Hurt (7 page)

Jamie’s words were cut short when she was suddenly propelled backwards and pushed down onto the soft leather of the couch. She opened her mouth to ask Nicole if she had lost her mind, but before she could say anything Nicole had her lips pressed against Jamie’s, the force of the kiss taking Jamie by surprise. This was not the soft, warm kiss she was accustomed to from Nicole. This was an intoxicating, passionate kiss, meant to devour, and Nicole was doing just that. Jamie moaned as she felt Nicole’s tongue against her lips, demanding and then gaining entry. Nicole’s tongue swept across her own and then grazed the inside of Jamie’s lip. Feeling a fire begin to stir and tingle along her spine, Jamie turned her head, drawing away from the kiss and gasping for air.

“What the hell, Nicole?” she asked in between breaths.

“I’m an idiot,” Nicole whispered into her ear and then flicked her tongue along the sensitive spot just beneath, causing Jamie to tremble and moan softly. Nicole trailed kisses along the inside of Jamie’s neck and then stood, looking down at Jamie with an expression on her face that Jamie couldn’t decipher. Shaking her head, Nicole said, “Just remind me to punch Amy in the throat the next time I see her.”

Nicole pushed off from the couch.

“Amy?” Jamie frowned. “Your sister-in-law Amy?”

Nicole nodded and then extended a hand to Jamie. Taking it without hesitation, Jamie rose from the couch and stood staring at Nicole, wishing she had some idea of what the hell was going on. Nicole gave a soft smile and tugged on Jamie’s hand.

“C’mon, I think it’s time to go to bed,” Nicole said, repeating her statement from earlier. There was no misjudging the tone, however, and the clear invitation. The look of lust was unmistakable in Nicole’s dark green eyes.

Jamie glanced down at the unopened containers of Chinese take-out.

“What about the food?”

“Would you like to stay here and eat Chinese, or would you like to accompany me to the bedroom?” Nicole asked, raising one eyebrow slightly.

Jamie didn’t have to give it a second thought.

“General Tso can kiss my ass.”

“That’s what I thought,” Nicole murmured, smiling as she pulled again on Jamie’s hand and began to lead her down the hallway toward the bedroom. Jamie was still unsure exactly what had gotten into Nicole but, deciding it best not to chance another sudden mood swing, stopped abruptly in the hallway and pulled back on Nicole’s hand and twirled her around so that they were face to face. “Hey!” Nicole exclaimed, startled.

“Hey, yourself, crazy person,” Jamie smiled and then reached around Nicole and, grasping her buttocks in both hands, lifted her up. Jamie continued walking the short distance to the bedroom, Nicole’s legs encircling her hips. Pausing by the edge of the bed, Jamie dipped her head and began to kiss and nip at Nicole’s neck. Moaning softly, Nicole drove her hands beneath Jamie’s blouse, running her fingers along the underside of her white cotton bra, traveling around to softly caress the skin of Jamie’s back.

Jamie lowered Nicole onto the bed and then took a step back as she pulled her shirt off over her head and threw it across the room. She grinned down at Nicole as she kicked off her shoes and stepped out of her khaki pants. “You have exactly three seconds to lose that shirt or I’m ripping it off you.”

“Don’t you dare,” Nicole laughed as she began to work the buttons, and then gave a tiny shriek as Jamie hooked the bottom edge of the blouse and pulled it over her head in one fluid motion. Jamie made short work of the rest of Nicole’s clothes and then pushed her back onto the bed, relishing the feeling of Nicole’s soft skin and hardening nipples against her own. Jamie took one eager breast into the palm of her hand, caressing it as she moved her lips to Nicole’s, savoring the taste of her lips and groaning as felt herself get lost in the kiss. As Nicole writhed beneath her, Jamie began to kiss along the side of her neck. Jamie flicked her tongue along the edge of one ear and then smiled as she heard Nicole moan and felt her begin to grind her hips up against her own.

“Do you like that?” she breathed into Nicole’s ear, pulling the lobe with her teeth and lips, suckling it slowly. Nicole inhaled sharply and arched against Jamie before making a soft growling sound and rolling Jamie onto her back.

