Mac
walked up to the cell and unlocked it, never once meeting Sonny’s
eyes. “This sure as hell isn’t for you, Corinthos,”
he said. “You two have an hour. But no conjugal visiting, please.”
Alexis stepped into the cell, and Mac shut the door behind her.
She heard him clear the guards from the post nearest to the holding
cell as he walked away. But all of her attention was on Sonny, her
breath coming in quick bursts as he stood before her at last.
He seemed okay…fairly calm. Still sexy as hell despite the
fact that they’d left him in his suit and it was rumpled. His
jacket had been tossed on the top bunk. His shirt was unbuttoned
to reveal the powerful column of his throat. The sleeves were pushed
up to his elbows. All in all, he looked as if he’d been trying
to stay cool in the heat of the holding cell area. But she knew
that the claustrophobia had made him feel as if the clothes were
choking him.
There was strain in his face, around his eyes. “How are you?”
she asked him.
He tilted his head. “I’ll be better when you come over
here,” he whispered.
Alexis rushed into his arms. She clung to him and breathed in his
scent, grateful that she’d gotten to touch him again.
“How the hell did you convince Mac to let you do this?”
he demanded, a thread of suspicion in his tone.
Alexis leaned back to look at him. “I have my ways,” she
laughed.
“I think the commissioner has a crush on my wife,” he
replied. “Don’t know if I like that.”
One finely arched eyebrow raised. “Well, it got me in here
to see you.”
“Okay, well, then I guess I’ll tolerate his lust for you.”
Alexis laughed again, but then sobered as she saw how he was staring
at her. “What?”
“You just look so…amazing when you laugh, “ he confessed.
“I think…”
“What do you think?” she asked, wide eyed.
“I think I’m gonna have to kiss you.”
“Oh…”
His mouth fell upon her, impassioned kisses raining down upon her
face and the side of her neck, inching with agonizing slowness to
her softly parted lips. His hands threading through the silken strands
of her hair, he crushed his mouth against hers and instantly a blistering
heat began to radiate through her entire body. He plundered her
depths, his tongue stroking intimately against hers until she thought
she would lose it and scream against his mouth.
She could never erase the imprint of his body from her memory even
when she had wanted to…could never lose the sensation of his
mouth on hers. The mastery of his lips and hands and tongue were
sensual delights she had missed in the fiber of her being. Now she
drank her fill until the heady pleasure made her dizzy in his arms.
His hands held her firmly to him even as he slowly surfaced from
the deep and drugging kiss. “You blow me away,” he rasped.
“I don’t understand this thing with you.”
She looked at him in confusion, detecting the serious note in his
voice. “What do you mean?”
His throat bobbed convulsively as his eyes bore down into hers.
“You scare me, Alexis,” he admitted, his voice so low
she had to read his lips to understand what he had said. “I
been—you know—having trouble breathing down here. It felt
like this cell was two inches wide. All I could think about was
how you helped me last time and I found myself wishing you were
with me. And now here you are…”
She smiled against his neck, inexplicably happy. “What’s
so confusing about that?”
“Well, I mean, the wanting was always there between us from
like day one.”
She nodded her agreement.
“But needing you is...” He seemed to lose the will to
express the words, as if he was walking through a minefield and
one slip of the tongue could blow them both to kingdom come.
“You know I don’t lean on anyone. Anyone at all. Yet I
seem to be leaning a lot on you. Just like I did before. When we
were friends.”
She shrugged. “I lean on you, too. Why is that a problem?”
“It’s not,” he said, but she plainly saw the glimmer
of doubt in his eyes. “Except…we’re not supposed
to be that way anymore. All the fighting and the anger we’ve
indulged in for the last two years…that was gone with one kiss
in your apartment. We did like a 360 or something overnight. Yeah,
there are things that you said that still hurt in my heart. Just
like I’m sure there are things you still hold against me. But
here we are anyway…not talking about any of those issues…just
wrapped in each other’s arms…like a couple of teenagers
on a first date. And I can’t seem to keep my hands off you.”
She bit her lip, unsure of how to answer him. Unsure if there even
was an answer. She was as shocked as he was that they were together
like this. But she didn’t want to analyze it and didn’t
want him to either. She had analyzed everything else in her life
until it made some sort of sense. Instinctively, she knew that loving
Sonny would not ever make sense. It just was what it was.
”I wanted to keep the distance between us, you know…so
you couldn’t hurt me ever again,” he said. “And so
I wouldn’t hurt you like I’ve done countless times before.
Now all of a sudden there’s no distance. What the hell’s
happening here?”
She heard the uncertainty in his tone, the same fear that lived
in her heart when she was near him, and it touched her deeply. She
reached across and caressed his lips gently, tracing the arrogant
line of that perfect mouth.
“Maybe we just needed each other…but couldn’t find
a way to get back,” she whispered. “A way to scale the
wall we’d erected between us. And we knew that talking would
only bring the pain back. So when life gave us this opportunity,
we decided to communicate in the simplest, most honest way we know
how…like this.”
She held his gaze as she looped her arms round his neck and pulled
him down to her once again. She kissed him with all the love she
couldn’t express in any other way. And from the moment she
did so, she was lost.
