ROMANCE: Bear Naked Seduction (Billionaire Bear Trio Book 1) (62 page)

Rebound with the Ex

Rebound with the Ex

Chapter 1

I was sitting in my apartment with a tub of ice cream open on my lap, and even though it was wrapped in a tea towel I could still feel the coldness seeping into my bones, but at least I was feeling something. Outside I could hear cars roar along the road, and in the apartments around me I could hear the sounds of people talking but in my apartment there was only the sound of silence. Images flickered on the television screen but I didn't pay attention to them. Pretty people with perfect smiles and false problems. Every day they met someone knew and had another relationship and it all worked out fine for them because that was the nature of things, but for me that was a picture of a life that I would never have.

I wasn't like them. I didn't have the perfect slim body. I liked food, and enjoyed eating. Was that so wrong? In this day and age it's like a sin, something you should be ashamed of. I never had any issues with my own body until other people started having issues with it. When I was at high school they would all stare at me in the shower and giggle, and then suddenly carrots would start turning up in my locker and bag at school. I thought it would get better as I grew older and moved through life but adults were just as cruel as children and I had to develop a thick skin. I pitied them really, that their lives were so small and meaningless that the only joy they could get was from the misery of others. But I was already different and not just because I was fat, but because I liked girls instead of boys, and the worst thing wasn't being teased or bullied at school, it was that Lucy was the one doing it all.

Lucy was the first woman I loved, although I had to lover her from afar. She was bright-eyed and bubbly and everyone loved her, especially when she was ahead of everyone and her round breasts swelled and her hips started swaying in that mesmerizing way. Every head turned. I even caught the fathers of the students looking at her, wondering how such a girl could be so sexual. They looked at her hungrily, like wolves, as though she was just a piece of meat for them to salivate over but to me she was a queen. I lay awake at night dreaming of telling her my feelings and that she would return them, that she would tell me all the teasing and bullying was just an act and she only did it because she wanted to hide her true feelings...that she loved me too.

When I found out that she was going out with Billy it broke my heart. The pain was a stabbing one and I didn't know how something that I couldn't see could feel so raw. I watched her and knew that I shouldn't love her because I meant nothing to her but I couldn't stop myself. The anguish of wanting something that I could never have was palpable, and my pillow was stained with my forlorn tears every night.

Growing up as a big lesbian teenager wasn't fun, and my life seemed bleak, and as I let the ice cream slide down my throat I thought back to that time and chuckled dryly to myself. Even though that was ten years ago I still felt the same way, like I would always be wanting something that I couldn't have.

I sighed as I drove the spoon into the soft, dark ice cream. I always went for chocolate with little bits of brownie in it, and this one even had swirls of golden caramel. As I scooped up a large mound of it I smiled at the soothing crush, and lifted it up, looking to see how long I could make the caramel stretch before it broke. When it finally lost its cohesion it fell and drizzled back down. I placed it in my mouth and closed my eyes, letting the sweet chocolate fill and comfort me.

Then, I checked my cell to see if anyone had replied to my messages. Nothing. There was only one person that I hadn't tried to contact and that was because we'd spent the last week shouting down the phone to each other. All of my other friends were AWOL, and I felt so lonely that I could have cried. But my tears were all gone. I'd spent too much time crying over Lacey and now it felt like I didn't have anything left in me.

The audience in the television laughed but I couldn't see anything funny. I stared ahead with a blank look in my glassy eyes, watching the fictional characters have better lives than me. I was twenty-nine and I had nothing to show for my life. I was single, eating ice cream in a small apartment, and nobody wanted to be my friend.

Chapter 2

When the show ended the credits rolled and everyone looked happy. That was the thing about TV shows; they always had an ending. Life wasn't like that. You went through day after day in one long, endless string and everything was a chaotic mess. I used to think that everything happened for a reason, that somehow there was a plan for my life; but I soon came to realize that was just an exercise in vanity. There were six billion other souls in the world, why was I so special that there would have been a grand plan for me?

