Tempted

“But he’s not?”

James drew in a breath. Let it out. Took another, a slow, easy pattern that nevertheless didn’t sound relaxed. “No. I’d say not.”

“But you know him? I mean, you were best buddies for a long time, right?”

He laughed, then, and the twinges of unease his answers had stirred in my gut fled. “Yeah. I guess we were.”

I reached for him then, to run a hand through his hair. He moved closer to me. His hand found just the right spot on my hip, nestled into my body’s curve. I lined myself up along him.

We were silent for a while. I let myself melt against him, breast to chest. He wore a pair of boxers. I had on a tank-top and a pair of panties. There was a lot of skin contact. I wasn’t about to complain, even though the night hadn’t yet begun to cool, and we stuck to each other.

He got hard, which made me smile. I waited, and after a moment his hand began its slow, easy path up and down my side. The thump of his heart quickened, but so did mine.

I tilted my head. His mouth found mine without effort. Our kiss was sweet and slow, without urgency.

“Don’t you have to be up early tomorrow?”

James pressed my hand to his thickening cock. “I’m up now.”

“I feel that.” I gave him an experimental squeeze. “Whatever shall I do with this?”

“I have a few ideas.” He pushed his groin against my hand, his fingers sliding between the edges of my tank top and panties. “Why not suck it?”

“Oh, that’s subtle.” My voice sounded dry, but I was grinning.

“Never claimed to be subtle,” James murmured. He dipped his head to taste my throat.

I hitched in a breath. My hand bore down. James groaned. I smiled. I pushed him back, just a little, just enough for me to slide down his body and take his penis out of the boxers. I didn’t have to see it to know every ripple and curve. I closed my fingers around the shaft and bent closer to lip the sensitive flesh around the rim.

James made a happy sigh and rolled onto his back. He put a hand on my head, not pushing me down or hurrying me along, just stroking my hair a little. His fingers snagged and tangled. A discomfort so slight it didn’t qualify as pain sparked against my scalp.

I licked him, savoring the salt-musk flavor. Even fresh from the shower, this part of him always smelled and tasted different from, say, an elbow or a chin. His cock, lower belly and inner thighs all maintained a deliciousness I could only describe as male. And unique. Blindfolded I might have faltered at identifying him by the slope of his nose or bulge of muscles, but that smell and taste would prove him to be mine every time.

“If I were in a dark room full of naked men and had to find you, I could,” I murmured before sliding my mouth over his erection.

“Do you often fantasize about being in a room full of naked men, Anne?” James lifted his hips to push inside my mouth. I curled my fingers tighter around the base of his prick to keep him from surging too far.

“No.”

His laugh was brief, breathless. “No? Never? That’s not your fantasy?”

“What would I do with a room full of naked men?”

He sighed as I sucked him. I cupped his balls, soft, and stroked my thumb along the tender seam in his flesh. “They could … do things … to you ….”

I used my mouth and hand in tandem until he groaned aloud, then stroked him up and down and gave my jaw a rest. “No. I’m a maximum two-input girl, James. All those men would just go to waste.”

I put my mouth back on him, taking him in as far as I could go. His cock throbbed against my tongue. Silky precome mixed with my saliva and made him slippery. Easy to stroke. Easy to suck.

James put a hand to my hip and tugged me gently, until I spun without taking my mouth off him so I straddled his face. It was my turn to moan when he gripped my ass and pulled my clit onto his tongue. He flicked me lightly with the tip. In this position I could control how close or far my body got to his. I could hover over his lips and tongue, move my pelvis, stroke myself along his mouth.

I loved it.

My orgasm rose fast. It became difficult to concentrate on sucking him while he licked me. We got a little sloppy. I don’t think either of us cared. We both came within seconds of each other, our cries mingling in the dark. After, when I’d turned around and lolled in sated content on my pillow, I noticed the air had grown cool enough I wanted to be under the blankets.

I pulled them up over both of us, though James was breathing in the just-about-to-snore way I found alternatingly endearing and excruciating, depending on how tired I was. He snorted into his pillow. I lay back, tired but not quite ready to sleep.

“What did you fight about?” I whispered into the darkness hanging between us.

