by Sara Whitney
Ana reached out to stroke her hair. “Jake?”
Mabel nodded against the table.
“And you’re still determined not to be with him?”
“Yes. No.” She closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of Ana’s fingers moving along her scalp. “I want to. I’m scared.”
Ana kept smoothing her hand over Mabel’s hair. “Too scared to chase your joy? That’s not the Mabel I know.”
Her friend was right. Jake had stripped her bare and, well, stripped her bare. Time to locate her bravery and chase that joy.
Thirty
Jake strutted back into the main room of the bar. Really, that was the only word for it. The memory of the way Mabel had fallen apart in his arms; the taste of her, hot and wet against his tongue; the helpless, blissed-out look on her face; the sounds she made when she came. What man wouldn’t strut a little having caused all that?
Back at his table, he dropped into a chair and inclined his chin at Brandon, who was sitting in the middle of the Brick Babe brigade. Brandon chin-nodded back but didn’t make any comments, lascivious or otherwise. Hopefully that meant he was in the clear and didn’t look too smug for having rounded most of the bases just now with the hottest woman in the bar.
He hadn’t intended to corner her tonight to talk about their relationship, and he definitely hadn’t planned on kissing her, let alone sliding his hands under her skirt to steal all that heat for himself.
It was just that she’d sung that song.
Before that, he’d been enjoying her performance. She was as electric as he remembered from the show in September. He’d been content to sit back and drink in all her magnetism, but of course Brandon just had to speak up.
“Your girlfriend’s good!” he yelled over the Rob Zombie song she was covering.
Thea turned and hit him with a confused glance. “Your girlfriend? I thought she was dating Aiden?”
Jake closed his eyes briefly, praying for strength. “She’s not my—it’s not like that.”
And then Mabel and Dave moved to the edge of the stage and she sang for him. No, she’d sung to him, as if he were the only other person in the room. Her voice had been strong, but the vulnerability on her face and the raw yearning in her tone gutted him. She didn’t move. She didn’t shift her focus away from him. She simply sat on that stool and exposed her soul. And when she was done, she morphed back into rock star Mabel, laughing and waving as if she hadn’t just shown him his own bloody, beating heart.
After the song, he didn’t dare make eye contact with anyone at the table until he felt a gentle touch on his knee. It was Thea.
“Are you telling me that woman up there doesn’t care about you?” Her soft voice was barely audible over Mabel’s final song.
Jake shrugged helplessly.
“Well, it sure seems like she does. Maybe go talk to her?” When he didn’t move right away, Thea tried another tactic. “If you don’t track her down the instant she’s off stage, I’m making a move on you myself.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “For pretty much any other guy, that would be awful motivation,” he said. “Thanks.”
“What a lucky bitch.” Thea shook her head.
So he followed Mabel when she left the main bar area. Then, seeing her alone in that dark office, something inside him snapped, and this time he didn’t pull back from pouring out all his pent-up frustration that she wasn’t with him.
Well. Their relationship was going to change after tonight, and he wasn’t sure if he was more excited or scared to see which way it would go now that he’d finally laid it all out. He’d declared his intentions; the rest was up to her.
Suddenly he couldn’t sit in the bar a minute longer, wallowing in uncertainty. He leaned across the table to make his excuses to Brandon, needing to holler to be heard over the Amy Winehouse song the Moo Daddies were covering.
“I’m heading out, man. See you Monday?”
Brandon, arm around a giggling Babe, leveled a gaze at him. “You two finally working out your issues?”
Jake didn’t even pretend not to understand. “One way or another.”
“Good luck with it.” Brandon offered him a smile, a startlingly real one. “Believe it or not, I’m rooting for you.”
Then he returned his focus to the woman hanging on his arm, leaving Jake to process one more surprise in a week full of them. Shaking his head, he shrugged into his coat, said good night to Thea, and left the bar alone. The ball was in Mabel’s court now. She had his number, after all.
So why hadn’t she texted yet?
Jake bounced from one room in his apartment to the next because he couldn’t settle in one spot. He was too restless, too preoccupied with whether Mabel would tell him to fuck off or ask him to take her out next weekend.
He just hoped she’d tell him soon.
But the minutes dragged by, and his phone stayed silent. He finished a beer and decided against a second one. He did his dishes and was contemplating scrubbing down the kitchen, just to keep his hands busy, when a knock sounded at the door.
His heart leaped. Who else would be showing up at his apartment after midnight? But he didn’t rush to answer, warning himself that it might not be her. It was probably another surprise Milo visit rather than Mabel on his welcome mat.
He opened the door to find Mabel on his welcome mat, one corner of her mouth kicked up in a smile.
“My turn,” she said without preamble, walking over his threshold and kicking the door shut behind her. She wasted no time shucking her coat and pulling her shirt up and over her head, dropping both to the floor.
“I’m not seeing Aiden.” She shimmied out of her tiny skirt. It joined the rest of her clothes. “I’m not seeing anyone. Because all I can think about is you. Every morning, you. Every night, you.”
