Wild Child (25 page)

All in all, it wasn’t awful.

And every once in a while, she looked up and saw Jackson watching her. Smiling at her. Every single dirty thought in his head right there in his eyes.

I’m in trouble with him. Real trouble
. The kind of trouble she’d never, ever thought she’d be in.

Luckily, Sean was a fantastic antidote to all of it.

“Hey!” he called, standing behind a folding table, a Crock-Pot in front of him beside a bunch of plastic bowls and spoons. “You here to try my chili?”

“Absolutely,” she said, grateful for his cheerful and easy acceptance.

“Don’t do it,” Cora warned as she went by, her arms full of tissue-paper flowers that people were tucking into chicken wire on the float. “Nearest doctor is thirty miles away.”

“Hilarious, Cora,” Sean said as the woman swept right on by. “Don’t listen to her. She thinks she owns the market on food in this town.”

“I’d love some chili,” she said, and Sean beamed as he spooned some up for her.

“So … this garage,” she said, looking around at the soaring ceilings and cement floors. It was about as big as a house. “This is yours?”

“Yeah. I bought it a year ago thinking I would start brewing my own beer, you know. Microbrew style.”

“Great idea.”

“Yeah, but my brother Brody hasn’t been home long enough at one time to help me set it up.”

“There isn’t someone else you can have help you?”

Sean looked at her for a moment, as if gauging whether or not to trust her with a secret. In the end he shrugged—choosing not.

Sean handed her a bowl of chili. “Bon appetite,” he said with absolutely no attempt to pronounce the words correctly. She smiled at him, inexplicably fond of the man at this moment. He wasn’t pretending to be anything.

And then she took a bite of his chili.

“Oh my God,” she said, choking it down, because she couldn’t actually spit it out. “That … that’s awful.”

“Come on!” he cried.

“No, it is. I’m sorry. Is the … is the meat even cooked?”

Sean grabbed the chili bowl and scowled at her. “Get,” he said. “Go away.”

That was clearly her cue to leave, and she was all right with that. She’d broken up her loneliness, managed to brave a few steps off her island.

But Jackson, over by the float, lifted his hand, calling her over.

“Didn’t I tell you not to try the chili?”

“You did. I wish I’d listened.”

“Well, I need your help. What do you think?” he asked, holding two tissue-paper flowers. “Light green or dark green?”

“For what?”

“For the okra on the float.”

She laughed. “You can’t be serious.” Reba ran in circles around her. Vanessa swung her camera over toward them.

“Stay,” Jackson whispered, glancing sideways at the camera. “Just stay for a little longer.”

She wanted to stay. With him.
Oh. Oh no
. She was in such trouble. And helpless to get out of it.

“Dark green,” she said.

And stayed.

Jackson stared at the gold safety lock popped backward out of the hotel-room door, keeping it cracked.

She did it. She actually did it
.

He’d rushed here. After Vanessa had left and Gwen walked home, Jackson nearly ran out of that garage. Desperate to see Monica. Desperate to have her.

And she’d done what he’d asked. The door was open.

Want was a twitch in his muscles, a fire under his skin, and he pushed open the door and took a step into the hushed darkness of her room. The air was warm and faintly damp and he thought of her in the bath, those freckled shoulders. The three inches of thigh above the water, covered in drippy trails of bubbles.

His foot made a soft noise on the carpet and he heard her breathing on the bed.

There were a dozen things he could say. Dirty words. Kind words. A joke or two, but something compelled him to be silent. The trust of that cracked door—that trust, it just wrecked him. Left him stunned and humble.

And so, silent, he came to stand next to her. The moon came through the sheer curtains just enough that he could see the gleam of her bare skin in patches. Snapshots. Her thigh. Her belly. The slice of her left cheekbone.
Her arm came out of the shadows, and the glass in her hand glittered as she set it down on the table.

This felt … inevitable. Whether or not she’d worked up the courage to tell him her secrets, whether he’d worked up the balls to try to seduce her out of her own head—this moment felt unavoidable. Like a destination they would have come to no matter what detours or wrong turns they might have made.