The sound of his breathing changed. An indrawn breath. Silence. James didn’t answer and after a few moments, I forgot to ask again, so taken up was I in dreams.

Things changed, as they are apt to do, without warning. I’d spent the morning running errands, and I was playing reluctant hostess that evening to James’s family, all of them. Parents, spouses, nieces and nephews. I planned something simple, grilled chicken and salad, fresh rolls. Watermelon and brownies for dessert.

The brownies were ruining my life.

The recipe seemed simple enough. Good quality chocolate, flour, eggs, sugar, butter. I had all the right tools for the job, as James would have said with utter seriousness. I even had the skill, though perhaps not the talent. Yet for some reason, I was thwarted at every turn. My microwave refused to melt the chocolate without scorching it. The butter splattered and burned me when, forewarned by the chocolate disaster, I tried melting it on the stovetop. One egg had a blood spot, the other the bonus of a double yolk that would have been a lovely surprise in an omelet but messed up this recipe.

A glance at the clock showed the hour I’d set aside for this project had already stretched longer than that. This made me tense. I don’t like being late. I don’t like being unprepared. I don’t like being less than perfect.

I’d opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fans, because I preferred a breeze to the noise and sterile chill of our stuttering air conditioner. The kitchen smelled good, like marinade and melted fat and baking bread, but it was hot. Chocolate stained my white shirt and the front of my denim skirt. My hair, unruly on its best days, had gone berserk and hung in tangled corkscrews past my shoulders. Sweat trickled down my back, tickling.

I’d forgotten to buy salad dressing, but no time for that now. I’d have to whip up something from scratch. No time, either, for the soak in the tub I’d planned as advance reward for serving dinner to the horde. I didn’t care if that meant my knees would stay stubbled, but I’d been looking forward to the scent of lavender and half an hour of silence. Now if I was lucky I might squeeze in a quick scrub in the shower before changing my clothes. The way things were going, I’d have to just give myself a wipe down with a washcloth and hope for the best.

Right. Brownies. I had only one package left of the gourmet chocolate chips. If I messed up again, we’d be eating stale sandwich cookies for dessert. I set the package on the counter and poured the butter from the double boiler into the mixing bowl. One step at a time.

I stirred carefully. I re-read the instructions. I lifted the bowl to swirl the melted butter and eggs together, just like the book said.

“Hello, Anne.”

Warm butter sloshed and the mixing spoon clattered to the kitchen floor. My heart stopped, my breath stopped, my mind, for one terrified moment, stopped. Like a movie put on Pause, then clicked to Fast-Forward, I jerked back to life.

I’d screamed. How embarrassing. Turning, I released my death clutch on the bowl and set it on the counter with a small clang.

The first time I saw Alex Kennedy, it was with the thud-thud of my fast-beating heart still pounding in my ears and throat. He stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand on the doorjamb at a point high enough to stretch his lean body. He leaned slightly forward, one foot balancing his entire weight while the other leg bent as if I’d caught him in the act of taking a step. I saw faded jeans, low-slung but with a black leather belt holding them snug on his hips. A white T-shirt. Very James Dean, though instead of a red cloth jacket he had a black leather coat tucked into the hook made by his hand shoved into his front pocket. He wore sunglasses, and the big dark lenses covered most of his face.

It was a picture-perfect moment, like something out of a movie, and for a moment we merely stood and stared at each other like we were waiting for an unseen director to shout “Action!” Alex moved first. The hand came off the doorjamb, the other eased itself from his pocket and grabbed the coat before it could fall. He finished his step, entering my kitchen like he’d always been there.

“Hi.” He said this looking around the room over the top of his dark glasses before he looked back at me. “Anne.”

He didn’t make it a question. James had said he was smart. Who else would I be? He didn’t introduce himself, either, a fact that could be taken as arrogance or nonchalance, or simple understanding that though he didn’t know me well enough to know it, I was smart, too.

“Alex.” I moved around the kitchen’s center island, toward him. Streaks and mess coated my hands, so I didn’t offer one. “Wow. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

He smiled. It’s a cliché to say it took my breath away, but all clichés began as truth, or else nobody would be able to relate to them. His mouth, full soft lips, quirked on one side. He took off his glasses. The eyes beneath were dark and could only be described as languid—lazy, rich, slow. Deep. Alex had eyes that meant something important, if only I could figure out what it was.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I rang Jamie’s cell and he said to head on over. He said he’d call you. I guess he didn’t.” His voice, too, was slow and deep. Bemused.

