Up in Smoke (Kisses and Crimes Book 2)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  “What, being bitchy? Running my mouth?” I snorted, laughing. “I always did have the gift of gab. Once I got going, you couldn’t pay me to shut up. I should know. A couple of kids from my neighborhood tried.”

  That comment earned a grin from him. But he didn’t glance up at my face.

  “Guess that’s why you and Bishop got along so well as kids,” he mused. “The boy who never had much to say hanging with a girl who said too much.”

  “Sounds about right.” I tried to crack a smile.

  “He balanced you out.”

  I nodded.

  “Yin to your yang.”

  I agreed.

  “Oh… so, that’s why you’re in love with him…”

  My eyes snapped upwards to Jackson’s face. Confused, I tried to scan his body for signs of humor, but I couldn’t find any. He still wouldn’t look up at me. He let the unexpected accusation hang in the now thickened air.

  “What?” I released the word slowly.

  “Bishop...” He paused. “Is that why you’re in love with him?”

  “I…” I shifted on my feet, feeling warm and uncomfortable. “I’m not in love with Bishop.”

  “Bull-shit.” His sudden comment stole my breath. “All that ripping and running. Flying halfway across the world to be by his side? I’ve never had a woman do that for me. No matter how good I was fucking her. And I know that Bishop wasn’t fucking you…”

  Heat flared underneath my throat. Jackson was busying himself, ignoring me as he threw jealous allegations my way, and I could feel my fingers tingling with rage.

  I found a voice that, two seconds ago, had gone mute.

  “Well, maybe you’re not as good at fucking as you think you are.”

  He caught my attention with one look. “I’m not as good as I think I am. I’m better… but still… that doesn’t explain your obsession.”

  “I’m not…” I nearly screamed. “I’m not obsessed.”

  “Oh, come off it, Pea.” I hated the way he said my name. Like he owned it. “Admit it. You. Want. Bishop.”

  He filled the cup again, cutting the water off, and swallowing its contents before I could process the last half of what he was saying. He sauntered over to me. His chest was large, broad underneath his black t-shirt, and the way his jeans clung to his muscular legs and hips made me swallow as he edged closer.

  His eyes were narrowed. His dark blond hair hung forward and when he looked at me through the dark gold strands, I wanted to shrink.

  I held my ground because I knew his angle.

  This was a game… and Jackson wouldn’t dare respect an unworthy opponent.

  “Eat me, Jackson,” I hissed.

  “I can’t… I’m not Bishop.” He smirked. He came within a foot of me. “Come on. Tell me. Tell me that you want our ‘good’ friend. Tell me that you want him to take you…”

  He backed me into the door where I pressed my back flush against the cheap, dirty wood, sighing.

  “Admit that you want him to love you. To love all of you.” He planted his hand on the door, above my head. Whispering.

  “Admit that you want him to rip you out of those tight little blouses. Put a hand underneath those sexy pencil skirts…”

  He leaned into me, nearly brushing his lips over my earlobe as he whispered into my reddened ear.

  “Tell me… that you want to be fucked senseless.”

  I slapped him.

  No. I pushed on his chest first with both hands and then, I slapped him. And it felt good.

  All that tension, all that rage and fear had culminated into this one moment and I let it go. I let my frustration explode in the form of a swinging open hand.

  Right at Jackson’s face.

  I wanted to do more, but a small shred of decency (and maybe even a little guilt) kept me from taking it further. I held back.

  My knee was dangerously close to going for Jackson’s two precious balls. And he had no idea.

  I practically growled into his face.

  “That was for me.” I slapped him again. “That… was for Bishop’s wife—for Dani.”

  I stepped into his body. “You wanted to get back at me. Fine. You succeeded.”

  He smiled. Out of all of the things he could do, he smiled. I think he enjoyed pressing my buttons.

  A part of me believed that the slap had turned him on.

