Jacked - The Complete Series Box Set (A Lumberjack Neighbor Romance)

by Claire Adams

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” I snap. “He’s got some tattoos and he says ‘fuck’ sometimes, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to pull me under and ruin my life.”

  We’re both a little surprised at my use of the word, but it’s out, and I can’t put it back in.

  “Well, it’s good to know I’m doing the right thing,” he says. “If I ever catch that boy on my property again, I’ll have him arrested for trespassing.”

  “I wouldn’t be too worried about it,” I rejoin. “I’m probably not going to be around much after today, anyway.”

  And, with that, I turn and walk out.

  Every step I take, I’m expecting my dad to stop me, but he never does. He doesn’t even say anything.

  I know I hurt him, but I’m done feeling sorry for him. He’s a grown man. He’s a father; my father.

  It’s only after I’m a few blocks from my house that I pull out my phone and give Abs a call.

  “Sup, Mia?” Abs answers.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says. “What’s up? You sound upset.”

  “Me and my dad kind of had a fight,” I tell her. “Would you mind if I stay over at your place tonight?”

  Abs doesn’t answer.

  “Abs?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Come on over. The place is a mess as usual, but we can fix the couch up for you. What happened?”

  “Would you mind if we talk about it in person?” I ask. “If I don’t have a few minutes just to breathe, I’m probably going to start yelling or crying or throwing things, and I’d rather not do that.”

  “All right,” she says. “See you when you get here.”

  Good old Abby. She can be a bit of a handful, and to be honest, I don’t really like being around her longer than a few hours at a time, but she’s always come through for me when I’ve really needed it.

  Abs doesn’t live with her parents, but moving in with her isn’t exactly the best option, either. Along with her brother, who rents the other room from her and is in and out with the kind of people my dad really should be worried about, Abby is also an avid collector of cats.

  I’m not allergic or anything, but I don’t want to live with something called a glaring: too creepy.

  The walk to Abs’s place takes the better part of an hour, but at least I’m feeling a little less stressed when I get to her door.

  I knock, and what sounds like 20 or 30 tiny air raid sirens starts going off inside Abs’s apartment.

  The door opens, and I’m almost ready to compliment Abby on her new carpet before I realize the cats have all gathered to see who’s at the door.

  “What up?” Abs asks, trying to herd some of the more daring felines away from the door. “Wanna come in before you start letting all the cats out?” she asks.

  I shuffle inside, being very careful not to step on any of the partially-contained balls of hatred and viciousness. All right, so I may have had a couple of bad experiences with cats as a kid.

  Abs manages to get the door closed and the cats disperse, all but a few of them leaving the room.

  “So, what’s going on?” she asks. “You’re quiet. I don’t like that.”

  I fill her in on the conversation I had with my dad and even let slip a few details about Ian and our brief rendezvous earlier in the evening.

  “I know it’s a little weird talking about this. I know Ian caught your eye, too,” I say. “Are we cool?”

  “Yeah,” Abs says, “we’re fine. Nothing happened at that party, by the way. I don’t know if you knew that, but yeah. We just talked a little bit.”

  “You’re really not mad?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Tell you what, though. When you’re through with him, I’ve got dibs.”

  I snicker a little. “I don’t even know if I’ve officially started with him,” I tell her. “A few hours ago, I had every intention of telling Ian that we couldn’t see each other if it wasn’t class-related. Actually, I did end up telling him that, but all that just fell away so fast. I didn’t really see it coming.”

  “What do you think changed?” Abs asks, holding up portions of her hair, one after another, looking for split ends.

  “I think it was his dad,” I tell her. “My dad, too.”

  “Okay, that’s kind of gross,” Abs says, crinkling her nose. “I can understand having a thing for his dad, but—”

  “Not sure where you got that,” I interrupt, “but not what I’m saying.”

  She motions for me to proceed and then leans forward to grab a thin pair of scissors from her coffee table, cutting about half an inch off a lock of her hair.

  “Ian’s dad told me to stay away from his son because he thought I’d just end up holding Ian back. He was pretty angry at the time, but he seemed to make a convincing argument,” I say. “Then tonight, before I went out to meet Ian, I just saw this look on my dad’s face. I wouldn’t say I knew the conversation was coming tonight, but I had a pretty good idea that it was coming sometime soon.”

  “So it’s a forbidden fruit thing?” she asks.

  “No,” I tell her. “It was just this realization that it’s time to grow up and stop letting my dad or his dad or anyone else’s dad dictate what I do and don’t do or who I see or don’t see.”

  “Or who you do or don’t do?” Abs says with a smirk.

  “Haven’t really gotten that far yet,” I tell her. “It was just that 30 seconds… Abs, I can’t even—you know, right in the middle of everything, I just pulled away, told him I had to go and walked off?”

  “You’re such a—” she starts.

  “I just didn’t know what else to do,” I say, barely noticing that I’m interrupting. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything like it.”

  “I’ve seen you kiss guys,” Abs says. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve had a boyfriend or whatever, but you can’t tell me it was that much different.”

