His vision whited out, his whole body bowing with the force of it, toes curling and jaw aching with the effort it took to keep silent in the darkness. Two more slow, careful pumps to milk the rest of it out of him and he let go, still pulsing weakly against his abdomen as he went limp.
He felt wrung out and suddenly exhausted. The stirring under his skin was sated, but there was a new kind of restlessness seeping in.
Because a fantasy of sex was easy enough to conjure, but there was no ending to the story. No way they picked themselves up off the floor or spoke to each other the next day.
Hell, he’d all but been forbidden from speaking to her tomorrow.
He swept his clean hand over his brow and grimaced at the other one with not a little bit of belated disgust. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He wanted her. Obviously, he wanted her.
But there were a lot of things he wanted. And very few of them were things he ever got to keep.
It was another one of those lessons Jo had learned from her father: never, ever admit you’re wrong.
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and tongued at the ring there. Darted her gaze from the streams of data coming in from the telescope, toward the sight of Heather and Adam both sitting there beside her.
The sad fact, the one she’d only admit to herself, was that she’d been wrong about a lot of things this summer already. She’d packed the wrong clothes, completely underestimating how oppressively hot it was going to be. She’d assumed the wrong things about who P.J. Galloway was and why she’d assigned her to Heather in the first place. Assumed all the wrong things about what kind of advisor Heather would turn out to be.
And Adam. The big, gorgeous guy who didn’t respect her boundaries, and who’d gotten here on account of his professor’s connections, and who was uselessly mooning over an ex-girlfriend who clearly didn’t care as much about him as he did about her. She’d pegged him for the kind of asshole guys like him usually turned out to be. As an idiot riding other people’s coattails. As a cuckolded wimp. And he wasn’t any of those things.
Already tonight he’d defied her expectations, keeping quiet when the silence in the observatory was even starting to get to her. Interjecting only to point out an issue with some of the calibrations they’d performed when they’d been getting started. Working steadily on a notebook full of calculations she begrudgingly admitted looked pretty freaking complicated.
Coming to her and asking if he could sit in on her telescope time instead of just running ramshackle over it and barging his way in.
And nobody—absolutely nobody—should look good in a hoodie and running shorts, under awful fluorescent lighting, in the middle of the night. But goddammit all, he did.
Silly her, worrying he’d distract her by trying to make small talk all night. Turned out the biggest distraction was just his stupid, perfect face.
Rolling her eyes at herself, she turned back to her monitor. The next star they wanted to look at was just starting to rise, so she input the new coordinates. Heather pretended not to pay too much attention to what Jo was doing, but she wasn’t very good at it. Only after the telescope had swept out to the correct patch of sky did she let out a breath and rise, taking her tablet with her.
“All right, kiddos. Looks like you’ve got this in hand, so I’m going to take off for a bit.” Translation: time for a quick nap on the couch in her office.
It was a heady thing, being trusted to run this baby all by herself. Sure, there were a couple of operators there to call upon if anything really bad happened, and Heather would be right upstairs, but still. Jo was really in charge now.
“Okay.”
Heather headed off, leaving Jo and Adam by themselves. Jo tapped her booted foot against the linoleum, her throat suddenly tight. Adam was sitting a respectful three or four feet to the side—close enough to see the monitors but far enough away that he wasn’t encroaching on her space or her experiment. It suddenly felt like he was sitting right on top of her, though, her skin buzzing and pulse humming with the promise of proximity. The possibility of contact.
She looked over at him, meeting bright blue eyes, and for the longest moment, their gazes held. Heat bloomed up and down her spine, because there was something about his stare. Something that made her think he was really seeing her.
Except then he seemed to remember himself and tore his gaze away, directing it outward, toward the window.
The room suddenly felt even more silent than it had a minute before.
She’d brought a bunch of articles with her, but it was after midnight, and the idea of really concentrating on the text made her temples hurt. She dared another glance over at him, and then another, and she bit her lip. She wasn’t going to break. He was the one who was supposed to give in and fill the quiet, not her. That was how it always went. For once, she actually wanted him to, and the fact that he didn’t made her skin itch.
Who the hell was she kidding?
“What are you working on?” she asked, pushing her papers and any pretense at disinterest away.
He arched a brow. “I’m sorry. I thought I wasn’t supposed to be distracting you with small talk?”
Mock-glaring at him, she waved her hand. “It’s more of a no speaking unless spoken to kind of thing.”
“Oh.” His smile got awfully smirky, but there wasn’t any malice to his tone. “In that case”—he shrugged, looking up—“it’s just some background calculations for my project.”
“Yeah?”
He licked his lips, distracting her from his eyes with the soft pout of his mouth. She wondered how it would yield beneath her teeth. How his equations would taste on her tongue.
“Jo?”
She blinked, refocusing. His voice had that quirk to it, like he was saying her name for the second time. Like she was the one who hadn’t been paying attention. “Hmm?”
He tapped his pencil against the paper and pushed it closer so she could see. “Did you want me to take you through it?”
“Um. Sure.”
He scooted a few inches closer. After a quick glance at the monitor, she did the same.
