Beck did feel bad for ditching the guys and running after Jaycee to Pascal’s. Well, he felt bad after the fact when they decided to give him shit. So, when Jaycee said she was going to spend some extended time with Mavis two weeks later, he decided it was a good idea to make things up with his friends.
They’d gone out to buy supplies and had come back to the warehouse to have their overdue poker night. Jaycee might need a ride later, so he wasn’t going to drink, but Beck hadn’t broken that news to the guys yet.
His posse had just piled out of his car and was heading inside. He and Pine were first with Pete and Snick taking their time to grab their bags from the trunk. Beck unlocked the front door and they went into the kitchen.
“So, we grab a flight on the Thursday night and we’ll have the whole weekend,” Pine said, coming in behind him.
“I’m not going to Vegas,” Beck said and dumped his paper sack on the kitchen island.
The sound of someone running down the stairs from the studio made him look up. As soon as he saw Jaycee, she froze, her feet on separate stairs, her eyes wide and her face pale. “I wasn’t doing anything,” she said.
Beck smiled and spoke to Pine from the corner of his mouth. “Soon as she says that, you know she’s lying,” he said. “I thought you were going to Mavis’ tonight?”
“I was, but she called to say they’re having some bridge tournament thing, she forgot about it. She’s in a league so she has to play. I don’t know. But yeah, I was stood up,” Jaycee said, finishing her descent of the stairs. That was when he saw the bag slung across her body. “But don’t you worry, I made other plans, Beck.” As soon as she said his name, a laughing Snick came in with Pete behind him. Jaycee got another dose of shock and then winced. “Guy?”
He kept his smile to himself. “It’s ok, Muse, these are the Infamous Four,” he said, going over to kiss her cheek. “What’s with the bag?”
“What’s with the bag?” she asked and pointed at Pete. “What is he doing here?” Pushing past, she ignored Pine and Snick to focus on Pete. “You know?”
“He’s my gallery liaison,” Beck said, going to her to put an arm around her shoulders. “I’ve known Pete since we were kids, guess you could say it’s his fault I’m famous, not famous.”
Pete laughed. “Yeah, you forget that regular enough though, don’t you, prick?”
“But you… you own AD. You’re my boss,” she said. “All this time you’ve… you’ve known everything?” Her hand moved onto her belly. “You know everything?”
“Congratulations,” Pete said. “And, yeah, we figured it was a good idea not to let you know until the pregnancy took and you were in… We didn’t want your life to be disrupted more than it had to be.”
“So if I backed out or it didn’t work, I could stay at AD without worrying I was under scrutiny.” Pete shrugged, everyone held their breath for a second then she sighed. “Well I guess I don’t have to worry about asking you for maternity leave.”
Going forward, Jaycee went into the bartender’s arms and when Pete winked at him, Beck swooped in to pull them apart. “Yeah, ok, we’re pleased Pete knows,” Beck said, but when Jaycee turned to him he got a slap to the chest. “Ow, what the fuck did I do?”
“You lied to me!” she said. “Would you please stop doing that!”
“I never lied to you. I’ve never lied to you!” He’d been more honest with her than with anyone, including a lot of people in this room. Seeing through her ploy he realized that if she was cool with Pete and wasn’t storming out then she was trying to pick a fight with him for another reason, he squinted at her. “Show me your tongue.”
“No!” she said and turned her lips into her mouth to seal them.
“If you’ve been sucking the sponges or eating my chalks again…”
“What?” she asked. Clasping her hands at her lower back, Jaycee tipped her head all the way back to grin up at him. “You’ll discipline me, Maestro?”
She knew better than to tease him in front of people, but Beck couldn’t control his smile around her. Grabbing her arm, he spun her around and swatted her ass, hard. “Get in the house, Muse.”
She laughed and trotted around the island letting everyone else come inside properly. “I wasn’t eating chalk,” she said. “I’m addicted to something else today.”
“What?” he asked, pulling food out of the sacks they’d all brought in.
Reaching across the counter, she showed him that she had a strip of white cotton wrapped tight around her wrist. “Bondage?” Pine asked.
She sneered at him and moved her wrist toward the lawyer. “Smell it.”
Pine smelled it, then Pete and Beck did too. “Is that my deodorant?” Beck asked. Jaycee took it to her nose and nodded. The guys laughed, but Beck just watched how his woman smiled and smelled the cloth that smelled of him. “Guess you won’t be wanting this then.”
He pulled a family size jar of raspberry jelly from the sack and as soon as she saw it, she squealed. “Oh, Beckett!” she called out and ran around to grab it. “Thank you, honey.”
Picking up his hand, she kissed the back of his wrist then dashed over to the fridge. “She really likes jelly?” Snick asked.
Jaycee took the jelly and her Tupperware tub to the top of the island and sat down to open both. Picking a carrot stick from the Tupperware, she dipped it into the raspberry jelly and scooped it into her mouth. The guys around him recoiled, but Beck was nothing but proud.
