CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As Art and I stumbled up the beach and back to the house, I realized something kind of important. We were tipsy. Unless someone had truly snuck in our house and tacked on the front door crookedly. I had my shoes tucked under my arm, and he’d stolen a centerpiece for no reason I could discern, but at least we’d made it back unscathed.
“Here.” I handed my shoes to Art so I could focus on getting the door unlocked, and he took them slowly, looking at the strappy heels like they were UFOs. It took me three tries to get the keys in the door, and four tries to realize he was taking them out every time I put them in.
“We can’t drive,” he said loudly, snatching them out again.
“Gimme those!”
“No drinking and driving, AJ,” he said sternly, holding them out of my reach.
I scowled and snatched them from his loose grasp. Okay, maybe I was the tipsy one. He was clearly trashed. “It’s a door, you idiot. Not a car.”
“Not a car?” he questioned. He blinked big, brown eyes at me. Then he promptly threw my shoes across the yard.
I finally got the door unlocked and ushered him in the house. He tried to go in the hall closet instead of his room and I sighed exasperatedly. I grabbed his shoulders, and pointed him toward the right door.
“Damn.” He scratched his head. “Who moved my fucking room?”
“You’re drunk,” I informed him with a wry smile. “Go sleep it off.”
“What a waste,” he muttered, stumbling in his room. He hit his leg on the bed railing and tumbled into bed headfirst. He bounced for a minute before lying still in a heap. “What kind of guy goes to a wedding and can’t scare up even one lonely bridesmaid?”
“The kind that starts most of his pickup lines with the phrase ‘Damn girl,’” I said.
Clearly his question had been more rhetorical, because he did not appreciate my levity. Even in his twisted pretzel position, he managed to flip me the bird. He was still flipping me off when I turned off his light, and I hoped he’d fall asleep that way. I wished him the mother of all cricked necks for the morning, and closed his door loudly enough to make him moan pitifully.
When I finally got back to my room, Jackson was already in bed. It was a scene I’d gotten far too used to—him sitting with his back against the headboard, fingers swiping across his iPad dexterously, his forehead creased in concentration. I stood in the doorway for a moment, struck dumb by the sight of him for no reason at all. There was absolutely no reason that watching him work in bed should make me feel this way. Watching him do something simple as pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose shouldn’t make my stomach feel funny.
I strove for something smooth and svelte to say. But I had a little too much champagne swirling around in me to achieve anything of the sort. “Hiya,” was all I could come up with. Smooth, AJ.
He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “Hiya yourself.”
His voice was cool, and I winced. I knew I owed him an apology, and I wasn’t going to make him wait for one. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I wouldn’t say I was if I wasn’t.”
He held my gaze for a minute before inclining his head. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“You want a hand-written acceptance of your apology?” He sighed. “I said it’s fine. So let it be fine.”
Fine by me. And then I noticed his luggage, packed and prepared by the door. “You’re packed already? We weren’t going back for another two days.”
“I have to go back tomorrow.”
Someone shouldn’t sound so matter-a-fact when sliding a knife between your ribs. Going back a day earlier than we’d planned? Alone? I blew out a breath. “Guess it’s not so fine after all.”
He didn’t deny it. “A case of mine is getting close to settlement. Looks like her husband has finally seen the light. I want to setup a meeting with his counsel before they change their minds. Besides, I think we accomplished what we came to do, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course. You want to take the car? I can just fly back.”
“That works.”
I bit my lip as he went back to answering emails. I’d been around him long enough to know that he was still kind of mad, and I was kind of okay with that. Angry goodbye sex was exactly what I was looking for. It certainly beat tears and violins by a mile. I waffled over how to get the ball rolling, but in the end, I just went with what works.
Nudity.
I unzipped my dress and let it fall at my feet, a whisper of fabric on the hardwood floor. And suddenly there was a quiet stillness from his side of the room that I pretended not to notice. I padded over to the dresser on bare feet, and grabbed my hairbrush. I let down my hair and brushed slowly, pretending I didn’t see him watching me avidly in the mirror. From the way he was staring, I surmised that black thong underwear really worked for him. When I bent down to pick up the dress, extra slowly, I heard a soft groan.
“You trying to kill me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just getting undressed over here, Sparks.”
When I turned, he was standing behind me. I hadn’t even heard him get off the bed, and suddenly I was face to face with a wall of impatient male. Hard, impatient male. His boxers hung low on his hips, showing off that ripped and cut abdomen. My fingers flexed almost involuntarily, and I reached out.
He stepped back swiftly. “You can’t just get your way with sex, AJ.”
I bit my lip. “I said I was wrong. What else do you want me to say?”
He stared at me, those golden-green eyes and thick dark lashes so beautiful and unreadable. Then he shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t really expect you to apologize so quickly. I kind of wanted to milk this a little.”
He reached for me and I stopped his hands. He deserved the truth. He deserved to know a little bit of how I felt. As he tilted his head questioningly, I cleared my throat. Why were my palms suddenly so damp? Sweaty palms were not sexy.