She was repeating his words from earlier as she unwrapped the stripy scarf from around her neck, and then she was standing in front of him in an ice-blue bra and those hot-as-fuck boots, blond hair slipping over her shoulders. No underwear, of course, because he’d torn them off her eager body a few hours ago. All the blood rushed from Jake’s head straight to his dick. He’d never seen anything hotter in his life than Mabel Bowen standing almost naked in his living room.
“You’re right; I’m tired of fighting it. You’re what I want.”
She pushed him back until he bumped into the living room wall. Her hands, cold from the November night, pushed under his shirt, dragging it up his torso as her fingers skimmed along his skin. He helped her by raising his arms so she could pull it over his head, and she gave a purr of appreciation as she took in his bare chest, trailing a finger over his collarbone and down the ridges of his stomach. Then she dropped to her knees, glanced up at him with a knowing smile, and squeezed his throbbing cock through his jeans.
Nope. This was the hottest thing he’d ever seen: Mabel on her knees in front of him, breasts spilling over the top of her bra, hair wild down her back. And then he stopped thinking entirely because she’d undone his jeans and pushed them low on his hips.
She didn’t tease her way down his stomach or kiss a path up his legs. No, Mabel—his bold, direct Mabel—opened that gorgeous mouth and took in the full, straining length of him, hard and fast and firm.
“Oh fuck, Mabel,” he groaned, reaching forward to twine his fingers through her hair.
He didn’t guide her movements but let her take control as she moved up and down his shaft, sucking and stroking him with her tongue. Fucking finally. After months of imagining this, she was actually here, and it was better than his dirtiest fantasies. She used her hands—warmer now, thank God—to work the base of his cock with a twisting motion as she increased the suction in her eager mouth.
“Fuck, yes. God, that’s good.” He clenched his hands in her silky hair as she hummed her pleasure, and it vibrated along the length of him and straight into his blood as she continued to work. And finally when the heat and the wet and the pressure got to be too much, he g
ritted out, “Mabel. God, Mabel, I’m so close.”
She paused long enough to smile up at him. “Good.” She curled her tongue around the crown of his cock and increased the suction and speed until Jake’s hands fell from her hair and slammed against the wall, his hips bucking forward as his nerves ignited and he came with a shout. Afterward, his limbs trembled and his veins felt hollow, and he let himself slide down the wall, pulling her with him down to the questionably clean carpet.
They ended up on their sides, facing each other, and Mabel gave him a satisfied grin. “Hello, by the way. May I come in?”
He flopped an exhausted arm around her and pulled her closer so he could kiss her, long and soft and sloppy. “Yes, Mabel. Please come in.”
They didn’t stay on the living room floor for long though, because as Jake’s ability to reason returned, he remembered that this hot woman was practically naked and he’d barely touched her.
Tracing one finger along the skin of her right breast where it met the top of her bra, he asked, “Can you give me a single good reason for us not to spend the rest of the night in bed?”
She tipped her head to one side, spilling her golden hair across the carpet. “Do you still work for Lowell?”
He reached for her hair and twined a strand around his finger. “Technically, I work for Black, Phelps, and Suarez.” In Chicago, no less, but he didn’t add that part. This… whatever they were doing… was too early to be worrying about that wrinkle. Then he saw the look she leveled at him and said, “But yes, Lowell is one of my clients.”
She nodded and flicked her hair out of his grasp. “And do I still work for WNCB?”
“You do,” he said. “You’re burning up the airwaves on the afternoon drive.” His fingers moved down the slope of her left breast now, and he savored the warmth of her skin through the thin material.
Her breath started coming more quickly. “And do you still sit in your office, looking at numbers that impact my job?”
He ran his palm over her bare hip now, marveling at the softness of her skin. “At this particular moment the only numbers that matter are you and me.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she said with a bemused shake of her head.
“Come to bed with me, Mabel,” he whispered. “Please.”
And then he held his breath, hoping to God she’d say yes.
Thirty-One
Mabel was starting to feel a little self-conscious. She’d barged into Jake’s apartment, stripped, gotten him off, and was now basically naked on the floor. And they still had some things to discuss.
“I’ll come to bed with you, but there’s going to be some talking first.”
Jake’s eyes were heavy lidded as he studied her, a small smile playing across his mouth. “Fine by me. I could listen to you talk all night.”
She nodded and sat up, trying to look as businesslike as the situation would allow.
“First things first: no distractions.” She reached for his discarded T-shirt and shrugged into it. It was too big, but the cotton was soft, and it smelled like him. She wanted to hold it to her nose and give a cartoonishly huge inhale, but she restrained herself.
Next, she twisted around to unzip her left boot, then her right one, wriggling out of them as if she were a snake shedding its skin.
“Oh, thank God,” she groaned, stripping off the thin socks she wore underneath, then flexing her feet and wiggling her toes, trying to get the blood flowing again.
Jake, who’d shucked his jeans and was now seated with his back against the wall, had one ankle crossed over the other and looked perfectly at home lounging in nothing but boxer briefs. “Beauty is pain?”
“When I wear those, yes.” She leaped to her feet and reached for his hands to pull him up. “Take me to your bedroom?”
