So Wright: The Wrights

by Jordan, Skye

  The spring night still held a cold nip, sobering Jack a little. He’d stopped drinking hours ago, so he wasn’t even buzzed, but she had a way of making his head light. Pausing a few feet from the door, he pulled her jacket from her and shook it open for her. It took her a second to turn and slip her arms in. When she did, he caught the glimpse of a little more ink on one shoulder.

  Her hands closed over his, and she drew his arms around her from behind. Jack stepped into place as if he’d done it a hundred times. He moved his hands down her arms, around her waist, and pulled her body up against his. She was slim but strong, and he lowered his lips to her shoulder as he ran his hands across her flat stomach. The faint scent of flowers and musk lifted with the heat of her body.

  Sweet mother of God, she felt amazing.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a man hold my jacket for me before.” Her words were soft, a little mesmerized, as if it was also the first time she realized no man had ever held her jacket before.

  “I hope I continue to surprise you.” He kissed her neck. Her jaw. The sweet spot behind her ear. “How many tattoos do you have?”

  She turned her head and flashed a flirty smile over her shoulder. “You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you?”

  The prospect shot a thrill through his veins. He released her and pulled on his own jacket.

  A little laugh ebbed from her throat and she ran her hands over the front of his light wool coat. “Oh, you are so New York. Never thought I’d find that so sexy.”

  “Maybe you’re seeing the born-and-bred Tennessean beneath.”

  “I do love hearing that drawl slide through your voice.”

  “Wait until I’ve been here a week. All traces of New York will be history.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I doubt that.”

  He was starting to feel like he’d found solid ground again. These unfamiliar transitions made him a little crazy, but he could see the road laid out ahead of him now, and a level of confidence returned. One benefit of never staying with one woman long was learning how to please all types of women. And he looked forward to thrilling this one.

  He reached up and eased her hair from the collar of her jacket. Soft, silky, thick. He wanted his hands in it all night. Images of just how he’d like to manage that filled his mind, and blood pounded his groin.

  “I like those dirty thoughts drifting through your eyes.” She took his hand and started down the street toward his hotel.

  He looked over his shoulder, scanning the parking lot. “Is your car here? Do you want to move it to the hotel?”

  “Focus, Jack.”

  Trucks and cars still peppered the lot. Customers lingered, talking, laughing, kissing. “I don’t want you walking back on your own—”

  Miranda stepped into his path. He grabbed her arms, barely stopping short of walking into her. She gripped the edges of his open jacket, made a quick turn, and pushed him back against a brick wall.

  “Whoa.” All his scattered thoughts snapped back to the moment, and he searched her face, trying to read her expression.

  “Let me help you keep your head in the right place.”

  She slid her hands beneath his coat and around his waist. Her body leaned into his, a sexy slide in all the right places. She rocked her hips against his, and a starburst of lust exploded through him. Then she pushed to her toes and offered her mouth, but Jack still had to drop his head to kiss her. Instead, he let his gaze soak in the raw desire in her eyes. Basked in the feeling of being wanted. Something he only realized now he hadn’t truly felt in a long damn time.

  He fought the need clawing through his body. He wanted to savor this. This thing he had a gut feeling would change him in some fundamental way.

  Jack cupped her face, stroked his thumbs along her cheekbones, eased both hands into her hair, and cradled her head. She stretched up his body a little more. Jack pressed his forehead to hers and ran a thumb across her lower lip.

  “Jack.” Her hands fisted in the back of his shirt beneath his jacket. “Kiss me.”

  This one moment, really nothing more than a few seconds before a kiss, a moment Jack had experienced countless times in his life, suddenly seemed powerful. Steeped in the intangible—passion and possibility, knowns and unknowns, a blend of fantasy and reality.

  “No rush,” he told her, and meant it. He wanted to imprint everything about her in his memory. “I’m patient, remember?”

