by Carter Ashby
He searched her eyes and saw she really didn’t blame him. She probably blamed herself. Hopefully she blamed Damon. “Are you going to visit him?”
“What? Visit who—?”
“Damon.”
Her face went blank. “I don’t know. Probably.”
He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want her to ever see that man again. Jayce reached for her, cupped the back of her head, and drew her lips to his. He kissed her deeply, knowing she wasn’t returning his love; even knowing that, he still needed to give her everything he could.
She was the first to pull away. “Jayce,” she breathed.
“When can we hook up again?” he blurted, desperate to prevent hearing her say another word about how she was too overwhelmed to love him. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand. He even agreed that Maya needed to focus on herself and her kids. He just didn’t understand why she wouldn’t let him help.
“Um…I guess next weekend. We’ll see.”
Jayce swallowed down his unwanted feelings and turned on the charm. He stood, pulled her to her feet, and pressed his cheek to hers so he could whisper in her ear. “You were a fucking animal this morning, Maya.”
She giggled and pressed herself against him.
Jayce smiled, knowing he could at least do this. “You want me just as badly as I want you. We aren’t waiting until next fucking weekend, you hear me?”
Her giggle pitched higher and she was practically grinding her hips against him. “There’s no other time.”
“There’s always time. You’ll see.” He stepped back, tweaked her nose, and then left while they were both still wearing smiles.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Maya wasn’t surprised to get a call from the principal on Tuesday. She’d received a letter from the principal, but apparently Mattie had forged her signature on several notes that had been sent home, so the trouble was more expansive than she’d initially thought.
She sat in the office next to an irate set of parents. Her son and theirs were sitting in the outer office with ice packs on their bruises. “Now this is a warning, for Jared,” the principal said.
“What?” cried the irate mother. “Jared is a victim in this. He did nothing wrong.”
“Which is why he’s not being suspended,” the principal said.
Maya sat and stared listlessly at the backs of the picture frames on the desk. “Are you suspending Mattie?” she asked.
“For the remainder of the week. Please, Mrs. Bradley, consider counseling. There are community counseling programs that cost very little and can be of great benefit to a child when going through divorce.”
She nodded and thanked him. She and the kids were already doing counseling, but she didn’t want to be argumentative.
She went out to collect her son. She drove him home in silence. It was lunch time, so she made him a sandwich. He ate. In silence. When he was done, he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest, and stared out the window. Both her children had her green eyes and fair skin. But Mattie had inherited a lot of his father’s other features. It frightened her that he might have inherited his temper, too.
“Why—“
“Because he’s a jerk,” Mattie said.
Maya sighed. “Okay, well what specifically did he do to you to make you hit him?”
Matthew glared at her. He didn’t answer. She waited, but he didn’t answer. Finally she got up to do some house cleaning. “I guess since we’ll have plenty of quality time together this week, you’ve got plenty of time to answer me.”
That night she carried her frustration to work with her. It was a major effort to force a smile on her face. What if she was losing her son? What if this was the beginning of the end for him and he wound up knocking up some dumb high school girl, beating her senseless, and then getting thrown in prison?
She wished it was Friday night. On Friday, she wouldn’t have time to be distracted. Unfortunately, there were lulls in her evening and she found herself unable to push the worry away. Around eleven, as the nighttime crowd thinned, Jayce cornered her behind the bar. “Hey, babe, everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, as she loaded glasses in the washer under the bar.
He didn’t press her, which was one of the great things about Jayce. But a few minutes later when she slipped into his office to take a moment just to breathe, he was there. He gently took her by the arm and pulled her against him.
She pressed her cheek to his chest. “It’s just that all the shit I’m going through for us and all he has to do is go to school, you know? Just go to school. I’m doing the best I can and….” Her words got flooded out by tears. His arms went around her and she sobbed into his chest.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice reverberating in his chest against her cheek.
“Mattie got suspended for fighting.”
He stroked her hair. “I got suspended all the time, Maya. It’s not that big a deal.”
“It is that big a deal!” she pushed away and looked up at him. “I need him not to be affected by this. I need them both to have normal, happy lives and not be burdened by my fuck-ups!”
“Maya—“
“I’m so selfish. I’m such a horrible mom.”
“You’re not. Stop judging yourself. It’s a waste of energy.”
She threw up her hands and scoffed. Easy for him to say. Stop judging herself? How did one do that, she wondered.
Now she was tired and overwhelmed. He kissed her forehead. And oh, wouldn’t that be nice? If she could just take this man somewhere private, lay back, and let him make it all go away for a while? But she couldn’t even do that, because his hands and eyes and voice were all so full of love that it hurt to look at him.
She pulled away, but he caught her by the waist, pulled her against him, and kissed her on the mouth. She tried to stand firm and wait it out, but his lips won her over and she wound up sinking into them. Into him. God, he was like a cocoon of safety and love and passion. Almost impossible to resist except that she knew she couldn’t return his affections.
She pulled away from him with a great deal of willpower. His hooded eyes were on her lips and he came forward again. She held him at arm’s length. “No, Jayce,” she said gently.
