by Box Set
“Oh,” she whispered. “You mentioned the ranch before.”
“I ended up there every summer until I graduated. I went on spring break, too. I spent as much time as possible there, really… but that was after the first summer. That first summer, I thought they’d basically sent me to hell. Chores, being outside… none of it was really my thing. I have always been more interested in computers and gaming than I was in being outdoors. The place was run by this guy—Stone. It is funny really…” His voice faded into a short burst of laughter, but it didn’t sound happy at all. “Life gives you people you are supposed to love and cherish, like my parents, and you can feel nothing for them. Then along comes this man I should’ve hated, did hate at first, and he became one of the most important figures in my life. He made me who I am, really.”
When he didn’t say anything more, she asked, “Why do you sound so sad?”
“Right now, Stone is lying in a hospital bed in a coma. I don’t know that he’s ever going to wake up.”
She swallowed hard. After a second, she asked, “But you’re here with me?”
“Stone would’ve wanted me to be off making a difference, not sitting around being sad.” He sounded so sure of it, she didn’t debate the topic with him.
“So the bad boy camp turned you around?”
Again, he laughed and his voice sounded a bit lighter when he said, “No. Hell no. I’m still a bad boy, sweetheart. The camp made me realize I could turn my frustration inward and destroy myself, or I could use that same determination to reform the world around me. I made my first video on a whim, just for shits and giggles. Kept making them because they made me laugh. When they went viral, I realized there were a lot of people out there like me. People who maybe needed someone as fucked up as themselves to prove they weren’t alone. Jimme Money was born to make me laugh, and he made the world laugh. My father may hate it, the world may say I should get a real job and stop screwing off… but to the people that matter? I’m that voice. Which is pretty damn cool.”
She couldn’t disagree. Talking to him in the cover of darkness seemed somehow more intimate than kissing. She whispered, “Do you ever get lonely?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I read this thing once that said people who made others laugh were often the saddest people. I can’t say that is wrong.”
A rustle in the darkness suggested he shrugged.
“I get lonely, too, sometimes. That’s why I asked. I wanted to be an artist, but my reasons weren’t because I loved art or anything. I think I wanted my mother to notice me, if that makes sense. When I couldn’t do that, I still work on the edges of her world. Still looking for some common ground…” She chewed her lip.
“I think we all do that,” he answered. “We’re all just scared kids pretending to be grownups. The roles don’t fit us, but here we are.”
She wanted to ask him why he kissed her. She wanted to tell him she thought he was funny and interesting and she hadn’t met anyone like him before.
Instead of saying any of it, she whispered, “Goodnight, Al.”
“G’night, Jude.”
***
“I want you to brace yourself,” Al said. They were sitting in the car outside the convention center where Carpenter said Al was to make an appearance.
“Brace myself for what?” She figured there’d be a handful of teenagers inside, all huge fans of his videos. Maybe she’d get to see one of the videos. Without her phone, she hadn’t been able to google him, but she had to admit to a gnawing curiosity.
“Just… do.” He opened the car door and pulled his baseball cap low over his eyes. He’d tugged a hoodie over top of the hat and wore sunglasses. He was mostly invisible.
Following him and Carpenter inside, Jude was shocked by a wall of noise. When he strode out onto the stage, she peered at the gathered crowd.
Men and women of all ages were in the seats. Most of them stood at his appearance and began chanting, “Eat dah bunneh!”
“Eat the bunny?” she whispered to Carpenter.
“It’s a skit we did. One of our more popular ones. Hush, I want to hear how ‘Jimme Money’ handles them.” Carpenter watched and waited for something, until Al called him onto the stage.
Jude considered the man on the stage—once he whipped off the sunglasses, hat and hoodie—to be a different person from Al altogether. He joked with the crowd, jumped into song, made smart ass cracks about some of the people in the audience.
He was louder, brasher, and altogether funnier than Al ever seemed. It was like he’d donned a mask and become another person from the one she’d spent the past few days with.
The crowd loved it. Once he finished his performance, he sat down on the edge of the stage and signed autographs—one on a woman’s bared breast, she noticed—and joked with the crowd for more than another hour. Through all of it, she just watched him.
So, the dorky lumberjack man she met in the airport—the one who flew who knew how far to come rescue a stranger even though his father figure was in a hospital bed—was the son of a wealthy family and an internet star.
The pieces didn’t quite fit together in her head. When he turned to look at her, though, she saw yet another piece of the puzzle.
Even though he’d been surrounded by hundreds of his adoring fans, Al looked lonely. Almost trapped by the Jimme Money character he’d created for the world.
Like her, he acted like everyone expected him to behave, even if the mold didn’t quite fit.
Gnawing her lip, she turned away and headed to the car. As he’d suggested, no one seemed to notice her presence at all.
Then again, she wasn’t sure they saw Al, really, either.
Chapter 8
“Can I ask you a weird question?” Jude asked.
