Back inside, she stared at the bed without seeing it. What she saw was Logan and Cat. Then, inexplicably, she saw herself on the bed, with Drew. She straddled his face, then bent over to take his cock in her mouth. Eyes closed, she could actually feel his tongue on her, in her. He loved oral sex. He loved doing it to her. He wanted her, desired her. The last time she’d talked to him, out by the garbage cans, no less, he’d wanted to touch her. She knew it. She’d been wet wanting it so badly.
Opening her eyes, Alexis put her hands to her warm cheeks. She wasn’t much different from Logan and Cat. She wanted. She fantasized. She needed. The only difference was that she hadn’t acted on it.
But how long would that have lasted? How long before it was her in Drew’s bed with Cat walking in on them?
“No,” she whispered to the room. “I wouldn’t have done that.” Yanking open her drawer, she pulled out a pair of capri sweats and a crop top. Logan wanted to put it behind them. She wasn’t like that. It was going to fester inside her unless she somehow exorcized it. There was only one thing to do.
She had to talk to Cat.
Chapter Sixteen
Donning her flip-flops, Alexis trudged next door. If Cat had returned to work, she would damn well follow her there, too. The pounding beat of her heart drowned out the tinkling of the doorbell inside the house.
Despite her resolve, she wanted to run when the door opened. Cat was polished and beautiful, her auburn hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Wearing a chic lemon yellow sheath that hugged all her assets and showed off her flat stomach, Cat was perfectly put together, immediately putting Alexis in the one-down position.
Damn her that she could look so good after having hot, sweaty, disgusting, cheating sex.
Alexis inwardly cringed at the thought, and her skin shriveled when Cat grabbed her arm to pull her inside. “Oh, hon, come on in. We can straighten this all out.”
How were they supposed to straighten out the fact that Cat had been fucking Logan while Alexis was at work?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Cat said, leading Alexis into the kitchen. Like a lamb to the slaughter? “Let’s pour some coffee first. I was going to come get you so we could talk this through.”
It was so surreal. They were going to have coffee? Alexis hadn’t even said a word yet. Was she going to let Cat just explain it away?
“I don’t want any coffee.” She ignored the mug Cat set on the counter. “I don’t care how it happened or why. I just want you to tell me it’s not going to happen again.”
Cat tipped her head. She didn’t smile exactly, but something, maybe a smirk, creased her mouth, and she widened her eyes as if she couldn’t possibly have heard Alexis correctly. “But we’ve all been having such a good time together. You enjoyed it. Please don’t tell me you were faking all those orgasms.”
Alexis gaped. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“You did have some out-of-this-world orgasms, didn’t you?” Cat put out a hand, her fingernails finely manicured.
Alexis jerked away before Cat could touch her. “What has that got to do with fucking my husband in my bed while I’m at work?”
Cat blinked, Miss Wide-eyed Innocence. “I honestly didn’t think you’d mind. I was checking in with Logan when he was driving down this way for a meeting, and I had a break between clients, and we thought what the heck.”
“So why didn’t Logan tell me about his meeting?” And why were they always calling each other?
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”
Goddammit, that wasn’t the point anyway. “I don’t care how it happened. Just tell me you’re not going to do it again.”
“Look, if I’d known you’d get upset—”
“Cat, you were fucking my husband. How could you not think I’d be upset?”
“But I’ve been fucking him for a month.” Cat narrowed her eyes slightly, almost imperceptibly. “And you’ve been fucking my husband.”
Alexis felt a twinge, but she wasn’t going to be beaten down. “You just don’t get it.”
“You’re right, I don’t. Drew and I were going to talk to you guys about going on separate dates, like role playing. Then coming home and reliving it all with our own spouses. I thought you’d go for that.”
“Are you crazy?” Her head was aching, a migraine behind her eyes. “That is not okay.”
Cat shot her a woebegone just-been-kicked look. “Hon, I’m so sorry. We should have talked about the ground rules right up front. We were both thinking different things. But it’s all out in the open now. We can agree on the do’s and don’ts, make sure we all know the expectations, what’s okay, what’s not acceptable.”
She wanted to scream. Taking a step back, then another, she was suddenly crowded up against the refrigerator. She tried breathing slowly so she didn’t hyperventilate. “None of it is acceptable anymore. Don’t you get that you crossed the line today?”
Cat gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “Honestly, I didn’t know you’d be so touchy. You should have said something.”
She should have said something, like this was all her fault? “I can’t believe you, Cat.”
“Why? You liked it all before.” Cat moved in on her, and blocked by the fridge, Alexis had nowhere to go. She was in her flip-flops, and with her high heels, Cat towered over her. “You loved it. I made it possible for you to take what you wanted, my husband.” Her voice low, almost seductive, Cat stepped right into her personal space. “You liked everything. Even what I did to you. And you know you want more. I gave you that first little push into getting with the program. Logan loves it, doesn’t he? The sex between you two has gotten so much better, hasn’t it? Isn’t this kinky foursome we have the thing he’s always wanted? You just needed a little push.” She shook her head gently. “You can’t give it up.”
