The Big Bang Alien Love Affair Read online

  Personally, Duke thought she was taking the ‘I refuse to belong to anyone’ thing a bit far, but he could understand her wanting to stay single at least until she finished college (she had one more semester), got a job, and could stand on her own two feet. He respected her for it, even. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

  After one or two attempts to convince her of the folly of her ways with sound reasoning, he’d given up. It only pissed her off. And while Duke found pissed off Lexi hot, he didn’t like it when she was genuinely upset with him. Instead, he’d taken to teasing her about giving him another shot. That worked much better.

  Even though she never took any of his offers, she teased back. Things had been going well, he’d thought.

  Until he’d screwed it all up by getting jealous. The first time, with Luca, he’d reacted without thinking. When he’d seen the pinched look on her face, her normally plush lips pursed, he’d known he’d fucked up. He’d expected her to explode, but she hadn’t.

  Not until Sunday night when she’d called him out for treating her like his possession.

  Duke wanted to blame it on stress. Bills were piling up and he’d been staying awake until all hours after the bar was closed to try and find ways to cut costs and bring in more revenue. Shotguns had a steady stream of customers, but they mostly ordered cheap beer and well liquor. He earned enough to cover his overhead and pay the mortgage on his little ranch house at the edge of town. Or he used to.

  He really should have called the cops on Barb. He still wasn’t sure how much she’d stolen from him over the two years she worked there, but he figured it had to be somewhere in the thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. It had been a slow leak, gradual enough that he’d just thought business was dropping off. He’d gotten behind on payments to his vendors and mortgage payments and had to borrow against his credit.

  Getting rid of Barb had helped, but it was looking more and more like the damage was already done.

  “Oh my god! That was incredible!”

  Duke couldn’t help but smile at the breathless squeal Lexi gave as she finished pulling herself up on top of the wall. He climbed up beside her, grateful for the distraction.

  “I told you that you’d love it.”

  Lexi bumped her bare shoulder against his, her breathing still a little ragged. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t let it go to your head, boss. You’re still mostly a moron.”

  “Careful. Don’t forget I know seventeen ways to kill a man with my thumb.” He flicked her thigh, hard. She rubbed the spot but rolled her eyes at the bad joke.

  “I’m so scared.”

  She gave a gratifying shriek that earned them both a scowl from one of the trainers when he made a lunge as if he was going to toss her off the top of the wall. Hearing her laugh and threaten to stab him with the fruit knife one night when he was least expecting it was worth it though.

  Maybe taking her rock climbing hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. She’d forgiven him for being a ‘total Neanderthal,’ anyway, and surely with the two of them busting their asses, things at Shotguns were bound to get better.

  Of course, that sentiment came back to bite him in the ass not two days later. It was slow even for a Thursday night, so he’d left Lexi up front to handle the handful of customers while he once again ensconced himself in mountains of paperwork to try and figure out how to dig himself out of this mess.

  A headache pounded behind his left eye as he stared down at the columns of black numbers until they went all blurry and squiggly.

  “Hey, you can’t just go back there!”

  Lexi’s voice raised in outrage was a sound he was familiar with after nearly three months working together, but it was usually aimed at him. He glanced up as his office door was yanked open. At the sight of his CPA Marcus, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Sorry, boss. I tried to tell this asshat you’re busy, but he’s apparently really important.” She had her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes when she caught his gaze. Duke had the sudden urge to scoop her into his arms and kiss her senseless.

  Knowing that would go over like a lead balloon, he shook his head and smiled at her instead. He was going to ask her to get them a drink, which would probably get a sarcastic response, but he did enjoy those from her. Before he could open his mouth, Marcus flopped down into the slightly rickety chair Lexi had placed in front of his desk so she could pester him while he did his ordering.

  “You’ve been ignoring my calls, Duke. You can’t make this problem go away just by pretending it doesn’t exist.”

  Marcus was an old friend, but at the moment Duke wanted to punch him in his narrow face. Right on cue, Lexi crossed her arms and frowned at him.

