One Last Kiss

by Jessica Lemmon

  He squinted through the windows against the bright sunshine, his eyes adjusting and catching sight of Natasha in a royal blue dress. Her plate was piled with fruit and she was carrying a glass of green liquid.

  Yeah, he’d skip socializing outside, thank you very much.

  He tipped the last of the coffee into a mug, grateful not to have to mingle to acquire a much-needed caffeine fix. He couldn’t talk to Natasha without at least being mildly alert. He raised the mug to his lips, but before the blessed moment that first hot drop hit his tongue, Gia appeared out of the ether.

  “Is that the last cup?”

  She wore the same cutoff frayed shorts and pink top from last night, only today she’d strapped on open-toed sandals. They added to her height, which brought her lips closer to his. At least the sandals were what he was blaming on his inability to look away from her mouth.

  “You look like you slept better than me,” he told her. She looked rested. Damned good. A little too rumpled for his pleasure, like Denver had slid his busted fingers through her hair this morning.

  “There’s more coffee outside.” Jayson scowled and lifted the mug to his lips again. This time she wrapped her fingers around his at the handle.

  “Then go outside and fetch yourself a cup. This is my house.” A feral spark lit her dark eyes as she tugged on the mug.

  “This is your parents’ house. My employers. Plus, I was here first.” He pulled up on the mug while she pulled down, each of them careful not to spill the precious liquid that would deliver morning pep.

  “I can’t go out there,” she said with a frown.

  “Why not?”

  But then he turned his head and saw Denver lounging at the carafe, chatting to a couple Jayson didn’t recognize.

  “Did you two have a spat?” Jayson’s smile was incurable at the idea.

  “If by spat you mean did I sneak back into our shared room on tiptoes so I wouldn’t have to wake him and have an awkward conversation this morning about how I wasn’t going to sleep with him, then yes. We had a spat.”

  Shocked by that, he temporarily forgot to hold on to the mug. She easily removed it from his hand, doctored it with some half-and-half from the fridge and leaned on the wide, stainless steel doors. She took the first coveted sip, closed her eyes and hummed.

  “You mean have an awkward conversation about how you weren’t going to sleep with him again?” Jayson asked, fairly sure that’s not what she meant. Sounded like she hadn’t slept with Pip at all. If so, that was good news.

  “I didn’t sleep with him. Do you think I’d sleep with a guy on our first date or something?”

  He tilted his head and watched her with his eyebrows raised.

  Cheeks blushing, she mumbled at the edge of the mug, “You don’t count.”

  “I don’t?” Hand on her waist, he leaned over her to say into her ear, “As I recall it was right in this house.” Her turn to be too shocked to hold on to the coffee. He reclaimed the mug and took a heavenly drink.

  “That bathroom, if memory serves.” He pointed across the hall at the staircase, beyond which was a half bath where they’d sneaked off after excusing themselves from the dinner table.

  “That wasn’t our first date. It was a work function.” Her lips lifted at the corners. Good memory for both of them, that night.

  “Tomato, potato.”

  Smiling, she shook her head at his bad joke.

  “In all seriousness—” he moved the mug when she reached for it “—I’m glad you didn’t sleep with him.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t sleep with her.” She snatched the mug. “You didn’t, right?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “Good. She’s too beautiful. It’s unfair to us mortals.”

  Oh, Gia. He managed a sad smile. Tipping her chin, he peered down into her coffee-colored eyes, took in the riot of deep brown waves surrounding a face he’d stared at many a night while watching her sleep. Without makeup, freckles dotted the bridge of her nose—too faint to see unless you were really looking.

  He was really looking.

  “She’s got nothin’ on you, G.”

  They were in a holding pattern, her hands wrapped around the mug, and one of his hands on her face, the other flattened on the refrigerator next to her shoulder. The rest of the world might as well have crumbled to dust. All his reasons for not sleeping with her were harder to grasp when he was this close to her.

  If they slept together she’d throw up a wall. They’d argue. This would end as badly, if not worse, than it had when they’d divorced.

  And still...

  “Jay...” She was poised to say something really undesirable. Maybe a “we can’t” or “we shouldn’t.” She would have been right.

  So he did what he had to do to prevent hearing it—and kissed her before she was able to speak.

  Eight

  Gia wasn’t sure who leaned in first and erased the gap between them, but before she knew it, the sexual tension that had been roaring inside her like a five-alarm fire in the dry season ignited.

  Jayson’s warm lips pressed against hers as her back flattened on the cool steel door of the refrigerator.

  His mouth was still fused with hers when he took the coffee mug from her hands and set it on the counter. He pulled her away from the fridge and, still kissing her, walked her out of the kitchen. Had anyone seen them? Had their dates seen them? She didn’t know.

  She didn’t care.

  When they reached the staircase, he came up for air and craned his neck toward the voices coming from the top.

  There was a moment of hesitancy that gave her enough time to reconsider, but she only laughed. He took that as a yes, when in reality it was a hell yes, before eagerly steering her into the bathroom on the other side of the stairs.

