Just One (Dangerously Dimpled) (5 page)

“She thought he was giving her a ride
home. They’ve got a Junior League brunch in the morning. She had to buy a
special hat for it and everything. Peach with a white fishnet veil and a little
pearl broach at the side,” Paige sighs, sleepy.

Alex crouches like a lion at the end of
the bed, prowling toward me on hands and knees. His erection is back with a
vengeance.

I press the phone tight against my ear
and do my best to put a sexy, unbothered smile on my face as my heart pumps
wildly. I pray the flush spreading across my skin doesn’t give me away. “Well
that sounds…nice.” Alex reaches out to pry apart my thighs but I cross my legs
against his assault.

“You’re a terrible liar, Charlie. I know
it’s not your thing but it’s important to Cadence, and Alex is her date. If he
doesn’t turn up soon, she may well strangle him with a pair of silk gloves. I
mean, she just got elected to the board last month, showing up without her date
isn’t an option.”

Her
date.
Alex smiles
wickedly at me as I shoo his hands from my breasts. His eyes show no sign of
deception but if he’s here with me now, and promised to Cadence tomorrow, one
of us is leaving Dallas short two dimples. I want to ask Paige if they’re
serious, but he surprises me by gently running his lips along my side, and a giggle
escapes.

“What was that?” Paige’s voice sounds
decidedly less tired and drunk.

I bite my lip to hold in a moan as he
manages to force my thighs apart. “Nothing.”

Alex pulls a softened nipple into his
mouth and lavishes it with his tongue.

“You sound funny, what’s going on?”

“I was just, ahhhh-ha-ha-ha…” I squirm
against the delectable invasion of fingers on my neither region. I swat at him
with my free hand, but he’s persistent, and I’m horny.

“Charlie? Do I need to come up there? Are
you sick or something?”

Alex’s smile is devilish and unapologetic
as he kisses my jawline. His skilled finger moves inside me. “Paige I gotta go…
to bed, I’ll, uh, I’ll call you in the morning, okay? Bye.” I half throw the
phone back into its cradle.

 
“That was very naughty of you.” My hands
move over his chest as he continues to drive me wild.

“You want to see naughty? I can show you
naughty.” His fingers leave me and he grabs my wrists, pulling them above my
head. “Why don’t we see how much pleasure you can stand?”

I look to the floor and he follows my
gaze.

“Hand me that belt,” I say.

“Did you just spank me?”

A deep, throaty laugh erupts behind me.

“I can’t believe you did that.” My
fingers dig into the quilted cream headboard.

“Think of it as punishment for the
torture you just put me through.”

The delicious prickle of Alex’s leg hair
brushes against the backs of my legs. His hand reaches around and cups my
breast, caressing it gently before pinching my nipple, teasing me.

I sigh. “You’re the one who wanted to see
which of us could hold out longer. It’s not my fault you’re such a wimp.” I
push back against him, eager to feel his erection inside of me.
Slap.
“Ouch!”

“As your lawyer-”

“I don’t recall putting you on retainer-”

“As your
self-appointed
representation, Miss Davies, I strongly advise you
hold that wicked, wicked tongue of yours. It’s going to get you in trouble.”

“You didn’t seem to mind when I was using
it to help you with your, ah,
caseload
.”

Alex’s hand leaves my breast to roughly
grab my hip. He pulls me down his length in one long, hard stroke. Four hours,
four orgasms, and one very abused black-leather belt later, he’s still rock
solid. I clench around him and smile when he whimpers.

My bottom slaps against his pelvis, a
fantastically erotic noise that fills me with fresh excitement. “Do it again.”
I pant, forcing my hips to match his speed.

“What?”

“You know…” I beg, unwilling to voice
aloud what my treacherous body wants.

Slap.
“That?” Alex rubs the spot his hand just
reddened.

“Yes.” My voice is breathy. I’m choked
with lust.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
“Yes!” I
scream, relishing the hot burn. My body thrums with need.

 
I’ve never been one for wild sex but the
feel and sound of his hand slapping me while he takes me from behind wakens
something uninhibited.

He slows his movements and presses his
chest against the smooth skin of my back. Lips trail a series of soft kisses
across my shoulder blades.

 
At this angle, his pubic bone is flush
against me, his dick buried deep inside. Alex minimizes the reach of his
thrusts to mere centimeters but every three strokes he rolls his hips. I want
to scream, whether in agony or ecstasy, I’m not sure.

“Fuck me, Alex.” I try to buck my hips
against him. It’s impossible. His hold on me is unrelenting.

“Give me a minute.” His forehead presses
into the nape of my neck. “I’m about to lose it here.”

“Please, touch me.” I plead, encouraging
him to pick up the pace by rocking back and forth.

“Charlie,” he gasps, “you’re in serious
danger of killing me.”

“Wrongful death by doggie style?”

I literally feel his laughter inside me.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” He lifts
his head from my back and slowly, excruciatingly, begins thrusting his hips
forward once more. His hands grab my shoulders for better leverage. “I’ve never
been this turned on in my life.”

I close my eyes against the flood of
satisfaction he’s bringing to my body and sigh. “Ditto.”

“I tell you this is the best sex of my
life and you say, “Ditto?””

“I live in a trailer park, what do you
expect?”

Another of his laughs rumbles through me.
“Funny, sexy, smart, thank God you’re clumsy too or we might never have met.”
He picks up the pace.

“You talk too much, Ramirez. Shut up and
fuck me.”

Being a good little rich boy, he does as
he’s told.

In romances, they always go on about the
smell of sex lingering in the air. I don’t know what sex is supposed to smell
like, but five hours after Alex dropped the sugar bowl outside my door, the
room smells like maple syrup.

“So good,” I mumble around a mouthful of
warm pancake. Twenty-four hour room service has to be the best invention of the
twenty-first century.

