by Julie Kriss
I pulled into the driveway—Kyle’s SUV was there, so he was home, just like we’d arranged—and pulled some empty boxes from my trunk. Then I mounted the front porch steps and rang the doorbell.
He opened the door almost immediately; he’d probably been waiting. He was wearing jeans and a pullover sweatshirt—his day-off wear. It was rare for Kyle not to be on shift on a Saturday, and for a second I remembered how well I used to know his schedule.
“Hey,” he said. He had showered, shaved. He was a nice-looking guy, and he was strong and fit because of his job. He made good money and now had a nice house. By any definition, he was a catch.
“Hi,” I said to him. I held up the boxes. “Thanks for letting me in. I won’t take long.”
“Sure,” he said. He stepped aside to let me in, and I walked upstairs, ready to collect the last few things I hadn’t been able to grab when I moved out. I was halfway down the upstairs hall when it dawned on me that the stuff I needed was in the dresser and the closet in the bedroom. Kyle’s bedroom, formerly our bedroom. And he was following me down the hall.
I shook it off. It didn’t matter; we were over. We’d been over for a long time. I was not going back to Kyle, and nothing was going to happen in that bedroom. I just had to get this over with and go.
You’re being too nice about him, said Jace’s voice in my head. He should never have fucked you if you didn’t like it, if you had to fake it.
And then: I’ve never had sex.
I wouldn’t think about that right now. I wouldn’t.
“How have you been?” Kyle asked as I entered the bedroom and put my boxes down.
“Good, thanks,” I said, opening a drawer of the dresser that used to be mine.
“You look good.”
“Thank you,” I said again. “How is the job?” Because maybe if we were chatting, it would be easier for neither of us to look at the bed. I was definitely not looking at the bed.
“The same,” Kyle said. “It’s a mess. It always is.”
I nodded, pulling sweaters from a drawer and putting them in a box.
“I haven’t touched anything,” Kyle said.
“Okay.”
“Tara.”
I turned and looked at him, but he shook his head. “I know that look,” he said. “Your determined look. Nothing’s going to get you talking, is it?”
I shoved more sweaters in the box. Why did I have so many freaking sweaters? “There’s nothing to talk about. We did all of our talking months ago.”
“I’m on a bunch of dating sites now.”
That should have at least made me flinch, but it didn’t. I moved to the closet and pulled more clothes from a shelf.
From behind me, Kyle said, “You know what I found? It’s easy to get laid, but it’s harder to find someone to talk to.”
This I recognized. When things had fallen apart at the end, when Kyle realized he didn’t have control of the situation or of me, he’d resorted to nastiness. Things that were supposed to hurt me. His talking about sleeping with other women was supposed to hurt me. What he didn’t understand was that it only made me want to get this over with sooner.
“I don’t even need the websites, really,” Kyle continued. “You know there have always been women hanging around guys like me. We attract them like groupies. There are times I can just take my pick.”
This was terrible. Not because what he said broke my heart, but because I could feel my whole body clench. I never wanted this man to touch me again. I’d felt that way before last night, but now—after Jace Riggs had had his hands and his mouth and his tongue on me—the thought made me want to shudder. The difference between the two men could not be more clear: Kyle with his self-involved crap, and Jace with those damn eyes that saw everything.
Kyle was waiting for me to say something, so I gritted out, “That’s nice.”
“It isn’t like your job, is it?” Kyle said. “The only men you meet are John the middle-aged bore and the scum that come to your sessions. Though don’t get me wrong—I bet John would fuck you. You’d just have to ask him nicely.”
He was trying to make me angry now, trying to get me to hurl insults back at him, trying to make me fight and hurt. Provocation was one thing Kyle was very, very good at. He saw it every day in his job, just like I did.
“I’m done,” I said, stacking the boxes and carrying them toward the bedroom door. They were awkward, though not heavy, and I had to peer around them to aim for the door frame. I stopped when I felt Kyle’s hand on my arm.
I froze. In all of our arguments, in the nasty fragments of our relationship, he’d never hurt me, never even grabbed me. Even now his touch was almost tentative, not a hard grip. And still, it made me shiver.
“Seriously, Tara, what are you going to do?” he said. “Become an old spinster? Maybe find some ugly loser ex-con to service you?”
He knew nothing about Jace Riggs. Nothing. But this was Kyle’s superpower: shooting enough ugly barbs at you until one of them hit. No wonder the divorce rate in men of his profession was sky-high.
“What I do is none of your business,” I said, “and leave my clients out of it.”
He was quiet for a second as I made my way down the hall. He didn’t offer to help, of course. As I started down the stairs he said, “If I hear you’re dating anyone from the force, he’s going to have a big fucking problem. And so are you.”
So that was what he was worried about. “Not a chance,” I shouted back, and walked out the front door to load my car.
I drove three blocks and pulled over at a half-built lot, dirt under my tires. My hands were shaking and I needed to see Jace so bad it almost turned my stomach. I pulled out my phone and composed a text that sounded lighthearted, not like I was desperate for a glimpse of him. Don’t even try to avoid me after that conversation last night, Riggs. I have questions.
You think you can analyze me? he texted back.
