Improper English

  He gave me an annoyed look, tossed back his drink, then stood up like he was going to join me. I stood up as well, prepared to move to whichever table he wasn’t at. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His fingers clenched around the edge of the table in front of him. With a grim smile, he heaved it to the side, pushing it up against the one I was occupying.

  I glanced around the room. The rest of the tables were filled, all but a large one in the center with a reserved card on it. Damn! “May I ask just what you think you’re doing, confiscating my former table like that and having the nerve to push your unwanted self up against my new stronghold?”

  Alex’s grim smile lost a little of its grimness and warmed up just enough to kindle several small but intense fires in my innards. I sent out a call for the internalorgan fire brigade and sat back down.

  “You seem to be unable to make up your mind as to which table you wish to sit at. I’m just trying to make it easier for you.”

  “Whatever. Just so long as you realize I’ve stood you up and am now not having dinner with you.”

  He sat down at my ex-table. “Yes, I am aware of that fact. Might I say that I appreciate your telling me in person that you are standing me up?”

  I gave him a quick little nod and picked up the menu. “I thought it was the polite thing to do.”

  He waved for the waiter’s attention, pointed at me, and did that weird mental-telepathy drink-ordering thing that men can do. I frowned at him. “I don’t like whiskey.”

  “I’m not drinking whiskey.”

  “I don’t like vodka, either.”

  “I’m not drinking vodka.”

  I transferred the frown to his glass. There was no color in the little pool of liquid at the bottom, which eliminated any of the rye or bourbon type drinks. What else was clear?

  “I don’t like ouzo, either.”

  “Neither do I.”

  I switched my frown from his glass to the waiter as he approached with two drinks on a tray. Gin? Rats. I liked gin. The waiter pursed his lips and shot us both a look that spoke volumes, but he placed the drinks down at each of our tables with nothing more than a noncommittal murmur.

  I poked at the wedge of lime in the drink, then sucked my finger. “Gin and tonic? How did you know I like G&Ts?”

  Alex looked up from where he was reading his menu. “I beg your pardon, madam? Were you speaking to me, a stranger dining here quite alone at my own table?”

  “Oh, very funny.” I pulled my menu out and stared at it, wondering what the hell I was doing sitting there trying not to throw myself on him. Maybe showing him just how not together we were wasn’t the best of ideas. He didn’t seem to be overly offended by my refusal to have dinner with him. In fact, he wasn’t even sitting at the same table as I was. Pushed together or separated by distance, they were still two different tables. Well, fine, if our breakup wasn’t going to give him any grief, that was great! That was fabulous! It made my life so much easier! I would just sit here and ignore him and have my dinner by myself, and by the end of the meal he would go his way and I would go mine, and that was all there was to it.

  Except of course I would never recover from the loss of him in my life, but that was my issue, not his, no matter what Isabella thought. Selfish? Self-centered? Certainly Alex didn’t think I was selfish and self-centered. Or did he?

  I glanced over at him. He was studying the back of the menu, but he looked up when he felt my gaze on him. “Isabella said you’ve started work on a new story.”

  Oh, so he wanted to do the polite-conversation thing? I debated ignoring him completely, but decided I was bigger than that. I lowered my menu and plucked the wedge of lime out to suck on it. Alex watched with an indescribable look of horror on his face. I chewed the lovely pulpy bits out of the lime, then waved it about nonchalantly. “Why, yes, as it is, Isabella is quite correct.” I narrowed my lips at him. “About that she is correct. She’s very, very wrong about other things.”

  “Is she? I have no doubt of that. Despite what you seem to think, Isabella isn’t perfect.”

  “Big words, coming from her former partner in Hide the Salami.”

  Alex blinked twice. “Christ, don’t tell me you’re jealous of Isabella, too?”

  What? Jealous? Me? He had to be kidding. “You’re kidding, right? You think I’m jealous? Of Isabella? And what the hell do you mean, too? As in, I’m jealous of more than one person? Is that what you think? You think I’m jealous? Of Isabella and someone else? Some mystery person? Who? Bert? Ray? Philippe?”

