Jailbait

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “Wonderful.” He sighed as he lifted his hand and wiped a stray dot of dried blood off his forearm.

  That’s when I saw his side.

  “Your back is bad,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I don’t actually know. The doctor looked at it and said it was fine. Just needed to take a shower and get it cleaned up with some alcohol and rub some ointment on it. I got what I could, though. Haven’t had a chance to get a shower yet.”

  I bit my lip, wondering if I should offer to help.

  His eyes narrowed on the move, his gaze flickering between my eyes and my lip.

  “Just say it.” He sighed. “You’re going to tell me I should’ve known better than to date her in the first place, aren’t you?” He paused. “Technically, this is your fault, too.”

  My mouth fell open. “My fault?”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, your fault. I wouldn’t have even said yes to whatever it was that she was saying had you not come out in your tight fuckin’ pants and your stupid top that showed off your cute little belly overhang.”

  “Belly overhang!” I cried. “I don’t have a belly overhang!”

  Okay, so I did.

  It wasn’t much.

  But I had it.

  Especially when I was wearing tight pants.

  Then I really had it.

  But he wasn’t supposed to point out that I had one! That was rude!

  “Whatever you call it, it was sexy as hell, and you shouldn’t have been wearing it out of the house. But you did, and I was watching you, and I didn’t realize I’d agreed to a date until she got all excited and asked me when,” he grumbled.

  I rolled my eyes, picked up my beer, and then gestured toward the stairs. “Let’s go up there and clean that up. Unless you think you can do it yourself.”

  He looked at me for a long few moments before grunting something and going to talk to the other bartender. When he was done, he rounded the corner of the bar and then picked up my blazer before gesturing toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  Seeing my clothes in his hand made me think dirty thoughts, so I chose to focus on the stairs instead of looking at his ass as he climbed the steps in front of me.

  We made it to the door that led into his apartment, and he input a code into the door that unlocked it for him.

  “I need one of those,” I murmured.

  “You do,” he agreed. “I like mine.”

  Then he was holding his apartment door open for me, and I was slipping past his big, muscly, delicious body to walk into his inner sanctum.

  It was… bare.

  There wasn’t a single thing in it.

  In fact, from what I could see, there were four things total in the entire place.

  A zero-gravity chair parked in front of a massive big screen television. A massive king-sized bed.

  And a cat.

  A cat that was sitting on his counter looking at us walk inside.

  “You have a cat,” I said in surprise.

  “I have a cat,” he agreed. “Kind of. I guess. I found it out in the alley out back. It comes in and out of my fire escape. Sometimes it’s here, sometimes it’s not.”

  I found myself smiling as I walked over to the cat.

  “Careful,” Trick warned. “He’s feral. Hasn’t had any shots.”

  I slowly moved toward him.

  He looked rough.

  As I got closer, the rougher he became.

  “He only has one eye,” I found myself saying.

  “He only has one eye,” Trick confirmed as he moved around his apartment behind me. “I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll be back out in a minute.”

  Then he left me alone with his cat.

  His cat that had one eye, half a missing right ear, scars on his nose, and a crooked tail.

  “You’re a sight,” I said to the cat. “You probably rule the neighborhood, don’t you?”

  The cat’s tail flicked.

  I wanted to pet him badly, but a memory from my childhood surfaced.

  I’d been twelve when I thought that petting a stray cat would be a great idea. The only problem was that the stray cat hadn’t wanted to be petted, and I’d then gotten bitten for my troubles.

  I’d, in fact, gotten bitten so bad that my mother had thought it would be best to get the bites checked out. Then, when I’d gotten there, the doctor had suggested that I get a few rabies shots in my wounds.

  From then on, I’d never touched another stray anything.

  I’d learned my lesson.

  But I wanted to pet this particular guy pretty bad.

  Anything that hung around Trick I was interested in.

  But, alas, the cat that was a stray would not get a pet from me.

  Not unless he was the one to make the move.

  So, pulling myself away from the rough cat, I walked over to the window he’d indicated the cat climbed through, and grinned when I saw the little cat door he’d erected for it to enter at will.

  That was cute.

  And sweet.

  I’d never have pictured Trick as being sweet like that.

  The shower turned on, and a loud scream of pipes had me glancing at the walls where I could hear the racket coming from.

  “Are you not worried that the pipes are going to burst?” I called out.

  There was a muffled laugh from the direction of his bedroom, and I chose to think of that as ‘no, he wasn’t worried.’

  Instead of worrying overly much on the state of his pipes, I went to the kitchen and stared at his counter.

  There were tons of things on it, ranging from a stack of papers that looked to be bills to a couple of to-go cups that looked like he was deciding whether to save them to use or not.

  Thinking they needed to be washed, I took the lids off, washed them as well as the cups, and then tossed the plastic straws into the trash can.

  Laying a dishtowel out on the counter, I not only washed the to-go cups, but I also washed the pots and pans in his sink.

  When I got to his silverware, I washed that, too. Only, I stopped to admire the black forks and thought ‘holy shit, I need some of these.’

