But when we pressed together and were bare-skin to bare-skin, I would've been surprised, should've been shocked. That is, if I could've thought. My legs wobbled and his hands slid under my ass, a cheek in each of his large palms, pulling my body up until I had no choice except to wrap my legs around his waist, my arms twining around his neck.
It must be noted that throughout the whole maneuver, his tongue and mouth never left mine.
I'm here to say, that heat, that special kind of hotness you hear about, that you read about?
Yeah, it's real.
It's good.
Very, very good.
I only became aware of the doorbell when we changed position so Jax could twist the hot water on enough to prevent us both from freezing.
"Uh, doorbell," I whispered against his lips, my arms holding on for dear life since the hands on my ass, levering me up against the shower wall, were slowly releasing as he moved.
"Do you need to get it?" Jack asked pulling his head up, to look me in the eye.
"It might be a delivery," I admitted regretfully.
"Shit," he said as I slid down his body, feeling every bump, every indentation of his muscled form on my inner thighs, between my legs, as I moved. Especially against the hard length behind his wet briefs.
"Agreed," I said, stepping out of the shower and grabbing a towel, rubbing it over me before slipping into my robe. "Be right back."
I walked quickly to the stairs and bounded down, tying my robe firmly, determined to shoo whoever it was that was leaning on the doorbell as quickly as possible.
Before I was even halfway down, though, I heard it.
The voice.
"Goddamn it, Lacey. Get your motherfucking ass down here, now," I heard my mother screech as she banged on the doorframe.
Shit.
My mother.
Now. Of all the freaking times the woman could show up, she chose now.
With Jack just upstairs.
Shit.
"Mom?" I called through the door. "Er, Belinda? Now's not a good time. Can you come back later?"
"I'm not going to come back later, you stupid piece of shit. Open the motherfucking door now! You're my sister and you know I won't go away until you let me in, you stupid cunt!" she screamed.
Okay, so the language and the scream let me know that she had a man with her. A man that didn't know her age or that she had a daughter. Plus, since the language was so raw, this guy was a bad-ass, which was the only kind of man my mother respected. That is, if a woman like her could work up any respect at all, even for another of her species.
"What's going on?" I heard Jack whisper from the joint of the dog-legged bend in the staircase.
"Uhm, family issues," I muttered, trying and failing to keep the derision out of my voice. Not to mention, my embarrassment at him having a front row seat to the drama about to unfold before his eyes. I don't know if she sought it out or created it all on her own, but Belinda Emerson and the car wreck of her life were drama personified.
My mom banged on the door again, making even the boarded up window next to it rattle.
"Open the motherfucking door, Lacey or I swear…" I heard her bellow the unfinished threat.
I opened the door, and used my foot to brace against it, only allowing a hands-breath of space to show.
She was, as always, dressed inappropriately. This morning's choice was a bright red spandex number that spanned her bloated curves, showing way too much skin for Auburn, for morning wear, for any and all other reasons you could come up with. I would've called it a tunic. I think she meant to wear it as a dress.
Her makeup was smeared and her hair, which she always wore teased out to there and beyond, was more wild than usual.
And, as usual when around me, her face held a sneer.
"Well, there she is. Miss Queen of Everything," she greeted. Which, by all accounts, was one of the nicest greetings she'd given me in years.
"What do you want?" I asked, hoping to circumvent the family reunion she was trying to stage for whomever was also within hearing distance, i.e., her latest man.
"I need money, missy, and I need it right, the fuck, now," she yelled. "She was my mother and…er, our mother and I deserve at least half of what she left you!"
"Mom…" I started.
"I told you before! Don't you ever fucking call me 'Mom', you cunt," she hissed, leaning in and pointing a long red nail at my face, trying to whisper but failing. Even from a distance of three feet, I could smell her. The cheap booze, the lack of a personal hygiene that was still bleeding through the cloud of some kind of perfume applied with a heavy hand was what hit my nose.
