“What?” Jared was on his feet before he could think.
Kitty took a step back and shot him a wary look.
“Jesus H. Christ, is that why you were so wired this noon? Why didn’t you ask me last night?”
“I didn’t fucking think about it last night!” She swallowed. “I’m asking now. Did you fuck Susan?”
He shook his head vigorously. “I don’t have time for college girls. I like my women a little older,” he paused, “and hopefully a little wiser. Why in hell would you ask such a question?”
“Your son,” she stammered. “Jackson told me Susan had slept with most every man who would be attending the wedding.”
He took a step forward. She didn’t retreat this time. He reached out and cupped her chin. He ran his thumb across her lips. “Did you wonder about that when we danced at the reception?”
She glanced down at her toes. “The question crossed my mind.”
“And you still led me on.”
“Not on purpose. I knew I had the redeye to catch.”
“Right. And then you conveniently forgot about your daughter until after you had a chance to sample what I was offering. Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No. That’s not it. I’d forgotten about Susan until this morning.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. She showed no sign of resistance. He crushed his mouth against hers and ground his body against hers until she began to respond in kind. He slid his lips off, cupped his hands over her curvy ass and ground her yellow-clad crotch against his erection. He nodded when she adjusted her fit until he was certain she had him where she wanted him. “And what were you planning on doing if I said I had fucked Susan?”
Her eyes glazed and she worked her lips with effort. “Sending you away.”
“Really? You could’ve walked away from this?” He hoisted her legs until he held her butt in his hands and she locked her legs behind his back.
“Yes,” she panted, gliding up and down his cock through the fabric. She bit his shoulder. “Oh, God. Why are you doing this to me? Oh God, I can’t stop. I’m coming.”
She clasped her arms around his neck and tightened the grip of her legs. He held her steady, letting her body quake against his. He held her until his arms screamed for help. At last, she tried to find the floor with her feet.
Kitty took a step back from him and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes still seemed out of focus. “Why?” she reiterated.
Jared filled his chest with air and steadied his own pulse. “I need you to know I’m a damn difficult man to get rid of until I’m ready to go.”
“And you’re not ready.”
He shook his head and watched her lips curve up into a half-smile. “Sometimes you can be quite perceptive. You do believe me—about Susan?”
She nodded. “You wouldn’t lie about that.”
“That doesn’t sound like a total vote of confidence.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know you that well.”
He grimaced. “Maybe we should do something about that. Anyway, since we’re talking about our children, let’s get one more out of the way.”
Kitty shrank from him. “Jackson.”
“Jackson. So do I care that you fucked Jackson—apparently you would’ve cared some, at least, if I’d gotten it on with your daughter. The answer is hell, no. He’s an adult. You were an adult. Just for the record, if I had hooked up with Susan, I would’ve hoped you could’ve remembered that. But,” he held up his palm to prevent Kitty’s interruption, “that didn’t happen. I gather from what you said at the wedding reception, Jackson didn’t exactly ring your chimes.”
Kitty wet her lips and swallowed but didn’t try to speak.
“I apologize for that,” Jared continued. “He should know how to treat a woman by now. And don’t trust everything the boy says. Jackson is noted for exaggeration. I don’t doubt she’s been with a number of guys, including my son, but I highly doubt I was the only man at the wedding who hadn’t screwed her.”
She continued to look at him wide-eyed and open mouthed.
He placed a finger under her chin and closed her mouth. “Do you suppose we have any more need to talk about our children’s love lives?”
“Do you and your son often talk about your women?”
He smiled at the renewed fire in her eyes. His Kitty was coming back from wherever the hell she’d been most of the day. “I never talk with him about my women. Occasionally, when he gets sloshed enough, he volunteers stuff I don’t particularly want to know.”
“So would you have been attracted to me if he hadn’t told you I was hot?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t need a twenty-two year old to tell me you were going to be hot, in bed or out. You exude heat, woman. Do you have any idea how hot you were walking your daughter down the aisle of that church?”