  He leveled an emerald gaze at me, one that sizzled its way down to my scarlet-painted toenails. I loved those looks, I just hated the way they left me wanting to slither across him and lick every square inch of his skin. “Actually, I think you’re jealous of my ex-wife.”

  I goggled at him. There was just no other word for it, I goggled. At him, at his ridiculous ideas, at his suggestion that I could be jealous of anyone, but most of all, I goggled at the expression of pity on his face. He was serious! He thought I was jealous!

  “You’re out of your friggin’ mind!” I finally de-goggled enough to say. “Totally and completely out of your mind! Jealous of your ex-wife? Oh, I grant you, I might be the teensiest bit envious of Isabella’s perfect face and perfect hair and perfect clothes and perfect life and perfect relationship with you, but you think I’m jealous of your ex-wife? A woman I don’t even know? Why would I be jealous of her?”

  That rattled him enough to wipe the look of pity off his face. He frowned instead. “Alix, my relationship with Isabella—”

  I held up a hand and interrupted him. “No! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! I don’t care at all! I don’t want to know anything about how you and Isabella were, not how much you loved/liked/worshiped her, not how long you were together, not how she lay in your arms at night and talked to you about all sorts of interesting, intelligent things, the sort of things that I never talked to you about because we never stopped doing it long enough to have time for talking—none of it! I don’t want to hear anything about you and Isabella!”

  “My relationship with Isabella—”

  “Alex, no!” I said loudly, ignoring the surprised looks from people dining around us. Damn it, didn’t he see I couldn’t take any details about him and the Ice Maiden? Not in the frail mood I was in, thank you very much.

  “—was never—”

  He was a stubborn, stubborn man. I knew he was going to insist on telling me things about himself and Isabella, and I didn’t want to hear them. I couldn’t hear them. One more shot to the heart like the last one he gave me and I’d be through. Finished. Dead as a doornail right there in Stella’s. There was only one thing that I could think of to say that would keep him from finishing that sentence. I took a deep breath.

  “Did I tell you I’m not pregnant?” I bellowed across the sound of his knee-melting voice.

  Well, I was right, it worked, it shut him right up. Unfortunately, it also shut up everyone in the restaurant. I know because they were, at that moment, all staring with great interest and no little speculation at us. Alex, on the other hand, just looked like he wanted to throttle me.

  I raised my hand and waved it at Giorgio. “Check, please!”

  Alex caught up with me at the stroppy front door.

  “When I ask someone to go to dinner with me, I usually expect to eat at some point,” he commented as he took my key from where I was trying to gut the lock, and gave it a gentle twist. The door opened. I didn’t know who I hated more at that moment, the door or him. I didn’t have a chance to decide, however, because he took a firm grip on my elbow and hauled me upstairs.

  “Hey!” I protested as we passed my landing and continued up. “What do you think you are doing? I’m not going to your flat with you!”

  “Why not?” he asked, sounding suspiciously like he was speaking through grinding teeth. I peered at him in the darkness of the stairwell but couldn’t see anything other than the determined set o
f his jaw.

  “Because once I get there you’ll just want to get naked and have me kiss you all over and maybe even bring out that bottle of lemon-flavored massage oil that I love and will want me to oil you up and clean you off again, or worse yet, you’ll want to oil me up and then you’ll slide your—”

  “Alix,” he growled, hauling me to his side while he pulled out his key.

  “What?” I asked a bit snappishly, annoyed he had interrupted the lovely scene that was building in my mind.

  “I brought you up here to talk, not to make love to you, although I’m not excluding that from the list of things I wish to accomplish tonight.”

  “Well exclude it, buster,” I snarled, pushing away from him and stalking through the door to his flat. “Because Mr. Monthly Visitor is here, and I’m crampy and bloated and I don’t want you touching me anywhere south of my chin, OK?”

  “Ah. I should have guessed from your petulant mood you were indisposed.”

  I whirled around from where I had been looking out his window. “Oh, you do not want to go there! Just leave my hormones and moods out of it!”