Cat’s suddenly cloying perfume made her nauseous, but Cat’s words were beginning to register, take on meaning. “You and Logan talked about all that?”
“I wanted to test the waters, that’s all. I didn’t want to ruin a good friendship.”
“So you talked to Logan before?” Alexis pressed.
Cat smiled. Alexis thought of the snake offering Eve the apple. “Hints, that’s all. Nothing specific.”
But Alexis thought back. It was always Cat and Logan urging her, and they’d urged Drew, too. The first switch of cocksucking, the first fucking, Cat or Logan setting things in motion.
Good God, they’d planned it, between the two of them. It was monstrous.
“You were fucking Logan before Tahoe, weren’t you?” Her voice felt like a raspy whisper, hurting her throat.
“Of course not.” But Cat didn’t blink, didn’t look horrified at the suggestion. “We never talked, just bantered, enough so I thought it would be okay.”
Alexis didn’t believe her. Without conscious thought, she threw up a hand and shoved Cat. She stumbled into the counter. “I came over for two things, Cat. To tell you not to come near my husband again and to make sure you told Drew what’s been going on.”
“There’s nothing going on. You’re getting hysterical.”
“I’m completely clear. Are you going to tell Drew I found you in my bed with my husband?”
Cat crossed her arms, her first defensive posture. “Seeing the way you’ve reacted, I think it’s probably best he and I don’t discuss it. I’ve miscalculated everyone’s reactions.”
“Yes.” Alexis nodded her head sharply as she spoke. “You did miscalculate. And you better tell Drew.”
“Or what?” Cat snarled like the feline she was.
“Or I’ll tell him, and you won’t like how I do it.” She stepped in close and stabbed her finger just short of Cat’s chest. “And don’t come near my husband again.”
* * * * *
The bravado wasn’t like her and two days later, Alexis hadn’t followed through on her threat to Cat. She didn’t know what the hell she expected, for Drew to come over and talk to
her, to Logan. Something. There was nothing from the house next door.
She and Logan didn’t talk about it, but they didn’t talk about anything else either. She wasn’t giving him the silent treatment, but she didn’t have anything to say beyond the perfunctory everyday stuff, like when they’d each be home, what was for dinner. In the evenings she read the same pages of a book over and over. They slept in the same bed, but they didn’t have sex.
She didn’t know who was waiting out whom.
By Friday, she couldn’t take it anymore. She called Drew and said, “You want to get together for lunch?”
She didn’t have a clue what his long hesitation meant. “Where do you want to meet?” he asked.
How about in your bed so your wife can walk in on us fucking? She didn’t mean it, but her anger simply would not go away. She didn’t want to ask if Cat had talked to him about what happened. If Cat hadn’t, then it wasn’t something that could be discussed over the phone. “How about Frankie Johnnie & Luigi’s on El Camino?” It was always packed and noisy, and no one would be able to eavesdrop over the cacophony of the place.
They agreed on eleven-thirty so they could beat the rush.
When she turned the corner from the parking lot, Drew was standing by the entrance. Mr. Tall GQ, he was enough to stop a woman’s heart. Hers literally lurched in her chest. He looked so good, it hurt. She shouldn’t have had any feelings at all. They all should have died when she walked into her bedroom and found his wife with her husband. With a rush of guilt, she realized that Cat was right; she’d wanted many of the things they’d all done together. She’d wanted Cat’s husband.
Drew smiled. “Hey, there.” He didn’t hug her, kiss her, or even touch her elbow as he opened the door for her.
I am so mixed up.
The restaurant was like a big Italian kitchen, noisy with laughter and voices, rich with the scent of tomatoes and spices. A dark-haired waiter in black pants and white apron showed them to a table in the corner.
Drew glanced at his menu when they were alone. “You want to share a pizza?”
Over the top of her own menu, she scanned the room and determined none of her coworkers had decided on lunch here, thank God. “That would be fine. Pick whatever you want.” She didn’t care about eating.
He ordered a Vegetarian Fantasy.
The word set her nerves jangling. Such a short time ago, he’d been her fantasy. It had all gone bad.
“What’s wrong?” He didn’t have to be intuitive to know she was a wreck about something. After all, they’d agreed to avoid each other, yet she’d asked him to lunch. Without their spouses.
Where to begin? “Has Cat talked to you about”—about what? She couldn’t even say it aloud—“anything?”
“She wondered why you and Logan hadn’t wanted to get together.”
For God’s sake, she couldn’t believe Cat would mention that. “What did you say?” It didn’t matter, but she couldn’t help herself.
“That I thought maybe you guys weren’t comfortable with what we’d been doing so we should back off until you’re ready. Or not.”