I plan to try.
I stared out the window and felt the burn in my chest. And I wondered how I was going to tell the man I was falling for that my ex-boyfriend was a cop on the Westlake PD.
Nineteen
Tara
At eight o’clock I pulled into the driveway of the Riggs house. The sun had almost finished setting, leaving a rosy glow on the horizon and deep shadows beneath the trees. In the main house, a single light was lit in an upstairs window. There was another light in the window of the guest house, which I could see when I got out of the car.
I’d dropped off my boxes at my apartment. I’d had something to eat and changed into a simple cotton sundress of deep red with a pattern of dark blue and green leaves. I wore flat sandals, almost no makeup, and my hair was down, clean and brushed, falling down my back. A casual late-summer outfit. Carefully chosen for meeting the hot virgin ex-con former client who I was a little bit obsessed with and hoped to either analyze or devirginize—or, if I was lucky, maybe both.
My stomach was still twisted when I knocked on the guest house door, the aftereffect of the encounter with Kyle. Then the door opened and Jace was there, and the sour feeling turned into a twist of pure crazy anticipation, deep in my gut, up my spine, and between my legs.
He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt that had a smear of something black on it—grease, maybe. His hair was mussed and his eyes were a little wild. “Shit,” he said. “It’s eight already, isn’t it? I just got back.”
“From where?”
He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stick up more. “My brothers…” He trailed off. “Never mind. I was going to take a shower. I didn’t have time. I don’t think I smell good.”
“Is this a bad time?” I asked.
“No, no. Shit.”
He was so flustered, it was kind of adorable. “Okay then, if it isn’t a bad time, are you going to let me in?”
He seemed to take this question seriously. “Yeah, I am.” He stepped back, but he also curled his hand lightly around my upper arm, as if he
thought I would go running off. “Sorry. Come in.”
I let him lead me into the guest house. I was distracted by his arms—I’d never seen him in short sleeves before. He’d always worn a jacket or a hoodie. He had tattoos down both arms, coming from under his sleeves and snaking down his forearms. There was ink on the soft skin of the inside of one bicep. I hadn’t known that about Jace, that he had tattoos. Good lord. The anticipation twisted harder.
He didn’t seem to notice my lust-filled silence. “Just have a seat or something,” he said. “I meant to clean up in here.”
I brushed closer to him and caught a sharp smell. Oil, the tang of sweat, and possibly gasoline. “It’s okay,” I said. “If you want to take a shower, go ahead. I’ll wait.”
He paused and looked at me. Those gray eyes, those dark lashes. He was uncertain about something, I could see that. I wondered if it was me or something else. I wondered if he could see the uncertainty in my own eyes—uncertainty about Kyle, about myself, about whether I should even be here. Even though, if I admitted the truth to myself, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
As if he was reading my mind, Jace said, “What are we doing, Tara?”
“Talking,” I replied. “If you want.”
His gaze dropped to my neck, my collarbones, then rose back to my face, and for a second his eyes grew dark. You don’t want me the way I want you, he’d said. Right now the air between us was about to catch fire. I stood there and let it sizzle, let him decide.
He took a breath and rubbed a hand over his jaw. He was wearing his rings, and I realized I wanted him to be wearing his rings when he put his fingers inside me. I was shocked and turned on at my own thought.
“You want a drink?” Jace said.
“Okay,” I managed.
He turned away, and I looked around for the first time. The guest house was actually rather nice—a little like a hotel suite. The main room had a big bed in it, neatly made, with a simple plaid coverlet. A small table and two chairs. A door leading to a bathroom on the other side of the room. On this side, near the front door, a corner of kitchen, with a sink, a fridge, a small stove, and a coffeemaker. It wasn’t much, but I imagined for a man who’d spent twenty months in a cell with no privacy, it was luxurious.
There was a well-used laptop sitting on the small table beneath a stack of books. There were more books next to the bed, and still more on the kitchen counter. A small TV sat in one corner, but since it had books piled in front of it, it didn’t look like it got used much.
While Jace opened two beers he had in the fridge, I looked at the book nearest me, which was pressed open against the counter, like he was midway through reading it. It was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Jace caught me reading the title, and I smiled at him. “Light reading?”
He shrugged and handed my beer to me. “It was fifty cents at a library sale, and I like to read classics.”
“Is it good?”
“It’s hard to understand, and the language is complicated, and everyone’s name seems the same,” he said. “But I keep at it. I like a challenge, and it’s better than TV.”
I sipped my beer and smiled at him.
“What?” Jace said.
“You’re complicated and hard to understand,” I said. “And a challenge.”
His eyes widened. “A come-on line,” he said, pleased. “I knew it. I thought you just wanted to talk, counselor.”
I felt myself grinning. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“Not bad,” he said. “Have a seat.”
I took my beer and sat in one of the chairs. The bed sat in the middle of the room, basically shouting at us, but Jace didn’t seem to notice. He sat on the edge of the bed and untied his boots. “Sorry,” he said, glancing up at me. “Long day.”
“Really, I can come back.”
“Quit it.” He kicked the boots off. “You said you had questions. Ask away.”
