His hand moved to hold her face. It was cold, like his lips had been. Then his fingers moved a little and his forefinger glided along the back of her ear and his thumb played with her earlobe. She shivered. Her ears were a favorite. A secret place few men ever discovered and where a little attention could almost always make her weak kneed.
And she realized what Jason’s attention could mean, both tonight and after they’d had time to get to know all of each other’s secret places. He would pay attention. He would react. Their future would be one of learning about each other and applying that learning. Of discovering.
She deepened the kiss, starting their future by exploring the reaches of his mouth. She ran her tongue along the ridges of his teeth, feeling the bumps and the grooves. She scooted forward on the couch, her hands first resting on his shoulders, then moving down his arms and along his chest.
Jason didn’t move anything other than the light pressure of his fingers on her ears, but he wasn’t passive. She could tell that he was letting her investigate, giving her the space she needed to understand. At some signal she didn’t even know she had made, his other hand moved up her back, encouraging her onto his lap.
She went eagerly, yanking at his shirt in the process for access to his skin. Friday night, she hadn’t had the chance to explore his skin. She hadn’t had the chance to explore anything. She pulled up at the hem, pressing her lips along his body as each last bit of skin was revealed.
“Hey,” he said as she pulled his shirt over his head and was looking at him again. He ran a hand over the curves of her head, cupping her nape and holding her close to him, but far enough away that she couldn’t kiss him again.
His eyes were soft, caring and warm. In them she saw her reflection, and it was like looking at herself in candlelight. Flattering and loving. In those eyes, she was near perfect. In those eyes, she was enough—and never too much.
“Hey,” she said with an answering smile.
“Am I staying the night?”
“Do you want to?”
“Hell, yes.” His fingers tightened on the back of her neck, not enough to hurt, but enough for her to know that the man she was going to spend the night with worked with his hands for a living. He had great hands. He made things with his hands.
He was going to make her come with those hands.
And other things.
She giggled.
“Did you just giggle?”
“Yes. I think I did.”
“I love it when you giggle. When you giggle, I feel like that part of you that’s normally hidden behind numbers and formulas is bubbling forward.”
She twitched her lips and raised an eyebrow. Not quite a scowl, but close. “Those numbers and algorithms are a part of me, too.”
“I know. And I like them. But if you bring a protractor to bed, I’m going to say something.”
“Better and safer than a compass.”
He looked confused for a moment, then must have realized she meant the geometry tool for drawing circles, rather than the hiking tool that would tell them which way was north. She could tell the moment when the correct image hit his mind’s eye, because he burst out laughing. “Well, you’ve got me there.”
Then he kissed her, and it was his turn to explore her. His hands started out slow at first, continuing to linger on her ears and her head and her neck. Then, as she moaned and pushed into him and shifted around on his lap looking for more, he shifted, quickly enough that she didn’t notice the change in the balance of power.
And then she was on her back, the pleasant weight of him pressing her against her couch cushions. His mouth was on her neck, both firm and gentle at the same time. His palm was on her breast, his fingers brushing against her nipples.
He smelled good. Like soap and shampoo and the hair gel she remembered from last night. And a little bit of sweat from their short hike. He always smelled a little bit like sweat, as if he’d been working with his body.
His mouth moved from her neck to the curve of her breasts. She sighed, lifting herself against him and running her hands over his back. There were muscles here, muscles that shifted and pulled. Muscles that worked.
Her fingers played up those muscles like a glorious piece of music on the piano, stopping at her favorite notes and listening for the times when she hit a spot that made him moan.
She hadn’t realized how magnificent a man who worked with his body could be. She’d been blind and stupid and so certain that only one way of appreciating the body and the mind could interest her. Then he hit a good spot and she lifted her pelvis in response, too desperate for him to keep thinking.
She felt empty. He could fill her. He was going to fill her. He was going to make her moan. He was going to make her scream.
And she had almost let numbers convince her to miss out on this.
His hands started working her waistband, and she froze. He stopped. “You still here with me? We okay?”
She nodded, but he still didn’t move. His hand was hovering enticingly over her belly button, not yet moving to pull her pants off. She let go of his back and used both hands to shove her pants down. Only his body was in the way, so her pants caught on her hips.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, his smile taunting. He knew the answer; she could feel it in the flex of his fingers against her body.
“It’s a yes.” She moved her hand over to his, to hurry him along.
He tsked in response, blocking her access with his hand and his body. “Now, now. I think you’re rushing this. We’ve got some things we need to talk about.”
“Now?” she said in a near shriek.
“Well...” He paused, his voice teasing her as much as his hand hovering right over her pussy was teasing her. Making her want.
As if she didn’t already.
“The first thing we need to establish is if you have condoms. I’m going to take off your pants, and I want to know what my rules are here.”