He faced his computer screen and didn’t dare turn around. He didn’t have a clue how she’d react to the whole Jimme Money thing and wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. Besides, he needed to finish researching the Carpenter situation.
It looked like his old pal borrowed some money from the business account recently in rather large lump sums. Considering Carpenter struggled previously with some gambling issues, he’d bet he’d fallen off the wagon. Not that it was a terrible thing. To try to fix it, he’d told Carpenter to keep the amount they’d made from the unplanned event that day. He also began setting him up for some visits with the same therapist he’d sent Carpenter to the last time they’d had this issue.
In the morning, he’d ask Carpenter about the whole thing and see if he came clean. If he did, cool. They’d work through it together. If he lied, well… maybe it was time for him not to have access to the business account without Al approving the uses beforehand.
As Stone once told him, Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
It wasn’t like the money mattered to Al, but the thought of his friend getting into trouble he couldn’t readily fix scared the hell out of him.
“Did you hear the question or are you ignoring me?” Jude asked.
Al peeked over his shoulder at her. “I wasn’t sure how to answer.”
“Why?” She looked confused, which was yet another adorable expression on her lovely face. Crumpled brow just made her little button nose look like it needed to be kissed.
Not going there, he reminded himself. Not a creeper.
“Because I don’t think we’ve had a single normal conversation since we met a few days ago, so I’m not sure what your idea of weird is.” He spun his chair to face her, keeping his hands in his lap in pretended casualness.
Pretended because she sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed in a tee shirt and yoga pants, which shouldn’t have appealed to him in the least. He was a man, a manly man. Men got turned on by silk, lace, preferably in tiny scraps of material which barely hid the flesh they covered.
Telling himself that didn’t make his dick any less stiff, though.
He’d be better off returning his focus to Carpenter. There was nothing in his
world less sexy than Carpenter.
Which got him to thinking of a skit he could do about just that…
“You’re doing it again. You’re not really paying attention to me.”
He shouldn’t tell her he was desperately trying to think of anything but her, so he simply answered her original question. “Go ahead. Ask me a weird question.”
“Why did you apologize for kissing me?”
She wasn’t wearing a bra. He wasn’t sure why his brain chose that moment to notice it, but the points of her nipples against the tee-shirt proved nothing restrained her breasts under the cotton shirt. Again ignoring her question for safer ground, he asked, “Are you cold? Would you like me to turn up the air conditioner?”
She chewed her lip, smiling a cockeyed grin. “I’m not cold, but I know where you’re looking since you asked.”
He heat flooded his face and he swallowed hard. Damn, busted.
“I apologized for kissing you because it wasn’t appropriate for me to make advances. You’re going through a trying time right now and it isn’t gentlemanly…”
She laughed out loud, standing in a slow and almost predatory way. He couldn’t help but look at the sensual line of her body, even as he damned himself for doing it.
With a hand on her hip, she asked, “I thought you got paid to say dick and boobies? Yet you’re trying to be a gentleman with me?”
He swallowed again, but it didn’t help. He practically salivated at the idea of getting up and tugging her body against his own. “You asked for help. I’m trying to help you hide out…”
“You still didn’t answer the question, not really.” She’d stopped close enough that he could reach out and tug her into his lap if he wanted. His mind spun off into the gutter again, wondering if the office chair would hold up to sex or if the wheels would make them slide all over the damn place if he tried.
“I did. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to take advantage of you when your emotions are all over the place. You called your sister because you were scared—I knew that from the moment I met you. I’m here to help you, not hump you.” He mentally smacked himself in the head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He should have thought before he spoke, found a classier way to word that.
She didn’t seem phased by his crassness. Instead, her laugh tinkled out, making his stomach do the flipping thing again. “What if I want to hump you?”
Yes, please, he thought. But what he said was, “Jude, when this is all over…”
“When this is all over, I’ll go back to LA or jail. You’ll go back to wherever it is you work from. We won’t see each other again.” She captured his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Right now, we’re alone, we’re adults, and I’m attracted to you. Are you attracted to me?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“Then instead of apologizing, let’s see where this ends up, shall we?”
***
She’d never been the one to initiate sex with a man before, but then again she’d never liked someone as much as she liked Al. And it wasn’t all about the way he looked.
She liked the way he laughed. The way he smelled. Hearing his voice.
But the moment he stood, she remembered her insecurities. What if he expected her to continue to lead the way? What if he wasn’t into her as much as she was into him? What if—?
He captured the back of her neck in his hand then he drowned her in another of his knee-melting kisses. Usually for her, kisses were build-up—leading to the main event. Never before had she kissed a man who she could happily kiss for hours on end without getting bored.
She twined her arms around his neck. When his hands cupped her ass, drawing her roughly against his sexy as hell body, she moaned. He backed away from the kiss for a second, biting his own lip and considering her face. “You sure this is a good idea, Jude?”
She wasn’t sure. She reminded herself about a thousand times over the last day how she should let their impulsive kiss go and forget it ever happened. But it felt important.
He felt important.
“No,” she answered honestly.
