by Evie Snow
He’d kissed her last night. That had been the thing that had snapped her out of it. What kind of woman went straight for a guy’s crotch before even kissing him? Just that thought alone left her blushing again. The whole thing had left her feeling so freaked out, she’d escaped to her bedroom the minute they’d gotten home and now she felt like an idiot. That wasn’t surprising, really—she’d been an idiot over him as a kid and here she was doing it all over again at thirty years old.
She tried not to stare as Stephen took a seat on the other couch, folding one leg across the other.
This was probably her cue to say something. After all, she’d been the one who’d announced they needed to talk. Idiot. Why had she opened her big mouth? She would have been better off sneaking out and riding over to Amy’s or Scott’s place to ask their advice. Except Amy would probably laugh her head off, and Scott was likely enjoying a bit of morning time with the latest little art student neophyte.
Stephen cleared his throat. “Jo—”
“So,” Jo said at the same time.
“Go on.” Stephen tilted his head, waiting for her to continue, his expression attentive.
“Look, I’m really sorry if . . . well, you know, things might have . . . Um. Yeah. I didn’t mean for last night to happen, but it did, and I apologize if you feel bad about it,” she stammered then raked a hand through her hair, waiting for his response. “Stephen?” she prompted when she couldn’t handle the tension anymore.
His lips pressed together in thought, he averted his eyes to gaze somewhere over her shoulder for ages before looking back at her. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it. And, well, ah, things came as a bit of surprise last night, but you know, I don’t need an apology. In fact, I’ve spent most of the past twelve hours trying to work out if I need to apologize to you.”
“Why?” Jo blinked. “What did you do?”
He took a couple of seconds before answering, frowning. “Just tell me straight, do I owe you an apology?”
Jo let out a strangled laugh born partially from the knot in her chest. “No. I enjoyed myself. I just . . . I just came on pretty strong. I thought I’d freaked you out.”
“Ah. Honestly? You can come on to me like that any time you want.” His face colored a deep red and his gravelly voice was both sexy and surprisingly vulnerable coming from a guy who didn’t look like he had a care in the world. He ran a hand through his hair, making the curls stick out at odd angles. “Jesus. Okay, let me get this right so I don’t put my foot any further down my throat. I, ah . . . what I’m trying to say is that I enjoyed myself. And well, I, uh, wouldn’t mind returning the favor, actually.”
Jo’s eyebrows hit her hairline, relief and a hell of a lot of anticipation surging through her system. “Serious?”
“Yeah?” It sounded like a question. Like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just said and was waiting for her to derail the train of events.
Jo wasn’t about to accommodate him. She carefully set her coffee down on the table in front of her, not wanting to make any sudden movements just in case he changed his mind. “So would you . . . would you mind if I, ah . . .”
He slowly shook his head, his mouth curving in a slow, sexy smile. “Well, no, no, I don’t think I would.”
“So if I came over there right now?” Jo asked.
Stephen’s smile widened as he gave her a very deliberate once-over. The mood in the room made a right turn down Lust Street. “Yeah. Why don’t you do that?”
It took two seconds for Jo to move from point A to point B and only one more second to straddle Stephen’s thighs. He met her halfway, framing her face with his big hands, kissing her deeply, sucking her tongue into his mouth while she ran her fingers roughly through his hair, not caring if she hurt him a little bit.
She hadn’t shared this kind of physical connection for far too long, and her body was humming with a sexual awareness she hadn’t felt in years, maybe not since she’d been an awkward teenager harboring a painful crush. Her hands tightened in his hair and she bit him, wanting to hurt him a little for the way he still made her want him after all these years—and maybe wanting to test him, too, to see if he’d pull away and tell her this wasn’t really happening.
He didn’t seem to mind. Within seconds, one of his hands was grasping her hair just as hard, holding her head in position while he licked at her lips, driving his tongue into her mouth again with more raw passion than finesse. His other hand went to the small of her back, pulling her harder against him as his hips began a rocking motion that sent them both wild.
