What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 3)

by Lauren Hawkeye

  “Nice one. Now let me show you how a man does it.” Brandis tossed the ball up from half court, getting nothing but net.

  “Fuck you,” Jack muttered, grabbing the ball and heaving to the other end, making his own string music.

  Brandis whistled, and the next few minutes they gave up actually playing and instead just had a one-upmanship session, seeing how far they could hurl the ball and still hit the basket. Jack won, which was fair since Brandis had schooled him the last time.

  After an hour they sat on the grass, breathing heavily, gulping water, the silence between them comfortable until Brandis opened his fool mouth about the girl again.

  “So… you get in those panties yet?” He shot Jack a sidelong glance.

  “None of your business.” Jack lay back on the grass, trying hard not to think about her and her skin, hair, lips, the heft of her breast in his hand, the sensation of the hard peak of her nipple in his mouth. “Fuck.” He rolled onto his side, embarrassed at the way his body kept reacting.

  “I didn’t think so. You still harboring a cherry, aren’t you, big talker?”

  Jack ignored him.

  “We gotta fix that,” Brandis said, slapping his hip.

  “Gonna start working for my old man.” Jack hoped to take the conversation off its current track. “Saturday. At a job site.” He got to his feet, nervous energy increasing his need to move around.

  “Huh,” Brandis said. “Sounds…interesting.”

  “It will be fine. I won’t work with him exactly. Just for the company. Make my own damn money for a change. That’s good. I guess.”

  “So…that means you get to see the secretary?” Brandis raised an eyebrow at him.

  Jack felt his face flush. He’d told Brandis about catching his father fucking the girl in the office that day. Now he sort of regretted it—wished he’d kept it for himself, to remember and masturbate to as much as he wanted. “No, I mean. She isn’t on the job sites, I guess.”

  But he didn’t really know. The thought of being in her space made his stupid, rookie dick hard all over again.

  That night, after eating a meal his grandma had cooked for them earlier in the week, he looked at his father. The man sat, beer in hand, staring at the tube.

  “Dad,” he said, hating how weak his voice sounded. Absolutely, completely despising how much he needed someone to guide him, to advise him. But needing it enough he was forced to reach out to this asshole for it.

  “Huh,” the man grunted without looking at him.

  “Will I need to, um, come in to the office first Saturday? I mean, fill out paperwork or something before going to the, uh, job site?”

  His old man shot him a look full of understanding. A smile spread over his face, startling Jack and making him uncomfortable. Then he looked away, sipping beer and glaring at the TV again. “I know you were there. I know what you saw, you pervert.”

  Jack blinked, his heart thudding his chest. His mouth was instantly bone dry. “Um, what?” But he knew, and he hated the old bastard even more for being such a shithead about it. Calling him the pervert for watching? Jesus, he wasn’t the one who’d been married for god’s sake, making the secretary fuck him on a Sunday in the dark office.

  “Oh Jackie boy. You have a lot to learn. But it’s okay. She is a sweet piece of tail. You’d have to be blind or a homo not to want to see her again.”

  Jack stood, unwilling to hear any more bullshit fall from his father’s lips.

  “No, no, sit, listen. I’ll tell you what you want to hear. You’re probably whacking off five or six times a day. I’ve been there, I get it.”

  Jack’s cheeks flushed. His fingers curled into fists as fury made his vision dim. God, he wanted to pound the fucker’s face again.

  “Women,” he said, still keeping his gaze trained on the television, “are good for three things.” A silence descended. Jack ground his jaw, determined not to be the good pupil and ask the obvious question in the room. The man turned slowly and stared at him.

  Jack kept his face neutral, raised an eyebrow as if to ask “Oh? And what is that, wise father?”

  The man pointed the beer bottle at him. “Cleaning. Cooking. Fucking. In that order. Don’t try and make them any more than that, my boy.” He gulped back the last of the bottle and pondered it as if it held the secrets of the universe. “That is where I went wrong.”