  My senses were heightened. And as angry as I was, as embarrassed and jolted as I was by his accusations, I was even more jolted by the nearness of his body to mine.

  Or, rather, what the closeness of his body was doing to me.

  I’d used my anger to cover up the fact that on some basic level, I felt pure longing. The heat of Jackson, the timbre of his voice and the width of his shoulders were turning me inside out.

  I was so fucking turned on that I hated myself for it…

  And I wondered if he knew it. I wondered if that smile on his face was because he could tell what was happening… just by looking at mine.

  He took a step toward me again.

  “Get back at you?” He shook his head. “Oh, no, Pea… I haven’t even begun to get back at you...”

  I shuddered… and the tiny shaking motion jolted me out of a deep sleep. I bolted up, no longer in Jackson’s car but somehow in my apartment—in my bed, sweating.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw who was lying beside me.

  ***

  PENELOPE

  The dream—a two-month old memory—was no match for the man himself. He slept like the dead. Still and unmoving. There was a tension in his body that belied the look of peace that was on his face, and unless you looked close enough, you couldn’t tell if he was alive.

  You sure as hell couldn’t tell that he was breathing.

  And though I’d seen his face more times than I could count, though I’d memorized the lines of his face and touched them, kissed them (slapped them before), every time I looked at him, it was as if it was the first time.

  This wasn’t the boy that I’d fallen for fifteen years ago. I had to keep telling myself that.

  Everything about him was dirtier than I remembered.

  His blond hair. His grin. His disturbingly sexy mouth and what came out of it…

  Argh.

  Why did the most annoying man on the planet have a smile that was a straight arrow, a hot button aimed directly at the center of my silk underwear? Here he was, uninvited, somehow now asleep in my bed… and I was still struggling with whether or not to kick him out of it.

  Luckily, he made the decision for me.

  “Are you just going to keep staring?” he asked, startling the hell out of me. “Or are you going to at least say ‘good morning’?”

  Nothing moved on him but his mouth.

  His eyes were still sleepily shut. His face was slack. It was still perfectly angular with those high, hard cheekbones of his and that rigid jaw, but everything else remained solid as stone.

  He knew I’d been watching him.

  How long he’d been awake, I could only guess, but as I looked at him, with his strong arms stretched above his head, his hands planted firmly beneath his neck as he rested on his back, I noticed all of him.

  And “all of him” was still fully clothed, still completely dressed in his black shirt and slacks from the night before.

  I, on the other hand, was the complete opposite.

  I had been changed into my bedtime outfit: an oversized shirt and “barely there” boxer shorts. I jumped out from underneath the covers.

  “Jesus, Jackson. What the fuck…?”

  His eyes remained closed. “Is there a problem?”

  “You know there is,” I fumed, standing over him. “I passed out. You were only supposed to drop me home last night and instead you’re here. And you…” I looked down. “You redressed me..?”

  He frowned. It was his only other movement.

  “Was I supposed to leave you in your sweaty office outfit? Was I supposed to lay you down a
nd hope that you got comfortable enough to get a good night’s sleep? Beer, dirt and sweat-stained from that shitty bar?”

  He finally opened his icy eyes.

  “With blood from my hands still on your skirt?”

  He glared at me. For the first time since I awakened, I saw a hint of the bandages wrapped around his half-hidden knuckles. What wasn’t obscured by his head and hair was angry with red welts and bruises. And in that moment, it occurred to me how much comfort he sacrificed last night just so he could ensure mine.

  His body, large and muscular, bordered the edge of the bed in a position similar to a plank. He had to be hurting. I was hurting just looking at him, and instead of thanking him for putting me first, I’d already laid into him.

  It was hard to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt; my instincts always told me not to. But he’d done nothing to deserve this treatment.

  The man had saved me… and here I was, complaining because he might have gotten a peek under my skirt while he tried to make me feel cozy after what could only be described as a shit-tastic night.

