Jason grinned. “Bulldog Rascone!” he said with flair, and Liz found herself laughing again.
***
After dinner, Jason asked for a lift home. They stood outside of Chevette’s and the valet had just returned with the car and was attempting to hand the keys to Liz, who wasn’t accepting them.
“Look, Jason, I appreciate your help. But you can drop me home and keep your car. The valet then turned to Jason. “Your keys, sir.”
“They belong to the lady,” Jason replied, and then turned to Liz. “Until your car is ready, you keep it.”
“The keys, ma’am,” the now impatient valet said to Liz, attempting to hand her the keys once again.
“But how are you going to get around?” Liz wanted to know.
Jason smiled. “Don’t you worry about me.”
“And don’t you worry about me,” Liz said.
“I’m not letting you get around without wheels, Liz, now that’s a fact.”
“You aren’t letting me?”
“You heard me.”
“Sir?” the valet pleaded and Jason finally took the keys. The grateful valet hurried away from them.
“Funny,” Liz said, “my father looks nothing like you.”
Jason snorted. “Tonight he looks just like me,” he said and unlocked the driver side door.
“Now get in.”
Diners entering and leaving the restaurant began to notice them, which Liz knew couldn’t be good for Jason. She therefore shook her head and began getting into the driver’s seat.
“You are a bulldog, anybody ever tell you that?”
“Many people. But none as sexily as you just told me.”
Liz rolled her eyes as he closed the door and headed for the passenger side of his own car.
But as soon as he was unable to see her, she smiled.
***
It was an almost ordinary house, small, one story, made of log wood and pine, down a long graveled path backed by a large, private lake. It was dark and secluded and absolutely nothing at all like the kind of home Liz thought a showboat like Bulldog Rascone would own. She expected big, brash, ultra-expensive. Not small, quaint, and peaceful. Extremely peaceful, she thought, as she stopped in front of the old-fashioned porch.
“Come on in,” Jason said, unbuttoning his seatbelt, “I want to show you around.” Ordinarily Liz would have told Jason thanks, but no thanks, and went on about her business. But she actually had enjoyed herself tonight and, to her own shock, wasn’t quite ready for it to end, either. She got out, attempted again to give him his keys – was rebuffed again, and followed him into a home that she found beautiful, not by its extravagance, but by its understatement.
There were no stand-out pieces, just tasteful art, and the kind of big, sturdy, traditional furniture you’d find in your regular cookie-cutter suburban home, or some cabin somewhere: early English, Herculean, pastel-colored, with leather (or was it vinyl?) trim.
Jason, however, flipped the light switch and smiled greatly, as if ordinary was the last thing he’d call his home. “Well, what do you think?” he asked her.
Liz couldn’t help but smile. “It’s so not you,” she replied.
“So not me, or your image of me?”
Liz looked at him. It was the second time he had made clear that she was not to believe what she read in the papers. He wasn’t who everybody thought he was.
“Actually, you’re right,” Jason added, looking around himself. “This is definitely not in keeping with my public image. That’s why I bought it. But let me show you the rest.” He took Liz by the hand, which caused her to feel oddly comfortable, and showed her a galley-style kitchen that was so small that both of them couldn’t stand in it at the same time; two boxy-type bedrooms just big enough for a bed and maybe a dresser; and then the master suite. As soon as Liz entered the suite, she got it. Now she understood what all the fuss was about.
“Ah,” she said as soon as followed him in and saw the view from the floor to ceiling windows in a bedroom built, unlike the previous two, in the round. The view, of a lovely, quiet lake surrounded by beautiful, wind-tossed trees, was serenity personified. “It’s enchanting,” Liz found herself saying.
“Yes,” said Jason, as he enjoyed the view, too. When his eyes trailed from the window to his bed, and he could imagine Liz naked in that bed, he abruptly took her by the hand again.
“Come,” he said, nearly dragging her along with his swiftness, “I want you to experience the view.”
