Seduction in Bunny Pyjamas

Chapter 1 – Life's a bitch, or a bastard

She falls for her best friend. He is her salvation, and the cause of her pain, all rolled into one...

Note from Buzzlegirl – this is a story in 4 parts. There isn't much sex in this part, it's a bit of a slow build up, but worth it in the end I hope. This is my first submission, so please do vote and leave comments, I'd love to hear what you think and whether it's worth my trying anymore!

With lots of thanks to luvtaread for her superb editing skills.

This latest girl was exceptionally beautiful, standing in the kitchen wearing one of HIS shirts over what looked like a very expensive set of lingerie. Slim, long legged, perfect hair despite the early hour on a Sunday; everything a man could want.

"Draven got lucky again"

Alex thought to herself, padding into the kitchen. "

It really doesn't seem fair that she could be that stunning!"

"Hey, could you pass the milk" she said to the beauty, plastering a (hopefully) friendly smile on her face as she walked over to the kettle and flicked the switch.

"Oh, sorry, sure" startled, Beauty turned suddenly, looking down at Alex's reindeer slippers her ex had bought her as a joke, but not bothering to cover up her semi clad body "and you are?"

"I'm Alex, Draven's housemate"

Beauty's eyes widened slightly

"not the answer she was expecting"

thought Alex;

"He didn't mention you were..." Beauty paused, for the first time looking uncomfortable...no...perhaps more unsure than uncomfortable.

"He didn't mention I was at home? Ha ha, don't worry, I didn't overhear anything I shouldn't have, I was listening to music on my headphones" Alex finished for her, making an attempt to be friendly. After all Draven was her best friend and she really had no reason to feel quite so cold towards the girl, it wasn't her fault that Alex had a bit of a problem with beautiful girls; particularly the parade that wandered through the house on a fairly regular basis thanks to his penchant for the type.

"No, he, erm, didn't mention you were a girl" Beauty looked a bit confused for a second, before turning back to the fridge and pulling out the condiments to go with the toast she was making. "I'm Rachel, I'm sure Draven's mentioned me, we work together at the bank" Beauty said, glancing over her shoulder at Alex again, giving her the once over from toe to head before turning back to the fridge, but not before Alex caught the smirk on her perfect lips.

"Of course" Alex lied smoothly – she didn't want to upset the girl, Draven could have mentioned her; now that Alex thought about it, there might have been mention of a Rachel, but then again, there were so many that had 'made Draven's acquaintance' it was hard to keep up!

"Anything for an easy life"

she thought. Actually, that wasn't true and Alex knew it deep down. She did it to keep Draven happy. No matter how she might kid herself, she let him get away with murder for one reason and one reason alone, she loved him and thus she would forgive him pretty much anything, despite how much she might disapprove. Ah unrequited love, is there anything worse, more painful, more humiliating?

********* ******** ********

Alex's life was dull. She got up, she went to work at her job in the hospital accounts department where she spent 8 hours moving paper from one pile to another, trying to balance budget with clinical requests; getting moaned at by Doctors for lack of funds for treatments and hospital management for overspends neither of which were her fault. After that heinous experience she would go home, tired and miserable, and lose herself for a couple of hours in the joy of a good book or music, before going to bed and starting the whole cycle again the next day. The highlight of her life would be the occasional evening she got to curl up with Dray on the sofa watching DVDs and just hanging out. That had been her life since she split up with Jamie a year previously.

Jamie, the man responsible for her complete lack of confidence. Nothing had been the same since she came home from work early that day with a headache and walked in to find him fucking some random bitch in their bed.

The bitch had been courteous enough to look contrite and grab her clothes before running out of the room, but Jamie, rather than getting down on his knees and begging for forgiveness as Alex had expected, had been entirely unrepentant.

"What do you expect me to do? It's your fault...you never want to have sex anymore, you're always too tired or too busy. Then when we do, it's the same old shit. I don't know why I even stuck with you this long, it's not like you're worth fucking anyway" his tirade just went on and on getting louder and more hurtful as he got more and more angry.

So, according to him, what Alex had thought was simply a rough patch in their four year relationship was, in fact, something else entirely. It didn't seem to occur to him that she WAS tired, since she was the one out working to support his dreams of becoming a musician...the dreams that involved him being seemingly unable to hold down a full time job for more than a few weeks ("

It stifles my creativity babe, you know"

). She'd done it willingly, she loved him and genuinely wanted him to be happy.