  Having sex back where it’d all started was risky territory, but by the time he shut them into the small room, she only cared that they were finally—blessedly—alone. He didn’t bother with the switch, so the yellow glow of a night light barely illuminated the space—if it could even be called that. His big body added to the necessary bathroom accoutrements, the only place left for her was where he put her next.

  On top of the sink.

  “Oh!” Hand to her mouth, she stifled her surprised reaction as the people who owned those upstairs voices passed by the bathroom door. Once they were gone, Jay moved her hand away.

  Mouth ravaging hers, his hands moved to her T-shirt and stripped it over her head. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask, didn’t wait. He simply read her body language and right now—with her own hands pawing at his T-shirt—it was fairly obvious what she wanted.

  Him.

  Her fingertips raked over his abdominal muscles, still defined the way she remembered. So much of him was the way she remembered—which was both good and bad—but at the moment she focused on the parts of him she craved.

  His seeking mouth over hers.

  His diving tongue, hot and insistent.

  His big hands, making her delicate by comparison.

  She unbuttoned his jeans and slipped her hand inside. Both of them moaned their approval when she found what she was looking for. Long and broad, he was a sight to behold. She couldn’t resist sneaking a peek of her stroking hand in the meager light.

  “This is a bad idea,” she couldn’t help pointing out. She was out of breath from excitement, no longer able to call up why this was a bad idea. She only knew that it was.

  “The worst,” he agreed. “Some things never change.” A crooked, cocky smile crested his firm mouth, his eyes at half-mast while his erection was at full tilt. “That was verbatim what you said the last time we were in here about to do this for the first time.”

  “You remember that?” she asked as he divested her of her shorts. She had to let go of him to support herse
lf on the edge of the sink but once her lower half was naked, she put her hands on him again.

  “Are you kidding?” There was something tender in his voice, even as he wrestled with her shoes and shorts. Something about his tone reminded her of how in love they once were. Before he became the Fixer of All Things.

  “I—I don’t have a condom,” she said since that was the first unromantic comment that popped into her head.

  “I do.” He frowned. “In my room.”

  She shook her head. “We’re not risking that again.”

  Being busted by Addison at her wedding last year had been embarrassing. Gia had been walking around telling anyone who would listen that hers and Jay’s split was amicable and that they were better off apart. And then she’d been caught with her pants down—well, not really. But when Addi had busted them, Jay’s zipper was open.

  Resting his forehead on hers while her hand worked on him, he blew out a slow breath. “I have to be inside you.”

  She gripped his face, feeling the stubble on his jaw. His next exhalation brushed over the tender skin on her neck. His desperation matched her own.

  “Are you still on birth control?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He lifted his head, his blue eyes going stormy gray with lust. With need. With want.

  “No condom,” she decided, because that was the only decision.

  He wasted no time lining up her entrance with the swollen head of his cock, pulling her flush to the edge of the sink. She held his neck, her fingers eagerly bunching his T-shirt while he slid in deeper. Deeper.

  Seated to the hilt, he blew out a tortured breath that fanned her hair and tickled her ear.

  Against that delicate shell, he growled, “God damn.”

  No one had been inside her since he had, and sex in the Mercedes, while that back seat had been a tight fit, had been similar to this time. Out of control with want, they hadn’t considered the future.

  They hadn’t considered the past, either. The years of arguing and misunderstandings. The sadness over their crumbling marriage with each of them helpless to stop it.

  Now, though. Ahh, the blessed now.

  Now was about the physical. About his ability to turn her on and know what she liked. He displayed that next, by tucking his wide palms around the globes of her ass and pulling her down on top of him. Impaling her while his arms shook with the effort of moving her on and off him. Her breath sawed from her lungs in soft high-pitched sighs.

  This was Jayson Cooper at his best.

  The first time they’d had sex had been in this very bathroom, in this very position. She’d joked then that she was going to marry him “if only to have sex like this on demand whenever I need it.”

  He must have noticed her mind wandering. He stopped long enough to remind her, “Stay with me. You have an orgasm for me. I know it.”

  An orgasm for me.

  He’d always phrased it that way, as if her having an earth-shattering, bone-rending orgasm was a gift to him. Another reason she’d vowed to marry him.

  She shut out all other thoughts and concentrated on the sensations in her body. On the soft rub of her nipples on her bra each time he pulled her flush against his chest. On the way he tasted on her tongue, the salt on his skin, the rough scrape of whiskers from where he hadn’t shaved yet...

  He gripped her hair, balling it in his fist while she explored his neck with her mouth. He loved that.

  Scraping her teeth along his jugular, she suckled his earlobe next. “Did Natasha treat you this well, Jay?”

  His agonized “no” made her believe that was true.

  “Did your skateboarder friend handle you the way I do?”

  “Never.” She shook her head, feeling naughty that their dates were still here. Couldn’t be helped. Jayson and Gia hadn’t been great at avoiding each other even when they’d tried.

