Ink Spots (3 page)

“Pancakes.”

He raised his eyes to meet hers, one dark brown brow lifted in question.

“Pancakes?”

Mandi nodded emphatically. “Yes. One of my favorite foods in all the world and a tradition on my birthday.”

“Well then, if it’s pancakes my birthday girl wants, then it’s pancakes she shall have.”

He stepped back and opened door for her in a grand gesture, sweeping his arm for her to walk out ahead of him. She couldn’t help or stop the smile, knowing she must look goofy with it plastered on her face from ear to ear, but she didn’t care. She also wasn’t going to touch his comment, wasn’t going to ask about the possessive word

“my”. She was just going to enjoy the unbelievable reality of having him all to herself for a while when she hadn’t for a second imagined he would be interested in her.

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Once in the hallway, she turned away from the noise coming from the front of the building and slipped out the back entrance to the employee parking lot. “I’ll take you around to your car and I guess… Do we want to take one car?”

“Yeah. You can leave yours back here. Jackie’ll make sure it’s safe. I’ll be your driver tonight.” He took her hand and pulled her along after him. His long legs ate up the gravel lot, and it was all she could do to keep up, in flip-flops no less, until he stopped and lifted her in his arms much as he had earlier.

“Jaz, put me down.”

“Nope. I like holding you and carrying you.”

“I can walk.”

“I know, but we’ll get there faster if I have you like this. Besides, it makes my cock happy to have your pussy so near.”

“Oh god,” she groaned. “I can’t believe you said that. Out loud. Outside.” Mandi buried her face against his neck as he laughed. The sound vibrated through her and she laughed a little too. He was different than she thought he’d be—lighter, fun, easy to be around and not at all intimidating. Although the sexual side of him, the lust she’d glimpsed and briefly touched… She wanted more of it.

“I have a feeling there are going to be a few things in the course of the next hours that you won’t believe I’d say or do or…” He pushed his face against her ear, sliding a hand down her ass and between her spread-around-his-waist thighs, cupping her and making her moan. “Make you do.”

He came to a stop and removed his hand from her hot, moist, jeans-covered pussy.

She wanted it back. She missed the heat from his palm mixing with the heat from her sex. And again, for a second time that night, he let her slide down his body until her toes touched the ground. He kissed the top of her head and took the duffle from her hand.

The car he popped the trunk on was a classic Dodge Charger, ’72 or ’73 from the looks of it. Damn and double damn. In awe, she walked around it, lightly dragging her 19

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fingertip across the sparkling blue finish. It glittered in the moonlight with black gleaming wraparound pinstripes.

“You like it?”

“It’s gorgeous, Jaz. What year?”

“’73.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” He shot her a puzzled look but didn’t question her.

She loved being able to throw guys off with some of the inane knowledge of cars she had. She stroked the tip of her finger across the edge of the hood. “Did you do the work yourself?”

“Uh yeah. Most of it. Belonged to my foster dad and he’d always told me he wanted me to have it when he died. He kept it in amazing condition, and when he passed, I found out he’d meant what he said and left it to me. It meant everything to me, that even after all that went down between us, he kept his promise, kept his word. I knew how much he loved this car and finally realized too late how much he…”

His voice trailed off, and Mandi thought it best to let that emotional subject go. She understood what he was talking about, that thing called unconditional love. She’d had it from her parents and her brothers. She knew Jackie had it for him and…

Yeah, she needed to let that idea go for the moment too. She turned her attention, and his, back to cars. They were safe there. And with sex. Most definitely with sex.

“My one brother has a Charger too. White with reflective red stripes that fade into orange then into yellow. It has a white leather interior, dash included. My other brother has a Mustang. Red with white leather and chrome.”

He beamed at her. From ear to ear, with a boyish charm and enthusiasm that transformed the usual hard countenance of his face and melted her heart. So much for not going there. Would he catch her when she fell or would he hightail it out of there, leaving her to introduce her heart to the pavement?

