Tempted (5 page)

“Right. And I don’t suppose Sean can watch the rugrats in the evening?”

I shrugged, but something in Mary’s tone made me look up. “I don’t know. Why? Did she say something about it?”

Sisters also share a nonverbal language. Mary’s posture and expression said it all, but in case I missed what she was trying to say, she said it anyway. “He’s a jerk.”

“Oh, c’mon, Mare.”

“Haven’t you noticed how she doesn’t talk about him anymore? And it used to be all, Sean this, Sean that, Sean says, Sean thinks. Tell me you haven’t noticed we’ve been spared the Gospel of Sean lately. And she’s been an even bigger priss than usual. Something’s going on.”

“Like what?” We abandoned the frou-frou shop and headed out into the bright June sunshine.

“Well, I don’t know.” Mary rolled her eyes.

“Maybe you should ask her.”

My sister gave me another look. “You could ask her.”

The sight of a familiar shock of black hair and a wardrobe that had dangerously malfunctioned made us both pause.

“Oh, brother,” Mary said under her breath. “Goth vomited all over her.”

I laughed. “Is that what that is?”

“I think you used to call it punk back in the day. Holy cow. She never quits. I thought she was seeing that guy who worked at the record store.” Mary sounded awed. “Who’s that guy?”

Claire was grinning and flirting with a very tall, very lanky young man with enough metal in his face to set off an airport security alarm. She wore a set of black-and-white striped stockings, a black lace skirt with a jagged hem and a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a punk rock band that had swirled down the drain of drug overdoses before she’d been born.

“She definitely marches to the beat of her own drum,” I said.

“Yeah, that and an electric guitar, two French horns and a synthesizer.”

Claire looked up and waved from across the parking lot, said her adieu to her new suitor and headed toward us. “Ladies. Good morning.”

“It’s afternoon,” Mary pointed out.

“Depends on what time you got up,” countered Claire with an unashamed grin. “So what’s the happs?”

“Anne can’t decide on a frame.”

“Hey!” I protested. Without Patricia here to balance on my side, I could quickly be overtaken by my two younger sisters. “It’s not up to me. We should all decide.”

Claire waved a hand clad in a fingerless lace glove. “Whatevs. Get whatever you want. It’s not like they’ll really care.”

“Hey, Madonna,” I said, annoyed, “1983 called. It wants its wardrobe back.”

Mary snerked. Claire made a face. I felt a small, useless moment of triumph.

“I’m starving,” Claire declared. “Can’t we go find someplace to chow?”

“Not all of us have the munchies,” Mary put in.

“Not all of us have to watch our weight,” Claire retorted sweetly.

“Girls, girls,” I interjected. “Grade school’s over. Can we please grow up?”

Claire slung an arm around Mary’s shoulders and gave me an innocent look. “Wha? Whyfor you so uptight, my sistah?”

I did love them, all of them, and couldn’t have imagined my life without them. Mary grinned and shoved Claire’s arm off her. Claire shrugged and leered at me.

“C’mon, princess,” she cooed. “Treat your li’l sissies to a burger and fries.”

“Are you going to come clean my house?” I asked. “That’s worth the price of lunch, isn’t it?”

“Oh, right, before James’s boyfriend comes for a visit. I almost forgot.” She stuck out her tongue. “You don’t want him to find all your sex toys lying around.”

“You never did say when he was coming,” Mary said.

The three of us started toward the diner on the other side of the parking lot. The food was decent and not generally a draw to the summertime tourist crowd inundating Sandusky to visit Cedar Point. Better still, it was close, and my stomach was rumbling.

“I don’t know when he’s coming.”

“What’s his name? Alex?” This came from Claire, who held the door open for Mary and me.

“Yeah.” The waitress seated us in a comfortable booth near the back and handed us menus none of us needed. We’d been coming here forever. “Alex Kennedy.”

“And he didn’t come to your wedding?” Mary shook sugar into her iced tea and squeezed the lemon wedge. She passed me a few packets without my having to ask.

“No, he was overseas. But his company got bought out, and he’s coming back to the States. I don’t know that much about it.”

“What are you going to do with him while James is working?” This practical question astoundingly came from Claire, sipping water through a straw.

“He is an adult, Claire. I’m assuming he can find something to do.”

Mary snorted. “Yeah, but he’s a guy.”

“Good point,” Claire said. “You’d better lay in supplies of nachos and spare socks.”

I rolled my eyes at both of them. “He’s James’s friend, not mine. I’m not going to be doing his laundry.”

