Alex (17 page)

Long after Alex fucked me up against my front door, and long after we stuffed ourselves with cold sesame noodles and fried rice while sitting on my living room rug, eating our meal from my coffee table, and only after Alex pushed me down to said living room floor and took me in a frenzy again, do I finally tell him about what happened with Mara.

He pulls me up from the floor and into his arms, walking me back to my bedroom, where we crawl into my bed and pull the covers up snugly around us. He holds me while I share with him the details of Mara’s overdose.

Alex doesn’t say a word while I talk but just strokes my back with his fingers and every so often grazes his lips against my temple. When I admit with no small amount of shame that I’m terrified I’m going to lose Mara, and that I am doubting my own abilities as a counselor, Alex takes his fingers and places them against my lips to silence my words.

“Don’t,” he says quietly. “Don’t doubt yourself…not for a minute.”

Turning my head to the side to dislodge his fingers from my mouth, I argue, “But I don’t think I can reach her. You should have seen her in the hospital. She wouldn’t even look at me. Wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Some people don’t want to be reached. Some people love the misery.”

“No,” I deny adamantly. “She doesn’t love misery. She hates what the drugs have done to her parents.”

Leaning down, Alex kisses me softly. “But she took the drugs to avoid the misery. And she loved how the drugs made her feel. I imagine it’s going to be hard to reach her right now. She’s tried them twice…both times she didn’t die but experienced escape from her misery. I’m not sure there’s anything you could say to her, Sutton, that will get her to stop. You’re just going to have to keep plugging away with her, and hope that you will eventually get through.”

I let my gaze slide to the left and stare at the moon filtering through my window. Alex is right…I have to keep pushing at her and pray to God that she will be careful.

“Let’s try to get some sleep,” Alex says as he continues to stroke my back. “I have to get up early to meet Garrett at the gym.”

“Okay,” I whisper, wiggling in tighter to him as I wrap my arm securely around his waist.

I listen to the sounds of our breathing even out and grow more measured. Just as my eyes start to droop, I hear Alex say, “Sutton?”

“Yeah?”

“You reached me. When no one else ever has.”

My eyes pop wide open and my heartbeat skips erratically over his words. They are meant as a means of bolstering my confidence, because Alex Crossman by admitted history has some dark demons in his closet. I have no clue what they are because he hasn’t shared them, but I do know that they have shaped the person he used to be. And I do know that he’s apparently not the same person he was before we met.

Tilting my head slightly, I bring my lips to the skin on his chest and give him a kiss. “Thank you,” I tell him with a smile on my face.

He squeezes me tightly and then I close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

“This is starting to become a habit,” Sutton pouts but she doesn’t sound in the least bit perturbed.

“It’s a good habit, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m all for making this a permanent habit.”

We’re sitting on the floor of my living room, eating delivery pizza from my coffee table. Sutton is wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else. I hastily threw on a pair of workout shorts when the pizza dude rang the doorbell.

I had intended to cook dinner for her tonight, something I’ve never done for another woman in my life. Hell, I’ve never even
bought
another woman dinner in my life.

Yes, my plan was to cook dinner, then see if I could surpass the heights we reached last night when she confronted me with a see-through robe and a box of rubbers. I don’t know that I had ever been so turned on in my life.

But unfortunately, when Sutton showed up at my apartment tonight and I saw her standing there, looking beyond amazing with her fiery hair in a high ponytail and wearing nothing more than her classic jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I was overcome with such lust, I pulled her quickly in and pushed her down on my living room couch.

She didn’t complain or dissuade me—not that it would have done any good. Instead, she just gave the most pleasurable sigh I’ve ever heard when I made short work of stripping her bare and burying my face between her legs.

I gave her no mercy and within seconds she was moaning and writhing on the micro-suede cushions, her hands gripping my hair for dear life. She tasted fucking divine and I plunged my tongue in and out of her ruthlessly, fueled on by her groans of pleasure and the way her hips would buck hard against my chin. It turned me on so much, I may have gone a little crazy on her. I put my tongue to work in other ways, licking and sucking at her while my fingers pushed in deep.

She came fast, and hard, and she screamed my name again, and I swear I almost came just from hearing that. I laid my chin just above her pelvic bone and watched her come back to awareness. When the fog cleared from her eyes and she focused in on me, she grinned and said, “Get naked.”

And then I had a condom on and was pounding inside of her and it was just as good, if not better, than last night. She urged me to go harder, deeper. She dug her nails in my ass and even bit me on my shoulder which in turn caused me to fuck her just a little bit rougher.

And then I came super fucking hard, way faster than I ever have before. So hard, I had lights winking in my peripheral vision, and even after the shudders had gone silent within me, I found I wanted her again.

But that’s when I noticed a burning smell in the air, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a haze of smoke above us.

“Fuck!” I yelled as I jumped up and ran buck-ass naked into the kitchen. Opening the oven door, I looked in and saw that the lasagna I had put under the broiler just before she rang the doorbell was burnt to a black crisp, smoke curling away from the pan and rising into the air.

