Chapter 28
B ecause Lex forced me to drink what felt like a gallon of water and to take some aspirin, I don’t have the mother of all headaches. As if he hasn’t done enough already, I wake up to find a tall glass of water and another tablet of aspirin on the nightstand next to me.
He isn’t in bed anymore, which makes sense since it’s almost noon. Feeling undeserving of his sweet attention, I swallow the pill, finish the water, and lie back to stare into emptiness.
Jesus fuck, I acted horribly yesterday. Lex still wasn’t right to let her in and entertain her for so long, but I had no business being this nasty and catty to her. God, what must she have thought of me? I definitely passed as an emotionally abusive girlfriend, and the shame of it burns inside my chest.
It isn’t the first time I’ve gotten so absurdly drunk around Lex, and now that I lie there thinking back on it, I wonder if maybe I have an alcohol problem. As much as I’d blame Mason for making me drink that much, I let it happen because I wanted a temporary escape from my thoughts. That’s it, I’ll be more reasonable with the alcohol until Christmas. And even then, I’ll keep it mild. It’s a solid goal, and it’ll help lower my calorie intake.
Lex was right. I went way too far. And if I can’t control those insecurities and doubts, they’ll become true. My fear of losing him will make it happen because who’d want to stay with such an unstable person? The irony of it is palpable. There’s probably something poetic about it.
Lex definitely was the bigger person with the way he took care of me, staying by my side as I puked blue, then carrying me bridal-style to his bathroom so I could brush my teeth and gargle some minty mouthwash.
I’m so embarrassed by my behavior that I’m reluctant to go out there and see him. But I need to apologize and thank him for taking care of me despite how I treated his friend. So, summoning the little courage I have in me, I crawl my way out of bed and into the cold air. I grab a fluffy blanket folded on the armchair as I pass it and wrap myself in it.
He’s sitting on the couch in the living area with his laptop on his knees. Without a word, I walk up to him. He spots me in the corner of his eye, and as I reach him, he settles his computer on the table before him.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he answers while I clumsily lay on the couch, still wrapped like a burrito. He welcomes me as I rest my head on his lap, looking up at his strong jawline.
His gorgeous face is familiar and comforting, and behind his sexy glasses, there’s something sweet in his eyes. He settles a hand over my sternum, which I cover with mine, and with his free one, he gently grazes my hair, chasing the remnants of my headache away.
“How’s your head?” he asks.
I don’t expect the wide grin that splits my face in half as I think of the only thing I can answer right now. “Haven’t had any complaints.”
His smirk is knowing and proud as he says, “Definitely not from me, no.”
We stay like this for several minutes, with his hand softly brushing my hair as I enjoy it with my eyes closed. But what happened yesterday keeps eating me up, so I force myself to trigger the talk we need to have.
“Baby?”
“Hm?”
I open my eyes and say, “I don’t want you to cut all ties with Evora.”
“I told you, I don’t mind if—”
“But it’s wrong. You shouldn’t have to choose between her and me. We’re stronger than this.”
“Then how do we make sure yesterday never happens again?” he asks after a moment of pondering.
“I don’t want to be the jealous girlfriend. But I also don’t want to feel like this again. Maybe we can set some boundaries together—something that helps me feel more secure while making sure you’re not cutting someone important out of your life.”
“Of course. Do you have anything in mind?”
I think about it for a few seconds, refusing to be too strict. The first thing that comes to mind is honestly ridiculous, but I still need to say it. “Don’t sleep with her,” I demand. After a short second of stupor, his low chuckle lights up the room .
“Thank God you clarified this because I wasn’t sure if I could. I’ll call her to cancel our plans for tonight.”
“Don’t joke about it,” I pout, nudging his arm.
“Of course I won’t sleep with her, Andrea. Not only do I not want to, I would never do that to you.”
“Good answer. Okay, seriously, though. You two hanging out late at night makes me uncomfortable. Could you keep it to reasonable hours? Like nothing too late?”
“Done. What else?”
“I don’t want to feel like anything is happening behind closed doors. When you guys meet, do it outside? Like in a bar, a museum, or a public park. But nothing romantic.”
“I might check with you for those because I’m unsure what qualifies as romantic.”
“That’s another thing. I don’t want to feel blindsided again. Just give me a heads-up when you see her, so I don’t find out in a way that makes my brain spiral.”
“Fair enough. I’ll text or call whenever I’m meeting Evora. What else?”
“I haven’t thought this through, but I’ll let you know if I have more rules.”
With a grave and serious expression, he nods before bending toward me. I push myself up the best I can, and we kiss tenderly. This angle is odd, and when it intensifies and his tongue meets mine, it’s like discovering kissing all over again. We have to try the Spider-Man kiss one day.