  He dropped his keys on a small table and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “My apologies. Would you care to sit down?”

  I sat, suddenly tired of fighting the endless battle within myself to deny the love I felt for him. He sat in a chair next to the couch, turning it so he faced me. “Now, perhaps we could discuss matters calmly, without bellowing intimate details across crowded public places.”

  A little blush crawled up my neck and heated my cheeks. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realize everyone would hear.”

  He nodded gravely and leaned back, his lovely long fingers steepled under his chin. Oh, how I loved that chin!

  “I feel as if we’ve been speaking at cross purposes, and I would like to clear up a few points. First of all, your distress yesterday was not solely due to my being unable to talk to you, was it?”

  I was so tired. Tired of feeling horrible, tired of wanting him and knowing he was never to be mine again, tired of trying to figure out a way to change so I would be what he wanted. My body felt as if it were encased in cement, pressed down onto Alex’s couch cushions without a hope of ever again moving. “Why would you think your rejection wasn’t what bothered me?”

  He shifted in his chair. “Alix, I didn’t reject you, I just couldn’t deal with your problems at the time. You’re the only one who sees duty to my job as a rejection.”

  I stared at my fingers lying limp on my legs and said nothing. There was nothing to say. His job came first.

  “I want to know why you are so determined to destroy what we have between us.”

  I looked up at him in surprise. He leaned forward and took one of my hands in his. My fingers curled around his.

  “Why have you chosen to leave me? What have I done to make you think that this relationship is anything like the ones in your past?”

  A familiar pricking sensation behind my eyes heralded trouble. I swallowed back the lump forming in my throat. “What are you trying to do, make me cry by being so nice to me? I warn you, it’s not pretty when I cry. My eyes get all puffy and red, and my nose runs, and sometimes I get the hiccups. So I’d think twice about making me cry if I were you.”

  He slid to his knees and pulled me down until I was resting against him. I was as boneless as rubber, not wanting to be so close to him, close enough to smell that wonderful spicy scent that was exclusively Alex, but I lacked the strength and will to push him away. It was just so much easier to give in than to struggle to maintain my indignation.

  “Ah, sweetheart, I don’t want to make you cry. I just want to understand what I’ve done wrong. I want to know why you’re hurting so much, and how I can make it stop. I want to know what it will take to prove to you that I won’t ever leave you, no matter how terrible you think your life has become.”

  The tears were building again, filling my eyes as I leaned into his chest and felt my hair ruffle as his voice slid softly, so softly over me.

  “I want to love you, Alix, but you won’t let me.” His lips, warm and soft and indescribably delicious, were nuzzling around the nape of my neck. My breath caught in a half sob as I closed my eyes on the tears. It was wrong letting him melt me like that, but I couldn’t stop him, not even if I wanted to. Still, I should at least make a token effort.

  “Alex, please…” The words dried upon my tongue when I opened my mouth to speak.

  “Please what, sweetheart? Please stop, or…” He tipped my head back and steamed my lips. All those little pieces of my shattered heart started glowing with a burning white heat as his sensitive lips swept across mine, caressing, teasing, seducing my mouth. My eyes opened briefly when he persuaded my mouth to part for his seeking tongue, but his emerald gaze was too hot to look into for any length of time. It scorched my eyes just as his mouth scorched mine. “…or please make love to you? Which is it, love?”

  “You’ve got something magical in your saliva, don’t you?” I mumbled as I pulled away long enough to draw some air into my needy lungs. “You’re not human—you’re some sort of god with magical, seductive spit who brings women to their knees with just one touch of your tongue.”

  Amusement and desire and warmth danced through his eyes as he grinned, then dipped his head to my jaw and began nibbling a line that made me melt into a big puddle of desire. Warning sirens went off in my head, but I was powerless to do anything about them. Despite our ruined relationship, despite the fact that what existed between Alex and me wouldn’t last, I couldn’t fight the feeling of rightness with him. I slid my hands over the wonderful terrain of his back and buried my face in his hair, that wonderful soft, silky, chestnut hair that smelled so Alexish. He nibbled a trail down my neck to the bodice of my dress, sliding both of his hands up my sides, pausing to span my waist while he nibbled on the spot on my collarbone that never failed to make me tremble.

