She catches my wrists in her hands, but her hold is light. And when I continue roving over the curves that have driven me to distraction for weeks, she follows my lead, maintaining the contact but not making any move to stop me. I’ve got her dress high enough that all I have to do is shift my thumb and graze her pussy.
Her fingers tighten around my wrists. “Why not?”
“Why shouldn’t you go?” I meet her eyes for a beat before returning to slowly stroking over those soft, swollen folds. Parting them. Spreading the slickness I find in them. Easing from the couch to the floor, I align my mouth with the sweetness I only got the barest taste of earlier. “Because I’m not nearly done with you yet.”
Her eyes are wide, her breath ragged. She’s fucking beautiful.
“Fair warning, Laurel.”
Laurel
“No.” I laugh, backing away from Jack’s bed, wrapped in a thoroughly warmed sheet. “I’m not letting your mouth or fingers or any other mind-melting part of you near me. I already spent the night, and I have a huge list of things to get done today.”
Jack’s expression is pure masculine satisfaction as he crawls off the bed, snagging the towel he was wearing when he busted me trying to make my escape after what turned out to be our first round. Since then, he’s had me in the living room, on the stairs, and back in his room.
Wrapping it around his waist, he prowls closer.
“It’s barely eight. How about I promise to keep my mouth, fingers, and other appendage of note on strict orders not to engage for at least another couple of hours. Just crawl back into bed with me for a while, and I’ll order breakfast in.”
“Pass.” As tempting as Jack’s post-sex charm is, I’ve got more sense than that. “But thanks for the offer.”
He shrugs, watching as I gather my things. “Okay, then what time can I pick you up tomorrow?”
“Monday?” My phone’s in my purse by the front door, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have anything on the books for the rest of this week.
“Yeah.” His mouth tilts into that sexy slant. “I’ll take you on a date.”
I almost drop my sheet. “A real one?”
Taking advantage of my stunned state, he comes up beside me, catching me in the loose circle of his arms. “A real one, Laurel. I’ll bring you flowers. You’ll get nervous about what to wear. I’ll take you somewhere nice but out of the way for dinner. We’ll talk about where something like this could go. And then I’ll kiss you goodnight so long…” he nuzzles his lips against my ear, sending chills skating down my arms, “…and so hard. So good, you won’t let me leave until the next morning.”
Wow. That’s some picture he paints.
And I’m not unaffected. Turning, I give him the same nuzzly lips treatment against his neck. “Any chance there’s an à la carte version of that date?”
He pulls his chin back. “What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking I’m never going to be stupid for this man again. “The goodnight kiss sounds amazing. But how about we skip straight to that? Say, ten-ish? My place?”
Jack’s brows pull together, darkening his eyes. “That’s what you want?”
I don’t know what I want, except that, for once, I want to be the one in control. “Yes.” I swallow, forcing myself not to look away first.
“Okay. Ten-ish it is.” Then he laughs and pulls me in for a quick kiss. “You want to borrow some sweats and a shirt for the ride home?”
“What?” He’s agreeing? Just like that? “No, my dress is fine.”
“Great, give me a minute, and I’ll take you.”
Jack
The nice thing about “ten-ish” is that there’s some wiggle room. Could be a little before. Could be a little after. And I’m calling nine thirty-two as within the booty-call window.
Which, make no mistake, is what this is. What it also is: a means to an end.
Laurel thinks I’m a guy without a lot to hide, but where she’s concerned, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been keeping my feelings for her under wraps for most of my life. I’m fucking good at it, and as a result, there have been plenty of times when even I couldn’t entirely accept what was happening.
But now I know. I want her. And once I stopped fighting it with every argument I could throw at it, once I gave in and just did what felt right—I realized there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to have her.
Including agree to sideline my plans to date the fuck out of her, until she’s had some time and a few dozen incentives of the O variety to get used to the idea that we might actually be good together.
Me: You get my present?
Nothing in the bylaws suggested I couldn’t send her a gift.
PutARingOnIt: I did. So you just happened to see these and thought of me?
Ha. If you fast-forward past me spending all of yesterday thinking about Laurel and going out of my damn head imagining what tonight would be like, seeking out a specific store with her in mind, and spending an hour picking out exactly the right silky bits and pieces in an ice blue I can’t wait to see next to her skin.
Me: I figured since you wanted to bypass the part where you fretted over what to wear, I’d help you out.
PutARingOnIt: Thoughtful.
Sarcasm doesn’t really translate via text. But I’m fairly certain that one is dripping with it.
Me: Hopeful. But either way, I’m on my way up.
PutARingOnIt: Door’s open.
The elevator takes forever, each floor a torturous wait. When I get to Laurel’s apartment, the door is cracked open, so I let myself in and lock it behind me.
“Laurel?”
“Back here.” The bedroom. Because that’s the limit on what she wants. For now.
And I’m all about accommodating.
At her room, I stop, that ache in my chest growing with my smile. “Hey, gorgeous.”
