by Megan Hart
All the storm watch warnings had been right on target for once. The flurries had started that afternoon and grew increasingly heavier as the day passed. The weather forecast was calling for six to eight inches of snow by 2:00 a.m., which was normally when Jesse was closing up and heading home. But John was right—the weather was bad enough that if they could shuffle out the three people gathered around the table in the front, it would make sense to close up early.
As it turned out, the trio was finishing their drinks and signaling for the check even as John started running the register receipts and getting the few glasses that had come out of the kitchen back on the shelf. He told the small kitchen staff to pack up and head out, then turned to Jesse.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Just as Jesse was getting ready to agree, the bell over the door jingled, and in she came. Colleen, the Thursday night special with the sad eyes and love of onion rings. He’d been certain she wasn’t coming tonight and telling himself that he didn’t care. But here she was, stamping her feet and brushing the snow off the shoulders of her heavy black coat. White flakes covered her light blond hair. In the few seconds before they melted, they looked like a circlet of flowers.
“We’re—” John started.
“I got her,” Jesse said, already pouring the glass of whiskey, neat, and sliding it into the spot she always took.
“You’ll close up?” John asked.
Jesse barely gave him a glance. “Yeah. I’ll take care of it. Lock up the back, okay?”
“Got it.” John clapped him on the shoulder, gave Colleen a nod as he passed, and then...
They were alone in the bar.
“Nice night.” Jesse twisted a wedge of lime into the glass of seltzer and put that in front of her, too. He’d meant it as a joke, but Colleen gave him a blank stare. No smile.
“Yeah, it’s great. Thanks.” She pulled the glass of seltzer closer, but didn’t take a drink. She looked at the whiskey, and her mouth twisted.
Something was wrong. She was always quiet, but polite, and though he’d seen her give more than one hopeful douche bag the cold shoulder, she’d always been nice to Jesse. Well, until last week, when he’d somehow pissed her off. He hadn’t meant to, had felt terrible about it. She’d seemed okay to him in the market, though. It didn’t seem like she was holding a grudge. No, something else had closed off her face like a mask.
She’d been crying.
It didn’t take a genius to see the faint streaks of mascara smudged under those beautiful gray eyes or the shadows beneath them. Those sad eyes. He’d always been a sucker for the girls who cried.
“Can I get you something else?” he asked carefully, too aware of how last Thursday he’d pushed the onion rings and mousse on her, thinking he knew what she wanted when he obviously didn’t. “The kitchen’s closed, but I can do a few things back there. If you want.”
“Closed?” She blinked slowly. Understanding dawned. She flinched, looking around. “Oh. Shit. Oh, yeah, you’re closed? I didn’t think about it, the weather. It’s so bad. I’ll just go. I’ll go now.”
But she didn’t go. She sat motionless, frozen, one hand on the seltzer glass and the other on the edge of her stool, as though she needed to push herself off it to get moving. A rivulet of icy water trickled from the melting snow in her hair, down her temple and over her cheek like a tear.
She looked at him then, though it was clear she didn’t really see him. She shook her head, that gorgeous hair falling over her shoulders and half covering her face. It was the first time he’d seen it worn down, and he wanted to fist his hands in it. Tip her head back. Find her mouth with his.
Jesse had known he had a crush on her, but this was getting out of hand.
“I should go,” she said again. And then, incredibly, she did something she’d never done before in all the months he’d been working Thursday nights. She picked up the glass of whiskey, and she drank it. She wiped her mouth with slightly shaking fingers. “I should go.”
“No,” Jesse told her. “Stay.”
* * *
Uptight, controlling bitch.
The words echoed in Colleen’s head, over and over. Steve’s words. She’d heard them a thousand times before and had convinced herself they no longer stung. That he could no longer control her, no longer hurt her. Somehow, that self-delusion had made it worse.
You can’t make it without me, can’t make a decision, can’t take care of anything, without me. I have to do it all for you, Colleen. You need me.
You need me.
Colleen swallowed against the smoky flare of the whiskey. It had gone down a little rough, but now warmth spread through her. She looked at Jesse. “Stay?”
“What else are you going to do? Go out into the cold? Not just yet,” he told her with that smile, that damn smile she’d been trying to ignore all these nights when she came in to prove a point to herself.
A point she’d failed to make tonight. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe tonight was the first time anything she’d done had made sense.
She didn’t need Steve, and hadn’t for a long time. She never would again. She wouldn’t need anyone again, she thought, finally looking at Jesse. Really looking at him, that smile, that earnest look. No more need, she told herself.
But she could want.
Colleen let her tongue dent her lower lip, where the whiskey flavor still lingered. It was not her imagination, was it, that Jesse watched her do it? Or that something in his gaze flared? Embers that had been banked so long inside her she’d have sworn they’d gone cold kindled at the sight of his look.
“You don’t have to get home?” she asked him, pausing. Thinking. “Your kid?”
“She’s with her mother. School’s canceled tomorrow. So’s her mom’s work. They’re all set.” He put both hands on the counter and leaned a little closer with a head tilt that made everything inside her tumble and twist. “Can I get you another drink?”
