And then the dreams started, glimpses of the future I forfeited flashing through my mind on an endless loop. All of them starring my best friend’s wife: the woman I pretended to hate in the light of day but made love to in the darkest corners of my mind every night.
Ishouldhave felt guilty. Eric was my brother in all but the literal sense of the word and coveting the love of his life should’ve been more than enough reason for me to hate myself. But in true Alexander fashion, I didn’t. Instead, I rationalized. I told myself the dreams were okay because Eric got to haveher. He got her smiles, her laughs, her soft moans, and her breathless pleas for more. He got everything.
When those thoughts still weren’t enough to assuage the guilt, and I could barely look myself in the mirror, I went dark, telling myself we should both be glad I wasn’t more like my father. A man who would have never stepped aside and settled for dreams when there was a chance he could have the real thing.
Somehow, probably just to spite the strands of Gabriel Alexander’s DNA coursing through my veins, I managed to survive. Living off of scraps that were unsatisfying and apparently inaccurate, because even themost explicit ones couldn’t hold a candle to what just happened between me and Sloane in this bathroom.
My heart is pounding in my chest, smacking against my rib cage while every drop of blood aches painfully inside the erection I still have pressed against Sloane’s stomach. Another bead of precum leaks out of my tip, and I know I have less than a minute to disentangle myself from this woman before I lose my shit and take her against the wall.
Sloane doesn’t give me the chance to move. Her hands come up to my chest and start pushing. Gently at first, and then with more force, like she can’t wait to put some distance between our bodies. I pull back, expecting to see her flushed and sated, eyes still hazy and soft with lust for me. Instead, I find tears streaming down her face and a sullen expression marring her beautiful features.
Shit.
She’s still shoving at my chest, so I lower her gently to the ground with a slide of my leg. The empty look in her eyes and the deafening silence in the room makes moving from between her thighs awkward as hell. Once I’m free, my hands bracket her waist just long enough to make sure she’s steady on her feet, and then I drop them.
It hurts to let her go.
Especially when she looks like she could use a hug like the one I gave her on Friday when she was upset about that fight with her mom. But today it seems like I’m the source of her tears, which makes my chances of being the person to comfort her significantly lower. I probably have a five percent chance of not having my head bitten off if I try to touch her right now, but I’m willing to take the gamble if it means getting rid of the storm cloud that’s gathered over her head.
I reach out, putting my hand gently on her forearm. “Are you okay?” She shrugs me off before my brain even registers our bodies have touched.The tears are flowing freely now, rolling like waves while she looks everywhere but at me.
“What’s the matter?”
It’s such a dumb question, because anyone looking at the panic creeping into the corners of her eyes and the dejected slump of her shoulders would know what I’m too scared to hear her admit: she’s ashamed. The guilt of what she just did, and who she did it with, is threatening to eat her alive.
I know that’s what it is because I feel it too. A millstone around my neck that’s never really gone away but gets a bit heavier every time I see her and my heart skips a beat just to remind me she’s the only person who’s ever truly owned it. It started in on me the second she walked in the room with James today, looking all annoyed with him but blushing every time I glanced at her. I wanted her then, even though I had no reason to hope she would let me have her.
And now that she has, she regrets it.
Why wouldn’t she? It’s not like you’re Eric. You’re not the man she swore her life and love to. You don’t make things better for her. You just make them more complicated.
“Sloane—” I start, but she shakes her head. Both of her hands are working at her clothes, trying to straighten the wrinkles on her chest where I kneaded her breasts only moments ago. My gaze darkens. I want to beg her not to erase the proof that this moment happened, but I fight the urge, because I know it’ll only make the situation worse.
“Can you please turn around?”
Her voice breaks on the last word and tears fall steadily down her face. The last thing I want to do is turn my back on her, but I can’t deny her request. I turn and stare at the drywall, ears primed and listening for any sound that comes from her. There’s a slight rustle of fabric as she shifts her skirt back down. A gasp as she smooths her fingers over her curls and thensniffles. First, they’re small, so faint I think I’m imagining them, but when they turn into sobs, I whirl around to face her.
Her clothes are straight now. All evidence of our encounter is gone, save for the puddle of liquid arousal she’s left on my leg. It’s soaked through the denim of my jeans, so it’s not visible at all, which is good because it would probably only add to the great, heaving sobs racking through her body. She’s got a hand clamped over her mouth, trying, and failing, to stifle the broken sounds pouring out of her.
My heart twists.Fuck, does she regret what we just did that much?
I move toward her, and she turns away from me, shrinking further into herself. I take another step, my front pressing to her back, and wrap my arms around her. This time she doesn’t move away, and relief floods me when she relaxes into my hold. But it only lasts for a second before it transforms into something more destructive while I listen to her cry.
Her tears seem to go on forever, each sob bleeding into another until I can’t tell where one begins and another ends, and I don’t move or breathe because I’m too scared to remind her I’m the one comforting her.
When they turn into soft sniffles, I put my hands on her hips and turn her around. I need to understand what went wrong and how I can stop it from happening next time—if there’s going to be a next time—but she still won’t meet my eyes.
“Sloane, I—” I don’t know what to say, because there’s nothing I can say to relieve her of the burden of her guilt and grief. “It’s okay, angel. Please don’t cry.”
Her back goes ramrod straight and then she’s pulling away from me. Our gazes lock, and I wish like hell she wasn’t looking at me because there’s nothing masking the absolute devastation playing across her features and nowhere to run from those watery eyes, flushed cheeks, or trembling lips threatening to destroy me. It breaks my heart to see her like this, to know being with me in the most basic way did this to her.
“Don’t.” Her chin wobbles. “Please don’t call me that.”
This is the sickest form of confirmation, undeniable proof of just how wrong I’ve always been for her. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve wanted her or how much I loved the girl I met all those years ago, I wasn’t right for her then and I’m sure as hell not right for her now.Why did I think I ever could be?
I knew better than any other man that might pursue her what I was up against: the memory of her perfect husband who was funny and kind, and who loved her beyond belief.
Eric never raised his voice at her or intentionally provoked her to anger. He wouldn’t have taken more than a kiss from her while she was working, and he damn sure wouldn’t have pushed her to the edge when she was barely recovered from a fight with yet another person who wanted things from her she didn’t want to give.
