by Freya Barker
“When’s your birthday?” I ask, and this time his irritation is obvious as he lifts his head once again.
“October.”
Awesome. His is before mine in February, so technically only three-and-a-half. I can live with that.
“Stop talking,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around his neck and lifting my mouth to his. I barely notice the roll of his eyes, but I can feel the vibration of his groan when I slide my tongue between his lips.
Our mouths and hands explore both over and under layers of clothing. Touching and testing. Jake’s skin is soft over the firm muscle underneath and I want to taste. Shoving up his shirt, I expose the short, course hair on his chest, narrowing to a strip running down his belly. I bend forward, touching my tongue to his skin; tentative at first, but bolder when I hear the hiss of his breath. I sense more than see him take the shirt off the rest of the way before his hands tangle in my hair.
I’m not quite sure what possesses me, but my hands are already working the button on his jeans when I sink down on my knees in front of him.
“Fucking hell.”
Jake’s muttered curse sounds more like a plea than a protest, and I’m happy to comply.
His cock is hot and hard when my hand closes around him, while the other is shoving his pants down to his knees. Commando. I always thought it was a myth—I guess not.
The head dark red, almost purple, the veins bulging along the thick shaft. I feel bold and empowered when he twitches in my hand, and I softly kiss the tip before pressing the flat of my tongue to the base of his shaft, dragging it slowly from balls to crown.
“Rosie...Jesus.” His voice sounds pained as I slide him into my mouth. His hands on either side of my head, he firmly pulls me back, dislodging himself from my mouth with an audible pop. “Baby,” he coos when my eyes lift to find his, heavy-lidded and dark, burning with heat. “My turn.”
I’m not very worldly, sexually speaking, and to say I’m not used to being on the receiving end would be putting it mildly. Giving is easy, but having the focus turn on me is a different ball game.
I let Jake pull me to my feet and take the opportunity to admire his strong body. I haven’t seen many men naked, but I can safely say—in most cases—they look better with clothes on. Not so Jake.
I’m so distracted by his body, running my fingertips over his skin in discovery; I barely notice I’m being divested of my own clothes. Not until he backs me up to my bed, and pushes me to lie down on the mattress. Now I feel exposed, with him standing there, looking down on me. I can feel his eyes and touch taking in every inch of my pale, freckled skin. I’m not a small woman; I’m short, but not small. The swell of my belly and thighs are always a cause for insecurity, but the way Jake trails his fingers from the tips of my breasts to my stomach, testing the softness, feels more like worship than criticism.
He remains standing when he opens my legs, draping off the edge of the bed, and trails his fingers through the newly trimmed patch of red curls at their apex, slipping one finger inside my tight channel. My mouth falls open at the intrusion, as his eyes close and his head tilts back.
“So wet,” he whispers. “So hot and wet, I could come just from feeling your hold on my finger.”
My heart pounds in my chest and I hear the blood rush in my ears. My skin is charged, hungry for the rasp of his touch.
He slips in a second finger, and my hips come off the mattress as my eyes roll back, and I give myself over to sensation.
Suddenly his hand is gone, and when my eyes snap open, I see him reach down for his jeans. Seconds later, he steps back between my legs, a condom rolled neatly down his thick shaft, as he slips his hands under my knees and slides me to the edge of the mattress, lifting my legs wide. He leans in and kisses my lips sweetly, before straightening up. Just by flexing his hips, he rubs the head of his cock along my slit before sliding inside. Just the head, but already I feel full. Jake stops right there.
“I’ll go easy,” he says, his eyes betraying a barely contained restraint as he looks down to focus on our connection. By small increments, he feeds his cock inside me, stretching me to facilitate him with a slight, satisfying burn. He rocks his hips deeper and deeper, until finally he’s fully seated in the cradle of my hips and stills. The effort to hold back has sweat running down his body, as his eyes come up to meet mine. “About to lose it here, baby. Won’t be able to hold back, you feel too good. Need you to put a hand to that pretty little clit. That’s it,” he says, encouraging me when I slide my fingers over the slick little button.