His voice got softer as he ran through the lines of letters and symbols scrawled out across the page. It wasn’t difficult to follow, and half of it she’d seen before, if not quite in the same configuration, but he explained it nicely, answering the couple of questions she interrupted with.
At the end, he frowned. “It’s not quite working out right, but I think I’m pretty close.”
She traced his calculations back a handful of steps, leaning in even closer. She paused in her scanning and tugged at the corner of the notebook, then without thinking, reached over and grabbed his pencil out of his hand, brushing his skin as she did.
“You dropped this term,” she said, circling it, then looking at him.
He’d somehow ended up almost on top of her, their chairs bumping, his knee warm where it pressed to hers. His lashes were impossibly long against the fall of his cheek. He inspected the page, mumbling to himself. When he lifted his gaze again, it was with the most brilliant, beautiful smile on his face.
“How did you catch that?”
“I don’t know. Just did.”
“Impressive.”
The compliment made her warm inside. People didn’t say that kind of thing to her very often. Probably because she usually shoved their mistakes in their faces instead of quietly pointing them out. She quirked her shoulder up but didn’t move away.
He was so close, and it was the middle of the night, and he’d been looking at her. Maybe if she pushed just a little…
His grin faltered as their elbows bumped, and oh yeah. The darkness in his eyes wasn’t her imagination.
But neither was the way he sat up straighter a second later. The way he laughed and raked his fingers through his hair and edged his chair a few inches to the side.
Right. Just like that, the intimacy of the space and the math and their lowered voices dissolved, and the so
ftness she’d let out for just a second did, too. She turned to the monitor, but there was nothing new to see. The experiment was chugging right along, the telescope slewing slowly but surely over an unappreciated patch of sky.
“Um . . .” he started.
She moved the mouse around the screen for lack of anything better to do—for the pure comfort of having something to look at that wasn’t him.
And latched on to the first, most hurtful thing she could think of to say. “So. Did Ms. It’s Complicated ever call you back?”
He made a low noise in his throat that said she’d hit her mark. But instead of rising to her bait this time, he took a long, slow breath. “No,” he gritted out. “Though if she had, I wouldn’t know it.”
“Oh?” Not that she cared.
“No. I… uh… broke my phone.”
He broke his phone. The guy who never stopped looking at it—not at meals and not when she passed his office and couldn’t resist peering in. Not during meetings and not at the grocery store, and—
She caught herself before she could turn her disbelieving gaze at him. “You did?”
“Yeah, that night, actually.” And did he actually sound sheepish? “I, uh, may have let my temper get the best of me after somebody pointed out some things I wasn’t really ready to hear.”
What? Wait, did he mean Jo?
“And you took me seriously?”
He was absolutely shit at hiding how that wounded him, but he shrugged. “You may have had some good points.”
“Good points that you decided to take out on your phone.”
“Couldn’t exactly take them out on the person who was actually responsible, could I?”
She didn’t know if he meant her or the girl at the other end of that silent line. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to, either. Careful not to actually press anything, she tapped her finger against the edge of the keyboard. “You going to get the thing fixed?”
“Way beyond that. Gonna have to get a new one.” At her low whistle, he fidgeted with his pen. “And yeah. Eventually. Though”—he swallowed wetly, jaw clicking—“it’s nice, in its own way. Having it gone.”
She understood that. Wow, did she ever.
Nothing like giving up on the person you were never going to get any real approval from to make you feel about a million pounds lighter.
And maybe just a little bit like shit when you realized you were the only one in the relationship to notice.
She kept her gaze pointedly fixed on the data in front of her, trying to soften her tone, even with the tightness in her throat. “You still going to see her when you go to that… conference thing?”
“As far as I know. She said she would, but that was…” Before. He didn’t have to say it.
“Well, I hope…” What did she hope? That they’d work everything out and live happily ever after? Hardly.
In fact, the very thought of that bothered her more than it should have. Not just because she wanted to see what was under those running shorts of his. Because she didn’t like the idea of him settling for the rest of his life, accepting scraps when he should be getting more. From someone. She didn’t know him well, but even she could see he deserved better than that.
“I hope she doesn’t disappoint you,” she decided on. That was safe.
“Me neither. But I’d only be so surprised.”
“That sucks.”
“Big time.” He sat there without saying anything for a long moment, and she half thought he’d drop it. Let them lapse into the silence that had been working for them so far this evening. Then again, the talking thing hadn’t worked that badly, either. He shifted, picking up his pencil and tracing the binding in the margin of his notebook. “Since you bring it up, though, I was wondering.”
“Hmm?”
“Who was it?”
Something went cold in her chest. “Who was who?”
“The person. You said someone taught you that it was better to walk away than wait for them to care. Who was it?”
Oh hell. Forget cold—her ribs were suddenly made of ice, and they were squeezing in.
Because where did she start with that one? The father who wanted nothing to do with her, who just wanted his dead wife back? The boys she fucked her way through the minute she was out of his house? The professors who wouldn’t give her work when that was all she wanted?
Forget where to start. Where did she end? Where did this go except into the kind of pity party that made her want to scream?