  Jack’s rage forced him forward. “Don’t talk about my mother,” he ground out, wishing he had killed the man when given the chance.

  John Gordon seemed to startle out of a daze, then he looked at Jack who stood looming over him. “Oh back off, boy. Don’t be so dramatic. Emotion is something you have to keep under control. All the time, especially when it comes to women. Let them be emotional, but keep yours,” he put a finger on Jack’s chest, “in here.”

  Jack stepped away out of his reach, unwilling to feel the man’s touch anywhere on his body. His father shrugged, held up three fingers. “Cleaning. Cooking. Fucking. Save the conversation for your friends at the titty bar. Now go make yourself useful and get me another beer.”

  Jack blinked, unsure if the bizarre conversation was ending. His father narrowed his eyes at him and belched, then spoke again. “Don’t you have homework or something?”

  In a daze, still trying to absorb how utterly fucked up his life was, Jack got the beer, opened it, and hawked a huge wad of spit into it before walking back into the TV room and handing it over. “Thanks, Dad. Great advice. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Keep your dirty boy paws off Mindy.”

  Jack stopped, turned, and stared at his father.

  “I mean it, you little shit. She’s mine. Mindy, the office girl—don’t go near her.”

  Jack shook his head, walked out, and thought for the millionth time that he would be lucky to escape his teen years not a virgin or not in jail for patricide.

  Chapter Three

  Every single muscle and molecule of Jack’s body ached when he moved even the slightest bit. Both of his thumbs were black and bruised and one was sans a fingernail. His chapped hands were raw and full of splinters. No matter how many times he washed his hair it still felt full of drywall dust. His eyes were gritty from it.

  For the last six weeks, he had spent entire weekends and three afternoons a week learning just how much he didn’t know about the basics of building a house. The crew reveled in his ignorance. Went out of their way to encourage his fuck-ups. Threatened every day to “tell Daddy.”

  Until two days ago when he’d snapped, put his fist through a perfectly good piece of freshly hung, mudded, and sanded drywall right before flattening the worst of the assholes on the job site with the same dust-covered knuckles. They’d backed off after that, giving him a small measure of grudging respect.

  True to his word, John Gordon paid him the going hourly wage and Jack’s bank account was swollen with cash. But he didn’t spend it. He resisted the urge to take Laura or any other girl out on a real date as he got his feet under him and established himself as not the pussy kid whose father was their shithead boss.

  He felt good about going to the job site for the first time since he started, but goddamn, he was sore. He rolled onto his back, noting he’d managed to nap for an hour. He still needed to get to the office and grab his latest paycheck before heading out to a party.

  He half stumbled, half crawled to the bathroom for a shower, emerged, dressed, and stopped in the doorway of his sister’s room. She was engrossed in a book as usual, twirling a strand of her long, black hair around her finger, focused and ignoring the world around her.

  “Hey Mo-ster.”

  She looked up, smiled, and ran into his arms. Taking a deep breath of her, he smiled, then tossed her back on her bed. “Going out tonight. You okay?”

  She nodded, rolling her eyes, an affectation that bugged him but one he figured he was stuck with. “Daddy said he would be home by five.” Jack took a breath, nearly ready to stay home. “I’m fine. Go on. I’m ju
st going to read all night.”

  He hesitated, glanced at his watch. “Go on, Jack. Seriously. I’ll call Grandma if Daddy’s late again.”

  “All right. But we’ll pick up the Monopoly game tomorrow morning. I’m still winning, I think.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, rolled to her side, and reopened the book. Jack smiled, grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter, and headed out, his mind only half on the stop before the party. The party where he had every intention of moving the lovely Laura beyond her half-hearted protests and getting right into her panties, leaving his annoying virginity behind. He had condoms already tucked into his wallet in preparation.

  He shifted in his seat as his eager body rose to the occasion a little early, but the pleasant pain of the zipper’s bite ramped up his libido in a perverse way. He drove downtown to the Keystone Construction building, parked, and used his key at the back entry.

