Author's Note: So there is a reason for the rating increase to M but it's definitely NOT St. Berry sex. :) That's going to take a little bit of time. With this chapter, I wanted to give a little insight into what Jesse and Rachel's lives at home are like. Why they both might be a little unhappy in their current situations. I plan on having more chapters like this later on as well. Anyway, thanks for all of the feedback everyone! Keep it up!
Jesse unlocked the door to his apartment and knew that it would be dark inside before he even opened the door. This is what he had come home to most nights for the past year. An empty and dark apartment.
He walked over to the bar, grabbed a tumbler glass and poured some scotch into it, gulping it all down in one swig. He poured another glass and walked over to the couch and plopped down onto it, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing in frustration as he leaned his head back against the couch. He thought about what his life had become. Professionally, he was living the dream that he had always wanted. Personally, it was a different story.
He and Isla might as well just be roommates. They hadn't been intimate in months and when he'd try to initiate it, she'd tell him she was tired or she just wasn't in the mood. Although, he wasn't completely blameless because there had been many times where he had pushed her hands away from him after a long, hard grueling day.
It was more than that though. They didn't even really talk anymore. He remembered when they used to come home and give each other a kiss on the lips and talk about their days. Now, they were doing well if they actually had a conversation that lasted longer than five minutes.
Somewhere along the way, it seemed like they both had just stopped trying. Other things were more important in their lives than their marriage. Jesse was just glad that they didn't have any children that could possibly suffer from the loveless marriage he and Isla were currently in.
As he took a sip of scotch from the glass, Rachel's face swam in his vision. He smiled at the memory of how she had laughed and grinned at dinner. He hadn't wanted to leave her company. He could've stayed there just talking to her for hours. Innocent thoughts turned into forbidden ones as he continued to drink his scotch. He thought about the love scene that they'd had during rehearsals. How it had taken so much restraint not to put his tongue in her mouth as they were kissing and see if she still tasted the same.
He felt himself harden as he fantasized about their love scene becoming a reality. They'd never had sex when they were younger, but Jesse could just imagine how good she would feel beneath him. How good it would feel to be inside of her. The sound of her crying out his name.
His eyes flew open just as he had started to reach inside his pants. He needed to take a shower. A cold one. He shouldn't be having thoughts about Rachel like that. She was his co-star. She was engaged to another man. He was married.
Walking into the bathroom, he stripped off his clothes and turned the water on. As he stood under the streaming lukewarm water his thoughts wandered back to Rachel again, and he felt himself grow extremely hard as he began to think about pressing her up against the wall of the shower and having his way with her. He took his erection in his soapy hand and stroked himself. He imagined his hand was Rachel's lips and warm tongue, gently sucking and licking.
It didn't take long before he was spilling in the shower as he came. He washed himself off and tried not to think about how he was going to look Rachel in the eye tomorrow. Sure he'd fantasized about her before but it'd been a long time ago. Besides, this was different. They weren't high school kids who were dating. Or he wasn't having sex with some girl imagining it was Rachel.
Turning off the water, he got out of the shower and dried off before putting on some sleep pants and a t-shirt. As he climbed into bed, he tried willing all thoughts of Rachel from his mind. He turned on his iPod and placed it on the nightstand, closing his eyes and trying to fall asleep.
Jesse ended up drifting off with thoughts of Rachel and what could have been if things were different. He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep when he felt the bed move. Looking at the clock, he noticed that it was after 1 a.m. He turned over to look at his wife who had just crawled under the covers.
"I didn't mean to wake you," Isla said, looking over at him in the semi-darkness of their bedroom.
"Late night at the office?" Jesse asked, his voice gruff with sleep.
"Yeah, we were trying to get some stuff done in time for the next issue," she explained. "Go back to sleep." She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. He noticed the smell of cigarette smoke on her but didn't taste it on her lips. He was curious when they had started smoking in the office.
He sometimes wondered if she was having an affair, but sadly he couldn't bring himself to care or be concerned about his wife's potential infidelity. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about his own thoughts of betrayal.
Rachel walked into her and Donovan's apartment to find him sitting on the couch drinking a beer. She shouldn't have been surprised since this seemed to be how she always found him when she came home lately. Either that or he wasn't there at all. "Hey," he greeted, not bothering to look away from the show that he was currently watching on the TV.
