Chapter 6 Alessa
Alessa
What a fucking egotistical asshole.
I’m still fuming when I make it to my room. I scrub the blood from my hands and strip my jeans off. Killing Chadwick didn’t even curb my anger. Who in the fuck does he think he is insinuating I’m being soft on Leo? I just don’t want to start a fucking war.
Someone knocks at the door, and I jerk it open in nothing but my shirt and red panties. Oops.
Ryder’s eyes snap down and snap back to my face. “Can we talk?” he asks with that muscle ticking in his jaw.
I motion for him to enter, shutting the door behind him. It’s not the first time we’ve had a yelling match, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
He starts pacing, and I lean against the door, waiting for him to talk.
“I was out of line downstairs.”
“You don’t say,” I remark sarcastically.
He whirls around. “Goddamnit, Les. I’m trying to apologize.”
“If you weren’t an asshole, you would have nothing to apologize for.”
He runs both hands through his hair. “I’m fucking sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I remark.
“What is it about him?” Ryder asks, and I narrow my eyes. “I’m just trying to understand.”
I walk over and go into my closet, pulling a pair of shorts off the shelf.
I refuse to have this conversation with Ryder in my underwear.
I pull them on before walking back into the room, getting comfortable on the bed, and leaning against my headboard.
“I like him, Ryder,” I tell him, even though it’s more than that.
I can’t tell him I love Leo, or he will continue to accuse me of going easy on him.
Honestly, I probably am. Anyone else would have been more than dead by now, but here he is, still alive and still in my house.
“Why? He just screams fragile as fuck.”
I roll my eyes. “He doesn’t.”
“Why him? He’s been lying to you for months, Les.” Ryder slides onto the bed beside me, kicking his boots off.
“I’m well fucking aware of that, Ryder.”
“I’m not saying it to rub salt in the wound,” he sighs. “You could have any man you want.”
I snort. “Who?”
“You’re so dense sometimes,” he says with a chuckle, but it sounds off. “All I’m saying is you don’t need him.”
One second, I’m looking at Ryder with a glare for calling me dense, and the next, his lips are sealing over mine.
He uses my surprise to his advantage, pushing his tongue into my mouth.
I place my hands on his chest to push him away but end up yanking him closer with fists in his shirt.
The first touch of his lips is like electricity running through my body.
He hooks an arm around my waist, pulling us both to a laying position on the bed, his body half over mine.
I run my hands up his chest and around his neck, running my hands through his hair, pulling him closer.
His mouth is magic against mine, pulling me into his kiss.
Stroking my tongue with his, he braces a hand on the back of my head, holding me against his mouth just as hard as I’m holding him to mine.
He shifts his body, settling between my thighs, rubbing his hard cock against my shorts covered pussy.
He groans into my mouth when I push my hips up to meet his, and it’s like a bucket of ice-cold water being dumped over my head.
I finally gather myself and shove at his chest. He releases my mouth immediately and rolls over to the other side of the bed, staring at the ceiling.
I touch my lips, wondering what the hell just happened. This is Ryder. My best friend of twenty-five years. Hell, our birthdays are a month apart, his in February, mine in March. We never crossed that line. Until now.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t feel that,” he says.
I shake my head in denial because I did feel that, but I also feel guilty. I just told Leo I loved him, and he’s lying in the room below us while I’m making out with someone else.
“We can’t, Ryder,” I whisper.
“Because of him?” he retorts.
“Because I won’t ruin our friendship.”
He jumps off the bed, scooping his boots out of the floor. “One of these days, you will open those pretty blue eyes to the truth.” He strides out of the room, leaving me to figure out his cryptic remark.
The truth? What truth? With that rolling through my head, I jerk my shorts off, slide my bra off through my shirt, slinging it across the room.
I settle into bed, and all I can smell is Ryder, his cologne, and that woodsy scent that follows him around.
Ugh! Why the hell did he have to kiss me? What the hell even was that?
I punch the pillow, trying to get comfortable.I can still feel how his lips move over mine, and how his body felt pressed against me.
“Oh my god,” I groan into the pillow, not wanting to admit how much that little bit of contact made me want more.
When I finally fall asleep, it’s full of dreams of Ryder and Leo.
“You look like shit,” Gage remarks from the passenger side of my BMW.
“Fuck off,” I grumble.