“Guess we’re ordering pizza, huh?”

Turning around, I saw Sutton standing there—just as naked as I was—with a grin on her face.

“Sorry,” I muttered with an apologetic grin. “Guess I got sidetracked when I saw you in my doorway.”

Sutton sauntered up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She pressed her body in warmly to mine, and I felt my cock jump at the contact. “I’m glad it burned. I rather liked the way you greeted me tonight.”

I kissed her then, softly, because I hadn’t even bothered to kiss her before when I was just fucking her in my living room a moment ago. Her tongue met mine and we moved our mouths against each other with delicate softness.

And while the kiss was sweet and sensitive, it in no way diminished my lust, which was growing for her once more, as evidenced by the fact I was getting hard again.

“How hungry are you?” I asked as I pulled away from her lips.

“Not very,” she whispered, her fingertips grazing across one of my nipples.

Fuck, that felt good.

“We’ll order pizza later,” I told her as I bent down and lifted her up over my shoulder.

Giggling, she braced herself with her hands on my lower back. “What are we doing now?”

Smoothing my hand over her ass as I walked out of my kitchen and toward my bedroom, I told her, “Round two. Then we’ll eat.”

Yeah, we went at it just as hard, and I love the wild, uninhibited fucking with Sutton. She loves it too, I can tell. Just the thought of it starts my dick twitching again, so I take another slice of pizza from the box to refocus my attention for just a few minutes.

“So has Brandon tried to contact you?” I ask casually. I’m not worried about the moron. He doesn’t present a threat to me, but I don’t want him bugging Sutton if she’s not into him. She doesn’t need the stress.

“Yeah, he called me a few times today but I haven’t called him back yet,” she says, picking a piece of pepperoni off her slice of pizza and folding it delicately with her fingers. Then she pops it in her mouth, licking the grease off.

Yup…my dick jumps again just watching her do something as innocuous as eating a piece of pepperoni.

“Why do you have to call him back? Just ignore him,” I say simply, taking another bite of pizza.

Sutton shrugs her shoulders with a quick jerk, her brows furrowed inward. “I guess I feel like I owe him an explanation or something.”

Setting my slice of pizza down on my paper plate, I wipe my hands with a napkin, ball it up and then throw it down on the table. “Why do you think you owe him? He dumped you, right?”

My question isn’t asked with any censure implied. I’m genuinely curious as to why she feels this way.

“I guess because there was a time I loved him. And because he once gave me an explanation. He didn’t have to, but it was important to him to do so. I may not like what he told me, but I’ve always appreciated his honesty.”

My gut clenches a bit over hearing her proclaim she had love for the guy. I know rationally that they once loved each other, but hearing it said out loud, in conjunction with the fact that she feels an obligation to him, doesn’t feel so hot. A flash of jealousy hits me hard and I try to tamp it down.

And because I really need to know exactly how she feels about me, and because I’m too chickenshit to ask her outright about it, I go in a roundabout way. “Do you still have feelings for him? Want me to back out of the picture?”

I pose the question in a lighthearted way, trying to convey that her answer isn’t really that important. Only I know—in this very moment—how fucking important it is, which I suppose is why I’m holding my breath awaiting her answer.

Sutton picks up her own napkin and wipes her fingers. After she lays it down on her plate, she leans forward onto her hands and knees and crawls toward me across the carpet and around the edge of the coffee table. Without pausing a beat, she crawls right onto my lap and straddles me.

My hands immediately go under her bare ass, gripping her softly, and the semi I have been battling since the pizza arrived goes full mast.

She wraps her arms around my neck, leaning her head down and kissing me softly on my neck. When she pulls back, she looks at me thoughtfully. “No, I don’t have feelings for him. Nothing beyond a vague fondness for what we had. He was my first love, so that was special. And I most certainly don’t want you to back out of the picture. Any other questions?”

“Actually…I do have another question,” I tell her. It’s something I’ve been mulling over since last night. “I was snooping through your medicine cabinet at your house before I left this morning, looking for some mouthwash.”

Her eyebrows rise upward over my confession and she smirks at me in good humor. “Sneaky.”

“I know,” I confirm. “I found your mouthwash, which I’m hoping made for a better kiss goodbye, but I also noticed the birth control pills in there.”

“Yeah?” she drawls in question over where I’m going.

I hesitate for a moment, which is completely un-Alex-like. I never hesitate over anything, which is a testament to the overinflated ego that my father helped to create.

“I want to do away with the condoms. I want to fuck you bare—with nothing in between us.”

I let my words penetrate, offering nothing more. She has nothing to worry about from me. I’ve always worn a condom. I’ve also been tested every year in my routine physical, which is required by the Cold Fury. I’ll provide her that information but I want to see what her reaction is first.

