Chapter 11
Kat
Here’ssomething I had never told anyone: Alex and I had sex right before our divorce hearing. I mean literally fifteen minutes before, when we dragged each other into an unoccupied bathroom in the courthouse.
It took all of ten minutes, and I saw stars. So, I was sure, did he.
I hate you,he’d said as he pushed my skirt up. I hate you, too, I’d told him as I unzipped his pants.
We were a mess by then. We really had hated each other. Which was strange, because we’d been in love even when he went to prison for attacking his brother. I’d visited him every Saturday. He’d told me he was sorry, over and over. I told him it was fine. He’d made a mistake. When he got out, we’d move on.
By then, my family knew about us. The fallout was bad, but I didn’t care. My stepfather hated me, my mother was furious until she didn’t care anymore, and my brother, Tyler—well, Tyler got mean. He was technically my half-brother, since my stepfather was his biological dad, and he didn’t have my Cherokee blood. After Alex went to prison and I became the true black sheep of the family, Tyler started calling me squaw. He did it viciously, under his breath when no one else was around, and he really liked saying it. It gave him a thrill.
It hurt, because anyone who tells you that being called something like that doesn’t carry even a pinch of pain is lying. But I’d been called names before, by lots of people, and I was strong enough to take it. I didn’t need my family. I had Alex. When he was released, we got married and moved into a little apartment together, just him and me.
At first, it was good. Perfect, even. Alex’s friend Dane Scotland had written some kind of genius piece of software, and incredibly, they had made a deal to sell it—for forty-six million dollars. It was the kind of thing that only happened in movies, but it was about to happen to Alex, as soon as the deal was final. He and his friends—Dane, Aidan, and Noah—were talking about starting their own company, a venture capital firm that would invest in other businesses. I had bypassed college and was taking photography courses, spending my time honing my craft. Photography made me happy. Alex made me happy. We were starting a good life, Alex and me.
We were finally going to get our happily ever after. And then Damon Blake happened—again—and we fell apart.
Even after it was over, I had a hard time processing how fast it was. Alex and I had been married a year then, and we were both twenty-two. Damon had been out of town—I had no idea where—and when he came back to Chicago, he took Alex out for a drink. To put the past behind them, he’d said. He had something he wanted to talk to Alex about.
Alex went, because even though Damon had had some kind of thing for me, he was willing to put that in the past. They went out and had a drink, and then another. And another. And at some point in the evening, Damon leaned close to my husband and said: Look, I have to confess something and get it off my chest. You deserve to know. While you were in prison, I slept with Kat.
It was a lie. A fucking lie. But in that moment, with those drinks in him and his brother leaning close, confiding, Alex believed it.
He believed it. He believed that while I was waiting for him for eighteen months, while I’d lived in hell at home, taking shit from my family because I’d fallen in love with him—he believed that while that was happening, I had had sex with his brother.
It had killed him to believe it. And still, he had.
When he came home and accused me, we’d fought. I was hurt and furious, and so was he. We flung horrible words at each other, things we couldn’t take back. Aside from Damon and his awful lie, something had cracked between us that night. Something that hadn’t felt like it could be fixed.
Believing Damon was Alex’s mistake. And then—I could admit it now, years later—I had made a mistake of my own.
That night, during that horrible fight, instead of sticking it out, I’d packed my bags and gone home to my family.
Oddly, it was my mother who got out of bed and listened to me as I cried and told her everything. Her expression was stoic. Her anger and her weeping over how I was “ruining my life” had ended a year ago. Since then, she’d ignored me, almost as if she’d decided I died.
When I finished my story she said, “So you don’t want to go back to him?”
“No,” I said.
My mother nodded. “I’ll take care of it.” She stood up to leave my bedroom, but at the doorway she turned back. “You get one youthful mistake, Katharine. Just one.”
My mother wasas good as her word. From that night onward, she’d taken care of everything: the rest of my things were brought from my apartment with Alex, a lawyer was called, divorce proceedings initiated. I was kept at home, heartbroken and numb, while none of Alex’s calls were allowed to get through to me. My mother didn’t even bother to lie about it. “He called your phone a number of times,” she told me after they had taken my phone away. “We disconnected the number.”
I let my family take over. I was living in a strange fog of indecisiveness, and for a while it just felt easier to let my family make my decisions for me. I couldn’t have explained why. I could barely form two thoughts in a row, and my mother and stepfather were only too happy to do my thinking instead. I floated along, doing as I was told, signing the papers I was told to sign. My life with Alex seemed far away. It was too hard to fight anymore.
I didn’t see him again until the day of the divorce hearing. Seeing Alex—my Alex—in the hallway, wearing a jacket and tie, his gray eyes looking at me with naked pain, woke me back up after my long fog. I felt love, and anger that he hadn’t trusted me, and searing shame that I’d let my family run my life instead of running it myself. I realized I’d turned myself off because I hadn’t wanted to feel. Now I felt everything.
I hated him.
I wanted him, too. He felt the same way, because a few minutes later, we were in an empty bathroom with the door locked, and my skirt was shoved up before I had the words I hate you out of my mouth. The pleasure had been harsh and incredible, making the last of my numbness fall away.
When we were finished, Alex had paused, panting against my skin. “I know you didn’t sleep with my brother,” he said. “I was stupid to believe it. But we can’t be fixed now.”
He was right. We’d both messed it up. We were broken, and there was nothing we could do. Maybe Alex Blake was, as my mother had said, my youthful mistake.