Finally he moved his hand enough to give her access to her pants, but he was quicker than she was. Her pants were undone and his hand was there, warm on her pussy, playfully tormenting her with possibilities.
“See, I want to know if I will be using my hand here.” A finger slipped under the elastic of her panties, sliding against her pubic hair and the crease of her leg. “Or maybe I’ll use my mouth, like I did last night and feel you shake and shiver against my lips.”
Thinking about his mouth there was enough to make her shiver, and his eyes darkened in response. “Like that idea, do ya?”
“Well, I’ll want to know what all my options are before I commit to any one thing.”
He pressed a kiss against her belly button. His lips were warm now, but she could still taste the gin that had been on his lips. “Of course, I want my cock in here. I want to feel you warm and tight around me. And I want to kiss you while you come.”
“Any reason we can’t do all three?”
“Does that mean you have condoms?”
She nodded. “Upstairs. In my bedroom.”
He slid his finger out from under her panties as he sat up. “Well, then. Let’s get moving in that direction. You’ve given me quite the to-do list. I want to make sure I do everything I’ve been told.”
Once he was on his feet, he held out a hand and pulled her up alongside him. “You’ll have to lead the way.”
Hand in hand, she took him with her up the stairs and into her bedroom.
Jason made good on his promise. Between his hands, his tongue and his cock, she came twice before curling up in his arms and falling asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“WHAT WAS IT you wanted me to get out of here?” Jason called from Marsie’s home office the next morning, looking around at the room in her house that was probably the most Marsie. Most o
f the walls held tall, light-colored bookshelves full of books, everything from what looked like programming books to old textbooks to mass market paperbacks, and all of it was organized by subject. Probably by author as well, but he wouldn’t examine too closely to find out.
Marsie was going to make him some fancy roast chicken. Like chicken baked in a cracker, she’d said. That description was more than enough to dampen his curiosity to look around these bookshelves. He was going to quickly grab the cookbook she’d asked for and head back into the kitchen.
“It’s called Stir. It’s thin and black, with a wooden spoon on the cover, if I remember correctly,” she called back. “I think all I need to get from the store is the chicken.”
They had a plan for their day. She was going to make “the world’s best roast chicken,” while he was responsible for sides. Since the chicken apparently took hours to cook, the rest of their day would be spent lounging. After their hike yesterday, Marsie had suggested a bath in her big tub. Jason had seconded that suggestion.
He headed over to the bookshelf holding the cookbooks and looked for a thin, black book. “What’s the author’s last name?” As he could have predicted, her books were organized by author’s last the name. And, as he looked more closely, the cookbooks were first organized by cuisine, then by author’s last name. “And what kind of food is this roast chicken?”
There was a little banging around in the kitchen before she answered. “It’s delicious kind of food,” she said, the impish smile she was wearing carrying through the doorway. “Delicious Italian food. The author’s last name is Lynch.”
His fingers bumped as he ran them over the bindings of the books. No Lynch, though there was a small space where a thin book could fit. It was even in the right spot. “Could it be somewhere else? It’s not here.”
“Hmm...” Her voice was louder, and he turned to find she’d popped her head through the doorway. “My desk maybe? I’ve been looking at the recipe for weeks, trying to decide if I could justify making so much food for just me.”
Then, as quickly as she’d appeared, she evaporated back into her kitchen. He chuckled as he headed over to her desk. She’d said he was responsible for the side dishes, but he was pretty certain she was rifling through her refrigerator looking for what she wanted to make.
Marsie was not good at giving up control. They might end up with a comprise—more side dishes than two people could reasonably eat, even considering leftovers. The trick to being with a woman like Marsie was giving her the space to be the amazing person she was. If that meant sacrifices like eating too much, he was willing to make them.
He didn’t see the book when he first glanced at her desk, though he was too amused by how messy her home desk was compared to her work desk to look closely. She had papers everywhere on her home desk, and none were in the neat piles she kept at work. It was more evidence of the layers to her personality that made her so interesting.
One of the piles was higher than the other. He picked up those papers and, as she had thought, the cookbook was lying underneath. He was setting the papers back on her desk when he noticed a name along the side.
Jason.
He looked away, determined to leave Marsie’s private notes alone when the other words on the page snapped through his head and it dawned on him what he might be looking at.
Waterski25. BigPappi82. They weren’t names, so much as they were handles, probably for online dating and far more clever than the one he’d used for himself, JSN0562.
This is Marsie’s algorithm. That realization was quickly followed by the next: and she scored me. Running along the top of the page were attributes a man might have: height, education, compatibility of television programs, attractiveness of profile picture, prestige of job... He picked up the paper. She’d had to print it on legal-size paper because she had so many requirements she was judging the men against.
