by Lisa Gillis
After a couple of questions, they were given the go ahead to leave. Jack’s arm snaked around her waist as they approached the lighted exit sign leading to the concourse beyond. Because her emotions felt jumbled, she stiffened at the intimate contact before relenting to the baser instinct that craved his touch. Pressing her hip to his, she curved her own arm around him savoring the warm, hard feel of his body.
Because in Mississippi, gambling was only legal on an interstate waterway, the corridor was long that connected the ‘boat’ to the main building. At this time of the afternoon, it was crowded with players coming or going. For a minute, she and Jack walked in silence keeping near the wall to one side.
“I know you are still mad, but you don’t know how close I was to throwing you on that table and banging your brains out.” Jack bent to her as he spoke, and his words washed intimately over her face. “Unless you want to end up in the first bathroom or closet we pass, you better come up with a plan fast. And that plan better be fucking now; fighting later.”
CHAPTER 35
AS USUAL, WITH WORDS ALONE, he had her hot and bothered. Even though she wanted to tell him to fuck off, she wanted more to fuck him.
Fighting off the spell she had fallen into with the mere memory of him against her in every way, she shoved away, and her fingers curled in an effort to keep from slapping his smug face.
The reason things were not working between them was because sex worked so well between them, allowing other conflicts to be pushed aside instead of resolved. Wordlessly, he slipped his arm back around her waist and once more, she returned the embrace. What if because they fought first, they never fucked again?
“This is a hotel as well as a casino.” Grudgingly and yet so eagerly, she volunteered the information.
“Where do we check in?”
A swipe of a black card had them swiping a key card less than a quarter of an hour later. The second they entered the room, he had her pressed to the wall, and his tongue was swiping hers before the heavy door clanged closed.
He broke lip contact long enough to turn the lock, and she saw that the key card had dropped to the floor at their feet.
Reaching up, she jerked at his disguise cap, and when his hair spilled free, she forked her fingers into the warm, silken, familiar strands.
A grin hovered on his lips. “I find that uniform strangely hot, or probably it’s just ‘cause I know you are hot underneath it...”
Returning his mouth to hers, he skimmed his hands up under her shirt, and worked them under her bra. Their groans were simultaneous. With a hook of his fingers, he lifted his lips again, long enough to rake the shirt over her head. His kiss went from her neck to the exposed cleavage, and when her bra disappeared, she grabbed at his shirt desperate for skin to skin contact.
Hot skin, wet with his kisses, cooled with the chill of the room when they next separated long enough to divest the rest of their clothing. Sandwiched between him and the wall, one of her legs slid high to his hip as they became carried away again, and he automatically leant support as she wrapped to him.
His whisper was hot and humorous into her neck, “I’m sure there is a bed in here...”
“May as well find it since you paid for it...this we could have done in the elevator...”
“Almost did, but didn’t think you would be into it...”
When she bit at his chest, he let out a startled curse.
Intent on the smooth skin of his shoulder and neck against her lips, she didn’t look up as he moved them farther into the room.
Dropping her to the bed, he followed her down, using the momentum to roll her. Closing her eyes against the sheets, she relished his lips trailing her spine and the graze of his teeth against more sensitive skin. After a quick possessive bite, he moved up, hooking an arm beneath her stomach and pulling her back against his chest. The other hand roamed free and when it paused, adept fingers easily coaxed her gasps. The weight of his chin rested in the crook of her neck as they came together fast.
His name slipped from her lips into the sheets. Then somewhere in the midst of it tears slipped from her eyes into the sheets.
She was glad that her face wasn’t to him, and she turned it even more into the mattress. However, as their hyperactive senses began to settle down, awareness of things not all sensual returned.
“Mariss...are you crying?”
Damn it all, she felt like a baby for a split second, and then she didn’t care and allowed wracking sobs to overtake her body
“Mariss...are you hurting?” Instantly, he drew completely apart. “I didn’t mean, I thought you were feeling good with it. Mariss honey look at me... please...”
“No!” Her scream was into the mattress. “I hate you. I hate that you can do this.”
“What...”
“I hate you for this.”
“For what?”
“THIS. And I just let you.” Fresh tears burned her eyes, soaking the sheets. During the fast, furious pace, he held her hands, and now that they were free, she used one to prop her forehead on.
“Mariss, what are you talking about? Are you hurt or...”
“I’m hurt more than you could ever care,” her voice steadied.
“What do you mean care? I care. I love–”
“No!” she quickly interrupted, and fury coated her next words, “Don’t say love. You don’t have a right to.”
“Marissa!” There was a frightened inflection in his voice creating a slightly higher pitch each time he spoke. The fact that Mariss had evolved to Marissa meant something.
Tenderly, his hand curved on her shoulder, and she rebuffed his attempt to forcefully turn her to face him. She felt bare in every way, her body uncomfortably nude to his eyes, her soul stripped to his intellect.
When she wouldn’t turn, he did so, rolling to his side enough to stare at the side of her face. “I do. I do love you. How can you–”
“If you love me, Jack...” At last, she pushed to her elbows and in a twist toward him revealed the grief on her face. Shock filled his features. His eyes welled, the tears cresting in empathy and possibly in guilt.
