by JR King
“Oh please, give me a break. My relationship with her is neither here nor there, just a variable of happenstance. Trying to inculcate moral sense?”
“You want a break, Mitchell?” I demanded aptly. I skirted him when he made a grab at me. “I’ll give you a fucking break!” So the new Cold War began.
Late in the night, the three of us kicked up our heels, dancing to a perfect daisy chain of Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Usher. Sara could dance. Really dance. Arms raised over her head, crossed at the wrists, swiveling her hips shamelessly to the sensual rhythm. Even as I belted out nonsensical lyrics while shaking my behind boldly to the catchy, bass-heavy pop beat, my internal radar registered his presence before I saw him.
Alexander looked less than pleased as Sara and I swayed on the dance floor, pressed in between steamy, muscled males. His gaze was hooded, his jaw set in that familiar way, hardened with disapproval. There’s no room for discussion. I laughed. Everything about him screamed power, a power he did nothing to conceal.
Once the hits cleared, I was having a drink of water by the bar. Felt a hand on my shoulder and a seductive growl in my ear. “Nice night, wouldn’t you say?” A familiar gleam settled in a set of stark grey eyes. “Come with me.”
My hands fell to my waist. Alexander’s sinful proximity made my legs throb weakly beneath the pale mint green Karen Millen Diamante dress. His three-piece looked crisp and fresh, even though I knew he came straight here from work, or else he’d be wearing a business suit. In a recent article in Esquire magazine, he acknowledged he had fastidious tastes. As a man who dabbled in fashion, his sartorial backdrop was a suit, his work outfit a three-piece, a business suit for nights out, and for formal occasions different style tuxedos were de rigueur.
“No,” I mouthed.
“They’re outrageously plump, your lips, you know. When they form a no, all I can think about is having them wrapped around my cock.”
I should have been outraged. Should have slapped him and shoved the glass of water in his face and proclaimed him revolting before marching away with my dignity held in tact. Instead, I was intrigued, and paralyzed. He was crass and crude, there’s no doubt about that, but there’s something liberating about hearing a man state exactly why he found you attractive, even at the risk of infuriating you. Many guys had told me I had beautiful big eyes, and plump lips, and soft skin, and a slender figure. I could sum up a million other lines that really translated to I want you in my bed. Cheesy lines always put me off. Vulgar lines?
“No cameras, baby. Michael told me everything,”
It wasn’t until he touched me, faint but familiar, that my paralysis was broken. “Go away.” One eyebrow arched in question, suddenly I was forthright verbose. “And stop sizing me up.”
“Would you like to size me up?” He smiled.
“Disgusting.” I returned a polite smile. “A quick Google search clarified much.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that Internet articles are full of planted rumors and falsehood?” He took a step closer, brushing the tips of his fingers along my arm. “You look stunning tonight. I like this dress.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself. A stalker who has nice clothes.”
“Stalker?” He feigned shock. “I’ll go up hill and down dale for you.” The moment was electric; he tenderly lifted my chin with a finger. Inside the grasp of his grey gaze lay a universe of twinkling stars, the bursting dullness of luminous dwarfs making me wonder about formation.
I admired the glittering in the grayness of his eyes a little longer before smiling and shouting back: “Bye.”
“Cut it,” he groused, grabbing me by the waist. Looking every bit as dangerous as his voice threatened, he brought his hand about my hips. My hand came to rest on his with measured firmness, trying to stop him as he dragged me along.
Sara and Vanessa, who were this side of being drunk, turned a blind eye to my abrupt departure. A sea of people parted for us as if daring to stand in our way was harmful. We stopped at the coat check and, “I’ll see you home,” I was told.
In the limo, “Arrogant ass,” I gasped harshly, the words crushed between our lips. Why I’d waited for the privacy of a limo to set him straight was the question du jour. “Stop it.”
Even as I said the words, he was pulling me against him, as if demonstrating I belonged to him. His mouth was as unrepentant as his touch, his voice husky and low, “It’s been a week, baby. Throw me a bone.”
