by Lisa Gillis
Hot fury blazed in eyes that only minutes ago were blazing with hot desire, and mentally she revised last night’s assessment of failed ‘Phase One.’ It was looking like it had carried off better than she hoped. She didn’t like him being mad at her, and yet it was titillating to find that he was.
Unsure where to take the phase from here, she simply let her feelings lead.
“Probably about as hard as the shoe on the other foot,” her mumble was intelligible enough to catch his attention.
“What are you talking about?”
“You partying in LA while I’m sitting around here with our sick kid.” The words were part of the plan at some point, but to actually say them broke her voice.
“Momma, Mom Mom, Mooommma!” The growling chant began.
Jack’s steadfast gaze never left her face, and he incredulously denied, “I wasn’t!”
His indignant astonishment threw her, and again she reflected on the internet picture and what it portrayed. “It seemed like you were. Creeping around with your ex and all!”
“My ex?”
“The ‘lingerina.’” Then, when he continued blankly contemplating the made up word, she huffed with all the haughtiness of Tristan when he had to explain himself. “The underwear model!”
His laughter was abrupt, and just as abruptly it cut the moment his mirth provoked the frown she felt on her face.
Carefully, he replied, “I’m not dating her, never have.”
“Momma!” Tristan was no longer practicing the screamo growl, so she knew the water had cooled and the bubbles evaporated.
Swinging her feet off the couch, she sprinted to the bathroom, wrapping his slight body in a towel and helping him with his pajamas. Directing him to bed, she promised to send in Bally and that Jack would be in to say goodnight. However, it wasn’t that simple to pick up her conversation with Jack.
“But, do I get a snack?”
Containing her aggravation at the timing, she replied, “Of course, sweetheart.” And a big dose of Tylenol, she crazily thought. Because, this discussion with Jack, no matter how it progressed, was ending with phase two. Of that, she was determined.
Phase two was S–E–
“Mom? I get a snack, right?”
X
“Want to eat in your room and watch t.v.?”
“I wanted to eat with Jack and watch t.v.”
“What do you want for your snack?” Following the tiny boy as he swung on his crutches into the den, she met Jack’s eyes, and he stood, automatically clearing a path of shoes and toys to Tristan’s chair.
“Hey buddy. I was thinking about an orange. Is that what you want?”
Tristan nodded, and while she cleared the taco trash, she watched astounded as Jack puttered around the kitchen and shortly returned with a paper towel of peeled and sectioned oranges.
The moment the tot was in bed with a dose of Tylenol down him, they adjourned to the kitchen after a story read by her and another by Jack.
Again, fascinated, she watched finding him already familiar with the location of utensils and food items. Retrieving the alcohol from the top of the fridge, he began to mix drinks. He asked many more questions about Tristan’s physical limitations, and wondered how quickly in the future these would be a thing of the past.
When it got quiet, she curiously observed as he divided one of Tristan’s juice boxes between the two glasses of orange juice and vodka.
“Don’t knock it till you try it.” Revealing the slight dimples that fluttered her stomach, he passed her finished mixture over. Taking a long sip of his, he turned, leaning a hip against the counter in the sexy stance she remembered so well from the tour bus. Indicating her drink with a tip of his head, he inquired, “Okay?”
Obligingly, she swallowed a sip and nodded in surprise.
Dark eyes quickly honed in on the movement of her throat, and provoked by this attention, she tilted her glass for another.
A comfortable silence stretched, and finally he ventured, “Mariss, I’ve never dated her.”
Searching his earnest eyes, she quietly refuted, “That’s not what Perez Hilton says.” Although she had clicked through the famous blog to some unremembered gossip site, she nevertheless used the name she remembered to make the point.
If possible, his face was as dumbfounded as earlier when she first brought up this supposed ex. “You stalk me online?”
“Just once. The other night. And stop looking at me like that!” The last part she yelled when he seemed entirely too pleased with this new revelation.
