by Julie Kriss
No guy had ever touched me like that. Or given me a nickname.
I’d never had a sex life that was off the charts.
And suddenly, I wanted one.
I had an appointment with Dr. Pfeiffer tomorrow. I needed to think about today. Right now. Because tomorrow… anything could happen.
What did I want? Right now? Because I wasn’t happy—that much I knew. If I were going to die tomorrow, what would I want to do today?
I’d like to see Jason Carsleigh naked again.
Now that my anger had burned away, I knew that was what I’d wanted all along. My body at war with my brain, my memories, my embarrassment, my feelings. My feelings were confused, but my body wanted to finish what we’d started five years ago.
And technically, it could. He was single now, unattached. That hot body of his didn’t belong to anyone. Not anymore.
If today was your last day on earth, what would you do with it? A theoretical question, at least for most people. Closer to home for me.
“You know,” I said to Holly, “maybe Dean is right. Maybe I’ll ask Jason.”
She smiled at me, happy, unaware of my secret, filthy designs on her brother’s body. “Really?”
I smiled back at her. Holly knew I had a big problem with Jason, but like everyone else, she didn’t know what it was. “I’ve decided that maybe I should stop holding a grudge,” I said. “It was a long time ago, and it doesn’t matter anyway. I think I should move on.”
“Okay,” Holly said. “I’m sure that whatever made you mad, Jason is really sorry about it.”
I nodded, thinking about Jason apologizing to me, face to face. He’d meant it. “Yeah, he probably is.”
“Well, it’s a great idea if you can convince him. I’d like you guys to be friends.” She checked the time on her phone. “I think his shift at the bank usually ends at seven thirty. You can still find him there if you want.”
I picked up my coffee. “Fine, I’ll try. Don’t warn him, though. I want to surprise him.”
Holly smiled. “My lips are sealed,” she said.
Six
Jason
Seven o’clock. The bank branch I worked at closed at seven, to accommodate the after-work crowd, and they clocked my shift out at seven thirty so I could help wrap up paperwork and turn off the phones and computers before setting the alarm.
All of which I would be doing, if I was actually at the bank.
I dribbled my basketball on the court in the park near my house, circling in, doing a layup, circling out again. Dusk had set in, and it there was the beginning of fall chill in the air, accompanied by a thin, misting rain. It was cold on my skin, but it didn’t matter. I kept moving and kept myself warm.
I’d been here for over three hours, playing alone. I’d been here when the after-school crowd came to the park, chasing out the stay-at-home moms with little kids. I’d been here when the after-school kids had gone home to dinner, leaving the park to the after-work joggers. I’d been here when the rain had chased the last few stragglers away and I had the park to myself. Now everyone was gone and there was nothing but the quiet and the soft hush of rain and the wet, green smell, mixed with the smell of my own sweat.
I moved to the end of the court and stood in a crouch, my knees bent and ready, dribbling the ball back and forth between my hands, feeling it hit one palm and then another with satisfying force. I stood for a moment and felt the power of the stance, the way it circled the motion of the ball and contained it, the way it kept me perfectly ready to move in any direction. My brain had shut off and I was nothing but a body, blood pounding in my veins, when I looked up and saw Megan.
She was crossing the park toward me, wearing a soft jersey dress that hugged her hips, her toned legs flashing over her sneakers. She had her arms crossed over her chest in the chill. “Hey,” she said when she got close, the tone of her voice a little uncertain.
I realized I’d frozen in place, still crouched, the ball gripped in one palm, watching her. I was soaked, and staring at her, and I had a bruise on my cheekbone from the punch Half-Assed Beard had thrown. I made myself blink. I was completely taken by surprise.
“What are you doing here?” I managed.
She stopped at the edge of the basketball court and stared at me, her gray-green eyes dark with something I couldn’t read. “I was looking for you,” she said. “I went to the bank to talk to you, but they said you weren’t there.” She tilted her head. “They said you were fired this morning.”