Jo heard a low, husky moan but wasn’t sure who it came from. She didn’t care, just didn’t want him to stop moving, stop touching her. She felt a sharp desperation to have him inside her before he started thinking and changed his mind, so she became more aggressive, running her hands over every available inch of his skin, feeling warmth, smelling his sun and soap scent. Within no time, contact through clothes wasn’t enough, and she wrenched herself back, frantically dragging his T-shirt over his head.
She gave a purr of satisfaction at the sight of bare skin and taut muscle before latching her mouth onto one of his pebbled brown nipples, biting down and enjoying Stephen’s groan of pleasure-pain. He reciprocated by sliding her top up to bunch under her arms, pushing her sideways back against the arm of the couch.
Looking down at her, he groaned, palmed her breasts, and took one ultra-sensitive nipple in his mouth, sucking deeply, while he deftly tweaked the other one.
Jo’s hips jerked so hard at the sparks of pleasure arcing through her body she almost bucked him off her.
He murmured his approval as his hand worked its way down her belly to the top of her shorts. She sucked in an expectant breath, but instead of going any further, he simply ran his fingers along the sensitive skin just above her waistband, driving her insane. She told him as much, but he ignored her.
In retaliation, Jo pushed Stephen’s pajama bottoms down with both hands and dug her short nails into his backside, pulling him hard against her. He growled, moving his body up over hers to give her a deep, ravenous kiss. His teasing hand finally pushed her shorts down her legs, throwing them across the room before sliding up her thigh to where she needed him. Once his searching fingers found her wet and ready, they began circling her clitoris in an infuriatingly slow, intensely arousing movement that was too much.
“Inside!” she demanded, biting his lip.
He shook his head. “No. I want to—”
“I need you. God. Fuck me,” Jo moaned, tugging at his hips, wanting him to be as out of control and vulnerable as she felt.
“Protection?” he asked in a rough voice, fingers still working their magic. Not enough, not nearly enough.
“Pill, no sex for ages, I’m clean. You?” Jo almost screamed as a warm tingling sensation began to take over her body.
“Completely clean, haven’t had sex without a condom for years.” Stephen drove two fingers deep inside her, stretching her, sliding them in and out slowly, like he had all the time in the world.
She wasn’t having it and bit his earlobe.
“Fuck, you are ready, aren’t you?” He groaned, moving down and latching his mouth onto her nipple again, tripling sensation. She bucked against him, trying to dislodge him, trying to bring him closer. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, come without him. It would leave her too open, too exposed.
“Yes! Now! Dammit!” Jo slid her hand from his backside to between them, grasping his rigid cock and guiding him. She gasped and then held her breath as he entered her, overcoming the delicious bit of resistance her body offered to penetration before sinking deep.
They groaned in unison. Jo wrapped her legs around Stephen’s back, pulling him close, arching her hips up to meet him.
They weren’t gentle. Lost in the moment, they hammered against each other, bodies slapping together. Stephen reared up to drive deeply, his pelvis making contact with Jo’s in a way that drove her wild, screaming and pushing agai
nst him as she forced him to move faster, rougher, until she came hard, grasping his shoulders and clamping him against her as tremors slammed through her, triggering his own release.
They shared a messy, open-mouthed kiss before he shuddered one last time and let his head flop down next to hers on the couch.
It took a while before Jo found her breath to talk, and then she decided she didn’t want to say anything to spoil things. Instead, she wrapped both arms around his back, holding him tight.
“Well, that’s one way to have a talk,” Stephen said against her neck, his voice full of suppressed laughter.
The movement of his lips on her skin caused Jo to shiver.
She chuckled, feeling relief wash through her that they weren’t going to do any deep and meaningful stuff right now. “I’ve always been one for clear communication.” Her throat was sore. How loud had she been?
“Would you mind if we communicated on a larger surface? This couch isn’t doing it for me.” He groaned, hauling himself up onto his forearms.
Jo winced at the stickiness between her thighs as he began to pull out. “How about a shower?”
“Done,” he said then grinned. “As long as I get the soap.”
