Tempted (25 page)

PMS had made me cross and weepy. I tried pulling away from him, preferring to sulk, but his hands gripped my upper arms firmly. I went stiff and unyielding, instead.

“Jamie, turn off that damn game and get up here. Anne wants to be taken out to dinner and a movie. You’re not treating her like the queen she is.”

James scrambled to his feet at once. “Why didn’t you say so, baby? We’d have turned it off.”

I managed to roll my eyes. “Just forget it. I don’t need to be treated like a queen.”

“Yes. You do.”

“Alex,” I said, less pissed off and more exasperated. “I’m not a queen.”

“You are.” He pulled me closer. “A queen. Am I right, Jamie?”

James grinned and moved behind to hold me from behind. “Yep.”

“A goddess.”

They moved closer, sandwiching me.

“The light of our lives,” said Alex. “Breath in our lungs. Mustard on our hotdogs.”

“If you say the wind beneath your wings, I will punch you both in the face.”

“See?” said Alex. “That’s what I mean. Why don’t you say stuff like that more often?”

It was hard to concentrate with James licking the back of my neck and Alex’s thigh nudging between mine. “What? That I want to punch you in the face?”

“If that’s how you feel. Hell, yes. Jesus, sometimes I want to punch the ever-loving shit out of Jamie over there, especially when he fucking farts under the covers and acts like he didn’t.”

“Hey,” James protested. “Fuck you, fucker. Sleep in your own bed.”

Alex wiggled closer, dipping to nuzzle my jaw. “My bed doesn’t have Anne in it.”

Between them I lost the anger over the video games, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up. “You’re both pains in the ass, you know that?”

He pulled away to look at me. “See? Doesn’t that feel good? Say it again.”

James snorted lightly behind me. Alex reached around to poke him. “Shut up.” He looked back to me. “Go on. Say it again.”

“You’re both pains in the ass.” I waited a second. Neither of them looked concerned. I tried again. “And if I walk into the bathroom one more time to pee in the middle of the night and find the seat up, I’m going to scream.”

A sly smile slid across Alex’s mouth. “See? Doesn’t that feel better?”

It did feel better. James wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. I leaned back against him, letting him take my weight.

“Are we really pains in the ass?” James asked.

“We are, man. I’m sure we are.” Alex didn’t sound upset. Just resigned. “Men are pigs.”

I laughed, finally. “You’re not that bad.”

James tugged me until I turned to face him. “You want dinner and a movie? We’ll give you dinner and a movie. Jeeves! To the limo!”

“Wait, wait, I’m not ready—” I protested around laughter as James tickled my sides.

“What do you mean, you’re not ready? You look ready to me.” James looked me up and down.

“You’re an ass,” said Alex. “Don’t you know anything about women?”

“Since when are you an expert?”

I put my hands up, one on each of their chests, pushing them apart and away from me. “Gentlemen. Enough with the banter. Give me ten minutes in the bathroom. Alone,” I said to Alex, who didn’t have the same sense of bathroom privacy as I did. “And I expect to be taken to a nice restaurant, not some burger joint.”

“What madam wishes, madam shall have.” Alex took my hand and lipped the back of it, a silly gesture that still managed to make my stomach do happy flip-flops.

Later, we came home to an empty house after an exquisite dinner and an enjoyable movie. We stumbled down the hall, hands roaming, mouths meeting, clothes strewn once more in odd places. I had two men doing their best to please me, over and over, and their best was pretty damn good. Lying between them as the chorus of snores began, I looked up at the ceiling and wondered how it was that Alex, who didn’t know me, knew me so well, and James, who should have known me better than anyone in the world, didn’t.

“Anne. It’s your mother-in-law.”

As if I couldn’t guess by her voice, or wouldn’t know who she was if she called herself by her name. “Hi, Evelyn.”

“Are you still sleeping?” Her voice insinuated that anyone still in bed at this hour was a lazy good-for-nothing.

I cracked open an eye to look at the clock radio. “It’s only eight in the morning.”

“Oh. I thought you’d be up by now. Doesn’t James have to be up early to go to work?”

“He leaves around six-thirty, yes.” I covered a yawn with my palm and rubbed my eyes, which someone had apparently filled with sand. “Was there a reason you called?”

God, I hoped there was. I wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat, not that I ever was. But today, particularly, I felt grouchy and out of sorts, my belly bloated and threatening to cramp.

“Yes. The girls and I are going shopping today and we thought you’d like to come along. We’ll pick you up at nine-thirty.”

Fuckity fuck in a duck-colored bucket.

I sat straight up in bed. “Where are you going shopping?”

She rattled off a list of stores, outlets, the mall and some nail salon I never frequented. “Nine-thirty. You’ll be ready, won’t you?”

“Actually, Evelyn…” I rolled over to look at Alex, his face buried in James’s pillow. Heat rose off him, comfortable in the early morning coolness. I stroked a hand down the satin skin of his bare back. “I’m busy today.”