I just wanted her to go. To go back to whatever hole she'd crawled out of and just leave me alone. Yet, I'd known when Ms. Russell said my mom had filed a motion against Grandma's will that she'd be creating trouble.
I just hadn't figured on face-to-face trouble with my new guy seeing her shit-storm in all its glory.
"Goddamn, Lynn," I heard a slurred deep voice yell from behind her. "I knew you were just some tired, old whore that likes to screw her way to the good life. You ain't no thirty. Shit, you're pro'lly closer to fifty. Fuck, babe. Give it up."
At the sound of the man's voice, Jack came completely down the stairs and wrenched the door out of my hand. Luckily, I moved my foot away just in time.
"Go away," he said firmly, in his deep, deep voice. "Go, the fuck, away now."
This was a nightmare.
One that could send a girl to an institution.
Or a nunnery, even if you're not a religious sort.
Take your pick.
"Oh. My. God," my stupid, out of her too-good-to-take-her-meds, bi-polar mind, Mom uttered staring at Jack, stumbling back as she spoke. "It's fucking Jax Wynter. My daughter is fucking Jax fucking Wynter."
Wait…what?
I glanced up and saw Jack staring at me, his mouth a thin line and a muscle jumping in his cheek. His eyes looked almost stricken as he watched me.
Jax Wynter?
As in, the baby rock star I'd had a crush on at sixteen?
Jax, the Eternal Teenager, from one of the biggest rock bands in America, in the world, for fuck's sake?
Holy shit.
My eyes shot back to my mother watching in horror as she reached into the top of the dress to drag her tits upwards. A quick shimmy then she threw back her shoulders, palms on her ass and purred, "Well, hello there, handsome."
I moved my mortified eyes back to Jack, and saw it.
I saw what my mom had recognized.
It was all there, in the deep brown eyes and the full lips, the thick glossy hair and the inked arms. Helping me to remember how I knew him.
Straight from the poster which Ricki had taped to the back of her bedroom door when we were knee deep in our rock chick phase.
Jax.
Jack.
How stinking stupid am I?
How did I not see it before?
Without thinking, without caring about who was on the other side, I slammed the door and shot the lock.
"You're Jax Wynter?" I yelled on a whisper over the sound of the banging of the door, the repeated bleeps of the doorbell.
Obviously, Mom wasn't going away. At the moment, I didn't have time for her and her shit. I had another issue to deal with first.
"Yeah, Lace. I am," he whispered back tightly, his eyes closed and his head back. I heard, and this may sound really weird, I heard shame in his voice at his admission.
"And, what? You get off playing like you're a regular person or something?" I hissed. "That whole 'I'm just a nice, regular hot guy' helps you score with us local-yokels? Huh?"
Chocolate chips, even my voice was shaking. I tried to get a grip on the tremors of my body but it was pretty hard to do when I was so tense, so utterly pissed off, I thought my head was going to explode.
How dare he?
"What am I? One of your groupies or a little local plaything you've decided would help yo
u pass the time here in bum-eff Egypt?" I whisper-yelled again.
"Lacey? Stop, baby, please," he begged. "Please don't."
"How stupid am I, right?" I said, turning to stomp my way upstairs. "Getting all up in a famous rock star's face. Not even knowing he was a rock god to begin with! Jax Wynter!"
A thought occurred to me and I twisted on the staircase to stare directly into his eyes, since we were on the same eye-level now.
"I had my tongue in your mouth," I yelled out loud. I mean, loud.
"Yes, you did," he shot back, shouting right back at me. "And it was good. Right, Lace? It was good, right?"
His words hung in the air a couple of seconds before I got it.
I heard a background note in his voice I didn't expect.
It wasn't of a rock star with a groupie.
It wasn't even of a man with a woman who was having a shit-hemorrhage.
To this day I really believe it was of a man who was scared of what his woman thought of him. Not of what he, one of the superstars of rock, thought about me.
