Instead, he stops just across the road from the beach in front of a two-story, cherry-red cottage with white trim, a second-floor Romeo and Juliet balcony, and a dark, shingled roof that shows zero signs of leakage. A French door leads inside from the postage-stamp-size front yard filled with white hydrangeas, and there’s a cutesy wood sign over the door: Our Little Secret.
Like so many San Francisco properties, the house seems like a real estate afterthought, shoe-horned between two other, larger places. A tiny alley on the left hosts his bike, while another, equally narrow alley on the right leads behind the house. When Jax pops the gate and props his surfboard against the fence, I catch a glimpse of a fire pit and green Adirondack chairs.
Oh—
He shoves the wetsuit down his legs. It’s not as if I haven’t seen him naked before. We had sex in that pool house and then again in the billionaire’s spare bedroom. It’s just that we were totally planning on doing each other then and getting naked was part of our scene and—
I’m staring.
Anyone with hormones would.
“You’re gorgeous. I mean. You—” I wrap my arms around myself because it’s that or jump him in his yard and it’s not quite dark enough for that. That is also good because I can see all of him clearly and there’s a whole lot to look at.
He’s still built like a giant absolutely everywhere. His big, inked arms flex as he shakes out the wetsuit and then tosses it into a trough-like vat. The suit lands with a splash and then he bends over—oh yes—swiping a towel from the cottage’s tiny back porch. He wraps the towel around his lean hips and...
“Such a waste.” I stare at what he’s covered up. Despite his afternoon in the very cold Pacific and a damp walk back in what amounts to a giant latex condom, he’s erect. Impressively so. When I drag my gaze back up to his face, his eyes laugh at me.
“You’re good for my ego, Peony.”
“I’m honest,” I counter. “And you probably have the happiest neighbors in the city.”
He laughs some more and then brushes past me, his hand capturing mine. “Let’s get you inside.”
“Is this what the Beast said to Beauty? Do you have a dungeon inside?”
That sound? It’s my brain short-circuiting and all rational conversation going up in smoke. Flames. Something totally incendiary and one-hundred-percent immature. It’s just that this big, rough, way-too-gorgeous man makes me want to press up against him. Lick the lines of his muscles. Taste him right now because what if I don’t get the chance to do it later?
He’s addictive. That has to be it.
He’s also practical and efficient because he tugs me gently toward the front of the house and onto the porch. He flips up his doormat, on which a pair of honey bees fornicate or gambol or do whatever it is that bees do. There’s a key underneath. I toss my umbrella onto the porch and refrain from pointing out how desperately insecure his key storage solution is.
“Are you sure you live here?” I tilt my head back, trying to take it all in.
Our Little Secret is oceanfront and it’s not a cardboard box. That’s a huge win in the game of adulting. I don’t know anyone who could afford to rent a place like this.
I’m officially in love. It’s the cutest thing ever.
“We’re one hundred percent not breaking and entering.” He waves his key in front of me. “Yes, I live here.”
He unlocks the door and holds it open for me. The inside is as unexpected as the outside. A white brick fireplace anchors the big open space and there are loads of windows. A tiny open galley kitchen leads to the backyard and stairs head up to the second floor. Another surfboard leans against the wall, and the only furniture is a desk sporting an impressive pile of hardware, and a couch.
I can’t help myself. I prowl around his space like a stray cat let inside from the yard. The ocean’s a bright slice of blue through the front windows, so close I almost feel like I can touch it. No curtains cover the glass, but the space feels cozy and safe.
I run a hand over the back of his couch. It’s white, covered in a drapey, lacey throw and positively snowed under a mountain of equally white pillows.
“Came with the house.” The corners of his mouth lift.
Mmm-hmm. I run a hand over the stack of laptops and hardware bits on the desk. “Are you hacking into the Pentagon’s mainframe?”
Possibly, my knowledge of hacking comes almost entirely from WarGames and The Matrix. I’m not sure it’s an accurate representation of the skills required, but Jax would rock those long, black coats the heroes of The Matrix wear. I’d happily watch him storming around in shit-kicker boots.
He runs a hand over his hair. “Surfing doesn’t pay the bills.”
“I feel your pain. I was crushed to realize that no one was going to pay me to travel the world and stay in amazing resorts.”
“I’m in tech.” He volunteers this cautiously, as if he expects a reaction from me, but computers seem like a perfectly benign way to make a living. Unless, you know, he’s hacking into people’s stuff and holding it for ransom or something.
“Do you like it?” I can’t quite wrap my head around him spending hours bent over a laptop, pounding out lines of code or whatever it is engineers do.
He gives me a look I can’t interpret. “I’m good at it. I make money.”
“Sweet, filthy lucre.” I mime kissing an invisible person. “We all do what we have to do. I myself am wallpapering San Francisco with my résumé. I have an interview with a startup.”
He nods. “You could be the new Google employee number fourteen.”
“How often do you really think it happens?”
“A stock IPO that makes the employees millionaires over night?” He shrugs and heads for the kitchen with our tacos. “I’ve seen it happen more than once.”
