Trust Bailey to come to her rescue as tactlessly as possible. “Make like the rest of the world, Shane, and leave her tits alone.”
Starla drove a well-placed elbow into her husband’s midsection.
Jack’s lips twisted. “Same tact as ever, I see.”
“I call ‘em like I see ‘em.” Bailey grinned.
“Want a magnifying glass?” Shane wasn’t finished harping on her tits.
Lin extended a single digit in his direction, the light catching off the glitter in her nail polish. She waved it at Bailey for good measure, pointing at his barrel-chest. “If we’re talking boobs, let’s talk man-boobs, too—”
“Ah, how about refilling my shot glass? I’m still in my twenties.” Jack held the glass out towards Bailey, but his eyes were on Lin. Looking for the blush, no doubt. Or maybe looking for my tits.
Bailey laughed. “To your thirties, then. And my man-boobs.”
“Both things I could do without.” Jack muttered. Eyes still on hers, he downed the shot. “One more.”
Starla scooted up next to Lin. “Everyone.”
Lin ignored her own refilled shot glass. Starla hissed at her. “Drink it.” She tilted her head close enough to Lin’s to avoid being overheard. “You’re obsessing again, and I won’t have it.” Starla held up her own glass. “For the future.”
Shane held his own up. “Some of us have more of it than others.”
You can say that again. She shared a look with Starla.
Fine. She lifted the brimming little glass to her lips. Shane jostled her, and half the shot ran down the corner of her mouth, splashing a tiny stream onto her chest. “Shit, Shane. Watch it!” She glared at Shane, who finally had the grace to look slightly abashed.
“Relax. I got this.” Jack stepped up in front of her, set his shot glass down on the railing between her and Shane, and dipped his head to her neckline.
Cold fire danced along her skin as he licked vodka droplets from her bare flesh. Somewhere suddenly very far away Starla gasped and giggled. Lin’s fingers curled themselves into a death grip on the cold wooden railing while goosebumps iced right down into her cleavage.
Jack lifted his head, frost paling the color of his lips. The alcohol hit her belly with a little flare. Ice crystals of vodka skittered down inside the vee of her bra, chill pinpricks that burned. Lin’s gasp drew white fog from the charged air between them.
Jack’s teeth flashed in the dissipating mist. One eyelid dropped suggestively and he turned his head. “You never could appreciate fine art, Shane.”
~*~
Right after he'd signed the final divorce papers, Jack had tried to take a bath in his still-being-renovated loft. He remembered sinking under the warm water to rinse away the sour stink of failure, but when he rose back up towards the surface, he slammed into a half-inch thick crust of ice from the wrong side. He panicked and bloodied his knuckles punching through it. He ended up naked on the subflooring in a pile of slush, but that first breath of air tasted like a bullet dodged, complete with metallic adrenaline aftertaste.
It wasn't an unusual feeling for him to have around Lin Sanada. Ever since they first met, she inspired big-brother protectiveness, drew him to the exotic in her looks, and let slip rare secrets from a mind of complex depths that shook him from the course he'd set on his life's path.
The second breath he tasted out of that frozen bathtub held the thick sweet flavor of second chance. The same honeyed aftertaste curled his tongue now, remnants of warm skin and chilled vodka. Not unwelcome. Encouragement that faint should have put the brakes on whatever else his mouth might come up with while his brain remained disengaged. Instead, his long-dormant sense of adventure took it as an invitation.
An invitation that even the environment seemed to encourage. He could say he didn’t know what came over him when he decided to chase the vodka down her cleavage, but that would have been a lie. What came over was a sudden and fierce need to rejoin the land of the living and respond to a captivating woman who’d invited his interest like any normal guy with a pulse. In the space of one breath and the next, he came to a single, firm conclusion that had surprisingly little to do with sex.
He wanted Lin in his life. He wanted all his friends back in his life. So if there was a way to make that happen, he was going to find it.
~*~
“Well. This looks interesting,” Shane muttered.