  He whistled as he climbed the steps up to the top floor of the five-story structure and entered the main complex of offices where his father presided, along with the financial manager. They had a nicely outfitted conference room with a large window overlooking downtown Ann Arbor, used to impress high-end clients.

  A small kitchenette was at the back next to the copy room. There was a beat-up table, four butt-sprung chairs, a sink, coffeemaker that rarely got a break, and a full-size fridge.

  Jack stopped, catching a whiff of something out of place. He shook his head and kept walking toward the cubbyhole of mail slots, each with an employee name taped to it. Just as he was reaching for the one thing in his, an envelope with his latest paycheck, he stopped, picking up the distinct sound of female unhappiness. A sniffle, soft sob, a sigh, coming from the reception area to the left of the mail cubbies.

  Keystone employed three women. There was the lovely Mindy, his father’s personal secretary and who Jack assumed was angling for stepmotherhood. Karen was the accountant—a large, scary lady with a booming laugh who dressed as if she was headed to a job site most days. And then there was Yvonne, an imposing woman who did the bulk of the administrative work including serving as a sort of command-and-control for all the job sites, never without her walkie-talkie at her hip.

  Yvonne was forty-something, divorced, bossy, and probably the hardest worker in the damn place. Jack supposed it must be her crying. He had heard her ex-husband had lost his job and couldn’t pay child support anymore so she and her three kids were strapped for cash.

  He considered sneaking back out, figuring she hadn’t heard anyone come in or she wouldn’t still be blubbering away in there. Then he shook his head at himself. He had a soft spot for female tears, having experienced so many of them from his mother and sister.

  He crept around the corner, determined to just give a quick reassurance and bolt, unwilling to derail his plans for the night. The vision he saw there made his heart stop then kick-start itself into a double time rhythm.

  Mindy was sitting at her typewriter, hands in her lap, shoulders shaking. Jack tried like a trooper not to notice that she appeared dressed to go out dancing or something equally fancy. The small black slip of silk stopped higher than mid-thigh, one thin strap had slid off her shoulder, and her feet were encased in mile-high, shiny black leather.

  He groaned and willed his body not to react like a teenager’s with little success. The closer he got the more he saw of her—the high swell of her breasts, the firm line of her neck, the bare perfection of her arms. Giving himself a mental shake, he reached out and lightly touched one shoulder.

  Her long, blonde hair was gathered up in a sexy tumble on her head, with tendrils falling around her face.

  “Hey,” he croaked out.

  “Oh my God!” the woman shrieked and leaped to her feet, stumbling when the wheeled chair slid out from under her, and nearly going flat on her ass. Jack grabbed her arm and got a full nose of her then—the perfume he’d smelled earlier and a hint of something deeper, spicier, that brought to mind sweaty skin-to-skin contact and the sweet grip of a woman’s body around his.

  Not that he knew how that felt exactly, but all of a sudden he had a hint and it hit him right in the libido, making him bite back a groan. He grimaced, tried to focus, recalling his father’s firm words about “dirty boy hands off Mindy.”

  “Jackie,” she gasped, righting herself with a hiccup.

  Jack stared at her a minute, dumbfounded and completely paralyzed with gut-churning lust. “You’re drunk,” he said.

  “No, no, I’m…I just, oh shit.” She pulled out of his grip and flopped back in the rolling chair, turning to face him and crossing her legs so he got the perfect view of her long, lean, tanned upper thighs. He sucked in a breath.

  “Okay, well, I gotta go.” He started walking backward, unable to rip his gaze from her calves, getting his feet tangled up in each other and a small wastepaper basket in the process. He sat, hard, biting his tongue as his whole body flushed red.

  She laughed, a sort of wind chimes, singing sound that made his ears burn and his dick even harder if that were possible. She stayed seated, watching him as he got to his feet, keeping his back to her.

  “Your father is an ass,” she mumbled.

  Jack tried and failed to choke back bitter laughter.