I’m twenty-six years old. I’ve worked a dozen jobs in the last three years and none of them has made anyone rich, let alone made me financially solvent. “So you’ve worked places where everyone wakes up some random Friday morning a millionaire and buys an island in Fiji?”
“Millionaire, yes. Island, no. There are only three hundred islands in Fiji. Most of them aren’t for sale. Also, there’s nothing random about an IPO that explodes.”
“That’s a lot of millionaires.”
He pops the door on the fridge and frowns. “I should have gone to the store.”
I peek around him. Mostly this is an excuse to cuddle up against his back because I’m freezing and he’s warm, but I’m also curious. He’s definitely got the whole bachelor-fridge thing happening. There’s a pile of random condiment packages, a Chinese take-out carton, and some weird energy drinks.
He shuts the door and leans back against the kitchen counter. His hands find my hips, his thumbs stroking my hipbones. “Tap water or bourbon?”
“Definitely the bourbon.”
He snags the bottle from the counter, but then pours us both big glasses of water anyhow—to fight off the evils of dehydration, I guess.
“Sofa or balcony?” He makes a face. “The chairs are on the balcony, if that matters to you.”
We decide to take our haul to the balcony. I follow him up the stairs and through the second-floor bedroom. Like the downstairs, there’s just the one, big room that’s mostly unfurnished. He does have a big platform bed with a white duvet and a striped throw that’s been folded back into near surgical thirds. The floor is a really cool bleached pine and the walls are a soft almost-white. Maybe it’s the almost total lack of color that makes it seem so sterile. Or maybe he moves around a lot, like I do.
“It’s like a blizzard threw up in here.”
Of course I blurt it out. I couldn’t possibly keep my uncomplimentary thoughts to myself.
He flashes a grin at me. “Tell me what your favorite color is.”
“Rainbow. Why settle for on
e?”
He’s silent for a moment as he undoes the latch securing the porch doors. “Wouldn’t that be ombré?”
“A Scrabble-worthy word.” How unfair is it that he’s both hot and well-read? “Feel free to ombré your bedroom, big guy.”
His porch—which is more of a precarious perch over his front yard—has an amazing view of the ocean. What’s even better is that I can smell the sea and the sand, but we’re high enough that there’s none of the noisome bits that makes San Francisco a little too gritty sometimes. A pair of seagulls duke it out on the sand. There’s a breeze, too, cool and salty, and the drizzling rain has stopped.
Jax briefly disappears inside the bathroom that’s tucked off the bedroom and comes back in jeans, much to my disappointment. We work our way through the bag of tacos. He’s ordered enough for two Jax-size people, so it takes a while. While we eat, we watch the world go by on the street between the cottage and the beach. Mostly, this consists of judging the parallel parking attempts happening on the narrow, car-packed street, but there are also pauses that neither of us tries to fill up with small talk. It’s strangely relaxing.
After I’ve achieved a six-month food baby, I wander back inside his bedroom, because I’m nosy. Jax follows me, depositing the remains of our dinner picnic in his trash. He’s almost preternaturally neat, so it’s a good thing he’s never actually seen inside my RV. I’m most definitely not neat when it comes to my personal stuff, despite being practically a professional organizer at work.
The rainbow throw demands attention. Each side forms a perfect line. It doesn’t seem like something he would have chosen since the rest of the place is the color of tofu and rice, but it’s impossibly soft and I’m tempted to strip down to my skin and wrap myself up in it. If cashmere and kittens had a baby, this blanket would be it. When I straighten, I collide with a hard, male chest.
His arms come around me, steadying me. “It was a gift from my sister.”
“You have sisters?” I twist around so I can see his face.
“One. She lives up in Napa.” His finger skims my cheek. “She’s an organic honey farmer.”
He makes a face as he says this, as if he can’t quite believe the words coming from his mouth.
I giggle. “That’s not the most common occupation.”
“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done for money?”
Given my extensive job history, there are so many candidates. I think for a moment. “I’ve been a professional stand-in-liner. And I trimmed mouse toe nails in a university lab for a week. What about you?”
His mouth replaces his finger, finding my throat. “I was Chief Listening Officer for a friend’s company. I was supposed to report back about everything people said online and on social media. And I did some ethical hacking for a sex toy site. You wouldn’t believe the amount of fraud that happens on those sites.”
“So you used your computer skills for good instead of evil? I don’t have to worry about the Pentagon busting down your door while we’re having a moment?” I tilt my head to give him better access. He takes the hint, his mouth moving across my skin.
“You are entirely safe with me.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Let me restate. You’re as safe as you’d like to be.”
“So I’m at total risk of losing my panties.” I happy sigh, wriggling out of my kimono. Getting a head start on losing my clothes seems desirable. “Awesome.”
“I like how you think.” He grins at me and there’s one of those weird moments where you and another person are sort of sharing a brain. I can practically see myself through his eyes as he moves his mouth to cover mine.
At first we kiss as if we’re not in any rush. His lips press against mine, warm and gentle. His hands settle loosely on my hips, his thumbs working beneath the edge of my top and smoothing over my skin. My mouth parts, and he deepens the kiss because we’ve both been waiting for this since I met him on the beach. I want him.
