Wordless (Pink Sofa Secrets Book 1)

by Mel Sterling

  He pulled her close, moving her legs so she straddled him, his erection pinned between them against his belly. "Ch-chapter one," he stammered, as she reached to position the tip of him where she was wettest, softest.

  Lexie leaned forward, her naked breasts pressing against his shirt, rubbing the sensitive tips in a slow circle. She kissed him hungrily, open-mouthed, felt him nip at her lips as she settled her body over his. "Shhh. No more talking. We'll just…put a bookmark in and—"

  Jack's laugh was more a hitching gasp as Lexie began to move, guided by his hands. She held hard to the back of the sofa to keep the two of them from sliding off its pink horsehair cover.

  Jack was glad Lexie was distracted by something other than the book-related seduction talk, because he'd run out of erotic analogies. His brain vapor-locked the moment she eased her body over his erection. It was all he could do to concentrate on bracing his feet and shoulders to keep his ass on the sofa as Lexie moved in his lap. Forward. Back. Slowly at first, then finding the angle and pace. He left his hands under her skirt.

  God, how he loved this woman in a skirt. The fabric slid and billowed, tangled and caught. The hem dragged over his knees as she rose, then slithered back as she sank. Her hands kept moving from the wooden decorative molding of the sofa to curl over his shoulders, then back, as her balance shifted. He watched her tension mount, a beautiful flush spreading over her breasts, up her neck, and onto her face. She looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes and her bottom lip tucked between her teeth. Her breathing was deep and slow, with a hitch at the start of each inhalation. It kept pace with her slow grind.

  "Jack."

  "Right here with you, baby."

  "So…good."

  "Mmm."

  "It's a terrible sofa, Jack."

  "It's a wonderful sofa."

  "Hard to stay on."

  "I've got you." His hands tightened at her hips. "Got you. Lexie."

  Her movements deepened, quickened slightly. One hand gripped his shoulder and urged him forward. He kissed her neck; sucked lightly. Bit down on that sweet angle where her shoulder began. She gasped and her head drooped. Her breath was suddenly ragged in his ear. Jack knew she was close. He was so deep inside her that he could feel the slick grip of her from tip to root.

  This time, when she came, she stiffened and went motionless, pressing down, head tossing. He was just in time to grip her ribcage and keep her from falling backwards. Her skirt, caught in his hands, rucked up beneath her breasts like a weary flower. She was almost there, he thought, his own vision darkening as his climax built. But he knew they could do better, could obliterate each other in passion—

  His right hand lowered those critical few inches, enough for him to work a finger between their bodies where they were locked together, and glide across the swollen little bud. Glide, then press.

  It was enough.

  "Jack. Jack!" Her wail told him she had shattered. The wail became a stuttering hum, and Jack let himself go with her, pulling her down onto his cock, hard, harder. Touching the mouth of her womb.

  All that remained was a few convulsive twitches from each of them, and a soft panting laugh from Lexie. "Leave the skirt, he says," she gasped.

  "Damn straight. I love that skirt. And what's under it, dear God."

  Jack walked Lexie and Melville home in the late afternoon, with the golden light slanting low and glowing in the turning leaves along the way. Lexie seemed reenergized. Jack wanted to buff his nails on the lapel of his jacket and take credit for that extra spring in her step, but contented himself with smirking. He'd made her forget her troubles for a while.

  With the sinking sun, the breeze rose. In the trees above them, several yellow and scarlet leaves broke free of their moorings and spiraled down. Lexie and Jack stopped to watch. One twirled close and he stood still as the leaf settled against his shoulder and chest.

  Lexie gave a small happy jump. "Make a wish!"

  "On a leaf?" His smile felt crooked and goofy on his face, but he was still so high from the lovemaking on that perilous pink horsehair sofa that he couldn't help it.

  "Of course! It chose you. Make a wish."

  "All right. I wish—"

  "Not out loud, Jack! Just to yourself."

  Jack looked right at her, at the more than usually rumpled curls—he'd tangled his fingers there, guiding her mouth to his over and over—and the relaxed, happy blue eyes, and he wished. It was a besotted mooncalf sort of wish, the kind that felt like all the sappy AM radio love songs he'd ever heard, piled on top of one another and covered with frosting and birthday candles in which shooting stars sparkled. Make this last forever. Make her love me back.