I laughed, rueful. “He didn’t.”

“Bastard.” Alex slung his jacket over the back of one of the high-backed chairs at the breakfast table and hooked both thumbs in his pockets. “Something smells good.”

“Oh … I’m baking bread.” I grabbed a dishtowel and wiped my hands quickly and began the dishevelment dance. Hair smoothed, shirt tucked, a quick pass of face and body to make sure I was put together.

He watched me, mouth still quirked. “And making something with chocolate, I see.”

“Brownies.” I blushed, and blushed harder at the heat rising along my throat. I had no reason to be embarrassed. Well, aside from the disaster that was my kitchen and personal appearance.

Alex made a low purring noise of approval. “My favorite. How’d you know?”

“I didn’t—” He was teasing. “Who doesn’t like brownies?”

“Good point.” He laughed. He looked around the kitchen again, as if taking in every detail. I found myself following his gaze with mine, cataloging the framed prints on the walls, the wallpaper, slightly peeling in the corner. The scrapes in the linoleum where the chairs had worn the pattern to whiteness.

“We’re fixing it up,” I said, like I had to apologize for the kitchen’s imperfections.

His gaze swiveled back to me. It was disconcerting, in a way, yet also familiar. Alex had the same focus as James, though on my husband it was offset by a somehow greater sense of impermanence. James could be intense on whatever had currently grabbed his attention. He was the blackbird with a beady eye, focused on the shiny. Alex reminded me of a lion waiting in the grass, seemingly sated until his prey got close enough to capture his notice.

“It’s nice. You’ve done some nice things.”

“Oh, you’ve been here before?” I shook my head at my own question. “Of course you have.”

“Back when Jamie’s grandparents lived here, yeah. Long time ago. It’s nicer now.” His mouth stretched into another slow grin. “Smells better, too.”

There was no reason for me to be intimidated by him. He wasn’t doing anything. He was, in fact, being quite pleasant. I wanted to return his smile, and I did … but it was with a sort of hitching, confused reluctance. It was the kind of smile you give to someone who’s just offered you a mint on the subway. Wondering if they’re being kind, or if your breath’s offending. Was he just being polite, or did he mean it?

I didn’t know.

“I hope they taste good, at least. I’m not having much luck with them so far,” I admitted with a glance at the bowl.

He tilted his head to look at the mess on the center island. “How come?”

“Oh …” I shrugged with a small, self-conscious laugh. “I thought I’d be fancy and make them from scratch instead of the box. I should’ve stuck with the prepackaged mix.”

“Nah. Things made fresh are always better.” Alex moved closer to the island, and therefore, closer to me. He looked into the bowl. Without his gaze pinning me, I could watch him. “So you put the butter in with the eggs? What’s next?”

He came all the way around, and we ended up shoulder to shoulder. He hadn’t looked so tall from across the room. My head would reach the bottom of his chin. On James, I could reach his mouth without standing on my toes. Alex turned his head and gave me a look I couldn’t interpret.

“Anne?”

“Oh … oh, I guess it’s right there.” I leaned over to stab the cookbook with my finger. Several grease splotches marked the pages. “Melt the chocolate. Melt the butter. Mix together. Add the sugar and vanilla ….”

I stopped when I saw him staring at me. I returned his smile with a tentative one. It seemed to please him. He leaned forward, the tiniest amount. His voice dipped low, sharing a secret.

“Want to know the trick?”

“Of making brownies?”

His grin got broader. I expected him to say no. That he had another trick to reveal, something sweeter even than chocolate. I leaned forward, too, just a little.

“Hot butter will melt chocolate. You need a low flame.”

“Will it?” I looked at the cookbook so I didn’t have to look at him. More heat rose, burning the tips of my ears. I thought I must look ridiculous and tried to pretend it didn’t matter.

“Want me to show you?” At my hesitation he straightened. His smile changed, gave us a bit of distance. Still friendly, but less intense. “I can’t promise you they’ll win any awards, but—”

“Sure. Yes, sure,” I said decisively. “James’s family will be here pretty soon and I don’t want to be worrying about dessert once they start arriving.”