I straightened, letting my arms drop. “Congratulations,” I said. “You’re witnessing my finest day.”
“Why did they fire you?” she asked.
I pointed at the bruise on my cheek. “This isn’t in line with their image,” I said. “That, and I was late this morning. For the sixth time.”
She nodded. “Why were you late?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “Seriously, Jason, you can’t think I’m judging you for getting fired? This is me you’re talking to. I get fired all the time.”
I sighed. My muscles were aching and my head was pounding. I was so fucking tired. “I’ve been late to work because I took a second job as a bouncer at Zoot Bar, so I work a few nights a week.”
Megan blinked. “Zoot Bar? Where the college kids go?”
“That’s the one.”
I thought she might scoff at me or make fun of me—I mean, she couldn’t stand me, and with good reason—but instead she just stood there, taking this in. “Huh,” she said thoughtfully. “Holly doesn’t know about any of this. The firing, the bouncer job. Neither does Dean.”
“Neither does my mother,” I said. “Though she’s going to figure it out when I don’t go to work tomorrow. Unless I come back here and shoot hoops all day. Which reminds me—how did you find me?”
Megan bit her lip. “I went to your house—your mom’s house—after I left the bank, looking for you, but there was no one home. The old lady on the corner was in her yard, and she said she’d seen you come this way with a basketball in your hand.”
“That’s Mrs. Greene,” I said, the words automatic. “She tends to watch the street a lot.”
Megan lowered her chin and looked at me skeptically through her lashes, and the look was so unexpectedly sexy that I felt a pulse jump in my dick. “She referred to you as ‘that nice Carsleigh boy who mows my lawn.’”
I bit back a laugh. Mrs. Greene was eighty, and unaware of anything that could be taken as innuendo. “Yeah, that’s me.” I rubbed my cheekbone, hoping the throb of pain would distract me from the fact that she was starting to make me hot. “What do you want, Megan?” I asked, hearing my fingertips rasp over my skin, pressing the bruise. “Why were you looking for me?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. The rain was beading in her curly hair, trickling through the loops that spun down her back, over her shoulders. She swallowed, and I could see the movement of her throat. How the hell had I not known that Megan Perry was hot? Or was it that because I’d been with someone, I hadn’t let myself know?
She blinked, as if she was struggling with her words, and then her gaze dropped down me—my black basketball shorts, my gray t-shirt that was soaked in sweat and rain—just briefly, but just enough. Every time I look at you, you look naked to me, she’d said, and suddenly I knew it: I looked naked to her right now.
Well, that was fine with me.
“That guy who hit you,” she said, buying time, not asking what she really wanted to ask. “Who was he?”
Slowly, I dribbled the basketball, once, twice, and came across the court toward her. “I kicked him out of Zoot Bar on Saturday night,” I said, keeping my eyes on her. “He was making a girl uncomfortable, and he thought it was okay because she was his ex. So I hauled him from the club and dumped him on the street.”
Her eyes went wide at that. I looked at her mouth as I came closer, still dribbling the ball, and wondered what those perfect lips would taste like. Apparently I already knew. “What’s the real qu
estion?” I asked her.
She watched me come closer, but she didn’t move away. Instead she tensed her jaw and met my eyes with hers. “You said you were sorry,” she said. “About what happened.”
“I am,” I said.
“If you want to make it up to me, I need a favor.”
“Yeah?” I came closer still. I was standing nearly at the edge of the court now, while she stood on the grass. “You want me to mow your lawn?”
Megan’s lips parted, and then the corner of her mouth quirked in a smile before she tamped it down again. I took that as a good sign.
“I don’t need you to mow anything, jackass,” she said. “I need you to take me to a wedding.”
My first instinctive reaction, deep in my spine, was distaste—who the fuck wants to go to a wedding?—but I ignored it. She had the right to ask something of me. “Whose wedding?” I asked.
“My cousin’s.”
“Is the cousin the bride or the groom?”
“The bride.”
“And why the fuck do you need me to take you to your cousin’s wedding?” I asked.