I woke up in a shitty mood because of Ryder kissing me, and I didn’t sleep for crap.
We won’t even talk about the dreams that would wake me from a dead sleep, moaning.
I took care of myself twice throughout the night because of those damn dreams. Each time I woke up, I almost found one of them to take care of it for me.
I made it to the door once ready to find Ryder and demand he finish what he started.
Luckily, I talked myself out of it before I went to find him.
Now it’s eight in the morning, on a Monday at that.
It’s mid-June here, and it is too hot for this shit.
Fucking hell, my mood is turning dark, fast.
We are on our way to one of our clubs, Club Maximus, to do some administrative work.
I hate every second of it, but it’s how these places run as well as they do.
It’s one of the biggest clubs I own. It’s in an old warehouse, so we have a lot of space for two bars, two dance floors, lots of seating, a DJ, and my newest addition soon is going to be dancers.
People line up for miles to get in any day of the week.
He chuckles. “What’s your problem?”
“Ryder. Ryder is my fucking problem,” I snap and then take a deep breath. It wasn’t Gage’s fault. “He’s an asshole.”
“I thought he came up to apologize last night,” he says with a frown over his mirrored sunglasses.
“He apologized, all right,” I reply. With his tongue down my throat.
“Okay,” Gage says slowly. “Then what’s wrong?”
I whip into the club’s back parking lot and push my oversized sunglasses up on my head, shoving the car into park. “He kissed me.”
Gage’s mouth drops open, and he pulls his sunglasses off. “Fucking finally.”
“What do you mean, finally?” I ask, shocked.
“Come on. There is so much sexual tension around you two, and it’s not even fucking funny.” I narrow my eyes at him and push my door open. I stride to the building, Gage right on my heels, laughing. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what, Gage?” I ask without turning around. I key in the code for the backdoor, and when the lock pops, I swing it open. “There’s nothing to see.”
I keep walking down the long hallway that leads to the offices. The only door on the other wall is the back entrance to the club. This part is for employees only. I unlock the door to my office, shutting it behind Gage. I take my place behind the desk, and he drops into a chair in front of me.
“You’re a smart woman, Les.” He sits forward in his chair. “You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about kissing him.”
I throw my hands in the air. “Of course I have. When we were both hormonal teenagers around each other twenty-four seven. We aren’t teenagers anymore.”
“No, you’re two consenting adults fighting your attraction to each other like toddlers,” he retorts.
“Do you want to get shot in the face today?” I threaten. That’s the second time he’s said something smartass in the past five minutes.
He snorts, “You wouldn’t shoot me. What’s holding you back?”
I sit back in my chair with a sigh. He isn’t going to let this go. “Twenty-five years of friendship.” I swallow. “Leo.”
He waves his hand in the air. “If anyone can make a relationship work and keep the friendship intact, it’s you and Ryder.” He sinks back in his chair with a thoughtful look, and I’m immediately suspicious. “As for Leo, do you still want to be with him?”
“I don’t know,” I say miserably. “I love him, Gage,” I whisper.
He shrugs. “Duh, or he would be dead.” Sometimes, I do want to shoot him. “What if you didn’t have to choose?”
“This isn’t a book, Gage, and it doesn’t work that way in real life.”
“Why?” he asks, looking genuinely confused.
Is he fucking with me?
“For one, there is no way in hell Ryder is the sharing type.” I open my laptop. “This conversation is done. I’m not doing this with you.”
He gets up from his chair, striding to the door. He pulls it open. “I never took you for a coward, Les.” With that parting shot, he shuts the door behind him, leaving me gaping at the door.
A coward? How does wanting to save my friendship with Ryder make me a coward?
Pushing everything out of my head, I get to work. I don’t want to be here all day. No matter how hard I try, my mind keeps returning to what Gage said. We can’t have that type of relationship. Can we? Do I even want a relationship with Ryder? Do I even want to stay in one with Leo?
“Fuck you, Gage Murphy Lawson,” I mutter. “Fuck you for putting this shit in my head.”
He just has to add to it like I don’t have enough going on.
I’ve have three guys I thought I could be serious with in my life.
It started with Dex until all that went up in smoke, then there was Zane until I found out he was a traitor, and now Leo, who I just found out had been lying to me for months.
I didn’t have a stellar track record with relationships.
It would eventually blow up in my face, and I would lose my best friend. Right?