The bedsheets rustled as she bent her knee, revealing the dark shadow of curls between her legs. Drawn, powerless, he touched her knee, running his hand up the outside of her thigh to her waist. She arched into his hand, curved and curled under his touch. Open-handed, his palm slipped up her rib cage to cup her breast. She was warm, trembling in his embrace.

He felt an impatient tug on the hem of his shirt and in answer he ripped it off, then pulled off his pants. He stood naked over her. Her fingers, soft and cool, touched his erection. Curled over him, around him. Pulled.

They hadn’t kissed. They’d barely touched, and he was hard as stone. His blood pounded beneath his skin.

This … this wasn’t how he’d imagined it happening. He’d had this image of him controlling things tonight. Of being the big-man seducer and not giving her a chance to think, to talk herself out of what she felt. But here she was with her own control. Her own agenda.

Fuck
. That was hot. Surprising and beautiful.

“Condom is on the table,” she whispered. Even in the dark he found it without a problem. Tore it open with his teeth, slipped it over his skin, hissing because it felt so good. His own touch burned.

He put his fists on the bed near her shoulders, braced his knee beside her thigh, and held himself over her, the heat filling the inches between them. He felt so close to breaking, so near his own edge; he’d felt that way every time he walked into this room. She sent him there with
her trust, with her skin and scent. Taking his time, trying to pull himself under control, he slipped his fingers between her legs, his thumb finding the heat and dampness of her. She gasped, groaned, pushed herself against him.

“Please,” she whispered.

Oh Christ, if she was going to start begging, he’d never last. She made room for him between her legs, curled her arms over his neck. That touch seared through his skin, down to the marrow of his bones. No matter where he was, years from now, he’d remember the exact and specific sensation of her arms around his neck, her breath in his ear.

But still he hesitated.

“Are you …”
sure, ready, okay?
He shook his head, struggled to pull himself together to not be just a bag of dumb lust and blind sensation. She deserved far better than that.

She shifted under him, found his erection with her hands, and positioned him, there. Right there where he could feel through the latex, through his skin, the answer to his questions.

Yes
. She was sure.
Yes
. She was ready.
Yes
. She was okay.

And then, still holding him, she arched and he slid inside of her.

She was the instrument of her own glory, her own pleasure.

Incendiary. He couldn’t breathe for the heat and squeeze of her.

“Here,” she sighed, pulling him tight against her, slipping her legs up over his knees. She arched her back and lifted herself, using him, dragging herself over him. “Just … just like that.”

Still no kissing.

“Monica,” he breathed.

“Yes.” It was a sigh. Acceptance. Invitation. “More.”

Fine. No kissing
. She was pliant against him, a willing shore for him to break against. And he took her, with long, smooth, hard strokes. She braced her hand against the headboard, pushing against him, chasing him down. He sat back on his heels, pulled her legs higher up over his, used his hands at her waist, pulling her, pushing her, lifting her.

She dug her heels into the blankets beside him, shifting him off balance, and he caught himself against the headboard, driving high and hard into her.

“Yes!” she cried. “Oh God. Yes.” Her legs curled around his waist, her strong, muscular thighs holding him tight against her. “There,” she breathed as her hands came around his back, under his arms. “Right … right there.”

Her head kicked back, her hair an ebony splash across the pillow. He watched her as he pushed into her, all the way down, all the way in. He would touch her heart if he could. Captivated by her, by the twitch of her lips, the long sweep of her eyelashes, the way her body squeezed him. The coil of her muscles, the way he could feel … there … at the bottom of his stroke … her tremble.

It built, they built. The walls could have come down and he would have been unable to look away. Unable to stop.

“Jackson—”

He bent his head, bracing his forehead against hers. They were sweating, breathing hard. He licked her throat, sucked at the skin near her ear, and it was good. So good. And he couldn’t control it for much longer. He slipped a hand down her body, over her breasts. She gasped when he touched her nipple and he pulled it, squeezing it harder, to hear her moan. He wanted her in pieces in his arms. He wanted her screaming. Crying his
name. Driven suddenly by the ticking clock of his own orgasm, he bent his head to pull a nipple into his mouth, and his fingers found where he was sliding into her. He touched her stretched skin that accepted him with such beautiful grace.