“I love the way you laugh. Your eyes get all crinkly in the corners and they sparkle a little… I almost feel like I won something when I make you laugh.” I wiped sweaty palms on my thighs. “That’s all I got. That’s your real.”
Those eyes got all crinkly in the corners as his mouth half-lifted in a smile. “Not bad, Winters. Not the sonnet you promised me, but not bad at all.”
And then his mouth was on mine, insistent and demanding. The thick slide of his tongue filling my mouth sent something warm and shivery down my spine. My fingers tangled in his thick hair as he slanted his mouth over mine again and again. It wasn’t simple as a kiss, but something more relentless. Reckless. Possession.
I groaned my approval as those rough, skillful hands mapped an achingly slow path down my spine, ending with a handful of my rear in each hand. He pressed hardness into yielding softness and they fit perfectly, like interlocking puzzle pieces. My legs left the ground before I even realized what I was doing, and I wrapped them around his waist, anchoring my heels in the small of his back. He began to rock into me, slowly, pressing soft kisses down the side of my neck, and fuck, it was…indescribable.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. His eyes locked on mine, and it was like there wasn’t a part of me he couldn’t see right then. Worse yet, he could see me, the real me, and everything I was trying to hide. It was romantic. Meaningful. Unnerving.
I pushed at his shoulders until he had to let me down. He made a frustrated growl as my feet hit the floor and I was able to step away. “I thought you wanted…”
His voice trailed off as I stripped off my underwear and bra, and sent them flying toward the ottoman. “I did and I do.” I made my way over to the bed. I didn’t try to walk sexily because I was pretty sure that would end up with me falling on my face. “Do you think we could possibly do this without declaring our undying love for one another?”
He stared at me, muscles working in that square jaw, eyes boring into mine. I was tempted to close them, mostly because I knew he could see everything that I wasn’t able to say. For a second, I thought he might call me on it. But then his eyes narrowed, and he cocked an eyebrow. “On your knees, then.”
I felt the loss immediately. But fuck it all, his voice was low and rough, and made me wetter than ever before. I complied slowly, taking my time even as I felt the tension rolling off him in waves. He wanted to fuck me, fuck me hard, and seeing laid-back Jackson this close to losing his cool made my breath come in short stutters in my chest. I lay flat on the bed, ass exposed, propping myself up on my elbows.
He made a low growl in his throat and grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed. He lifted my hips with one hand and jammed the pillow underneath me. I tried to catch my breath from the new position, almost feeling too exposed, too vulnerable.
But this was Jackson. And I had absolute trust that he wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. I spread my legs a little more, just going with it. I wanted him in me. On me. Deep inside me, moving, thrusting as hard as he could manage.
His hands caressed my skin, down my shoulders and back, shaping my waist with his fingers, and then over my ass. He gripped the cheeks firmly and pulled them apart, fingers hard enough against my hips to leave imprints.
My breathing quickened as I waited…waited for that first strong, sure stroke. That full feeling of him surging inside me, filling me, and then—
His low chuckle made me growl. He knew exactly what he did to me, and right now I needed him a little too much to be embarrassed. “Don’t play with me, Jackson,” I demanded. “Fuck me.”
“Bossy, bossy,” he whispered.
One of his hands reached around to cup my sex, rubbing the heel of his hand against me, making me undulate against his hand despite my intentions to stay still. The head of that thick cock finally breached my sex, snatching the breath clean from my body. And then he was deep inside of me, and every nerve in my body was suddenly alive. Perked-up. Ears upraised. Ready to receive sensation.
I widened my stance even further, my back dipping automatically as he began to thrust. Hard, long, sure thrusts that made me lock my elbows to even remain upright. Then I gave up, dropping my torso flat on the bed. I buried my face in the tangle of sheets, gripping the edge of the mattress with tense fingers.
He didn’t seem to mind that I was in danger of being smothered by Bed Bath & Beyond’s finest sheets. He braced one arm, corded with tension, next to my face, while the other hand fisted in the length of my hair. The sounds in the room were filthy. Obscene. And they were really getting me the fuck off. The sound of his skin slapping against mine rhythmically as he worked me over. His mouth open on my neck, breathing harshly in my ear. The cries I couldn’t hold in. My moan was muffled as he hit that fucking spot and I was pretty sure I was being asphyxiated. Worth it.
“Oh God,” I managed, muffled and choked. I wasn’t sure if I was praying for air or an orgasm, but I needed one of them pretty soon.
That strange, tingly feeling gathered clear in my toes, but I didn’t signal him to back off. I didn’t want to slow down and build up again. I wanted that rush…wanted that falling feeling to slam me so fucking hard.
“Jackson,” I whispered, the word choked and strangled. It was all I could manage as the storm ripped through my body like a tornado, my hands balling parts of the comforter in my fists tight enough to rip it clean apart. The clench of my walls around him seemed to trigger something primal as his teeth nipped at my shoulder. Actually, no, that wasn’t a nip, that was a fucking bite, right at the juncture of neck and shoulder. Bastard. The pain and the pleasure mixed together in a way that made my mind go absolutely blank for a moment.
