Read Actually Love - Jessie & Zach Online

Authors: Melanie Shawn

Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary

Actually Love - Jessie & Zach (9 page)

BOOK: Actually Love - Jessie & Zach
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Lord have mercy!

“I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.” Zach’s voice held a sleepy, gravelly quality as he rubbed his hands over his face, which was sprinkled with just enough stubble to further weaken Jessie’s already-trembling knees.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just didn’t feel like driving all the way back to Harper’s Crossing when I’d just have to turn right around and head back here in a few hours.” Jessie stopped herself up short and pursed her lips together.

Why was she telling him this? Zach didn’t
need
an explanation. Was she,
Jessie Sloan
, babbling like an idiot? Was it out of nervousness? The thought appalled her, but she had to admit that that might very well be the case.

Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she was concerned that it might crack one of her ribs. She was doing everything she could to
not
drool over Zach’s body, but even that was proving to be an extremely difficult task considering the sheer volume of saliva in her mouth as her eyes—of their own accord—scanned Zach’s mouth-watering physique.

Zach’s body was, in one word…perfection. His wide shoulders were rounded with definition. His long, muscled arms looked safe and strong. His broad, smooth, rock-hard chest was rivaled in sexiness only by the rippling abs and lean waist below it. The steely contours of Zach’s body were overwhelmingly, spine-tinglingly, one hundred percent
male
. He was the definition of alpha male in prime condition; which caused every
female
inch of Jessie’s body to come alive with awareness.

“Makes sense.” Zach nodded as he yawned and his arms fell to his sides.

“Don’t let me keep you up.” For some reason, her eyes drifted down to see if he was in fact “up.”

Stop it!
Jessie reprimanded herself. Her gaze dropped to the linoleum floor as she tried desperately to corral the kinky, wild-thought horses that were unexpectedly trotting through her brain.

“You’re not.”

Jessie heard the smile in Zach’s voice, and her eyes flew back up to meet his. His face was turned up in a half smile, which she could not immediately classify as a smirk or a friendly gesture.

She was leaning toward smirk when Zach said, “I got all moved in this afternoon. Why don’t you go ahead and take my bed and I’ll crash on the couch.”

Jessie waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, no. I’m fine on the couch. Honestly, I’m so exhausted that I’ll be out as soon as my head hits the pillow.”

Well, that might actually be a lie. She had been exhausted, but now she was wide awake. Arousal had that effect on her.

“Actually, you can’t sleep on the couch.” Zach casually lifted his arms above his head and rested them on the wood doorframe.

His new position made all kinds of muscles in his arms, stomach, and chest (that Jessie had not seen before) pop out in definition. Where her mouth had been overflowing with excess saliva just moments ago, it was now bone dry. She froze at the sight he presented.

Trying not to let her traitorous body’s reaction show, Jessie crossed her arms defiantly—and maybe to cover up her now hardened nipples. “Yes. I. Can.”

Her argument might have made her sound more like a petulant two-year-old, but honestly, she was just proud of herself for getting out those three little words without sounding all breathy like Marilyn Monroe singing to President Kennedy. At this point, she was counting that as a win.

Zach dropped his arms and shook his head with a sigh as he stalked towards Jessie. Her head was beginning to feel light, like it might just float away from her body. All around Zach’s impressive frame, Jessie could see little white stars. With each powerful step he took, she was finding it harder and harder to take in a breath.

Come on, oxygen. Don’t fail me now!

Instead of stopping in front of her, he brushed past her, and only then was Jessie able to breathe. Leaning back against the counter for support, Jessie was trying to figure out what in the name of Prada had just happened to her.

Was she
that
overtired?

Not any more than she had been for the last month.

Was she getting sick?

She didn’t feel achy.

Her cousin Riley’s wife Chelle said that she’d passed out when she was pregnant. Thankfully Jessie knew that was not the issue. Unless she was somehow impregnated by Immaculate Conception. It had been a year since she’d been intimate with anyone, and she and her ex had always used protection.

She
definitely
wasn’t knocked up.

Then what could possibly have caused her to almost hyperventilate and pass out?

*     *     *

Zach took a moment to try to get his body under control as he reached for the gold doorknob. Breathing slowly through his nose, he did a quick visual of his lower region.
Shit.
He wasn’t just at mid-chub anymore. He was now at full strength.

Dammit. It was bad enough that Jessie looked even sexier than she had when she’d strolled into Gianni’s yesterday. It also didn’t help that she’d woken him from a dream starring her and the black stiletto heels she was currently wearing. Zach
had
been doing a good job of keeping himself under control, even when Jessie’s gaze had been hungrily roaming up and down his body. It wasn’t until those big brown eyes of hers had flown to his crotch after she said that she didn’t want to “keep him up” that the thin thread of control he had been holding on to snapped.

“The lock is broken on this door.” He jiggled it as evidence as he turned his head, glancing back over his shoulder, keeping his arousal facing away from Jessie.

“What?” she asked as she too looked over her shoulder. An expression of confusion clouded her gorgeous face for a moment before she blinked and nodded. “Oh, that. I know. I saw that when I came in. We could tell Margie, but I figured that I’d just call a locksmith in the morning.”

Then with no further comment, she turned her head back as if the fact that she was not going to sleep on the couch was completely unrelated to the fact that she was not staying downstairs with a door that anyone could just walk through.

“I already called one,” Zach explained.

“Oh, okay.”

He saw the back of Jessie’s shoulders shrug underneath her form-fitting, sleeveless black dress, which hit her right above the knees. He could see the outline of her back as she leaned casually against the countertop. Her dress perfectly hugged her hourglass figure, leaving little to the imagination. It reminded him of something that Audrey Hepburn would wear in one of those movies his mom had liked to watch when he was a kid. Even though Jessie looked nothing like the film star, she definitely embodied the same classy, sex appeal that Audrey had so effortlessly exuded.