“...If you do love me then go. Now.”
Dark pleading eyes melded with her gaze, but she won the stare off. The bed linens rustled beneath his knees as wordlessly he moved away. Even trapped in her shroud of grief, she admired his beauty–the tremor of muscles beneath tanned skin as he walked away. The bedroom door clicked behind him. Once more, she flopped face down on the bed, and free from inhibitions her tears rained again.
Time passed; she couldn’t say how much. Her ears picked up a slight sound, mingling with her own, as if she were hearing an echo of her own sobs.
Gradually, her mind processed and replayed every detail of Jack at the card table. His sweet humbleness had won her heart over enough to come to this room with him. Nothing had changed. Instead of talking through their problems, Jack had wanted sex, and like a drone, she had complied. Her heart was a slave to his, and that would be fine with her, if only his heart was equally enslaved to hers.
A sound again pricked her senses. She was no longer crying. So why was she still hearing sobs? Flipping over and then sitting up, she traced the sound to the door. Her feet sank into the plush carpet as she took a few directional steps pausing midway between the bed and the door. The crying was clearer.
Veering to the bathroom, she took a minute to clean up after taking care of her urgent need. Then, standing before the door, she fortified herself during a long pause.
Willing her words not to waver, she spoke through the panels. “You were supposed to leave.”
Her heart thumped at least twenty times before he replied, “I’m not leaving you like this.”
Scorn singed her reply, “Because you always do what you want.”
“Yes, usually. And I’m sorry about that. I will work on it, Mariss. I swear. But this is not completely about what I want. It is about what I won’t.” The last word was stressed and she felt some de
ja vu. “I won’t leave you while you are this wrecked.”
“I didn’t want you to see me like that...”
“I needed to see you like that...”
Moving closer, she leaned her head against the trim, and her fingers brushed the knob. His voice was coming from below, as if he was on the floor. Instinctively, she looked down.
“I do love you Mariss. I know you have to know that. And if you don’t, if you don’t know that, then I have failed you so bad, so much worse than I thought I would.”
Oh, shit. The waterworks began anew. She wiped the wetness of a tear with her fingertip as he continued.
“I’ve been such an idiot. And what’s worse is I can feel it when it’s happening. When I’m saying or doing idiot things.” A hiccupping sniff from his side of the door accented that confession. “I came here to apologize. To beg you back. And then, I screwed that up. When I saw you, I just wanted you. Wanted things between us how they should be.”
He was crying. The sounds were clear, and her hand closed on the knob, but she didn’t twist.
“I can’t believe I said that shit to you on the phone. I’m so sorry, Mariss. I know sorry just sounds lame, as terrible as it was. It wasn’t how I feel. I swear.”
“I know...” The answer croaked from her lips so quietly that she knew he might not have heard her from the other side of the wall.
His crying was steady and unable to handle it, she pulled open the door, and he fell at her feet. The physical jolt seemed to surprise him, and after a few seconds, he righted himself, and slowly stood. It was hard to look at the desolate expression inside red rimmed and bloodshot eyes, but she held his humbled look. His hands moved, but he stopped just short of touching her.
“I know, Jack. I know you were stressed.” Moving her hands enough so that her fingertips brushed his, she took both of his hands.
“I was.” A sigh of agreement left his lips. Then he appealed, “I told you I say stupid shit. I told you I’m a verbal asshole. But I’m not inside. I swear to you I don’t feel the things I say.”
Piqued, she let his hands fall again and even took a step back. “And I’m telling you I understand. But that doesn’t make what you say when you’re stressed any easier to hear.”
“I know. I know, honey...” His weight shifted from one foot to the other, as if he wanted to close in the small distance she had just created.
“I can handle venting, when that is what you are doing. I know you listen to me bitch and moan about crap too. But that was a personal attack, Jack. And what is more—you wouldn’t call back. You wouldn’t apologize.”
He looked so much like Tristan when she was scolding him over some something that her heart clenched. Most important, he looked anguished as he acknowledged these accusations. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed as he silently and pleadingly held her eyes.
“And then you come around and...” Miserably, she thought about stopping here. The next words stuck in a degrading ball in her throat before she forced them out in a choke. “And... and it just seemed like sex was all you missed. Like you didn’t miss...like you didn’t miss...”
Looking up, she found his chocolate eyes and enjoyed the sweetness swimming in them as he lightly brushed down her arm with calloused fingertips.
“...me...”
His lashes blinked several times, as she did when she was trying to hold back tears, and she was ghoulishly drawn to this emotion. Only once had she seen a man cry. Kel. It had been brief because he had stormed away in anger and embarrassment. It had been selfish because he wasn’t getting his way in getting her back. However, Jack’s tears appeared a mixture of both misery for what he had brought on himself, and empathy for the pain put on her.
“I missed you, Mariss. I missed everything about you. I missed you so much that I couldn’t function.” His gaze swept her bare body. “And I missed you in every way. I missed seeing you with Tristan in your lap.” He took the step that she had put between them, enough to sift her hair in his fingers. “And the sound of your voice. I missed it so much. Talking to you. Being with you. In every way. Not just sex.”