  “Alex,” I whispered into his ear, then bit gently on the outer edge. “Alex, you have to stop.”

  His hands teased the underside of my breasts for a moment before sliding around behind me, his fingers hot on the skin exposed as he pulled the zipper down.

  “Why? You’re not still angry with me?” The words were spoken against my lips as his tongue dipped inside again while he peeled off both the top of my dress and my bra. Flames followed his fingers as they stroked my spine, tracing along my ribs, his mouth never once releasing me from the terrible, ceaseless, mind-meltingly wondrous havoc he was creating.

  “What?” I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t catch my breath, let alone my thoughts. I suckled on that delicious spot where his jaw met his ear and heard him groan.

  He pulled two cushions down from the couch and laid me back on them, his mouth claiming mine once more before answering me. “Why do I have to stop?”

  I tugged on his shirt until he stopped kissing me long enough to pull it off. A sigh of satisfaction escaped me as I curled my fingers into the lovely hair on his chest, teasing little circles around his adorable nipples. He slid down my body, pulling my dress with him until I was wearing nothing but my underwear and sandals. He lifted one foot and looked at the sandal with the sparkly ankle strap, lifted an eyebrow at me, then kissed the sandal. “Shall we be naughty and leave them on?”

  I shivered at the look in his eyes, but remembered my objection when his hands moved up my thighs towards my undies.

  “I can’t Alex. Mr. Monthly Visitor, remember?”

  He laid down a line of kisses on my belly. “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”

  I couldn’t keep from making a face at that offer.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked, his fingers pausing in the act of caressing beneath the waistband of my underwear.

  “No, but I think I’d rather not.”

  He sucked on one of my hip bones, the silk of his hair and heat of his mouth against my bare skin setting me ablaze. “There’s more than one way to make love,” he murmu
red as he nibbled his way over to the other hip bone, then headed northwards.

  “No fair,” I complained, rubbing my leg against his and fumbling with his belt. My life as I knew it might be over, my heart destroyed with no chance of repair, and I wasn’t feeling fit enough to indulge in our usual between-the-sheets fare, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to do wicked things to his body. All of it. Every sweet inch of it.

  He rose up off from where he was just about to torment my breasts and quickly stripped.

  “Better?” he asked as he knelt beside me.

  “Much better,” I cooed, tracing the long line of muscles in his thighs. I put a hand on his chest to stop him when he leaned forward over me. “Alex, you realize that this is just a temporary cease-fire brought on because I have no immunity to your magic saliva, and that it in no way implies that we’re getting back together. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “No,” he said, then ignored my restraining hand and leaned over to take one of my nipples in his mouth.

  Words stopped in my throat as heat coursed out from my center to the farthest points on my body, then slammed back, centering in the deep, hidden core of me. I opened my mouth to object, to make sure he understood that this meant nothing, but gasps of pleasure came out instead of words, gasps that soon turned to moans when one of his hands teased its way down my chest, over my belly, and down farther, nudging aside my underwear to stroke gently at that one tiny little spot of utter bliss.

  “Alex!” I protested, bucking under the effect of his fingers. “You…can’t!”

  “Let me love you, sweetheart,” he murmured against my nipple before tugging on it gently with his teeth. I gasped again and arched up beneath him. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  I wanted to cry out that the ache he had created deep inside me was too much, but the hot, dark words he whispered against my breast wiped all thoughts from my mind but of the wonderful magic his hands and mouth were creating. The pleasure inside me coiled tighter and tighter until I couldn’t distinguish it from the ache of want he had generated; then suddenly his lips were on mine and I was shouting my joy into his mouth. I trembled with the power of the pleasure he gave me, tears slipping from my eyes as he held me tight and kissed my cheeks, my eyes, my mouth.