Dead silence for the time it took for me to count to five. “Really.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but I’ve got other plans today—”

“Oh.” Her voice shifted, staying pleasant as it always did but with an undercurrent of tension. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve got some errands to run, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re going shopping, then.” She sounded pleased. “Just come along with us.”

I didn’t really have any errands, had no plans but for starting the day off with Alex’s dick in my mouth and his face buried in my pussy. That was hardly the sort of thing I could tell my mother-in-law. I tried to think of something to tell her, anything. Alex stirred, lifting a squint-eyed face and looking deliciously rumpled.

“I don’t really want to go shopping with you today. I’m sorry.” I wasn’t.

Another silence. It was easy for me to picture her expression. The slightly curling lip, the flared nostrils like she’d scented something foul. I always wondered if, in her mind, she was smiling and somehow the signals got crossed between her intent and what actually ended up on her face.

“Well. If you don’t want to spend time with us…” She trailed off, clearly waiting for me to protest.

And, of course, I did, because it was expected. It turned my stomach to acid and forced my mouth into a tight frown, but I did it. “Of course I want to spend time with you. It’s just that I’ve made other plans today.”

“Of course you did. Well. Another time, then.”

Meeting the Queen might have been more important than going shopping with Evelyn and her daughters. Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps took precedence. Abduction by aliens might have been excused. Anything else just didn’t cut it.

I sighed. Alex rolled onto his back, an arm behind his head and the other rubbing his sternum lightly. Up and down. Hypnotizing me. His fingers drifted lower, my gaze following them. When I looked back at his face, he was smiling.

“Can you give me until ten?”

“I don’t want to take you away from your plans.”

“I’m sure I can rearrange them, but I won’t be ready by nine-thirty. If you want to go on without me…”

“Oh, I’m sure we can all wait.”

Great. I was going to be beholden to them the entire day because they’d waited for me. “I don’t want to hold back your plans, Evelyn.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Because I’ll hold you accountable for all eternity.

I sighed again. Alex was smirking and moving his hand like a puppet’s mouth, mocking my conversation. I turned away so I didn’t laugh, and he pounced on me. He mouthed my neck and cupped my breasts from behind, tweaking my nipples to hardness. I let out an oof!

“Anne?”

“I’ll be ready by—” his hand was between my legs beneath the hem of my nightgown, finding bare skin “—ten….”

“Tell her to make it ten-thirty.” He gave a low, evil chuckle as his fingers stroked my curls.

“Is someone with you?” Mrs. Kinney asked. “I thought you said James went to work.”

“He did.” I tried wriggling away from him, but he was strong enough to hold me in place. “Alex just popped his head in to tell me something.”

“Oh. He’s still there?”

She knew he was, of course, because I was sure she called James at least every other day. “Yes.”

He pulled me back against his erection. His fingers stroked me, slowly, circling. I was wet for him. My body ached at his touch.

“We’ll see you at ten, then.” She hung up and I hung up, then collapsed back against Alex with a groan.

“You’re wicked.”

“I told you, I’m a rascal.” He kissed my earlobe. Hot breath made me shiver. The hand on my breast caressed my nipple, while the one between my legs kept up the steady motion. “Good morning.”

I turned to straddle him, my nightgown the only barrier between us. My arms linked around his neck. His hands drifted to my ass, holding me closer.

“Good morning.”

“You’d better go get ready. She’ll be here soon.”

“I know.”

Neither of us moved. Our breathing shifted, his going in while mine went out. My clit throbbed, and I rocked slightly against the heat and hardness of his cock. Alex bent his head to trace my collarbone with small, light flickers of his tongue.

I ran my fingers through his hair, the strands tickling the back of my hand. “Did you get up earlier?”

He nodded, mumbling against me. “Had breakfast with Jamie. Came back to bed.”

I hadn’t even woken when James got out of bed this morning. “You’re the better wife.”

He looked up at that, his lips glistening. Those gray-dark eyes flickered. He licked his mouth. His hands grabbed my ass harder, pulled me tighter. “I didn’t know it was a competition.”

I hadn’t meant it that way, but once the words were out there was no denying them. “Is it?”

His lips pursed, looking sly. “You tell me.”

He let go of my ass to grab a handful of fabric at my belly and pull it upward until nothing was between our bodies. Bare skin to skin, his cock trapped between his stomach and my cunt. I couldn’t move for a moment. It felt so good. Heat from him, slickness from me. It would only take a small shift, the tiniest arch of back and thrust of hip, and he’d be inside me, if he wanted. If I wanted.

We didn’t move.

His hands kept pulling until the nightgown came off over my head. My nipples brushed his chest. Alex put his arms around me again, while I adjusted my legs to close around his waist.

The air might still have been morning cool, but all I felt was heat. I put my hands on his face, tipping it up. I held him still while I looked down into his eyes. My thumbs reached the softness of his mouth and traced his lower lip. He turned his head just a bit and kissed my palm.

When he looked at me again, I lost myself in his eyes. Deep and dark, not like James’s bright blue summer sky gaze. “Do you love him?”

“Everyone loves Jamie.”

