by Lana Sky
It seemed like a million years since I had kissed someone last, but even a heavy make-out session had felt nothing like this.
Jason didn’t peck, or tongue, or whatever other crude slang could describe a kiss.
He…touched. Felt. Explored. When his lips met mine, it was as if he was claiming more than just my mouth. Parts of me, buried deep down, flinched as if he had picked them up, carefully observed each one, and then set them aside again.
I inhaled, breathing in his heady flavor and felt something in me hum in appreciation at the way his weight felt nestled against me.
Perfect.
Final.
Right.
I tilted my head back, plunging my tongue against the seam of his mouth before I could lose the nerve. Did he taste the same way he smelled?
Yes.
Rich. Decadent. Wild and untamed. Sweet and spicy at the same time. He was a million, billion contradictions rolled into one indescribable package. A grunt ripped from his chest as my tongue probed his. His grip became a vice, nails possessively cinching my skin beneath my sweater.
Tendrils of heat coiled through my veins, blotting out all thought. All sense. For a moment, I forgot that I was Abby Newman and I relished taking control. All that mattered was feeling. Living. Tasting.
Jason Daniels was everything…and I wanted to be greedy.
I ignored the part of me horrified by the impulse and slanted my mouth, relishing his taste over my tongue.
One of his hands left my waist and raked through my hair, seizing a handful of it and using it to anchor me in place as his mouth resettled over mine. Harder. Faster. Hungrier. A tongue barreled into my mouth. Teeth snagged my lower lip and tugged.
Playtime was over. This was real. Harsh. A grapple for control, and I was losing—badly.
I could only counter the loss of leverage by grinding my body against his, loving the way his breaths grew ragged, and how the kiss became less and less coherent with every brush of my breasts against his chest. Every slide of my hip along his thigh.
Suddenly, he drew back, eyes latching onto mine before I could think to look away.
“Abigail…” My stomach clenched at the way he said my name. His voice was husky and rough, with his baritone catching over the syllables and dragging them out.
His fingers disentangled from my hair, sliding down to my cheek, and suddenly I knew that this was something more than a random kiss. Something that shouldn’t unfold in the middle of the goddamn sidewalk.
I gasped for air as Jason’s grip edged around to my ass, cupping firmly in a way that was so not gentlemanly—and made me only crave more.
I tried to pull away, but he was too heavy. Too strong. Too warm. I could feel a part of me slipping away, surrendering to his masculine presence. It had been so damn long since I’d been this close to a man…
So damn long since I’d felt this needy ache pulsing between my legs, only growing with every beat of my heart and brush of Jason’s breath against my skin.
Once again, he had taken everything, and I was left with nothing more than a desperate need to regain control. To do something…before he swallowed me whole.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I unhooked one hand from his shirt, formed a fist…
And punched Jason Daniels in the face.
Chapter 7
Jason withdrew, leaving me to stay upright on jellied knees. I had to brace one hand against the side of what appeared to be a deli just to keep from sinking down to the pavement.
People were watching us.
A man in a suit kept glancing from me, to Jason, and back.
I should have felt scandalized, I supposed. Insulted. But I couldn’t even muster the strength to feel anything but confusion.
A red flush was quickly spreading over the side of Jason’s face, though he didn’t even have the decency to wince as his fingers grazed his jawline before returning to his side. Instead, a casual, almost playful smile crossed his mouth.
Just like that, the man I’d met at the concert was back.
Without a word, he turned away from me. His truck was parked only a few feet away, and he inclined his head towards it before crossing over to open the passenger-side door. Then, he glanced back at me from over his shoulder.
“After you, Ms. Newman.”
I stared at him for what had to be five solid minutes before I caught sight of two old women watching us with disapproval from across the street. Unwilling to cause an even bigger scene, I scrambled forward and climbed weakly onto the seat.
I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. My lips were on fire, and when Jason circled around to the driver’s side, my gaze darted right to the center of his jeans, gauging if he was as affected as I was.
He moved too quickly. Within seconds, he had taken the wheel and pulled away from the curb.
“I’ll arrange a meeting to discuss the album,” he said after a moment. I had no idea how he managed to sound so steady. So in control. “Is tomorrow too soon?”
My mouth felt swollen and tender from the force of his kiss. It took everything I had in me to face forward, dig my nails into the car’s upholstery, and choke out a reply.
“Um…sure…I’ll call Bret to schedule it.”
I would rather die than let him know just how in danger of losing control I really was.
Again.
He made no mention of what had happened outside of the café. No explanation for his mood only minutes earlier. I got nothing from him by the time he pulled up outside of my apartment.
I supposed that I could have played pretend, like he seemed to be, and exit the truck without mentioning anything of our meeting. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t have a “tact” bone in my body.
“What the hell was that about?” I demanded, forcing myself to finally meet his gaze, though I regretted it almost instantly. Damn, his eyes were on fire—a molten, deep shade of blue that conjured images of the ocean. “Why did you…what the hell is your game?”