The one she’d had was already softening the edges of everything. How long had it been since she’d had liquor? “Four years. Eleven months.”
“Hmm?”
She looked at him. “The last time I had a drink was the night I finally decided to leave my husband. He goaded me into it. Both the drink and the leaving.”
“What about tonight?” Jesse asked quietly.
“That,” she said, “was him, too.”
Without a word, Jesse pulled out a squat glass and poured a shot of Jameson into it, then another into her empty glass. He lifted his.
After a moment, she did, too.
It went down smoother this time. And somehow sweeter. Colleen shivered, not from the alcohol’s burn but at the way Jesse was looking at her.
“He used to tell me all the time that I needed to loosen up. Lighten up. That I didn’t know how to have a good time. That because I liked things a certain...way...” She paused, swallowing, not sure why she was telling him this. Only that she needed to tell someone. “He said I was a pain in the ass to live with. No fun. I was a boring, nagging bitch who had to control everything, but that I was incapable of doing anything on my own. He made me feel constantly incompetent. Oh. And, according to him, I was frigid, too.”
Jesse coughed lightly.
Colleen laughed. Low at first, then louder, letting her head fall back. The sound was harsh, very little humor in it. She closed her eyes for a second, memories unfurling like a ribbon inside her head, before she opened them to focus on Jesse.
“I’m not,” she said. “I just didn’t like fucking him.”
It was Jesse’s turn to laugh, the sound sweet as honey and just as thick. He leaned on the bar, hands shoulder-width apart. Fingers slightly spread. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“He was.” She licked her lips, watching again as his eyes followed the movement of her tongue. His gaze warmed her more than the booze had; Jesse looked at her as though he wanted to eat her up.
It had been a long time since a man had given her t
hat stare. No, that wasn’t true. It had been a long time since she’d paid attention to a man giving her that look and wanted to return it. Colleen let her fingertips trace a circle of damp left behind on the bar by her now empty glass. She glanced out the front plate-glass windows to the cobblestone street outside. A few people walked past, laughing and tossing snow at each other. Night had fallen, hard and dark and deep.
“It’s still snowing,” she murmured.
“Good thing we don’t have any place to go, huh?”
“Why did you let me stay, Jesse?”
His smile faded for a moment, just long enough for him to blink. Then he leaned a little closer. “Because...I thought you needed to.”
She remembered him giving her the chocolate mousse, and how it had rubbed her the wrong way. Yet he’d done so many things for her over the past few months since he’d started here at The Fallen Angel. He’d come to know her preferences so easily and had made it so easy for her to come back, week after week.
“I told you how I feel about people assuming they know what I need.”
He nodded and turned to press a button on the small remote that controlled the pub’s sound system. In seconds the slow, distinctive beat of “Cry to Me” filtered through the speakers. It had been one of her favorites for years, first as a cut on a vinyl album she’d found as a teenager scouring thrift stores and then later, as an adult, an iTunes track. How had he known?
Like the whiskey and onion rings and mousse and everything else, Colleen thought, he just had.
Chapter Four
Jesse moved before he could second-guess himself. He went around the bar, one hand out. He didn’t ask her to dance. He waited for her to take his hand.
She waited long enough that he was certain she wasn’t going to, but then her fingers eased into his and squeezed. Colleen slipped off the stool, a little unsteady but catching herself so that she didn’t stumble. She was in his arms half a minute after that, the two of them pressed close on the splintery wooden floor that wasn’t really meant for dancing. On one of The Fallen Angel’s good nights, when the crowds of Fell’s Point filled this bar cheek to cheek and hip to hip, there would have been no been room for them to do this, but now he spun her out slowly and back in again to dip her.
She laughed as he pulled her up, and damn, that smile, that gorgeous chuckle, made him understand why men had claimed they’d die for their lady loves. Everything about this woman made him want to make her happy. Keep her safe. When she allowed him to pull her in close again, he took a long, deep breath against the fall of her pale hair.
She shivered, tensing, but he kept his grip steady so she didn’t pull away. He’d have let her go, of course. He wasn’t grabbing her. Wouldn’t force himself on her. But in another second she relaxed against him, her face in the curve of his shoulder. And yes, oh, shit, yes, her hand cupping the back of his neck.
They danced.
Someone had been messing with the controls for the sound system, and when the song ended, there were two beats of silence before the same one started again. He waited for her to pull away from him, but she didn’t. They moved to that old song as though it was the first time they’d ever heard it, and Jesse let himself get lost in the heat of her body. The scent of her. The smoothness of her cheek against his.
She murmured something under her breath as the song came to an end for the second time, but he couldn’t catch what she said. He paused, not wanting to ruin the mood. “Hmm?”
Colleen pulled away enough to look into his eyes. “I do like chocolate mousse. I like it a lot.”
“I know you do,” he told her.
“I’ve never ordered it here.”
“I just...guessed,” Jesse said.
Colleen’s eyes flashed bright for a moment before she shook her head and gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “I was such a bitch to you that day, Jesse. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He settled his hands on her hips, fingertips just brushing the swell of her butt. He wanted to slide them lower, but didn’t dare. Not when this was going so well.