Sutton’s eyes go wide in astonished wonder. I notice a stain of blush on her cheeks, and I start to think that maybe I’ve gone too far in my desire to possess her in a way that’s been different from all others. But then I notice the heat that seeps into those lovely hazel eyes and she licks at her bottom lip. She’d never be a poker player in the bedroom. I can see clearly that the idea turns her on.

“Okay,” she whispers, her legs subconsciously gripping against my hips a bit harder. “I’ve never been without a condom before. I mean…the pills are to regulate my period. I was on them long before I ever had sex for the first time.”

“I’ve always worn a condom before,” I assure her hastily. “And I’ve been tested. I can give you my records.”

Shaking her head immediately, she tightens her arms around my neck. “No, I trust you—”

“I don’t mind,” I interject.

Leaning in to kiss me, to silence me, she pulls back and looks at me deeply. “No…I trust you, Alex.”

Guilt flashes through me because maybe she shouldn’t. I’m completely telling her the truth about my sexual history and the fact I’m clean, but the fact that she trusts me so implicitly means her feelings are getting deep. Mine are too, but let’s face it—anything more than a scratch against the surface is practically subterranean for me.

I just hope she’s not falling in so far that I have the power to destroy her when my inherent nature takes over.

“Okay,” I tell her, rather than warning her away, because I want her too much in this very intimate way to listen to my own misgivings.

“Any other questions?” she asks cheekily.

Grinning at her, I rub my fingertips over her soft skin. “Nope. That satisfied my curiosity and has made me very eager to fuck you again.”

I start to lean in to kiss her, because damn, I want her bad. The thought of having no barrier between my hardness and her softness has my blood raging. But she pulls her head back a bit. “Well, then I have some curiosities of my own.”

I raise my eyebrows, quirking my lips upward. “Really? What might those be?”

“Have you ever had a serious relationship before? Been in love?”

I hold my smile but it dims a bit. “No. Never.”

“Not even in high school? Or whatever you call it in Canada?”

Chuckling, I reach down and pull her legs so they wrap around my waist, and she settles down onto my erection with nothing but the material of my shorts separating us. She squirms a little but waits for my answer.

Giving her a slight tilt of my hips so I rub against the heat between her legs, and just so she knows that I find that more interesting than this conversation, I tell her, “It’s called high school there too, and no—not even in high school.”

“You didn’t have a girlfriend in high school? A stud like you?” she teases, and in other circumstances, I would enjoy the joking nature of this conversation. But she’s hitting close to a subject that doesn’t produce warm memories for me.

“I was too busy training. My dad wasn’t big on me dating.”

Sutton’s mouth hangs open and her smile fades some, but I can tell she’s not certain exactly what I mean by that. “You weren’t allowed to date? Ever?”

“Never,” I confirm.

She pulls her lower lip in between her teeth and chews on it thoughtfully, which is always a sexy-as-fuck move. I contemplate leaning forward and grabbing it with my own teeth when she sidetracks me. “I remember reading online that you left home when you were sixteen to play in the Quebec Juniors. Surely then—”

Shaking my head, I cut her off. “I left home then, but my dad still controlled me. He forbade me from dating or having a relationship with someone. Hell, he forbade me to have any friends. Training was my number one priority. He wanted me to be the best and to do that, I had no room in my life for anything else.”

Sutton stares at me, her eyes doleful. It borders on the look of pity that I thought she had shown me before, which gets my hackles up a bit. “That’s terrible,” she says softly. “You didn’t have a childhood, did you?”

The sympathy in her voice completely kills my hard-on, and I find myself suddenly needing a bit of space. I easily lift her from my lap and set her down gently on the carpet beside me. Rolling to my feet, I busy myself with picking up the pizza box and paper plates from the table. Sutton follows suit and helps me clean up.

As I turn toward the kitchen, I attempt to alleviate the darkness of the moment by saying, “It was a long time ago. I’ve more than made up for the fun I missed out on back then.”

Following me into the kitchen, Sutton asks, “How? How do you make up for missing out on good times…having those memories?”

“Who says I don’t have good memories?” I ask, hoping to throw her off the scent of tragic circumstances.

Throwing the paper plates in the garbage, I turn to take the trash from Sutton’s hand and deposit it in the bin as well. She walks over to the sink and washes her hands.

“Well…you said you didn’t date…didn’t have any friends. Always had to train. It sounds lonely.”

I don’t confirm or deny that because it
was
lonely. She continues on. “I mean, you didn’t have a first love, or a first kiss with someone special?”

I like Sutton. I mean, a lot. More than any other woman I’ve ever known. But I see the starry look in her eyes, the utter romanticism seeping out of her pores as she laments the fact that I didn’t have what she deems to be a pretty important rite of passage. I think that means she finds me broken in some way, and while that may very well be true, I don’t like being the victim.

So I decide to give her a reminder that I am who I am, and that I’ve done just fine with the way things are. I also want to give her a reminder that there’s still a dark side to me that she can never take for granted.