He strokes me twice, deep and slow, before losing all control, and his hips piston, slapping skin against skin as I work my clit furiously to keep up. The groans, whimpers, and grunts intensify, as we both seem to barrel toward climax. I feel his body jerk inside me as he yells his release, while I teeter on the edge for an endless moment, before bursting apart on a scream.
Without a word, but with infinite gentleness, he cleans me up after, lies down and tucks me close, his nose buried in my hair, before drifting off almost instantly.
I lie awake for hours after, reliving every second, afraid if I fall asleep I might lose this feeling of peace and utter contentment.
JAKE
I wake up with the sun, only disoriented for a second when I open my eyes to an unfamiliar bedroom. The woman wrapped around my back, like she never wants to let go, is very familiar, though. Even more so since last night. Probably why I can’t remember the bedroom, my eyes were glued to her.
Still stuck between time zones, I lean over to check my phone I put on the nightstand last night. Five o’clock: too early to go to work and too late to go back to sleep. Normally, I love to go for a run at this time of morning, but I didn’t bring any gear.
Rosie huffs out a sleepy complaint when I roll to my back, quickly reattaching her luscious body to me, pulling her knee up over my legs. I feel the heat coming from her core against my hip, a heat I’ve touched and been inside, but have yet to taste.
With my face clenched between her thighs, my tongue buried deep in her pussy, and her taste bursting in my mouth as she climaxes awake, I discover I have a new favorite pastime to indulge in at the crack of dawn.
IT’S NOT UNTIL MUCH later, when I walk into the PASS office and see Radar sitting at his desk, I realize I never told Rosie about the security tapes. Perhaps it’s best. The film crew won’t be back until next weekend, and with Rosie back at work on Thursday night, which means I only have a few more days to give her my undivided attention. What good would it do to spoil that now?
CHAPTER 15
ROSIE
I don’t know if I’m ready for work today.
It’s been another very busy week, but this one is much easier to handle than last week. Probably because this week I’m being kept well-stocked with oxytocin and endorphins, thanks to a dark, brooding, and supremely talented, personal security guard. Seriously, I think I’ve come more these past couple of days than I have my entire sexually active life. Not that it’s saying much, but still.
I’ve been on cloud nine, making it so much more tolerable to deal with the legalities of a quick sale of the house and the logistics of moving Mom and her things to the nursing home. When every aggravating day ends in bed with a man whose solitary focus is pleasure, his and yours, any frustrations or hurts are quickly forgotten.
I’ve never had that: someone who is there at the end of the day. Not ever. It was promised to me before, along with the sun and the moon—by the man I allowed to lead me along for way too many years—but all Chad Pendergast gave me in the end was a black hole. Empty promises of a married man, who wanted his cake and to eat it too.
And I was the naïve girl who kept swallowing it down.
Jesus, I’m morbid today. It may have been the afternoon spent in the nursing home. Nothing like a quick trip down memory lane to squelch any positive sparks. A subtle feeling of panic nags just below the surface. What if I’m falling in the same trap again and am making to
o much of whatever is happening with Jake? I don’t even know if what we have is sustainable, once life settles back down in a normal routine. I don’t know if he even wants that.
We haven’t really talked much.
We haven’t even gone on a real date. We’ve barely surfaced from either my bedroom or his. And even though it’s not the once-a-week-and-only-at-my-condo I was limited to with Chad, the singular focus on sex feels familiar and has me a little concerned.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the sex—I’m all for the sex, in particular with Jake—but don’t I want there to be more?
Frustrated, mostly with myself, I turn into the hotel parking lot. I find a lucky spot, not too far from the back door, but before I can even get out of the car, my door is pulled open and I’m hauled out by my arm.