Claire made a derisive noise. “We’ll see.”

“Oh, listen to you,” Mary said. “When’s the last time you ever did anyone’s laundry, including your own?”

“You’re insane,” replied Claire, unconcerned. “Of course I do my own laundry at school.”

Mary frowned. “You should do it at home, too.”

“Why? It gives Mom such pleasure,” said Claire, and I was pretty sure she was being serious.

“I’m not worried about the laundry,” I told both of them. “Or about entertaining him. I’m sure he’ll be able to entertain himself just fine.”

“Ha. He’s been in Hong Kong, right?” Claire put her hands together and pasted on a silly grin. “He’ll expect a geisha, you watch.”

“Geishas are Japanese, you idiot.” Mary shook her head.

“What. Evs.” Claire blew upward, puffing her bangs out of her eyes.

Listening to them declare disaster actually made me feel better about Alex’s visit. “Singapore. And it will be fine, you guys.”

“No walking around in your panties,” said Claire with a doleful sigh, like that was the worst thing of all. “How will you stand it?”

“As if I do that anyway?”

“Dude,” my youngest sister declared, “that shit’s the best part of living on your own.”

We all laughed. Mary’s phone beeped again, and she dug it out. She read the message, tapped the keys and tucked it away again.

“Hey, hot stuff, you act like you’re married to that thing. You holding out on us or what?” Claire craned her neck to catch a glimpse of Mary’s phone.

“It’s just Betts.” Mary shrugged and drank tea.

Claire leaned forward. “Are you and Betts a couple?”

Mary’s mouth dropped open. So did mine. Claire looked unconcerned. “Well? She keeps texting you like she can’t bear to be parted from you. And we all know you’re not that into dudes.”

“What?” Mary, who generally gave Claire as good as she got, seemed unable to speak.

I was finding it hard to speak, myself. “Claire, good lord.”

Claire shrugged. “It’s a legitimate question.”

“What ever gave you the idea I don’t like guys?” Mary blinked rapidly, her cheeks staining bright red.

“Umm…the fact you’ve never had sex with one?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I told Claire.

“No,” said Mary, “it doesn’t, especially since, hello! I so have!”

Claire and I both did a double take. One of the delightful things about having sisters is the Three Stooges-esque quality of so many of our conversations.

“Get out! What? When? Who?” Claire squealed.

Mary looked around the diner before she answered. “I did it, okay? I lost my virginity. What’s the big deal? You all did it, too.”

“Yeah, but none of us waited until we were shriveled up old maids,” Claire said.

“I’m not an old maid, Claire.” Mary’s face still gleamed from blushing. “And not all of us are rampant sluts.”

Claire frowned. “Hey.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend,” I said to defuse them.

Both turned to look at me with almost identical expressions of disdain.

“I don’t,” said Mary while at the same time Claire chimed in, “Who says she’s got to have a boyfriend?”

“I just thought…never mind.”

Mary shook her head as the waitress brought us our platters, but waited until we were alone again before speaking. “It was just some guy.”

“Some random guy?” I wouldn’t have expected that from Mary, who used to dress up as a nun…and not for Halloween. “You lost your virginity to some stranger?”

Mary blushed again. Claire hooted, reaching for the ketchup. “Rock it, sister. Way to go.”

“I figured it was time,” Mary said. “So I went out and I found someone.”

“Weren’t you worried about…disease?” I shuddered a little. “Or…anything?”

“She made him wear a condom.” Claire waved a fry. “Bet you ten bucks.”

“Of course I made him wear a condom,” Mary muttered. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Well, I’m just surprised, that’s all.” I didn’t mean to sound disapproving. I wasn’t, not really. Losing her virginity to a stranger was probably no worse than my giving it up to the high school boy I mistakenly thought loved me. At least Mary had gone into it without romantic expectations.

“Spill it. Was it good?”

Mary shrugged, looking down. Her phone begged for attention again, but she ignored it. “Sure. Yeah.”

“You’re not convincing me.” Claire nudged her.

Mary laughed. “Yeah. It was good. He was pretty hot. And I guess…he was good.”

“What, you guess? You don’t know? If you don’t know for sure, Mare, it can’t have been that good.”

“Why are we getting sex advice from you, I want to know.” I pressed down the top bun of my overstuffed burger, and juice puddled on the plate. I was going to eat the whole thing, I just knew it, even if I’d regret it the next time I got on the scale.