“Doesn’t sound fair.” Jo feigned a frown.
Stephen glanced at her bare breasts below her pushed-up T-shirt. “Oh, I reckon it is. Besides, if you’re good, I might let you look at my delectable arse.”
“I think we need to talk about this,” Jo said, eyes crinkling with laughter.
“Well, your communication skills might need some fine-tuning. I could be obliging and help you work on them.”
When Jo took a playful swing at him, Stephen let out a bark of laughter before quickly withdrawing and sprinting to the shower, her howl of displeasure following behind.
* * *
“Bloody hell! Could you make that hurt anymore?” Jo bellowed while lying atop the rug on the floorboards of her sister’s living room.
“Yep, so shut up or I’ll give you the most accurate Hitler moustache seen since World War Two. On your vagina.” Amy applied a fresh round of wax to Jo’s bikini line and flattened a linen strip down on it.
“You’re a pocket sadist, you know that?” Jo lifted her head off the small pillow to glare at her sister, who wasn’t looking the least bit repentant.
“Didn’t you read my job description?” Amy arched one perfect, platinum-blond eyebrow. “Hairdresser, barber, beautician, and torturer.” She ripped the linen strip up as she said the latter, causing Jo to howl again. “I haven’t checked your job description lately. Does it list ‘absolute wimp’ next to ‘engineer’?” Amy taunted. “You want to do your armpits too?”
“Yeah, why not, and while you’re at it, you can stick a toothpick in my eyeball,” Jo grouched, inspecting her bright-red and very offended lady bits.
“No one ever said beauty and comfort were the same thing.” Amy gestured with her spatula for Jo to lie back and lift her arms. “Reveal all, or it’ll get rough for ya.”
“As long as you don’t cackle when you rip the hair out this time.” Jo raised her arms above her head.
“I never cackle. You need a bite stick?” Amy asked with feigned concern.
“Give me one of your fingers,” Jo grumbled.
Amy had Jo’s underarms bright pink and baby smooth within seconds. Afterwards, they wandered out the back to Amy’s mossy redbrick courtyard for a cup of tea and a bit of sun. Amy’s small, ancient Fremantle home was only a few minutes’ drive from Jo’s modern apartment, but visiting it felt like traveling back in time a hundred years.
Situated in the convict-built part of Fremantle, the building’s old wooden floors, molded tin ceilings, and 1950s black-and-white kitchen with enamel red cupboards suited Amy beautifully. As much as it exasperated Jo that Amy never tried to renovate, the ramshackle outdoor toilet to her left, nicknamed Harvey, added to its charm.
“So are you gonna tell me what’s going on with you?” Amy asked, pulling up the wide legs of her purple pajama bottoms to bare her calves to a sunbeam.
“Whadya mean?” Jo asked, sliding on a pair of Ray-Bans and resting her head against the mossy brick wall behind her chair.
Amy just gave her a look before reaching up to tie her curly blond hair into a messy topknot. “Am I going to have to torture it out of you?”
“I thought the torture just happened.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“So where’s the man of the house?” Jo asked, knowing it would distract her sister.
Amy scowled. “No longer at this residence as of three days ago.”
“Really?” Jo asked, ripping off her sunglasses and studying Amy intently.
“Really, and no, I don’t want to talk about it,” Amy said brusquely, brushing an ant off her arm.
“Can I call him an idiot now at least?”
“Yes, except you never even met him, and this one was my fault.”
“You say that every time,” Jo grumbled.
“So. About you?” Amy held a hand up to signal the conversation was going to change track or she’d be cackling a whole lot more during any future hair-removal process.
“Well, I do have some news,” Jo said slowly.
“Spit it out, precious.”
“Stephen and I may have done the horizontal tango. Multiple times and not all of them horizontal.” Jo sipped her tea to hide her smile.
There was a stunned silence as Amy stared at her. “Come again? When, where, and why? You’ve been here what? An hour already? And you just tell me now?”
