Chapter 38

Alex woke early the next morning despite the late night, to find Rick almost comatose beside her. He had indeed lived up to his promise of a good night, making love to her tenderly for hours before falling asleep just before dawn, exhausted. Alex's confrontation with Jon had invaded her dreams and affected her sleep, so it wasn't long after falling asleep that she was awake again. But Rick was dealing with jetlag on top of the late night, and the nights exhausting activities, so she figured he would sleep for a good few hours yet. She gently rolled out of bed and slipped on her usual early morning attire over her naked form, a now thread bare Bon Jovi T-Shirt. It was one habit she had never been able to break. She padded bare foot to the small kitchen in the guest house only to find she was out of coffee. Damn it, I'll have to get some up at the main house.

Slipping her feet into her UGG boots, Alex was glad to have brought the warm sheepskin slippers from home. She opened the door as delicately as she could, cursing as it creaked. She stepped out into the frigid morning air and a chill tore up and down her spine, her flimsy T shirt doing nothing to protect her from the cold. Will I ever get used to this level of cold? She wondered. A couple of inches of snow had fallen over night, so she carefully navigated her way across the slippery yard to the kitchen door and slipped inside.

Bessy wouldn't be there until lunch time today, she had worked late the day before so Patti had given her the morning off. The house was deathly quiet, neither Bruce nor Patti was an early riser and the children would be exhausted from their late night. She walked into the large pantry that was in fact larger and better equipped than her own kitchen, and explored the shelves until she found what she wanted. The coffee was on a high shelf, she stretched up on tippy toes, her hand reaching high over her head pulling up her T-shirt and exposing the lower curve of her perfectly rounded ass, but still the coffee was just out of reach. "Damn it" she cursed as she tried to extend further.

Jon stood in the doorway admiring the sight before him. Her long tresses hung lose down her back, mussed from sleep and, he would be correct to assume, sex. He recognised the garment she wore, it was the old tour T-shirt she had had when they were together, now threadbare from use so that the thinness of the fabric exposed her naked silhouette beneath. Her form was long and lean as it reached high for the coffee on the top shelf. He glanced at the floor and slowly drew his eyes up the length of her body, drinking in every delicious inch.

He watched the muscles in her calves flex with the strain of stretching. His eyes moved up to her slender tapered thighs, the same thighs that had spent many a glorious hour wrapped around his waist. At the top of her thighs his eyes rested on the lower curve of her buttocks, peachlike in shape, tight and perfect. It had been a long time since he had seen that much of her, and he was semi erect just at the sight. And then she leaned forward slightly and he got a view of those gorgeous amber curls, the ones that had tickled his nose as he drank from her, sending her over the edge time and time again. He wondered if she was satisfied with Rick, if he could make her cum over and over and over again, if he could make her lose control, if he could make her scream...the way she had for him.

Alex was still reaching for the coffee when she felt, a hard male body press against her, reaching over her for the package she sought.

"Was this what you wanted?" His breath was warm against her ear. She spun quickly at the voice, but he did not move. She looked briefly into Jon's eyes, before looking down and averting her own. His were a deep blue, his pupils dilated as if trying to devour the sight of her. She knew that blue, she knew it meant she was in trouble, she knew that she wouldn't be able to resist him a second time. She could feel his arousal pressed against her centre, how she longed to feel that in her again. He had once filled her so completely that no other man could ever fit her so well, know her so well.

His hands gently rested on her hips, he leaned in and his tongue grazed over her lips, urging them to part, she obliged deepening the kiss, exploring the familiar places she had so missed. He wrapped her in his arms and her knees buckled, but he held her firm. He moved a hand to give the taut peaks of her breasts the attention they were longing for, flicking the tight little nubs with his thumb. His other hand moved down to her thigh and began to creep up the hem of her T-shirt until his fingers came in contact with her soft auburn curls. He ran single knuckle up and down the crease between her thigh and her ever wetter pussy and was just getting ready to slip into those silky depths when a familiar voice called.

"Jon...Jon are you in here?" Dot called.

"Fuck...." He cursed softly, before calling. "Yeah I'm here" he said taking the few steps to the door of the pantry taking the coffee with him as he spoke. Alex hid in the pantry unable to control her body's reaction to this other woman's husband. She was so turned on from the brief interaction, that she could feel her own wetness on her thighs. Go! Please just Go, she begged silently. She listened to the exchange from her hiding place.

"Where have you been?"

"Getting this.... I was gonna make a cup but since you're up we may as well just go home" He said as he placed the container of coffee on the bench.

"Don't you think we should say thank you and goodbye first?" Dot asked. "I mean they were kind enough to let us stay after you tied one on last night. What was that all about? Your mood shifted so suddenly, right about the time Rick arrived. Have you had some kind of run in with him?"

"Nope! I guess it was just seeing him and her together...been a long time since things were that good for us...in fact I'm not sure they ever were." Jon was sending Alex a message and she caught it immediately.

"Yeah well you know what Jon, it takes two to make a marriage and you have been absent from this one for far too long. And I don't mean physically either, though that takes its toll, it's not as bad as the emotional absence even when your home." Alex could hear the resentment in Dots voice.

