The Set Up

by Kim Karr

  Drew is looking at something on his phone. Soon, he passes it to Jasper. I watch Jasper shake his head and seconds later pass the phone to Jake. Feeling a little tingly and a little giddy, I pull Jasper to me by his belt. One step away is all he’d been, but I wanted him closer. I catch him by surprise. I can tell by the look on his face. He catches me by surprise too. The heat of his palms seeps through the fabric of my skirt. I love when he touches me like this. And then that lean muscled frame of his leans down to kiss me softly, and suddenly I’m made of feathers. Floating through the air. Drifting.

  “Hey, you two.” Drew’s booming voice interrupts our bliss.

  Sheepishly, I turn to the massive body standing beside us.

  “What do you think?”

  Think?

  I wasn’t thinking.

  Jasper draws me into his side. “Yeah, sure, sounds like a plan.” How does he even know what Drew is talking about?

  Jasper leans to whisper in my ear, “He wants to get a booth.”

  “Screw sitting down!” Jake exclaims. “Let’s go upstairs and dance!” Jake points toward the staircase.

  Jasper looks at me, and I nod. “Sounds fun.”

  Will and Drew both begrudgingly agree as well.

  The guys toss back the drinks in their hands and put the empty glasses on the bar.

  Four sets of eyes are staring at me. Waiting for me to do the same. So I do. I chug the drink, the carbonation fizzing in my throat from the tonic, and try really hard not to burp.

  That is something I’d never live down.

  The colored lights from the ceiling flicker in an almost sensual way, and the five of us, all dressed in white, make our way to the third floor.

  The crowd up here is different than that on the first floor. Almost feral. The music is different too. We stand on the edge of the dance floor, watching. Listening. I don’t know the song, but everyone seems to love it. People surge around us, bouncing, wiggling, moving to the beat, some even grinding. Groups of dancers join together and then break apart. Happy to touch their partners, if only for a moment.

  When the song changes to the familiar opening strands of “Ice Ice Baby,” Jake looks toward Jasper.

  Jasper gives him a nod and to my surprise Jake jumps on the dance floor.

  At first he blends into the crowd and it’s hard to see him, but soon enough the crowd clears away and everyone circles the dance floor to watch him.

  Jake is breakdancing. Really breakdancing. He’s moving in a circle, one leg extended in front of the other and then switching to the other leg as fast as he can, over and over. When the chorus changes, he switches to a push-up position and kicks his feet up in the air.

  Flipping back onto his feet, he moves his body in sync to the beat and when he turns toward us, he points to Jasper. Much to my surprise, Jasper lets go of his hold on me. Taking a couple steps onto the dance floor, he widens his stance, and then drops to his hands and starts spinning with his legs intertwining in his arms in a way I would never be able to do.

  Feeling giddy, I clap my hands together and bounce to the beat, my hair going wild as it bounces at the same speed.

  Standing up again, along with Jake, they both drag their feet almost like they are doing the moonwalk.

  Watching him out there, he couldn’t be more adorable and charming. I can’t stop myself from laughing, cheering, and maybe even crying a little. I love that he is having fun and enjoying himself. It makes my heart swell. I love that he’s not inhibited to be in front of people and do his own thing. It makes me proud. I love that he is here with me. I love him. I love him. I love him. I might not be able to tell him so, but I do.

  As soon as the song ends, he’s striding toward me. He’s laughing and curling his finger. I have no more air left to laugh anymore. I can’t take my eyes off him. I think my heart forgot to beat.

  The new song pumping through the speakers is a little slower. It starts just as Jasper’s lips connect with mine. A burning hot kiss and a furtive slip of the tip of his tongue that has me throwing my arms around him just to keep standing.

  Pulling away, he mouths, “Dance with me.”

  I’m out on the floor before I can say yes, and aligned thigh-to-thigh, belly-to-belly, before the next line of the song is sung.

  “Did you like that?” he murmurs in my ear.