  “It was, though,” I tell her. “I mean, the kiss felt the same, maybe a bit—all right, pretty substantially better, but it was everything that went with it. Ever since I saw him that first time, he’s just continued to confound my expectations.”

  “So, what are you going to do about it?” Abs asks, holding up a hand mirror to make sure her hair’s still even.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I know I don’t want that kiss a couple blocks from my house to be the end of the story.”

  “You’re staying over, though, right?” Abs asks, glancing up at me as she starts trimming her fingernails.

  “Yeah,” I answer, “if that’s all right with you. I just need to be away from my dad for a little while.”

  “It’s fine,” she says, picking up a stray nail clipping and dropping it into the wastebasket in front of her.

  I still haven’t sat down.

  We have dinner—leftover pizza—and settle in for a movie.

  After a while, I hear snoring from the other end of the couch, and it’s hardly a debate. I get up off the couch and make my way to the door, locking the knob on the way out.

  My body’s weary, but my mind is racing.

  I don’t know if he kissed me or if I kissed him, but I do know neither of us seemed to be holding anything back. Well, until I got scared and bolted anyway. That’s the problem.

  I’ve never really been the type that could get away with playing games like that for too long. I know that’s what he thinks I was doing.

  It occurs to me about a block from Ian’s house that I’m probably not going to have a lot of luck going through the front door. I would just call or text, but I want it to be more of a surprise than that. That way, if he’s changed his mind, at least I’ll have a few more moments with the fantasy.

  Ian’s house looms against the starless night sky, and I don’t know what my plan is, but I should probably figure it out pretty quick.

  If I knew which room was Ian’s…

  I set off around the side of the house, for on
ce grateful for all the light pollution in this town. It makes the areas without street lights just that much darker.

  Most of the windows are dark, and even those that aren’t all seem to be covered by blinds or curtains. This might be a short trip.

  I reconsider knocking on the door, but even if Ian’s dad wasn’t such a despot, it’s still too late to risk waking the whole family.

  I’m almost all the way around the house when I notice something different about what’s blocking the view into one of the windows. It’s a capital A with a circle around it.

  I seriously doubt Ian’s lawyer dad considers himself an anarchist.

  The room is on the second floor, though.

  I look around for a ladder or some other way to avoid trying to go up the drainpipe, but decide maybe I shouldn’t just break into his room. The romantic in me still thinks the idea has its merits, but the rest of me is insecure enough not to take being welcomed for granted.

  I’ve got an idea.

  I cautiously make my way back toward the front of the house and continue to the side of the street, bending down and collecting a small handful of gravel.

  Making my way back to the side of the house with what has to be Ian’s room, I feel my face growing hot and I’m becoming very aware of the more sensitive areas of my body.

  I throw the first pebble and immediately rush to the side of the house, crouching down and out of sight.

  “What are you doing?” I ask myself under my breath.

  Rather than talk it out with myself, huddled in a little ball at the side of somebody’s house, I let my will dominate my won’t, and I take a few steps away from the side of the house.

  There’s no motion in the window, the flag’s still in place, and there’s no sign of light in the room.

  I throw another pebble ,and though I once again feel the urge to hide, this time, I stick it out.

  There’s no response.

  You know, it’s entirely possible he’s not even home, or if he is, who’s to say that he’s even in his room? I should just call him.

  No, I’m not going to do this over the phone. I don’t want to talk to him until I can talk to him face-to-face.

  I throw another pebble, and am really starting to feel silly. That’s when something moves one corner of the anarchy flag to one side. It’s too dark in the room for me to see in, so I just look in the direction of where I think his face might be, and I smile and wave.

  The flag resettles, and that’s a clear enough answer for me.

  I let the rest of the tiny rocks fall from my hand, and I turn to head back home or back to Abby’s or I don’t even know where when I hear the sound of a window opening.

  “Psst!” a hushed voice comes from up above and I turn to see Ian standing with most of his upper body out the window.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Ten

  The Hesitant Miss Dillinger

  Ian

  “I’m pretty impressed,” I whisper to Mia as I help her the rest of the way into my room. “Most people have a harder time climbing that thing.”

  She shoots a glance at me, asking, “Just how many people climb your pipe on a regular basis?”

  “You know, the way you phrased that, I’m not quite sure how to answer,” I laugh.

  She lets out a derisive snort and leans her head forward a little, looking up at me. “Really?” she asks.

  “I reinforced that drain back when I was like, 13,” I tell her. “Rob’s dad always had tools lying around and my parents were out of town. When I was younger, a lot of people climbed up that thing. Not so much the last few years, though.”

  Her stance relaxes a little.

  “So, what’s up?” he asks. “You took off so suddenly earlier. What are you doing here?”

  She opens her mouth and takes a breath, but she doesn’t speak. Before I even realize it, we’re kissing again, and she’s lifting her shirt from the bottom.

  We pull apart long enough for her to get her shirt over her head, and then she starts kissing my neck and running her palms up under my shirt, the warmth of her hands exciting every inch of skin on my upper body that she touches.

  “You sure?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says in a hurried whisper. “Now shut up. I really don’t want to have your dad coming in here right now. The guy kind of freaks me out.”