Sometimes I still spared a passing though for Lucy and wondered where she was and what she had done with her life. I look back to that time and thought how different my life would have been if I had tried to talk to her or just tried something different. Perhaps she would have been intrigued. She must have thought about being with girls because every guy wanted her and it was all so easy to be with them but girls, they were mysterious and intriguing and she would have wanted to know, would have needed to know, and sometimes at night when I played with myself I thought about Lucy and how she was then, how I was then, all young and supple and tight and I would feel the most intense orgasms, but immediately afterwards I would lay back in bed and groan for I was aware of how alone I was.

But that was another life and I was another person. And really the only person I wanted was Lacey, although I didn't really want Lacey, I just wanted that feeling I had when I was with Lacey, that safe feeling, like when I was wrapped in her arms there was nothing bad going on in the world and everything was going to be okay. I could still remember her smell and I wished that I couldn't because it was so easy to fall back into those memories of the two of us sitting up late at night, both of us had trouble sleeping, talking about nothing and everything. It never seemed like we would ever run out of things to talk about. I remember the first date we had, how we spoke for hours and time didn't seem to matter, and at the end of it all she said that she was afraid we had exhausted every topic. I just looked at her with her sparkling eyes and heart-shaped face and I knew that even if I had stare in silent adoration for the rest of my life I would have been happy to do so.

Instead, I said that there were things we could do other than talk, and in a rare moment of bravery I leaned forward and pressed my lips to hers, tasting the strawberry that was left from the lip gloss she had applied moments earlier. I could tell by the way the breath squeezed out of her mouth that I had taken her by surprise, but after the flicker of a second she reciprocated and the two of us were lost in a whirl of heady delight. After we broke apart we looked at each in awe. The kiss was so powerful that my entire body was trembling and all I wanted to do was kiss her forever.

And just like that we were in a relationship. I loved her and her free-spirited ways. Everything was so easy with her and there was no doubt that we were together. Some of my other relationships had been rocky but with Lacey it was natural, and I was glad for that. We had a relationship that made everyone jealous. All of our friends commented on it.

'You two are so great together, I wish I could find what you have.' They said, and it made me glow every time they mentioned it. But then things began to sour. Lacey started a new job and she was working all hours and when she was at home she barely had anytime to hang out. I would make plans and she would say that she couldn't because she was working, and I would say okay but deep inside my heart was breaking. I couldn't say anything because she had worked so hard to get to where she was that I didn't want to be a burden on her, but then when we went to parties and people said that same compliment I gave a polite smile and looked at the love of my life, because I knew that things weren't as perfect between us as they once were.

Chapter 3

I tried to talk to her about it but I hated rocking the boat because I was always afraid that I was in the wrong. That was a mistake I had made with a number of my exes, I let things bother me and fester inside me until it became too late and the issues were too much and they made us explode. But Lacey wasn't like that usually; I could talk to her and be one with her. But it felt like she changed, that the job changed her. She was tired and stressed and the things we used to together I ended up doing alone. I could tell we were drifting apart and I wanted to save us but it felt like I was the only one that was trying.

And then came the e-mails.

It happened so innocuously. I was going to show her an interesting blog post I had read about the role of lesbians in popular culture and her laptop was closer than mine so I lifted the screen and she froze.

“They don't mean anything,” she said. I furrowed my brow in confusion and I stared at her. The color drained from her face and she looked guilty. My insides spilled and I could feel something crawling over my skin, a fear of something that I didn't want to be true. One of the tabs was open on her e-mail. My throat ran dry and I almost didn't look at it, almost buried my head in the sand, and the stupid thing was that I probably wouldn't even have noticed had she not said anything. But she had. And I couldn't ignore that.

I slowly moved the cursor to the e-mail tab and my eyes searched the screen. There were a number of messages from a woman named Rebecca, with pictures attached, laying on a bed with her hands draped over her body, tempting, teasing pictures, the kind that Lacey had always laughed at. But there were sitting on her laptop, the suggestive text of the e-mails was pushing and intimate, and when I read the replies my throat tightened again and I wanted to turn back time to just a few moments before so that I could live in the bliss of ignorance.

The words were made up of little black letters on the screen yet they were burdened with such weight. I couldn't believe that Lacey was the author of these steamy, innuendo-laden messages. There was such freedom in the words—such passion—a far cry from the closed-off woman that I had known for the previous few months. I looked at her and pushed the laptop away, not wanting to read anymore. I had so many questions that I didn't know where to being. In the end I started with the obvious.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Just someone I met at a conference. We had a few drinks and we got to talking. It was boring and we both needed the entertainment. Nothing happened though.”