Taking a couple of steps, he came to a stop before her. “Her name is Randi Gavin. We are friends. I go to her publicity crap, and she goes to mine. Some of this stuff is planned out for months, and the events require RSVP names way ahead of time for background checks. It’s easier to bring someone who is already on file.” He paused for a few sips of his beverage then wryly continued, “Besides, I learned, the hard way, that the person I’m dating might change by the time whatever is happening actually happens, and it sucks to be stuck with someone you can’t stand by that time.”
“You’ve never been more than friends?” doubtfully, she asked as if she had the right to be this inquisitive, but he didn’t seem to care.
“No.”
“You’ve never banged her?” Why couldn’t she shut up?
“I told you we are friends. That’s it.” Skillfully, he eluded the query.
“You’ve banged her.” Conclusively, she nodded.
“Marissa, what does it matter?”
“You’ve banged her.”
“As friends. A couple of times. But not in a long, long time.” A flash of perception crossed his face. “Is that what your date last night was all about?”
“Not exactly,” she fibbed, not wanting him to know she was so desperately infatuated with him. “Olivia tried to set us up awhile back. And I told her I would after Tristan’s surgery.”
“And after all that waiting for a date, it had to be the weekend I came?”
“Well no. But you were coming to see Tristan–”
“And you,” he interrupted before she could play out the ploy.
‘And you’
No two words, or even three words, had ever made her so happy.
Taking her glass, he thrust both drinks aside, and his palms came to rest on her hips to pull her close. The hand that snaked so familiarly under her shirt was cold from holding his drink, but it quickly warmed against the heat of her skin. Greedily, she couldn’t get enough of his kiss, and she found herself practically hanging on him in an effort to get even closer.
When he lifted her against him, she wrapped him with her legs, entwining them together as he headed into the other room, past the other room, and into her bedroom. From the previous night, he must have recalled the layout because even in the dark he went straight for the bed and came down on top of her.
His fingers were on the buttons of her shirt, and she rose, flinging it off along with the bra beneath it as soon as it was undone. His shirt came over his head at the same time, and they pressed together eager to feel skin to skin. Fervently, she traced each muscle and skimmed her fingers across hot skin. Her lips were on his lips, his neck, his chest, taking in and tasting everything her hands were feeling. His reciprocation was driving her to a frenzy, and finally crazed, she realized she was lying limp while he was tasting and teasing every bit of exposed skin.
By some sanity in the back of her mind, she was listening for any sign of Tristan being awake, any clank of his crutches. “Jack,” she gasped at the next flick of his tongue, “I should see if Tristan is asleep...”
“I will.” Pulling his shirt back on, he exited the room and was back in a flash pushing the door completely closed. “Tylenol strikes again.” She could hear the fond smile in his voice, and his clothes rustle as they came off. “Can I turn the lamp on?”
A second after her assent, she was blinking in the light and basking in his admiring look. Her eyes ran dow
n him, all long, lean hard muscle.
Back against her, he whispered, “You are just how I remember...And I remember everything, Mariss.”
The sweet words whispered against her neck. “The way you look. The way you taste.” Her hand was now in his, and the lash of his tongue on the palm, the stroke between her fingers, brought a whimper to her lips and brought back the memories she held so vivid. Thinking of his tongue other places as he continued this tease had her moaning again as other places heated unbearably... “The way you sound...”
Abandoning the assault on her hand, he sought her lips again, swallowing the next sound from her throat. Her hand traveled down wanting to pull the same sound from his lips, and the second her fingers closed around what they sought, she was rewarded with a low rumble.
Everything resumed full throttle; she couldn’t keep up with his next touch or kiss, and her lips, tongue and hands could not get enough of him. Somewhere in this madness, the rest of her clothing was shed, and when his kiss strayed intimately to those ‘other places’, the reality, replacing the recollections had her smothering her cry with a pillow.