  It was as I was staring at those forks that he came out and startled me.

  “What are you doing?” he growled.

  I whirled around, keeping the fork in front of my face, awed by what the light did to it in this direction. It almost looked like an oil slick now.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “These forks are the bomb. Where did you get them?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, looking at me through the tines. “Six helped me set shit up.”

  “Six?” I asked, curious.

  “My boss’s woman,” he explained. “Are you going to drop that fork and talk to me normally? Or are you going to keep staring through the tines at me? It makes me feel like I’m back in prison, and that’s not a good feeling.”

  I dropped the fork immediately.

  “I thought you owned the bar?” I asked curiously.

  “I do own the bar,” he said. “But my boss, the one that got me out of prison? He’s engaged to be married. Her name is Six. She’s… colorful.”

  I placed the fork down onto the dishtowel I’d laid by his sink and then started to do all the other forks. Only when I was done did I turn around and survey him.

  That was when I realized that earlier, he’d been standing in such a way that I couldn’t see that he was shirtless.

  Now, with him leaning against the counter across from me in only jeans and bare feet—why were bare feet so freakin’ hot?—I could see his entire lovely body.

  Twelve years ago, he’d been buff. Coming right out of deployment had honed his body perfectly.

  I’d had my hands on his body. I’d felt his abs.

  Other attributes.

  But this new Trick? He wasn’t someone my hands knew.

  I wanted to run my fingers all along the length of his body, getting to know every new muscle and curve.

  Instead, I zipped
my lips and offered out my hands.

  “Where’s the alcohol?” I quipped.

  He gestured to the counter beside him with a jerk of his chin, but otherwise didn’t make a move.

  I steeled my spine and walked toward him, stopping close but not too close, and reached around him for the bottle.

  “What about cotton swabs?” I wondered.

  “I don’t have any.”

  I frowned. “You don’t have any cotton swabs?”

  He shrugged. “I have paper towels. Why would I have need of cotton swabs?”

  “For this instance, right here,” I commented.

  “I don’t usually get ran over all that often,” he admitted. “So I’d use them like once in a lifetime.”

  “Or, someone might be over here doing their toenails?” I teased. “Sometimes we want to wipe all that polish off, and paper towels just don’t cut it.”

  He looked at me with a raised brow as he turned and caught up multiple paper towels.

  “The first and only woman ever in this apartment was and is you,” he said simply.

  My lips were so dry, but I refused to allow myself to lick them, thinking that he would get the wrong impression.

  “Turn around and lean against the counter,” I squeaked.

  He chuckled as he did, the deep, dark timbre of that rusty, unused laugh sent shivers down my spine.

  I took the paper towels he was holding out to me and folded them nicely before tearing them in half and then thoroughly soaking them in alcohol.

  I looked at the broad expanse of his back and nearly moaned when I saw all the muscles that were lining his back.

  God.

  A man shouldn’t have that many muscles. They should really be all puny and bleh.

  At least in my opinion. Trick’s especially. Because looking at him right now, I wanted to draw my lips all over his skin, tracing all those muscles with my mouth.

  “Does it look bad?” Trick asked, disrupting my thoughts.

  I sighed. “It looks… rough.”

  Now that I was looking at it, I could see that it was probably paining him even though he made it look like nothing was wrong.

  The scrapes went from his right hip all the way across his lower back, and then up toward his armpit.

  “What did you hit?”

  “I think it was a tree trunk or something,” he admitted. “It goes a little lower, too.”

  I gulped.

  Oh, I wanted to look lower, and it had nothing to do with his road rash… or tree rash. Whatever had caused it.

  “Well,” I hesitated. “Can you reach it? Or do you want me to look at that, too, and clean it up?”

  There was a moment of silence and then he started to unbutton his pants.

  I moaned. Literally, I moaned.

  He froze at the sound, and to cover up my embarrassment, I licked my lips and turned my head.

  “What’s your stray cat’s name?” I asked him curiously, flicking a glance at the cat that hadn’t moved from his earlier position.

  “I call him Tater.” He sounded strange. Which was okay, because I probably sounded just as strange.

  “Tater,” I mused. “That’s an interesting name. Why Tater?”

  There was a moment of silence, and then his pants sagged as he slowly unzipped his zipper.

  I closed my eyes, squeezing them so tightly that my brain hurt.

  “The first time he came in, I was in the shower.” His voice was a low rumble that was like a soothing balm to a tortured soul. “When I came out, he was eating my leftover baked potato that I hadn’t wanted to finish. When I tried to take it from him and shoo him out of my place, he barked at me.”

  “He barked at you?” I asked, my eyes flashing open.

  He was slowly lowering his pants, and he was leaned over the counter, one massive hand planted on the Formica countertop in front of him.

  The way he was positioned, it looked like he had his cock in one hand. Added in the way his muscles were rippling, and yeah… what the hell was wrong with me?

  Things were tingling inside of me that hadn’t tingled for anyone else, ever.

