would recognize until the end of time.
The dream was bittersweet. It was a balm that she so clearly needed, and yet, even in sleep, she was aware of the pain that awaited her upon waking. A pain that would be even more acute after spending a night in his arms, albeit nothing more than the fantasy of his arms. However, Allie was in no hurry to sweep the dream from her subconscious. In fact, she was quite happy for it to run and run. And Reece stayed with her that night, continuing to hold her, to caress her and whisper nonsense in the dead of night.
When Allie awoke, bright sunshine was streaming through the window and she could tell by the level of light that it was at least mid-morning, perhaps even midday. And indeed, she would still have been asleep if it wasn’t for the harsh ringing of her phone. She never bothered to have a phone in her bedroom, but the one she kept in the living room was quite loud enough to be heard from anywhere in the apartment. In fact, she suspected it could be heard from anywhere in the apartment building. Grant had once told her that there was a way to adjust the volume, but she’d taken little notice. As she grumbled and pulled the sheets over her head, she wished she’d paid more attention to his rambling.
She refused to get up, but the bedclothes did little to muffle the sound. Eventually, the ringing did cease and she heard a beep followed by the distorted sound of her own voice, “This is Allie McLaren, I can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message or call me on my cell.” Another electronic beep followed.
“Hi, Allie,” Reece’s deep voice echoed around the apartment. “Listen, I probably should give you some space, I know that. But I’ve been thinking about you and I wanted to know how you’re doing. Give me a call or something; just let me know you’re okay, all right?” he asked, there was a brief silence on the line, as though he wanted to say something else. However, no more was said, and after a few seconds the recording ceased.
Peeling the covers off her head, Allie rolled onto her back and stared blankly at the ceiling. “I’ve been thinking about you, too,” she whispered. She was torn, she wanted to talk to him; desperately wanted to talk to him, but knew that she shouldn’t. However, Reece seemed concerned about her and it would be selfish in the extreme to let him worry unnecessarily.
With an exhausted huff, she tossed the bed clothes off and sat up, before sliding naked from the warmth of her mattress. Not bothering to put anything on, she began scouring the floor for her cell phone, before realizing it was probably in her purse, which she’d dumped in the living room. Sure enough, there she found it. Without leaving the time or opportunity to talk herself out of it, she typed a quick text message, believing that to be the easiest solution to her predicament. The message read, ‘Reece, thanks for being worried about me, but I’m fine really. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk at the moment. You know I want nothing but happiness for you, so do me a favor and find someone who deserves you. I don’t and maybe never did.’
By the time she’d sent it, she wished she hadn’t. For one thing, she suspected that it would open the door for further conversation between them and, for another, it was just another agonizing reminder that he was out there somewhere and she couldn’t be with him. However, the minutes ticked by and he didn’t respond. Allie took a shower and got dressed, and still there was nothing from him. She poked around the kitchen, looking for something to eat and found her fridge and cupboards sparse to say the least. Eventually, she found a loaf of stale bread and made a slice of toast. She ate it bare and dry, while hovering over her iPhone. “This is exactly why you shouldn’t have done this,” she muttered to herself. It wasn’t until she’d finished her meager breakfast; almost an hour after she’d sent him the text, he finally returned one of his own.
‘Thanks for letting me know you’re okay. I don’t want to make anything harder for you. So, I’ll respect your wishes from here on out, I promise. But you have to know that stuff about not deserving me was BS’
She smiled sadly, as she imagined him saying those exact words to her. She could envisage the expression on his face, she knew where he’d pause and exactly which syllables he’d place emphasis on. The sound of it played in her head as surely as the message he’d left on her answer machine. She allowed herself to daydream, just for a moment, about what life would be like with him; if they could live together, get married, and maybe even have a family one day. She knew one thing, if that had ever happened, he would have kept her smiling. He’d certainly always been able to make her smile when they’d been dating all those years ago.
Shaking herself from that torturous reverie, she forced her brain to focus on the present; on what was and what could be. Except she came up blank and with a growl of frustration, she threw herself down on the couch. “Shit,” she cursed, immediately regretting the force with which her weight had been tossed onto the furniture. Pain shot through her butt and jarred her spine. She suspected that would leave another set of new bruises on her fragile skin. “Great,” she groaned. An even greater moan of frustration came from deep in the pit of her belly when a knock at the door demanded she get up again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PASSING THE TORCH
She opened the door angrily, swinging it wide until the inner handle almost crashed into the wall.
“Umm...Sorry if I’m disturbing you.” Grant stood wide-eyed at the threshold, clearly frightened to be on the wrong side of Allie’s temper and not for the first time. He’d seen it all too often and knew what the consequences of it could be.
The alarmed look on the sandy-haired office grunt’s face made Allie feel guilty. Sighing, she shook her head and silently stepped out of the way to allow him to enter the apartment. “No, I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m just having a bad day.”
“Oh,” he instantly brightened, flashing her his broadest smile, which always made him look even younger than he was. “No sweat, I mean, you’ve been sick, right? So I guess a bad mood is underst
andable.” He chuckled, then seemed to catch himself. “Not that I’m saying you’re in a bad mood,” he quickly backtracked. “I just...If you were, it’d be-”
“Grant,” she interjected halting his ramble.
“Yeah?” he responded.
“It’s fine; just sit down,” she urged, noticing for the first time the file he held in his hand.
Without another word, he shucked his San Francisco Giants’ jacket, tossing it over the back of the couch, before tossing the file on top of her laptop. Finally, he sat down, rubbing the palms of his hands over his denim covered thighs as he did so.
“Did Needham send you?” she asked, eyeing the folder curiously as she took a seat next to him.
“Kyle?” he scoffed. “Hell no,” he chuckled. “I don’t think he’d be too happy if he knew I was here.”
“So...” she breathed. “I don’t mean for this to sound rude, but why are you here.”
He grinned broadly at her again, shuffling forwards and gripping the file excitedly. “I know you said to leave it alone,” he began, looking very proud of himself as he laid the folder in her lap. “But I couldn’t, so I did a little more poking around.”
“Grant if this is anything illegal,” she huffed.
Lifting both hands to protest his innocence, he insisted otherwise. “This is totally on the up and up and absolutely something that we could use.”
Allie surprised herself with the interest she suddenly had in what she held in her hands. Quickly she flipped the file open, and found herself looking at a photograph of a heavily built man. He was climbing the steps of a building and held an executive valise under his right arm.
“Do you know who that is?” Grant asked, his stubby finger cutting across Allie’s vision and pointing at the man in the image.
