The waitress looked back over her shoulder and crawled slowly onto his lap and my heart tore right out of my chest. Sparks of painful heat burst out along my skin as her tits bounced before his eyes and her ass pushed into his lap over and over. His jaw locked tight. I watched the muscles of his face clench and twist as his eyes flittered back and forth between us.
It hurt like hell. I didn’t want him looking at her and comparing us. I’d just come up lacking. I just wanted him to look at me.
My hands fisted against my legs and I wanted to scream and rip her off him.
That’s when I realized—when I finally faced the truth—I didn’t want to see him with someone else. I couldn’t. I was completely falling for him. His eyes were back on me while she grinded her ass into him. A heavy feeling spread across my chest and burned in my belly. I gave him a shaky smile, the only thing I could muster, and I stood up to leave. I needed too. Let him go home with her tonight. Or whatever it is that goes on here.
“Where are you going?” he asked in a husky voice.
“I’m not feeling so well,” I mumbled, “I need some air.”
“Okay,” he said, as the woman—the girl—continued to dry hump his crotch. Her hands were wrapped around his neck, her little bikini top was pulled around her perfectly rounded little breasts and her nipples were brushing up against his jaw. “If that’s what you want. I’ll catch up with you later.” His eyes glanced from me to her nipples and back to me.
If that’s what I want? I wanted to throw cold water at them and stop them from doing what they were doing. She looked like a dog in heat. I wanted him to run after me. Tell me he didn’t want her. I wanted him to tell me he only wanted me. I wanted to be enough.
Damn it. This was all wrong. I shouldn’t be feeling this way.
I needed to get back into reality. He wasn’t mine. I had no right to be jealous. I had no right to anything. I walked quickly out of the club and jumped in the first cab I saw, praying like mad the driver didn’t turn out to be a serial killer, although with the way I was feeling right about then, he’d be the one found chopped up in a suitcase in the back of a stripper’s car.
When I arrived back at the villa, I changed into a comfortable sleep shirt, slid under the safety of the bed covers, and curled into a ball. How could he do that to me? How could any man stay there with those women when the people who really feel something for them are waiting for them back home or in stupid fake honeymoon suites?
A minute later, I heard the door to the villa open and heavy footsteps thump down the hallway. Within seconds, James climbed into bed next to me and wrapped his arms around me. The feeling of relief was unreal. My eyes burned with emotion as I hugged his arms and nestled in closer to him.
“You okay?” he asked, warm breath tickling my ear.
All I could manage was a grunt.
“It’s hard to talk to people and tell them how you really feel. What you really think, huh?” he whispered.
“Easy to say things through email or private messages,” I murmured, “or when intoxicated.”
“You should just say the things you want, Lex. I told you I’d give you anything you needed here.” Here. Only here. That was the catch, wasn’t it? That was the thing that hurt the most. We had a time limit and the fantasies in my head had been projected into the far future where we were something other than the fun we were having. “Tell me what you want, Lex.”
I bit down on my lip and squashed up my face to stop any emotion from peeking out. Even though we were playing this fantasy game together, I could never tell him what I really wanted. His answer would be a resounding no and that would mess up the time we had left. “Just stay with me tonight.” My voice shook with stupid, stupid insecurity. Moronic vulnerability. What we all at one time suffer from. Fuck, guys don’t get it. All us women want is to be wanted. Cherished. We didn’t want to have to ask for it or beg for it.
And we wanted to be enough to deserve it. We want to feel like someone knows we’re worth it. We want someone to stay. Pick us out of the rest of them. Be everything for that one person.
He crawled under the covers and slid in behind me, molding the length of his body perfectly around mine. A knot twisted itself deep beneath my breastbone, spreading a disorienting warmth low into my belly.
“I think about sleeping like this every night,” his voice was low—his lips pressing against the back of my neck and sliding slowly, reverently over the base of my skull and across the soft skin of my shoulders.
The heat from his mouth kick started a steady throb between my legs. My ribcage felt as if it twisted tighter —I could barely breathe in deep enough.
I tilted my head over my shoulder, the one his lips covered, the one his tongue was darting out gently licking, and looked at him.
His eyes pierced mine and my heart nearly beat out of my chest from the sudden heavy emotion and ache that pulled at my heart.
“You didn’t like tonight,” he whispered between kisses.
“No, I didn’t,” I said, tilting my head back around so I didn’t have to look into his eyes any longer. His hand reached up and held my face, pausing for a moment then continuing with the assault of my skin with his tongue.
“All I saw was you. All I wanted was you.” The tip of his tongue fluttered down my back, sending chills and heat along my spine. He nipped at my ribcage—just below my shoulder blade, and I gasped from the contact. “I came back here for you.”