  “What problem?”

  “I’m not going to discuss —”

  Lexi cut Marcus off with a slice of her hand. “Not talking to you, buddy.”

  Duke couldn’t help but chuckle at the look on Marcus’s face. It drifted off into nothing a moment later, however, when Lexi turned her narrowed blue eyes on him.

  “Problem?”

  He dropped his forehead into his palms and pressed the heels of his hands against his tired eyes. “Go ahead and tell her, Marc.”

  After a pointedly silent moment that conveyed he wasn’t at all sure about what he was about to do, Marcus outlined the financial situation Duke was in. He spelled it out pretty clearly. Either he thought Lexi was stupid, or Duke was. Probably the latter.

  She didn’t speak the entire time. When Marcus finished, she stalked across the room, balled up her little fist, and socked him in the shoulder. Hard. He’d been expecting it, but it still hurt.

  “You moron.”

  Marcus sputtered a laugh, but Duke just rubbed his sore shoulder. “Don’t you have some customers to serve?” He knew he was grumbling, but he was tired and his head hurt.

  “Two more months. Were you going to tell me or just let me show up to work one day and find an OUT OF BUSINESS sign on the door?”

  “Lex…”

  She hissed at him. “No. I’m not speaking to you right now. And you!” She pointed a buffed nail at Marcus. “I want to see everything.”

  Marcus opened his mouth, obviously to protest. Duke sighed.

  “Give her whatever she wants, Marc. She won’t shut up until you do.”

  “Oh, fuck you, boss.”

  “Any time, Blondie,” he replied with half a smile.

  ***

  Lexi was in big trouble. She rubbed her tired, gritty eyes and tried to think her way out of it. It was all she’d been doing for the better part of the last two weeks.

  Damn him. Damn him and his stupid furrowed brow and his surly attitude and sexy scowl and sculpted lips. Damn his amused snort and his crooked smile and his big, capable hands. Damn him for apologizing when he was wrong and admitting his bad behavior and making the effort to correct it. Damn him for teaching her rock climbing with patience and restraint when he could have tried to take advantage. Damn him for making her laugh and for making her angry and for making her care and for making her want to have someone belong to just her… and for making her want to belong to him.

  Most of all damn him for that last one.

  And damn Marcus the scrawny CPA too, while she was at it. It hadn’t been easy to keep her hands off Duke, to keep their relationship firmly in the “boss/employee who are also friends (and had sex that one time)” category, but she’d been managing. And then Marcus had barged into Duke’s office and spilled the beans about the fate of the bar, and now…

  Now, she was spending all her free time on the computer, making phone calls, researching, and even grilling her professors. Trying to find a way to save Shotguns. And despite what she’d been telling herself, it wasn’t because she didn’t want to lose a good job.

  She’d known Duke was dangerous. And not just because he was a big, muscular guy who could physically overpower her if he wanted to. No, that danger wasn’t one she faced from him.

  He was a whole
different kind of danger. One she’d been trying to avoid since she’d first discovered boys.

  “Well done, Alexis,” she mumbled to the ceiling of her bedroom. Her weary voice sounded eerily like her mother and she shivered.

  Stretching her arms above her head, she flopped back against her pillows and scanned her lapful of papers. There it was, in black and white in front of her… the solution to her problems. Both of them, if she wanted.

  Which was the million dollar question. Or, the quarter of a million dollar question, technically.

  That’s how she phrased it the next afternoon when she stood in front of Duke, anyway. Perhaps she should have waited until she’d had another full night of sleep before bringing it up, because he stared at her as if she’d spoke Swahili or something.

  “What?”

  “I said, I quit.”

  Duke glanced from the two separate stacks of neatly bound paper she’d laid on his desk a minute ago back up to her face. His heavy brows drew down and the furrow appeared between them, making Lexi’s heart spin. She forced herself to remain straight-faced and unaffected in the face of his anger and confusion.

  “And these?”