No. He was afraid of my opinion about him.
Very afraid.
I slowed my roll.
The look on his face, the tone of his voice, everything I was reading in the air around us on the staircase had absolutely nothing to do with rock and roll or fame or a guy slumming it.
I dropped my ass to the stairs in shock.
He was into me. As in, into me in a big way. My thoughts about him mattered and held weight.
I saw him crouch down before sitting on the steps below me.
"I wanted to tell you, Lace," he said slowly.
"Why?" I asked, glancing at him. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He was quiet and I gave him time.
"You're the first person that didn't know me, didn't recognize me," he began. "The only person that treated me like a real person, not some fucked up, burnt out, has-been piece of shit."
His hand covered one of my feet on the tread just above where he was sitting and his head lowered, watching as his thumb moved over the skin on the top of my foot.
"That life, the fame of the group and fucking everything that goes with that kind of inescapable attention, almost destroyed me, Lacey." His voice was soft yet underneath was a note of pain.
"It did fucking destroy Denny," he said on a tortured whisper and his head dropped to my knees.
Without thinking, my hands went to his hair and I watched as my fingers began to thread themselves through his still damp raven locks.
"I've never met anyone like you," I heard him mumble into the skin exposed by my robe. "You didn't flirt or ask questions about my life, the drugs, my brother or the band. You asked questions about me, Lace, about me. What I thought, how I was feeling. You treat me like someone you want to know."
His voice, that deep velvety voice, got even softer. "You kiss me like I'm somebody special, but not the famous kind of special. Just a regular guy who has worth. Someone who you might like to be with at some point."
He raised his head and I, like always, got caught in his chocolate eyes.
"You're beautiful, funny as hell and smart. Your sweetness covers me like warm syrup every time I'm around you. You kiss like a woman starved for me, just for fucking me, and I don't want any of that to stop." He blinked at me slowly and swallowed before he continued. "I was afraid you wouldn't want me, wouldn't want to even see me if you knew, Lace. And I didn't want this thing that's started between us to…"
I pressed my fingers against his mouth to stop his words.
I didn't need to hear anymore.
I looked, really looked, at my Jack.
The man I was getting to know.
A man that had captured my heart and that enflamed my body.
And, by all the wonderful cocoa berries under the sun, I forgave him for not telling me he was a smoking hot rock star. One of the handful of men that every woman in the world wanted to sleep with, to kiss, or even, just once, see face-to-face in real life.
I tipped my forehead and pressed it against his.
"You think we've started something here?" I teased.
"Fuck, yeah, baby, I do," he admitted with, what sounded like, a relieved sigh.
"I'm kind of getting that we need to keep this on the down-low," I said feeling, as much as hearing, my smile.
"Grams says that eventually people will forget, except it hasn't happened yet," he replied, his own smile beginning to spread before faltering. "Is that going to be a problem for you?'
I thought about it for all of point zero four seconds. "Absolutely not."
He leaned forward. And was about two millimeters away from kissing me, when I had to ask, "But, when it comes out, can I tell everyone that you fell at my feet when you met me?"
I got a view I'm sure was not on any piece of film, video or even written about in any rag-sheet.
It was the view of Jax, that beautiful rock god, throwing back his head, laughing his ass off, the booming sound echoing off the walls in my tiny stairway.
Chapter 11
We were still kissing on the stairs when I heard a key in the back door and saw Beth squeeze her way through.
She glanced up and, over Jax's shoulder, I saw her eyes get big as she dropped the ring of keys in her purse.
"Your mom's outside, Lace," she advised slowly, turning her head away from the tangle of our bodies.
"I know," I answered mildly and used my head and shoulder to keep Jax's head tucked against me. "Uhm, I'll be down in a second, okay?"
She waved a hand and turned to the door that led to the bakery.
As soon as I heard the door close, I stood, pulling Jax up with me.
"I gotta get to work, honey," I said, opening the door to my apartment.