Yeah, she’d been jumping from one craving to the next, but when she embraced something, she went all the way. One craving that hadn’t subsided was her need for him.
The floor around their bed was littered with pictures of her, they were half a dozen deep in some places. He couldn’t stop drawing her. Naked. Clothed. Sitting. Standing. Sleeping. Every time he looked at her, he felt the burning need to commit the moment to paper.
“Go get my sketch pad,” he said, tipping his chin toward the stairs.
Jaycee smiled around her carrot stick. “Now?” she asked. He nodded. Scooping up a big blob of jelly with her half-eaten carrot stick, she offered it to him. “Want some?”
No, not a chance, it was disgusting. Not as disgusting as the pickle juice, but gross all the same. Still the look of adoration in those eyes was enough to make him grab her wrist and lunge down to steal the carrot stick from her fingers. She screamed and opened her mouth in a rapturous laugh.
“Mm,” he said, bending over the counter to prop his head on the heel of his hand. “Delicious.”
“You do not like the taste of that,” she said, swaying closer.
“You think I’ve never tasted any of your weird cravings before?” he asked and just had to look at her mouth to let her know what he meant.
He’d tasted them when he kissed her. He wanted to kiss her now, wanted to screw her over this kitchen counter, wanted to lay her down in their bed and slide himself into her… but he couldn’t.
Because they couldn’t follow through with their preferred three letter word, sex, they invented their own new word, or acronym, MAC, Mutually Assured Climax. MAC had become a part of their life, every day… several times a day. Here in the kitchen, in the living room, on the stairs, in the studio, pretty much any time they could get away with taking off each other’s clothes and taking advantage of each other, they did.
Beck didn’t know how it had happened. It wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to be business only. One act had become two, and after they’d done it once, it just felt right and normal to do it again.
He’d never been as comfortable with a woman as he was with Jaycee. She watched him work, she helped him work. When he was slowing or growing frustrated, she put herself between him and the piece and held his hands.
If he felt himself losing his way, he called on her, and they worked together. Jaycee talked about his work, talked about color. She talked about everything, about politics, and the goddamn weather, it didn’t matter. Sometimes he phased it out and just focused on working, but even just the background murmur of her tone prompted him to work harder and faster.
“Is boys’ night a goner?” Pine asked behind him, breaking Beck’s fascination with her lips.
“Don’t worry, I’m going out,” she said, and took one last bite from her carrot stick before returning the lids to their rightful place.
“Where are you going?” Beck asked, remembering the bag she had slung across her body. “That better not be heavy.”
“I’m going to stay with a friend tonight,” she said, washing her hands as the boys shuffled past to find their drinks. “I figured you could use a night off.”
“And if you get sick in the morning?” he asked, going over to scoop her bangs from her face while she dried her hands.
“My friend has indoor plumbing,” she said. “I can puke anywhere.”
“And MAC?” he asked, raising a brow.
Clasping his face, she pushed onto her tiptoes. “Soon as I come home, Maestro, I promise.”
He nodded and let her pass to head to her downstairs bedroom. “MAC?” Pine asked.
Beck knew his smile wouldn’t help keep their secret, but he cleared it as he coughed and shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about, my man.”
Slapping his friend’s shoulder, Beck went to grab his own beer. Pete and Snick were seating themselves in the living room when Jaycee came back from her bedroom. Dropping her bag to the floor, she pulled on the jacket she’d retrieved.
“You need a ride?” Beck asked because he didn’t like her going anywhere on her own and he liked it even less when it was dark.
They spent every minute of the day together. Every minute. And he never got bored. Never wanted rid of her. How had she done that? How had she become an extension of him without him even noticing?
“No,” she said, zipping her jacket. “Pascal’s meeting me at AD.”
She didn’t just say… what the hell? Pete laughed and slapped a hand on the back of his armchair to look over it at Jaycee. “You got that guy on the hook, Jaycee, honey?” Pete pointed over at him. “I told you, right? I told you they were into each other; didn’t I say it?”
“Uh, are we missing the point here?” Pine asked, coming into his peripheral vision. “Jaycee, honey, you’re not supposed to spend the night with any guy like… that.”
“It’s not like that,” she said, pressing her hand to her abdomen. “Oh no, I love this jacket… it’s getting tight.”
The reminder of the child growing inside her wasn’t helping to calm Beck down. She did have a rounding of her belly, it was slight, she was still only ten weeks pregnant. In two weeks, she’d be able to tell anyone she wanted to about the baby.
It had been amazing how their physical intimacy had affected their communication. She’d talked to him about their time apart, how devastated she’d been having considered him a solid, reliable influence and then he’d pulled the rug from under her by backing out.
Listening to her talk about how she felt when she thought her period had started was horrendous for him. But it had been a good chance for both of them to sooth and comfort each other. MAC was the highlight of his life and had completely changed everything for him.