And she did, as Jason flew open the French doors and they walked out onto the wide deck. Although the crickets clogged up the night sounds, and the night owls lifted their voices, too, the peace was palpable. It felt like a drug to Liz. Like an easy addiction. She had to smile. She had to hand it to Bulldog.
“This is awesome,” she said, nodding.
Jason grinned. “No, is it really?” he asked like a kid, as if he was pleased by her confirmation.
“Yes, of course. I see it now. Completely.”
She was the only woman who had been in his home who did. The few others were turned off as soon as they saw the front of the house, with one even commenting that she had expected a mansion, not this “shack” of a place. But Liz got it immediately, as Jason somehow knew she would.
They stood there, still holding hands, listening to the sounds of the night as if they were hearing a symphony. Jason looked at Liz. Her face was enraptured.
“You like it then?” he asked softly. It was a redundant question, but he felt a need to ask it.
“I love it,” Liz felt a need to say, tears building in her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”
Jason looked at her, at her tear-stained eyes, and he pulled her into his arms. Liz, moved too, return his embrace. And there they stood, for the longest, holding tightly onto the other.
Until Jason moved slightly back and looked at her face, her eyes, her mouth. And then he kissed her. She allowed it, which made him hungrier. He moved her closer, and kissed her harder. Soon, there was no daylight between them at all. And he wasn’t about to stop there.
“Oh, Liz,” he said as he kissed her cheeks, her chin, as he nuzzled her ear. “I’ve got to have you.”
“Jason, we can’t,” Liz replied, as her arms encircled his neck tighter, as she slowly began to falter.
“Don’t say that,” he said, refusing to make it easy for her. “We can. You know we can.
Please say it, Liz. Please say yes.”
He was begging her now, as he backed her against the door, his loins screaming in agony for a release, to release inside of her. Only her. Nobody but her. He had to have her!
“Please,” he pleaded again.
“Oh, Jason!” Liz cried and as soon as she did he smothered her mouth with his own. And that did it for him. He lifted her and carried her to his bed. He began undressing her with one hand, and himself with the other. But it was taking too long. She helped, undressing him, until they both were made bare.
He laid on top of her, still kissing her as if she was the breath he breathe. When he was about to enter her, she stopped him.
“A condom, Jason,” she said.
“For everybody else, yes, I always wear a condom. But not for you.” Liz stared at him, at the sincerity, the passion, the pure lust in his eyes, and she knew there was no turning back. She released his arm.
And then he entered her. She felt his massiveness as he entered, and her back immediately arched. It felt like a heroin high, a meth high, how a crack cocaine high had to feel. She kept lifting her small body against his massive one as the weight of him, the wildness of him, spilled inside of her. She squirmed in pleasure as he pounded her, as he kept screaming her name, and they both lifted up in a full body caress, and then collapsed in a release that caused both of them to shutter.
***
She could not believe she had allowed it to happen again. Not again! She stood in his bathroom, her clothes in her hand, and slowly began to dress
. Three times with this man, three times naked with this man. He had to think of her as some kind of a nympho the way she was always so willing to tear off her clothes at seemingly the mere sight of him. Yeah, she put up some resistance at the beginning, but that was only token resistance and they both knew it. She was behaving as if the girl had to have it and the girl had to have it every time she laid eyes on him! It was embarrassing. And even afterwards, after she had dressed and reentered the bedroom, only to find him already dressed and waiting for her up front, made her feel weird. She could barely look him in the eye.
He wasn’t exactly breaking out the champagne, either, she noticed, as he asked if she was okay. When she said that she was, he walked her out of his house, up to his car, and opened his driver’s side door for her. He was quiet too, which made Liz assume that he was as thrown as she was, until he sat her down in the driver’s seat of his car, and leaned in and kissed her. It wasn’t the kiss of a regretful man, but a triumphant one, a very passionate kiss, as his lips couldn’t seem to get enough of her. When he finally stopped, he slouched against the car’s doorjamb and she leaned her head back against the high head rest. What was she thinking, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering. She didn’t need any hot and heavy romance right now in her life, and especially not with some control freak like Jason Rascone!