“Okay.” I ran my fingers over the lip of my beer bottle. Jace put his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle between them, and watched me. I realized that this setup was a little like counseling—the two of us sitting across from each other, me asking questions. He wasn’t my client anymore, and we were in his home—his bedroom—and we were on the edge of pushing our relationship into sex. But still, this setup was the one he was used to, the one we were both used to in a way. So I relaxed my shoulders and went with it.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” I said, “about your lack of sexual experience.”
He rolled his eyes—there were those familiar Jace defenses. But to his credit, he didn’t shut me down. “Go on.”
“Well, it seems to me that sex is only the surface issue. The deeper issue is intimacy.”
“As in?”
“As in, you have a problem with it.”
He laughed, not seeming to notice that I went thick with lust at the sound, at the way his face relaxed when he did it. “I guess I’d have a problem with it if I’d ever had any,” he said.
“That’s what I mean. Your mother left when you were very young, and your father was a terrible parent. Your brothers weren’t any help, though they’re older.”
“They were too busy surviving on their own,” he said.
“Fair enough. But that left you alone.”
“Plenty of people who are alone do a lot of fucking,” Jace pointed out.
I nodded agreement. “But that’s how they express, however unsatisfyingly, their desire to be close to another person, even for a short time. And that isn’t how you do it.”
“So how do I do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You tell me.”
He didn’t even think about it. He reached down and took my heel in his hand, lifting my foot up. He slid my sandal off. “I do it by arguing with my counselor,” he said. “By going to her office and sitting on the bench outside. By harassing her.”
“You’re not harassing me,” I said, outraged on his behalf. I couldn’t take my eyes from the sight of his hands on my skin, those beautiful fingers, those sexy rings. “I like it.”
“Good,” he said, putting one foot down and lifting the other. He took the other sandal off and let his hand wander smoothly up the back of my bare calf. “Okay, we’ve analyzed me,” he said. “Let’s analyze you.”
His hand on my leg was obscene. I was wet, my pussy pounding with pressure, and I was also crazily glad I’d shaved my legs this afternoon. “What about me?”
“Your intimacy problem,” Jace said, his gaze also on his hand as it moved.
“I don’t…” I had to stop talking when his fingers traced the soft skin behind my knee. “…have one.”
“Sure you do.” He was so quietly confident, so self-assured. He lifted his hand from my leg and took my elbow instead, tugging me from the chair and over to sit on the bed. He stood in front of me, all six feet plus of him, muscle and motor oil and masculine perfection. He touched the side of my face, traced a finger over my lower lip. “You said you didn’t like fucking the last guy you were with.”
“I…” Had I said that? My mind was blank. “I didn’t like it,” I said, thinking of what it had felt like to have Kyle touch me, be inside me. Of the times I’d cried silently in the bathroom afterward, thinking there was something wrong with me.
“You lived with him,” Jace said, kneeling—actually getting on his knees in front of me. “And you hated fucking him.” His hands moved up beneath the skirt of my dress, his fingers hooking into the waist of my panties, tugging them. “That left you alone. All alone.”
“Jace,” I said, but I lifted my hips so he could pull my panties off. He drew them down my legs and threw them away.
He put his hands on my knees and parted them, though the hem of my dress sagged down and still covered me. He lifted his gray gaze to mine and held it. “You fuck anyone else since him, Tara?”
I couldn’t look away from him. “No,” I breathed.
; He moved his hands up under my dress, parting my thighs wider. “I didn’t think so,” he said. “Heal thyself, counselor.” And he dipped his face between my legs.
I made a mewling sound, and it was so good, so good, that I dropped back onto my elbows on the bed so he could have better access. Jace parted my pussy lips, found my clit, and licked it soundly while kneeling on the floor. Everything inside me went haywire as his beard scraped the skin of my inner thighs and his tongue slid down, into me, then out and up to my clit again. My legs jerked, and Jace held them, and he sucked my clit softly, and just like that I came, the orgasm a rush that made me feel relief and an edge of deeper want at the same time. I pulsed my hips up against his mouth and then flopped fully back onto the bed.
“Oh, my god,” I panted.
Jace took his mouth off me and pushed my dress up, past my waist, his touch a little rough. I took over and pulled the dress the rest of the way off as he bent and kissed my lower belly, my hipbones, his hands holding me still as he worked his way up to my breasts. I unclasped my bra and tossed it away. I had barely a second to wonder if I should be self-conscious about my small breasts before he lowered his mouth to one nipple.
I moaned again, arching up into him. My nipples had always been painfully sensitive, something he seemed to instinctively know. I yanked at his T-shirt, and he reared up briefly to rip it off. I had a glimpse of his muscled shoulders, the sleek ink of his tattoos on his warm skin, before he bent down and took my other nipple in his mouth.
I ran my hands over his arms, his biceps, his shoulder blades, the muscles of his back. I touched his soft hair and the back of his neck as he released my nipple and kissed upward, moving until he was fully over me. Then I ran my hand down the side of his body to his hip and I cupped him through his jeans—his hard cock, his balls. I curled my fingers over it and rubbed my palm on it as he moaned against my skin, his hot breath on my neck.