I let him in spasmodically with soft moans. A ghost of lemon-mint and honey haunted his tongue that stroked against mine. The solidity of his erection buffeted against my thighs, and the kiss was unsynchronized and chaotic, the cedar of his cologne whipped at my senses.
“You fucking tease. More,” he mumbled into my mouth, exploring every crevice of it with his eager, skilled tongue. I grasped his middle potently and opened up my mouth like a lotus flower. Lips bruised by the maleness of his kiss, my mouth tingled.
Minutes ticked by before he relinquished his hold over my mouth. “That felt fucking awesome.” His smile was pure mischief. I got caught up in its sudden openness, and found myself smiling too. Then it was gone, and the strictness was back. “How are we going to proceed?”
“I can’t do this,” I told him candidly, lips shaking with each heavy breath I took.
“I can do slow,” he growled, tapping my face, trapping my jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “We’ll go slow, okay, baby?” His passion died down and his eyes were doing that probing thing.
I tossed my hair out of my face. Mind over matter. I inhaled deeply, waiting for the feathery spasms of my muscles to quiet down.
“Why are you still with him?” He asked this bitter and almost whispered it in my ear, as if Mitchell were evil, looking angry with me.
“None of your business.” I wasn’t convinced by my tone.
His laugh was dry and humorless. “End it for good.” His uneven breath ruffled the stray hairs hanging across my forehead. “Too delicious, I’ll never wean off. Do you have any idea how much I need you?” His voice trailed off with a soft sigh, one hand going up the side of my neck so lightly I could barely feel it. With a groan in the back of his throat, he threw his arms around my shoulders, crushing me up against him as he anchored me. “I want to,” his hand flattened against my bare back as he pulled me in for another kiss and tugged my hair out of its ponytail, “taste the rest of you.” His hand slipped gently through my locks. “I’m begging you. PLEASE. You smell so fucking good.”
I tried to say something in response, but my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. Instead, I shook my head vigorously, loose hair tossing, my eyes wide.
As he brushed back my hair, I almost slipped into a kind of subdued torpor. He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “You’re wet, aren’t you, Ariel?”
I stiffened at that. At hearing the magical term I’d used to imply a connection between us when I met him that night.
“Don’t pretend you aren’t getting wet this minute. I know your body, know what makes you hot and creamy. Unlike other men, I can make you orgasm with the barest of touches. If you were so averse to my touch, you wouldn’t enjoy yourself. You may not like that I make your body sing and dance, and you may even despise the power I hold over you, but you were made for me.”
“I’m not wet,” I spat in indignation. How dare he make the assumption that his sick mind games aroused me? Never mind if it were true, he shouldn’t just assume and win.
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “Should I check?”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what exactly?” His mouth was tantalizingly close to mine. “No you’re not wet or no you don’t want me to check?” His hand meandered over my chest, inching toward the gap between my legs.
“Oh God.” I couldn’t help it; the reaction was totally Pavlovian. His skilled fingertips managed to affect me as if no man had ever touched me. Unable to hide my arousal, I buried my head into my chest, just like an ostrich buryin
g its head in sand.
He chuckled when he reached my slit and ran a finger along it. “You’re very wet.”
I let out a small whimper at the unfairness.
“Elena,” he soothed, pushing the tip of his finger just inside me. “This is your body reacting to the man who owns it. It knows it wants me, even if you can’t accept such a simple fact.” I gasped when he pinched my clit and drove his finger all the way inside me. “Elena,” he repeated, his eyes fixed on mine. I stared at him, at the contours of his face and his shapely neck as he slid the skirt of my dress slowly, inch by inch, up my thighs. He kept his eyes fixed on my face throughout, his lips parted just a little, his Adam’s apple bobbing. It almost looked like he was as nervous as I was. “Let me taste you.”
No.
“Why not?” he echoed my thoughts, looking me up and down with something like reverence. His erection was visible through his trousers, tenting the wool. Knowing I had that effect on him was absolutely intoxicating, but not as intoxicating as the man himself. When he drew me closer, my breasts pushed hard against his muscular chest, his erection hard and firm against my hip in turn. His hand slid down to cup my ass. I flinched slightly, knowing how damp the fabric of my panties felt, but even as his fingertips grazed the back end of the wet patch, his response wasn’t scorn but a low, knowing laugh. “I knew it. You were made for me.”