“Inside, you.” Starla’s voice was quiet enough not to intrude on the long moment he held Lin’s gaze with his own. “Come in for the slide show. I found pictures from every year we were in business.”
Bailey patted Jack’s shoulder. Even his heavy hand couldn’t break Jack away from her. “Happy birthday to you, buddy.”
Long after the others left them alone, he broke the silence. “Too much?”
Her chest began to rise and fall rapidly. She glanced into the window, then out towards the trees. “There’s a fire pit back there, and Bailey keeps a beer cooler next to it.” She pushed away from the railing, pausing to glance over her shoulder as she descended the first step. “Do you want to stay here on Memory Lane?” One sooty eyebrow ascended. Did she have any idea how she beckoned with that curve of her lips? “Or see what’s in the woods?”
The periwinkle sparkles of her dress flashed in the light from the windows as she disappeared down the stairs. Something flipped over in his midsection. The wind teased the somnolent wind chimes dangling from the underside of the deck, a musical summoning that had him taking the steps two at a time after her.
She crossed the lawn rather nimbly, given her party shoes. Jack expected to cover much more ground and catch up before she reached the gap in the holly bushes, but he took his time striding after her, the slow rising excitement in his chest something he wanted to savor, along with the scents of cedar and greenery. He crossed the border of holly and inhaled deeply, the humidity and coolness of the woods carrying with it a vastly different feel than the air on the deck. Nothing even close to it in the city, and for a moment, he felt a pang of longing.
The yearning for wild places felt alien to him. He set it aside as he spotted the pale glow of her dress ahead of him. The path jogged to the left around a wide-trunked tree that soared up into the night. He thought he felt acorns under the soles of his shoes, but for all he knew, they could be marbles. The tree-dotted landscape went wilder past the big tree, moving from hedges and borders to a less-cultivated undergrowth. Grasses whispered at the edges of the path, and he thought he heard laughter off to the right, but he wasn’t about to look. Starla’s house was refreshingly free of Oddling drama and he prayed fervently to whatever might be listening that it would stay that way.
“Down this way. Watch out for the roots.” Lin’s voice floated from the left and he found his way around the path. He caught sight of her dress again in the reflected moonlight and the last beams filtering out from the house. His pulse sped up at the sound of her voice and his footsteps quickened in pursuit.
That’s what it feels like. The refreshingly unusual feeling of wanting something badly enough to chase after it. He dodged the roots, more by feel and instinct than sight, and turned with a bend in the path that led past a copse of cedars that now separated them from the house, cutting off the last of the golden light, leaving them in bare branches and moonlight blue. She led him deeper into the woods, the empty limbs of hedges giving away to a stand of evergreens arching up over their heads, mixed in with older trees and underbrush. His eyes adjusted and it seemed like weak daylight to him as she rounded the last curve past a knee-high boulder. Up ahead, he could hear the quiet lapping of a stream.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to start making the trek up here again. He hopped up on the boulder and down beside it at the end of the path, just before it widened into a small clearing. Small branches snagged at his pants as he slipped up behind her, close enough to feel the warmth of her body against his. “Are you okay? You don’t have much on.” He ignored the part of him that pumped its fist and thought
, Woo-hoo! She doesn’t have much on!
She tossed her head. The spill of curls held up with a jeweled clip loosened. “I’ve been burning with shame all day. I’d rather be out here in the cold than squirming on the hot seat.”
Branches that remained motionless as she ducked under them whipped him in the face and shoulders. “You have nothing to be squirmy about.” Poor choice of words, because now he was imagining her squirming. Preferably on his lap.
Until she gets frostbite on her ass.
“Almost there. Starla and Bailey cleared it out last summer. Bailey was going to build the kids a treehouse.”
He peered through the thicket, spying a set of weathered wooden chaise lounges sagging on one side of a clearing, opposite a shadowy pile of firewood painted silver in the moonlight. Bushes of some evergreen dotted the edge of the clearing, along with spindle-fingered trees stripped of leaves.
She turned her head to the side. “Hey.”