OK, there was the odd moment when she had resented his lack of motivation in the working world, and lord knows they could have used the extra money, but, no relationship was without its challenges. And it was so easy to overlook those faults when he was sitting at the bottom of the bed strumming his guitar, creating something beautiful from thin air. His eyes closed, the melody surrounding him in an erotic fog that made him even more beautiful.

Instead he had 'outgrown' her, he wanted some fun, he wanted someone interesting, exotic, beautiful and good in bed....

"Someone who knows how to please a man, fucking you is like fucking an elephant, except that would be more interesting" Jamie spat at her. Damned if that hadn't raked over her biggest insecurity – she'd always felt inferior to Jamie, he was talented, good looking and she'd always found it difficult to believe that he wanted her despite what he'd always said. He knew how self-conscious she was about her less than waif like appearance and yet he seemed to think it was ok to use that against her. His handsome face was shining with anger, taking perverse pleasure in destroying all her illusions. In bringing her down to nothing, even less than nothing.

She couldn't listen to any more, Alex did the only thing she could think of...she ran.

She walked around for hours, Jamie's angry face swimming in her head, his accusations and spiteful words playing over and over. She found herself outside Draven's flat. She wasn't sure how long she sat there on the bench opposite but the darkness had closed in.

Suddenly he was there putting a coat around her shivering shoulders "Hey Al" he said softly, "why don't you come in and have shower, then you can tell me what's up". He gently pulled her to her feet before shepherding her in out of the rain.

"

When did it start to rain?"

she thought numbly.

He manoeuvred her into the bathroom where he started the shower before depositing her in the small cubical, clothes and all. She felt the warmth of the water fusing the fog around the edges of her mind. When she eventually got out of the shower, she saw Draven had thoughtfully put a pair of jogging bottoms out and a t-shirt.

God she'd ran out on her life and hadn't even taken her purse. She had no clothes, no money, no keys, nothing. She started to cry again and seconds later, Dray was at her side, gathering her gently against his sculpted chest. Those hours of kite-surfing and gym work-outs left him with a body to die for which, right now, Alex was hanging onto as if her life depended on it. He gently slid to the floor, leaning his broad shoulders against the wall, holding her tucked on his lap, her head resting against his shoulder and his hand gently stroking her back soothingly.

"What did that bastard do to you Al?" he said gently.

Dray loved women and despite the fact he had a parade of them through his door, he wasn't a bastard. He didn't cheat and he had a certain morality about his relationships, even his one night stands, despite the fact he couldn't seem to commit for more than a few months at most. As she recounted the story, there on the floor of the bathroom, she felt his body tense inch by inch, his hand stilled on her back.

"Fucking dick" he swore softly as she repeated word-for-word what Jamie had said about her. "Bastard".

By the end, she was drained, emotionally, physically and her head was pounding. Draven picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her to the bed "You can stay here love, don't worry, as long as you need" and she'd felt a small ray of hope; maybe it was going to be worth getting up tomorrow.

********* ******** ********

Alex didn't really remember the months that followed that disastrous day. They seemed shrouded in cigarette smoke, numbness and nightmares. Jamie had cleared out practically everything by the time she'd felt strong enough to go round to their old flat; all he'd left were her clothes and a few personal effects, which had been dumped unceremoniously in corner of the bedroom - the photo albums documenting their life together and the gold chain and St Christopher she'd given him as their last anniversary present. She'd been heartbroken all over again.

Draven had just been there, his usual cheeky demeanour replaced with sombre understanding. There was no humour in this situation. He helped her gather up her things into bin bags before taking the photos and the other keep sakes Jamie had so cruelly discarded and carried them to the car.

It seemed perversely funny to her, carting her life out in bin bags when it had been reduced to rubbish. The hysterical laughter that bubbled out of her had, in mere seconds, morphed into wracking, gut-wrenching sobs that shook her entire body. Draven was immediately at her side, pulling her into a comforting embrace, her tears soaking into the cotton of his t-shirt as he cradled her.

She'd moved into his place, initially for just a week or so, but a week had turned into a month and before she'd realised, 10 months had passed. They'd decided not to renew the tenancy on Dray's flat and had between them, rented a small house in the middle of town.