  Every time Trick Wheat came around, my body decided to take on a life of its own.

  What the absolute hell was wrong with me?

  “Yeah.” Trick’s voice was a sweet rasp that had my heart hammering. “It was the weirdest sound I’d ever heard. And so, I let him finish up his dinner. The next time he came into my place, I had cat food. But he’s only interested in my leftovers. He turns his nose up at cat food.”

  My lips were twitching despite the severity of the situation at hand.

  You know, the ‘I’m about to burst into flames’ situation.

  My nipples were tingling, my heart was hammering, and no amount of squeezing my thighs together was helping.

  “You gonna start cleaning those scrapes, or do you want me to pull my pants back up?” he asked.

  I studied the globes of his ass one more time before moving to the scrape.

  “It’s not that bad,” I admitted as I took the alcohol-soaked paper towel and pressed it to his skin.

  His ass was tight.

  And when I say tight, I mean, I could bounce a quarter off of it tight. Or hell, I could maybe bounce myself off of it.

  While naked.

  Maybe our bodies would slip and things would end up inside of me…

  “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about your father and your mother,” he apologized.

  I felt my heart constrict.

  Two years after he’d gone to jail for good, my parents had been in a car accident. Only, I knew it wasn’t a car accident. It was a murder made to look like a car accident.

  Nothing could’ve cooled me off faster.

  “They were murdered,” I said softly.

  He stiffened, and I thought maybe the alcohol on his ass burned him. That I was hurting him.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, feeling his muscles tighten.

  CHAPTER 14

  My thoughts and prayers go out to anyone trying on bathing suits.

  -Text from Swayze to Trick

  TRICK

  It was the feel of her hand on my bare skin that was killing me.

  That, and the way I could feel sexual vibes rolling off of her one second, and absolutely nothing the next.

  “Are you sure?” I asked carefully, wanting to turn around but at the same time, wanting to stay exactly where I was so that she would talk.

  “Positive,” she replied softly, the alcohol once again going to work on my backside. “They gave it some time, though. Let the heat die down on them. They waited until there would be no more fingers pointed at them, and then they tampered with their car. They left out on a road trip to Nantucket, got about a quarter of the way there when their brakes went out.”

  I hated to say it but, “Brakes go out, honey.”

  “My stepdad was meticulous about taking care of his cars,” she admitted. “Every time they went somewhere farther than an hour, Errick took the car in to get inspected. To get everything fixed up. I know for a fact that they checked the brakes that time, too, because Errick came home bitching about how much it costs to get your brakes checked.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Did you bring your theories to the police?” I asked carefully.

  “Yes,” she answered, “but, as you can tell, nothing came of those theories,” she grumbled.

  She hit a sore spot on my ass, and I hissed in a breath.

  “Sorry,” she whispered softly.

  I didn’t say anything to her apology, nor did I say anything more to our earlier topic.

  Sadly, she was likely right.

  My trial had definitely been botched. The backwater town of Dark Lakes and the surrounding area was scared of whoever held the town in an iron grip. They would rather send a man like me to prison for twenty years than deal with their riff-raff. They’d rather see an innocent couple die than to admit that they had a pr
oblem.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t any happier about my situation, or her parents, than she was.

  We’d all been let down by the law.

  “Do you have any ointment?” she asked.

  I looked up over the length of the counter and saw where I’d left the bottle.

  “It’s across the counter.” I gestured with my head.

  She came around the counter, and our eyes met and held for a few long seconds.

  Suddenly, the heat that was between us flared back to life.

  Then her eyes dipped, and she took in the lower half of my body.

  The only thing she could see was the V that led down to the root of my cock, which happened to be the only thing visible due to the counter height.

  That didn’t seem to matter, though.

  Not to her, and not to me.

  I watched as her nipples pebbled behind the soft gray camisole she was wearing, and only then realized that she hadn’t worn a bra underneath it.

  I licked my lips and all but groaned at the sight.

  She hastily looked down, trying in vain to hide her reaction, and skirted around the counter.

  Only, she didn’t pay attention to where she was going because the next thing I knew she was tumbling toward me with windmilling arms.

  One second, she was standing upright, and the next I had a barstool slamming into me, followed shortly by an overbalanced woman.

  The first hit me with a wallop of pain, and the next hit me seconds later with just as much pain, but centered on a piece of my anatomy that was now very much uncontained.

  My pants dropped to the ground, and the only thing that kept me upright after she hit me was my lean against the counter.

  “Shit,” she said softly, her entire body now pressed up against me. “I’m so sorry.”

  I looked down into her eyes, saw the pleading look there, and lost it.

  Leaning down, I slammed my mouth down onto hers.

  She inhaled sharply at the move, and I used the opening to do what I’d been dying to do since the moment that I’d last had her in my arms.

  This time, luckily, she wasn’t underage.

  This time, I also wasn’t going to stop.

  I couldn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  Wasn’t able to.

  Nothing was ever easy when it came to Swayze Molly Marrin.