Claire shrugged and dug into her coleslaw. “Because I’ve had the most sex. Duh.”

“Duh.” Mary laughed. “I wouldn’t brag about that, if I were you.”

“I’m not bragging, just being honest. Geez. What I want to know is, how come you all have such a puritanical attitude toward fucking and I don’t. How’d that happen?”

I laughed. “I don’t have a puritanical attitude toward fucking, Claire.”

She gave me a look. “Oh, really? What’s the kinkiest thing you ever did?”

Silence.

“I thought so.”

A triumphant, smug younger sister is quite annoying. I threw a fry at her. She ate it with aplomb and licked her fingers.

“It’s not about the kink,” Mary said. “Gosh, just because we haven’t let anyone tie us up or spank us doesn’t make us prudes.”

Claire laughed, tipping back her head. “Oh, please. These days, spanking’s almost vanilla.”

“What’s the freakiest thing you’ve ever done, then?” I asked calmly, turning the tables.

Claire shrugged. “Cutting.”

Mary and I both recoiled. “Claire, gross!”

She laughed. “Gotcha.”

“Gross,” Mary repeated, looking sickened. “People do that?”

“People do everything,” Claire said matter of factly.

“I’d never let anyone cut me,” said Mary.

Claire pointed with a fry. “You never know what you’ll do for the right person, Mare. Never say never.”

Mary scoffed. “I can’t imagine there could possibly be a right person who’d get me to agree to cutting.”

“Maybe not cutting, but sure as hell it would be something,” Claire said. “Love is some messed up shit.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in love,” said Mary.

“Goes to show what you know,” answered Claire. “I do.”

“Me, too,” I said. We raised our glasses and clinked. “To love. All kinds.”

“Oooh,” said Claire. “Anne is kinky, after all.”

“Who?” James sounded sleepy. He had to get up early to hit the job site.

“Alex.”

James made a muffled, snorting sort of noise into his pillow. “What do you want to know?”

I stared upward, into darkness, and imagined stars. “What’s he like?”

James was silent for so long I was certain he’d fallen asleep. At last, he rolled onto his back. I couldn’t see his face, but I pictured it as he spoke.

“He’s a good guy.”

What did that mean? I rolled onto my side, facing him. Between us, heat stirred. Reaching out, I could have touched him, but I tucked my hand beneath my pillow instead and found a cool spot on the sheets.

“He’s smart. He’s…”

I waited but couldn’t stand the hesitation. “Funny? Nice?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

I sighed. “You’ve been friends since what, the eighth grade?”

“Yeah.” He no longer sounded sleepy. He sounded like he wanted to be sleepy.

“So…you have to have more to say about him than he’s smart and a good guy. C’mon, James. What’s Alex like?”

“He’s like the lake.”

“Tell me.”

James shifted, the bed dipping as he moved and tugged the covers with his feet. “Alex is…he’s deep, Anne. But he’s shallow in places, too, when you don’t expect it. I guess that’s the only way to put it.”

I pondered this for a moment. “That’s a very interesting description.”

James didn’t say anything. I heard him breathing. I felt his breath on my face. I felt the heat from his skin, inches from mine. We weren’t touching but I felt him all over me, just the same.

“Okay, how about this? Alex seems easy to know.”

“But he’s not?”

James drew in a breath. Let it out. Took another, a slow, easy pattern that nevertheless didn’t sound relaxed. “No. I’d say not.”

“But you know him? I mean, you were best buddies for a long time, right?”

He laughed, then, and the twinges of unease his answers had stirred in my gut fled. “Yeah. I guess we were.”

I reached for him then, to run a hand through his hair. He moved closer to me. His hand found just the right spot on my hip, nestled into my body’s curve. I lined myself up along him.

We were silent for a while. I let myself melt against him, breast to chest. He wore a pair of boxers. I had on a tank-top and a pair of panties. There was a lot of skin contact. I wasn’t about to complain, even though the night hadn’t yet begun to cool, and we stuck to each other.

He got hard, which made me smile. I waited, and after a moment his hand began its slow, easy path up and down my side. The thump of his heart quickened, but so did mine.

I tilted my head. His mouth found mine without effort. Our kiss was sweet and slow, without urgency.

“Don’t you have to be up early tomorrow?”

James pressed my hand to his thickening cock. “I’m up now.”

“I feel that.” I gave him an experimental squeeze. “Whatever shall I do with this?”

“I have a few ideas.” He pushed his groin against my hand, his fingers sliding between the edges of my tank top and panties. “Why not suck it?”