“Just checking,” he said. Then his mouth was on her neck, trailing kisses to her earlobe. When he bit down, she bucked against him. The movement made her shirt ride up and then his hands were there, gliding against her heated flesh.
He slid her shirt over her head, revealing her breasts to his hungry looking gaze. “Knew you weren’t wearing a bra,” he whispered. One of his hands returned to her ass while the other tweaked her nipple playfully.
She gasped and whispered back, “They’re not terribly comfortable.”
His grin was boyish and his brow quirked. “Then, by all means, never wear one when I’m around. I won’t complain once, promise.”
With those teasing words, he closed his mouth over one nipple and she couldn’t decide whether to giggle at his words or melt into a puddle on the floor. He lay her down on the bed, apparently to give himself better access to her breasts, and she couldn’t think.
When he began easing her pants down, she captured his wrists. “Not fair. I already lost one garment. Your turn.”
His eyes were heavy lidded when he rose above her and tugged off his shirt. She knelt on the bed to better appreciate the view. For a gamer guy, his body was awfully hard in all the right places. Using her fingertips, she traced along the hollow that led in an arrow to his groin.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he whispered, waggling a finger at her. “Fair is fair. If I lose my pants, you lose yours.”
She didn’t hesitate to remove her pants, pleased when he did the same. The view was spectacular. Licking her lips, she met his eyes. “You play a lot of video games, right?”
This seemed to make him pause, and just when his hands were about to connect with her desperate flesh again. “Yeah?”
“No shortcuts for this game, got it?”
His slow smile promised things his words confirmed. “We’ll see about that.”
Then he kissed her again and her mind blurred. He tracked his way down her body, dragging open mouthed kisses, nips, and bites across her flesh as her heart raced and she panted with need. When his thumb grazed the flesh between her legs, she bucked uncontrollably, wanting more and yet dazzled by the attention he already paid to her skin.
His mouth closed over her there, the most intimate of kisses, and her fists clenched the sheets. Desire ramped higher, slicking her skin with sweat and blasting her mind with a red-hazed tension. “Al,” she whispered, but the sound was closer to a whimper.
“No shortcuts,” he reminded her before returning to his task with a skill that soon had her bucking against his firm hold on her hips.
The first orgasm loomed close, and she wished she could hold it off. Wished she could keep the tension even as her body ached for the fulfilment his mouth promised. Then she fired over the edge, only his body anchoring her to reality at all.
His mouth captured her inarticulate moans, his tongue dancing against hers in an invitation to play. She dug her nails into his back, bowing to rub herself against his stiff dick.
As a reward for her efforts, he gasped before reaching for the bedside table. Once he had a condom in hand, she took over, sliding her hand up and down his hard shaft a few times before slowly easing the latex onto his body. He collapsed back against the pillow, allowing her to complete the task before dragging her body above his.
She thought he intended to pull her onto his cock, to join their bodies, but instead he began toying with her clit. In what felt like seconds, she rode his fingertips, as desperate as she had been before for a release.
Only when she’d lost all sense of self control did he ease her down onto his shaft, lifting his hips to meet her downward stroke. Instead of allowing her to ride him at the frenzied pace she longed to set, he controlled her hips with his hands, easing in and out of her in slow, even motions.
He kept that up while watching her face. “So lovely,” he whispered. “You’re so damn lovely.”
&nbs
p; With a fast thrust that shocked a gasp from her, he rammed upward, pleasing them both. Then his hands released her hips, trailing upward to capture her breasts instead. She began to speed up, lost to everything but the building pressure and tension in her body.
He flipped them, pinning her with his superior size and pulled her legs up high. When he drove into her again, she cried out at the sparking pleasure electrifying her senses. Higher she spiraled, until she couldn’t go any higher, and then she erupted. Hoarse cries filled the room as she shattered, and it took her a second to realize they were her own.
His body jerked one final time and then he stiffened. The muscles in his neck stood out in stark relief as he came then he practically collapsed on top of her. “God,” he whispered between pants. “I felt that in the heels of my feet.”
She tried to giggle, but couldn’t. Her body still trembled with aftershocks, as if the orgasm refused to end. In a few moments, she’d be able to think clearly again.
She was sure of it.
When he rolled away, she felt bereft, but then she realized he moved to rid himself of the condom. He hit the switch above the bed before returning to her side and tugging her close.
“You should rest,” he whispered.
“I am still relearning how to breathe,” she replied. “Why should I rest, exactly?”
She couldn’t see his smile, but she felt it against her temple as he dropped a kiss there. “Because I’m going to wake you up in a couple hours and see if we can do an encore performance.”
Chapter 9
He kept his promise. She woke in the darkness to find herself already wet and needy from his idea of an alarm clock. Alarm cock? Whatever, she hadn’t had a single complaint in the night.
Dawn teased the backs of her eyelids. His leg lay as a heavy, furry pressure across her waist and his soft curls teased at her breasts. It seemed he used her as a pillow.