His mouth dried out at the graceful line of her exposed shoulder. He twitched the silk of her wrap back up again, sudden heaviness coalescing in his chest. “Hey.” His voice sounded gravelly to his own ears. The enigmatic curve of her mouth sent a bolt of sheer awareness through him the likes of which he believed firmly relegated to the past. He licked a sandpaper tongue over his lips. “Does this path...lead where I think it’s going?”
She lifted her eyes to his. The heat in their depths kicked him in the midsection. She tilted her chin. “Are you game for an adventure?”
~*~
The low timbre of his laugh did something wiggly to her insides. Using the opening line to EvoWorld’s game could have backfired, but his crooked smile sent a curling feeling spreading to her toes. The silvery cast of his hair lit up in the moonlight, giving him an ethereal, not-quite-there look.
It matched her own not-quite-real feeling. Shame had pushed her to the woods, but once she crossed the line of holly bushes, safely away from the scrutiny of everyone else, the shame drained away, replaced by something loose. Without boundaries.
A skirl of nervousness rippled through her. In the back of her mind, in a nest of memories, there lived a Jack Winters in fantasy—college crush, good friend, the ultimate missed connection that stood right in front of her. That Jack dazzled her imagination and tripped all her insecurities at the same time. The ones that held her back when Nancy entered the picture. The self-doubts that conceded a fight that had never even had the chance to start.
She lifted her head. There was no fight to be had now—no butterfly Nancy to eclipse her luna moth. The tip of her nose brushed his. This is my decision.
“Let’s play.” He echoed the “yes” response that took the player into the game. He closed the distance between them. Her eyes fluttered closed as his lips touched hers. My risk.
He must have been sucking on an ice cube because the touch of his tongue against her lips made her gasp. Her breath pulled in cold air that swirled into the back of her mouth and settled in the pit of her stomach, flooding her body with enervating lethargy. She sighed into him as tingles spread from her stomach to her toes.
He stroked her arm with the lightest of touches. False touch, since it wasn’t really his skin contacting hers, but the gloves he’d never taken off. Somewhere, some part of her was jumping up and down at the thought of kissing Jack Winters. She pushed the fantasy away. I am owning this.
A few moments passed before she realized that as hot as she was getting, he didn’t seem to be following suit. If anything, his body felt cold. She drew back. “You with me here, Jack?” My risk, my reward. And my loss if I fall. But she wasn’t going to throw herself at a target that didn’t want to be hit. Hit on.
He lifted his head, stroked up the small of her back to her shoulders, and pulled her towards him. “You have to ask?” Lin’s pulse went crazy with the taste of ice cubes splashed with vodka and chased by juniper berries.
She pushed him down onto the chaise lounge. The weathered wood creaked under his weight. She made herself hold his gaze as she set her knee on the chaise next to his body, her lips bare inches from his. The blush heated her cheeks and sent warmth flooding down further. She stretched her other leg over him, straddling his hips.
He pulled her back down with him, trapping her hands in between them. Under her fingertips, she felt the rise and fall of his breathing, and the thrumming beat of his heart. “It’s me—who should be—” he said between a give-and-take that made her feel like a starving woman, “asking you—if you—mean what I—” His gloved fingers found the bare skin of her thigh up under her dress and she gasped, sucking a cold breath from his mouth. “—really, really—hope I think—you mean.”
For an answer, she reached under her skirt and tugged at the edge of his glove. Soft, buttery-feeling doeskin peeled away as he wiggled his fingers. She let the glove drop to the side of the chaise and shifted her hips to a more comfortable position.
Her breath ghosted the air between them as she broke away. “You’re overcomplicating things. Simplify.” She licked over his lips.
The breathtaking cold of Jack’s touch sent an exotic thrill through her. Between the skittery freeze of his cold fingers and the blanket of cold, moist air that surrounded them like their own private ice-castle, her imagination wanted to drag her to interesting places. “You can start by moving that hand a little higher.”