  She made a sound in her throat. A blend of frustration and desire. She turned her head and caught his thumb between her lips. But she didn’t just kiss it. She slid it deep into her mouth. Stroked it with her tongue. Sucked with enough pressure to buckle his knees.

  A growl broke in his chest. He used both hands to pull her mouth to his. Open and ready, Miranda rocked his world with a wet, warm, wild kiss that sent him into a sexual haze. One that permeated every fucking cell until he couldn’t breathe.

  When she broke away, Jack was dizzy. “I want passion. Not patience.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive. I’ll show you.”

  That fierce look flashed over her face again. She stepped back, took his hand, and started toward the hotel with a much quicker step. This time, Jack matched her pace with an urgent need to peel back all her layers.

  They climbed the front steps, and he opened the door to the lobby for her, then followed her in. At the elevator, he pushed the button and glanced up at the numbers with a beehive buzzing in his gut. From unease, excitement, maybe even a sense of adventure. And Jack wasn’t exactly the adventurous type. This was the most impulsive thing he’d done in years.

  She leaned into him, her hands under his jacket, her expression sultry and amused. “Are you nervous, Jack Jonathan Taylor?”

  He huffed a laugh and watched the floors light up in turn. “Like you said, I don’t do this much.”

  But now that they were on this trajectory, away from the hustle of the bar, he couldn’t help but wonder how often she did this. He assumed relatively often considering how comfortable she seemed with the arrangement. And he wasn’t sure if that bothered him or not.

  “You’re overthinking it again,” she told him, tightening her arms around him. “I can see your mind churning. The world won’t fall apart tomorrow just because we take a night off.”

  She cuddled close and looked up at him. Her eyes shone warm in the fluorescent lighting. And, damn, had she gotten even more beautiful in the last twenty minutes? She was a refreshing mix of girl-next-door sweet and nightclub edgy.

  “What are you escaping?” he asked.

  “Just work.”

  “How often are you at the bar?”

  “Occasionally, just when they need an extra body. But I’ve got several jobs. I’m not one to sit still long.”

  “What kind of jobs?”

  “I pick up all sorts of odds and ends. Your work is far more interesting. Commercial, you said? What’s the biggest building you’ve designed?”

  The question surprised him, and he had to think a minute, paging through his projects in his mind. “Probably the retail and commercial building I’m working on now. It’s in Melbourne.”

  “Office space?”

  “Yeah, with shops on the basement and first floor.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  The question was so novel, he searched her expression for sarcasm. “You want to see it?”

  “Absolutely.” The elevator stopped on his floor, and Miranda took his hands and walked backward, drawing him out with a sexy little smile. “After. When we take a break to breathe.”

  She took the key card from his hand. “Which way?”

  “Right. Room seven thirty.”

  She pulled him toward the room and opened the door. When she passed through, Jack had another I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this moments.

  Only when Miranda fisted the front of his shirt and pulled him in behind her did he realize he’d hesitated.

  “You think way too much.”

  In th
e foyer of the suite, she flipped on the lights. A soft glow brightened the space. She released his shirt and let out a low whistle. Jack saw the space through her eyes—the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Nashville, an open fire element at the center of the living room with a stainless-steel hood above, a sleek kitchen off to the left.

  “Someone likes comfort.” Standing in the middle of the room, she made a slow circle, pausing when she faced Jack again. She shrugged her jacket off her shoulders, let it slide down her arms and drop to the floor. “Let’s get that intelligent mind of yours in full cooperation with your body.”

  Miranda crossed her arms, pulled her tank off over her head, and dropped it on top of her jacket.

  Jack’s pulse doubled. Her breasts were wrangled into a lacy bra, her waist slim, her stomach flat and exposed two full inches below her belly button. His hands clenched. Mouth went dry.

  The tattoo on her upper right chest was a dandelion blowing in the wind, several fronds floating away. Whimsical, and somehow not what he’d expected. Maybe she was a closet romantic too.

  Miranda’s hands dropped to her belt, a sparkly, cowgirl-type belt with a fancy silver buckle. The simple movement of watching her unfasten that buckle shot lust straight between his legs.