  The low growl of his voice stroked up her spine like a velvet finger, instantly hardening her nipples.

  “Are exactly what I said they were. Business plans. This one,” she tapped the one on the left with a pointed finger. “This one is what you need to do if you want to keep the bar open and eventually start turning a profit again.”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his broad chest. Aside from the fact that he was sitting down instead of standing behind the bar, his posture was identical to the day she’d first walked into the bar. That seemed fitting.

  “The other?”

  Lexi swallowed past the lump in her throat, because here she’d gone out a bit of a limb. Well, in for a penny, she thought. Really, the whole thing was one big giant limb…

  “That’s what you need to do if you want to gut the place and turn it into a premiere rock climbing facility.”

  Duke just stared at her from beneath those thick, black brows. She shrugged and glanced away, her gaze lingering on the picture of him climbing in what she now knew was Arizona.

  “I tried to think of a way to combine the two, you know? Like maybe a bar where people could rock climb? But… well, it just wouldn’t work. The insurance alone would be cost prohibitive. So, it had to be one or the other. I couldn’t decide which, so I figured… well, it’s your bar, so you should decide.”

  “It won’t be my bar. Not if I take your advice.”

  She was surprised he was being so calm. Honestly, she’d expected him to blow up as soon as she brought up her plan. Or at least to argue about the money. He knew, after all, how she felt about the trust fund.

  “It would too. I’d just be giving you a loan. You’d pay me back. The terms are all in there.” Lexi felt the heat creeping up her throat. She needed to end the conversation and get out of there. That had been the plan. Drop off the paperwork, tell him she was done, and get out. She knew it wasn’t cool to leave him in the lurch, but it was Thursday. Thursdays were slow.

  Her heart pounded in her chest as he scowled up at her. She wanted to crawl over the desk and climb into his lap, but instead she curled her hands into tight fists and squared her shoulders.

  “Which is why I don’t think I should work here anymore. Either way, it would just make things… awkward.”

  Yes, it would be very awkward if she had continue working with him and pretending she wasn’t falling ridiculously in love with the stubborn moron.

  “And what if I decide not to take your advice? What if I decide to close it down? Would you keep working here then?”

  His words were quiet, but they hit Lexi in the gut like a fist. “I… what? No! You… Don’t be a moron, Duke! You have to take the money!”

  The anger and exasperation felt warm and familiar. She propped her fists on her hips and glared at him. Duke pushed both business plans away from him and shoved his chair back so he could get to his feet. He braced his fists on the desk and leaned over it, managing to loom over her despite the two feet of space between them.

  “Oh, I assure you, Blondie, I most certainly do not have to take your damn money!”

  “You stubborn ass! You would really turn down a loan from a friend just to…what? Save some of your damn pride?”

  He kicked the chair away, sending it crashing against the filing cabinet with a clang. Lexi flinched but didn’t back down. Duke’s nostrils flared as he shoved the massive desk to one side in a feat of bulging muscle and grabbed her by her shoulders.

  Lexi gasped at the feel of his hot, rough hands on her skin.

  “A friend? Is that what you are, Lex? My friend?”

  He snarled it at her, his cinnamon scented breath — from chewing his favorite gum, Big Red, and she hated and loved that she knew that about him — wafting against her cheeks. Unable to resist the alluring warmth of his body so close to her, Lexi’s hands rose and twisted in the front of his t-shirt.

  “Yes,” she croaked, clinging desperately to that word. Friend.

  Friends spent time together and made each other laugh and wanted the best for each other and were there when the other person needed them. Friends could even have sex more than once and still just be friends. She could do that. Friendship was safe.

  “Bullshit. I don’t do this with my friends.”

  And then he was kissing her, and Lexi was kissing him back and she was on fire with lust.

  She’d thought she remembered how drugging and powerful Duke’s kisses were, but she’d been wrong. His lips were satin smooth but so strong as they moved against hers, and his tongue was a sweet flame licking into her mouth.