She shook her head.
“I felt sorry for Susan. Every one knew she was taken. But you? Hell, even the preacher had to struggle to find his place in his script after he watched you come down that aisle.”
She smirked. “I do recall a longer pause than I remembered during rehearsal.” She rose on her toes and nibbled on his chin. “So who knew you could be good for a woman’s ego?”
He pulled her body in tight to his and inhaled her scent. “I have my moments. Don’t get too used to it.”
“I won’t,” she murmured. She leaned back against his arms. “Now that we’ve cleared the air, I’m famished.”
He gave her a crooked smile.
“Not that,” she said quickly. “Maybe later. I have a favorite Italian restaurant not too far away. Will that work for you?”
“That works for me.” His gaze traveled slowly down her body. “Are you going to put on shoes?”
She tapped his chest and winced. “I’m not going out looking like this. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready.” She waved over her shoulder. “I won’t be long, really.”
He nodded and then warmed up his coffee before sitting back down at the table. She didn’t strike him as a woman who could ever dress in a hurry.
He leaned back and blew air through his compressed lips. That was close. At least he had some idea what moved her in addition to passionate sex. Her daughter.
Jared closed his eyes. He hadn’t lied to her. He hadn’t fucked her daughter. He did have a rule against younger women. That didn’t mean Susan hadn’t tried to hook up with him.
She’d been as bold as her mother. He’d been over at her husband-to-be’s place for dinner and to tutor Brad in the use of a new software business program when Brad had dashed a term paper over to a professor’s house. Brad’s car had hardly left the driveway before Susan started making her moves.
He’d told her no. He’d told her about his rules against younger women. Put out and exasperated, she’d strutted to within three feet of him, calmly lifted her short skirt and proceeded to bring herself off. She’d been commando. When she came, she wiped her sticky fingers on his shirt saying he’d better remember her five or ten years later when she tracked him down.
Jared shook his head. Susan would be one pissed off woman if she knew he and her mother had hooked up.
- o -
Feeling much relieved, Kitty hummed while dressing for her evening with Jared. She might not have been coy about it, but at least her fundamental question got answered. Jared hadn’t slept with her daughter.
She shivered, recalling the scene in the kitchen. Oddly, they’d finished what they couldn’t in the hotel lobby at the wedding reception. This time he’d purposely pushed her over the edge to prove a point. He’d had no intention of letting her down until she came. As he said, she wasn’t going to get rid of him easily without his agreement.
She freshened her lipstick. Not that she had any plans on dispatching him anytime soon. Even her emergency phone consultation with her therapist had helped, though sometimes she thought her therapist might be more wacked out than she was. It w
as good to hear Sandra Aster’s calming voice on the line. Sandra had reminded her of some of the devices she’d learned to avoid getting hooked by her father’s voice. After all, the man had been dead for nearly a decade, but the tapes spinning her memory could be as powerful as ever.
She’d go back to using some of the self-talk messages she and Sandra had worked on over the years. She’d look at pictures of her father to remind herself that he was only flesh and blood and that he seldom looked happy, whether he’d been lecturing her, eating at a barbecue, or even preaching. Her father had been a deeply unhappy man. That was the case both before she was born and after. She’d really had little to do with his unhappiness. But she did have to be reminded of that fact from time to time.
But why now? Why would her father pop up after being absent from her thoughts for years?
Kitty chuckled, shrugged into a white men’s dress shirt and tied a knot under her breasts, leaving a clear view of her belly ring. What was the point of having one if you didn’t show it off now and then?
She slipped into a string bikini bottom and reached for a yellow skirt. Maybe Jared was right. She did have a proclivity for wearing yellow.
But Sandra was way off base about Jared. Sandra’s response to the sudden intrusion of her daddy’s voice was to ask if there was a new man in her life. They’d gone over her teen years not long after she and Sandra began working on her crap. Her dad always got furiously jealous if she dated a guy more than twice. He thought they were getting serious.