“Well”—she pushed off the countertop and clapped her hands—“I’ve got a long day tomorrow. Goodnight.”

Shit
. He’d gotten so distracted by studying the curves of Jessie’s backside that he’d totally abandoned their
very
important conversation. The only positive thing to come out of his realization was the fact that blood had once again begun traveling to his brain, so he was no longer sporting wood.

Zach turned around to face her as she reached out to gather her jacket and purse. “Jessie, I can’t let you sleep down here alone.”

She froze, and he watched as the arched brow above her right eye lifted. Her dark-brown eyes stared directly at him with a coldness that he suspected might make a lesser man shiver.

“You don’t have a choice in the matter. I’m a big girl. I’ll sleep where I want,” Jessie said slowly, deliberately.

Zach wasn’t an idiot. He knew that, when a woman dug in her heels this deep, it was futile to argue. So he didn’t.

“Okay,” he said plainly.

Zach didn’t miss the look of surprise at his easy acquiescence before Jessie quickly masked it. She gave him one sharp nod before gathering her purse and jacket, spinning on her heel, and clicking her way out of the kitchen. After she disappeared through the darkness, he heard the door to the downstairs bathroom shut.

After walking across the kitchen, Zach pulled out a folding chair he’d seen tucked between the counter and the tall, white refrigerator. Once he unfolded the seat, he set it against the wall and lowered down into it. His straightened his legs out in front of him and crossed his ankles. Leaning his head back, he folded his arms, closed his eyes, and tried to get as comfortable as possible.

The thought did cross his mind to head upstairs and get a pillow to prop up behind his back, but he seriously doubted that would add that much to his comfort factor. So instead, he tried not to think about the fact that, if he got any sleep at all—and that was a big if—he was probably going to be in some serious pain tomorrow.

But at least he’d know that Jessie was safe. There was no way in hell Zach could have brought himself to leave Jessie, or any woman for that matter, downstairs in a house that was not secure. He’d lived in the city his entire life, and even though the odds of anything happening were slim, there was always that one-in-a-million chance that something could happen. Even those odds were too high for Zach if he could do anything about it.

It would be a hell of a lot easier if Jessie would just take her stubborn ass upstairs and sleep, safely and securely, in his bedroom. Then maybe they could both get a decent night’s sleep. But he had to admit that she was pretty damn cute when she put her heeled foot down. The fire in her eyes alone had been enough to set off an inferno of blazing lust inside of him.

Which was bad. Really bad.

All week, he’d been enjoying texting back and forth with her a little too much. His level of anticipation over their new living situation was a little too excessive for his peace of mind. He’d even started dreaming about her, which was what her arrival tonight had interrupted.

The worst part was that they weren’t even really
sex
dreams. At least they didn’t start off that way. They usually started off with one or the other of them doing mundane tasks around the house. He’d be vacuuming. She’d be dusting. He’d be cooking dinner. She’d be doing laundry. Then there would be some flirting, which would turn into foreplay, and dammit if he hadn’t woken up each time before he’d been able to slide inside her body.

It was as frustrating as it was scary. The frustrating part was obvious. It was irritating the shit out of him that he was getting blue-balled in his dreams. The scary part was just because, historically, if Zach had a ‘sex dream, it was just that. It was a dream that he was having sex with one or more random, anonymous women. Never before had it been someone he knew co-starring in his nocturnal pornos, and it hadn’t even played out like any good X-rated film should. All sex—no story line.

Zach didn’t even know what to call the—sometimes twice—nightly heavy-petting scenarios that played out in his brain, which he remembered in excruciating detail. Torture. That was what he’d call them.

“What are you doing?” Jessie asked loudly.

It startled Zach since he hadn’t heard her leave the downstairs restroom. His eyes opened to one very displeased roommate. Jessie stood just outside the kitchen still wearing her form-fitting black dress, but the hair, which had been pulled up, now fell in waves around her shoulders, her face was scrubbed clean, and her pink-painted toenails were now visible on her bare feet. She looked far too sexy for Zach’s liking.

“I was trying to get some sleep,” he said, attempting to keep his tone as lighthearted as possible even though his body was wound so tight that one look, one breath, one lick of Jessie’s lips and he was afraid he would come in his pants.

“You can’t sleep in a chair in the kitchen.” Unlike Zach, Jessie did not seem to be attempting to temper her tone at all. She was pissed and not afraid to show it.

“I’m a big boy. I can sleep where I want,” Zach said, repeating the sentiment Jessie had used for her argument.

At his words, he saw her tiny nostrils flair as her full lips scrunched. He could see the wheels turning in her head. There was no doubt in Zach’s mind that Jessie was trying to formulate her next strategic move. Sadly, he knew it was all in vain. She could move anywhere she wanted in this little game, but the outcome was going to be the same.

Check. Mate. Baby.

“I could just drive home,” she said with a lot less conviction than he assumed she’d wanted to.

“Yep. You could.” He didn’t like the idea of her driving alone at night, but at least he would know that she was sleeping in a safe house. Or at least that was what he would tell himself.

She glared at him, and he wasn’t sure if this was a staring contest or a pissing contest, but either way, she wasn’t winning.

After several silent minutes, her jaw ticked and she put her hands up. “Fine. I’m too tired to deal with this.” With that statement, she spun around on her heels.

Zach stood from the hard foldout chair, and by the time he stepped into the living room, she was halfway up the stairs. “My t-shirts are in the top drawer if you want to sleep in something more comfortable,” he offered, happiness over the fact that she’d decided to cry uncle and head upstairs more evident in his voice than he’d meant it to be.

BOOK: Actually Love - Jessie & Zach
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