She’s lounging back on her bed, wearing an old pair of Bearings High sweatpants rolled at the waist and a varsity T-shirt sporting a few holes to match. Her hair is up in one of those messy knots, and there’s a half-drunk glass of wine on the nightstand.
Her smooth brow arches in amusement. “Expecting something else?”
Hell yes I was, but if Laurel thinks she’s disappointed me, she couldn’t be any further off base.
I give a low growl of approval, then start with the buttons on my shirt while kicking off my shoes.
My shirt hits the floor and I move on to my belt.
The amusement is gone. She sits a little higher in her bed.
“Jack, seriously… this does it for you?”
She does it for me. “Yeah, a lot.”
I pull the condoms from my pocket and toss them on the bed before crawling up it until I’m braced over Laurel’s sexy body. Her big brown eyes are wide, and if I’m not mistaken, she looks a little nervous. Like on some level she doesn’t totally want to acknowledge, she knows this isn’t just some hookup.
“Laurel, I’ve been thinking about you like this for years. You’ve just made one of my oldest high school fantasies come true.” I dip down and kiss her, sinking into the softness of her lips and giving her my tongue until she moans and her hands move to my chest and start sliding down to where my belt and fly hang open.
Pulling back with a groan, I catch her left hand in mine and pull it up to my mouth for a kiss. “First things first.”
“Bossy,” she sighs, lying back and tracing the hand with my ring on it across the exposed stretch of her belly.
I’m pretty sure all the blood in my brain just evacuated south to my dick. Because, damn, I like that.
I catch the drawstring at her belly with my teeth, giving it a tug to untie it. Hooking my fingers into the waist, I draw the sweatpants down inch by inch until I see it.
Ice-blue silk trim, sheer mesh, a tiny, sexy-as-fuck bow on the most scantily cut panties I’ve ever seen. “You wore them.”
Easing her T-shirt higher, she shows me the matching bra encasing
her perfect tits.
“I did. You like?”
The flashback to when I fell for her the first time was hot, but seeing her wrapped in what I gave her, knowing no one has seen it but me… “I’m so hard it hurts.”
I whip off her T-shirt the rest of the way and then the sweats. Pushing between her knees, I lick through mesh to her sweet pussy. “No more messing around. You come like this and then I’m going to fuck you into next week.”
15
Laurel
“He told you how to come… and you did?”
I give Margo the volume-control eyes and then scan the Whole Foods aisle for any children before turning back to her and nodding like a bobblehead. “Yes!”
“How many times?”
Another furtive glance around.
“Four.” I grab her hand, pulling her in for the eye contact so critical to her understanding what I’m about to share. “He. Is. So. Good.”
Margo’s eyes go wide with emotion, and suddenly she’s blinking back tears. “This is everything I wanted for you! You’re in love!”
My shoulders drop, and I toss down her hand with a huff. “Bite your tongue! I’m in lust. And it’s amazing. This thing with Jack is complicated, I’ll grant you that. But when you boil it down to its most basic elements… what we have between us is convenient and hot.”
“Smoking hot,” she corrects.
I bite my lip, thinking about the demise of that bra-and-panty set. “Blazing hot.”
She swallows. “Burn-the-house-down hot?”
And what he did to me after. Reverently, I whisper, “Inferno hot. We’re talking five alarms. Probably more.”
Margo steps closer to the cooler, leaning into it as she wafts the chilled air down her shirt. She kills me.
“So, convenient, huh? Did he just pop a kiss on your completely spent lady business and take off afterward? Let you finish watching Shameless?”
She’s going to read too much into this. I know it. “He spent the night.”
Silence.
I’m not going to look.
More silence, and I can feel my defenses rolling their necks and bouncing on the balls of their feet—ready to jump into the fray. I hold out a second more before spinning back to her. “So he did me against the shower wall this morning, and as a thank you, I made him a cup of coffee.” Which we drank together before he drove me to work, but no way am I going to tell her about that, or how I got chills when he played with my hair while we set up plans before he gave me the dirtiest kiss of my life right there, double-parked in front of my office building.
Margo’s lips are tucked together, her effort not to smile irritating me all the more.
“It’s just sex!” And cue the young mom sprinting past me with her kids in tow.
Dang it.
Jack’s spent the night three times this week. We’re sticking to the sex-mostly plan, but he’s a chatty guy and all too easy to talk to, so maybe there’s a little more conversation happening than sex-only would constitute. Particularly because so much of it happens while I’m tucked into the crook of his arm, my fingers trailing lazy designs over the spectacular contours of his chest.
But I’m still in control. I’m still just enjoying the ride, and I am not getting invested on any kind of level where I might have the potential to be hurt. What Jack and I have is about fun.
And while I am planning to talk to him on the phone for quite some time tonight, it’s totally within the rules. He’s out of town for the weekend with Harry to check on some properties in Austin one of his longtime associates wants him to develop. But he promised to dirty-talk me into my happy place if I sent him my favorite naughty Tumblr gifs throughout the day as inspiration. At first, I wasn’t sure I could do it, but we started texting, and pretty soon he had me laughing and then a little breathless, and finally, well, it’s a good thing I’ve got an unlimited plan, because once I started sending… and he started responding… yeah, goodbye Saturday and any other plans I might have had.