Sure, it was against the rules, and sometimes he beat himself up about that. But when it felt so good, and so right, he couldn’t bring himself to freak out like he had after their first kiss, especially not now he knew how it would upset Jaycee.
“Who’s Pascal?” Snick asked.
“Her groupie,” Pete said.
“Her boyfriend, apparently,” Pine said. “If they’re spending the night together and she’s not having sex with him, he must be damn understanding. That’s more than fuck buddies.”
“I don’t know you,” Jaycee said, focusing on Snick.
Pete waved over the top of his head. “Don’t talk to Snick, Jaycee, he’ll piss his pants. Women terrify him.”
Snick sneered while Pete and Pine laughed. “He’s an accountant, he spends all his life in a tiny room with a calculator,” Pine said. “We’re pretty sure he’s a virgin.”
Beck would usually be the first guy to get involved in the mocking of their friend. He wanted Jaycee to get to know Snick too, so she shouldn’t be worried about talking to him. But she didn’t seem to know how to interpret the joking. She looked to him for guidance, but he wasn’t giving it to her, not about Snick.
“No,” was all Beck said in a single clear syllable.
“He’s not a virgin?” she asked. “How do you know that?” She smiled and glanced at Snick. “I think he’s cute… in a kind of boyish way.”
“Crap, that’s it,” Pine said. “You’ll need to toss that chair and Snick will need new pants.”
Jaycee enjoyed his friends, but the ease of her happiness slipped away when she looked at him. She must have realized he was pissed off because the tiny descent of her brows was enough to ask him a question about his mood.
Beck shook his head. Her head tilted and she examined him for a second, then exhaled. She wasn’t giving in yet, but she knew what he was saying no to. When Beck still didn’t get the answer he wanted, he raised his brows and moved to take a step forward, but he didn’t have to take it because she held up her hands.
“Fine,” she said and lifted the strap of the bag over her head to dump it on the floor. “Then I guess I’m going to take a bath.”
Relaxing, he smiled, she wasn’t making a big deal of it, she accepted that he was uncomfortable and relented. Jaycee had talked about how good they were at compromise, he’d never thought about it, but now he could see that she was right.
“What?” Pete asked, twisting to look at her. “I thought you were going to AD.”
Pine’s finger went back and forth between them, and his voice was kind of distant. “No, you missed it. They just did this whole… thing… What was that?”
But it was Jaycee’s turn to glare at him now. Beck had gotten what he wanted. She’d want something in return. He didn’t give a crap what it was, if it kept her away from another man’s bed, he’d do it.
As much as Beck didn’t honestly think that his woman was going to get intimate with Pascal, even if she was on a couch fifty feet from Pascal’s bed, it was too close for his liking.
Unzipping her jacket, Jaycee let it fall onto the floor. She unfastened her watch and dropped it too before pulling the clip from her hair to loosen it in a way he’d confessed made him crazy. Yep, he’d be eating a lot of pussy tonight. But she could bring it on.
Drawing her eyes from him, Jaycee slunk to the stairs and began to ascend. About halfway up she took her top off and discarded it before unzipping her skirt. Though he didn’t see that come off, it was probably at the top of the stairs.
Beck had the best view, but Pine probably noticed her attitude and her slow strip. So instead of hanging around and waiting for his lawyer to start slinging questions, Beck went into the living room and dropped into the armchair at the opposite end of the coffee table from Pete.
Propping a boot on the edge of the table, he rested his beer on his knee, knowing he should come up with something non-Jaycee related to say, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from her top that lay draped over the side of the staircase, dangling there, teasing him.
“Why is she going upstairs?” Snick asked.
“She prefers the tub up there,” Beck answered, slugging from his bottle. “She wants to put horizontal glazed panels into the middle of the bathroom wall… all the way around… I can probably do that myself, right? It’s not difficult to toss in a few windows.”
“With your skills, probably. But you’ve got to watch the hands,” Pete said. Yeah, he’d been moaned at about taking risks when he went through his woodworking phase. “She wants to see into the studio while she’s in the tub?”
“I guess,” Beck shrugged.
“But that would mean you could see her,” Pine said, his suspicion growing. “In the tub.”
Beck thought he was off the hook from answering to that observation when Pete spoke. “How the hell does she even know there is a tub up there?” Pete asked. Damn, that direct question was no reprieve. “Thought the studio was off-limits.”
“To everyone,” Snick said.
“Yeah,” Pine said. “You’ve never left that door open for anyone. You were out for hours today; did you leave the door unlocked all that time?”
“She has the code,” he said.
His friends’ jaws swung loose. They all lunged forward and gasped or cursed in a show of shock.
But Jaycee saved him from having to explain to the guys why he’d shown his surrogate such trust. “Beck!” she called from upstairs.
Yes.
Dumping the beer on the table, he surged to his feet. “Back in a minute,” he said, trying not to appear too eager as he climbed over his friend’s legs and hurried to the stairs.