We get lost in our embrace, and I forget about our issues, about my headache, about Evora… We kiss like nothing else matters in this world—because it’s true. Shifting around to adjust my position, I’m soon plastered against him, my arms wrapped around his neck to hold him close as we devour each other.
I want him. I miss having him, miss feeling him inside of me, miss our perfect harmony… Having sex again would remind him how good we are together, and how he won’t hurt me.
With a bold hand, I grip the front of his basketball shorts, molding my palm over him. He’s soft, completely flaccid. Shit, all this mess really fucked with his head. I insist, pressing harder, pumping him through the fabric until he pulls away from me with a groan. When it still doesn’t work, I slip under the elastic band of his shorts and underwear to circle his dick.
He doesn’t fight me, his forehead pressed on mine, his expression a mix between pain and need. He lets me try for about a minute, and when there’s no sign of him getting hard, he pulls my hand out of there. “I’m sorry, Andrea. ”
My eyes become misty, sensing his inner pain and turmoil, but I don’t insist, moving away from his lap. He’s hurt, and I don’t know how to help him heal.
“Have you… have you considered going back to see your therapist?” I wonder.
He shakes his head. “He was an incompetent asshole. I need to find another one, but it’s hard, given my unique needs.”
Right, it must be so hard to find a professional when you’re so much smarter than them. “It’s okay,” I say, laying my head on his shoulder. “We’ll take our time and figure out what to do.”
“How about we put some food in you and watch a movie?” he offers.
“I wouldn’t say no to a cream cheese bagel and scrambled eggs.”
“I’ll take one out of the freezer. What do you want to watch?”
“This feels like a Shrek kind of day.”
He grins, amused by my choice. “Another classic of cinema, I see.”
“You’ll love it. It’s about a mannerless ogre who loves his solitude but ends up forced into an adventure with a talkative ass.”
His laugh mends my heart a little, as well as the kiss he can’t help but give me. “It sounds very familiar.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
I pick up the blanket I dismissed during our kiss and wrap myself in it as he heads off to the kitchen. We’ll get better. We absolutely will.
T he animated movie is good enough to distract me from the fact that I should be working. Andrea makes it even better, whispering some of the lines as they occur. She’s a big fan, it seems, and I think I understand why.
I’m lying on the couch, and she’s half over me, her ear over my navel as she lies on her stomach between my parted legs. I’m not sure how we got into this position, as we started sitting up, but I enjoy having her on me like this. She’s like a warm weighted blanket.
At some point, she looks up at me and calls, “Baby?” I look down, and she hesitates before continuing. “I was wondering… You’re afraid you’ll hurt me, but what if we do things where that can’t happen?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if I use my mouth? Do you think that would be okay? Could it work? ”
I have no idea. I’ve never had performance issues before, especially not with her. A suggestive look from her used to be enough to send blood flowing to my cock, but her hands on me as we kissed with passion didn’t work a couple of hours ago. These are uncharted waters, and I have no idea how to navigate them.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “It could work if there isn’t the pressure of sex.”
“Would you mind if we tried?”
She stares at me with her doe eyes full of love and hope, and I know refusing would hurt her. But if we try and I stay soft, she might also take it poorly. I reach down to frame her beautiful face with my hands. “If it doesn’t work, promise you won’t take it personally,” I demand.
Without missing a beat, she nods. “And if it doesn’t work, you can always issue a complaint about my head, and I’ll try to do better next time,” she says humorously. I chuckle at that, hoping she actually won’t mind if nothing comes of it.
She lowers a little more as I pick up the remote and press pause. “If you feel uncomfortable with something, tell me, and we’ll stop,” she insists, to which I nod.
There’s something deferential in the way she lowers my basketball shorts and then my underwear to free my resting cock. “Even like this, it’s still the prettiest dick I’ve ever seen,” she appreciatively says.
“Glad you find my cock ‘pretty.’”
“It’s our cock,” she corrects me before laying a series of kisses on the soft flesh.
With the armrest angling my head up, I have no problem looking down at her while she worships me with her plump lips and pink tongue. It isn’t missed on me that I’ve been scared to have this part of me inside her again, but there she is, showing me how much she loves it. And something tells me it isn’t a coincidence. She knows exactly what she’s doing, reminding me of how much she likes my dick.
I shouldn’t be surprised by how well that works on me. But I can already feel the blood flow through my length, hardening it. Fuck, she was right. Sex scares me so much that I can’t get hard for her, but this… this works on my fucked-up brain. It works so well that I’m soon aching with the need for more, gloriously hard as precum leaks out of my tip.
She licks it up and asks, “Do you want me to keep going?”