Jason smiled. The sight took my breath away, leaving me vulnerable to the full effects of his voice. “Just what do you mean?”
“Don’t play games with me,” I snapped, smothering the shiver that raced down my spine. “First, you send a CD to my apartment—one you swore that I wouldn’t hear a peep of unless I agreed to represent you. Then you drag me out to a café, where you brood for five minutes before kissing me in broad daylight—by the way, thank you for that front-page spread if some asshole photographer snapped a picture.”
He didn’t even have the decency to look alarmed. Or chastised. Or…guilty.
His expression was utterly calm, devoid of anything but a disarming half-smile.
“Hmmm.” I nearly choked at the sound that rumbled up from his chest. “I think you’re mistaken, Ms. Newman. After all, our relationship is strictly business.”
Oh, I thought weakly, lacing my fingers together tightly in my lap. So he wanted to play it that way. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful by his sudden “memory lapse” or irritated that, once again, he was calling the shots.
I felt tempted to challenge his façade. I bit my lower lip, drawing his attention to my mouth, and felt oddly triumphant when his eyes narrowed.
“Business,” I agreed, before he could respond. “Which brings me to the reason why I accepted your proposal in the first place…” The lyrics of his song crossed my mind, edging out the memory of everything else for a brief moment. “The one with the verse, ‘straight to the vein, sink into a place where I don’t know pain’—it’s…it’s about addiction, isn’t it?”
I didn’t realize, until a humming sensation rumbled through my chest, that I had been holding my breath in anticipation of his answer. It was such a personal, dangerous question.
The kind of nosy prying that I would kick someone in the face for asking me.
But I had to know.
Jason’s expression wavered for the briefest moment.
Then he nodded.
/> “I had a feeling that, out of everyone, you would pick up on that little detail.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I croaked.
“It means that you don’t just hear pretty music when you listen to a song,” Jason explained as if it was obvious. “You listen. You hear the lyrics. I could see it on your face the other night.”
A part of me shivered at the heat in his tone. I wondered just how much of me he had seen and what he thought of me.
But that wasn’t important at the moment.
“You were an addict?”
He didn’t answer me right away. His eyes drifted across my face to stare through the windshield, watching the afternoon traffic sluggishly churn by.
“I was,” he said finally. “Though, I don’t think it’s possible for a human to ever stop being addicted to something. Whether it’s drugs. Alcohol. Music. Something.”
I found myself nodding along. Everyone had their own special brand of poison, I supposed.
I had my work, Perry had his exercise, my father had his desperate schemes to make money, and my mother had her own vices.
I wondered what Jason’s was.
“Drugs?” I blurted, horrified by my own rudeness.
“Once,” Jason admitted with a firm nod rather than take offense. “Among other things…”
Oh? That definitely was at odds with his perfect, angelic image.
I wanted to ask almost as much as I didn’t want to hear his answer. He was too…honest, and honesty was so far out of my comfort zone. I rarely held conversations with men that extended beyond crude explanations of sexual preferences. In fact, I rarely had “conversations” with the opposite sex, period.
“What about you?” He asked, before I had the chance. “Something tells me that you, Ms. Newman, might have more than a few skeletons in your closet.”
I wanted to take offense to the bluntness in his tone, but I couldn’t. Instead, I stole a page from his book and tried a little honesty myself—at least then, we seemed to be on even footing.
“My mother was addicted to cocaine.”
It was way harder saying the words out loud than I would have ever thought. I hated the harsh note in my voice. The ache in my throat. “Is addicted,” I corrected hoarsely. “Among a hell of a lot of other things…”
“That had to be rough,” Jason said, and I hated him for responding.
I narrowed my eyes at him before turning away, hoping that my unwillingness to elaborate would be his cue to be like everyone else and just let it go. Unfortunately, I was learning that one Jason Daniels was not like everyone else.
“Both my parents were addicts,” he said.
The brutal honesty was as shocking to me as a baseball bat to the head. Or maybe a punch to the face.
“I…I would have thought that you’d grown up on a farm somewhere in Georgia with a pet horse named ‘Beau,’” I croaked once I found my voice again.
He laughed, and it irritated me just how comforting I found the sound to be. It alleviated some of the tension. I could breathe again.
At least until he met my confused stare, eyes sparkling with that familiar playful gleam. “Foster families are a wonderful thing,” he said. “Though my farm was in Idaho. Near Coeur D’Alene, to be exact. And by the way, the horse was called ‘Brownie.’”
“Idaho?” I tasted the name over my tongue. “But your accent is Southern.”
“Both my parents were born and raised in Georgia. I lived there until I was nine. One day, we took a mobile home out west and just kept going.”
“And your foster family?”
He shrugged. “The Daniels’ took me in when I was seventeen.”
From what little I knew about the foster-care system, that was pretty old. The fact that he must have changed his name stuck out to me.
“They adopted you?”
He nodded. “Treated me like I’m one of their own. Now what about you?” He jerked his head in my direction. “Where did you grow up?”