She linked her hands behind his neck. The song had started a third time, and both of them moved in a small circle. With every step, her body rubbed his. It was going to get embarrassing in a few minutes, but he didn’t stop.
“Do you think I’m pretty, Jesse?”
He didn’t hesitate for a second. “I think you’re beautiful.”
She laughed.
It seemed impossible that he could pull her closer, but somehow he managed. “What? You don’t think so?”
“If enough people tell you that you’re beautiful, you can easily start to believe it, right?” Colleen’s mouth twisted wryly. “And yet it only takes one person to tell you that you’re ugly to make anything anyone else ever said feel like a lie.”
“Did he tell you that you were ugly?” The ex-husband, the asshole.
“No.” She shook her head. “He never had to say it out loud. He just made me feel that way.”
“He’s—”
“An asshole,” she cut in. “I know.”
It was the perfect time to kiss her, so he did. He could tell himself he meant it as a sweet gesture, only friendly, but the moment his mouth pressed hers, it was all he could do not to crush her against him. And when her lips parted, opening for him, and her tongue slid along his, Jesse broke the kiss with a small, mortifying groan.
Colleen shuddered. The brightness had gone out of her gray eyes, replaced by something hazier. Heavy-lidded. She slipped her tongue along her lower lip the way she’d done a few times already tonight, each time sexier than the last. She hadn’t moved away from him, and now his cock was definitely making itself known. She had to feel it against her. She had to.
The song ended and began again. She looked toward the bar. He didn’t want to let her go long enough to change the song, but as he started to, she turned to him.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Jesse paused, an unwelcome but also relieving space between their bodies, his hands still on her hips. “Where do you want to go?”
“I live two blocks away.” She let her hands slide down his arms to entwine his fingers with hers and squeezed them.
Everything inside him knotted and tangled. Jesse studied her, searching for signs that the whiskey had made her too drunk to be rational. It wouldn’t have been the first time a woman invited him back to her place. Drunk twentysomethings on a pub crawl, tipsy cougars out to prove to their friends they still had what it took, bachelorette party beauties trying to be memorable and make memories. Colleen wasn’t like any of them.
Maybe she was messing with him. Revenge for pissing her off? Playing a game?
She looked into his eyes. Shadows shifted there. Something dark, but definitely aware. She knew what she was doing and what she wanted, yet still he hesitated until she spoke again.
“Come home with me, Jesse.” If it had been a question, his common sense might’ve taken over and let him decline, but she hadn’t said it that way. No hesitation, no question.
A command.
* * *
They’d run the last half block, laughing and grabbing up snow to toss at each other. No plows had passed, which would make the morning an infinite pain in the ass for anyone trying to get in or out of any of the narrow, cobblestoned Fell’s Point streets. With the snow still coming down at an inch or so an hour, already more than the weather forecasters had predicted, they’d be lucky if they got shoveled out by Monday.
She was going to get lucky, Colleen thought as her key chattered in the lock because her numbed fingers couldn’t quite fit it on the first try. With Jesse on her heels, she shoved open the front door, which stuck as usual because it was hung a little crooked. The pair of them stumbled into her dark foyer, lit only by the streetlamp outside. She slammed the door behind him, hard, to make sure it closed all the way.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’m not going to try to escape.”
Co
lleen hung her keys on the small hook beside the door and loosened her coat. Tossed it onto the newel post. She was so cold her teeth chattered worse than the key, and she’d lost feeling in her toes, but when she stepped up to pull him by the front of his shirt, all she felt was heat. “Kiss me.”
He did. Softly at first, but harder when her mouth opened. His hands dug into her hair, fingers scraping her scalp like the best sort of deep massage, and it was her turn to moan. With her fingers still twisted tight in the front of his coat, Colleen stepped back, back, back until she hit the wall next to the arched doorway to the living room.
His hands were all over her. His cock, deliciously hard through his jeans, pressed her in just the right spot as he shifted, and Colleen gasped. Jesse’s mouth moved from hers to nibble at her chin, and then yes, oh, God, yes, her throat. His teeth scraped her, sending arousal in red pulsing waves all through her.
“Touch me, Jesse.” The words slipped out of her. Too much. Too harsh? But instead of sneering or laughing at her, Jesse groaned. One hand moved between her legs, his knuckles rubbing her clit through the sleek fabric of her winter-weight leggings.
Somehow they were moving again, this time into the living room, where she fell back onto her plush sofa with him on top of her. He moved, crotch grinding against hers. His kisses were fire, burning her up. But he was a little big, a little too heavy. Overwhelming. Without thinking, she pushed and rolled, ending up straddling him with her thighs pressed to his.
Colleen, breathing hard, sat up, one hand pressed flat on his chest. The other went to his belt buckle. She wanted to get him naked and have her way with him. She wanted to climb up his body and get his mouth on her clit, to ride his face until she came.
Yet she faltered. Her fingers had worked open his belt but not the button or zipper, and she paused. Her heart pounded. The whiskey had warmed her, loosened her, but she was far from drunk.
What the hell was she doing?