“Oh, that’s subtle.” My voice sounded dry, but I was grinning.

“Never claimed to be subtle,” James murmured. He dipped his head to taste my throat.

I hitched in a breath. My hand bore down. James groaned. I smiled. I pushed him back, just a little, just enough for me to slide down his body and take his penis out of the boxers. I didn’t have to see it to know every ripple and curve. I closed my fingers around the shaft and bent closer to lip the sensitive flesh around the rim.

James made a happy sigh and rolled onto his back. He put a hand on my head, not pushing me down or hurrying me along, just stroking my hair a little. His fingers snagged and tangled. A discomfort so slight it didn’t qualify as pain sparked against my scalp.

I licked him, savoring the salt-musk flavor. Even fresh from the shower, this part of him always smelled and tasted different from, say, an elbow or a chin. His cock, lower belly and inner thighs all maintained a deliciousness I could only describe as male. And unique. Blindfolded I might have faltered at identifying him by the slope of his nose or bulge of muscles, but that smell and taste would prove him to be mine every time.

“If I were in a dark room full of naked men and had to find you, I could,” I murmured before sliding my mouth over his erection.

“Do you often fantasize about being in a room full of naked men, Anne?” James lifted his hips to push inside my mouth. I curled my fingers tighter around the base of his prick to keep him from surging too far.

“No.”

His laugh was brief, breathless. “No? Never? That’s not your fantasy?”

“What would I do with a room full of naked men?”

He sighed as I sucked him. I cupped his balls, soft, and stroked my thumb along the tender seam in his flesh. “They could…do things…to you….”

I used my mouth and hand in tandem until he groaned aloud, then stroked him up and down and gave my jaw a rest. “No. I’m a maximum two-input girl, James. All those men would just go to waste.”

I put my mouth back on him, taking him in as far as I could go. His cock throbbed against my tongue. Silky precome mixed with my saliva and made him slippery. Easy to stroke. Easy to suck.

James put a hand to my hip and tugged me gently, until I spun without taking my mouth off him so I straddled his face. It was my turn to moan when he gripped my ass and pulled my clit onto his tongue. He flicked me lightly with the tip. In this position I could control how close or far my body got to his. I could hover over his lips and tongue, move my pelvis, stroke myself along his mouth.

I loved it.

My orgasm rose fast. It became difficult to concentrate on sucking him while he licked me. We got a little sloppy. I don’t think either of us cared. We both came within seconds of each other, our cries mingling in the dark. After, when I’d turned around and lolled in sated content on my pillow, I noticed the air had grown cool enough I wanted to be under the blankets.

I pulled them up over both of us, though James was breathing in the just-about-to-snore way I found alternatingly endearing and excruciating, depending on how tired I was. He snorted into his pillow. I lay back, tired but not quite ready to sleep.

“What did you fight about?” I whispered into the darkness hanging between us.

The sound of his breathing changed. An indrawn breath. Silence. James didn’t answer and after a few moments, I forgot to ask again, so taken up was I in dreams.

Things changed, as they are apt to do, without warning. I’d spent the morning running errands, and I was playing reluctant hostess that evening to James’s family, all of them. Parents, spouses, nieces and nephews. I planned something simple, grilled chicken and salad, fresh rolls. Watermelon and brownies for dessert.

The brownies were ruining my life.

The recipe seemed simple enough. Good quality chocolate, flour, eggs, sugar, butter. I had all the right tools for the job, as James would have said with utter seriousness. I even had the skill, though perhaps not the talent. Yet for some reason, I was thwarted at every turn. My microwave refused to melt the chocolate without scorching it. The butter splattered and burned me when, forewarned by the chocolate disaster, I tried melting it on the stovetop. One egg had a blood spot, the other the bonus of a double yolk that would have been a lovely surprise in an omelet but messed up this recipe.

A glance at the clock showed the hour I’d set aside for this project had already stretched longer than that. This made me tense. I don’t like being late. I don’t like being unprepared. I don’t like being less than perfect.

I’d opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fans, because I preferred a breeze to the noise and sterile chill of our stuttering air conditioner. The kitchen smelled good, like marinade and melted fat and baking bread, but it was hot. Chocolate stained my white shirt and the front of my denim skirt. My hair, unruly on its best days, had gone berserk and hung in tangled corkscrews past my shoulders. Sweat trickled down my back, tickling.