“You call this nothing?” I said, gesturing to the screen. My eyes looked to the laptop again and I saw that woman with her long raven hair and her perfect almond-shaped eyes, and those slender curves that were just waiting to be explored.

“I mean...I didn't sleep with her,” Lacey said, a look of apology on her face. She moved into the room and tried to take my hand but I didn't want to be near her, didn't want to have her touch me with those same fingers that had typed those words to Rebecca. Rebecca. I hated that name.

“You wrote about it though. You
thought
about it. Am I not enough for you?”

“Of course you are baby.”

“Don't 'baby' me.”

“Please don't be like this.”

“What should I be like? Should I say okay it's fine carry on with your cyber affair? Should I lie and say that this doesn't bother me? Should I not bring up the fact that I've been feeling so lonely ever since you started this new job but I haven't said anything because I didn't want to stress you out even more, but now I find that instead of coming to me you turn to this Rebecca.”

“It's just...it's easy with her, I can just lose myself...”

“You're supposed to lose yourself with me. I'm supposed to be the fucking love of your life,” I said, my voice cracking with emotion. Lacey was quiet after that. She closed the laptop and sat down. The tension rose between us and the blood boiled under my skin. I wanted to hit her, to scream at her, but I was impotent with rage so I just stood there simmering, listening to her tell me her sob story about how she was under so much pressure and didn't want to dispel the image I had of her. How she wanted to prove that she could handle things and that Rebecca was just a way for her to escape from her life for a little while, to pretend that she was someone else. It all seemed like a hollow excuse to me and I didn't understand any of her reasons but she begged and pleaded with me to stay and work things out and I did because we were the couple that everybody wanted to be. We were the ones that everyone was envious of and I liked that about us, and surely in relationships you were supposed to keep trying even if you hit a bump in the road because you had chosen that person and that meant you had to compromise and sacrifice your own ego sometimes. But I made her delete the e-mails and block Rebecca and we promised never to talk about it again.

That night we made love but it left me unsatisfied. I could only think about what she had described to Rebecca and even though she said nothing happened I knew that Rebecca must have invaded her thoughts, that Lacey would have thought about sharing a bed with her, about peeling away that soft silk to get to the perfect curves and the undoubtedly shaved wetness, to taste and bury herself inside Rebecca, feeling the trembles of her body as the moans escaped her lips. 

I kept my mouth closed as I didn't want her tongue inside my throat. I let her fingers inside and I tried to let the pleasure wash through me as it usually did but my body was shut down. I heard her moaning as she rubbed herself, trying to force us back into an orgasmic heaven but my body was empty and I just wanted it to be over.

I felt the wet stains against my leg as she nestled up against me, murmuring that I was the best lover ever and nobody had ever turned her on as much. It all rang hollow to me though, and it felt like she was saying it to make up for the hurt she had caused, like it was all some sort of performance. I let her cuddle me but I felt stifled, imprisoned by my love for her. Had I given my heart to the wrong person? I didn't know, but I lay awake as she slept, and it was obvious that she wasn't plagued by the same demons as I.

We limped along as a couple after that. She tried harder to make things up to me but the more she tried the more forced it felt and there was a barrier between us. People still said that we were the ideal couple when they saw us out and about,  but I think that was borne from their memories rather than what they were witnessing,  because I certainly didn't feel happy. It's always struck me strange at how fragile love is. People would have us believe that it's the strongest thing in the world, that it can survive anything, but when things happen like they did with me and Lacey, love evaporated quickly, and we went from being so close to being strangers. We still had sex but it was more out of habit and routine than anything, until we stopped altogether.

I think we both wanted out but it would take one of us to form the courage and pull the plug. Of course that was Lacey. When she finally suggested it I agreed with her. I wondered if she had started talking to Rebecca again, or if there was someone else that she was exchanging e-mails with, but I didn't ask. Not at that point anyway. Afterwards, with all the phone calls, it came up. I'm not proud about how I handled the aftermath of our break-up but I'm only human, and she's a bitch.