He was looking closer now, all thoughts against snooping gone under a sense of indignation. He knew that she was ranking and scoring men. They’d talked about it. They’d joked about it. He’d teased her about it.
But he hadn’t known she’d ranked and judged him. And if his scores in comparison to the water skier’s were any indication, he hadn’t done very well. There wasn’t a total at the end of the sheet. Knowing Marsie as well as he did, she probably marked her scores on the paper, then transferred them to a spreadsheet on her computer where the algorithm she’d created could crunch the numbers for her.
No reason for her to decide the fate of an interested dude. No, Marsie would coldly mark a score and let the computer do the dirty work of saying if it was a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Is this judgment on me, or my dating profile? There wasn’t a date on the page that he could see, so he had no way of knowing when she’d scored him.
He picked up the page. There were more pages underneath. Those were marked with “version” and then a number, all the way through six. Like the top page, attributes ran across the top. Unlike the top page, he was the only person being scored.
He picked up one of the other pages, version three, and compared it to the one he was holding in his hand. Education level was gone. So was something vague called “books.” He still must not have scored very well, since there were three more versions she’d been working on. Version four was also missing height.
The contentment that had been lingering in him since he picked her up for their date yesterday morning disappeared in a wave of unease.
Not only had she been judging him, but apparently he hadn’t met whatever standards she had set for any man she would consider a serious candidate for dating.
He tossed the pages onto the desk. Was he a little bit of dick on the side while she looked for the man who passed her test? Or had she gotten so desperate that she was abandoning all her high standards?
Neither question—nor their answers—said anything good about what she thought about him. And, frankly, he thought better of himself to be anyone’s second best choice.
Even if that someone was Marsie.
He wanted to stomp out, head home and lick the wounds that the pages had ripped into his heart, but first, he had to know which option he fell into. He picked up the papers again, leaving the cookbook behind, and walked into the kitchen.
* * *
“DID YOU FIND IT?” Marsie asked as she heard Jason’s footsteps in the kitchen, her head buried in a cabinet. She hadn’t made a roast chicken in a long time and had no idea where she’d put her roasting pan. She had cooked a lot when she’d lived with Richard, but that had been a while ago. She hadn’t touched anything more complicated than a pot and a frying pan in years.
“I found something,” Jason said. His tone made her stop her digging, pull her head out of the cabinet and stand up. He looked as angry as he had sounded.
No. Not angry. Angry was too small a word. He looked furious, the light in his eyes shifting between nothingness and fury while the muscles of his face seemed barely able to contain the emotions that were coursing through him.
Papers sailed through the air, landing on her counter and spreading out before her. “What are those?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“Score sheets. Unless you have another name for them.”
“No.” Her voice was small, and she wasn’t able to put anymore force behind it. “I never called them anything. Spreadsheets, I guess. Like in Excel.”
“So the final scores live on your computer.” His nod was tight and hard, like she’d confirmed the worst. “You probably should have kept everything on your computer. Less likely that Waterski or I or one of the other men you’ve judged would find your assessments. Or did you hide them when any of your other candidates came over?”
“Candidates?” She took a step forward, to go around the counter and be near him, but the sharp jer
k of his head stopped her cold. He didn’t want her anywhere near him. From his body language, she was already too close. In the same city might be too close.
“That’s what it looks like to me.” He inclined his head to the pages spread out on her kitchen counter. “This looks less like dating and trying to find someone compatible and more like I was applying for a job and didn’t realize it.”
The stone of her countertop was cold under her hand when she steadied herself. When he put it that way...
“You know about the algorithm. You even teased me about it.”
“Yeah. I did. It’s different, on this side of it. Looking at my scores. I didn’t do well, did I.”
“No,” she said, then bit her lip.
He laughed, but there was no humor in the noise. “You know, I’ve always admired your honesty.”
“I was trying to get you to pass. I wanted you to pass. So, so badly.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better. In fact, the idea that you had to work so hard might actually make me feel worse.”
She winced. “That’s not how I meant it.”
“Tell me this, did you score me or did you score my online profile?”
“Will it matter?” she asked hopefully.
“I don’t actually know. But right now you have nothing to lose.”
The harshness of his voice made her suck in her breath. She had known it was bad, but she hadn’t realized it was that bad. “Um. Okay. I scored your online profile. I liked your online profile. And we were friends. I wanted to know if, you know, something else maybe could happen.”
He cocked his head, a brow raised. “So what? If I passed, you would make a move on me and if I didn’t, then nothing. We’d stay friends.”
She shook her head. “Honestly, I didn’t put that much thought into it. Your profile showed up in my matches and, well, it seemed so you. It was charming and light and interesting and I just...kinda... I didn’t think about what would happen if you passed. I just wanted to see if you could.”
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