  That was two wishes, but he didn't care. He took hold of the leaf by its stem and tucked it into his satchel, sandwiching it between two books for safekeeping. Lexie shook her head, smiling.

  "What?" he demanded. "Are there other leaf-wish rules you haven't told me? Must I set it free so it can go accomplish my wish, like a botanical genie? I confess I am a leaf-wish novice."

  "I made it up on the spot. Now you'll press it like some old boutonnière from your senior prom."

  "I never went to my senior prom. Too busy."

  She slid her fingers into his palm and tugged him along. "You skipped your prom, really? I'd have thought the girls would be lined up waiting for you to ask."

  "What about you? Did you go to yours?"

  "Yes, and it was awful."

  The smile on her face didn't support her words, but Jack was glad all the same. He immediately resented whatever long-ago boy had been lucky enough to dance with her, tuck her into his car, collect a kiss and a cheesy photograph. "Good," he said.

  "Wait just a minute—"

  "Now I don't have to hunt that boy from your past down and make sure he'll never turn up to—" Jack stopped himself from saying, take you away from me and finished, "—make me look bad."

  Lexie snorted. "You don't have a thing to worry about, not after…you know." Her head tipped toward the store. Her voice lowered. "I like books and all, but that…I have a whole new appreciation for literature now."

  "Good," he said again, smugly. She laughed, and Jack knew he wanted to hear that sound every day from now on. He would do whatever it took.

  They were at Horace's front steps. Melville milled at the door, working a figure eight of hungry cat body language.

  Such small, everyday things. A purring cat. Autumn leaves on a sidewalk. Holding hands with a pretty girl. A welcoming front porch in late-day sunlight. He didn't feel the slightest urge to stand behind his camera while he documented a disaster and got high on the adrenaline rush. He didn't know himself any more. No wonder Gard kept giving him funny looks.

  There was no recovering from this tender onslaught. The only option was surrender.

  "Are you coming in?" Lexie had the key in the doorknob. While he'd been daydreaming, she'd gone up the steps, crossed the porch, and unlocked the door.

  "Do you want me to?" he asked, suddenly unsure. He'd pressured her at the bookstore, and while she'd responded immediately and even seemed pleased about that, now he was second-guessing himself.

  She bit her lip, looking shy. "I don't suppose you have another condom in your satchel, do you?"

  Her words were like a jolt of electricity shot straight to his groin. He was speechless, and suddenly stiff as a fencepost.

  "Or—" Now she was the one who seemed unsure. "I'm sorry. I should let you go. Find Gard. Have dinner. He's your guest. I'm taking advantage of your good nature. Thanks for walking me home. Again."

  "My good nature be damned, and Gard too." He squired her into the foyer and locked the door behind them. While Lexie opened a can of food for the ever-hungry tabby, he sent Gard a quick text: Delayed. On your own recognizance. Don't wait up.

  The beep of Gard's reply was immediate. Asshole. Kiss her for me.

  Jack smiled, and when Lexie poised a foot on the lowest stair, he pocketed a condom and left satchel, phone, table
t and all behind. Nothing was going to interrupt his fantasy of Lexie in the high, iron bedstead with its lace, litter of pillows, and ever so practical flannel.

  Lexie pushed him out the front door at nine PM, sending him off into the dark with a long, slow kiss that made his stomach curl with renewed wanting. "It's not that I wouldn't like you to stay," she said. "But…Gard. If you stay, I'll feel terrible. He's alone in a strange town, and you're off…well. You know."

  "I know," Jack agreed. "Duty calls."

  At the corner, he texted Gard. Where y'at?

  Your place.

  On my way.

  Bring MREs lover boy. Empty fridge.

  Jack laughed softly to himself. MREs—meals ready to eat—the term brought back memories both foul and funny. Some of the worst food he'd ever eaten in his life, with some of the best people he'd ever known.

  Twenty minutes later Gard met him at the top of the stairs. "You dawg." Gard's Georgia drawl made Jack grin afresh.