She bucked against him. “What …? Oh God, again. Do … do that again.”

He smiled against her breast and used his fingers against her, against himself. He shuddered, holding on by only a thread.

“Come on, come on,” he breathed, prayed really.

And then suddenly she was one long contraction. He felt every muscle in her body seize and he was caught in the grip of her thighs. He closed his eyes, braced his hands against the headboard, and rode it out.

The sigh of his name, the sudden languid nature of her body—it told a story. He looked into her eyes and saw it there too. Not a show. It was real.

“You’re magnificent,” he told her without hyperbole.

“Your turn,” she whispered.

Unleashed, he thrust into her, holding her, positioning her so he felt her from base to tip. A growl roared out of him, the orgasm rolled through him, and he exploded.

Chapter 16

He was a sweaty, heavy mess on top of her and she delighted in it. Curling her arms around his wide swimmer’s back, she let him shake and twitch against her, sighing her name.

She relished it—the tickle, the sweat, the squish between her legs—the messiness of it all. The messiness was real. Honest. And how beautiful it was. She blinked away the prick of tears behind her eyes, not because she was embarrassed by them, but because she didn’t want him to be wounded—to think the worst. And maybe she didn’t want to talk about it just yet. This feeling—this buoyant gratitude—she wanted to keep it to herself for a while.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, pushing himself up and away. “I must be crushing you.” A bead of sweat dripped from the damp edges of his hair onto her breast. He touched the drop with his thumb and she quaked, just quaked with ticklish pleasure. “I’m sweating on you.”

“You are,” she murmured, smiling up at him.

He rolled to the side, turning away from her to handle the even messier reality of the condom. He stood and tossed it in the trash.

“I … brought up the bottle,” Monica said, pushing herself up on the bed. She reached to the side and grabbed the decanter she’d snuck upstairs. “There’s a coffee cup in the bathroom you can use.”

“Great,” he sighed, as if still trying to catch his breath.

She could relate. Her heart had stopped pounding,
but she still felt somehow behind herself, unable to catch up with all that had just happened.

Shamelessly naked, he came back into the room holding the coffee cup. He stopped to look at her, and she felt his gaze up her legs, across her belly, her breasts. She wanted to stretch under that gaze, invite him back to stroke her.

“That was—”

“Great,” she said. She wasn’t sure if he had misgivings, or doubts, but she wanted them gone. What had happened on that bed was spectacularly authentic.

Like a jungle cat, all sleek and coiling muscles, he crawled up the bed but then ruined the image by flopping down beside her, pushing his messy hair off his forehead.

She filled his coffee cup with more than the recommended serving size of scotch and settled up against the headboard, too happy, too relaxed, to be worried about her nudity or about these dangerous foreign feelings taking root in her chest.

“I was surprised to see you tonight,” he said after a long sip and a sigh, as if the scotch was just what he was missing. “I didn’t know you were interested in the parade stuff—I would have made sure you knew about it.”

“I wasn’t interested.” He laughed, and she realized how bad that sounded. How blunt. “No, it was fun. It really was. But I think … I think the truth is, I didn’t want to be alone.”

That seemed like a confession. A declaration. She was putting a flag in the ground and was deeply uncomfortable doing it. But it felt so necessary. She turned her own coffee cup in quarter-turns in her hands.

“I talked to Jerome Hennings today. He was the first officer on the scene the night my dad was shot.” She shook her head. Her memory of that night was so cloudy and while she might not remember the events so well, she’d had a stance on them. A point of view, a way of
referencing them so that they made sense in her head.
Dad was shot. Murdered
. But now … all this new information. These details that knocked her down and pushed her around, shaking that stance. “I don’t even know what to call that night anymore. I used to say the night Dad was murdered. But that doesn’t seem right anymore. And maybe … maybe it’s the night my mom was almost killed. Or the night I was nearly kidnapped.” She was suddenly tense. Angry even, the sweetness from moments ago gone. It was as if she’d pushed them up against one of the electric fences that encircled the things she just didn’t want to talk about.