“The groom is my ex.” The words were fast, and her cheeks went red. She hadn’t meant to say that.
“Interesting,” I said, bouncing the ball again. Who the hell was Megan’s ex? I hadn’t heard she had boyfriends. Then again, I knew nothing about her. Nothing at all. Except apparently what she looked like naked. If only I could remember all the details. “So you need me to show up at this thing to prove you’re over him and that you’re not a single loser. Am I close?”
She didn’t even flinch. “Something like that,” she said, blinking rain from her eyelashes. “Show up. Wear a suit. Look hot. Pretend you like me.”
Pretend I liked her? All I wanted was for her to drop her arms so I could see whether her nipples were hard. Jesus, it had been months since I’d had sex. Months. “It seems like you’re the one who’ll have to pretend, since you hate my guts.”
“I won’t pretend to like you,” she snapped.
I caught the ball in my hand, stilling it. The silence was sudden and complete.
Megan looked at my expression, and suddenly she looked uneasy.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said.
She looked like she was about to back out, but then she steeled herself. “What?”
I held up the basketball. “Beat me at one on one, and I’ll take you.”
“That’s idiotic,” she said. “I can’t win. You’re at least six inches taller than me. Plus you’re a fucking athlete.”
“Football, not basketball,” I said. This was cheating—basketball was my sport of choice, but Eden High had a football program, not a basketball program, so I’d played football instead. But Megan didn’t know that.
“You’re a Marine, you idiot,” she said. “I have no chance. No way.”
“Fine. Just get one in the basket, and you win. That’s it.”
Her eyes narrowed, and her body went still. Ah, so this was the competitive soul that lived behind the easygoing bohemian. “Just one?”
“Sure,” I said. “Actually, if it makes it easier for you, we can—”
But she was already moving, and in a flash she’d tipped the ball from my hand and was tearing across the court with it. She was wearing a jersey dress and sneakers, and her legs flashed, her wet hair bouncing as she headed for the basket.
I shouted and turned, darting after her. My legs were longer than hers, and I dodged around her as she moved, trying to get in front of her to block her shot without touching her, but damn her, she was already in the air. She made a nice layup—impressive for someone maybe five-five who didn’t have the benefit of a warmup—and tossed the ball at the basket.
It missed.
“Fuck!” she shouted. I had never heard Megan swear like that, and it made me unexpectedly picture her being filthy-mouthed in bed, maybe saying something like that when she came. The jolt in my shorts slowed me down, but she turned furiously and dashed after the ball before I could grab it. She was quick, and as she circled the court again, dodging my blocks and heading for the basket, I realized something: Megan was upset. Not just at me, but at something else. Something big that was making her edgy and angry and just a little bit crazy.
I knew the feeling.
I was being nice, because she was right: I was bigger and stronger than she was, trained and warmed up. But now I pushed her limits, dodging in front of her, stealing the ball out of her hand. She should have given up, but I knew she wouldn’t; she gave a yowl like a pissed-off cat’s and pounded after me, trying to get the ball back as I turned my back to her, left and right.
She got around me and faced me, her knees crouched, both her hands out. I stopped dribbling the ball and held it in one hand, mirroring her. I looked her right in the eyes. Rain was soaking her hair now, dripping down her face, but her gray-green eyes were fixed on me and blazing in a way that made my blood pound so hard I could feel the pulse in my neck.
“Bring it,” I said to her.
One eyebrow quirked just a little, but still she stared at me. And then I committed my fatal flaw.
I noticed that her dress was wet. The rain was making it stick to her body, the dip of her waist and the curve of her hip. It was sticking wetly to her breasts and her belly and I could even see the faint outline of a V between her legs. She wasn’t showing it off; it was just there, and my dick radar was on, and I noticed. My eyes dropped from hers for a split second as I checked her out.
Megan feinted left, and when I twitched in reaction, she dodged right and scooped the ball out of my hand, running for the basket again.