Wild and sweet, fiery and intense the kiss continued until she was weakly pulling him by his hair to her lips. If she had thought that was nirvana, she was soon reminded wrong. They rocked and they rolled until she thought every cell in her body would explode with the intensity and her heart would burst with emotion.
Being with Jack was everything she remembered and more. The connection was mental as well as physical, and as she lay against him sweetly sated, with their child in the next room, she couldn’t help but feel that they were fated to be together.
Phase two complete...
CHAPTER 21
AN INTERNAL ALARM woke her, and she lay staring into the shadows enjoying the feel of Jack’s leg twisted with hers and the sound of his breath. A few quiet snores, the ones she remembered from the hospital, intermittently broke up his breathing. Although she had hooked up with over a dozen men since Tristan’s birth, it had been more than five years since anyone but Tristan had been in her bed.
Tristan was the reason she waked, and her gaze spontaneously drew to the door cracked open to listen for him after she and Jack were done and dozing. Padding to the bathroom, she took care of that urge, and her eyes blissfully fell to the two foil packets in the trash.
Stepping into a steamy shower, she began to soap up, and every brush of the loofah caressed skin still tingling from last night. After washing and rinsing her hair, she wrapped in her robe and returned to the bedroom.
Jack had moved to lay diagonal in the bed, as if searching for her in his sleep, and now rested with his head on her pillow.
Easing back into the bed, she allowed her fingers what they craved, the slick softness of his hair, the smooth firmness of his skin, a trace of an arm, a trail down his chest to his stomach, and reluctantly stopped short of what she really wanted. Pulling in a deep breath of his scent, she contemplated the light of dawn through the slats of the mini blinds. Unable to resist, she pressed her lips to the warmth of his chest, then again...and again...unconsciously drawing closer to her craving and was rewarded when he responded in a very conscious state.
“Mariss....” That particular utterance of her name was an addiction. “Mariss mmh...”
“Mmmh,” she hummed the echo against him, around him, and savored the immediate response.
Minutes later, her cheek was against his chest, and he was mumbling in sated satisfaction about the best way to wake up in the morning.
With another look at the window, she unwillingly whispered, “You need to get out of here before Tristan gets up.”
Fully awake, he raised his head, and the shadowy pools of his eyes sought hers. “Okay,” he agreed. Then, “Wait, do you mean leave, leave? Or is it okay if I move to the couch?”
Always, he double-checked with her any important decisions about Tristan, and this was reassuring, and endearing. One of his hands stroked through her hair, and her lips turned to the heat of that inked forearm as she answered, “The couch.”
Despondent, yet entranced, she watched as he returned from the bathroom and picked through the clothing on the floor, dressing. Lastly, he pulled on his tee-shirt. Then pouncing on the bed, he hunkered on all fours over her and raised goose bumps with a line of kisses down her chest, then back up to her throat.
“Mariss?”
“Mmh?”
“When are you going to be ready to tell him?”
Her muscles went rigid as he spoke against her skin, and she pushed at him needing to see his eyes. The room was getting lighter by the minute, but she took the time to study his earnest expression. In the middle of the night, she had waked intertwined with Jack and idly fantasized telling Tristan that Jack was his daddy. But, in that imagining they were also telling their son that they were married, or were about to be married.
In her fantasy, there was a future with the three of them and no fear of her losing Tristan in this equation to some belated custody hearing.
“I don’t know...” Fingering the necklace dangling from his neck, she considered and softly replied, “We will figure it out today. Okay?”
With a last press of a kiss to her hairline, he bounded out of the room, pulling the door back to a crack behind him.
The sun was now bright, casting vertical shadows on the wall, and she closed her eyes, yet still couldn’t drift into any sleep stage although they had been up most of the night.