I’d forgotten to buy salad dressing, but no time for that now. I’d have to whip up something from scratch. No time, either, for the soak in the tub I’d planned as advance reward for serving dinner to the horde. I didn’t care if that meant my knees would stay stubbled, but I’d been looking forward to the scent of lavender and half an hour of silence. Now if I was lucky I might squeeze in a quick scrub in the shower before changing my clothes. The way things were going, I’d have to just give myself a wipe down with a washcloth and hope for the best.

Right. Brownies. I had only one package left of the gourmet chocolate chips. If I messed up again, we’d be eating stale sandwich cookies for dessert. I set the package on the counter and poured the butter from the double boiler into the mixing bowl. One step at a time.

I stirred carefully. I re-read the instructions. I lifted the bowl to swirl the melted butter and eggs together, just like the book said.

“Hello, Anne.”

Warm butter sloshed and the mixing spoon clattered to the kitchen floor. My heart stopped, my breath stopped, my mind, for one terrified moment, stopped. Like a movie put on Pause, then clicked to Fast-Forward, I jerked back to life.

I’d screamed. How embarrassing. Turning, I released my death clutch on the bowl and set it on the counter with a small clang.

The first time I saw Alex Kennedy, it was with the thud-thud of my fast-beating heart still pounding in my ears and throat. He stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand on the doorjamb at a point high enough to stretch his lean body. He leaned slightly forward, one foot balancing his entire weight while the other leg bent as if I’d caught him in the act of taking a step. I saw faded jeans, low-slung but with a black leather belt holding them snug on his hips. A white T-shirt. Very James Dean, though instead of a red cloth jacket he had a black leather coat tucked into the hook made by his hand shoved into his front pocket. He wore sunglasses, and the big dark lenses covered most of his face.

It was a picture-perfect moment, like something out of a movie, and for a moment we merely stood and stared at each other like we were waiting for an unseen director to shout “Action!” Alex moved first. The hand came off the doorjamb, the other eased itself from his pocket and grabbed the coat before it could fall. He finished his step, entering my kitchen like he’d always been there.

“Hi.” He said this looking around the room over the top of his dark glasses before he looked back at me. “Anne.”

He didn’t make it a question. James had said he was smart. Who else would I be? He didn’t introduce himself, either, a fact that could be taken as arrogance or nonchalance, or simple understanding that though he didn’t know me well enough to know it, I was smart, too.

“Alex.” I moved around the kitchen’s center island, toward him. Streaks and mess coated my hands, so I didn’t offer one. “Wow. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

He smiled. It’s a cliché to say it took my breath away, but all clichés began as truth, or else nobody would be able to relate to them. His mouth, full soft lips, quirked on one side. He took off his glasses. The eyes beneath were dark and could only be described as languid—lazy, rich, slow. Deep. Alex had eyes that meant something important, if only I could figure out what it was.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I rang Jamie’s cell and he said to head on over. He said he’d call you. I guess he didn’t.” His voice, too, was slow and deep. Bemused.

I laughed, rueful. “He didn’t.”

“Bastard.” Alex slung his jacket over the back of one of the high-backed chairs at the breakfast table and hooked both thumbs in his pockets. “Something smells good.”

“Oh…I’m baking bread.” I grabbed a dishtowel and wiped my hands quickly and began the dishevelment dance. Hair smoothed, shirt tucked, a quick pass of face and body to make sure I was put together.

He watched me, mouth still quirked. “And making something with chocolate, I see.”

“Brownies.” I blushed, and blushed harder at the heat rising along my throat. I had no reason to be embarrassed. Well, aside from the disaster that was my kitchen and personal appearance.

Alex made a low purring noise of approval. “My favorite. How’d you know?”

“I didn’t—” He was teasing. “Who doesn’t like brownies?”

“Good point.” He laughed. He looked around the kitchen again, as if taking in every detail. I found myself following his gaze with mine, cataloging the framed prints on the walls, the wallpaper, slightly peeling in the corner. The scrapes in the linoleum where the chairs had worn the pattern to whiteness.

“We’re fixing it up,” I said, like I had to apologize for the kitchen’s imperfections.

His gaze swiveled back to me. It was disconcerting, in a way, yet also familiar. Alex had the same focus as James, though on my husband it was offset by a somehow greater sense of impermanence. James could be intense on whatever had currently grabbed his attention. He was the blackbird with a beady eye, focused on the shiny. Alex reminded me of a lion waiting in the grass, seemingly sated until his prey got close enough to capture his notice.