JackMyJill: Finished with your bath?
Me: Done. Those bath salts were heaven. That was very sweet. How was dinner with Harry?
I blink, feeling that niggle of unease winding through me. Because I’ve been waiting the entire day for dirty phone sex with Jack, and not only do I ask him about how his business trip is going… I actually want to know.
That’s bad.
Or maybe it’s just sex-mostly between friends. Because more and more, that’s what Jack feels like to me. A very good friend with a unique set of skills that he’s graciously agreed to share with me. No strings attached.
The phone rings in my hand, and I jump like I’ve been caught with my mind in some emotional cookie jar. But I haven’t. I know what this is. We both do.
I answer, pushing my nerves aside. “Hi, Jack.”
“Hey, gorgeous. What are you wearing?”
I smile. That’s what I needed to hear. “A silk shorty robe and feather-topped fuck-me slipper heels. Hot pink.”
He laughs. “Nice try. Tell me.”
“The University of Chicago T-shirt I borrowed the other morning and the boxers you misplaced here on Wednesday.”
Jack’s answering groan is everything I hoped it would be when I bypassed my usual PJ collection in lieu of something I knew would drive him crazy.
“Anything else?”
“Not a scrap.”
“Fuck, Laurel. Take a picture for me. Please, baby.”
Yeah, forget the Tumblr gifs. The ache in Jack’s voice has me squirming where I sit. “Where do you want me when I take it?”
That low groan. So hot.
“Sofa… one leg over the back rest.”
I do as he says, lying back to get comfortable, arranging my legs just so, and leaving a bare strip of skin between where the rolled top of his boxers end low on my hips and where his T-shirt has ridden up toward my ribs. I debate for a second and then slide just the tips of two of my fingers beneath the boxers, letting the others rest over top.
Snap.
Send.
“Jesus fuuck.” His breath sounds ragged, sexy like nothing I’ve heard before.
Slipping my fingers lower into his shorts, I ask, “Jack, are you touching yourself?”
“You know I am.”
I almost come just like that.
“Mmm,” I purr. “Makes me so wet thinking about your hand wrapped tight around your cock.”
“Laurel?” He practically chokes out my name, solidifying my new plan. I think I’ll talk Jack into his dirty place first and then he can talk me back into mine. Because truth? I’m about to go off and we’ve barely even started this game.
“You’re holding it tight, right? Imagining that hot grip around you is me?” I moan a little as my fingers slip inside. “Because I’m imagining it’s you.”
“Oh fuck yes.”
“Tell me what you’re wearing, baby…”
Jack
There is nothing hotter than listening to Laurel Matthews beg me to tell her to come. Well, except for when I do, and she actually comes. Okay, or when she sucked her fingers for me after playing with herself and murmured how badly she wished I was there to taste her off her own tongue.
Hot. As. Fuck.
She’s smart. Creative. Beautiful. Funny. Quick. And she’s wearing down about us too, even if she isn’t ready to admit it to herself yet.
“Jack?” She sounds sleepy, sated. Soft and perfect in my ear as I hold my phone.
“Yeah, beautiful?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way.”
I grin, wondering what she’s got for me. “Okay. Let’s have it.”
“I miss you.”
Or maybe she’s closer to admitting it than I thought. “I miss you too.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I bark, zipping up my fly as Laurel smooths down her dress, cheeks still flushed from what happened against the front door to her apartment approximately point-five seconds after I walked in.
Christ, it was like we couldn’t get to each other fast enough. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t make it even a single step farther into her apartment.
And when we finished, I looked into her eyes, felt my heart pound in that way it only does for her… and I asked to take her out.
“You know that’s not what we’re doing, Jack.”
I blink, wondering how she can say that with a straight face. “We talked for three hours last night.” And yeah, one of those was dedicated to dirty talk, but the other two sure as hell weren’t. “We aren’t just fucking.”
She flinches, her shoulders going stiff. “I know that. But we aren’t falling in love, either.”
My jaw clenches, molars grinding together. I take a deep breath and hold up my hand. “Why don’t you tell me what we are doing?” She opens her mouth, but I already know what’s coming and can’t take it tonight. “And don’t even tell me we’re just ‘having some fun.’”
“Why not? That’s all it’s supposed to be. You said that’s all you wanted.”
“No, that’s what you wanted, and I went along with it because I understood that the last time I said those words to you it fucked everything up. And it stuck with you. And after all these years, you deserved to throw them back in my face. I went along with it because it was crystal fucking clear to me that what we had was more than that, and I thought all you needed was a little time to get used to the idea.”
“I wasn’t throwing anything in your face.”
“No?”
She blinks, looking away, and I hate that she doesn’t want to let me have even that much. That she doesn’t even trust me with what’s in her eyes.
“Laurel, please.”
“Maybe we should just back off. Slow things down some.”
Does she even realize what she’s saying to me? Is she trying to cut me this deep, or does she actually not remember them?
Dirty Bad Boy Page 9