  My present reality was getting a little too close to the memory/dream I’d just had of him, and, same as that night, two very long months ago, I was, once again, coming out on the end of it feeling very much like a piece of shit.

  Only this time… Jackson truly hadn’t deserved my wrath. I took a deep breath, feeling a bit shaky.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” I finally exhaled. “Last night was a shit-show. My nerves are shot and that filter between my brain and mouth is on the fritz, so please… ignore me while I try to sort through my own shit. It’s nothing personal.”

  “And I’m not taking it that way.” Jackson raised an eyebrow. “I know things haven’t been easy for you lately, Pea. I thought about staying on the couch, but after last night, I thought it best if I stick around. Sleep beside you. You know, in case you had any of those nightmares while you slept…”

  I was happy that he did.

  I wasn’t going to tell him that last night’s dream was about him. I wasn’t going to tell him that I hadn’t had those types of dreams for many years, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that I didn’t need him to look after me.

  I simply nodded.

  Because what else there was to say?

  When someone knows you this intimately, when a person has seen the very darkest parts of your soul and shined light in places where none existed, you always felt fear.

  You stayed fearful that no matter how much time had passed, no matter how much things had changed or stayed the same, that any slip-up would give you away and somehow you’d look up… and they would see the dark corners in your eyes.

  And maybe, just maybe, you weren’t prepared to show those vulnerable places to them ever again.

  So, I didn’t slip-up. I didn’t give myself away.

  I didn’t look in his direction. I didn’t reply. I just… nodded. And then I asked an innocent question, one that I knew wouldn’t reveal or give any hints or peeks into my thoughts.

  “You want some breakfast?”

  I turned on my heel and hightailed it to the kitchen. I opened the fridge, grabbed for the eggs and started whisking them so fast in the bowl I thought I’d break my wrist. I let the intermittent clicking of metal on plastic lull me into a calm, beating back the emotion that started to rise in my throat.

  I didn’t stop beating until I felt a hand on my waist from behind.

  “Eggs do something to piss you off?”

  Jackson’s voice was low. His breath had a minty quality to it, as if he’d just brushed his teeth and I became even more self-conscious than I’d just been, lowering my head over the kitchen counter so as to avoid his face.

  “I’m making breakfast,” I replied, concentrating absurdly over the eggs. “Make any more jokes, and they won’t be the only things getting beaten in this kitchen.” I flashed him a shy smile. “Why don’t you sit down? It’ll only take a second.”

  I turned back towards the counter, ignoring the sleeping heat that Jackson had brought with him, pretending the exertion from my whisking was the real reason I’d developed an extra layer of sweat.

  But he didn’t push.

  I heard him pull out a stool in my tiny kitchen, the scrapes and slides of the chair behind me making it hard to stay focused.

  I grabbed the flour and baking powder. Snagging another bowl, I went to work on preparing pancakes. I was just getting ready to reach for the fridge again when the sound of his voice, quiet and subdued, sounded through the open air.

  “I’ll take mine heavy on the raspberry.”

  I turned.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Raspberries.” He sat up straighter. “I’ll take a lot in my pancakes.”

  I eyed him warily.

  “How do you know I’m making raspberry pancakes?”

  “Because...” Jackson placed an elbow on the tiny kitchen table. “You eat those things like they’re popcorn.” His grin was slow and seductive. “Your tastes aren’t the usual, Pea, but they’re predictable. I should know. Once upon a time, those raspberry pancakes were the only things you could make.”

  I couldn’t help but crack a tiny smile.

  “Hey,” I snapped softly. “I only burned the kitchen that one time. And I did it because you surprised the hell out of me in my old DC apartment.” I looked back at him before returning my bowls. “You weren’t even supposed to be there,” I muttered under my breath.

  I didn’t know he’d heard me.

  “Yeah…” he mused out loud. “There were a lot of things we weren’t supposed to do back in DC.”

  It was a loaded statement, packed full of double, triple, quadruple entendres, and just when I thought about responding, I realized that he was right.