Her hand is leisurely pumping me, so soft yet firm, so fucking good that I have no doubt she can bring all this to an end. I won’t be hurting her with my inability to perform this time .
“Yes. Keep going,” I approve.
She almost purrs at that, kissing the side of my length. “Then tell me what you want, Alexander.” I groan, already over all that teasing and needing more. “Do you want me to suck your cock, baby?”
“Yes.”
“Then say the words.”
I let out a low chuckle, the irony of the moment not lost on me. That cheeky little … “I want you to suck my cock, Andrea.”
“Good boy …”
Still very proud of herself, she wraps her lips around me and gives me what I begged for. With the eager way she sucks in her cheeks and slides her tongue on the underside, I know I’ll be coming in no time. My greedy little dork works her magic on me, taking me far into her throat, pumping me with her hand, looking up with amorous eyes…
She’s so good at this, siphoning my cock like she’s desperate to have my cum fill her throat. I’ve never met a woman so hungry for it like this. She has never spit it out since we’ve been together, always happy to swallow me when I finish in her mouth. I fucking love that about her.
“Tell me, Andrea,” I say, my voice hoarse with pleasure. “Were you always such a whore for cum, or is it only for me?”
She moans around my girth and frees me, pumping her hand up and down while she answers. “It’s just for you, baby. I almost puked the first time I had cum in my mouth, and I used to rush to spit it out. But you… I love having you in me, Lex. I need it.”
“And do you need it now?”
She nods, letting out a small whimper.
“Then make me come and drink me down like a little cum slut.”
She doesn’t need to be told twice as she returns to her ministrations, swallowing me the entire way, her tight throat driving me insane. How could she ever think I’d grow tired of her when every time with her feels like the first time? It’s like I always forget how good she feels, how amazing she is, and then remember it over and over. No woman will ever compare, and if I ever lose her… I’ll remember how good she was for me until I die.
To no one’s surprise, I come in mere minutes of her expert treatment. Her deft tongue and hands show no mercy, and I find myself grunting her name as I keep her down with a firm hand on the back of her head, shooting white-hot ropes of cum down her throat. I haven’t gotten my balls emptied in over a week, and the amount that comes out of me is ridiculous. But she takes it all, her esophagus contracting around me as she swallows it down, which only makes me come even harder. I swear I see stars at the apex of it, my head spinning from how good it feels.
I’m panting as I release her, letting her lift up and free my cock. There’s no mistaking the smugness on her face as she returns the waistband of my underwear and shorts in place.
“So, any complaints?” she asks with a smirk.
I’m still out of breath as I say, “Fuck no.”
“Good, I still got it.”
She crawls up my body to kiss me, and I sample my taste on her clever little tongue. Perfect fucking woman …
“My turn, now,” I say once I’ve regained my senses.
“No, that was all for you. It was your moment, baby,” she counters, grabbing the remote to press play.
I want to protest, but she wriggles into me to get comfortable, genuinely uninterested in me returning the favor. So, I twist my gaze away from her and look at the screen instead, my hand finding its way to her ass, perfectly molded there.
“Maybe we should move to a deserted island, just you and me,” she says at some point.
“Why?”
“Because we’re so good when it’s just us. No outside interference, no drama, no Miriam Coleman… Only love and happiness.”
“Hmm, I’m not opposed to this idea,” I humor, pinching her ribs, making her jerk and squeal a little. “Just you, me, fresh water, and a monthly airdrop of food. Clothes are optional.”
“Clothes would actually be banned. But I worry we’d get bored at some point.”
“We can throw in Wi-Fi if you want.”
“But then it means we’d need electricity, phones, computers… Maybe it’s easier to stay here and stop letting others ruin us.”
I let out a resigned sigh and tug her closer, wrapping both arms around her. She stares up, and the devotion on her face tells me everything I need to know.
“Then it’s you and me against the world, freckles,” I promise. She nods, as determined as I am.
It’s us before everything else.
Her before anyone else.
A s a teenager, I didn’t explore sex like others did. At some point, I was so much younger than my classmates that intercourse with them would have been illegal. So, I was nineteen when I first began experimenting with an older student at Stanford. We’d blow off some steam together and then return to studying as if nothing happened.
I think I’m getting the teenage experience with Andrea now, though. We’re sticking to oral and fingering, and while it’s not the same as penetrative sex, it’s still quite good—especially with a throat like hers. She also likes to get on top, dock my cock between the lips of her pussy, and grind on me until we both come. I can never grow bored of watching her lick the cum off my stomach as she cleans me up afterward.