He rolled to his feet, smooth as a jungle cat, and grinned down at her. “Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of hearing you say that?”
The idea that he’d imagined it made pleasure curl through her belly, and she followed eagerly when he grabbed her hand and pulled her down the tiny hallway to his room. He skipped the overhead lights, instead flipping on the bedside lamp. It cast a mellow amber glow around the room.
“Wow,” Mabel said, turning in a circle. “You sure you’re not a serial killer? This is really… stark.”
The room was immaculate, the bed crisply made, the nightstand clutter-free, with no stray socks or discarded undershirts in sight. There were also no pictures on the walls and no personal items on top of the nightstand or the bureau. It might as well have been a hotel room.
Jake stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. “I’m a man of simple tastes.”
Mabel gestured to his closet. “If I opened this right now, would everything be disgustingly organized?”
Jake swept his arm toward the mirrored doors. “Keep in mind that you’ve just sprung an unannounced audit on me, but go ahead.”
Too curious not to, Mabel slid them open and saw, as she suspected, a neat line of suits carefully positioned on hangers alongside a row of starchy dress shirts.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You have a special hanger for your ties?”
“Oh, that’s nothing; the rest of my collection’s back home.”
Mabel resolutely ignored the reminder that Jake’s actual home was in Chicago and joined him on the bed, rolling to her side and propping her head on her hand. Jake in nothing but underwear was spectacular, and she took her time studying the slopes and dips of his arms, his chest, his abs. He had that abdominal V pointing to his groin that she’d never actually seen in the wild before this. “The time you spend at the gym is so worth it.”
“If you like it, then it’s worth it,” he replied, rolling to face her. “Time for talking now?”
She looked down at where she was tracing a pattern on his comforter with her index finger. “I need you to understand that I was never dating Aiden. Never even interested in him like that.”
Jake laid his hand over hers, stilling her restless movements. “The night of the Brick Babe auditions—”
She cut him off, embarrassed to admit this part. “I… may not have vetoed the idea of making you a tiny bit jealous that night.” She was startled to feel a growl rumble through his chest, and she bit her lip to hide her pleasure at his reaction. “But it’s only been you since the week you pulled me up from the gross old greenroom couch and then jumped the station van.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Poor Murdoch.” He shook his head in mock pity. “If only he wasn’t such an ugly bastard, maybe he’d have stood a chance.”
Mabel gave his shoulder a little shove, remembering her own distress over Thea. “You’re not off the hook here. Why were every one of my replacement’s limbs wrapped around you Tuesday at the station?”
“I can’t believe you saw that.” Jake groaned and mashed his face into the comforter, which did a world of good at dissolving the ugly knot of jealousy lodged in her chest. “She was excited because you taught her to run the boards, and I guess that manifested itself as an enthusiastic hug. If you’d watched for another two seconds, you’d have seen me take three big steps back. I promise you, I’m not interested in Thea like that.”
Then his smile fell, replaced by a creased-brow expression that she usually only saw when he was contemplating long rows of numbers. “Something you should know about me.” He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “This”—he gestured between the two of them—“doesn’t happen for me often.”
Her own smile slipped as his serious tone sank in. “What do you mean?”
His shoulders tensed. “I mean sex. I need an emotional connection with someone before I take them to bed.” He held up a hand as if he anticipated the question forming in her mind. “And not in some old-fashioned courtship wait-until-marriage way. I mean that sexual attraction just doesn’t happen for me if I don’t feel strongly about someone.”
She blinked, frowned, processed. “Emotions fir
st, then sex?”
“Yeah. Demisexual, if you’re trying to come up with the word. I had one serious girlfriend just after college, and one friend who sparked something for me that I didn’t pursue, but hookups and casual relationships aren’t my thing.” He rolled to his back, a trace of bitterness creeping into his voice. “It’s what makes me such a good corporate drone actually. I rarely have the time or opportunity to get to know anybody well enough to see if those feelings develop. So I work long hours and weekends without complaint. Until you.”
He turned his head to flash a small, secret smile at her, and she struggled to wrap her arms around the tiny miracle that she’d been the person who drew those feelings to the surface for him. The new information joined the Jake-puzzle she’d been assembling in her brain and her heart over the past few months, and this piece fit right in the center, filling some gaps. But she still required a bit more clarification.
“So sex for you is…?” Uncertainty colored her voice, but God, everything he’d done tonight had turned her on and made her want him more. What if she couldn’t return the favor for him in the same way?
“It depends. If the person isn’t right?” He shrugged. “I can take or leave it. It’s not something I need.”
“And with the right person?”
“With the right person, I love sex.” He smoothed his palm down her waist with a wicked smile. “Fucking love it.”
Has hand was heavy on her leg, and her breath was heavy in her lungs. She was scared to ask the next bit, but she had to. “And—”
“And you’re the right person.” His eyes scorched her, and his fingers clamped down possessively on her hip. “You may be the rightest person I’ve ever met. You’re perfect for me here.” He pressed his hand to his forehead, then moved it downward, pausing briefly over his heart before it landed on his groin. “And here. And now I need to make up for lost time.”