  “Yeah, the sooner you figure that out, the better.” He pretended to fiddle with some paperwork, never more aware of how many blood vessels there were in his penis. “Like I said, Mindy, I’ve got to go.”

  He started to move out of the receptionist’s space, needing to get away from there, away from her, at the same time wanting nothing more than to bury his face between her legs. He shook his head. He’d never actually been there either, but at that precise moment it was what he wanted to do so badly he could smell her from across the room, practically taste her on his lips.

  He shuddered then jumped when he realized she was right next to him, with her hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” Her lips were at his ear, too close, too familiar.

  He stepped away, cursing himself for being such a fucking rookie. His knees shook, and he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He started walking away, unwilling to admit what was happening right in front of him. Every nerve ending he possessed was alert, on fire, right at the surface of his skin.

  He wanted to fuck. Now. And he wanted to fuck this woman who was undoubtedly so close to him that if he turned he’d bump right into her tits. He closed his eyes, sent up a prayer of forgiveness and turned, slowly, coming face to face with unadulterated, horny female.

  Jack Gordon smiled, put one hand on the wall beside her head. Her skin emanated heat and his flesh responded in kind. “What do you want from me, Mindy? Proof that the son is not the same as the father?”

  “No,” she said, putting one hand alongside his rough cheek. Her lips were centimeters from his. The pink tip of her tongue darted out, mesmerizing him as she slid his zipper down, licking her lips. “I know the son is better than the father already. Although,” she smiled and every nerve ending he possessed zinged to life, “I think the son has a little bit to learn.” She sighed, palming his poor, aching cock. “And I’m a good teacher.”

  He leaned close, touched his mouth to hers, slipped his tongue between her rich, full lips and lost himself for the first time to the soft, sweet and very pleasant flesh of a woman.

  Chapter Four

  “This is….” He ripped himself away, trying to gather his forces, to keep from taking this step with, of all people, his father’s secretary-slash-girlfriend. Groaning but unable to say a word as she unbuttoned his shirt, he kept his hands on the wall, let her continue her pleasant path. “Mindy,” he whispered. “We can’t.”

  “Oh, but we can. We are. We will. Jackie,” she sighed into his lips, molded her lush body against his now bare torso. “I’ve wanted you for such a long time.” She nipped at his lower lip. “Now, take your hands off the wall.”

  She kissed him again, slipping her tongue between his
lips, filling his mouth with the most amazing sensations before stopping, smiling. “Put your hands on me. I know you want to.” She stepped into him, forcing him to move back, before putting her hand down his underwear and grabbing his painfully stiff shaft. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  He followed her. What were the options really? She had him literally by the dick. She giggled, pushed open the conference room door. Then let go of him long enough to tug the blinds closed and turn to him in the now mostly dark room. He smelled her, heard her, and tasted her still. “Mindy,” he whispered.

  “Shh….” She put her fingers on his mouth. “No talking right now.”

  She pulled him close again, as she leaned against the large table. He plundered her mouth, diving deep, exploring every corner of it, unable to hold back his moans of pleasure. His brain burned, his ears roared, and every need he’d ever felt was centered right at the tip of his cock. Unable to catch a decent breath, he had his hands all over her, yanking at her dress, pulling down the other strap.

  “Hold on. Slow down. Sweet Jackie…go…slower. Kiss me like this.” She put her lips to his, probed gently at first, then threaded her fingers in his hair as she increased her mouth’s pressure a little at a time. She drew back, leaving him with a soft bite to this lower lip. “See? Like that. Not like you’re drowning but like you’re swimming, coasting, enjoying yourself. Not desperate. Girls don’t like a guy to seem desperate…trust me.”

  She took his hand, drew it down to the warmth between her legs. “Now touch me here, slowly, slowly, but firm. Mmm…hmm…yes…right there, that’s it. Brush it with your fingertip…baby. Do you feel it? Under your finger?” She angled her hips into him as he pressed his thumb to her flesh, teasing as she said then getting serious, stroking it with the sort of pressure that was making her squirm and sigh and fill his nose with her lusty odor.