Playing It Safe(53)

Stop it, Julia. Don’t get your hopes up. Something always goes wrong.

Huh? Where the hell did that come from? Jesus, I need to get a grip and stop thinking the worst is always around the corner.

“Are you coming in?” Alex asks, breaking me out of my thoughts.

Sweet Jesus.

I can now add soaking wet Alex to the list, and I have to say, it’s probably my favorite out of all of them.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


I pull into my driveway about an hour later, freshly showered again, my legs feeling like jelly, and wearing the same clothes as yesterday. I already texted Sabrina on my way here to let her know that I was alive and well and would be making my weekly Skype call a little later than usual.

The only thing I bet you’re wondering about is whether we had shower sex or not. To answer your question: no, we didn’t. Instead, he washed my body from head to toe and vice versa. Then the strangest thing happened, which I still can’t make heads or tails of; he held me to him under the streams of water for a few minutes. What’s even more strange is that I let him. And yet even more odd, neither one of us had a sarcastic, flirty, or biting thing to say to each other. As a matter of fact, we were deathly quiet throughout the whole thing, making it feel far more intimate than all the sex we’d had up until that point.

Ah, the sex.

Hands down, the best sex of my life.

I’m not one to gloat, but I was right. I had a feeling he’d be amazing. What I didn’t expect was for it to be so good that I’m craving more from him. A lot more. So much more that it borders on pornographic.

And this is where it gets a bit tricky.


See above where I told you about our Harlequin Romance moment in the shower?

I can’t pretend it didn’t happen, just like I can’t lie about how it made me feel safe, comforted, and … cherished. It’s not insta-love, by any means. Well, I may be slightly enamored with his dick, but that’s beside the point. What I mean is that I’ve known Alex for a few years. In the last year alone things have definitely been different between us. I don’t know specifically when the shift happened from friends/colleagues to flirtatious friends/colleagues, but somewhere along the line it did. It throws a monkey wrench into my vow of staying away from men altogether, but I’m not going to complain. I’m going to try and embrace it and live in the moment instead.

Oh, and did I mention that he wouldn’t let me leave his house until I agreed to go out to dinner with him tonight? He was adamant about it and was quite persuasive. Something about how since we were supposed to go out on a date last night, but instead ended up in his bed by midafternoon and didn’t leave there until this morning, I still owed him one.

So I agreed. Of course I did; I’m not a complete moron.

He wouldn’t tell me where we were going either, only that I should wear something semi-nice. As a woman, that translates into spending an inordinate amount of time in my closet for the rest of the day trying to find the perfect semi-nice outfit before he picks me up at seven thirty later tonight. But before I star in my own episode of What Not to Wear, I have to talk to Sabrina.

I immediately take my laptop out and power it up, leaving it on the kitchen table while I make a pot of coffee. As soon as it starts to brew, I cheat a little by putting my mug underneath the stream. Once it’s full to the brim, I sit down and make my Skype call to Sabrina.

“Good morning, Scully,” she says, pointing out the X-Files coffee mug in my hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean good afternoon.”

“Is it afternoon already?”

“Are you going to spill, or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”

“Spill what?” I answer coyly.

“Um, let’s see. It’s after one o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday, your hair is soaking wet, you have no makeup on, and you’re still wearing your work clothes from yesterday.”

I glance down at my clothes and chide myself for not changing before starting this session with her.

“How very observant of you, Mulder,” I say back, using my old nickname for her since she has the same exact coffee mug as me. “Can we at least get the pleasantries out of the way before I spill?”

“Sure. I’ll go first,” she says. “I love you, and I miss you like crazy.”

“Aw, me too, sweetie.”

“Okay, so now that that’s out of the way, spill,” she demands, leaning back in her chair and waiting for me to fill her in.

I take another sip of my piping hot coffee and then clear my throat dramatically, thinking of the best way to tackle this. I know, I know, it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it feels weird.

“Stop stalling, Julia.”

“I slept with Alex,” I blurt out.

Sabrina doesn’t say a word, so I keep going. “I just left his house since I spent the night there.”

No reaction from her.

“We had phone sex a couple of nights ago too.”

Nothing.

“He’s picking me up tonight to take me out to dinner.”

She’s still quiet as a church mouse.

“And knowing me, I’m probably going to end up sleeping with him again after our date tonight.”

Crickets.

Finally, I see the tiniest hint of her shoulders shaking, and a smile creeps up, followed by an explosion of laughter.