“I missed you,” Jake growls, immobilizing me in the tight band of his arms. I barely have a chance to react before his mouth is on mine, kissing me like I’m his last breath, before he leans back, his eyes closed.
I haven’t seen him since early this morning, when I cracked one eyelid as he left to drive up to McInnis. Some company lawyer was flying in from LAX, on the red-eye, who was needed on location. Jake mentioned he had no idea what that was about and didn’t care, but he looks pulled through the wringer now.
“Missed you too,” I echo, feeling a hint of relief to my earlier concerns. “I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow.”
He was supposed to drive back with the rest of the team, at the end of their last shooting day.
“I know,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss to my forehead before dipping his chin to look into my eyes. “But I needed a chance to talk to you before then.”
“About what?” There is something in his look that makes me uneasy, so my voice has an edge to it.
“Blackmail.”
JAKE
It’s been a long fucking day and promises to get even longer.
The only instructions I received last night were to pick up one Simon Berry, legal counsel for the rich and famous, from the airport at five forty this morning, and to drive him straight up to McInnis Canyon.
First of all, the guy was cranky as shit at that hour of the morning, without much sleep, and even crankier when he found out there’d be no stopping for a couple of hours of sleep in a comfy hotel bed. My instructions had been clear: no delays.
After an hour of complaining, the guy finally fell asleep in the passenger seat and snored the entire way there.
Yanis, Dimi, Drexler, and an unusually subdued Steele are waiting in Drexler’s trailer. I thought I was just required to drop Berry off, but when I try to back out of the door, Yanis calls me back.
“Best sit down and listen in,” he orders, giving me a glare I can’t quite place.
I slip into the seat beside Dimas and throw him a questioning look, to which he shrugs apologetically. Now I’m really confused.
But not for long.
“We all know that our fucking golden boy here,” Phil Drexler starts, jabbing a thumb in Steele’s direction, “made an ass of himself in a titty-bar, drove drunk, then hit and killed a bum in an alley. We also know that while he’s been pouting in his scotch, fucking any two-legged creature he could lure into his suite, the rest of us have been trying to clean up his goddamn mess.” With every word, Drexler’s face turns a deeper red, while Kyle shrinks farther and farther into his seat. “To top it all off, it turns out Mr. Steele was trying to pay off someone claiming to have damaging information, and he never bothered to tell anyone until fucking yesterday!”
I’m genuinely concerned with Drexler’s well-being as he falls back in his chair, pulls a wad of tissues from his pocket, and starts mopping the spittle from his mouth. The table is quiet for a moment, more to give Berry and myself a chance to process this information, than anything else. It appears this is not news to the others.
“Kyle was contacted the Friday, after the incident in the alley, with a note that was slipped under his door. In the note was a newspaper clipping of the police scene in the alley, the name Fever, and a phone number,” Yanis continues, taking over. “He tried the number, but there was no answer. Next thing a text popped up from that same number, with instructions to set up a cash drop. Instead of notifying us, he had his agent fly out with fifty grand in a messenger bag. Saturday morning, he paid a barista from the coffee shop in the lobby five hundred dollars to drop the bag at the bottom of a food bank bin inside the Safeway on Horizon Drive.”
There is so much fucked up with this scenario, the damage already done hurts my head.
Apparently, another text came in yesterday morning, from the same number, that time asking for two hundred thousand. That’s when Kyle panicked and confessed to Drexler. He thought he’d be able to handle things on his own and nothing would have to get back to Guild Film Productions. Clearly that didn’t work.
“We’re behind the eight ball on this one, folks.” Yanis continues. “We’re going to have to do damage control, and at the same time, get on top of this before it blows up in all our faces.”
“Exactly,” Drexler agrees, his color having returned to a much healthier shade. “And we’ll wrap up shooting today and pack up tomorrow morning, but first we have to do some contingency planning for the future of this production.” He turns to Simon Berry, who’s been listening quietly, and nods his head in response.
