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“Tricia.” My voice sounded low … gruff, as want and desire clogged my throat and I fought the unwelcomed electrical thrill that ran through me from having her gorgeous eyes on me. I felt my heart rate stall and stutter erratically as the air between us thickened. Blood roared through my veins and heat pooled at my core. The forceful reaction of my body to seeing Tricia was a reaction I’d never experienced with any other woman. My balls ached just looking at her. I had grown hard and my whole body had felt electrically charged, despite my head telling me I shouldn’t feel anything and hating I felt like that about her.
The hot afternoon sun suddenly burned as if someone had turned up the heat and shame washed over me that my body was being disloyal to Juliette. Disgrace warred with desire and I silently cussed Tricia’s appearance, because my devotion toward Juliette had been wiped out in a single heartbeat the moment I looked into Tricia’s piercing eyes. I couldn’t move, totally incapacitated by raw carnal thoughts about the woman I’d only slept with less than a handful of times. I’d never been a cheater by choice, yet pure liquid lust seeped, bathed every nerve cell I possessed in that one single minute in time.
For months after the last time I’d been with her, Tricia’s mental image had mocked me with her perfect smile that lit up her eyes. The way I had walked away from that scenario of hookups with her had controlled my thoughts far longer than I’d have liked. Being with Juliette had distracted me from those and they diminished. Yet, seeing Tricia again had cast fresh doubt on how I felt for Juliette just by her presence.
Tricia brought out a spirit within me I found difficult to resist, and when I’d taken the hard decision not to fuck her again, I knew denying myself that pleasure would take will because she felt like an addiction.
As my mind worked overtime to adjust to the shock of our meeting, it subsequently overloaded and emptied. I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t thought what I may have said if I had run into her again and how I would have behaved, but when faced with the reality of this, all I managed to say was her name.
“James,” she responded, mimicking my name like I had done hers, but it was how she said it that told me she wasn’t immune to the riot of feelings arcing between us either.
“How have you been?” Absentmindedly, holding both beers by the neck of the bottles in one hand, I caught her upper arm with my free one before I realized I’d touched her. Tricia’s breath hitched sharply, her braless nipples immediately catching my attention as they pebbled beneath the tiny silk top she wore.
It hadn’t been my intention to touch her at all, but once I did, my fingers itched as agony and pleasure filed through every cell I possessed in response to the smooth warm skin beneath them. Tricia’s eyes immediately dropped to where I held her before looking at mine again. Dark jade eyes filled with lust stared back at me as she battled her own desire.
Good…” she shrugged and looked about as thrown by the meeting as I was, “busy, you know how it is.” The flat tone in her voice conflicted with how she searched my face, cast her eyes down to my lips, stalled for a beat, then held my gaze again.
Vibrations ran through my body as the air around us shifted again. The potent chemistry we had and the overwhelming connection we’d shared previously pulsed undeniably between us. Another incapacitating pause filled us both with hesitancy as we stood in self-denial and fought our thinly disguised attraction.
“No, actually, I don’t. I have no idea what you’re up to these days.” Frustration bubbled in my chest and I had no idea why I’d said that. I was with Juliette and I shouldn’t have cared what Tricia’s life was like anymore … but for some unknown reason I had suddenly needed to know.
“Tricia?” a low masculine voice asked directly behind me. As my gaze had been firmly on hers, it was she who broke our intense connection and glanced over my shoulder. The interruption made her take a step back, and as she did so my hand broke contact with her. I felt the imprint of her skin and the loss of warmth from it instantly.
As I turned my head to look at the guy, my chest tightened as discontentment turned to irritation and anger before jealousy took over. I was shocked that Tricia had brought someone with her because I’d never seen her with anyone else. That alone told me he may have meant something to her. All other times I’d ever seen her at events, she had been alone.