That bitch. Alexis was angry all over again, and she knew she’d say it all wrong. Stupid, stupid to have done this. She should have dragged Logan over there tonight. Confronted them. Then again, what difference did it make now? Everything that had happened was done, over, the friendship was totally screwed, and so was her trust in Logan.
“Talk to me, Alexis.”
She didn’t know how long she’d been stewing. “I’m sorry I did this, Drew. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
He put his hand close to hers on the table, spoke softly, his voice layered beneath all the noise around them. “Since we’re here, why don’t you tell me what this is about.” He was so calm, so gentle, comforting.
Why couldn’t Logan have been like this?
“I don’t know any other way of saying it.” She heaved a great sigh that seemed like a weight on her chest. “I had to go home midday on Wednesday and I walked in on Logan and Cat.”
Drew just sat there. Looking at her. As if he didn’t get what she was saying.
Maybe she needed to be more specific. “They were—”
“I understand what they were doing,” he said sharply. His lips pressed flat, then he swallowed, and finally, the fingers of one hand drummed on the table.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I should have told you or not.” She felt sick. This was stupid, wrong. She hurt, so she had to make him hurt, too. Was that what this was all about? To make sure everyone else hurt the way she did?
God, how she longed for the days before Tahoe, when life was less complicated. When she still believed Logan wanted only her, and she didn’t ache for Drew’s touch.
Chapter Seventeen
Drew drummed his fingers until his knuckles ached. He didn’t know if Alexis should have told him either. Cat was fucking Logan in the middle of the day. No foursome, alone. He assumed they’d been in Alexis’s house. When his jaw started to ache, he realized he was grinding his teeth.
He didn’t know how he felt. Cat was Cat. She loved sex. She would have looked at it as an extension of the fantasy sex. If Alexis hadn’t found them—and obviously gotten upset—Cat might have told him that night in bed just before she took his cock in her mouth.
Yet there was a raw slice of betrayal. She’d wanted to go on separate dates, and he’d nixed the idea. So she understood he wanted to keep it to a foursome.
Their pizza arrived. “Here you go.” Their waiter slid the pizza platter onto a metal stand and shoved a flat serving utensil beneath a piece. “Anything else, folks?”
“We’re fine, thanks.” He wasn’t fine. That strange, happy, giddy schoolboy feeling that had run rampant through him the moment Alexis called now circled the drain right along with his appetite. In fact, he’d wanted to shout at the waiter to take the fucking thing away.
Scraping a hand down his face, he looked at Alexis’s stricken expression. In that moment, she wasn’t pretty. Her features were ravaged with emotion, anger, pain, fear, making her look her age.
“Should I have told you?” she asked again.
He felt his chest rise with a deep breath, but the air didn’t fill him. He was empty. He realized he didn’t want to know. He and Cat were fine. She’d fucked another man two days ago without his knowledge, and Drew had fucked her last night without a qualm. His life was good, comfortable, smooth, and he had a hot, insatiable wife.
Knowing meant he had to do something about it.
“Drew, please, I’m so sorry.”
Despite the sweetness of the past few weeks, the longing for her that seemed to invigorate him, he needed the ease of his life before Tahoe. He’d feared the whole thing would ruin the friendship. He’d ignored that it could ruin his marriage.
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Alexis. Punish Cat for you?”
She shrugged, helplessly. “I didn’t want to feel like I was keeping secrets. Like we were all lying to you.”
“You were right tell me”—even though he’d have preferred the lie—“and I think you know everything’s over.” All of it. His desire for her was now tainted, illicit, as wrong as Cat and Logan. He cocked his head. “It had to end this way. You just can’t do the kind of stuff we did without consequences.” In a way, he was glad it was Cat. Because he didn’t want to be the betrayer. It was so much easier to be the betrayed.
Hitching his hip, he dug out his wallet and threw some bills on the table.
“Drew,” she said as he rose.
“We’re okay, Alexis. We’re fine. We can all get over this and move on.”
That was a crock of shit. Everything had changed. Everything was fucked up. The worst was that he couldn’t even keep the good memories of Alexis. All he could do was walk away from her.
In the car, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
Cat answered on the second ring. “Hi, hon.”
“Is it true?” He
r long silence beat in the hot car. He didn’t need that excruciating pause to know Alexis hadn’t been lying. “We need to talk tonight when I get home,” he said, then ended the call without waiting for Cat’s answer. She didn’t ring back.
Tonight, they’d figure out if they could move past it.
* * * * *
Logan’s car was in the drive when Alexis got home that evening. Unusual, since he had the longer drive. She almost always had dinner ready when he came in, if he didn’t have a late meeting. But he must have left work early. Her stomach felt like it had dropped to her toes. Someone—either Drew or Cat—had told him about the lunch date, and Logan was probably pissed about what she’d done. Old stick-in-the-mud Alexis who was all worked up.
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