“Then why are we doing this?” I whispered against his parted mouth. I breathed in his air, took him inside me in the only way allowed.

I moaned when he put his hand to the back of my head and forced my mouth to his. When he kissed me so hard our teeth clashed. When he twisted to push me down on top of the tangled mound of sheets, and when he covered me with his body. His erection stroked along my inner thigh, tantalizing my flesh with his.

“Because we can’t stop ourselves.”

The perfect answer, if not one that made me happy. I didn’t have time to reply because he was kissing me again. He rubbed himself on me. The friction built. My hand found his cock, fingers curling into a tunnel he could fuck into. Our mouths bruised each other. He bit the soft skin of my shoulder, and I cried out. Sweat coated us, making us slick, helping us slide.

There were, he’d said, lots of other things to do besides fuck, and he was right. We did them all. Hands, mouths, skin on skin, my body making places for him to fill. I held my breasts together so he could slide his prick between them as I used my mouth at the same time. We lay head to foot, licking and stroking. He got behind me, thrusting against the groove of my spine while his hand stroked me closer to climax from the front.

We tangled, we writhed. We contorted. But we ended up face-to-face, mouths open, concentrating too hard on what was happening between our legs to even kiss. He pushed into the space between my hand and hip, while he used two fingers inside me and a thumb on my clit.

The position was awkward. He was pulling my hair. His arm had to be falling asleep. We didn’t care. Too close to coming to stop, to move, to breathe, we moved together until the headboard banged the wall.

“Fuck,” Alex breathed. “Just like that…”

My fingers curled tighter. He groaned and buried his face into the curve of my neck. I shuddered, lifting my hips to meet his thrusting fingers.

He spoke, low muttered words muffled into my skin. How much he loved to fuck my mouth, how good my pussy felt around his fingers, how much he wanted to make me come. Mostly he whispered my name, over and over. Cementing me to him, making it impossible for me to think he didn’t know me, or that I could have been anyone.

Anne, he whispered. My name. My body beneath him. My taste on his tongue, my breath in his lungs. He said it again and again until I answered with his. We were joined.

Pleasure filled me like water in a well, bubbling up from some place deep inside. It filled all my crevices, every inch. I shook with it. I was lost in it, swallowed up in it. James had been right about him. Alex was like the lake, and I was drowning in him.

We came within seconds of one another. Slippery, sticky fluid coated my fingers. The smell of it made me gasp. Spent, breathless, we eased to stillness and relaxed inch by inch.

Alex, face still tucked against me, moved off me just enough so I could breathe. His arm lay across my stomach and his leg stayed over mine. His breath tickled more now that passion had passed. We stayed like that for a while. Quiet.

“This is more than it was supposed to be,” I said, staring at the ceiling.

Alex, so vocal a few minutes before, stayed quiet. His body replied in a way his voice did not, with a small, swift tension all over. He rolled onto his back, then away from me, and he got out of bed and padded down the hall without saying a word. I heard the hiss of the shower a moment later.

I looked at the clock and hopped out of bed with a curse. I had ten minutes to shower and dress before they arrived to take me shopping. I had no time to ponder what Alex’s lack of response had meant, and I was glad. That meant I didn’t have to think about it, either.

The shopping trip with Evelyn wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been, despite her repeated attempts to engage me in discussions about when I might consider having a child. I managed to smile and grit my teeth and fend her off with vague answers. By the time I got home, my eyes throbbed with a tension headache as well as PMS.

“Oh, look. James is home.” She sounded like she’d won the lottery. Instead of just stopping to let me out, she turned off the ignition.

“I guess you’re coming in.” I couldn’t manage to sound welcoming.

“Of course!” She was already out of the car and opening my kitchen door.

I’m not sure what she saw, since by the time I came in behind her all that was left were the guilty looks, but whatever Alex and James had been doing it was awkward enough to make Evelyn stammer. Since this was a woman who prided herself on having a response for all occasions, watching her stumble and fumble for words was quite a sight.

“Mom,” said James. “What are you doing here?”

“I took Anne shopping and I’m dropping her off. I saw your truck and I thought I’d come in and say hello.” She straightened her back and patted her hair, though it wasn’t messed up.

I looked hard for evidence of what she’d seen. Nothing seemed out of place. A cigarette burned in an ashtray, but though I didn’t allow smoking in the house that didn’t seem scandalous enough. Alex was giving James small sideways glances and looking away quickly like he was afraid he might laugh. James was ignoring him.

“Yeah, I just got home. About twenty minutes ago.” There was something off about James’s grin. It was too broad. Too silly. Too something.

“How was work?” Evelyn didn’t move far from the doorway, so I pushed past her.

“Great. Really good. Really, really good.”

Whatever they’d been doing, it wasn’t something they’d intended for anyone to see. They looked like they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar…or down one another’s pants. I looked around my kitchen, but other than the cigarette sending up its small plume of smoke, nothing was out of place. Alex looked like he was getting himself under control and stood up to give Mrs. Kinney a too-innocent smile.