  They exchanged grins briefly and then they stopped talking. The only sounds were the heated slap of their bodies interspersed with labored breaths until her orgasm rolled over her like a cresting wave, crashing down and taking her mind with it.

  For this finite moment, any issues between them were nonexistent. There was only right now—only him coming, the growl in his throat, the stiffening of the muscles in his arms. He filled her, both with his essence and with the deep, guttural moan of completion in her ear.

  Eventually, after they’d managed to calm their breathing, he pulled out of her and rested her limp body onto the sink. He braced the sides of the counter, his forehead conking onto her shoulder.

  “That—” he said between a deep breath “—was better than the last time we had sex.”

  In the parking garage. Five days before their divorce.

  He wasn’t wrong. It was better, and on that long-ago day it had been pretty damned incredible.

  “When you got it, you got it.” She kissed his temple.

  He raised his head and his smile nearly took her breath away—as if she needed any help with that. He lowered his mouth to hers for a kiss when the doorknob jiggled.

  “Someone in there?” came Addison’s voice from the other side of the door.

  It occurred to Gia suddenly, alarmingly that she’d ducked into a bathroom to have sex with her ex at yet another wedding. Only this time, she’d succeeded.

  And she’d done it with their dates outside. With the possibility of being caught, she felt more shamed than naughty. She and Jayson had no business carrying on with each other anywhere, let alone here, where she might have to explain their behavior to her sister-in-law...

  “One second!” she called out then whispered to him, “I can’t believe it. Addi’s going to bust us again.”

  “Like I said—” He zipped and buttoned his jeans and laid a succinct kiss on her forehead “—some things never change.”

  Nine

  “It’s a good thing Royce and Taylor aren’t here,” Brannon said from the head of the conference room table.

  “Agreed,” Jayson said. Those two deserved to enjoy their honeymoon and their time together without worrying about problems at the office.

  “We’ll solve the issue before they come home,” Gia chimed in from his left. Her eyes flashed quickly from Jayson to Brannon.

  As Jayson had expected, she’d been as cool as a cliché cucumber this week. He’d seen her react that way before—after the car sex and the almost-sex last year. She’d let herself go with him, but when they were done, she acted like it’d never happened.

  That morning after Royce and Taylor’s wedding, Jayson exited the bathroom first with Gia behind him. Addison had given them a wide-eyed blink followed by a sideways smirk. There was no need to explain. He guessed Addison Abrams had overheard enough to answer any lingering questions she might’ve had.

  Natasha, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed he was missing. He’d driven her home, admittedly awkward after their tense date, but she hadn’t said much. Though she did make sure and tell him, “It was a nice wedding, but we will not be seeing each other again, Coop.”

  Fine by him.

  He’d called Mason after the drop-off to apologize for potentially ruining his stepbrother’s working relationship with Natasha, but Mason assured Jay that his prize supermodel was under contract.

  That left Jayson to wonder what the hell he’d been thinking bringing a stranger to a Knox wedding. And further wondering why the hell Gia had done the same thing. But he knew. They’d been trying to fireproof from exactly what had ended up happening anyway.

  Jayson couldn’t regret it, even if Gia was still giving him the cold shoulder. He, for one, wanted to do it again. No sense in letting perfectly incredible sex rot on the vine.

  He wasn’t sure where she stood. If she was regretful or reliving the afternoon on a loop in her head the way he was. She was a good actor when she needed to be. And
at ThomKnox, under the watching eyes of her brothers, she did some of her best work. He understood why she didn’t want to broadcast what happened, but he saw no need in pretending. Addison knew what had happened, so there was a ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance that Brannon knew, too.

  He glanced at his ex-wife while her brother pecked at the T13 tablet in his hand. She held Jayson’s gaze for an extra beat, licking her top lip before pressing it against her bottom one.

  He’d expected an unreadable expression, but hers wasn’t unreadable. Her eyes were heated and slightly vulnerable, and the way she jerked her gaze from his gave her away.

  She wanted him again. He knew it in his balls. Not such a good actor after all, it seemed.

  “I see what you mean.” Brannon frowned at the tablet in his hands. “It shuts down.”

  “That’s the bug,” Jayson said, his mind returning to the task at hand. The tablet launch last year had been smooth and since then, the sales were above where they’d projected. The software update that was due to go out next month, however, was a hot wad of WTF. “It ran fine last week and now it’s not. I have no idea what’s transpired since then to screw it up.”

  Unless Jayson and Gia having sex caused a tear in space and the working part of the software was sucked into a black hole.

  Unlikely.

  “We’ll find the glitch,” she reassured all of them, her expression shifting back to calm and collected. “We have the best tech team is the country.”

  “Damn straight,” Jayson agreed. He didn’t realize that he and Gia were smiling at each other until Brannon cleared his throat.

  “No need to mention this to Taylor or Royce until they’re back to work. This issue could go away in a matter of hours.” Bran handed the tablet back to Jayson.

  Also unlikely. Jayson had complete faith in their tech team, himself included, but he wasn’t sure this problem would be resolved that quickly.