Alex, still gloriously naked, picks up
the spoon from the room service tray and digs into homemade vanilla ice cream.
“Pancakes and ice cream at four in the morning is an odd choice.”

“Classic post sex food. We need to carb
up if you want to go again.” I push his spoon away from my pancakes.

An amused grin splits his face. “Again?
Remind me to prepare my will beforehand next time.”

The idea of a next time with Alex fills
me with an uneasy delight. As close as I feel to him at this moment, I’ve lived
in the South all my life, and I know that money can create an impossible divide.
A reality as true now as it was a hundred years ago. I push the thought from my
mind and offer him a bite of my pancake. “So, tell me something.”

“What?” His spoon slides tantalizingly
from his mouth.

“Anything. But not your name and where
you live or that kind of thing. Tell me something real. Something personal.”

He’s contemplative for a minute, taking
my request seriously. “When I was seven my dad took me to a baseball game and
lost me.”

“No he didn’t.”

“He did.” Alex sits up and removes the
tray from my legs, setting it on the floor on his side of the bed. He lifts the
heavy comforter and joins me beneath satiny sheets. His feet are cold, but I
don’t complain. Reaching across me, he pulls the chain on the lamp, throwing
the room into darkness.

“Come here.” He grabs my hip and pulls me
to face him. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet, but I can make out the
silhouette of his face. His breath tickles my nose.

We’ve only known one another a few hours
but I feel so…connected, to him. “Tell me more.” I’m desperate to keep him
here, next to me for as long as possible. “Did your dad come looking for you?”

Alex runs his finger gently down the arm
I’ve left on top of the bedding. The quiet mixed with his gentle touch makes me
shudder. “We went with a group of people, mostly my dad’s clients. I think he
must’ve brought me with him as some kind of marketing gimmick. He’s always
trying to sell himself as a family man.” His voice holds a grimace, as if the
words leave a bad taste in his mouth. “Anyway, he left me in my seat when they
went to go speak with some other big shot, and he never came back.”

I wait patiently for him to continue.

“This older couple sitting behind us
called over a security guard when he didn’t show up for the seven inning
stretch. The guard took me down to fan-jail.”

My heart aches for him. “They threw you
in jail?” I stroke the shadow around Alex’s jaw, affronted on his seven
year-old behalf. I can feel the outline of a small smile.

 
He shakes his head. “It’s the only place
they could put me while they were looking for the old man. The security guards
were nice. They gave me a hat, a hot dog, and they put the game on this little
TV set on their desk. It was pretty fun, considering.”

“And your dad? When did he come to get
you?”

“Sometime around the bottom of the
eighth. He was totally hammered, Charlie. His clients were a rowdy bunch and
he’d jumped right in the thick of it, completely forgetting me in the process.”

Alex’s hand mirrors my movements,
touching the sweep of my jaw, caressing the expanse of my neck. The move is
intimate. His fingertips trail across my skin slowly, mapping every exposed
inch. I trace his.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I
whisper.

“It was a long time ago. Twenty-two
years.” His hand dips beneath the comforter and rests on my hip. His thumb
moves over the skin there, back and forth. “There’s more.”

I hold my breath.

“When Father Dearest came to get me this
guard, Jonesy, I think was his name, hit him. Punched him right in the mouth.”

“Why?”

Alex moves closer, resting his head on my
pillow. His face so close I can feel every word he says across my cheek. “When
he showed up, drunk and disorderly, he was really mad. I’d
embarrassed
him in front of his clients. Why couldn’t I just do as
I was told? All that shit. He shook me so hard, I thought that hot dog was
going to come up all over him. Jonesy pulled him off and yelled,
“Hey, that’s your kid there, what’re you
doing?”
My dad was irate. He took a swing at the guy but Jonesy hadn’t just
downed ten Coors Lights. He ducked and then, whamo, nailed the bastard right in
the kisser.” Alex laughs. Sadly. I wrap my arm around him.

I imagine a dark-haired little boy with
Alex’s soulful eyes. He’s trying to laugh it off, trivialize what happened, but
his words are angry. My mother was taken from me too soon but I know she loved
me. I felt it in her hugs and kisses, in the stories she told Paige and me at
bedtime. The bitterness in Alex’s voice tells of a very different childhood and
I wonder how deep those wounds go. I snuggle in closer, placing my head beneath
his chin and kiss the spot on his chest that’s just above his heart. “Good for
Jonesy.”

He again copies my movement, wrapping me tightly
against him.

“It was one of the best moments of my
life,” he confides, then kisses the top of my head. “I can’t believe I told you
that. I’ve never told anyone.”

“I reckon there are few subjects off the
table once you’ve done what we just did.”

He chuckles. “You’re probably right. So
what about you? Tell me something about Charlie.”

My mouth moves before my brain can stop
it, but my heart knows what it wants to unburden. “Mama died when I was twelve.
Paige was eight. She had breast cancer. It was too advanced to stop by the time
we found out and back then, it was a lot harder to stop at all.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It happened a long time ago, too.”

“It must’ve been hard.”

“It was.” I sigh. “But I had Paige and Daddy
to look after.”

“And who looked after you?”

I let his question fall unanswered. I’ve
been looking after myself for fifteen years. It’s my burden and right now, all
I want is to fall asleep in Alex’s arms. I want to forget real life.

 
The sun will rise soon but I wish it
wouldn’t. I have a terrible feeling that with those first pink rays of
sunshine, the spell will be broken. Alex will remember I’m no Cinderella. A
fancy dress and a pair of new shoes won’t be enough to keep him.

“Charlie?” Alex’s voice is nothing but a
whisper. His heart beneath my ear slows considerably.

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you fell.”

I smile against his warm body, and allow
the dream of tonight to wash over me.