Then he looked at her in a way he’d never done before. His head ducked, his eyebrows up, his full lips parted. “We could run upstairs,” he said, moving toward her.
She backed up, beginning to grin. “Oh, God, Jayce.”
“Five minutes, that’s all. Upstairs in my apartment?”
She backed into a wall and he nuzzled into her neck. She laughed. “You’re damn near irresistible. Those puppy dog eyes, wow.”
He pulled back and looked at her with the eyes again. “I got no problem accepting love out of pity, you should know that right now.”
She grabbed his face and kissed him before his expression undid her. “I’m a mother, Jayce. I’ve survived sweeter puppy dog eyes than that, trust me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Maybe if you’d had that look perfected back in high school, I would have gone home with you instead of Damon.”
She hadn’t meant the comment to be upsetting. She supposed it was a little crass. But the hurt that flashed through his eyes nearly undid her.
“That what he did?” Jayce asked. “Looked at you with puppy eyes?”
She didn’t want to talk about it. So she just shrugged.
“Maya, I don’t think I can wait much longer.”
She giggled.
“I’m dead serious. I’ve tasted the goods, I’m hooked now. I need a little something to get me through the rest of the week.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Uh-uhh. I ain’t gonna make it. So sometime tonight you’re gonna have to give it up to me, babe. Or else I think I might die.”
She was grinning and blushing and trying to come up with something smart to say. But then there was a knock on the office door and they both j
umped apart. Janice popped her head in. “Sorry, Jayce,” she said with a wink at Maya, “but Buck’s asking about his tab. I hate to serve him anymore with how deep it’s getting.”
The rest of the night, Maya kept her eyes on Jayce. His hands started misbehaving. Every time she was behind the counter for drinks, he’d sidle up to her and rest his hand on the back of her upper thigh, sort of slip his fingers between her legs. She couldn’t keep from grinning.
“All you have to do is say no,” he’d murmur.
And she’d move closer to him, press her breasts against him and say, “I know.” And then walk away with her drinks.
Or she’d be serving someone he knew, and he’d come up and talk to them while not-so-discreetly slipping his hand around her waist, slipping his fingers beneath the hem of her top so that he made her flesh tingle with his fingertips.
Or else he’d be across the room and flash her his cocky, half-grin and a wink, making her legs go week and her nipples go hard. She’d tasted the goods, too, and the experience had made her feel more alive and free than ever.
She was no longer the only woman in the world Jayce wasn’t flirting with. In fact, it had switched and she was now the only woman he was flirting with. She watched. His interactions with other women were polite, even charming. But the smolder was reserved only for her.
At midnight, she went back to the locker room to bundle up to go home. She smiled when she heard the door shut, and then lock. “It’s about that time, babe,” he said from behind her. And then the lights went out and it was pitch black.
“Jayce,” she squealed. “You have to turn it back on.”
“I wanna do it in the dark, all our other senses heightened.” He was approaching.
She stepped backwards, feeling behind her. There was a thin line between excitement and panic and she was straddling it. Her heart pounded so hard she was getting dizzy.
Jayce’s footsteps stopped. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she gasped.
“You wanna play?”
Play. That was all this was. A fun game. A fun sex game with a man who was sensitive enough to pick up on her fear even five feet away in a dark room. “Yes,” she said, firmly meaning it this time. “I definitely want to play.”
“Then come here and let’s do this.”
“You’ll have to catch me, first.”
She bolted as his wicked laughter echoed through the room. From that point on, she was as careful as she could be. The room wasn’t huge. There were lockers on one side and a couple of changing stalls in the back. On the other wall was storage; miscellaneous boxes of who-knew-what.
Maya found her way to the stalls and banged one of the doors open to make him think she was hiding there. Then she tip-toed back to the boxes and wedged herself down between two of them. She was sitting with her knees drawn up and trying not to laugh. There wasn’t a speck of light in the room. She could hear his boots shuffling across the floor. He’d found the stalls and found them empty.
“Hmm. Very clever, little mouse,” he said.
In the dark, his voice took on a menacing quality. She’d never noticed the low, musical timber of it before. It quivered her insides.
He was coming toward her, now, dragging his hands along the tops of the boxes. She heard his fingertips skip over the gap between the two boxes on either side of her. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to make a sound. He took two more steps and then stopped. Chuckled. Took two steps back and stood there in front of her. She could feel his heat, only inches from her.
“Found you, didn’t I?” he whispered.
She reached for him, found his legs, and ran her hands up his thighs. His hands went round her wrists and he hauled her to her feet. And then his arms were around her, one hand gripping her ass. His mouth on hers, his tongue ravishing, taking. When his lips moved to her neck, she said, “What is it about you that makes me want to take my clothes off as fast as possible?”
She lifted her arms so he could pull her shirt off. Her bra was next and in the blackness she felt his hands and mouth and breath on all of her. He was on his knees, pulling her shorts and panties down. Her panting breaths were loud in her own ears. “Oh, God, Oh, God,” she whispered. And then his mouth was on her and she cried out, “Oh, God!”