“That’s awesome. They still have them?”

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“Yeah, both. They run a garage and work on these old muscle cars nonstop.”

“Amazing. I would love to see their shop.”

And she’d love to take him, love to see the looks on her brothers’ faces when she introduced them to Jaz. Neither would be able to match him in bulk or height, and they’d be hard-pressed to pick on her in front of him. She bet he had a protective streak as long as he was tall. But introducing him meant more than a one-night birthday present of sex and pancakes and more sex.

She let his comment go.

“I love older cars like this. The paint is custom and new. The seats are original, but I’ve had them recovered. I had new carpet installed, and had the dash along with the rest of the interior completely overhauled.”

“What about the engine?”

“Restored. She runs like a dream.”

Mandi looked inside the passenger window then did a double take, finally looking up at him. “Did the clothesbasket of towels come standard with the Charger back then or is this something new Dodge is doing for their classics?”

“Smartass.” He slid the key in the lock and popped it, opening the door. He reached in and pulled the clothesbasket out, walking around to deposit it in the trunk as well as her duffle. “They’re from the shop,” he offered by way of explanation. “Someone has to wash them.”

An image of him folding laundry flashed through her head, and for some reason she couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around it. She’d love to witness it though.

“Get that smirk off your face and get in the car.”

Mandi bit back a grin and slid down into the soft-as-butter leather seat. Jaz was in her face before she got the seat belt pulled around her body. He was even larger in the close confines between her chest and the dashboard. He licked at her lips before pressing forward with his tongue. One hand cupped the side of her face while the other 21

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was braced somewhere out of sight. When he lifted his head, he was smiling. “You’re a dangerous little minx, you know that? Inside Katz, you tempt and tease with that sultry voice, those expressive eyes and your curvy body that just won’t stop and give a man a break. And underneath it all, with your blonde curls, your sweet, soft face… You’re still anything but innocent. I’m looking forward to stripping you down until there’s nothing but your hot-and-bothered soul begging me to sate your hunger.”

He was gone and had closed the door before she could say a word. More than his body was big. His presence, mental and emotional and most definitely his sexual presence, was as big as his physical one.

He got in behind the wheel and started the car. “Pancakes?”

It took her a moment to gain her wits about her again. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna need my strength.”

“No doubt.”

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Sitting across from her, watching as she dug into the plate of plain pancakes, licking syrup from her lips and the fork she held, Jaz was seriously regretting the choice of going out for food. He could have taken her to his place and made her pancakes. He could have had her naked in his kitchen, well, naked but for those boots. Holy fuck those boots. Settling her up on his countertop, licking her, eating her, fucking her with his tongue.

Hell, he’d love to take her on the hood of his car, on the trunk, in the seats, up against the door. And while he was torturing himself with images of her in all manner of sexual positions, she was calmly eating her birthday treat. Or one of them.

He wanted the next piece of meat she put in her mouth to be his cock not another piece of bacon. He wanted the next drink she took to be from his cock not from the glass of milk in front of her. He wanted the next wipe of her mouth to be from his tongue not from the napkin in her lap.

He wanted to be the feast she devoured.

The hots he’d had for her all these months hadn’t been tempered at all from their fuck earlier, not that he’d expected them to. He’d spent too long imagining her dark hair spread out on his pillows, those boots hooked around his hips, those blue eyes staring up at him, except now that he’d seen her without the costume, those hots were threatening to boil over. She was so real in all her reactions, so honest in her actions, and he’d finally tasted those lips he’d wanted for so long. He’d held her delectable body against his and she fit so perfect. And the spark in her eyes when she—

“What’s wrong?”

Jaz wasn’t sure he could find his voice. “Nothing, why?”

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“You’re staring at me like… It’s the look you would give me at Katz, like you wanted to eat me instead of the food you were ordering.”

“Like it or hate it?”

She blushed again and his dick hardened more than he thought possible.

“Kinda like it.”