With my last sanctuary gone, a part of me was terrified by the thought of sex with Alexander, and yet a part of me was equally thrilled. A dense ache paralyzed me and I couldn’t move, could only sit hypnotized as his smooth fingers trailed up to cup my sex.
“Alexander,” I verbalized hoarsely.
His fingers stopped their magic for a split second before diving back into my skin with reckless abandon. “I did warn you,” he murmured, caressing my cheek with one hand just before his lips engulfed mine once more. “I need to taste you. Let me eat that pussy. Please.”
My heart leapt up at hearing how casually he talked about things that made me want to hide my heath underneath pillows. “Don’t force this.” Without meaning to, I gave him a plaintive moue, already missing his hands on me.
“Shit.” His eyes seemed to flash in the dim light. “I wouldn’t do that,” he deadpanned.
I watched him with a fusion of lust and regret as he moved back and began to straighten my dress. I didn’t use the clicker to let the car in, just thanked him for bringing me home.
Exiting the limo, I turned up my face to the starless sky to catch the light rain. It started raining harder. Moisture dripped from the balding trees onto the asphalt, evaporating within seconds of impact. Kissing is always better when it’s done in the rain. Neither of us denied ourselves this point-proving performance. Before turning away, I couldn’t keep the curious words from spilling out. “Am I going to see you again?”
Shadows clustered on Alexander’s face, and the streetlights revealed that he was smiling warmly. He remained still for a moment, but not long enough for me to wonder if I’d sounded needy. “What do you think?” He took charge, pecked my mouth, then the tip of my nose. “End it, Elena. I promise, I’ll take it slow.” Raindrops slid from his face to mine.
Though I could feel his warmth, and his need for me, in those drops, I was suspicious. Too good to be true and all that stuff. The wind had no whisper as we looked at each other. Our breaths curled in the air between our wet faces, words hanging in the air like trembling dewdrops hanging on the tip of grass blades.
“I will think about it.”
*
The next day, I stayed in denial. A rainstorm had blown through and exhausted itself the prior night; nothing marred the balmy sky this morning. I went downstairs to make myself a steamy cup of java and went back to my room. I crawled under the covers and reached for my laptop.
I loved my MacBook Air. This laptop was one of the first expensive things I bought for myself, an overpriced luxury, but c’est la vie. Two years ago, when Maria spilled a glass of water on my MS laptop, I needed a new one, and although there were way more affordable options out there, I was drawn to the sleek silver Apple laptop because it’s the laptop to have. One of the geniuses at the Genius bar must have smelled the Blackberry in my Michael Kors, “May I perchance interest you in a demonstration of a bestselling product?” Worldwide, he added, as if that changed everything. He was so sweet and helpful and smart, and I didn’t want to look dumb. The customary pile of bullshit was absent in his speech, and the software was neither watered-down nor greatly virus-affected. Basically it came down to this: if you have a Ferrari in the garage, you don’t park a rickshaw beside it. Paired with an iPhone and iPad, I felt like a walking commercial as I giddily waltzed out of the crowded Apple store on University Avenue. Wrong, I chastised myself, and instantly clutched the trendy and unmistakable white shopping bags with great nonchalance. No one who holds an Apple shopping bag in public acts giddy, we all do that within the privacy of our homes. All I had to do was add a Magic Mouse to my ensemble the next year.
Anyway, cooped up in a warm dimension, I spent the next hours beavering away on my Loremaster title. Yes, I played WoW. I used to be all in my head, angst-ridden and emo, and fortunately, these days I couldn’t give a flying fuck about angsty issues. I had farming to do, and characters to develop. Not just fun with the Alliance, or the Horde, GMs from allover the world contacted me to train their PvP players, or tank/heal dungeons and raids. I was self-made, the Queen of Eastern Kingdoms. Stormwind City and Ironforge and Silvermoon City were my favorite cities. I’d discovered Vanilla in my teenage years, and being an only child, I fell in love with it. You might laugh at the following, but DPSing a dungeon on Saturday morning with a cup of coffee in hand felt like paradise—to me.
