by Sara Whitney
“Thank you all so much!” She strutted across the front of the small stage. “We’re going to wrap up my portion of the night with something a little slower to make sure you’re good and ready for Dave to come back.”
She nodded to Dave, who made a few quick gestures to the rest of the band, then held the mic close to her lips. “My last song tonight is dedicated to…” Her voice trailed off as she looked right at Jake with a private smile on her face, and everything—the crowd, the band, the lights, all of it—receded into the background as her gaze held his. Then she snapped out of her reverie, apparently remembering she was onstage in front of hundreds of people, and tossed her hair back to expose her bare shoulder before turning to the crowd at large. “To all of you, for letting me have the stage for a few songs!” Then she counted off her final number, Sting’s “Fields of Gold.”
“Ooh, I haven’t heard this one in a long time,” Ana whispered. “It’s one of my favorites.”
Jake could see why. Mabel’s voice soared over the melody as the stage lights played across the wistful expression on her face. He felt his heart twist. If this woman was willing to let him into her life, he wouldn’t hurt her for the world.
And then the song was done, and Mabel held out her arms as if she could embrace everyone in the crowd as they roared their approval. Dave announced a fifteen-minute break for the band, after which they’d play their last set. Before Mabel exited the stage, that underwear model they had playing the drums slid out from behind his kit to spin her around and dip her so low that she squealed and laughed as her hair brushed the floor. Jake hated him for the entire fifteen seconds it took.
While Mabel climbed off the stage and accepted high fives from the tables she passed, Ana excused herself to say hello to Dave, leaving Jake alone to try to collect himself. But by the time Mabel collapsed into the chair next to him, he was practically vibrating with the need to put his hands on whatever parts of her she’d allow.
“So.” She tilted her head toward him, looking almost bashful. “That’s a thing I do from time to time.”
Her eyes were bright, her cheeks pink. God, she was beautiful.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “You were fantastic.”
She shook her head. “Either you’re being kind, or you have your beer goggles on.”
“Beer goggles are for eyes.”
“Beer ear goggles then,” she amended with a laugh.
Time to make it clear to her where he stood. He’d danced around it enough tonight, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He had to touch her, this talented, laughing, vibrant woman. He slid his hand beneath the yellow silk of her hair, curled his fingers around the nape of her neck. She stilled under his touch, eyes fluttering shut, and he asked the question pushing against his brain. “Did you drive yourself here tonight?”
But at his words, she pulled away, eyes wide. “I need… I need a sec,” she mumbled, leaping to her feet and heading toward the restrooms.
Fuck. He pushed too far, too fast. She wasn’t ready for this, and why would she be? His sexual floodgates were open, but she could very well still think of him as some guy from work. Blowing up their friendship was the worst possible outcome to the night. He had to apologize, make this right, even if it killed him to do it. This kind of connection was so rare for him, the first in almost seven years. By some miracle he’d come to this strange town and found the woman who woke him up to all this hot, heady possibility. But if she wasn’t ready, or if she didn’t return his big, pulsing feelings… Well, that would fucking suck, wouldn’t it? He just needed to figure out what she was thinking.
He stood and followed her down the hallways to the restroom, reaching for her arm once he was close enough. “Mabel, I’m sorry.” The instant his fingers touched her wrist, she whirled around.
“Don’t.” Her voice was too loud in the hallway, and she said more quietly, “Don’t apologize.”
She really wasn’t interested. He swallowed his flash of bitter disappointment. “I didn’t mean to push for something you’re not ready for. I respect the hell out of you. You’re the best, funniest person I’ve ever—”
She laughed wildly. “Wait, you think I don’t want this?” Her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip, and she crossed her arms over her stomach. “All I want is this, and it terrifies me.”
“Why?” He immediately took a step back, giving her space.
She studied him with worried blue eyes. “We cross this line, there’s no going back. Is that what you want?”
“Yes.” A simple word, but it burst from his throat, raw with emotion. “I want my hands on you. I want my mouth on you. I want…”
The feral expression on her face shut down his words, and they stared at each other in charged silence for a long moment until they moved toward one another at the same time and crashed together in a kiss. She pushed him backward until his back hit the wall, then flattened herself against him, fingers digging into his shoulders and hips bumping against him as she chased his tongue with hers. His senses flooded with the smell of her, the taste, the incredible fucking feeling of having Mabel in his arms at last, warm and pliant.
She broke their kiss with a moan, and he pressed his thumb gently into the soft underside of her jaw until she met his gaze.
“I’m being honest when I say that I’ve never been more turned on in my life,” he said.
His already hard cock twitched with satisfaction as her lips fell open and her eyes darkened.
“Did you drive yourself here tonight?” He repeated his earlier question, and she shook her head, apparently robbed of speech. “Ana and Dave drove you?”
She nodded.
“Okay if I take you home?”
She nodded again.
“Okay if I take you home right fucking now?” he growled, sliding his thumb down her neck to her exposed shoulder.
“God, yes,” she breathed. “Let’s go.”
Eleven
The joke in Beaucoeur was that everything is fifteen minutes from everywhere else. How long to get to the library? Fifteen minutes. The movie theater? Fifteen minutes. The mall? The office? The gym? It’s all fifteen minutes.