“You don’t need us for that.” Yanis stands, motioning both Dimi and me out, following right behind us. “Hold up,” he calls when I head in the direction of the catering tent. I haven’t had anything more than a breakfast sandwich at the drive-through on the way to the airport this morning—I’m starving.
“Just grabbing a bite,” I call back.
“Need to talk to you, Jake. Command center in five.”
With that, he turns on his heel and marches off to the big truck we use as our headquarters when we’re on the road. It’s a compressed and completely self-contained version of our offices, with monitors, computers, a small armory, and the latest communications hardware; all operational and ready to go no matter what remote outpost we end up in.
I continue on my quest for food, and Dimas falls into step beside me.
“Brace yourself,” he mumbles from the corner of his mouth.
“For?”
“Spanish Inquisition. Yanis doesn’t want to do it in front of Drexler, but he’s going to want to know what the chances are our little Ms. Rosie has anything to do...umph.” Dimi looks up from the dirt where I just dumped his ass. All it takes is one well-aimed kick at the healthy knee of a one-legged man.
“Don’t even finish that goddamn thought. She has nothing to do with this for fuck’s sake.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” he grunts, grabbing his knee. “You know we’ve gotta check everything. And cheap move.”
“Quit your whining,” I bite off, reaching out a hand to pull him up, even as I chew him out. “You invented the cheap moves and you know it. If the roles were reversed, you would’ve fucking aimed for my balls.”
“I thought you were hungry?” Dimi hobbles to keep up with me, as I do a one-eighty and head straight for the PASS truck.
“I just lost my appetite.”
I find Yanis alone in the truck; Bree is nowhere to be seen.
“It’s not her,” I barge right in. Yanis throws a pissed look over my shoulder, presumably at his brother. “She’s got nothing to do with it.”
“At the very least we’ll have to question her, Jake. I get you’re invested in the woman,” he starts—only adding fuel to my fire.
“You don’t get anything,” I spit back. “She’s had other fucking things on her mind with her mother in the hospital.”
“I realize that,” Yanis says in a soothing tone that works like nails on chalkboard. “Which is exactly why we have to look at the possibility. Hospitals and nursing homes cost money, which Ms. Perkins doesn’t have a whole lot of.”
I surge forward, ready to plant my fist in his face, but I�
��m grabbed around the waist and lifted off my feet. Fucking Dimas abusing the four or so inches he has on me.
“Gotta think, Jake. She’s the one person who can tie him to the hit-and-run,” he mumbles behind my back. “And she’s gotta be scrambling to find funds to pay for...ah fuck!”
This time I do what he would’ve done, aim for the balls as I sharply pull up a heel. The result is immediate release, as Dimi needs his hands to cradle his tenderized package.
Without saying another word, I shove him aside and march out the open trailer door, almost bumping into Phil Drexler coming up the two steps. Ignoring him too, I head straight for my truck. Fuck them, I need to give her a heads-up before they can blindside her with accusations. She’s barely hanging on as it is.
After the first hour on the road, I start calming down a bit and decide to answer my phone, which has been ringing off and on since I left the set.
“Yes,” I bark.
“Where are you?” my boss wants to know in a clipped voice.
“About thirty minutes out of Grand Junction.”
“Goddammit, Jake. Why’d you have to pick fucking now to grow a heart? Your timing sucks.” He sighs deeply when I don’t say anything. “For whatever it’s worth, I don’t like your Ms. Perkins for this.”
“She sold the house.”
“I know,” he answers much friendlier. “Radar told me. We still need to talk to her, though. It’s possible she mentioned something to somebody else.”
“She didn’t.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Have to ask, though. We have a responsibility to our employer,” Yanis persists. “We can’t afford to miss anything.”
“I’ve gotta go.” I hang up before he has a chance to say anything else. I got the message already.
I’VE BEEN WAITING IN the alley beside the hotel’s back door for Rosie to get here.