Middle of Knight (30 page)

“Which is?”

“She’s refusing to see me or talk to me again until I drop the restraining order against Preston.”

He held her back at arms’ length. “But you’re not going to, right?”

She shrugged. “She’s my daughter, my only child. I can’t just sever all ties with her.”

“She thinks you’re lying about her father. He has her so fucking brainwashed it won’t matter what you do, she’ll never believe you. But giving into this is going to put you in danger and it will be like admitting you were lying or overreacting about the whole situation in the first place.”

“It’s ten o’clock.” Mrs. Baker knocked at the bedroom door.

Ryn pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. “I’m running late.”

Jackson cradled her face. “Being an example of a strong woman is the best way to love your daughter.”

She nodded, ever so slightly.

He kissed her until her body went limp in his grasp. “See you later, hot pants. Training, dinner, fucking.” He smacked her ass.

She rubbed her hand over it like it stung, and he hoped it did. He wanted her thinking of him the rest of the day.

“Fucking?”

“Sorry. Sexual intercourse? Coitus? The union and rhythm of our genitals?”

“I-I’ve got to get out of here.”

He loved pushing all her buttons, playing her with the ease of Black Beauty. Ryn reacted with her whole body and Jackson couldn’t get enough.

*

Gunner greeted Ryn
with a few sloppy kisses after her long day of crawling around on her knees cleaning other people’s homes while hers collected a nice layer of dust. She packed her bag, what she assumed would need to be an overnight bag, then loaded her dog and his food in the back of her RAV4.

“Haven’t seen you around much.”

Ryn turned, an instant smile graced her face. “Drew. How have you been?”

He smiled that crooked smile that eased the stress from her asshole of an ex-husband and her young, naive daughter.

“I’m good, thank you.” His expression sobered. “I know we don’t have an official neighborhood watch, but I’ve noticed someone snooping around your place on more than one occasion. It’s always been when you’re not home and he never got that close to the house thanks to Gunner. I said something to him when he went through your mail the other day.”

She fought to keep her panic hidden. “And?”

“He said he was your brother. When I told him your brother died, he told me to mind my own fucking business, got in his black Escalade, and I haven’t seen him around since.”

“Thank you.” She gripped her keys.

“Do you know who it could have been?”

“Preston,” she whispered.

“Your ex with a restraining order against him?”

“Copper blond hair mixed with a little gray, always in an expensive suit, gold Rolex?”

Drew nodded. “What’s he want?”

“Me always on edge, looking over my shoulder, shunned by my own daughter, and completely miserable.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m going to practice some self-defense, have dinner, and then …” With a shrug she bit her lips together. Drew didn’t need to know about the “fucking.”

“Be safe. I’ll keep an eye out and call the police if I see him again.”

Ryn nodded. “Thanks, Drew.”

Somehow her car made it to Jackson’s, even if she couldn’t remember a single turn or stoplight. The question was whether or not to say anything to Jackson about the information Drew shared. Their first meeting ended in Preston going to the hospital via an ambulance. She could only imagine what Jackson might try to do if he knew Preston had been snooping around her place. He had his own issues with his peculiar and suspect piano student.

“That’s a big bag,” Jackson smirked as she stepped inside the front door. “You moving in?”

“Oh … um, no, it’s just a change of clothes…” she stammered her words “…to wear to dinner.”

He grabbed her bag and tossed it in his bedroom then kissed her so hard she questioned the whereabouts of her tonsils. “I’m just messing with you. My future wife can stay with me for as long as she wants. Forever would be ideal.”

Her heart needed to know why he kept doing that. It was fun until she actually wanted him to mean every word. Even in that moment she shocked herself by thinking that.
Did
she want him to mean every word?

His smile faltered, perhaps because of the way her jaw hung to her feet. “Ready to kick my ass?”

Regaining control of her mandibular function, she nodded. Ryn assumed he’d teach her more moves, life-saving skills. Instead he had her demonstrate her pathetic endurance through a cardio and strength-training workout. People spent hundreds of dollars on fancy equipment and gym memberships and he brought her to his mercy with a jump rope and pull-up bar. Everything else didn’t require anything: squats, pushups, dips, planks, burpees. The pinnacle of her embarrassment came when she couldn’t even do one pull-up without him helping her by lifting up on her hips. Val would get an ass-chewing for letting Ryn think she was in good shape.

Sagging in the corner, sucking down water like oxygen, she watched him do one-arm pull-ups. Admiring his firm planes of muscles flex in waves along his back, arms, and legs, she became primed and so very ready for their post dinner plans. The chances of him feeling the same way after watching her die before his eyes seemed unlikely. Sweaty old lady nose-planting after seven pushups had to have been anti-climatic for his sex drive.

“Ready to shower, hot pants?” Jackson wiped his face and chest with a white towel.

“Just be honest with me. Am I your beard?”

He chuckled. “My beard?”

“Yes, as in you’re gay but you don’t want people to know so you have a woman with whom—”

“I know what the term beard means. You think I’m gay?”