"You didn't get to bake, Lace," he said. Glancing back I could see he was frowning. "I didn't mean to keep you…"
"You didn't," I assured him moving to my bedroom. "You're welcome to stay if you want. I'd like you to meet Beth and Sarge. I'll completely understand, though, if you don't want to be seen."
He'd followed me all the way back and into my room. I reached for a pair of jeans and one of my 'Lacey's Bakery' t-shirts before grabbing a bra and some underwear.
Jax was standing next to my bed, eyeing the muss of covers, taking in the little stalk of freesia in a bud vase sitting on the nightstand.
"What?" I asked, stilling at the look on his face.
"You liked the flowers," he said. He didn't ask. He just seemed to be confirming.
"Very much, honey."
I got another beautiful smile.
"Could you, uhm, give me a sec to get dressed?" I asked, waving a hand towards the door.
He stepped through and softly closed it behind him.
I shucked into my clothes, slid my feet into a pair of chef clogs before dragging a brush through my half-dried hair. I looped a holder around it before pulling on a black baseball hat, yanking my hair through the back opening, catching the long length of it, wrapping the holder again and again.
It was going to look like shit tonight, but it was up and I looked somewhat presentable.
He was waiting in the hallway, just tugging his t-shirt into place when I exited my room.
I glanced towards the bathroom and saw the towels were draped over the shower rod to dry, the mess on the floor completely wiped up.
"Yes," he said slowly.
"Yes?" I repeated, watching him as he leaned against the wall, pulling on his obviously new running shoes.
"I'll stay. I gotta call Gram and I'll stay in the kitchen. But, I'll stick around if you…," I saw him swallow as he straightened before finishing. "If you want me to."
I was already late, so what was another five minutes?
There was a hot man in my house that needed assuring, who's mouth fit mine so stinking well that I was willing to take just a bit more time.
I took a couple of steps back and grabbed another baseball cap for him.
It wasn't muc
h of a disguise as disguises went, but it was something.
I pressed against him as I shoved it on his head and raised my mouth to his.
Oh, yeah.
We fit.
*.*.*.*.*
"Beth," I said coming into the retail space, feeling his heat behind me. I glanced towards the glass doors at the front and noticed there was a bit of a group forming. "Can I see you in the kitchen a moment?"
Her eyes travelled to the tall figure behind me before she nodded and went through the swinging half-doors.
When all three of us were in the tiny room, were taking up almost every available square inch of walking space, I saw her expression. And I saw she already knew who he was without even having to be told.
I was determined to do this right in a way that would help him as much as myself.
"Beth? This is Jack, my boyfriend." At my words, I felt his shaking fingers flex on my waist from behind. "Jack, this is Elizabeth. We all call her Beth."
"He-hello, Jax," she stumbled, her eyes round and wide.
Jax moved to my side and stuck a hand out towards her. I watched her eyes move to the hand, then to his face and back again before she reached a shaking hand to him.
"Nice to meet you, Beth," he said velvety, deep and I felt his whole body vibrating as his chest again pressed against my back as their hands released.
"He's going to help me in the kitchen, if you don't mind handling the counter?" I asked, trying to sound normal, calm. He needed calm and normal. "He's hiding out, okay? We're not going to…uhm, we don't want to…"
"I get it," she finally said, cutting me off. "I'll work the counter and the crowd. Except, can I just say this and get it out of the way?"
I tilted my head over my shoulder at Jax, catching that gaze, that shy brown look before I saw him nod his assent.
"Okay," I breathed, turning back to her.
"God, I love your music," she gushed, releasing words along with her breath. "You're my favorite band! I was so sorry to hear about your brother."
"Ah, thanks," I heard him rumble from over my shoulder. "It's, uh, always nice to meet a fan."
"No, really. I mean it," she said, her eyes widening even further. "I won't tell a soul, honest. But I just wanted you to know, you know with everything and all."
Everybody Falls Page 9