Goosebumps rose on Jamie’s stomach as Nicole slid down and began to kiss and lick around and under Jamie’s breasts. Jamie sucked in a gasp of air as Nicole wrapped her lips around one swollen nipple and slowly began to draw it into her mouth.

“Oh God, Nicole, please…” Jamie begged, mindless of what she was asking for.

“
Please what?” Nicole murmured, her warm breath tickling Jamie’s skin. Nicole moved from one breast to the other, attending to each nipple in detail. Jamie let her arms fall back onto the bed and breathed in sharply as Nicole tasted and teased at her throbbing breasts. Jamie fisted the fabric of the pale pink comforter as Nicole dove into the valley of her breasts, peppering her stomach with kisses, and then going lower still. Finding Jamie’s pulsing flesh, Nicole flicked it with her tongue, sending Jamie bucking up beneath her. Nicole held her steady with one hand, gripping Jamie’s hip as she arched and nearly screamed when she felt Nicole’s fingers opening her and then a steely tongue dart in and out of her swollen folds. Jamie could feel the wave building as Nicole lapped at her throbbing wet heat, reaching her hands down and weaving her fingers through Nicole’s hair. Seemingly spurred on by this, Nicole continued her assault, circling and suckling Jamie’s clit, relentlessly pushing her toward the point of no return. Then Jamie was there, writhing uncontrollably on the bed as wave after wave of pleasure washed over her.

“Oh my God,” Jamie breathed, melting into the soft mattress. She sighed as she felt Nicole slide up beside her, pausing briefly to cup and softly kiss the side of one breast and then along the line of her collarbone. Nicole slid her arms around Jamie’s neck and grazed her lips.

Gazing into Jamie’s eyes, Nicole smiled.

“Do you like that?”

Chapter Nine

Nicole had never been a morning person.

As a child her mother always had to drag her out of bed in the morning. On more than one occasion, the family’s orange ’65 Volkswagen Beetle peeled out of the driveway on two wheels in hot pursuit of a missed school bus. When she was a student at the University of Tennessee, Nicole had made it a point to schedule as many afternoon classes as possible. Before her death, Nicole’s mother always joked that part of the reason Nicole had gone into real estate was that no one ever wanted to go house hunting before ten o’clock in the morning.

As she lay on her deliciously soft bed, Nicole listened to the clatter of the lawnmower that had awakened her. She rolled over on one side and partially lifted one eyelid to glare at the alarm clock that sat on the bedside table.

8:12 a.m.

She groaned, stuffing her head under the pillow in an attempt to drown out the sound of the engine that seemed to be just outside the bedroom window.

Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat.

The sound was getting progressively louder and Nicole began to wonder if the person cutting grass outside didn’t know that it was Saturday morning, or if they just didn’t care.

Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat.

Nicole pushed the pillow down with one arm and willed herself back to sleep. Jamie had left to go to work only about an hour before and Nicole was happily sprawled out in the center of the bed.

Chunk-Chunk-Chunk-Chunk.

“Really?” Nicole said sharply from beneath the pillow. “What is wrong with you people?”
Who the hell cuts grass in the middle of December?

As if in response, the sound of the engine came to an abrupt stop. After a few moments of silence, Nicole rolled onto her back with a mutter of “finally”. She had almost dozed back off when a sharp metallic wail suddenly ripped through the air.

Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat.

With a noise akin to a growl Nicole sat up in the bed. She looked back to the alarm clock.

8:37 a.m.

Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat.

Little pieces of something—rocks?—started hitting the bedroom window that sat on the side of the house. Nicole threw back the sheets and exploded toward the window with fire in her eyes. She jerked back the curtains intent on giving someone a very large piece of her mind.

An elderly man wearing a tan fishing cap riding a bright green lawn tractor smiled up at her from outside.

For a moment neither of them moved, just stared back at the other through the screened-in window. Then, in the same instant that Nicole wondered why her next door neighbor was cutting the grass in Nicole’s yard, it dawned on her that she wasn’t wearing any clothes. Well, technically she
had
clothes on, but she really didn’t think that pink underwear and a white tank top that stopped somewhere in the neighborhood of her midriff counted as clothing.

From the look on Mr. Martin’s face, neither did he.

Nicole yanked the curtains shut. She closed her eyes and let out an embarrassed breath.
Oh my God
, she thought.
Tell me that did not just happen
.