  "Yup."

  "Smells like fried rice."

  "Yup. Moo shu pork, too. Kung pao chicken with lots of peanuts and chili peppers. Egg rolls."

  "Soup?"

  "Yup."

  They set the feast out on the little table. Jack was ravenous after an afternoon spent having the most satisfying sex of his life. He pushed the table over to the sofa, since there was only the one straight chair in the studio. Gard took the sofa, stretching out his leg and unbuckling his prosthesis.

  Jack's appetite fled. Gard's stump was covered in a sort of sock, not that Jack would have been repulsed by the sight of the bare flesh. It was the mere fact of that lost limb that drove his hunger away and set the vile guilt-monkey chittering. Gard paused with an egg roll halfway to his mouth.

  "Aw, man. Sorry. Grossing you out? I'll suit back up." He reached for his aluminum leg.

  "It's not that. I'm just so god-damned sorry, Gard. You have no idea."

  Gard turned his head away, and Jack realized he'd said the wrong thing. "Sure I do," Gard said softly. "Boys're dead. Friends're dead. Civilians. People we never met. Good folks, bad folks. Nobody asks to get killed. But it happens. And I'm sorry, so god-damned sorry."

  They sat there, silent and still. Finally Gard handed the prosthesis across the table. "You need to take a good close look at what your money helped buy me, JT. This is the best they make, top of the line. A work of art. I know you think you paid blood money, but you're wrong. So look at it. See how it works. Know that next time we're anywhere close to a basketball court or a soccer field, I'm gonna. Kick. Your. Bony. Reporter. Ass."

  "Jarhead," Jack said succinctly, but Gard's words had done the trick, pushing back the gibbering ghosts of Iraq. He wondered if anything would ever box them away for good. He had bad dreams. Other people had ruined lives and shattered families. He was one of the lucky ones.

  Later, when the fried rice and beers had done their work and Gard was sleeping like a baby on Jack's bed, Jack fished the keys to the rental car out of Gard's jacket pocket and slipped out of the studio. He left a note, but he expected to be back before Gard woke up. Lexie might be home behind doors with new locks, but Jack didn't trust whoever was messing with the bookstore to stay away.

  He kept watch from a spot at the curb a few houses down from Horace's bungalow, tapping away at his notes file on the tablet in the chilly autumn darkness. From time to time he started the engine and ran the car's heater to warm up. Only when dawn began to gray the sky and he could see light glow to life behind Lexie's kitchen curtains did he consider it safe enough for him to slip home again. Nobody had bothered the house.

  Gard hadn't moved much, though he'd pulled the blankets over himself from the far side of the bed. His prosthesis lay on the floor, ready for donning. Jack put the keys in the pocket where he'd found them, threw away the note, wolfed down some cold kung pao, and tried for a couple hours of grainy sleep on the studio's too-short sofa.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JACK AND GARD WERE a little later than usual arriving at Horace's Books that morning. Lexie was already finishing in Rare Books when she heard knuckles rapping on the connecting door. She stuck her head out into the aisle and was met by Jack's slow smile on the other side of the glass. It started out intimate and sultry, and when she tilted her head sternly at him, widened into an unabashed, little-boy grin.

  You've let him under your skin, she told herself. He's found all your buttons and he's pushing them unrepentantly. And you like it.

  Behind Jack stood Gard, head turned toward the bar of The Cup. He was nodding and laughing. She wondered if the two of them had managed to pry something out of Gilly, and frowned. So swiftly did her life spin these days that a single thought could throw her into a dark ditch of suspicion and dread.

  She let the two of them through the door, shook her head briefly when Gilly called, "Are you open again yet?" and locked it again. She wanted one of Gilly's rich, frothy lattes, but she couldn't bring herself to patronize The Cup until the investigation resolved itself one way or another.

  "Any news?" Jack asked, heading for his table. He ducked his head for a quick kiss that was intended for her lips, but she shook her head in answer, and the kiss landed on her cheek. "Mind if I get a little writing work done this morning?" he continued. "I need about an hour to get some notes cleaned up, then I'll roll up my sleeves."