  All the confidence he’d thought he had in the bedroom suddenly escaped him. He was messing with his own head. This was sex, not rocket science. Yet he felt paralyzed.

  She took his hand and wandered toward a short hallway, used the other hand to pop the button of her jeans, and slid the zipper down. “I assume the bedroom is this way.”

  He tossed his own jacket over the back of a chair, his mind darting, body aching. He couldn’t think clearly. Should he finish undressing her? Or should he focus on getting his own clothes off? Would it be better to be aggressive or let her take the lead, something she was obviously comfortable with?

  She moved differently than she had in the bar. There, she was all energy and efficiency. Here, she was slower, more contemplative. And there was a sexy little slink in her step.

  In the bedroom, she paused beside a dresser, pressed her fingertips to the edge, and bent to pull off one boot, one sock. Then the other. Her stomach muscles tightened and released beneath her skin.

  Jack leaned against the doorjamb, watching. Everything about her mesmerized him—the way she moved, her self-possession, the comfort with which she uncovered her body, the obvious confidence with her sexuality. “You’re so fucking together.”

  “I don’t know about that. But I know what I want when I see it.”

  She shimmied her jeans over her hips, then let them fall and kicked them off carelessly.

  His heart actually stopped for two full beats. The woman had curves and muscle he hadn’t expected.

  She sauntered past him to look through the open archway into the bath. “Good Lord, this is the size of my living room.”

  Jack would have laughed, but his gaze was sliding over her backside. The soft indentation of her spine. The flare of her hips. The long, toned thighs. And one freaking gorgeous ass.

  “Jack?”

  He’d missed something she’d said. “What?”

  She grinned, stepped into the bathroom, and opened the shower door. “I hope you’re thinking about what you’re going to do to me tonight and not on your worries. Do you mind if I shower?”

  He didn’t understand the question. All his blood had settled well to the south.

  The water turned on, breaking his trance. He found Miranda walking toward him with that lithe, lazy stroll. When she reached him, she slid her arms around his waist, pressed that luscious body against him, and looked into his eyes.

  “Oh yeah.” She rocked her hips against his erection. “Much better train of thought.”

  She fisted his shirt and yanked it from his pants, then worked on the buttons. “I might need some help in the shower.”

  4

  Miranda smiled at the shock in Jack’s expression. He definitely didn’t do this much. It might be one reason she’d decided to go home with him. And she could use some different in her life. Her past choices in men sure hadn’t worked out.

  His profession was intriguing. It made her want to talk about her real, seven-to-four job in construction. But she liked the vibe she was getting from him now, and, in her experience, men got a little squirrely when she mentioned she worked on a construction crew. Somehow, she was immediately perceived as less feminine. And most men automatically bristled at her proximity to dozens of other men every day, as if they were all some sort of competition.

  Besides, she doubted an architect would find her work very interesting. He was the designer. She was just the help who made his design a reality. She’d met enough architects and developers to know how they saw her—as uneducated white trash who’d gotten into welding as a vocation because she wasn’t smart enough to do anything more intellectually taxing.

  But right now, she was just a woman and he was just a man. And she liked this even playing field. No assumptions, no judgment, just two people acting on their physical attraction.

  She pushed his shirt off his shoulders and her heart rate jumped. His chest was wide, his shoulders and arms muscular, stomach ribbed with muscle. Crisp hair feathered his pecs, trailed toward his belly.

  Hunger rolled in her throat. She let her hands travel over his skin, tracing the contours. “Where does an architect get a body like this?”

  “Uh… Gym.”

  His serious answer to her rhetorical question made her laugh. His mind was clearly on standby. His gaze raked over her, half starved, half shocked, as if he couldn’t decide whether to revere or ravage.

  “How long have you lived in New York?” She dropped her hands down to his belt. She could already imagine the way his hard body would play against hers. The thought was intoxicating. As was the way he looked at her body as he slid his hands down her arms.