The man had given me fucking amnesia. Sweet baby Jesus. I stared at the headboard grimly. As soon as I remembered who the fuck he was, I was going to kill him.
“God…fuck…Avery—” His voice broke off as he came, shuddering, face buried between my neck and shoulder. He rested there, breath sawing through his lungs, sweat-sheened skin slick and warm against mine.
I wasn’t in much better shape, as I lay there like the dead. He finally rolled off of me, falling back on the bed. My body satisfied but my mind turbulent, I fell asleep.
*
It was still dark when I woke, still tangled up in the sheets. A cool breeze wafted over my skin, smelling like a mixture of salty sea air and…fresh laundry, maybe. I had a vague memory of Irene telling me that she liked to air-dry their sheets in the backyard. I turned my head and sure enough, we’d left the window open. The floral curtains rustled slightly from the wind, the white fabric pale and ghostly in the dark.
Jackson murmured something incomprehensible somewhere behind me, his arm snaking around my waist to pull me closer. I was glad he was getting rest because he’d said he was leaving pretty early. Just the thought of that made my stomach lurch sickeningly. I stared at the shapes the moon and curtains were creating on the wall, finally acknowledging the difficult truth.
Something was happening to me, and it was something I’d said I wouldn’t do. Oh, was it dastardly. Horrible. Disturbing. More disturbing than Art wearing the same board shorts two days in a row and turning them inside out for the third. More disturbing than how Lane and Rick were starting to dress, and look, alike. More disturbing than Julian’s perpetual defense of the manpurse.
I was falling for him.
I stared at the morphing moon shadows. It looked like some sort of unicorn. Which was kind of appropriate, because I was considering some pretty fantastical things. Would it be so foolish to fall for someone again? Did I even have a choice? Being with Jackson made me feel…things. Dangerous things. The kind of things that turned otherwise sensible women into love-struck fools. Things that made one want to slap on a pair of tight pants, Oliva Newton-John kind of tight, and skip down the street singing “You’re the One that I Want.” Ooh-ooh-ooh.
I was not ready to ooh. But I wasn’t ready to let him go, either. I sighed and turned in his arms, away from the patterns on the wall. When I glanced up, Jackson was looking right back at me. I blinked, startled. “Did I wake you?”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
“I can almost hear your mind working. You’re thinking so hard, you’re actually disturbing satellites in space.”
That was going to be hell on WiFi. I frowned for a minute, thinking about it. The thing to do would be to tell him what I wanted. And hope like hell that was what he wanted, too. I looked up to see him looking expectantly at me. Waiting.
My brow furrowed. Well, I couldn’t say it to his face. Jeez. What kind of person did he take me for? “I was thinking that maybe…maybe we could keep seeing each other when we get back,” I proposed to his left ear. “I mean, it’s not like either of us are in a relationship right now. There’s no reason we have to stop.”
“Stop…” He dragged the word out, waiting for me to clarify. When I didn’t, he filled in the blanks. “Having sex?”
“Well, yeah.” If you must cut to the chase. “When we get back home. We can pick up right where we left off. If you want to,” I added hurriedly. “What do you think?”
“Still doubting that I want you?” He smiled at me crookedly, but his eyes were troubled. He reached out to tuck a piece of my messy, tangled hair behind my ear. “You’re so beautiful.” His voice was quiet and almost inaudible in the dark.
I raised a brow. “You do realize that Lasik eye surgery is actually pretty affordable.”
He chuckled. “Shut up, AJ. Learn how to accept a compliment.”
“Is that what that was?”
“It was.” And then he was kissing my neck, and I had nothing sassy to say. The soft brush of his lips on my skin was an automatic aphrodisiac, and I stretched my neck to give him more access. Only…he hadn’t answered my question.
My eyes fluttered open. I hadn’t realized I’d actually closed them. “You never answered my question.”
His teeth sank into my earlobe gently, and he tugged at it. “What question?” he asked, distractedly.
“That we keep being…friends when we get back home.”
“I don’t want to be your goddamned friend, Avery.”
“Jackson.” I was suddenly desperate to get him to understand.
“I don’t want to talk.” His hands pulling the tangled sheets away from my body were insistent, and I didn’t say no. I tried to get on my knees, but he grabbed my ankle and flipped me effortlessly. “No. Like this.”
He moved between my spread thighs and entered me slowly. I groaned, trying to force him deeper, faster, but he moved at his own pace. The final thrust that sheathed him completely wrenched a groan from both of us. I struggled to catch my breath as he buried his face in my neck. He began to thrust in me slowly, and I gave up on trying to see everything. My hand tangled in his hair, and my eyes fluttered shut as I just decided to feel.
When I woke up, I knew I was alone before I even opened my eyes. So I didn’t. I lay there instead, the sun warming my bare shoulders, smelling the salty sea air and fresh sheets drying, pretending that Jackson was still right there beside me.