He makes a rough sound when I glide my tongue along his, tasting, teasing. I’m not always a fan of wet kisses. They’re kind of gross and I don’t like the sounds. But somehow it feels right with Jax—a little funny but mostly raw and honest in a way I can’t usually be. He needs this and so do I. His big hands make short work of my shorts and panties. When he tears his mouth away from mine to whisk the top over my head, I hear my own greedy sex sounds.
“This okay?” His voice is hoarse and gravelly. He needs me, too.
He likes to play.
“Don’t stop. Tell me how you want to play this.”
He groans something. “We could do yours again. Wedding night. Tell me what you want. Or I could choose for you.”
Oh. I like that. I’m tired and I don’t want to have to think.
“You choose.”
He grunts something, but I’m not really paying attention. I’m too busy getting my hands all over his big, warm body. He strips off his jeans, finds a condom, and then gently tumbles me backward onto his bed, going in for another kiss. I have just enough brain cells left to toe his sister’s throw off the end of the bed. There’s no way I want to get sex stuff on it.
And then we’re tangled up together, Jax pressing me down into the mattress while he braces his arms on either side of my head. There’s more kissing and hands going everywhere. I wrap my legs around his waist, trying to put him where I want him. He gives a dark laugh, running his hands down my sides then to my pussy.
His fingers... God...the man is freaking diabolical.
He’s saying stuff, too. Dirty words, filthy promises. All you have to do is lie there and let me touch you. Open your legs. You can come again for me.
I wrap myself around him, essentially turning myself into a horny human octopus while he skillfully reduces me to a happy, orgasmic puddle. It’s stupid, but I pretend to myself that Jax is just my boyfriend and that we’re having regular, routine comfort sex, the kind you have when you’re tired and horny and the tired wins out over sexual gymnastics. The mac and cheese of sexy times.
He finally gets inside me, his thighs pushing me wide. “You love this. You’re so wet.”
I am. I wriggle against him and succeed in getting his dick lined up with where I need it. He pushes inside me and I make a mewling sound I’ll be embarrassed about later. Right now, I’m too tired and too turned on to care. He shifts, pumping in and out of me, and I explode. He feels so good. I mumble incoherently into his shoulder while he moves faster and faster until he finishes, making rough sounds of his own. I’m boneless and relaxed when he pulls out and almost asleep when he rolls me into his side so he can hold me.
* * *
Despite the amazing sex and being six kinds of exhausted thanks to my crappy RV and its lack of weather resistance, I jolt awake. Jax sprawls next to me on the bed, sound asleep. At some point, we’ve moved apart, but our arms and legs still touch. My mind immediately starts buzzing, going a million miles a minute. When I fish my phone out of the shorts I lost beside the bed, it’s five in the morning.
Would leaving now be weird?
For a while, I watch the outline of him sleep. He breathes deeply and evenly on his front, as solid asleep as he is awake. He’s rough around the edges and blunt, but I like his no-holds-barred approach to living, and he’s got to be the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in real life. Also, now that I’ve seen him naked again, I realize my memory omitted a few key points from our first night. Points like the curve of his bare shoulder, the dark ink on the forearm shoved over his pillow, the muscled sweep of his back down to a pair of delicious man dimples above his tight ass.
The room grows slowly lighter. I need a bathroom, plus I sort of want to ransack his beach cottage and see what I can learn about him. Slipping out of bed, I pad over to the bathroom, shutting the door carefully behind me before I turn the light on. I don’t want to wake him up.
I should really, probably, almost certainly go now. After switching off the light, I use my phone’s light to find the rest of my clothing. No way I walk home pantless.
I’m tiptoeing toward the stairs when I hear rustling sounds from the bed. I’ve woken Prince Charming, after all.
“You don’t have to run off, Firefly. You could stay.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s not—”
A good idea.
Or smart.
“Wait a minute.”
He mutters something and I hear him stand, followed by the sound of jeans sliding up. I wait for him, even though that’s not smart, either. The longer I stay, the harder it is to go at all.
He ushers me down the stairs, his palm burning against the small of my back. When I keep moving toward the door, he tugs me back against him, curling his finger in a belt loop. “Stay.”
“I need to go. This is all—” I wave a hand around his house. “I don’t usually...”
I pull slightly against his hold. I don’t do casual overnights and anything that smacks of a long-term relationship has never worked for me. I don’t finish my sentences, though. What would I say? I don’t usually, but for you I might make an exception? That he makes me rethink what I want, and that scares me?
I give in to impulse. “Can I come over and play tomorrow?”
His eyes darken.
“Yeah.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jax
INDEPENDENCE IS HIGHLY OVERRATED, especially when you can outsource to someone better qualified to handle your problems. So, although Peony insists on heading out alone after our taco fest and sexcapade, I insist on going with her. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a stubborn bastard. I’m a big guy, too, so I’m perfect for beach defense. It irritates me that she won’t let me look after her, despite my obvious qualifications. It’s dark, the beach is lonely, and her rental is in a bad area, probably thanks to her neighbors. She’s not walking home alone.
Harlequin Dare May 2021 Box Set Page 22
