Page 38 of Chaos

26

Drex

Sometime After Midnight

HavingEris in my house was something I hadn’t planned when I left the house today. If I’d known she’d be here, I would have at least cleaned the blood from the wall, but hopefully she wouldn’t notice. I suggested we play a game of pool and poured us both a drink, making mine considerably stronger than hers. She was the first woman that made me feel I actually needed to drink to have the courage to be with. I knew that was because I cared for her, and truthfully, I had no idea how she felt about me. At times, I think she just tolerated me because we kept running into one another.

Eris’ hand cupped the cue ball while she placed it in the precise spot she’d decided to be best for the break. After I racked the balls, I moved the corner balls up to the second row to form a crown. She’d suggested we play slop, which was probably best. I tended to get too competitive, otherwise.

I programmed the surround sound to connect to my phone and put the playlist on random. “Mojo Fix” sailed from the speakers and seemed fitting to our situation. She swayed her hips to the music as she bent to take the shot. The pool stick moved through her fingers back and forth as she prepared to break the balls apart. I forced the hard lump forming in my throat down, swallowing the hormones raising my blood pressure. I shouldn’t be turned on watching her aim, but I was.

“Drex.” Her voice lightly said my name with an underlying sense of pleasure.

“Yes?” I answered, breathing outward and telling myself to take a step away from her. Instead, I used the excuse my tip needed chalked and took a step forward to get it off the table.

“I have no fucking clue how to play pool.” Her head bounced backward in laughter and I watched the beauty feather the room. Her laughter was musical. It was rare that Eris let her true self shine through, but when she did, my world stopped on its axis. She held that much power over me.

“Me either,” I whispered, hanging my stick in the wall rack and closing the space between us. We both knew that was a lie, but didn’t care. Pressing my crotch to her ass was almost my stopping point, but I wanted to try to spend some time with her, so I stuck to the plan at hand. Leaning forward, I took her hands in mine and showed her how to aim to sink the balls.

After explaining the geometry behind playing pool, I helped her make the break, sinking the one ball.

“I have big balls,” I announced, not considering it could and would have more than one meaning.

“Actually, they’re about average, AC/DC.” She met my statement with a joke and then slyly smiled, offering no excuses for what she’d just said.

“Are they?” I took it as a challenge, but honestly with her ass pressing against me I wasn’t sure how much more I could take without bending her over the table completely.

“Well, yeah…they’re normal, I don’t know…ball sized.” She laughed, dropping the stick from our grasp and tightening her fingers around mine.

“Really?” I pressed my hardness against her, forgetting every bit of modesty I was clinging to since we arrived at my house. Not pushing her had been my motive of the day, but I was realizing I wasn’t the one who held control, as I once thought. She drove my every move, even if she was unaware of doing so. The image of her body was permanently seared into my mind, and that gave her the power to control me.

“Umm, I may need a refresher,” she whispered, turning to face me. As I supported her back with my arm and our eyes locked, I knew with one look that she could pull me from the depths of hell. Aphrodite was in my arms, and all I could think of was how lucky of a man I truly was. Luck was an emotion that was foreign to me. There hadn’t been much I’d been thankful to experience in some time, so for me to feel this was astronomical. My only hope was the stars would remain in their proper constellations and not crash to the earth. Over time, I had come to accept the worst of situations. After all, if you expected the worst out of people, you could never be let down again.

Her mouth found mine, and she giggled as my facial hair grazed her face. “I like this.” She smiled and ran her fingers down the length of my face before biting her lip, driving every nerve in my body insane. Maintaining a level head around Eris was out of the question. She challenged me when I wanted to have the last word and moved me when my only wish was to remain. She’d led me to the unknown and forced me to drink from its waters.

Her path was the one road I was reluctant to travel, but fortunate enough to have accidentally stumbled upon nevertheless. She was important to me, and although I in no way resembled the man she needed me to be, she was undoubtedly, without a question, the one person who could complete me. Yet, I didn’t know if that was a puzzle I intended to finish. Even when a puzzle was removed from its box and seen to completion, eventually it was torn apart and the pieces were shoved back into the box never to be thought of again. I wasn’t sure where in that process we lay.

Selfishness was tangled into the complex web of traits that made me who I was. Even if I wasn’t proud to admit that, there was no point denying it either. Yet, in the time I’d grown to know Eris, my only wish was I wouldn’t be selfish when it came to her. I wanted nothing more than for her to run as fast as she could away from me, but she hadn’t. Instead, she ran toward me and shattered through every wall I’d built to distance myself from everyone, including her.

Perhaps it takes nearly drowning yourself to learn how to live again. As if in your last moments of life, reality consumes your thoughts and provides you with the self-preservation you need to fight. Eris not only delivered new water to the stagnant pond that had been filling my lungs for years, she extended her arms and gave me the strength to climb from its murky bottom. It was abundantly clear my mind would never be able to find the positives in every day, given the amount of time I’d spent living in the negative, but with Eris I had a fighting chance.

As her fingertips untucked my shirt and her nails traced up my bare back to my shoulders, chills overtook my whole body. They had little to do with her actions, but she was most definitely the source. She was undeniably paradise, and I would be the tragic drought to wither her beauty. Eventually, I would draw every ounce of joy from her, leading her to the bitterness I knew.

Her fingers linked behind my neck, and I laid her onto the pool table. Incapable of doing the right thing, my mouth found hers and I closed my eyes, savoring every minute with her. Our end would come; I just couldn’t predict when that would be.

* * *

The next morning,I stretched my arm across the sheets, searching for her, but she wasn’t there. Opening my eyes, I scanned the room for her. Thankfully, she was standing in front of the guys’ cage. She jumped as Mike stood on his hind legs and sniffed in her general direction. None of them were used to anyone other than Lexie and me being here, so he was justified in his curiosity. We were too busy last night for her to get the grand tour of the house, much less meet the guys.

She did, however, meet Mulder. At some point, he awoke from wherever he was sleeping and joined us at the pool table. In normal Mulder I-don’t-give-a-fuck fashion, he pressed his wet nose against Eris’ foot and snorted as he went on his way. He’s the reason I almost had blue balls today. I wasn’t sure what she thought was against her foot, but once he snorted, she screamed and promptly climbed off me and grabbed her heaving chest. If the whole situation hadn’t been so hilarious, I would have been pissed at Mulder. As soon as her bare feet touched the floor, he shot out from beneath the pool table and licked her knees as his tail wagged with excitement. She smiled and bent to his eye level, leaning her forehead against his.

“You sure know how to make an entrance,” she joked with him in a casual tone, scratching behind his ear.

Afterward, I introduced the two of them and was quick to lead him out of the room. Thankfully, he hadn’t completely ruined the chemistry between us. Actually, I’d grown to expect something to go wrong when we were together. If it wasn’t a showerhead spraying us in the face, it was Mulder’s wet nose. Typically, something found a way to deaden the moments we shared, but they somehow found a way to continue to live.

“You have rats and a dog,” she stated, not looking for a reply. Her pointer finger dragged the rungs of the cage, making a metallic clinking noise as she walked away from it. Cheddar rose from their hammock, eying her finger, and inched closer. I was happy she moved her finger when she did. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he was getting ready to bite her. I didn’t mention that fact to her, though.

“Do you have any more…pets?” Eris questioned in a light tone and raked her fingers through her hair as she sat on the edge of the mattress.

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