“Bastard,” Alex replied just before I crushed our mouths together again.
We didn’t have the same problem this time. He opened for me, and I pushed my tongue inside. He tasted like soda and toothpaste and Alex. His arms encircled me, my hand on the back of his head as I threaded my fingers through his hair and tugged him closer, like it were possible to have him melt into me.
He felt different from a woman, clearly, but he was Alex and I knew his scent, his feel, how he breathed, almost felt like I knew how he kissed too because everything between us was just so natural. So right.
I growled into the kiss. His hands went to my waist, his fingers digging in as we moved together in the sand. It wasn’t until the annoying guy who’d been dancing with him said, “Damn, the two of you are hot,” that reality set in and we jerked apart.
Alex’s eyes darted down, and it became obvious just how into it I was, which he likely already knew since I was pretty sure I’d been riding his thigh.
“I…” Alex reached up and touched his lips. “Why— I can’t do this with you,” he said and walked away, and my world shattered.
Chapter Seven
Alex
My feet couldn’t take me away from Caden fast enough, while everything inside me, especially in my chest, was begging me to turn around and go back, to grab him and kiss him and take advantage of whatever it was he was offering me.
The thing was, that would likely end in my heart being broken.
Also, Caden was a stubborn son of a bitch, so he was chasing after me regardless. “Alex! Wait!” But I kept moving, kept going until I got to the elevator, which of course had to take a lifetime to arrive. “Hey, what are you doing? Why’d you run?”
“You kissed me,” I said, as if that hadn’t been obvious.
“Yeah, I was there.”
“You’re also supposed to be straight.”
“That didn’t stop me from marrying you either.”
He had a point there, but still. “I can’t talk about this down here. But I also need you to take this seriously. It’s…” It was different for me.
“I know,” he replied, but did he? If so, what did it mean that he’d never mentioned knowing how I felt? And why was he doing something now?
The elevator finally came back down. The doors opened, a group of guys got out, and we stepped in. We didn’t speak all the way up to our floor. When we got to the room, I walked in first. I made my way to the window, looking out at the ocean. It was so dark, it looked black.
I closed my eyes when Caden came up behind me. He pressed his forehead to my shoulder, held my waist. “I don’t know what came over me. It killed me to see you dancing with him. I know it’s stupid, but I kept thinking…he’s mine…he’s my husband, my Alex, and this is our honeymoon. Which I get is fucking crazy. You were supposed to marry another man. This isn’t our anything. I’m just along for the ride.”
I opened my mouth to counter what he said, but Caden anticipated it, lifted his arm and pressed his fingers to my lips. “Shh. I’m not done. I hated Jackass, and not because of anything he did wrong other than having you. It killed me to be supportive of your marriage, to be your best man. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, just knew it felt wrong. You felt like mine.”
My heart beat so hard, I worried it might break through my chest. I sighed. How many times had I wished he would say something like this to me? Had hoped and prayed that Caden would want me… “It’s because you’re jealous, not because you really want me. You were feeling insecure about what my getting married meant for our friendship, and that caused issues with Jack. Now…I don’t know. You’re riding the confusing feelings from that; oh, and there’s the fact that we’re married. But all of that doesn’t mean you suddenly want to start kissing me when you’re not interested in guys.”
“I’m interested in you.”
I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see me. “I’m a guy, Caden. That’s not how it works.”
He jerked away. “I know. Fuck, you think I don’t know that? I’m freaking the fuck out, here, A. All I know is I’ve been feeling…weird about things for a while, possessive over you and hurt when you were with others and…like I said, tonight I kept thinking that you’re my husband and I should have been the one out there dancing with you.”
Finally I turned around, faced him. I could see the fear and panic in his eyes, but…there was something else there too. Something that looked like desire. “Did you like it? Kissing me?”
“I liked it so much, I ache to do it again.”
His response stole my damn breath. I didn’t know what to do, what to think. This would likely backfire big-time. There were so many reasons why I shouldn’t consider this…but it was Caden.
“I want you, Alex. I think maybe a part of me has known for a long time. I just didn’t know how to admit it to myself, didn’t know how to dig it out from that place I buried it the night I saw you with Bentley, because part of me knew then—that you were mine. That it would always kill me to see you with someone else. I don’t know what that means for us. I don’t know what I can offer you, and that makes me feel like a dick. It would break my heart to hurt you.”
It hit me then, the reminder that I’d spent every day since I was sixteen years old wanting to hear this from Caden. Wanting a chance with him. And now that I had it, I was going to throw it away? It would kill me when his curiosity was over, when he realized it was one thing not to want anyone else to have me, yet something else entirely to be with me himself, but I couldn’t spend my life wondering what if. What might have been possible if I’d just taken a chance. So this time, it was me who grabbed him, me who pulled Caden to me, taking his mouth with my own.
We didn’t have that initial freeze like the first time he’d kissed me downstairs. It was like we were running a race, like there was a stopwatch and at any second we’d be ripped from each other’s arms, so we had to gamble before it was too late.
It was a sensual battle of mouths and tongues. I couldn’t believe I was kissing Caden. That his hands were clutching my back, then twined in my hair as he made greedy sounds I drank down as if dehydrated.
“God, I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said as I kissed my way down his throat. “Please tell me you’re okay, that you don’t need to stop.”
“You stop and I’ll kill you.” Caden shoved his hands under my shirt, dug his thumbs into my abs, massaging as he explored my body. “Can we, um…lie down?”
“Fuck yes.” I took his hand and led him to the bed in our honeymoon suite. I was trying to be sweet and romantic, to take my time because this was a first for Caden and it was us, so I wanted it to be special. But he was him, so he had to be silly by tackling me to the bed. We started laughing as we were wrestling, each of us fighting for dominance, before we ended up with him on his back and me straddling him.
“Everything is always more fun when it’s with you.” Caden gave me a shy smile, so full of honesty and rare insecurity, it tightened his hold on my heart. How would I ever be able to stop this? What if it was a one-time thing, fucking around while we were on our honeymoon, and then he’d want to go back to normal? “What did I say wrong?” He cupped my cheek, caressed it.