  “Yes, I had no idea you could move in that way,” I answer, my pulse pounding in excitement.

  Jasper splays his fingers against my spine, his thumb drifting back and forth in a slow seductive way. “I have all kinds of moves.”

  Sliding my arms down to his chest, I look up into his hungry gaze. “I hope you show them all to me,” I breathe out.

  His eyes stare into mine, hard, and his smile is a little less bemused. “I want to show you the world.”

  People press against us, the dance floor filling back up. Somehow we ended up in the center of it all, and yet it feels like just the two of us. “I want that, too.”

  His thigh slides between my legs. “Do you?”

  The bass is thumping loud and I can feel it throughout my body, but most of all in my beating heart. All I can do is nod, and then because I can show him much better than I can tell him, I reach for his mouth.

  He kisses me back with so much emotion that I get lost in the music, the beat, in him. Both his hands slide up just below my breasts and then glide back down to my hips. Soon enough, they’re resting on my behind, and he’s pressing me to his very hard body. It isn’t long before I feel his cock against my belly.

  At first I’m startled. There are so many people around. But no one is paying any attention to us. Everyone is lost in the beat. My hands circle back around his neck and I toy with his hair, now a little wet from the exertion of dancing.

  His hands aren’t idle either. They move up my back to tangle in my hair. And then he tugs a little, causing my head to tip back, and slides his lips along my throat.

  I’m not sure who can hear me, but a small moan escapes my throat in delight as little tingles erupt beneath my skin from my head to my toes.

  My little moan turns into a gasp, and I lean back to look at him. Low-lidded eyes. Lips parted. A man looking at me like I’m the only woman in a club that has to be filled with hundreds of hot, sexy bodies everywhere.

  We move this way for a long time. The song changes. It doesn’t matter. Soon, we’re toward the back of the dance floor, the dancers surrounding us pushing us even closer.

  This time, when his hand splays across my behind and presses me into his erection, I press back. Even through the denim, I can feel how hot and thick his cock is. Seemingly unbothered by his state of arousal, he reaches upward to the small of my back, my tattoo. He holds his hand there for a moment or two, and then caresses down again.

  My intake of breath is sharp.

  “It’s okay, just relax,” he assures me, his warm breath blowing across my neck and sending a shiver down my spine.

  Breathless, aching, and pleasure building between my thighs, I do as he says, and relax into his hold.

  This time when the song changes, he turns me around.

  I’m facing the graffiti-inked wall, the mob of people on both sides of us lost in their own movements.

  His hand slips inside the waistband of my skirt, and immediately moves to cup my sex.

  To anyone else we look like a couple swaying to the beat. Hips moving slowly from side to side. Feet shifting ever so slightly. No one would know Jasper is pressing the heel of his palm against my clit, and no one would know it is sending a rush of tingles between my thighs.

  The crowd moves around us; we move too. And for a moment, when there’s another shift in the crowd, I think he’s going to turn me back around. Instead, his fingers dip inside the lacey edge of my panties and find me wet.

  There is no way to control my body’s reaction or the passion flooding my veins like hot lava.

  His teeth graze my neck and his fingers dip inside my slick heat. Once. Twice. Thre
e delicious times.

  Biting my lip to stop my moan, I find myself leaning against him for support, my arms going over my head and around his neck. As soon as I am in this position, I am all his. Completely open for him. And he strikes fast. His fingers rubbing my clit and dipping inside me at such a pace that my entire lower body feels like it’s throbbing within moments.

  Fun is fun, but I can’t have an orgasm on the dance floor. I turn my head. “What are you doing?”

  “Turning it up,” he blows against my skin as he nuzzles my ear.

  Before I can say another word, my body is shuttering and my clit pulsing around his fingers. I’m shattering in his arms—on the dance floor. Red, yellow, blue, and green lights coat my vision. A psychedelic spectrum of colors takes over my world as the earth shifts beneath my feet.