"Hi, how was your day?" she replied as she took her coat off and laid it on the chair along with her bag.
"The usual bullshit," he said, still not bothering to look at her. "Standing outside for a large chunk of the day waiting to audition for a role that I won't be getting."
"Donovan…" she started but he cut her off.
"Where were you?" he asked, finally glancing at her before looking at the TV again.
"I was having dinner with one of my co-stars," she told him, surprising herself by not just coming right out and saying that she had dinner with Jesse.
She finally had his attention and now she didn't really want it. "Oh yeah? Who'd you have dinner with?"
"Just Jesse," she replied, before heading off towards the kitchen to get a glass of water.
"St. James?" he asked loudly as he watched her walk away.
"Yep," she answered. A little too brightly, she thought.
"So do you actually like him now?" Rachel didn't know what to make of his tone. It wasn't exactly accusatory but it was in a way. "I mean, you would barely say two words to the guy for years."
"I just didn't know him and now that we're working together, he's actually a nice guy. You'd probably get along great with him," she explained, doing her best to keep her tone neutral. She should have told Donovan about her relationship with Jesse a long time ago, but now that she had waited so long he would wonder if she was hiding something from him. Rachel was beginning to wonder if she was.
Donovan just snorted at that and went back to watching TV. Rachel hated how jaded and bitter he had become over the years. She wondered if she hadn't landed a lead role on Broadway and found success, if she would be just like him. She hated that it hadn't happened for him yet, but she was supposed to be able to talk to him about things like how wonderful rehearsals were going for the show and how fabulous it was going to be but she couldn't. She either felt guilty or pissed that she was living her Broadway dreams when he wasn't.
"I'm going to take a shower," she told him. She might as well have been telling no one since it got no reaction from him whatsoever. Sometimes she wanted to take her engagement ring and throw it at him and tell him he needed to move out. She understood that it was probably really hard for him to watch her success when he'd been at it so long, but it wasn't her fault and she really wished that he could just be happy for her and support her.
As Rachel let the water fall over her body, she thought about how there would've been a time when Donovan would've come into the bathroom and joined her in the shower. The truth was, they hadn't had sex when he was completely sober in awhile. There were times when she didn't want him to touch her at all. Not even to hold her. He never got angry with her when she turned him down, but he would go sleep on the couch.
Rachel didn't know how to fix what was broken with them. She didn't know if it could ever be fixed.
Rachel could hear the sounds of the TV as she lay in bed a little while later. She put her ear buds in and listened to some music completely drowning out the sound coming from the living room. As she closed her eyes, her thoughts turned to Jesse and their evening together.
She had missed him. She wished that she had reacted differently when he jad sent her those flowers before her first Broadway show. They had lost so much time.
She remembered the feel of being in his arms as they had hugged. It had felt right and that familiar pull low in her belly was still there. She was a consummate professional when they were in-character and rehearsing, but she wouldn't deny that their love scenes turned her on somewhat. Even with all of those people around it was hard not to be turned on when Jesse's lips were on hers and his body moved against hers. She began to imagine what it would feel like to be with him. For real.
Would he touch her the same way that he did when they were in-character or would it be different? His kisses still felt the same as they had when they were younger. Her hand moved down her body as she remembered the way his hands had caressed her breasts during rehearsals. She slipped her hand inside her panties as she thought of Jesse's tongue darting out to taste her skin as he kissed her neck.
She imagined it was his fingers parting her folds and slipping inside of her. His thumb circling her nub as his fingers made her feel things that she hadn't felt in so long. She thought of his searing kiss on her lips and how she would hungrily kiss him back, her tongue tangling with his in a passionate kiss. Her mouth was a silent 'O' as she orgasmed, thoughts of Jesse still running through her mind.
The last few weeks of being around him had led to this. He had crept into her unconscious mind the moment they started working together. She'd had vivid dreams about him that sometimes made her blush as she thought about them in his presence. But now he was taking over her conscious thoughts and she didn't know how to stop it. When she would try not to think about him, it just got worse.
It didn't help that she and Donovan were having problems, and to hear that perhaps Jesse's marriage was in a not-so-great place, it made it even harder not to think about all the what-ifs. But this was the hand that life had dealt them and she was going to do everything she could to make sure that things between them remained platonic. Even if every waking thought she was beginning to have was anything but.