Shaking her head, Nicole moved from the window and picked up a pair of jeans and a t-shirt sitting on the top of the clothes hamper. She had slipped on one pink and white tennis shoe when she heard the lawn tractor starting back up again.

“Jesus,” she muttered under her breath as she laced the other shoe. Nicole hadn’t had a lot of contact with her neighbor over the years, at least not Mr. Martin. She’d been friendly with his wife, Dottie, since Nicole’s mother purchased the house the year that Nicole graduated high school. She was a sweet older woman who, every so often, would bring over the odd batch of homemade cookies. Mr. Martin—hell, Nicole wasn’t even sure what his first name was—she rarely saw outside of the occasional trip to the mailbox.

By the time Nicole made it out of the bedroom, she could hear that the lawn tractor had made its way to the back yard. Nicole walked through the kitchen and opened the small door off the laundry room that led to the backyard. She stepped out onto the patio, careful not to slip on the sandstone tile, still damp from the light rain they’d had the night before. Mr. Martin was riding back and forth along the back edge of the yard. He looked up as Nicole stepped from the patio to the grass and waved with a bright smile. After making one more pass, he turned and drove toward Nicole.

“Mr. Martin, what—”

“Oh, don’t ‘Mr. Martin’ me. Call me Bob,” he interrupted.

Nicole sighed.

“Okay,
Bob
. What are you doing?”

“I’m cutting the grass.”

“I can see that you’re cutting the grass,” she said. “Why are you cutting the grass—my grass—and why so early in the morning?”

“Oh,” he said smiling. “Dottie got me an early Christmas present, what do you think?” He waved a hand over the lawn tractor as if he were a model from the
Price is Right
.

“Very nice,” Nicole said, in what she hoped was a pleasant voice. “But that still doesn’t answer the question.”

Bob took off his fishing hat and scratched the side of his nose.

“Well, your…um…roommate,” he began, turning red as he looked up and down at Nicole, “…came by the house this morning on her way out and told me that I ought not to leave the new riding lawnmower sitting out in the front yard. She said that people steal lawnmowers all the time and she’d hate to see something happen to mine. She’s a police officer, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Nicole said with a small sigh.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I asked her if she’d like me to run it over your yard to keep you ladies from having to worry about it again this year and she told me to knock myself out.”

Someone may get knocked out when I see Jamie…

“Oh, well, thank you Mr. Martin—Bob,” Nicole corrected before he could. “That was very sweet of you.”

“Anytime,” he said, tipping his fishing hat. Nicole turned to walk back in the house when he stopped her. “Oh, wait. Don’t go yet.”

She looked back at him questioningly as he hopped off the lawn tractor and reached into his back pocket.

“I was saving this to give to you later. Your policewoman must have dropped it on her way out of my yard, I think,” Bob said, holding up Jamie’s cell phone. “I was guessing it’s hers, anyway.”

Nicole nodded as she took the phone from his hand.

“It is. Thank you, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear you’ve found it.”

“No problem,” he said and climbed back on the lawn tractor. He smiled, gave her a small wave and then drove off to continue cutting her lawn.

Nicole headed back in the house and then kicked the back door shut behind her. As she stepped into the kitchen, she briefly considered going back to bed, but, deciding against it, flipped the switch to turn on the coffee pot as she walked by. The coffee pot, like most things around the house, was in desperate need of an upgrade. Jamie had been after her for a while to turn it in for one of the pod-style machines, but Nicole had so far resisted. But, it would be nice to have a cup of coffee in just a few seconds rather than the ten or so minutes it took her pot to brew, and, as Nicole dropped Jamie’s cell phone on the kitchen counter, she thought that maybe she would break down and buy one after Christmas when they went on sale.

Nicole was searching the dishwasher for a clean coffee cup when she heard Jamie’s phone vibrating on the granite top. Finally locating a cup, Nicole walked back to the coffee pot, thinking that she would need to call Jamie on her county-issued cell phone to let her know that the neighbor had picked up her personal phone. She leaned against the counter top as she absently watched the slow drip of the coffee into the eight-cup carafe.

The phone buzzed again and Nicole glanced over at it, noticing a text message displayed on the large screen of the phone. She cocked her head to read it. Nicole frowned and then picked up the phone, holding it closer as she read the message again.