  Yeah, me too.

  I undo the clasp of her bra and she’s got the straps off of her shoulders an instant later, and she tosses the bra off somewhere into the darkness of my room.

  I’m kissing the arch of her neck and she’s unbuttoning my pants.

  This is moving a lot faster than I expected it to, though I’ve had a few fantasies that have actually come reasonably close to tonight’s reality. I’m not complaining.

  I tear my shirt over my head and throw it blindly, possibly out the window, though I’m not paying anywhere near the kind of attention to know for certain, and Mia’s kissing her way down my chest, over my abs and navel.

  She stops a moment at the top of my boxers, and she works the fingers of both hands between the fabric and my skin before she slowly starts pulling both pants and boxers down together.

  I’m most of the way hard already, and the feeling of her soft hand encompassing me and her lips teasing my tip only hastens the transition.

  “Why’d you take off earlier?” I ask.

  She coyly shakes her head and doesn’t respond, only takes me into her mouth, her lips sealing around me, her tongue already massaging the underside of my cock.

  Mia’s working me with her mouth and a hand, and a second later, her mouth is free of me and she’s pushing me backward.

  Between the darkness and the general disorientation caused by the moment, I’m not entirely sure of my relationship to my room as Mia’s final shove sends me backward and off-balance, so my arms shoot out on their own and I’m just hoping my head doesn’t hit something on the way down.

  I land on my bed, though just barely, and from the direction of my knees, I can hear Mia’s stifled giggles.

  “You know,” she says, “for someone for whom motion is art, you’re not particularly graceful.”

  “Sure,” I scoff, “I’m sure if I were to push you over backward in a dark room, you’d just float to the ground like a flower petal, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not the one trying to impress the world with the way I move,” she says and puts one of her hands on each of my knees.

  Mia slowly moves her open palms up and over my quads, over my stomach.

  When her fingertips reach my chest, I can feel the warm thickness of her tongue at the base of my shaft, and she moves the rest of the way up me, reversing direction when her mouth reaches, and again enveloping my part, and I wonder if this is what people are talking about when they say relationships are complicated.

  Earlier today, she was hesitant to spend any time with me at all, and now, she’s snuck into my room and taking me ever deeper into her eager mouth.

  This wasn’t even my idea.

  Not that I’m complaining.

  She slides up me again, this time all the way until her eyes are above mine and we both look at each other for a moment.

  “You’re sure this isn’t going to ruin the friendship?” she asks.

  I chuckle. “What do you mean?” I ask. “You don’t even like me.”

  Her eyes go up and to the left, and her bottom lip matches their direction as she carefully considers her response.

  “I guess you’re right,” she says. “We should be fine, then. Condom?”

  “Nightstand,” I answer.

  “On the one hand, I’m a little skeeved out that you just happen to have a box of condoms in your nightstand,” she says, crawling over the bed. “On the other, though,” she continues as she opens the drawer, “I’d rather you be prepared than not prepared, so what say we just leave it at that?”

  “Just one problem,” I tell her.

  “What’s that?” she asks,
turning toward me, her brow slightly raised.

  “That’s the wrong nightstand,” I tell her.

  “Okay,” she says, raising herself to a kneeling position and pointing to the other nightstand as if she were Patton conducting troop movements. “Get ‘em.”

  I laugh a little at the dramatic gesture, but I do as I’m told and take a single, wrapped condom out of its place and toss it to her.

  “Oh, you think I’m going to do all the work?” she asks.

  “I can never get those things open,” I tell her. “It’ll be better this way, trust me. If I do it, 10 minutes will pass and we’ll both end up too frustrated to stay naked. It’s very important that we stay naked.”

  “You sound like you’ve thought this out,” she says, raising her chin and turning a little away from me, skeptical, but still happy enough to leave her breasts bare and beautiful.

  “Who says I haven’t?” I ask. “Be prepared: they teach you that in Boy Scouts, you know.”

  “Girl Scouts, too,” she says, “though when I went through it seemed like what we were supposed to be most prepared for were making kitschy little crafts and learning to be better wives to our breadwinner, WASP husbands.”

  “Yeah, we didn’t get that part of the lesson,” I tell her.

  A tight smile twists one side of Mia’s mouth, and she goes to open the wrapper.

  “Not that easy, is it?” I ask.

  “Shut up,” she says. “You’re just trying to make this more difficult than it actually is.”

  “Then open it,” I tell her.

  It’s somewhere around here I realize that now’s not the best time to toy with the power of suggestion, although it would make for a particularly interesting conclusion to my earlier point on the placebo effect.

  “You can do it,” I tell her. “That’s why I gave it to you.”

  For a student of psychology, she fell for one of the simpler mind games. Then again, she probably wasn’t expecting such an experiment when we’re on the verge of admittedly more important things.

  It’s not really my brightest move.

  Fortunately, having given her permission to easily open the condom wrapper, she does, and I think she knows I was toying with her, because she’s tossing each half of the wrapper at my face one at a time, saying, “You’ve got a weird sense of humor.”