~*~
Jack knew he’d never been privileged to see the deep places where Lin’s mind went, even when they were closer friends and coworkers. But something in the intervening years had brought out an aggressive, self-assured side of her that made his knees weak. Good thing she steered him towards the lawn furniture, otherwise he would have buckled right there at the entrance to the clearing. When her lips met his, the contact caused crimson sparks to flash at the corners of his eyes and she pulled him through a rosy haze into the clearing and down onto the lounger, leading with a smile full of promise.
The warmth of her body and the soft places where she pressed against him created vapor in his brain. He sprawled on the chaise. Loose curls of her hair tickled his face. Trapped in the prison of her thighs, he could do nothing but react to the small movements of her body as she leaned in to steal his breath again. She tasted like hot chocolate and mint vodka and a faint, smoky aftertaste and he wanted more.
Of all the times for his sex drive to come crashing back to the front of his existence…Either he was the luckiest goddamn bastard in the world, or about to become the punchline to the cruelest joke in the world.
“We should—”
“I know—exactly—what we should,” she said between kisses with the hot aftertaste of fever. Her fingers threaded through his hair, interlocking at the nape of his neck, underneath the scarf.
She broke the kiss and licked her bottom lip. He followed the motion like a starving man. She unwound the scarf from around his neck. He shivered, not used to having the skin of his throat so exposed. At the back of his mind, the small panic of his freakish nature being found out beat against perma-frost coating the rational part of his brain. It should have set off warning bells. How could he forget that he couldn’t afford the kind of probing questions that questing probes of his ungloved fingers were bound to summon the second he found—
Joy! came in the form of silky, lacy panties and a breathless sigh that arrowed right to his crotch and squeezed with the force of five long and deserted famine years and—oh lord if he didn’t get to touch right now then there was just no damn justice in the world.
No touching! Touching is bad, cold, trouble! But once upon a time he didn’t have to worry about frostbite and questions without answers and strange things happening to his body, and his body remembered attraction and desire and the rush of masculine pride that came with the sound of a feminine moan.
Lin lifted her head, her hair starting to fall out of its pins in a dark curtain. “If you tease me, Jack Winters.” She began on the wings of a threat and ground her hips against his hand trapped betw
een them. She ducked back down and flicked her tongue over a spot just under his ear that sent a lightning-streak shuddering through him. “Then I’ll tease you right back.” Her breath sent shivers through him. “And I can be a Very. Good. Tease.”
“Oh, God, please do.” The words that tumbled out were only slightly better than a good-dog whimper, especially when her fingers teased the collar of his shirt open.
He moved elastic and lace aside and found real flesh, soft, damp, hot enough to burn his fingers but with such a good burn.
Lin gasped. “C-cold!”
The word brought an ice water cascade down on the whole hazy fantasy, soaking it with sodden reality. He sat up. A mistake, since the motion trapped his hand even closer against her body. “Whew!” Her breath came out a wispy laugh from deep in her throat. Her hips swiveled and his new goal in life became to hear that sound again, by any means necessary. She shivered against his hand and he thought he found it, but one last brain cell fired and reminded him that might not be a shiver of pleasure at his touch.
“Wait—”
“I don’t want to wait.” She scooted her hips forward and his fingers brushed soft wetness. Oh God...
“I don’t want this to be a mistake for you.”
“I know how to make mistakes.”
“Friends who fuck have a statistical likelihood of ending in disaster. I don’t want that to happen to us.” Us? There’s an us? His brain did a backflip as he realized that he wanted there to be an “us.” And not just because she was undulating against his hand while he gave her excuses not to.
She bent down again, this time taking the lead, her hot tongue draining his willpower and his ability to think beyond the sudden pressure against his fly. “Starla and Bailey,” she countered between greedy nips at his bottom lip. Every little smack that echoed in the damp air sapped a little more of his will to resist. And his ability to form coherent sentences.
“Already won the friends-to-lovers happily ever after lottery.” Meaning his chances of it ending badly with Lin increased by orders of magnitude. Like that mattered to the bare fingers of his left hand, rasping against lacy elastic and hot lady-parts.
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 4