So I did the only thing I could do in that moment. I pushed my skirt back down.
“Get out,” I told him. “We’re getting a divorce.”
Now,I had Alex’s hands on me again. He’d forgotten nothing—not how to curve his palm over my breast, not how to press his body against mine to make me shiver. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the side of my neck, sucking, not hard enough to leave a mark but hard enough to give me a thin sliver of pain. My bare toes actually curled against the hotel carpet and my knees tried to go weak. I gasped out a breath.
Sensation flooded through me. My blood warmed everywhere he touched me and my pulse beat in my ears. He slid his hands down my body and cupped my ass through my jeans, pressing me against him as our bodies rocked together. I needed this. It was the same kind of awakening I’d had in the courthouse, the same lifting of numbness, except it was better.
So. Much. Better.
I grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, taking the shirt off him and throwing it on the floor. He had the same body I remembered, lean and muscled, graceful, with the same dusting of dark hair on his chest, but he was older now, his muscles thicker and heavier, the thinness that comes from being hungry gone. I ran my fingers through the hair on his chest and tugged it as he sucked in a breath. Then I leaned in and sucked the warm skin of his neck just like he’d sucked mine.
We were definitely clearing the air.
We didn’t kiss. We just touched, our hands exploring each other everywhere. He unbuttoned my blouse and tugged my bra straps down, squeezing my bare breasts in his hands. I scratched my nails lightly down his flat stomach. Then he unbuttoned my jeans and slid his hand into them, under my panties, his fingers moving between my legs.
I was wet and ready. More than ready. I dug my nails into his hard biceps and lifted my hips, giving him more access. “Make me come,” I said.
“You think I can’t?” he growled against my skin as he rubbed me in a circle, once, and then again.
I was nothing but feeling, nothing but sensation. I still hurt from the attack, my body pulsing with twinges of pain, and somehow that added to the pleasure. Alex’s body pressed me against the counter, and with my injuries it should have hurt, but instead he fit against me so perfectly, his strength unleashed just enough, that it let me relax and open to him instead of tensing. I felt the cool air of the hotel room on my skin where my shirt was open and the brush of Alex’s hips against the insides of my thighs. I let my head tilt back, feeling my hair drop against my back as I closed my eyes and felt.
“Minutes, Kat,” Alex said as his thumb played over my clit. “That’s all it ever takes for you to come for me.”
“Fuck you,” I said, and then I gasped out a breath as he lowered his head and drew his teeth over my bare nipple. I bucked into his touch, a quivering mess of pleasure.
“What do you want?” he asked, teasing me. “My hand? My mouth? My cock? Tell me.”
All of them. I wanted all of them. But I was close, too close, and I didn’t want him to pause long enough even to change position. I ran my good hand through his hair and tugged it. “Don’t stop.”
“My hand it is, then,” he said, and he slid two fingers inside me, his thumb never stopping. I made a keening sound and ground against him. Close. I was so close.
He bent his head and sucked my other nipple, drawing his teeth over it because he knew what that would do to me. This wasn’t slow or leisurely, sweet or playful. We were both trying to get me there as fast as we could.
And it worked. I felt it deep inside me, and then I shuddered, coming hard on his hand. I cried out, not caring how desperate I sounded. I liked sex, and I loved orgasms. I refused to apologize for it. Alex knew that better than anyone.
We were both out of breath when I finished. I melted against the counter as his hand slowly withdrew from my jeans. We still hadn’t kissed.
I knew he was about to move away, so I gripped his wrist. He paused, waiting to see what I would do. The moment was so silent we could hear each other breathing.
His wrist was warm in my hand, and I could feel his pulse beating against his skin. This was Alex, the man I had loved once, right here, warm and vital. Focused on me, and only me. Waiting for me.
If we were going to clear the air, we needed to fully clear it.
I let his wrist go and dropped my hands to the buttons of his jeans. He hissed in a breath as I released them one by one, my knuckles grazing against his hard length. When I pushed his jeans and his boxer briefs down his hips and curled my fingers around him, squeezing lightly, Alex braced a hand on the counter and closed his eyes.
I had him in a moment of surrender, but I wanted more. I needed his surrender to be complete. Nothing else would be good enough. I stroked him once, then sank to my knees and took him in my mouth.
He made a sound that was exactly like pain. His body went hard and his muscles locked as I tasted him, relaxing my jaw to take all of him in. He already tasted slick and salty, because he was just as ready as I had been. So ready he would be just as fast as I was.
I gave him no mercy, just like he’d given me none. I used my lips and my tongue and my hand, stroking him without stopping. Alex’s breath was harsh, and his free hand moved into my long hair, winding it around his wrist and his palm as he gripped me.
I loved it. I never wanted to stop, and at the same time I wanted to break his control and make him come as fast as possible. I knew exactly how. I knew as much about Alex’s body as he knew about mine.
He made that sound of pain again, and then he came, his body so hard it felt like he was in torment. I still gave him no mercy, because he didn’t deserve any. I swallowed it all and then I swirled my tongue around the head of his cock, licking it clean.
It was a transaction, a negotiation, a settling of mutual debts. That’s what I told myself. It wasn’t anything else, because there was nothing else between Alex and me. There was only ancient history and hurt.
I was an old hand at heartbreak, so I didn’t dwell on the other thought that had lodged in my mind, thorny and stubborn.
I hadn’t felt this alive in thirteen years.