  His hands shoved her vest off her shoulders and deftly unhooked her bra. A second later, the zipper on her skirt slid down and he dropped to his knees, pulling the silky fabric with him. Lexi panted, her hands on his broad shoulders as he divested her of her panties, boots, and socks… leaving her completely naked in middle of his office.

  Duke pressed hot kisses to her inner thighs and her belly, stroking the tender skin behind her knees as he drew her legs apart. When his mouth reached her center, Lexi cried out and buried her fingers in his hair.

  He devoured her, kissing her with every bit of the same passionate skill he used on her mouth.

  Lexi’s knees buckled. She would have sunk to the floor if Duke’s strong hands hadn’t held her up. “Duke!”

  He looked up at her, a wicked smile in his coffee colored eyes.

  She laughed breathlessly. “I… I don’t do this with my friends either.”

  The admission seemed to snap something within him. Duke surged upward, peppering kisses on her abdomen and breasts and throat until he made it to her mouth.

  She clawed at his t-shirt, wanting to feel his skin. All of his skin, this time. Duke obliged her, reaching back to pull it over his head.

  Lexi pushed him back against the desk, running her hands over every inch of his shoulders, back and chest. She pressed herself against his warm skin and rubbed like a cat. The faint swirl of rough, dark hair between his copper-colored nipples abraded the sensitive tips of her breasts, making her breath catch in her throat.

  “Christ, Lexi!”

  Duke’s hands tangled in her hair, dragged her back for another deep, wet kiss. She moaned, fumbling blindly at his belt buckle. It gave way with a muted clank and she yanked it free of the loops, tossing it haphazardly across the room.

  She took a moment to palm the rigid length of his cock through the soft denim before she pulled the zipper down and reached inside. They both groaned as she curled her fingers around him and began to stroke.

  Last time had been hot and incredible, but quick. And she’d been bound. She hadn’t had a chance to explore. At the time, she hadn’t cared.

  She did now. God damn if she didn’t care a lot. About everything.

  Duke m
anaged to somehow toe off his boots without relinquishing her mouth. She heard them thunk against the floor as he kicked them away. Desperate to have him naked, she broke the heated kiss to shove at his pants.

  He shifted his hips obligingly, highlighting the delicious groove of his Apollo’s belt. Lexi bit her lip and whimpered. Sinking to her knees, she pulled at the legs of his jeans roughly, taking his socks with them.

  It was her turn to scatter nips and licks on his thighs and in the crease where his leg met his hip. She dragged her tongue through those tantalizing grooves, staring up into his glittering dark eyes as her hand pumped his shaft with tight, long strokes.

  “Lexi, baby…please.”

  Lexi licked a stripe along his length. Duke threw back his head and gave a shout of pleasure as her tongue flicked and rubbed against him.

  She could have happily stayed there, sucking and licking until he spilled on her tongue, but Duke tugged at her shoulders, urging her up.

  “Wait, baby, wait. Come here.”

  He caught her around her waist and lifted her up to his lips, pressing her along the entire naked length of his body. His shaft pulsed, hot and hard against her belly as he kissed her. He caressed her ribs and palmed her breasts to tease her aching nipples for a moment before gliding his rough palms up to cup her face.

  Drawing back just enough to meet her eyes, he stroked his slightly crooked nose alongside hers.

  “I want to be inside you again, Lex.”

  The words sent such a vivid spiral of pleasure through her body that Lexi gasped and shivered, goosebumps chasing themselves across her skin.

  “Oh, Christ. Yes!”

  She shoved at his shoulders frantically, urging him backward. Understanding, Duke swept his arm across the desk behind him, sending all the papers — including her meticulous business plans — fluttering across the floor.

  The office looked like a tornado had blown through it, but Lexi didn’t care. All she cared about at the moment was Duke.

  He lifted himself onto the desk in a maneuver that tensed his biceps and pecs and belly in a delicious display of muscle. Lexi’s mouth watered at the sight and she shuddered with the need to be touching him again.