She clenched her jaw and turned her gaze toward the big glass window looking out across the night. “Everyone,” she finally settled on. “Everyone.”
Chapter Six
It didn’t happen often, but there were some things so awesome even Jo couldn’t pretend to be unaffected by them. For just a second, she closed her eyes and let the sun soak into her skin. A good solid layer of SPF 100, and she was still probably going to burn, and she didn’t care.
She looked up again at the trees surrounding her. Palm trees. Huge and graceful, with broad leaves the size of her whole torso. Everything was so fucking green, but it wasn’t even just that. It was the bright red flowers and the golden petals and the shapes of plants that were like nothing she’d ever seen before.
She could die tomorrow, and at least she’d be able to say she saw a real, live, honest-to-God rain forest. She was here, standing in the middle of it, looking out over a pool of water so clear she could see down to the rocks ten feet beneath its surface.
And she was tethered to a bunch of children.
Another squeal rang out from the pool behind her, and she gritted her teeth. It wasn’t fair. All she wanted was to keep going, keep wandering through this place that made the breath in her lungs feel like it wasn’t enough. But no.
Dr. Galloway’s warnings rang out in her mind for the thousandth time.
Stick together. No wandering off on your own. Anyone who doesn’t check in won’t be invited on any future outings.
So here she was. The rest of the group had all stripped down to the bathing suits they’d worn under their clothes to dip under the little waterfall that ran through the rocks. Slipping beneath the surface and popping back up, and laughing, and…
And Jo was standing on the outcrop. By herself.
She kicked at a bit of rock with her boot. She hadn’t brought a swimsuit. Hadn’t expected perfect, shimmering pools where the sun broke free from the canopy.
Didn’t know how to dive in anyway. Especially not with people she’d been holding herself apart from all this time.
She gave in and cast a long, lingering look at them over her shoulder. They weren’t paying her any attention—not that she’d expected them to. Jared was chasing the redheaded girl under the waterfall, and Carol was floating on her back. The others were in similar states, and Adam…
Adam was treading water, and damn. She’d thought he was a specimen before she’d seen him with his shirt off. The guy was pure muscle, built without being bulky. Defined abdominals and a dusting of hair over pecs that glistened in the sun, and he had freckles. She wanted to feel how warm that skin was. Wanted to play the most intricate game of tic-tac-toe. On his shoulders. With her tongue.
And she wanted to stop doing this. Standing here, overdressed and overheated and dying to rake her nails across his spine. Quiet and ready to scream and alone.
Fuck it. Just fuck it.
Another pool lay on the opposite side of the outcrop she was standing on. Barely out of sight. She chewed her lip as she stared. It might be breaking the spirit of the law, but not the letter. She wasn’t wandering off by her lonesome.
She simply couldn’t stand to be there anymore.
After checking nobody was looking, she ambled down the rock, carefully picking her way to where it dropped off toward the other pool. It was deserted and crystal clear and perfect, and her feet were sweltering in her boots.
Out of sight, she unlaced them one by one. Pulled off socks and the baggy weight of her s
horts and her shirt and the tank underneath it. Standing barefoot in her underwear and a sports bra, she tucked her hair behind her ears. She braced herself for the shock of cold and stepped off.
The surface was farther down than she’d thought, the bottom even deeper. Her foot slipped on wet stone, and she scraped her elbow as she slipped under. Cool water closed over her head, and it was like falling and floating and submerging all at once. She kicked hard, pushed her arms, and burst upward into bright air and searing sun, and she’d never felt more alive.
It took all she had not to whoop out loud with the sheer freedom of it. She plugged her nose and dropped back down and laughed beneath the water, sending bubbles rising toward the light.
For the longest time, she just… played. Swam and twirled and held on to the rock with her fingers while she let her legs drift. It was always better like this, with no one to watch. No one to have to pretend for.
Finally, the sounds of laughter on the other side of the barrier shifted, the splashing dying away. She sighed and took one more long dive, then kicked up reluctantly toward the surface. The rest of the gang would probably take their time moving on, but she didn’t want them catching her with her pants down. She paddled over to the point where she’d jumped in and looked for a place to grab on and haul herself up.
Only there wasn’t one. She looked to both sides and to the outcrop of rock she’d been standing on before, and it was all smooth and slick and angled wrong.
The first little shiver of uncertainty rumbled its way through her, her stomach dipping.
Shit. She knew better than this. Never get yourself into a situation you aren’t sure you can get out of.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten, keeping her breathing steady and not thinking about being stranded and left for dead or about having to call for help. She’d be fine. She was a strong climber, and she had always gotten herself out of jams before. This would be fine.
Looking up again, she picked her best prospect. Braced her feet against the most solid thing she could find and gripped hard, hauling herself up. She cursed when she slipped, knocking the underside of her chin against the rock. Fuck, that hurt. She swiped at the spot and got a thin trickle of red. Nothing major, but it was insult to injury, and her fingers already felt raw from where she’d lost her hold. There was no other way, though, and she tried again, arm muscles straining, only there was nothing to grip onto.
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