“Yeah. Because they’ll take up all your attention. I know what you mean.” Alex reached for the bowl and turned toward the stove, where I’d left the double boiler I’d been using earlier.

He would know just what I meant, I thought, watching him dump the cooling butter-and-egg mixture back into the pot. He twisted the knob on the stove, bending to get his face at the level of the flame and setting it with a delicate touch. He grabbed up a spoon from the tool caddy on the counter and stirred the mixture.

“Bring me the chocolate.” He spoke like he was used to being obeyed, and I didn’t hesitate. I tore open the bag and gave it to him. Without looking at me, he shook the package gently, dropping chip after chip into the butter as he stirred it. “Anne. Come and see.”

I moved to peer over his shoulder. The butter now had dark brown swirls that got larger and larger as Alex added more chocolate chips. After a few more moments the mix was a gooey, velvety liquid.

“Beautiful,” I murmured, not really meaning to speak, and he looked up at me.

This time I didn’t feel like he’d snared me with his gaze. I wasn’t prey. He assessed me, then turned back to the thickening batter.

“Is everything else ready?”

“Yes.”

I gathered the rest of the ingredients. Together we mixed and poured and scraped the bowl with my serviceable white spatula that was guaranteed not to crack or stain. The brownie mix smelled liked heaven and filled the baking pan exactly the way it was supposed to.

“Perfect,” I said, and slid it into the oven. “Thank you.”

“And of course it has to be perfect, right?” Alex leaned against the island, hands gripping the edge so his elbows bent akimbo.

I wiped my hands on the dishcloth and started putting utensils into the sink. “It’s nice if it is, isn’t it?”

“Even a flawed brownie still tastes damn good.” He watched me clean without offering to help.

I paused, mixing bowl in my hand. “Depends on the flaw. I mean, if it’s too dry or crumbly, it might not look right but will taste good. Or if the ingredients are wrong it can look perfect on the outside and taste terrible.”

“Exactly.”

I wondered if he’d been baiting me to say something he’d been thinking. “Well. They looked perfect. Unless they burn.”

“They won’t burn.”

“But they might not taste good, either?” I laughed at him. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“You never know, do you?” He shrugged and gave me an upward, sideways, roundabout glance.

Teasing. He was teasing me, judging me. Trying to draw me out. Trying to feel me out. Figure me out.

“I guess we’d better taste it then.” I held out the bowl. “You go first.”

Alex raised a brow and pursed his lips, but pushed himself off the island and held out a hand. “In case they’re vile?”

“A good hostess always allows her guests to have the first portion,” I said sweetly.

“A perfect hostess makes sure everything’s grand before she serves it,” Alex countered, but he scooped a finger along the bowl’s side. It came away smeared with chocolate.

He raised his finger, showing me. Being theatrical. He opened his mouth, tongue showing intimately pink. He put his finger in his mouth and closed his lips over it, sucking hard enough to hollow his cheeks before his finger popped out with an audible noise.

He said nothing.

“Well?” I asked, after a moment.

He grinned. “Perfect.”

That was enough incentive for me. I slid my finger along the small amount of batter left in the bowl and licked it with the tip of my tongue.

“Coward.”

“Fine.” I stuck the whole thing in my mouth and sucked as hard as he had, making a show of it. “Mmmm, that’s good!”

“Brownies fit for a queen.”

“Or James’s mother,” I said and immediately covered my mouth to pretend I hadn’t said anything so remotely derogatory.

“Even her.”

We smiled at each other again, drawn together by our mutual understanding about what sort of person James’s mother was.

“Well …” I cleared my throat. “I should go change my clothes and take a shower. And show you to your room. It’s clean and ready, I just have to bring you some towels.”

“I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble.”

“It’s not any trouble, Alex.”

“Perfect,” he said, not quite a whisper and not really a sigh, either.

Neither of us moved.

I realized my fingers were numb from clutching the bowl too hard. I loosened my grip at once and put it in the sink. I had chocolate on my fingers from the bowl’s edges and I laughed, gesturing.

“What a mess.” I licked them, the pointer, middle, thumb. “I’m chocolate all over.”

“You have some just … there.”