  After a few seconds, he takes his hand out of my skirt.

  When I first try to catch my breath, I can’t. It seems to still be running in circles. On my second attempt, I inhale and it’s the scent of Jasper that pulls me back down to earth. His nearness. The need to see his gorgeous face. Finally, I turn around. When I face him, I’m met with the most beautiful set of brown eyes.

  Warm.

  Inviting.

  And flaming hot with desire.

  Jasper bends to kiss me. “I love watching you come.”

  Heat creeps up my chest. Down my spine. A new kind of want is spreading warm and hot through my body, and all I can do is stare at him.

  The song changes again.

  He runs his hands through my hair and pushes it over my shoulders.

  My breathing picks up again. If it were legal to fuck in public, I’d let him take me right here, right now. It sounds dirty, animalistic, feral, but it’s the truth. “I want you,” I manage, unable to think of anything else.

  Whiskey-scented breath washes over me. “Here?”

  I nod.

  I want to kiss every beat of his heart for making me feel the way he does. I want to give him the world. To give him me.

  The wetness of his tongue caresses my earlobe, making the warmth I’m feeling spread even deeper. “You sure?”

  I nod again.

  “There’s a VIP room in the back. I can see if it’s open. Follow me.”

  Like I wouldn’t?

  Halfway through the crowd, he turns. “I can’t wait to fuck your brains out, but I don’t want to do it here. What do you say we head home?”

  There’s that word again.

  Home.

  And this time when I hear it, the smile that spreads wider and wider across my face is only for him.

  “I’d love to go home,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around him so I can feel his body against mine one more time before we get off this magical dance floor.

  Jasper lifts his chin and wipes a stray tear away that I didn’t even know I shed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

  My emotions have been haywire. It goes hand in hand with my elevated sex drive, I guess.

  Making our way through the crowd once again, we finally reach the end of the dance floor. Before I even have both of my stiletto-killing-me feet on the alternate surface, I feel a hand on my shoulder.

  I turn.

  “There you two are. I’ve been looking for you both.”

  It’s Jake, and there’s no doubt in my mind that while we’ve been on the dance floor, he’s been drinking. And doing a lot of it. His eyes are unfocused. His words slurred. And his body is swaying.

  “Have a drink with me,” he slurs.

  “Next time, man. We were just heading home,” Jasper tells him with a clap on the shoulder.

  “You can’t do that. Will already left. Drew’s in the VIP room. And I shouldn’t be looking at all these women the way I am.”

  Jasper raises both of his brows. “What are you talking about? Look bro, why not?”

  “I took a vow of celibacy.”

  Laughter fills the space between us. “Why the fuck would you do something like that?”

  “Because I’m an asshole and I don’t deserve a nice girl like Shannon. She’s everything I should never have.”

  “That’s not true, Jake,” I tell him.

  His blue eyes flash. “Yeah, it is. I was an asshole to you, too.”

  I say nothing. He was.

  Jasper looks at me and crosses his arms over his chest.

  Something in my face makes his soften in understanding.

  “I am to every girl I meet,” Jake continues. “Why didn’t you tell me to fuck off?”

  I look him the eyes. “I was able to see what you were doing was your way of protecting yourself.”

  He scoffs. “Protect myself? From what?”

  “I don’t know, Jake. That’s for you to figure out.”

  He cuts me a dark look. “Yeah, maybe I could do that after another drink.”

  All I have to do is look at Jake in this state and my heart hurts for him.

  “I think we’re done drinking tonight,” Jasper tells Jake with a clap on the back.

  “No, you guys go. I’ll be fine.”

  Just then someone pushes past us and Jake loses his balance, almost falling to the ground, but Jasper catches him.

  Jake starts laughing. “You might need to help me to the bar before you leave, though.”

  Jasper whispers in my ear, “Do you mind if we take him home?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Clearly Jake drank way too much because in order to move him from the spot we are in, we have to drape his arms around both Jasper’s and my shoulders.