“I was working up to it.” Jo grinned at Amy’s snort, considered stringing her sister along, and then relented. “After the play in Kings Park and because I’d been drinking. Well, the first time at least.”
“Red wine?”
“What else?” Jo replied dryly. “Then . . .” She shrugged. “It just happened from there.”
“Okay. Wow. Wait, what about his girlfriend?” Amy frowned. Having been on the receiving end of cheating boyfriends a number of times, she was particularly sensitive on the topic.
“He says they were never together together. A friends-with-benefits thing, but if you want to know the truth, I haven’t asked.”
“Jo . . .” Amy warned.
“I know, I know.” Jo waved a hand dismissively. “If I genuinely thought they had anything going on, I wouldn’t have gone there.”
“What about his ex-girlfriend? Lauren, I think her name was?” Amy asked, looking a little more concerned.
Jo frowned. That was something else entirely. After that night in Kings Park, Stephen hadn’t brought her up again and Jo hadn’t wanted to ask. Everything felt too new, too fragile, to the point where she still didn’t want to push it. “Next topic.”
Amy pursed her lips. “Has he asked about what happened when we were kids?”
Yet another topic she didn’t want to touch. She knew Stephen blamed himself for what happened at the Christmas party years ago, and that guilt was probably the only thing stopping him from asking difficult questions. It was shitty of her, but she couldn’t let him off the hook and tell him the truth. Too much was at stake. Amy and her mum’s lives were at stake.
She forced a shrug to cover up the queasy feeling the question had brought on. “Not yet. And he won’t if I can help it. It’s in the past, Ames. You know full well what’d happen if Stephen found out about Dad. He’d tell Rob Hardy or his Uncle Les, and they’d fire him. Dad would probably go off the rails and kill Mum. Or, more to the point, you, since you’re the one living in Perth full-time.” She gestured to Amy with her cup. “It’s not gonna happen.”
Amy looked dubious but nodded in agreement with Jo’s reasoning. “So what are you gonna tell him if he asks?”
“I’ll just confirm what he thinks happened. That we were so embarrassed after the whole thing with Jeff Rousse that we moved to Perth to live with our aunt.”
“What if he asks why you don’t get on with
Mum and Dad?” Amy picked at her pajama pants.
“I’ll just tell him it’s a personality clash and let him believe the whole party thing created a big rift. The story’s worked for us all for fourteen years, Ames. I don’t think we need to change it.”
“Yeah?” Amy’s frown intensified. “What happens if Scott says something assuming you’ve already told Stephen what really happened? Or worse, if he’s still got those photos of us after Dad beat us up. What if he shows Stephen?”
“He knows better,” Jo said darkly, feeling a sharp stab of panic at the thought of Stephen seeing those pictures. “Although I’ll say something to him.”
Amy’s worry was obvious in the way she was rubbing her palm up and down her leg. It was a nervous tic she’d had since she was a toddler. “Jo, you hate George Creek. What happens if Stephen wants you to go down there with him?”
Jo grimaced. “Funny you should mention that. We’re driving down to Evangeline’s Rest tomorrow. Stephen needs to talk to his dad and his brother Clayton about some business deal and asked if I wanted to go along for the drive. I said yes, thinking it’d take the weight off you if I went to see Mum this month instead.” What she didn’t say was that she needed to check on Shirley to make sure Ken had heeded her warning. If Amy knew her mum had still been Ken’s punching bag for the past few years beneath her radar, she’d feel incredibly guilty, and Jo wanted to spare her that. “Let it go, Ames.”
Amy opened her mouth then closed it again. “Alright. You happy?”
Jo relaxed back in her chair, relieved at the change of topic. “Yeah. But that’s probably because of some pretty amazing sex. Awesome sex. Brilliant sex.”
There hadn’t really been any serious conversation. Neither Jo nor Stephen had wanted to ruin whatever they had going; but now, sitting in Amy’s backyard and being on the receiving end of her sister’s greasy eyeball, Jo was having doubts. Well, not doubts really. Doubts implied that she’d already made her mind up about something. She was having full-scale indecision.