Alex’s thumb traced the outer edge of my mouth’s corner. I tasted chocolate. I tasted him.

That was how James found us, touching. An innocent gesture that meant nothing, yet I backed away at once. Alex did not.

“Jamie,” he said, instead. “How the fuck’ve you been?”

They collapsed into a flurry of backslapping and insults. Two grown men reverted to the behavior of fourteen-year-old boys in front of my eyes, both of them rumbling and posturing. Alex grabbed James around the neck and knuckled his hair until James stood up, face flushed and eyes bright with laughter.

I left them like that, to their greeting. I crept away down the hall and into the shower, where I ran the water cold as ice and stood beneath the spray, mouth open, to wash away the taste of my husband’s long-lost best friend.

Mrs. Kinney often looks as though she’s smelling something bad but is too polite to say so. I’m used to it being directed at me, that carefully curled lip, those delicately flaring nostrils. I assumed it was meant for me this time, too, until I saw how her eyes had focused over my shoulder.

I had intended to nod and smile but not really listen to her commentary on the dinner, how it was being prepared, how much to serve, where everyone should sit. So when she stopped, stuttered, actually, like a wind-up doll whose key has rusted, I turned to follow her gaze with mine.

“Hi, Mrs. Kinney.” Alex had showered, too, and changed into a pair of black trousers and a silk shirt that should have looked too dressy but didn’t. Smiling, he came forward for the sort of hug and kiss to the cheek she insisted on giving me every time we saw each other, though I hate casual embraces.

“Alex.” Her reply was as stiff as her back, but she inclined her head to accept the peck he put on it. “We haven’t seen you in a while.”

Her tone clearly said he hadn’t been missed. Alex didn’t seem offended. He merely shook Frank’s hand and waved at Margaret and Molly.

“James didn’t tell me you were back,” continued Mrs. Kinney, as though if James hadn’t told her it simply couldn’t be true.

“Yeah, for a while. I sold my business and needed a place to crash. So I’m here for a few weeks.”

Oh, he knew how to play her in a way I envied. An answer, delivered in a manner casual enough to belie the fact he knew exactly what she was fishing for but not as much information as she wanted. My estimation of him went up a notch.

She looked over at James, who was busy swinging one of his nieces in the air. “You’re staying here? With James and Anne?”

“Yep.” He grinned, all teeth. Hands in his pockets, he rocked on his heels.

She looked at me. “My, how … nice.”

“I think it will be very nice,” I answered warmly. “It will be very nice for James and Alex to have some time together. And for me to get to know Alex, of course. Since he is James’s best friend.”

I smiled brightly and said no more. She digested that. The answer appeared to be enough, if not satisfactory, and she gave him a nod that looked like it hurt her neck. She lifted the casserole dish in her hands.

“I’ll just go put this inside.”

“Sure. Anywhere you like.” I gestured, knowing she’d put it anywhere she liked no matter what I suggested. When she’d gone inside and Alex and I were alone for the moment, I turned. “What’d you do to piss off Evelyn?”

He smirked. “Aww, and here I thought she adored me.”

“Oh, you must be right. That was clearly a look of adoration on her face. If adoration looks like she just stepped in dog crap.”

Alex laughed. “Some things don’t change.”

“Everything changes,” I told him. “Eventually.”

Not Mrs. Kinney’s feelings about him, apparently. She avoided conversation with him for the rest of the evening, though she didn’t skimp on the “crap, I stepped in crap” looks.

For his part, Alex was cordial, polite, slightly distant. Considering how long he’d known James and how “welcoming” they were to everyone, the fact Evelyn was giving him the cold shoulder was very telling.

“Well, well, well, Alex Kennedy,” said Molly as she brought me a handful of plates for the ancient, cranky dishwasher I only used when we had company. Dinner had ended and everyone stayed out on the deck. The dishes could have waited, but I was looking for tasks to occupy me so I didn’t have to make small talk. “You know what they say about bad pennies.”

I slotted the dishes into the washer and filled the soap dispenser. “You think Alex is a bad penny?”

I liked Molly well enough, in that I didn’t dislike her. She was older than I by seven years, and we didn’t have much in common other than her brother, but she wasn’t as overbearing as her mother or an opinionated drama queen like her sister.