They found they could live together easily, too easily in fact for some who always saw fit to comment. Their landlady thought they were the 'perfect couple' apart from one thing, they weren't actually a couple.

As the months passed, Alex's feelings for Draven had changed. She couldn't really put her finger on when exactly. They had known each other since college, Draven being one of the popular, sporty bunch and Alex being one of the dark goth types – not the sort you would normally put together, but they were lab partners in Biology and had found a commonality in their love of sports cars and quoting lines from the Simpsons.

After college they had drifted apart, but fate had brought them together when Draven returned from uni and they literally bumped into each other outside the court house in town. They reacquainted, moved onto mates, then friends, then good friends, then, without intention, the best of friends. It was an unusual dynamic but it worked.

Jamie had always been jealous of her friendship with Dray, but it had always been nothing more than a close, platonic and warmest of friendships. Had she married Jamie like she planned, she knew that she would never have considered Draven as anything more than a friend. Yet here she was, locked in an emotional relationship with a man who would never return her feelings...she'd gone from 'heartbroken loser' to 'pathetic loser crushing on her best friend' in one deft blow.

********* ******** ********

"Word up Chief!" Draven came sauntering in, shirtless, board shorts hugging his lean hips carrying his 9 m kite over his shoulder and his board in his hand.

Alex peered over her glasses, her curly red hair piled on top of her head making her look like a stern school teacher. "Rachel asked you to call her this afternoon about meeting this evening at Bar One...seems you two have been seeing a lot of each other. Do you think we can move onto referring to her as your girlfriend?!" she teased, arching one eyebrow at him.

"Hey hey, now don't go scaring a guy like that! I mean, the "G" word, that's a big step in a man's life! Don't get me wrong, she's fit as fuck don't you think and seriously, she can suck like you wouldn't believe but..."

"Dray!" Alex interrupted holding her hand up as if to physically prevent the image of Draven and the beautiful Rachel permeating her mind "remember that conversation we had about over sharing? I might be your mate but there are certain things you should leave to discuss with the guys down at the pub."

"Yeah yeah, but you know I think of you as a dude, man! That's what I love about you, you're the only chick I know that I can talk to like a bloke."

"Sure, sure, I know. She left you her home phone number, it's by the phone, said her mobile was playing up since she didn't seem to be getting as many messages from you lately" Alex pointed with the end of her pencil before looking back down to the crossword she was doing.

"So what are you up to this evening Al? Got a hot date?" Dray mused, raiding the fridge for the left-overs of last night's chicken pie "mmmm gfd yoof cnn cukf."

"Draven Gareth Holmes, did your mother not teach you not to talk with your mouth full?" Alex scolded, grateful for the excuse to change the subject before they got onto the old subject of her social life, or lack thereof.

"Mmmm baby I do love it when you get all stern with me, I'm such a bad boy" Dray leered in a deep voice waggling his eye-brows comically "and have I told you, you look hot in those cute little bunny pyjamas?"

"Down boy" Alex swatted him with her newspaper, laughing at Draven's over-acted leering "you're such a perv, I'm surprised any woman will go near you."

"You know you want me, you're only a helpless female after all" he joked walking around the table towards the stairs, laughing at his own joke.

Alex was used to their banter and knew he was just messing around, the smile fading from her lips as he walked away, a slight sadness washing over. It wasn't that she wasn't content, she was far happier than she thought she could be considering events a year ago. Draven had been instrumental in her rebuilding her life, but was pushing her to take the next step, start going out more, dating even. His pop psychology was that she was afraid to start seeing other people, scared of getting hurt. Maybe he was right to some degree, after all, her experience with Jamie had not left her unscathed. But she knew it was more than that, she knew that somewhere there was a part of her that didn't want this happy little home she'd built with him to end and didn't want to move on with anyone but her Dray.

But it wasn't going to happen. By his own admission Draven Holmes was as shallow as they came, only dating women that fit his 'criteria' – slim, beautiful, blond and ditzy. He certainly didn't want a plump, slightly goth redhead. Plus by his own admission, she knew him better than he knew himself sometimes.

"

You need to get a life you stupid cow

" Alex berated herself.

"AND...you seriously need to get laid as well before you forget how".

That was it, she was calling her friends from work, who were always out on a Saturday night, and she was going out to have some fun.