  “About seven years.”

  “After college, then?”

  He caressed her chest with the back of his hand, his knuckles floating across one breast. Her nipple hardened instantly, and a shiver coursed across her skin.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, his hands now exploring her belly.

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “Cornell.”

  She sputtered another laugh with a shake of her head. Only she would pick out the most unattainable guy in that bar to seduce. Her aversion to relationships really was hardwired into her shitty DNA.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing, it’s just, white-collar boy, blue-collar girl? Some would say you’re slumming tonight.”

  His hands tightened around her biceps, and his gaze focused like a laser. He was instantly one hundred percent sober and present. “I don’t think that way.”

  Right. She knew he thought that way even if he didn’t realize it. Or even wanted to. No doubt the women he dated in New York worked in corporations, not bars. They wore Prada, not Wranglers. Knew how to waltz, not two-step.

  But none of that mattered. Not tonight. He was hers for the next few hours.

  She stroked his erection through his pants. Jack’s eyes rolled back in his head, joined by a throaty sound of pleasure. When he opened his eyes again, they swam with the kind of heat Miranda had been missing lately.

  “You’re as different for me as I am for you,” she told him. “Maybe that’s why we’re together tonight. Novelty.” She pulled his wallet from his back pocket, found a condom, and tossed the worn leather on the dresser. “Tonight, all I’m interested in is getting a little Ivy League education of my very own.”

  She slid the foil packet into the edge of her bra, then unzipped his pants and watched his face as she moved her hand between layers of smooth slacks and soft cotton. The heat of his cock burned through his briefs, and her expectations were fulfilled. He was as long and thick as she’d hoped.

  His lids dipped, eyes darkened, nostrils flared. His fingers wrapped her biceps with a steady squeeze, and
his jaw muscle jumped. The sight of his raw passion coiled tension between her legs. Her mouth watered. She kneaded his shaft while kissing his lips, his jaw, his neck. Jack pushed out of those shiny dress shoes, and Miranda shoved his pants past his hips.

  Once he was down to his boxer briefs, she tucked the condom square between her teeth and held his gaze as she unhooked her bra. Let it fall down her arms. The fire returned to his eyes. Miranda turned away, let her panties drop to her feet, and stepped into the shower. Then offered her hand.

  He was naked in a split second. Miranda took one long sweep of a man who’d—so far—proved to be so much more than she’d expected and smiled. She would not go home disappointed.

  By the time they stood under the spray together, she wanted him inside her. But Jack was more interested in the slow build. He kissed her everywhere. His hands roamed her body before gripping her ass and pulling her against his erection.

  She reached between them and stroked him. He was so hard, he barely fit in her hand. And she was so ready.

  Miranda tore the condom package with her teeth and rolled it on. A full-body shudder rocked him. But instead of driving into her, he kissed his way down her body, pausing to suck and nip at her breasts. And as her need grew, Miranda sensed a very deliberate power shift. Jack might have taken some coaxing to get here, but he was clearly a very skilled, very confident lover. He continued to trail kisses down her belly until he was on his knees. He cupped his hand behind her knee and lifted her leg over his shoulder.

  Before Miranda could draw another breath, his mouth covered her. The sudden pressure radiated through her pelvis. Pleasure rocketed up her spine, arching her back, pushing a sound of surprise from her throat.

  Then his mouth moved, and lust surged through her body. Thrummed in her blood. Shocked her circuits.

  “Fuck.” She grabbed hold of a ledge in the shower with one hand and drove the other into his hair.

  He growled in approval, tightened his hand on her thigh and pushed it wider. Moved in deeper. He kissed and licked and sucked, layering pleasure upon pleasure. Miranda’s body bowed. Her hand fisted in his hair. Her mouth dropped open. She could taste the ecstasy just out of reach. But Jack was in no hurry. The hand on her thigh moved between her legs. His fingers pushed inside her. And goddamn, that was good. But she couldn’t tell him. Her throat was locked up.