“Good.” He took a bite of his own pancakes, blueberry with blueberry and maple syrup but minus the whipped cream. He needed to occupy his mouth so he didn’t pull her across the table and scare the crap out of the waitresses and other customers.

He still watched her though, never taking his eyes from her face. He couldn’t get over how much he loved seeing her this way, without all the makeup. Even at one in the morning she looked so beautiful, so fresh, and she was so wrong. He wasn’t looking at her like he did at Katz on the nights she waited his table. No, he was pretty sure the look in his eyes was much stronger now, much darker, much hotter. He wanted to eat her alive, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then he wanted to snack on her, nibble at her lips, at the insides of her thighs, behind her knees and delve into the secrets of her bellybutton.

He needed something else to focus on. “How long have you and Jackie been friends?”

“We met in high school, were sort of friends. I helped her out with her homework and when I went off to college, she…”

“She went into adult entertainment,” he finished for her. “She was supposed to be in college too but started dancing instead.”

She nodded. “Yeah. She liked it though. She didn’t mind being a stripper, being a dancer. She liked the money, liked the girls, liked the attention. And she had a great body, different than most. She had a figure, which made her even more money.”

Jaz knew and understood all that. He’d hated Jackie working the pole, doing private parties. She’d been his sister, for shit’s sake. His foster sister, but the feelings 24

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they had toward one another were no less strong than had they shared the same blood.

She’d loved what she did though, and she’d never regretted the choices she made. Hell, Katz was a booming business. She had plans to expand into the online market and was even considering a second location somewhere in Georgia.

“She talked about you, you know. In letters. While I was at college and she was working, we wrote letters a lot. She said you made her promise to take self-defense classes. I’m really glad you did. I worried about her.”

Jaz shrugged. “I wasn’t around to protect her, to stand up for her. I needed to know she could defend herself.”

“That’s what she said. That’s why she did it, why she promised.”

“Did she tell you why I couldn’t be there for her?”

“Yes.”

And she took that moment, that one serious moment to use that tongue of hers on her fork. It snaked out and licked at a drop of the liquid sugar before it could drip back onto the plate. His dick ached painfully under the table. He had to force himself not to reach down and adjust himself. The damn woman was hell on him.

“It doesn’t bother you?” he managed to croak out.

“What? That you were in jail for a bit? No. Should it?”

She just kept licking syrup from the tines. Heaven help him. She dipped the fork in the syrup on her plate then lifted it to her mouth and slowly licked at it, front and back, repeating the process a few more times, making it really difficult to resist the urge to pull her across the table and shove his cock to the back of her throat. “You need to stop that.”

Wide eyes flew up to lock with his gaze and that damnedable blush was back. She took one more long, slow lick of the piece of silverware before putting it down. The tip of her tongue took a swipe of her lower lip before retreating back behind her teeth.

“Sorry.”

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She didn’t look one bit contrite, so he wasn’t sure he believed her on that. “How many candles?” There, he was changing the subject to something very, very safe.

“It’s not polite to ask a woman her age.”

“I didn’t. I asked how many candles. You could say one, two, thirty.”

“Uh-huh.” She smirked and he winked. “Forty.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“No.”

“You don’t look a day over thirty. Not that I’ve ever been good with guessing people’s ages, but you don’t look any older than me.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Well, I’m not too much older than you and Jackie is my age.”

“I know, but she doesn’t look it either, and if I had to guess her age, I wouldn’t think she’s forty.”

“Forty is the new thirty, you know.”

“Age really doesn’t mean a whole lot to me.”

“What does? And if age doesn’t mean anything to you, why’d you ask?”

“So, I’d know how many birthday swats you get. And at the moment? You. You naked means a whole hell of a lot to me.”

The last blush hadn’t completely faded before another took its place, and he couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his plate then hers out of the way and leaned across the table. His intent was to give her a small kiss, but the second his lips touched hers, his tongue was inside her mouth, tasting sweetness that had him on the brink of a whole lot of improper public displays of affection.