Casting my eyes over the tall man she was with, I compared myself with him. What does he have that I don’t? I prayed my eyes hadn’t betrayed me and shown my resentment and irrational thoughts. What the fuck am I doing? I’m with Juliette—love Juliette. Yet even as I thought those things for Juliette, it had still crushed me to see Tricia with someone else.
Glancing from her to him, I noted he was a handsome, affluent-looking man, astute too, since his eyes narrowed eyes suspiciously and took in the measure of me. Taking a deep breath, he slid his hand into hers and held it toward his chest in an intimate gesture, and she turned, peered up at him, and mirrored the warmth in his smile.
“James, you’re my hero, just what I need.” Juliette grinned, suddenly beside me. Her interruption shook me back to my senses. Tricia’s face was unreadable as she watched Juliette pluck one of the two cold beers from my hand. She took a small swig from the bottle and lowering the drink from her lips, she eyed Tricia and her date curiously. Smiling she slid her free hand slowly around my waist, leaned into me, and glanced expectantly up at me.
“Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?” My boner instantly deflated and I couldn’t recall a time when I’d felt more awkward as I stood between her, Tricia, and her partner.
“Tricia—Juliette,” I said, trying to sound indifferent and immediately wished I’d had the superpower of teleporting myself elsewhere.
“And that’s it?” Juliette mused incredulously, her eyebrows raised to her hairline before they quickly dropped when she picked up the tense atmosphere in the air between us all. Again, I struggled for something— anything to say that would have lightened the moment—any one thing that would free the tongue-tie that had almost rendered me mute.
“James, would you mind giving me a hand to move this table?” My eyes snapped to my left and Hammer stood, one hand on a table he could easily have lifted himself and it felt obvious to me, he’d been watching the whole incident from a short distance away.
Luckily for me, he knew more of the deal between Tricia and me than I’d have liked him to know. The night of the wedding, after I’d left Tricia’s room, he came to my rescue then too.
“Nice running into you again, James,” Tricia interjected; obviously relieved she had an out to move on. It would have been hard for our respective partners not to have picked up on the unbearable tension between us since they had joined our conversation.
Immediately after she had spoken, Tricia’s attentive suitor moved his grip from her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. He nodded his acknowledgement but the suspicious expression that accompanied it told me we were done, as he turned Tricia and led her away.
“Who was that?” he asked, as they walked toward in the direction of the barbecue grill.
“No need to feel jealous, Mick, it’s only Billie’s brother-in-law,” she replied. If the conversation had continued about me, I had no idea, as they moved out of earshot and their voices became swallowed up by the indistinguishable chatter of the other guests around us.
“Old friend of yours?” Juliette asked, distracting my attention from them when they were almost out of sight. I realized I’d been watching them go and cleared my throat. Turning cautiously to look at my girl, it was apparent she hadn’t heard what Tricia had said when her partner had asked her. I moved away from her and calmly wandered toward the table Hammer had urgently decided to move on my behalf.
“Brother’s wife’s friend,” I replied offhand, giving Tricia as nonspecific of a title toward her, as she had about me moments before.
“Ah, really? I thought you looked … close,” Juliette replied. The hesitancy in her comment and the tone in her voice told me she’d chosen her word carefully. My heart sank. “For a moment I thought perhaps there had been more,” she added, and in my gut, I knew she already suspected there were unspoken feelings between Tricia and me, despite my protestation.
“Nope, definitely not close,” I replied honestly, because although Tricia and I had briefly been something, we’d never been close. Juliette’s question gave me an uneasy feeling, and another wave of guilt temporarily consumed me. Setting the table down only a few feet from where we’d lifted it, Hammer thanked me enthusiastically, like I had saved his life, and this gave me a minute to compose myself again.
My instinct had been to offer more reassurance to Juliette. After all, my meeting with Tricia hadn’t been orchestrated, nor had I welcomed how I’d reacted to it. Instead I chose not to dwell on the incident and threw my arm around her shoulder, pulling her into my side.