She fell back against the boxes, glad for the support, her legs going weak. His tongue slid along her, making her quiver and tense and ache and moan. “I can’t…,” she sobbed. “I can’t…I….” And then she was lost, wave after racking wave of orgasm brightening the darkness with white hot heat.
She was barely finished before he was inside of her, filling her with his hard length, and she came again immediately. He growled as he held her upright and thrust all the way into her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on, riding his movements and feeling her pleasure climb yet again.
His mouth moved over her, nipping at her ears, her neck, kissing her. She thrust her hands into his thick, beautiful hair. He moaned. She moved her fingers in his hair again and he moaned deeply and slowed his movements. Superman’s kryptonite. She stroked his hair, massaged his head, and his frenzied passion became more languid.
“You like this,” she said softly.
He pressed her against a wall, freeing one of his hands to knead her ass as he pushed into her over and over again.
“Do you like this?” she asked in a whisper.
“Uuunnnhhh.”
Maya smiled and sank back into him. He was moving deep, now, and grinding against her, coaxing her back to that insane peak. The joining of them was so tight that she didn’t have to move. He was already right where she needed him, moving just the right amount. She caught his bottom lip between her teeth and sucked. And then their tongues danced again so that when she came, again, he swallowed her cries.
A split-second later Jayce was pounding into her hard and fast until he came with a low, guttural, completely male sound. His entire body shuddered in her arms as he held onto her at the height of pleasure.
And then they clung, sweating, panting, faces buried in each other’s necks. She smiled. She wanted to laugh for joy. She felt so free and alive. It had never been like this. The fun had been missing from her life, among other things.
His stubbled jaw scraped across her cheek as his lips sought hers. She was smiling and she felt his lips turn up as he kissed her. “Wish I had the lights on for that,” he said.
“For what?”
“That smile, Maya. Oh, God, that smile.” He kissed her again and her heart ached with sorrow so sudden that she gasped. He didn’t notice, though, and kept kissing her so tenderly, so possessively.
At last she pushed him gently away. He set her on her feet and made his way back to the light switch. She shielded her eyes from the blinding light, not before catching a glimpse of Jayce, still clothed but a little mussed.
He came toward her and handed her her clothes. As she dressed, she said, “That was a lot of fun, Jayce.”
“Hide-and-seek sex is awesome.”
She fleetingly wondered how many other women he’d played it with. But she pushed the thought to the side. No reason to be jealous since she didn’t want to marry him. Or even date him. “What other kinds of sex are there?”
He had his jeans up, but not fastened. He looked up and off to the side, his lips pursed in thought. “Outdoor sex. Hot tub sex. Elevator sex.”
“What?” she laughed.
But he was still going. “Pretend-to-be-strangers sex. Movie-theater sex. Loud sex. Sex with a whole lotta swear words.”
She was cracking up now. “How many of these have you tried?”
He didn’t answer her as he came toward her with a cocky smirk on his perfect face. He traced her cheekbone with the backs of his knuckles. “So beautiful,” he whispered.
She bit her bottom lip and moved into him, embracing him. “Thank you.”
She held him for as long as she could justify, but eventually she had to nudge him away. “See you tomorro
w.”
He nodded and stepped aside so she could leave. She glanced back before closing the door behind her. He was standing there hipshot, his jeans still unfastened. Not looking at her. His head hanging, his jaw tense. Maya quickly turned away and left.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jayce was on his back bench pressing sixty pounds more than his body weight when Kellen finally came in. He was later than usual for their morning workout, but Jayce saw why. He had Mattie with him. Jayce put the bar back into the cradle and got up.
Kellen and Mattie took off their coats and tossed them onto a plastic chair near the front door. They both had on track pants and sleeveless t-shirts. They looked like father and son. Jayce was surprised to feel a hint of envy at this. The envy vanished when Mattie’s hate-filled eyes hit him.
“Hey,” Jayce said to Kellen.
Kellen jerked his head up. “Thought Mattie, here, might like to learn how to work out. Since he’s got so much time on his hands.”
Jayce shrugged. “Sure.”
“Great. Well I’ll leave you to it, then.” Kellen walked past him to the weight benches before Jayce had time to register what was happening.
“Uh, Kel?”
But Kellen was either out of earshot or ignoring him. Jayce turned, terrified, back to Mattie. “Um, you can, you know, jump rope, or do pushups or something.”
Mattie’s eyes were on the boxing ring. “Uncle Kellen said you’d show me how to fight.”
Jayce seriously doubted Uncle Kellen had said that. “Well…I can show you how to punch without hurting yourself. But you gotta warm up first.”
Mattie sighed. “Fine.”
Jayce led him to the mats and showed him some stretches. Then he handed him a jump rope and backed up. Mattie stared at the thing. “What do I do with this?”
“You just, you know, jump rope.”
Mattie arched a brow.
Jayce let out a nervous laugh. “You know.” He grabbed a rope and jumped a few times, twisting it in front of him and doing double jumps. “Jump rope. Like that.”