Her period arrives on Monday, and because she doesn’t have cramps that make sex unappealing, her increased estrogen levels make her hornier—which is saying a lot. She’s slightly reluctant at first, but her menstrual cup technically allows it, so she agrees to give oral a try when I offer. That’s how I learn she’s even more sensitive during that time of the month, likely due to the increased blood flow in that area. Making her come has always been easy for me, but watching her burst so effortlessly is a delight.
Another thing that I get to explore during that week is sixty-nine, which I was never fond of. But it’s another way of sharing the moment, so we indulge almost every night. It’s hard to stay focused on what I’m doing when it feels like she’s sucking the life out of me, but I like that it makes things more challenging. We have fun trying to see who’ll come first, keeping the scores in her phone’s notes. I’m winning by far—or at least I was until she realized massaging that space between my balls and asshole makes me lose it. Now, she’s gaining in on me. Fast.
This isn’t optimal, and I wish I could give her more, but I like that it gives us something new to explore. I’m learning more about what she likes during oral, and I consider that valuable intel.
“So, what are y’all’s plans for the weekend?” Mason asks.
I’ve joined the team for lunch, which has become an almost daily occurrence. I like spending time with my girlfriend, which makes sense, and Karen insisted that I can’t single her out too much compared to her colleagues. So, I sit next to her during the lunch break and entertain my other employees while I’m at it.
“We’re hanging out with a friend of mine,” Andrea explains before taking another bite of her salad. That’s new to me, so I turn to her with a questioning look.
“Is it me?” Mason wonders. “Am I the friend? Because I’d love to spend the weekend with y’all.”
“It obviously isn’t you.”
“Who is it, then? ”
“Jensen.”
She says it so casually that it takes me a moment to remember why the name is familiar. Then, I almost choke on my chicken when it clicks. That’s her sex toy. Does it mean she wants us to use it? My cock doesn’t work, but the vibrator definitely will. Fuck, I’m actually eager to fuck her with it, now. I bet it’s so easy to make her come.
“Who the hell is that?” Mason asks with a frown.
“You don’t know him.”
Before her colleague can question her any further, Kevin appears by my side, distracting the table from Andrea’s mysterious “friend.”
“Hey, Lex, I was wondering if you’d rather be next to Hensley or Rosenthal next Saturday.”
“I told you I wasn’t coming.”
He frowns, disliking my answer. “You were serious about that? Come on, we bought a whole table. And it was your idea to invite investors.”
“Well, things have changed, and I can’t go.”
The table has fallen silent because of our exchange, so I know Andrea hears it when Kevin says, “Come on, it’s Eva’s big night. You can’t let her down like that.”
She definitely heard because she asks, “What’s going on?”
Fuck. I didn’t tell Kevin about the Evora mess because I didn’t need someone else to call me a moron for not telling Andrea about my brief and null marriage. He has no idea I plan on avoiding our old friend in the near future, and I worry that he might say something that’ll trigger yet another argument with Andrea.
Turning to her, Kevin explains, “An old friend is throwing a charity gala for Christmas, the Saturday after this one, and Kelex bought a table in support. We have twelve chairs, and Lex thought it could be a good idea to bring investors with us to remind them of our values and good work.”
Andrea takes in the information and then looks at me. I can’t say anything, so I try to pass into my gaze that I’m sorry for not letting her know. But I’m not going anyway, so it doesn’t matter, does it?
“Are you going with Shelly?” she asks Kev.
“Of course.”
“Would it be weird if I came with Lex, then?”
I have to do a double take, unsure I heard what I think I did. “You want to go?” I ask, confused.
“Well, you’re definitely going because I’m not letting you miss your friend’s charity gala,” she replies. “And if there’s room for me, I’d like to be there, too. ”
“Of course there’s room for you!” Kevin says with enthusiasm. “Actually, it means I don’t have to invite Aldridge and his horrendous wife, so it’s such a relief.”
Ignoring him, I lean closer to Andrea. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah, I’ve never been to a gala before, so I’d love to go,” she confidently replies. “I don’t have a dress, though, but I can arrange that.”
“Girl, I know someone,” Mason chimes in. “He’s the goat, and I’m sure he can whip you up something by then.”
That immediately captivates Andrea’s attention, who starts talking logistics with Mason. I turn to Kevin to send him an annoyed look. If this goes to shit again, I’ll blame it on him this time.
He ignores my temper and asks, “So, Hensley or Rosenthal?”
“Sit me next to Andrea, and then I genuinely couldn’t care less.”
“Alright, Rosenthal it is.”
Just like that, he’s off on his merry way while I’m left having to deal with whatever his actions will bring. Andrea doesn’t seem upset about having to attend, looking at Mason’s phone while he scrolls to show her the kind of dresses his friend makes.
Is she really fine with going? Won’t it come back to bite me in the ass later on?
There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?