And she had spent a lot of time fantasizing about each boy. Was this the one she’d live out her days with? Maybe she had been serious, in a young girl’s fanciful way.
That was her daddy’s problem—though he’d been quite adept at making his problem hers, including complaining to the boys’ parents that he feared the devil might lead them astray. She smiled. By the time she and Todd got together later in high school, she no longer told her parents when she would be with a boy. Dates just happened. She’d made up for lost time learning about sex. And then she’d gotten pregnant. Maybe there was a devil.
According to her daddy, she’d been the devil. She preferred to think of the devil as having a cock.
She slipped her feet into her reliable yellow high heels. She grinned, imagining Jared with horns. Certainly the devil must have a thin mustache. Everyone knew that.
But Sandra was wrong about him. Her father didn’t pop into her consciousness every time she took on a new lover. And she wasn’t at all serious about Jared Jacobs, no matter what Sandra might hypothesize. She wasn’t going to get serious about anyone, and certainly not about a man she hardly knew.
Satisfied with what she saw in the mirror, Kitty ran a brush through her hair and headed downstairs whistling softly. The image of Jared Jacobs as the devil incarnate did have more than a little appeal for her.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I love pizza,” Jared said, grinning as Kitty tried to discreetly chew off the end of a gooey piece. It stuck to her chin. He peeled it off for her and she didn’t hesitate to lick his finger clean. “Don’t apologize for bringing me here. I’m sure their shrimp scampi is good, but isn’t Chicago famous for its pizza? Besides, this is more fun. Your mood seems much lighter than it was at noon.”
“It is,” she admitted. “You had more than a little to do with that. She secured several small sausage slices to her pizza before lifting it toward her mouth. “So why the western hat? Does that simply signify you live west of the Mississippi?” Suddenly she gasped for air and waved frantically at her open mouth.
He laughed. “Some of those pieces are hotter than others. Actually, I’ve earned the hat.”
Her brow furrowed. “How’s that? I’ve heard of cowboys earning their spurs, but not hats.”
He wondered how many cowboys she’d known. “I actually live on a working ranch.”
“You do?” Her brow furrowed delightfully. “I thought you lived in San Diego, where the sun shines all the time.”
“Not far from San Diego. Up in the foothills east of the city. It’s not a large ranch, by any means. Twelve hundred acres, give or take.”
Her mouth gaped. “Give or take. Damn, that’s a lot of land by Midwestern standards.”
“Maybe Midwesterners ought to rethink their standards.” He flashed an eyebrow and her cheeks turned a little rosy. Surprisingly, he liked having that effect on her. “I don’t actually work the ranch myself. Like I said, I’m into commodities. I have a manager who operates the ranch for me. The race horses, of course, but we also run some beef cattle, and the obligatory small herd of cattle horses.”
“A cowboy isn’t a cowboy without his horse,” Kitty teased. “I assume you ride.”
“I’m told I’m a fairly good rider.” He lifted a piece of pizza for her.
“I have no complaints,” she said before letting him feed her.
“I hope you wouldn’t. You’re a superb rider, yourself.” She arched her eyebrows and he smirked. “So do you ride horses?”
“Nope.” She shook her head and mocked him. “Guess I’m into more specialized riding. Did I tell you I bought a horse?”
He did a double take. “No, you didn’t mention it.”
“Well, half a horse, really,” she added. “Half of a race horse.”
“A race horse. Well, I’ll be damned. You are full of surprises. When did this happen?”
“Last week. I have an old friend who thinks he owes me.”
“I see—an old lover.”
“Lawrence is happily married to a woman I set him up with. He’s old enough to be my father.”
“But still, a former lover.”
“I’m not talking about old lovers, and I don’t expect you to, either.”