Her fear couldn’t have been more realized when he began to put on the seatbelt for her.
“Drive carefully,” he said, which she accepted as Jason just being his thoughtful self. Until he added: “I’ll be behind you.”
Liz looked at him, as he clasped the belt. “Behind me?” she asked him.
“To make sure you get home safe, yes,” he replied. “I’ll follow you in my truck.” Liz could hardly believe it. She just knew he had to be kidding. “Jason, that is so not necessary,” she said.
“Didn’t say it was necessary. But that’s what I’m going to do. You see that old pickup over there?” he asked her, pointing toward a dark beige Ford F-150. “That’s what I’ll be driving.”
Liz wanted to argue with him, he was taking this a little too far, but she didn’t bother.
Jason was going to do whatever Jason wanted to do, regardless of what she said about it. But she knew she couldn’t just sit back and allow it, either. She therefore cranked up and left, driving her normal fast speed, unable to stop thinking about what in the world was she getting herself into. She was allowing him to what? See her home like a good little girl? What would he want next? To know her every movement? To make her phone him whenever she went anywhere or even planned to do anything? To get his permission before she decided anything for herself? She’d been in those kind of suffocating, all-consuming relationships before. With her father first, and then with Scotty, her ex. Both alpha-males, both bound and determined to keep her under their control. She was terrified of going down that road again.
It wasn’t until she was nearly halfway home did she realize she had left Jason in the dust.
She was naturally a fast driver and this night, after that round of incredible lovemaking with Jason, after the implications of the decisions she was making, she had forgotten he was even behind her.
As soon as she parked at the curb in front of her apartment, however, she was shocked to see Jason’s truck fly around the corner like a bat out of hell and park before she was able to get out of the car. It was quiet around the Center, given that it was a dead-end street surrounded by warehouses and other office buildings, and Liz suddenly felt queasy when she stepped out of her car and saw Jason barreling toward her. He was in jeans and a polo shirt, and looked furious. Her inattention, it seemed, had annoyed him.
“What kind of driving was that?” he yelled as he approached her, his arms flailing. “It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself driving that fast, Liz? What’s the matter with you?” Liz attempted to play it off. “Don’t tell me a little petal to the metal bothers the Bulldog?
It’ll bother Mr. Conservative, I know. But the Bulldog?” She said this with a smile, a smile that seemed to catch Jason short, and he exhaled. And smiled too, only his smile was still fraught with worry.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack, woman.”
“Sorry about that.” And she was.
Jason looked at her. He knew her little Daytona 500 stun was her way of defying him, of showing him that she was her own woman, so he took it in stride. He placed his arm around her waist and began walking with her up the stairs that led to her front door. “Just remember I’m an old man,” he said as they walked.
“Yeah, right. You’ll run circles around any twenty-year-old and you know it.”
“I don’t know now. You said earlier tonight I reminded you of your father.”
“I said you were acting as if you were my father, which isn’t the same thing.”
“What ever,” Jason said in a mimic of Liz and Liz laughed.
When they arrived at her front door, however, Jason looked around at her neighborhood.
“I don’t like this, Liz. It feels too deserted around here at night.”
“And that’s just the way I love it,” she said, putting her key in the door and unlocking it.
She then turned to Jason. “Thanks again for letting me use your car. Unless my driving style’s given you second thoughts.”