The fifteen minutes it took to get from the Elephant to Mabel’s house were the longest fifteen minutes she’d ever endured. Neither she nor Jake spoke much. She felt swathed in a layer of gauze, the beat of her heart muffled in her chest. Her head was spinning from a mix of alcohol, adrenaline, and excruciating awareness of the man sitting next to her, breaking every traffic law to get them to her house that much faster.
She was having trouble focusing on more than one part of him at a time. His strong hands, one gripping the steering wheel, the other sliding along her bare leg. His scent, that delicious masculine mix of soap and Jake. The muscles in his arms, straining against his shirt and making her speculate about what the rest of him would look like when she finally peeled off his last layers. Her body hummed with excitement. Excitement and arousal.
“Turn here. I’m the fourth house on the right. Park in the driveway.”
Those were the first words she’d spoken since they left the bar, and she was surprised at how hoarse her voice sounded. She could tell herself that it came from all the singing tonight, but she knew the truth: lust had left her throat rough, her head spinning. Her lips still stung from the intensity of their first kiss, and she needed more. She needed to spend hours exploring his mouth, and thankfully, they had nothing but time to do just that.
Jake parked his Jeep, and they tumbled out and raced up the stairs of her front porch. She fumbled with her keys, laughing as she almost dropped them before disengaging the lock and tugging Jake in after her.
Once the door was shut behind them, all their rushing fell away and they stood facing one another. In her heels, she barely had to look up to meet his eyes, dark and thick-lashed. They were usually full of intelligence and humor, but tonight his eyes reflected her own want back at her.
He took a step toward her,
and she took a step back, unexpected nervousness flooding her. She took two more steps back as Jake took two more forward until she bumped against the wall. His eyes traveled across her face for a moment before he reverently ran two fingers down her cheek. At his gentle touch, her nerves fled and her hunger flared. He must have seen the shift in her eyes because he bent his head, and before she could overthink it or talk herself out of it, she tilted her face up and met his lips with hers.
They fell into each other then, kissing and touching. He ran his hands down her arms, and she slid her fingers under the hem of his shirt, moving them up his back. His skin was as warm as she’d imagined, his taut muscles flexing under her fingers. He licked along her lower lip, sliding across the seam with his tongue, and she opened her mouth to let him in. He kissed her urgently, only breaking the contact to move his lips down to her neck, grazing his teeth along her bare shoulder.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” he rasped, pressing kisses against her skin. The heat of his breath made her shiver.
She let her head fall back against the wall as he slid her shirt farther down her shoulder, and her breathing hitched when he ran his big hand along her collarbone and then trailed his fingers down. He hooked a finger around the wide neck of her shirt and slowly, agonizingly slowly, pulled it down over her breast. When he ran his thumb over her nipple where it strained against the fabric of her strapless bra, she made a noise deep in her throat that made him smile wickedly and press himself against her. God, he was hard. She rubbed against him, wanting that delicious friction even through the layers of their clothes, and he groaned and pushed her bra down, gazing at her exposed breast for a moment. Then he met her eyes with such a rapturous expression that she had to laugh.
“And I’ve been thinking about this all night,” he said, voice rough.
“Mutual. So mutual,” she panted. “Touch me please.” And he did, stroking her nipple first with his thumb and then with his tongue until she was writhing against him. He continued teasing her with his mouth as his hands moved down to grip her hips, holding her against the wall while he tilted forward and ground himself against her. She rocked against his cock until he groaned and moved his head up to claim her mouth again, giving her the opportunity to sink her hands into his hair. Of course it was as thick and soft as she’d imagined. Not a single part of him was turning out to be a disappointment.
After a series of long, drugging kisses, he broke away to command, “Bed, couch, floor. I don’t care, but it needs to be now.”
Mabel put a hand on his chest and pushed him back a step. “This first.” She grabbed the hem of his shirt and started to pull it over his head. Once he realized what she intended, he helped her by lifting his arms so she could tug it off and expose his torso. She tossed the shirt to the floor, and he held still as she looked her fill.
“You… you’re perfect,” she breathed.
And he was. Solid muscles curved along his arms, and his thick, defined chest lifted and fell with his heavy breaths. God damn, but her guess had been right; he had a full six-pack. She stepped forward and stroked a hand along his pectoral muscle, then followed the path of her hand with her tongue, loving the salt taste of him, the crispness of the dark hair that dusted his chest. She reached down and gripped the thick ridge of his cock through his jeans, then looked up at him with a wicked smile.
“I was right. It is the whole superhero package.”
He huffed out a laugh, but his eyes were closed, his hands clenching and unclenching. “I mean it, Mabel, I’ll pull you down on the floor right here and—”
She giggled and tugged him forward. “The couch,” she said, stumbling a little as she moved into the living room. “Lights on or off?” She reached for the light switch in the living room, missing it on her first attempt. With a frown, she tried again, but the switch was jumping around more than she expected.
She felt Jake go still behind her.
