“Come over here,” he said.
Still with his arm around me, he grabbed his cell phone and made a call. He said something about a tray and which room he was in, but that was all I understood. The rest of his words buzzed in my ears.
“Let’s get you warmed up,” he said.
This simple sentence resulted with me being gently led to the bathroom, stripped of my fancy robe and slippers, and the shower being turned on. When the water was steaming, which happened pretty much instantly because yeah, this was a fancy hotel with very good plumbing, I realized that Alex had stripped too, and was escorting me into the huge, marble-lined shower.
We were naked in a beautifully hot shower. The hot water glistened on his shoulders and streamed down his torso, making a path that my mouth wanted to follow.
Wow, and I thought his smile had been my only Christmas present. Stupid me. This wasanotherpresent. Not that I deserved it but Jesus Fucking Christ, his hands felt good as he lathered me up. All over.
The soap was silky and his hands were warm and strong, and my dick almost decided to wake up and take notice, but no. Well, everything else was working (my heart for one, beating fast), and when he gently kissed me, his mouth tasted of soap and hot water, and he was utterly delicious.
“Easy now,” he said. “We’ll get that chlorine off you and get you dry and then we can watch Christmas movies in bed. How does that sound?”
At least that’s what I thought he said. Did he mean we wouldn’t be fucking?
“No,” he said, quite gently, with another kiss to my nose as he washed the icicles out of my hair. “Not until you’re sober.
Oh, he’d heard me. He’d beenlistening.
Jonah used to listen to me. In fact, Jonah used to drop whatever he was doing and listen to me. I used to be the center of his world and now I was floating out in space and all I wanted was to have sex with Alex and then I could go back to my rotten, shitty, lonely life?—
“Tell me about Jonah, Beck,” said Alex. “You mentioned him before. Was he your boyfriend? What happened?”
My brain turned off and my mouth engaged. As he rinsed me off, and dried me off, and dressed me in some pretty fancy man-pajamas (Was that a fox print? Was the fox wearing a red scarf and dancing in the snow? Were the fucking pajamas made of fuckingsilk?), I started talking. Hell, I was a one-man, tell-all, Jerry Springer show.
No one had ever asked me how I felt about what happened between Jonah and me. Sure, I’d muttered my complaints, and then when Jonah’d been in prison, I’d yelled at him, and complained out loud. But that had never stopped him from changing and going in a new direction.
Nobody had ever cared enough to ask me how I fuckingfelt. And nothing I’d ever done or said had stopped the inevitable. Especially not after Royce had shown up.
To be honest, I wasn’t very good at sharing my feelings. Never realized I had any until all that shit started coming down. But I told Alexeverything.
As he dried himself off and put on his bathrobe, I told him how I was raised (by wolves), and where, (in a barn). I told him how I hot-wired cars to steal them and then stripped them down and sold the parts. I told him how me and Jonah had been lovers, from time to time.
I even told Alex about those fucking ghost plates that Jonah had insisted on fucking around with. They’re what got him arrested when he’d driven over the Wyoming state line. They’re what got him landed in Wyoming Correctional, and then parceled out to the Fresh Start Program for ex-cons.
I told him about the good times when me and Jonah could be on our own, even at Farthingdale Valley, though in recent weeks, at Thackery Ranch, I could feel him pulling away. That he didn’t want that with me anymore.
Sure, at Thackery Ranch we had some good times, putting super big wheels on an old junker and driving it dangerously along the banks of the Yellowstone River. But that started tonothappen. Jonah became more busy, him and Royce going off together all the time.
Then I told Alex how lonely I was, and I went on and on about it in a drunken flurry of feelings. I think by that time, his cell phone was ringing and there was someone at the door.
“I’m not a criminal anymore, though,” I said. “And that’s gotta be a good thing, right?”
“I’m glad you’re not,” he said as he tucked me into the giant, king-sized bed and propped about a hundred pillows behind me. “Give me a minute,” he said, kissing me gently, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ll be right back.”
I guess there’d been some kind of confusion amongst the staff or whatever, but Alex sorted everything out, talking on his cell phone while he went to the door and opened it to allow someone to (Steve? Bret? Stan?) push in a rolling cart with a bunch of things on top.
In spy movies, a bad guy would be hidden beneath the draped cloth and spring out at the last minute. But that didn’t happen here. Alex finished his phone call and then directed Steve-Bret-Stan to bring the cart all the way up to the bed where I had been tucked.
I guess I was feeling a little better after that shower, and now I was in a dream state, warm and tucked into a bed, wearing silky pajamas while Alex strode around the very large suite, getting things done.
My brain was a little frazzled, still, and my mouth was tired from complaining. I also guessed that Alex would be kicking me out in the morning, now that I’d stupidly admitted to him that I was a freaking criminal. Still, might as well enjoy it while I had it.
“Did you bring the bed tray?” asked Alex. He pulled out a fold of bills and handed them over before he’d even gotten the answer. “And I can’t find the remote.”
“Here it is, sir,” said Steve-Bret-Stan. “We keep it in the drawer at the night table. Makes the room look more tidy.”