"We've been through this Dot. I don't think now is the time or the place to get into another all out argument, do you? I thanked Bruce last night and told him we'd be gone early. I have to get mom home so she can start getting ready for Christmas day." Alex could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

"Fine...let's go. Let me just get the bags. I'll meet you at the car." She said and Alex heard the click of her heals slowly fade to nothing.

Jon waked back into the pantry, a lopsided grin on his face, "I'm so sorry baby. I didn't mean for that to happen. When can we finish what we started?" He moved in close as he spoke and run his hand up her thigh, stopping on the curve of her ass.

"You are joking right?" Alex said stunned disentangling herself from his grasp. "If not for her yelling out she would have walked in on us, you with your hand in my pussy." She groaned inwardly at the sensation the thought aroused. "And you want me to go there again...your insane Jon"

"Well... if we are more discrete it won't be a problem." He moved to take her in his arms, but she side stepped out of his way.

"Listen Jon.... what just happened here is wrong. I shouldn't have allowed it. Now I know there is a history here that may lead you to believe that I am ok with cheating but that's not the case. The fact that you have so little regard for your wife and the mother of your child astounds me. Now what shared in Queensland is in the past. I know you don't take your vows of celibacy very seriously, but Jon I do. I am with Rick now and I would never do anything to hurt him, the least of all cheat on him. So this ends here! Do you understand me Jon? I will be courteous and polite, one day I may even manage friendly but please don't expect more from me than that." Jon stood silent before her as she spoke, damn but she's a fiery one.

"Believe what you will baby. But know this one thing...I always get what I want. AND... I... WANT... YOU!" He punctuated each of those last four words. He then placed a chaste kiss on her lips and was gone before she could even reconcile his words in her sensory overloaded brain.

Alex scooped the coffee from the bench where he had left it and made a quick escape from the main house running to the warmth and comfort of her own lodgings. Rick was still fast asleep, so instead of joining him at the risk of disturbing his sleep, she curled her feet beneath her on the comfy leather couch in the den. She sat in silence and tried to reconcile her feelings about what had just happened. She was still deeply in shock that it had happened at all. She wondered what kind of person did that, cheated on the one they loved, then she realised....for him it was habitual. She wondered how many women there had been since her.

Alex would have been stunned at the answer...none. Since their week in Australia all those years before, there had been no-one but his wife. Even on tour with a bevy of models, actresses, fans offering themselves to him each night, even then he had no interest. He had only wanted one woman, only Alex. Of course the temptation had been there, and it had come close...on more than one occasion but ultimately all he could see when he closed his eyes was Alex's face and he just couldn't do it.

Her thoughts shifted and Alex wondered exactly how it would be possible to cope with her attraction to him. It was hard enough living on the other side of the world...but now...well now Rick wanted to move here. To New York to be precise. How could she deal with it being so unbearably close to him. His words echoed in her thoughts "I always get what I want". Not this time. NO! Definitely not this time.

To distract her from her thoughts of him, Alex went and retrieved her camera bag from the closet. She still had films that needed to go to the lab for developing, and proofs to check. She couldn't wait until she was in a house of her own where she would be able to set up a darkroom, and once again take full control over the images she produced. She pulled a stack of paperwork from the bag, the proof sheets from the photo shoot the week before and began to sift through the sheets of tiny images with the magnifying glass, marking the ones with potential. She was doing good, it was working, she was sufficiently distracted. And then she got to the last sheet. I was a series of photos taken of Bruce in and around his home town of Red Bank New Jersey a couple of weeks before. In one, just one photo he stood before the Count Bassie Theatre, and there in the background was a sign "Bon Jovi Christmas Concert here 20^th December 1993." It was relatively small and unobtrusive and she didn't even remember seeing it on the day, but now it had fresh tears coursing down her cheeks.

Alex felt a gentle hand on her shoulder; she hadn't even heard him wake.

"Hey baby..." Rick said gently "What's all this?"

Jon's familiar term of endearment had her crying harder. She spun and buried her face in Rick's rock hard chest and let the sobs overtake her.

Rick cradled her in his arms until the sobs subsided a little and then tried to push her back but she held on to him fiercely.

"Did you miss me that much?" He asked jokingly. "Well, just give it a month and you'll be chasing me out the door, because there is no where I have to be for at least the next couple of months. I'll be here so much you'll be sick of me"

"Never! You're my best friend, I'll never get sick of you." she whispered croakily "But it's not that." She said unable to meet his eyes. "I guess I'm just tired...tired and homesick."

"Do you want to go home?" He asked.

A glimmer of hope entered her heart...if only she could get away.

"Will they let you do that,...work from home?" She asked encouraged.

Rick shook his head. "No sweetie, they won't. But you are more important than any job. Say the word and we are on the first plane out of here."

Alex sighed "No. It really doesn't make much difference where we are based to me. I travel so much anyway." she said only a hint of the massive disappointment showing in her voice. And now I'll be travelling even more. Just to stay away from here.

"Are you sure sweetie? It's not too late...it will only take one phone call..." he prompted.

"I'm sure" she said resigned. How could she drag him away from the best opportunity of his life? How could she tell him the reason she should? How could she tell this beautiful man that she was in love with someone else?