Twirling the strand around his forefinger, he admitted, “Although it is hard not to put that as a priority. Because when I’m with you that way, I feel like I’m with you in every way. When I look down at you, or up, or over...I see the mother of my son, I see my best friend, I see the most amazing woman I have ever known, I see my lover, the woman I love.”
His eyes were earnest as they sank into hers, and she slid a hand up his chest curving her fingers around the back of his neck. When she stepped close enough that her length was against his, a shiver tore through her body, and she raised her face wanting with every fiber of her being to kiss him.
The kiss was gentle, sweet, and their skin brushed seductively together. “That must be it then,” she whispered into the kiss. His expression was expectant, questioning but he stole another kiss while he waited for the answer. “That is why we are so good together like this. No matter what stupidity happens, sex always makes it better. I guess because I can look into your soul and see everything you feel. I can look into your eyes and know you love me regardless of what stupidity just went down...”
“Stupidity has got to stop happening...” He brushed his lips to her neck, just beneath her ear. “I can’t take much more stupidity.”
“Me either,” she sighed against his chest. Jack pheromones overtook her senses, and she stiffened in defense. “You sent Tristan a phone so you wouldn’t have to talk to me...Damn it all, Jack. What the hell! It’s been almost two weeks. Two weeks!”
His arms tightened in an imprisoning embrace. “I’m so sorry. I was exhausted and until yesterday I did not realize so many days had gone by.”
At this, she jerked free. Every hour that had passed in their time apart was painfully etched into her heart.
“Wait, Mariss...” His defense was gentle, pleading. “With the schedule so crazy at the beginning of the tour, I was barely sleeping. Then with the stress of the crap between us–which I know I started–my body shut down. I was sleeping anytime we weren’t on stage.” One of his hands raked through his hair. “I remember telling James to send Tristan that phone. It was an idiot move. I felt like the biggest asshole every time I called Tristan on that number...”
“Who is James?” Numbly, she focused on the swirls of ink his chest instead of whatever expression might be in those addictive dark eyes, but at her question, a sound left his throat and she looked into his incredulous expression.
“James? He’s one of the tour managers.”
The question was a trivial one, a stalling tactic while she processed everything he had said. Jack was back to sifting her hair between his fingers. When the molecules charged between them, and she knew he was about to close in for a kiss, she defensively used her lips to speak.
“I’m old enough to know better, you know.” A slight twist pulled the tips of her hair from his toying. “I stopped believing every stupid thing a man says to get back into your pants...a long time ago...”
Her eyes slid over him. Rugged, tanned features, and dark, dynamic eyes. Lips just full enough to hold a hint of a pout. Eyebrows as dark as the long locks of hair that waved about the face. A face that was only tiny part of a charismatic person who had strangers screaming their love to him and worse.
She was no stranger, and she was not any less immune to these things.
“You though, I guess I would believe whatever you say, to have you back in my pants...” Wryly, she twisted her own words around.
“Everything I’m saying is true.” Cupping the back of her head, he brought her forehead to his chest and still standing, bare, in the middle of the room they rocked sideways together. “Especially the part about me being an idiot. I missed you so much. Every time I talked to Tristan, I asked about you.”
“Why? Why did it turn into such a deal?” She realized they were just going in circles with this discussion, but the way he had treated
her on the phone, combined with the rebuff afterward had not truly been resolved by an explanation of stress and a heartfelt apology.
“When you said you didn’t want to come on tour, Mariss, it felt like I was losing you. I just can’t take thinking you are going to walk out on us.”
Putting an inch or so between them, enough to see into his face, she slid her hands down to his, holding them as she declared, “That is not going to happen. I’m committed to this, Jack. We have a kid that needs two parents. Together. He has been through enough. The least we can do is give that to him.”
“I know, honey. I know...”
♪♫¨♫♪
“I missed this,” she sighed into his face as he teased with a slow heavenly slide.
“I missed this,” she exclaimed during a fast and furious pace.
“I missed this,” her words bounced off the tiles of the shower as she gazed down at his dark wet head.
“If you miss this so much, why won’t you come on tour?” Jack asked as they limply lay in the bed. “You could have this every day...”
Her hands played in his wet hair while contemplating the answer. She had been pleasured in every way, and she had returned every bit. Yet, while her body hummed satiated, she remained unsettled with the thought.
The sun’s square pattern on the ceiling held her interest, and when too much time passed with no answer, he spoke again.
“I was stoked about y’all coming along, and I thought you were too...”
“I was,” she earnestly assured, secretly amused that unconsciously he had begun incorporating her southern slang into his own speech.
“So what happened?”
What had happened?
She had cried when seeing him off because circumstances caused her and Tristan to be left behind. Night after lonely night had been spent in his empty bed wishing she were with him in his actual bed wherever that might be.
Had everything really changed with the discovery of the paternity test?
“You have to tell me what is going on. If this is going to work between us, you can’t shut me out every time you get mad.”