  “I love you,” he mutters to Jasper.

  Jasper just shakes his head. “You tell Charlotte that and I’ll leave you here right now.”

  “No man, I wouldn’t think of it. That’s your job.”

  Jasper looks over at me with eyes that tell me just how he feels.

  I say nothing.

  Although I wish I could.

  WINDING ROAD

  Jasper

  MAX, OUR CHIEF automotive design engineer, has this process he refers to as a thought experiment.

  I fucking hate it.

  Then again, he knows this and likes to fuck with me. I remember this one time when the result was more than even he anticipated.

  “First, picture a traditional six-cylinder engine,” he says.

  The engineer in me can do that easily enough. Shit, the street-kid mechanic in me can do that with his eyes closed.

  “Now take the cylinder heads, valve train, camshaft, head gasket—take it all off and throw it in the trash.”

  I look at him like he’s lost his damn mind.

  “You don’t need it anymore,” he tells me.

  Right, I think, he must have been drinking at lunch.

  “Then, take that engine and chop it in half, right down the middle.”

  I continue to humor him.

  “Now,” he says excitedly, “flip it over, one half on top of the other.”

  “What the fuck?” I respond, unable to play around anymore. We have work to get done.

  “Think about it, Jasper,” he says.

  And I do.

  It takes me a couple of hours, but I sketch out the idea, put a lot of hard thought into it, and then the light goes on. What we have is an engine with two pistons in each cylinder that oppose each other—it just might be the powertrain of the future.

  No fucking way.

  That experiment is still going to rock the automotive world.

  It is state-of-the-art technology all the way.

  It is the soul of the Storm.

  What will sell it.

  That was seven years ago.

  Seven.

  We’ve spent years making it better, stronger, faster.

  We have.

  It’s been a long road.

  And this guy I’m carrying out the door is now the one selling this technology to investors—and he’s fucking great at it.

  So yeah, I�
�ll help him through whatever shit he’s got going on in his head tonight, but come Tuesday, you better believe I’ll be pounding that head if he isn’t focused as fuck.

  A rumble in the distance steals my attention.

  Dark, angry clouds are gathering high above us in the heated summer sky. Strikes of lighting are already illuminating the blackened heavens in quick flashes, and the thunder is roaring in the distance.

  I pull my phone out to call for the car, but before we even make it past the row of tents, it pulls up to the curb.

  The window rolls down. “Good, you’re here; I was just coming back to get you.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask Will.

  “Where’s Drew?”

  “Still inside.”

  “What happened to him?” Will jerks his chin toward the weaving Jake holding onto Charlotte and I for dear life.

  “Just what it looks like—too much Jäger.”

  The car door opens. “Get him inside, I’ll go find Drew.”

  Like a bat out of hell, he passes me on the sidewalk, and I grab his arm. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing good. I’ll tell you in a minute,” he says and strides off.

  Always the drama queen.

  Inside the car, I don’t worry about him right now. Instead, Charlotte and I try to get Jake situated. We just get him settled in his seat when he lunges for the door. “Get out of my way, I’m going to puke.”

  In a rush, I practically shove Jake’s head out of the door.

  True to his word, he tosses the Jäger.

  I really should have known better.

  When I turn back, I see Charlotte struggling to open the other door, and then I hear her vomiting too. I shouldn’t have let her drink so much either. The rain has started to fall and the drops hit her one by one. Pulling Jake back in the car, I lean over to her. “Baby, are you okay?”

  She holds a finger up.

  Tentatively, I ask, “What can I do?”

  All she gives me is a shake of her head.

  I hate being helpless.

  Nerves jittering, I wait for her.

  Sighing, she pulls herself back into the car and leans over. She looks sexy as all fuck, but completely exhausted.

  Hating this for her, hating I can’t do anything to help her, I rub her back with slow, small soothing stokes. “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”