“Fucking hell,” I shouted, running after her, too slow. Megan bellowed a shout of triumph that echoed through the deserted park as she did a perfect layup this time, tipping the ball into the basket. When she landed, my momentum crashed me into her, and we stumbled off the edge of the court into the grass. Our feet tangled and we fell, Megan on her back, me on top of her.
We were both breathing hard. I could feel her chest moving beneath mine. She was on her back on the wet grass, but she didn’t move, she didn’t squirm. She didn’t push me off her. Instead she stared up into my eyes and her angry triumph was overtaken by a look of slow surprise as she felt me against her. I’d gone hard, and the basketball shorts hid exactly nothing.
“Jesus, Jason,” she breathed.
I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. She’d seen it before, anyway. I shrugged, still looking down at her. “Sorry,” I said. “It happens. I’ll get off if you want.”
But she didn’t tell me to get off. She slid her hips beneath me experimentally, sliding them along mine. She watched me wince at the jolt of sensation, and then she moved her hips again as a drowsy, drugged, totally turned-on look came into her eyes. It was not a fake look meant to flirt; it was not even close. I pressed my hips into hers, and watched as she took a little gasping intake of breath.
I leaned down and touched my lips to the side of her neck, brushing them lightly, smelling rain and sweat and aroused girl. She shivered when I touched her, so I did it again. “Now you remember,” I said softly, my mouth against her skin. “I’m packing some heat.”
She shivered again, and her hips flexed up against mine, her thighs opening so I notched between them. She took a deep, panting breath. I pressed against her through our clothes, slow and hard, watching her feel it. Watching her back arch a little.
I’m not gonna brag, but my dick is one of my best features. It’s… sizeable, let’s say. And I knew she was remembering every line, every contour of it as it pressed against her. Her eyes went half closed.
We had heat between our bodies now despite the rain, and I slid against her again, feeling the perfect torture of rubbing on the cleft between her legs. I gasped a little, and she heard it. She made a strangled sound, hooked her legs around mine, grabbed me by the hair, and kissed me.
I kissed her back. She was wild against me, her body straining up and pr
essing into mine, her knees gripping me. In response I pinned her down, slamming my body back against hers, tilting her head back and opening her mouth. She gripped my hair harder and tasted my tongue like she was dying for it. Like she was dying for me.
I couldn’t remember the last time a woman was dying for me.
I ground into her harder, pressing her into the grass, and she moaned—actually moaned—into my mouth. I dragged my hands down her body and lifted the hem of her skirt and she kissed me harder, biting my lip as I grabbed her spread inner thighs, as I touched the edges of her panties.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Do it quick.”
“Ssh,” I said, and slid my fingers into her panties. She was drenched. I felt my cock jump in my shorts, impatient. I touched her more thoroughly, sliding my fingertips over her, feeling everything. Everything.
In response, she lifted her hips from the grass and ground into my fingers, gasping.
She was as desperate as I was. I swirled my fingers over her clit, making slow little circles. Just the feel of it could make me come in my underwear. “Harder?” I asked in her ear, my voice a rasp.
“Yes,” she panted, grinding into me. “Yes. More.”
“Inside?” I asked her.
“Fuck, yes.”
I slid one finger inside her, then a second one, rubbing slowly in and out. She gave a moan, the kind that I hadn’t realized until that moment that I’d been dying for—the kind that said she was craving this, and only this, in this moment.
I could have fucked her. I wanted to so badly. But because of that moan, I made it about her.
I kept my fingers moving, slowly, as I bent and kissed her again. Tasted her mouth, her tongue. Let her rub against me, her hands in my hair. I fucked her slowly with my fingers and then I slid them out and rubbed her clit again, over and over, driving her crazy.
She broke the kiss, gasping, close. “More,” she said. “Fuck, Jason. More.”
I gave her more. When she came, I felt it, the tremble of her muscles, the clench of her body. Her knees squeezed me and her breath hitched. But she didn’t cry out or make a single other sound. She just breathed in a silent gasp as the orgasm rippled over her, as if her voice was gone.