“Point taken. Okay, so this old infirmed codger wants to help a much younger woman find her way in the horseracing world.”
She giggled.
He’d seldom heard her actually giggle.
“He’s not that decrepit. And I own the horse with Lawrence and Rebecca. Rebecca is one of my few good friends.”
“I see. All work and no play…”
“Something like that. So do you want to hear about this horse?”
“Tell me,” he said, chuckling. “You’re dying to.”
“Well, I’m quite impressed. He’s won at the stakes level.”
“Really.”
“Uh, huh. And I may not know much about riding horses, but I do know something about horseracing. I know stakes racing is where you’re going to find your quality horses.”
He nodded, giving her a half smile. “I’m not at all surprised you know quality when you see it.”
She winced but otherwise ignored his comment. “He’s handsome. Tall. Majestic. And has the darkest eyes.”
“So does he have a mustache?”
“You,” she snorted in a most unladylike way. “Not everything I say has to do with you.” She paused. “Well, most everything.”
“Maybe you can show me this new fellow of yours if we run out to the track tomorrow.”
“That’d be great. Maybe Lawrence and Rebecca will be there. They often are, on the weekends.”
“Looks like we’ve about polished off this pizza,” Jared said, lifting his beer stein to his lips. “You have any more thoughts about the evening?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “All of this talk about riding is making me want to get back in the saddle again. How about you?”
“Oh, I aim to please the lady. If we were at my ranch, I could put you astride a horse and teach you.”
“But we’re not at your ranch. We’ll just have to make do with whatever substitute we can find.” She ran a finger along the back of his hand. “So are you volunteering to be my horse and my cowboy?”
“Yes, ma’am, whatever you’d like me to be.”
- o -
An hour later, Kitty threw one hand high above her head and laughed at their reflection in the wall mirror. “How am I doing?” They were on her be
droom carpet and she was indeed riding Jared as he knelt on all fours, carrying the bulk of her weight. His dark western hat was askew on the top of her head.
He beamed at her in the mirror. “Ride ‘em, cowgirl!”
She bit down on her lower lip and dragged her wet pussy lips up and down the base of his spine, struggling for self-control. She narrowed her eyes at his reflection and tried to breathe.
He nodded. “Go for it, cowgirl. Dismount if you must. Rub your pussy all over my ass.”
She stood and trailed her pussy across one butt cheek, then the other. His words triggered her.
“Go for it, girl. Claw your clit. Fuck my ass.”
“Ah,” she groaned, stroking her clit. She was so close, but she wanted to ride her cowboy. She curled both hands on his shoulder and stretched over his back, bringing her pussy to the top of his ass. She started slowly, but couldn’t stay at that pace for long. She hurtled her loins against his ass. He grunted beneath her. The friction on her pussy became nearly unbearable—then she came. She came hard. “Jesus,” she yelped, unable to stop.
“Keep coming,” he urged. “I can feel your juices flowing down the crack of my ass.”
“Cripes,” she breathed at last. She kissed his head, his neck, his shoulders.
He laughed and lowered himself to the floor with her clinging to his back. “You ride real fine.”
Smiling, she snuggled against his neck. She wasn’t sure what she’d gotten herself into with Jared, but she’d sure enjoy the ride while it lasted.
“He’s a handsome specimen of the male animal,” Rebecca Madison whispered in Kitty’s ear.
Given that Rebecca seemed more interested in assessing Jared than the horse a groom was walking back and forth in front of the four of them, Kitty didn’t have to guess about the object of the woman’s praise. “He is that,” she agreed in a low breath. “Well put together, and moves nicely.”
“You’ve got a classy racehorse in that one, Kitty,” Jared said, gesturing at the rear of the horse walking away from them. “Well conformed and moves fluidly.” His gaze met hers and his eyes sparkled. “He’ll bring you lots of pleasure if you stick with him. I expect you’ll know what it feels like to be in the winner’s circle.”
The Best Man Page 6