A vibration sounded from the nightstand, and her head twisted toward the source as the face of Jack’s cell lit up. Resolutely, she ignored it, but when it sounded again, only a couple of minutes later, her curiosity won. With a wary look, to the shadowy hall beyond the narrow door slit, she brought up the missed calls finding them both from ‘Randi.’
At that precise moment, a text came through, and because she was holding the phone, she got a preview. Again, from ‘Randi’ reading ‘Sugar, let me know as soon as you know.’
Stretching her hand, she was about to return the phone when the next text came through from ‘Mom’ asking ‘Jacks did you tell her? I can’t wait to meet him. Call your mother!’
Letting the phone drop back to the stand as if it were a dangerous snake, she rolled over, and as soon as she settled comfortably, heard the clink of Tristan’s crutches. He stopped in the hall bathroom and afterward pushed open her bedroom door.
“Morning Momma!”
Mustering a liveliness that, after viewing the texts, she no longer felt, she return chanted the greeting, and Tristan asked, “Can I feed Bally?...”
When his words dwindled, she rose to see what his wide eyes beheld and spied Jack’s socks and shoes among her discarded clothing. Falling to her pillow, she brought a reassuring hand to her robe and in a desperate attention diversion asked, “What do you want for breakfast?”
Deciding he would choose a cereal, Tristan hoppeled off, and after taking the time to pull on a pair of jeggings and a long tunic top, she followed a few minutes behind him. Her bare feet hit the cool tile of the hall floor, and her strides stopped when she saw Tristan propped on his crutches before the couch. Jack was blinking the sleep from his eyes.
“Did you spend the night?” The toddler quizzed, and since Marissa was behind him, unable to read his face, she tried but failed to read his tone.
Jack pushed Bally’s snoot away from his face and sat up. “I thought if I was here when you first woke up that we could drive through McDonalds and get some breakfast.”
“Okay.” Tristan took a couple of steps toward the kitchen, then undeterred, made a second inquiry. “But did you spend the night?”
Jack’s gaze came over Tristan’s shoulder to meet hers, and she only grinned back. Tristan’s persistence was a direct genetic link from his father, and it was fun to watch paybacks come back around to Jack.
“Actually, I did,” Jack admitted. “It got really late and I thought you and me could surprise your Mom with some breakfast. Is she stil
l asleep?” With an innocence that would have fooled even her, had she not been staring into his eyes at that very moment, he made the inquiry.
“No, but we could still surprise her.” Tristan was gleeful at the idea.
“Okay buddy! I will just go tell her that you and I are going to the store for...for...”
“For toilet paper!” A slight bounce accompanied the toddler’s exuberant answer.
“Are we? Are you out?” Jack inquired of the hall bathroom that he had not been in since the previous afternoon.
“No. But I can hide it.” Tristan’s matter of fact statement had her staring, yet again, in surprise. Maybe he was more like his father than she would have wanted, she thought, while comparing the toilet paper deception to the cryptic phone messages she had just intercepted.
Darting into her room before her son turned and saw her, she stood brushing her hair into a ponytail and turned from the dresser when Jack rattled a knock and entered.
In a loud stage voice he explained, “Tristan and I are going to the store to pick up some toilet paper.”
Perching on the bed, he pulled his socks and shoes on, shooting her an impish smile and then retrieved his phone.
With a slight pucker of a frown, he paused long enough to punch in presumably answers to the texts and then clipped the device to his jeans.
“What do you want from MickyD’s?” The whisper was in the midst of a quick but hungry kiss.
“I don’t care. Whatever Tristan picks out for me.”
“You okay?” His fingers drifted down her neck, from the slightly visible whisker burns, to her chest where the slight sweet bruises on sensitive skin was now covered by a stretchy modest shirt.
Fiddling with the hair bands scattered on the dresser top, she wanted to demand answers to those texts. At the same time, she didn’t want to show her insecurity.
The best way to solve this custody issue, if there even was one, was to make him marry her. The only way to solve the issues of her heart was to make him fall in love with her.