Evermore captivated by the unknown, I refocused on research about Alexander Turner, rereading Wiki passages I hadn’t really read the first time I legitimately googled him. While reading, I was pretty sure I was having a hot flash, or I was coming down with a severe stomach virus. After some time passed, I found myself staring at the same point on every page, reading the same thing I started an instant before. Playboy of legend whose long-term commitment track is tenfold worse than George Clooney, yet girls cannot stop drooling over him. A figment of a fevered imagination dominated my thoughts: Alexander Turner and Elena Anderson. Quickly the voice of reason took over, screaming in my head like a four-year-old having a tantrum at the supermarket. My life-altering decision made, I launched my NPCScan add-on and tried taming Aotona in Sholazar Basin.
Later that day, much later, Mitchell and I had dinner.
“What did you do in my absence, Elena?”
I bit down on a herbed breadstick. “When the cat’s away, the mice freely play,” I answered with a drawn-out, wicked cackle.
His face could only be described as pained. “I swear I was in—,”
“London. I know, Mitchell. Could we dispense with the drama? Look, if you want Anna back, go for it. If you want me, prove yourself. It ends there.”
“I want you. I miss feeling you wrapped around my cock.” The way he spoke—part anguish, part euphoria—ensured me that I’d taken the right decision.
We sat in a private booth upfront at Deuxave and talked over the din of arriving crowds. At some point, Mitchell slipped his arm to the top edge of the banquette and played with my hair, tugging gently, wrapping it around his fingers.
“I want another glass of wine.” I removed my hair tie, allowing my hair to spill down my back.
Mitchell signaled the captain, who, after pouring the wine, traveled back down to a rowdy group celebrating an anniversary.
The restaurant was thinning out, the wine emboldening both of us.
“I didn’t fuck her, Elena. I swear.” Mitchell’s eyes stayed fixed on mine for a beat too long.
“I never said you did.”
A tiny frown puckered his brow. “Turner caught your fancy?”
I strummed my fingers on the table. “Says who?”
; “Says me. I call a spade a spade.”
“Careful.” Irrespective of his past, Alexander was a hard dream to let go of, for me. I clutched the stem of my wineglass tighter. “If he had, I’d be having dinner with him tonight, wouldn’t I?”
Relief stole across his face—across the muscles of his shoulders. The glass columns that supported my uncertainty shattered. I was wearing simple attire; a creamy sleeved poplin shell, a black skirt, and demure black lingerie. Mitchell pushed the hem of my skirt up my thighs until he bared the lacy bands of my stockings. “Ever had sex in a public powder room?”
When I drew my gaze back to his eyes, I saw amusement, as if he knew what I was considering. “Ethical conundrum aside—,”
The warmest of lips covered mine, stifling the residual words of protest that wanted to escape them. Soft lips, firm and dominant all the same, locking perfectly around mine. His tongue didn’t waste time with gentle probing before invading my mouth, claiming it, controlling it with a soul-searing kiss. When he let out a breath in my mouth, I tasted a tang of lemon. Earlier, the sorbet had been full of flavor, but Mitchell tasted better. Losing myself in the kiss, I suckled his tongue and heard harsh moans rising up in his throat.
“Fuck.” Mitchell crunched into my philtrum and licked my upper lip before pulling back to catch his breath. “You’re so fucking good at kissing.”
“That makes two of us.” The ongoing lingering friction between us seemed kind of pointless. I eyed the hardness in his trousers. “Not here. Take me home instead.”
Our waiter brought the check and Mitchell dropped his card without looking at the total.
I jutted my chin at the waiter’s departing back. “What if it was wrong? Overcharging happens frequently.”
His hand crawled down my chest to grope the skinny belt that looped around the high-belted crepe dress. “Once I take care of that not-fucked-enough pussy, this won’t matter.”