“You wish,” Jason said, playful at first, and then his look lingered and changed. She was beautiful to him. Not just in looks, not just her fantastic body. But in a way that was more than just her looks, that was more than just a sexy body. There was a great sense of decency about her, an innocence was still there, that pricked at him. She’d been through a lot, the way she made love to him tonight with such a total, unbridled release made him know that she had plenty of ghosts she wanted buried, that she wanted his sex to take away from her, and it disturbed him. He moved up closer to her. Put his hand on her smooth brown face. And he kissed her yet again. It was supposed to be a simple kiss goodnight. That was what his mind was telling him to do. Kiss her goodnight and then leave her alone for once. But his heart was telling him differently and that simple kiss became their most passionate yet.
Liz felt the heat too, wrapping her arms around him as he pulled her closer into his, as he seemed determined to sear her with his kiss. When their kissing finally ebbed, they leaned forehead to forehead against each other.
“This isn’t going to work,” Jason said. Then he stood erect, shaking his head as if he was convinced of it now. “This isn’t going to work,” he said again.
“What isn’t going to work?” Liz asked, puzzled.
But Jason was already taking action. He had already grabbed her by the arm, and was pulling her inside of her apartment. As soon as he closed the door, he slammed her against it, lifted her skirt, pulled down her panties, and unzipped his pants. With the urgency of a madman, he shoved into her, kissing her as he plunged deeper, and made love to her right then and there as passionately as they had made love in his bed. This was crazy. Why couldn’t he get enough of this woman? But he couldn’t. He had to have her. Everything about her turned him on. The way she laughed, the way she held her head, the way she flicked her wrist. He had to have her.
And he did, pounding her over and over as his entire body shook with euphoria. Liz shook too, as she met his passion, as she experienced that higher than high excitement that he was able to make her feel. She could hold on as he pounded her, as the sound of their bodies slapping against each other echoed throughout her quiet home.
After they both released, they collapsed against the door, both of them exhausted, both unable to move.
He stared at her. What was he doing? He’d never wanted anybody so desperately. “You okay?” he asked her, concerned that he had been too desperate, too rough.
She looked away from him, and could only manage a nod. “I’m okay,” she said, barely able to catch her breath, too.
SEVEN
Liz wasn’t in her office and seated behind her desk ten minutes before Sh
ameika was coming in with a stack of files in her arms.
“Here are the reports on Hemming,” she said as she dropped the files down on Liz’s desk.
“Thanks, Meek. “Those are a lot of files.”
“Hemming has had a lot of problems. That’s why they need to staff it. Should have been did it.”
“And they expect me to read over all of these files by noon today? Terrific.”
“Okay, now that we’ve got the business out of the way,” Shameika said and sat on the edge of her desk. “Give, sister. I want a blow by blow.”
Get off of my desk.”
“Come on, Liz. How was it? How was he?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Your date with the mayor,” Shameika decried. “Did he kiss you goodnight? Did y’all plan another date?”
“Like I’m going to tell you that.”
“But for real, what was he like?”
“You said it yourself. He’s Mr. Conservative. Mr. Republican.”
“Oh. So he was dull, hun?”
Liz wanted to smile. Jason was a lot of things last night, but dull certainly wasn’t one of them. “I wouldn’t say that,” she said.
“Then give it up, Liz. What’s he like? Beyond those labels, I mean.” Liz exhaled. “He’s a stubborn, bulldog of a man who . . . ”
“Who what?”
Liz smiled. She couldn’t help it this time. “Whose company I enjoy.” Shameika smiled too. “It’s about time! You got too much going for you to be by yourself all the time. If only he wasn’t so. . . ”
Liz’s heart dropped. “So what?”
“So conservative. So Republican, yuk! Then he’d be perfect.”
“Perfect? I told you he was stubborn and a bull dog and--”
“And perfect for you because that’s exactly what you need. A man’s man. Somebody not afraid to stand up to your bossy butt.”
“Child please. Why wouldn’t a man stand up to me?”
“Why you think?” Shameika said and began counting the ways on her fingers. “First of all, you’re a steel magnolia. Second of all, you never want to let anybody in unless they have the armor to crash through that wall you’ve been building up. And third of all, you’re Hamp Morgan’s daughter. Next question?”
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