“No. I think you could be having sex with women so hot even I’d consider a night of lesbian love if they offered. Instead you’re with me and I’m certain I don’t look like those fitness models after a workout. I can just feel how my hair surely resembles a drowned rat, and my face beams with heat so I know I must still be red even after twenty minutes of recovery.”

Jackson hooked his towel around her neck and pulled her against him. “Are you done?”

Ryn gave it another moment of thought then nodded once.

“Good. So let’s take my penis and your vagina upstairs and see what trouble they can get into in the shower.”

Ryn rolled her eyes. “When you say it like that it sounds ridiculous.”

“You think?” He lifted her over his shoulder and carried her upstairs. “In that case, maybe I’ll just bury my cock so deep in your pussy you’ll be tasting me every time you swallow. Better?”

“Yes, utterly poetic.”

*

Withholding pleasure as
a form of torture? Ryn found out the hard way it’s a real thing. They monkey fucked in the shower in every position possible, stopping each time to find a new position a breath before Ryn climaxed. At first it seemed like a coincidence, after all he couldn’t have known that she was about to orgasm.

Wrong.

By the fourth time she really began to suspect something, but before she could get the words out he whispered in her ear, buried balls deep from behind, “I’ll let you come if you promise to never mention our age difference and always … and I mean
always
act like the fucking goddess you are, making me barely worthy of even looking at you.”

“Jackson … please.” She reached behind her head and clawed at his hair as he trapped her earlobe between his teeth.

“Tell me you’re a fucking goddess,” he growled, pumping into her a few more times just to keep her on the brink.

Sliding one hand from his hair she moved it toward her clitoris.

“No.” He grabbed both of her hands and pressed them flat to the tile wall beneath his. “Say. It.”

“Yes.” She ground back against him.

“Yes what?”

“I’m … I’m a goddess,” she whispered.

He covered her clitoris with two fingers but didn’t press down or move them a millimeter. “So close … last chance.” His hips rammed into her, pushing the slight ebb right back to the very edge.

“I’m a fucking goddess!” With the slip of his hand, she saw stars behind her eyes explode so bright she couldn’t see anything else, but she felt absolutely
everything
.

“Damn right you are.” He pulled out and guided her to sit on the bench in the corner. She happily sat down, her orgasm had turned her legs into Jell-O.

Jackson pumped himself a couple of times and then he spewed his
semen
all over her breasts—chin down, eyes hooded. Ryn stared at him wide eyed and then at her breasts dripping with water and
semen
. Admittedly, watching him grasping his
penis
turned her on more than she ever could have imagined. The unexpected mess left her confused. If his fascination with older women had anything to do with their experience, then she had to be a huge disappointment. He was clearly the more sexually experienced one in their relationship.

He continued to look at her breasts with pleasure and lust painted on his face. He seemed to wait for her to respond. Ryn had no idea what that response should be. She should have watched more porn over the years.

Mental note: Google semen on breasts.

What would a “fucking goddess” do? Gather it in her hands and slurp it up? Smear it all over like lotion or an expensive moisturizer? Too weird.

“Clean up your mess … now.” She tipped her chin up and gave him a stern look while holding her breath. Breathing would have turned into laughing, at herself of course, because it took forty years for a man to jerk off on her breasts and when it finally happened she had no clue how to react. Her words were effortless even instinctual. She’d said the same thing to Maddie over the years about her bedroom.

Jackson raised a single brow, one side of his mouth curling into a sexy smile. Keeping his eyes locked to hers as if he could break her façade, he grabbed a bottle of shower gel and squirted it onto her breasts much like he did with his semen. Ryn gritted her teeth, holding strong. He smeared the soap over her chest, giving extra attention to her nipples. It felt good, too good, trying-to-make-her-break good.

Like the fucking goddess she was, Ryn held strong and made it out of the shower without begging for anything else, but just barely.

Day

W
atching Jessica sleep
had become Luke’s favorite part of every morning. He loved the way her lips twitched into a smile and each breath sounded like a sigh of contentment. Did she dream of him?

His heart rate increased as she stretched her naked body like a cat across the bed. When her eyes fluttered open he smiled a big, goofy clown smile, but he couldn’t help it.

“I probably should be creeped out…” she yawned through her words “…that you’re always standing in the doorway staring at me when I wake.” Scooting to a sitting position, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “But then I realize … you’re standing in a doorway—an exit—in case you have to flee from the monster, and that’s the biggest downer ever.”

Luke pushed off the door frame and moved to the bed. Without hesitation she pulled him back into bed and straddled his body.

“Stop calling the woman I love a monster.”

She licked up his neck, another cat-like move.

“I’m sweaty.”

“Mmm … I see you went for a run without me again.”

Luke palmed her bare ass, squeezing her tight glutes. “You slow me down.”

She dug her teeth into his neck over his carotid and growled. “You’re so full of shit. Just admit it … I’m bad for your ego.”

He chuckled. “Aside from your brother, I don’t think there’s a male ego in existence that stands a chance around you. You are a true man-eater.”

“Did you take our baby with you?”

“About that … it’s possible Jones might not be coming home with us.”

Jessica sat up. “Say what?”

“My mom said he slept in bed with them, wedged in the middle like the spot had his name on it.”

“He’d sleep with us if you’d let him.”