I weighed my words carefully. “Upstate New York.”
It technically wasn’t a lie. I had grown up near Syracuse. Went to S.U. Moved to the city when I graduated.
The same story I told everyone.
It was such a minor detail that I was surprised when Jason shook his head.
“Not-uh. You’re not from the North,” he declared. “You may have grown up here, but you’re from somewhere else.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
The corner of his mouth quirked, and he pointed through the windshield to the cafe.
“You may sound like a New York girl, but just then, when you were hollerin’ after me, I heard a twang in your voice. You’re not from around here.”
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammered.
My cheeks were on fire. Caught, a part of me whispered.
I had spent the better part of the past few years trying to rein in my accent, but sometimes the damned thing slipped out before I could help it. Perry liked to call it my “trailer trash moments.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Jason said softly, picking up on the way I tensed.
“You didn’t,” I snapped, hating his caring side more than I did the aggressive part of him that seemed to love pushing me off balance. “If you must know, I was born in Kentucky. Happy?”
“When did your family move to New York?” he asked, yet another uncomfortably personal question.
“‘We’ didn’t…I was dumped on my grandmother’s doorstep after my mother abandoned me and my father got sent to prison.”
It was only when I fell silent that I realized Jason was the first person in years I had said those words to.
The fact made me feel vulnerable. Exposed.
I didn’t like talking about myself. I didn’t like giving any bit of leverage to another person that might be used against me.
It blew my mind that, once again, Jason had managed to wiggle his way past my defenses with very little effort on his part.
Damn.
“I have to go.” I scrambled for the door and managed to push it open.
“Abigail, wait—”
“T-Tomorrow,” I blurted, climbing onto the curb before he could stop me. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk business.”
I couldn’t make it to my building fast enough. I barreled through the lobby, racing for the elevators. Only when I was safely inside one did I reach up to trail a finger along my lips. Whether to remember the feel of Jason there or to wonder what the hell had made me open up to him, I had no idea.
At nine a.m. on the dot, I strolled into the office with Bret at my heels. By a cruel twist of fate, we had managed to share the same cab to work, and he’d berated me with questions the entire ride.
What did Jason want?
Are you representing him?
Do I have to fire you this very second?
I was already exhausted by the time we finally reached METRO—and it didn’t help at all that a certain country crooner and his red-headed assistant were already waiting for us in the lobby while frantic Bridget raced around fetching coffee.
Jason wore a crisp white shirt with another starched collar. His pants were a sleek navy, and the contrast of them against the color of his eyes was almost painfully intense. Beside him, Dixie sat wearing a modest black dress. Her curls had been arranged into a neat bun, and her hands were folded primly on her lap. She smiled at me.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Ms. Newman,” Jason echoed while rising to his feet. He stuck out a calloused hand, his mouth forming a wary grin. There was no hint that he was embarrassed by or regretted our conversation yesterday.
It was like the bastard had nerves of steel.
I, on the other hand, was still shaken—by my own slip-up and his revelations. Looking at him, it was hard to believe that any of it was true. I had seen firsthand what addiction could do to someone.
Hell, I was the result of one alcohol-fu
eled, cocaine-driven screw up. The shackles of someone else’s obsession with drugs had weighed me down since childhood.
And yet here Jason was—Mr. Perfection and smooth charm. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at him. It was only when Bret’s hand fell over my shoulder and he shoved me out of the way that I realized Jason still had his hand outstretched.
“Bret Donovan,” Bret announced in his booming voice, causing poor Bridget to jump and spill two mugs of coffee all over herself and the floor. “Welcome to the METRO agency. I hope that Abigail has been nothing but welcoming—” I ignored the doubtful glare he shot me and circled around to help Bridget while he continued with his spiel: we’re the best in the business, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I was painfully aware of a pair of eyes on the back of my neck as I headed into the alcove where we kept the coffee maker. If a certain country boy couldn’t keep his eyes off of me, I had a little suspicion as to why. Yesterday had been a fluke, and I was back in my normal attire—though, I may have overcompensated just a tiny bit.
My skirt was about two inches away from being nothing more than an oversized belt, and my ruby red shirt hugged the contours of my bra, leaving little to the imagination.
At least now I felt powerful—a knight in full, impenetrable armor.
Yeah. Powerful.
My fingers shook as I snagged a handful of napkins from the counter and headed back into the lobby. I faced the wall opposite of the other three and bent down without shame to help Bridget, who was frantically mopping up coffee with the sleeve edge of her cream sweater. If I wasn’t mistaken, a sharp intake of air caught on the silence. Though, it could have just been Bret inhaling in preparation of his next tirade.
“Abby, get over here!”
I rolled my eyes as I tossed my wet napkin in the trash and rejoined the group, which had moved to the hallway that led to the back offices.
I ignored Jason—not because I was intimidated by what I might find in his gaze, because I so wasn’t—and settled on Bret who was wearing his sleazy, used-car-salesman smile.