  We’d done so much to each other, put each other through so much shit that it seemed harder and harder every day to dig our way out of the hopeless pit we’d plowed for each other.

  Buried in a series of half-truths and outright lies, maybe we’d lost sight of who we were when we first met. Two innocent teens with nothing to lose but each other… who somehow believed that this sick, twisted, damaged world out there was actually something to gain.

  Boy, how fucking wrong we’d been.

  I pulled out my pots and pans, banging them on the gas stove, thinking about how far gone Jackson and I had drifted from the in-love brats we used to be.

  “Sometimes, DC feels like a lifetime ago,” I commented casually.

  “In many ways, it was.”

  I snorted. “Before I was disbarred from the state of Virginia.”

  “Back when I was still FBI…”

  “Back when I didn’t want to kill you,” I continued.

  “Back when I’d wished you almost had…”

  His last statement made me stop. I shook my head, pouring the bowl of whipped eggs into the skillet. My voice was quiet. In that instant, I found myself speaking more to me than to him.

  I dropped the bowl on the counter. I turned.

  “Look, Jackson, I…”

  His head was suddenly buried in one of my tabletop fashion magazines.

  “You really should watch those eggs before you burn ‘em,” he suggested, not glancing over at me.

  He got up and just when I took a step towards him to force him to look at me, his fucking phone rang.

  He stepped away from the kitchen table and headed towards my bedroom. He shut the door behind him as if it wasn’t mine. As if he knew he could.

  As if everything I had belonged to him.

  I wanted to stomp my fucking foot like a toddler. And I almost did when I finally tried the bedroom door.

  It was locked. And I could barely make out his words beyond it.

  “Everything’s fine…” I heard from behind the door. “… nothing to worry about.” He paused. “I said I’d do it, and I will...”

  The rest was muffled, and when I tried to lean closer to the door, I heard nothing else. Just the
sound of shuffling over creaky floorboards and soon the sound of footsteps coming right towards me.

  I snatched my hand back from the door as if it were aflame and found myself staring into the eyes of the dark angel behind it.

  His scowl was fierce.

  “Need something?” he asked dryly.

  “Uh, yeah.” I steeled my chin. “I’ll take a helping of ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing’ with a side of ‘don’t ever lock me out of my own bedroom again.’”

  Jackson bypassed me, glancing over his shoulder at me as if I were an afterthought.

  He shook his head as he headed back to the kitchen. He scoffed.

  “Is that another one of your rules? ‘cause if it is, you can spare me the lecture and send me the terms and conditions in another one of your infamous scathing e-mails… one that I probably won’t read anyway.”

  He sat back down at the kitchen table, and I blew out a breath that nearly hurt my cheeks, staring hard in his direction.

  “Who was that on the phone?” I questioned.

  “Telemarketer. Some bullshit. Thought it was my secretary, Mable. Turned out to just be fucking spam.”

  Lie. I could hear the untruth in his voice from a mile away. I decided not to pry, focusing on the real issue at hand.

  “Jackson…” I started. “I’m serious. What’s going on with you? Wha…?” I could hardly get it out. “What are you doing here? I mean, I couldn’t get you to answer my messages or e-mails for days… and now you show up at the bar, out of the blue, and in my bedroom. What the hell do you want?”

  “What do I want?”

  He finally looked up into my eyes. He tossed the magazine from earlier into the air and I flinched as it landed on the floor with a slap.

  “I want lots of things. But right now, I’ll take eggs and raspberry pancakes…” He looked over my shoulder towards the hot stove, his dark blue eyes burning. “Without a side of burnt, if you don’t mind.”

  I couldn’t roll my eyes hard enough. I wanted answers, but all he seemed to want to do was give me the runaround.

  He stood—slowly—and the air in the room was saturated with such awkwardness that I wanted to reach inside of myself and slap the piss out of the sixteen-year old still lurking there.

  He stepped away from the table. I expected to watch him leave.