The softest of touches trembled across my skin as she tentatively lifted her hands to my waist. As timid as it was, her palms felt like scorching irons against my body.
“Ah, fuck,” I growled, sealing my mouth to hers. My tongue begged for entrance, and Alex quickly complied as her own tongue slid across mine.
I may not have a single memory from our one-night stand, but my mouth suddenly remembered her taste, remembered her eagerness. She met me stroke for stroke. I’d never been so turned on in my life by a kiss, and my cock ached in my boxers, craving release.
Deftly, I grasped the back of Alex’s thighs and hoisted her up. Her center aligned with my erection as she wrapped her legs around my waist. Fuck, I loved her legs. They were lean and muscular. Alex needed no help holding herself up on my body, so my hands were free to roam.
Blindly, I slid my hands to the hem of her shirt and slipped underneath. Her skin was as blazing as mine felt. I spun us around until I met the arm of the couch, then dropped us onto the overstuffed cushions. My hips rocked against her apex at the movement, earning me a shameless moan from Alex.
“Let me take this off you,” I said as I hovered my lips above her mouth, using my fistful of her shirt to tug at the material.
A dinging noise sounded in the background, but I ignored it. Unfortunately, Alex stiffened in my arms.
“Oh my God.” Her face turned an unhealthy shade of white as she pushed at my body to get free.
I sat up as she slipped off the couch.
“Someone’s coming. Put that shirt on.” She pointed to the black material as I stared at her, dumbfounded. Then I quickly remembered her brother came with me to the bar.
“Shit,” I uttered, reaching for the mass on the back of the couch next to my soiled shirt.
A knock on the door sounded before Andrew’s gruff voice called out Alex’s name. The door creaked open without her response just as my head poked through the opening of the shirt. I glanced up at the apartment entrance in alarm, hoping like hell my best friend didn’t suspect what I’d been doing with his little sister.
His gaze dashed between me and Alex before landing on me with a sneer I’d never experience from him before. I’d seen it given to others, but I’d never been on the receiving end. It was pretty damn terrifying, and I feared for my balls, to be honest.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Andrew asked, fury swirling about him as his hands planted on his hips, eyes narrowing into slits.
“Calm down, Andrew,” Alex said as I yanked down the rest of the T-shirt as it clung to my sweat-soaked skin. She strolled out of the kitchen holding three bottles of water like we hadn’t been hip-to-hip minutes prior. “Some drunk spilled his beer on us at the bar. I offered to let Nate borrow one of your shirts. Water?”
“Sorry, man. I tried to let you know, but I couldn’t find you,” I said, chiming in as I took a bottle of water from Alex. She wasn’t making eye contact with me, and that was definitely a good thing, because my cock was ready to continue where we were earlier. Too bad our hindrance was the sole reason we couldn’t do anything more than what we had.
“Well, while you two chitchat, I’m going to change my shirt.” Alex shoved a bottle of water into her brother’s chest. He juggled the bottle, struggling to hold it, before she headed toward her dresser, leaving us in her dust.
“She… uh… was pretty demanding about getting me a new shirt,” I tried to explain but stammered through the entire thing.
“Yeah, Alex has always been assertive when she has her mind set on something.”
For the first time in our friendship, I felt awkward around Andrew. The look on his face when he walked over the threshold into the apartment would have been priceless if I hadn’t been on the receiving end. Knowing I needed to steer his anger and suspicion toward someone that wasn’t myself or Alex, I asked Andrew what happened with the guy downstairs.
Twisting the lid off the bottle, he chugged the cool liquid before divulging about the guy. In three minutes, I learned all I needed to know about him. His name was Stephen St. James, heir to a mining business in Tennessee, with a trust fund to boot. He was a grade-A douchebag, which I already ascertained by his appearance, but I learned he was also Alex’s ex and the reason she hadn’t been in a steady relationship since high school.
“He deserves more than the broken nose I want to give him for the way he broke my sister.”
I wanted to ask more, beg for any tidbit of information about Alex and why she would ever date such an awful-sounding guy, but I knew it wasn’t my place. If I wanted to keep Andrew in the dark about anything she and I had done in the past, or frankly the last five minutes, then I needed to act casual. Inside, though, my heart was jackhammering in my chest.
Fuck, this was why I told Alex we needed to stay away from each other the other day when she told me everything that happened. I was digging myself an early grave at the rate I was going, because I knew, without a doubt, I wasn’t going to be able to stay away from her—no matter how many times I told myself that Andrew’s friendship and his family meant more than any attraction I had toward his sister.
Get yourself together, man. You cannot pursue anything with Alex, or you risk ruining any relationship with the only real family you’ve ever had.
I repeated the mantra in my head over and over until I felt like I hammered it home, while Andrew went on and on about how he wanted to tear Stephen limb from limb, then tow the parts behind one of the farm’s harvesting combines. But that all flew out the window when Alex stepped out of the bathroom.
“Alexandra.” Her whispered name fell from my lips as I took her in.
I tried to take her in little by little, but I didn’t know where to focus first. She wore soft white shorts that pleated down the front of the legs, reminding me of the khakis my parents used to make me wear to school growing up. They were a baggy mess on a gangly schoolboy, but on Alex, they made her appear classy. A black shirt made of some sort of see-through material covered her upper body, revealing a black bra underneath, hiding two of my favorite assets. She must’ve added the bra, because I knew for a fact she hadn’t been wearing one earlier. The sheer fabric Alex considered a shirt twisted in a knot just above her navel, revealing her tan, toned stomach. Her hair was now pulled back with damp ends that brushed against the middle of her back.
Suddenly, an image of my tongue gliding across her waist, dipping into the small crevice as her long hair tickled my cheek, came to mind. I closed my eyes to try to hold onto it, just for a moment, but it slipped away just as quickly.
“You can’t wear that,” Andrew stated authoritatively. From the short few days I’d been around my temptress, I knew she wasn’t one to be told what to do unless she wanted to be. Instead, she was more likely to do the opposite.