  "Do what you need to do, it's all right. I'm grateful for any help, but I know you have responsibilities."

  "I don't," Gard drawled. "I'm enjoying the paperbacks. Flexing my alphabetizing muscles." He and his cup vanished into the fiction.

  Jack set down his cup and left his satchel on a chair before coming to the desk where Lexie was updating the insurance loss spreadsheet and marking Rare Books off her worklist. "Everything OK? You seem tense."

  "I am tense."

  "It's…not about yesterday, is it?" His voice was low, pitched for her ears alone. "Because I don't have a single regret."

  "You don't seem to mind that you might be sleeping with a criminal, no," she said, trying for humor and missing.

  "It's all going to work out. I promise."

  "You can't promise something you can't deliver."

  "Stop worrying. Just get Horace's store back up and running. It'll all take care of itself from there. Besides, Gard and I are on the case, helping you and Ben keep an eye on things now."

  It sounded so simple when he said it, as if all that was left was a little judicious dusting and vacuuming. She stared into his dark, serious eyes and waited for the kiss that she knew would come. It was soft, and somehow respectful of her boundaries, especially given yesterday's seduction in the back room. She reached for a smile and found one somewhere deep, and took herself off to the Travel books, where true adventure and country guides and maps lay waiting for her to bring order to their chaos.

  The section was one in which Lexie had spent little browsing time. The books were a mix of hardcover and paperback. She wasn't sure how the section had been laid out, so she found herself pausing to skim back cover copy, the flaps of dust jackets as she checked each book for damage. There were books about people adrift on the Pacific without their boat motors. People trapped on mountain ledges, awaiting rescue. The little-known pleasures of small-town America. Trains and sailboats. Mexican coastal resort towns. What to pack for a cruise ship vacation.

  She was kneeling to reach the books on the lowest shelf when she turned over one book with the title Beyond Forgiveness: the Needless Carnage of Hurricane Katrina, and there was Jack staring up at her from the author photo. He looked rumpled and serious, skin dark with sun, video camera in hand. He stood knee-deep in water on a city street that she supposed was in New Orleans. Broken pieces of buildings, cars, furniture, garbage, all tossed by flood tide, surrounded him. Stunned, she sat back on her heels and turned the book over again.

  The author's name was John T. Jarvis.

  She blinked. She knew John T. Jarvis. He was an internet sensation, a photojournalist who tra
veled the world from disaster to disaster, chasing the heart-wrenching stories of people in crisis, towns destroyed by catastrophe. His capsule videos decrying the lack of government response, or humanitarian relief hijacked for black market resale by local warlords, had turned up in her emails from friends, gone viral on the internet, roused the righteous ire of millions and the guilty fury of bureaucrats.

  No wonder he'd seemed familiar when she first met him. But the Jack she knew—and even the JT Gard addressed—was different from the man staring out at her from the back of the book jacket. Did the T. stand for Tucker? She supposed John T. Jarvis, or even Jack Tucker, might be pseudonyms. The thought that she couldn't even be sure of Jack's real name left her feeling off-balance and frightened.

  She shuffled through other books piled nearby and found two additional titles by John T. Jarvis. One was about the horrors of a massive Indonesian tsunami, and the other was about Iraq. On the back cover, Jack stood dressed in protective gear, sighting along his video camera like a sniper. A tagline review on the jacket read, "Jarvis pulls no punches in this scorching exposé of the banality of evil: deadly wars waged over three-martini lunches by government bureaucrats and corporate sharks."

  That must be where Jack had met Gard. There was a destroyed Humvee in the background, half-buried in windblown sand piled along a wall where the Humvee had apparently wrecked. A goat stood atop its crumpled hood amongst the broken glass of the windshield. A soldier's helmet, canted and half-filled with sand, lay near a tire.

  Lexie picked up the three books as she rose. Her mouth felt loose, as if she were about to bray huge sobs like a devastated toddler.

  Jack was at his regular table, typing.

  The sight acted on her like venom, poisonous and sickening. The books fell from her hand onto the table, knocking his tablet askew. His hands scrambled to catch it.

  "When were you going to tell me?" she asked, very softly.