“What’s wrong?” She leaned against the wall to control the slight rotation the living room was doing around her. Maybe kicking off her high heels would help. She flipped her left shoe off but almost tumbled over when she reached down to pull off the right one. When she straightened, she found Jake frowning, and he’d stopped touching her, which was all wrong.
“How many drinks did you have tonight?”
Mabel grimaced at him, swaying slightly even though she’d kicked off those death trap heels.
“I don’t know, dad,” she said. “I had one or two at the bar, you brought me a couple, I had one onstage…”
Her voice trailed off when she saw the hunger on his face fall away, replaced by something that looked an awful lot like dismay. He stepped toward her, and she raised her arms to twine them around his neck. If they could just start kissing again, she was sure she could put that hot, needy look back on his face.
Instead, Jake ducked away from her arms and tugged her bra and then her shirt back into place.
“What… what are you doing?” she asked stupidly, reaching out to touch the miracle of his chest again.
Jake trapped her hand against his body and held it there, drawing her closer and placing a kiss on top of her head. “I’m going to hate myself for this maybe forever, but you’ve had a little too much to drink for me to be comfortable doing anything more than kissing you, sweetheart.”
Mabel struggled out of his grip. “What? No! I want you. I want this. I’ve wanted this for weeks!” She felt herself starting to wilt, an unsteady whine creeping into her voice.
“The feeling is so much more than mutual. You have no idea.” Jake’s laugh was strained. “And we can pick up where we left off as soon as possible, I swear. But I don’t want this to happen when you’re out of your head.”
He cupped her face and ran his thumbs along her cheeks, kissing her gently when she started to protest. “You wouldn’t like me very much tomorrow if I didn’t stop this now. I definitely wouldn’t like myself anyway.”
Mabel wanted to object, but her tongue felt too thick in her mouth for words and all she could manage was a mewl of distress.
“I’m disappointed too, believe me. Just… give me a second.” Jake released her and leaned against the wall, tipping his head back to take a few deep breaths while he surreptitiously adjusted himself in his jeans. With a hard exhale, he bent down to snag his T-shirt from the floor. “Okay, you lush. Time for bed.”
That muffled feeling that had been wrapped around Mabel ever since they left the bar had thickened since she’d gotten home, and it was getting harder for her to think or even stand upright. She pointed down the hall to her bedroom and let Jake lead her there after she almost veered into a wall when she tried to move under her own steam. In her bedroom, she indicated the cat sleeping on the end of her bed.
“Thass Tybalt.” She crossed to her vanity to remove first her left earring, then her right one. “Hope you two get along.”
Jake perched on the edge of her bed and applied himself to scratching Tybalt under his chin while she unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor.
Behind her, Jake muttered, “Christ.”
“Don’t usually drink like thish on show nights,” she tried to explain to the two Jakes who were somehow both sitting on her bed, but the words felt like lead in her mouth. “Or any night, really. You make me nervous.”
She giggled a little and snaked her bra out from under her shirt, dropping it on the floor on top of her skirt. She now stood in front of the Jakes in just her silver sequined shirt, which she tugged down to keep her black lace underwear from peeking out underneath.
“And you,” Jake said tightly, “make me feel many, many things. All of them good, in case that matters to you at all in the morning.”
She nodded blearily and started to slide her arms out of her shirt, but he scrambled off the bed to stand in the doorway.
“Fuck. Just… wait until I’m gone to change into something better for sleeping.” He laughed shakily and ran a hand through his alread
y mussed hair. “Gotta be honest, I’m at my breaking point here.”
But she was barely listening to him. Fatigue pulled at her, and she yawned so widely it made her lose her balance as she listed to the bathroom to brush her teeth and haphazardly wash her makeup off. That completed, she staggered toward her bed and crawled under the covers, no longer concerned about what she was wearing or where the two Jakes were. The dizzily spinning world went black shortly afterward.
Mabel woke up close to noon the next day with a pounding head and a world of regret, but her fervent desire for the sweet release of death outweighed any embarrassment she should be feeling about the way the previous night had played out. Unfortunately, she also felt too wretched to relive any of the nicer parts of it.
Rolling over, she stared blearily at her bedside table until her eyes focused on the folded note six inches from her nose. She smiled through the pain in her temporal lobe.
Leaving tonight was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. To be continued. SOON.
—Jake
Mabel rolled to her back and clutched the note to her chest, which was still covered in silver sequins. Then she staggered out of bed to retrieve her phone from her purse in the living room. A few texts were waiting for her. From her mom: How was your concert last night, sweetie? From Dave: Good show, dollface. From Ana: Seriously, that man is so hot, and he likes you too. DO NOT HESITATE.
Mabel shook her head in consternation, then winced. No head shaking just yet. In fact, she might still be a wee bit tipsy. It didn’t stop her from sending a thank you to Dave and a super fun to her mom. Ana she ignored because she wasn’t ready to unpack last night quite yet. And then she tapped out one more text: I have detailed, ambitious plans to do extremely dirty things to your body, but maybe not today. Thx for taking such good care of me last night. XO
Then she pulled those damn scratchy sequins off, rolled over, and dropped back to sleep, a smile on her face and Tybalt a warm ball at her side.