“Why?” I squeaked out, biting down hard on my lip. His feathery soft kisses traveled to the middle of my back, just above my bottom, and his teeth nipped playfully at my skin. His hands slipped away from my face and trailed down over my back. The way he touched me was full of tenderness—with a hard edge of refined restraint. His body was tense and coiled hard against me, and I knew at any moment I could be taken hard; ravaged, soiled and I wanted it—I wanted it all.
Through full open-mouth kisses against my skin, he whispered, “Nobody ever made me feel like this, Lexa. Nobody.”
What the hell did that mean?
I never got the chance to ask because he slipped deep inside me slow and steady. All night long.
19
Jameson
“Believing there’s only one person in this world for you is like trying to capture lightening in a jar. It ain’t real.” @Kavon #AllYouGetIsEletrocuted #Shocking
I had her in every way possible. I think I’ve been inside Lexa more than I’ve been in any one other person. We tried things I never did with anyone else. And I didn’t want it to end.
We spent our days on the beach even when it rained, asking each other question after question. She’d ask the most mundane questions in her utmost serious expressions. “Tell me…what’s your favorite…” she began, then arched one eyebrow up dramatically and continued, “cartoon?”
“That’s a very personal question,” I chided. “I honestly can’t believe you had the guts to ask me something so intimate.”
She snorted and swept her windblown hair into a band and tied it into some sort of sexy, wild knot-bun-style. “Well?”
“Batman Beyond. Yours?”
“Old school, way before my time; Pinky and The Brain.”
“That’s classic. Okay, what’s your favorite color?” I asked, reaching over and tucking a loose strand of hair she’d missed behind her ear.
“Purple. You?”
“Blue.” And what I really meant was the insane color of her eyes. But saying that aloud wouldn’t be good. Not good at all.
“Music?” she asked.
“Classic rock,” I answered. The line of questioning continued for hours, turning and spinning into days. Every inconsequential detail of our lives—books, movies, vacations, blogs, political views, every little impersonal tidbit of information, we tossed back and forth to each other. I couldn’t honestly remember the last time I wanted to know more about a woman, or wanted to tell everything to a woman for that matter.
Each night as the sun sank below the horizon, splashing crisp, fiery colors across the sky, the questions turned more meaningful and not easily answered. I wanted, no, needed to know why a woman as brilliant as Lexa could settle for a boy like Kevin Trager? Why hadn’t she really forgiven him? What were her ambitions in life? She couldn’t want to just be a fact checker for the rest of her career. What was her childhood like? Her first kiss?
“I noticed the lack of a father figure at your Un-Wedding. What’s the story there?” I asked.
“Un-Wedding? That’s what you’re calling it?” she snorted.
I shrugged. “Just answer the question, brat.”
She poked me in the shoulder with a finger and laughed. “My father left when I was eleven. Had an affair with someone he was working with. The classic cliché affair. He’ll send a Christmas card every year, sometimes a birthday card if he remembers.” She smiled brightly, pretending it didn’t kill her to be so rejected by her own father. A low roll of tension boiled in my blood. Some men should never get the honor of having children—especially little girls—when all they’d ever end up being is jacked up sperm donors. Beyond that, now I understood her more, now it started to become clearer why she was so self-conscious.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked low.
She shook her head. “It’s been so long I’m used to it already. He chose my stepmother over my mom and me. There’s nothing I could have done or said to stop it. Why let it affect me now?”
“But it does affect you.”
My words rattled her. It was easy to tell by the darkening pink of her cheeks. But she asked questions too. Uncomfortable ones.
“Why Sophia? What did you see in her?” she asked.
“Nothing, really. She was easily available. She threw herself at me one night and I just went with it. I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time, so I spent the night with her.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, ashamed and not even understanding why. “I never thought there was anything more for me. I never really felt strongly about anyone. Just sexually. I mean, I’ve dated plenty…but like Sophia said, I was always emotionally inaccessible. I’d never met anyone I wanted anything more with. I’m not opposed to the idea of relationships and marriage. I’ve never felt that way about someone before. I’m not sure I ever will. But I know I certainly didn’t feel it toward her.” I exhaled loudly and leaned back, “I always felt bad for her because I could never muster up any real feelings.”
She nodded her head slowly as she looked out over the horizon—her expression deep in thought. I watched her face carefully, wondering what she felt about my words, but she gave nothing away, just stared out across the water, impassively.
“It’s bittersweet,” she murmured, turning her head toward me and smiling tentatively. “Having these beautiful feelings for another person—the butterflies, the comfort, the wanting to spend time with someone. It’s such a breathtaking feeling. Until you taste the bitterness of them not feeling the same way back. It’s hard to let go of that breathtaking feeling. So hard.” Her eyes were wide, as if she shocked herself with her own words.
Yet I understood. I really did. Because I could already taste how bittersweet it was going to be when our time was over.
I sure as hell didn’t like the taste at all.