She’d been talking to me like she was just one of the guys, hanging out and gabbing about sex like it was no big deal. There wasn’t anything else in her response other than that. Nothing to give me the impression that she hoped for the same things I did or that it wouldn’t absolutely destroy what friendship we had if I were to get what I wanted.
But she leaned back against the cushions and angled her head up so she could look at me, trailing her fingers along the seams of a throw pillow. “What would you do if I kissed you right now?”
My jaw might have hit the floor.
Four
Pepper
It was safe to say I’d shocked Jackson as much as I’d surprised myself. At least he didn’t look disgusted or appalled by my suggestion, but that didn’t eliminate the overwhelming urge to backtrack.
I shifted, inching away from him and wishing I had another drink handy. I could stand to chug another and buy some courage. “Not that I’m going to do that or anything,” I hurried to say. “Stupid question. Ignore that one. Let me try—”
“I’d kiss you back,” he cut in, leaving me stunned and breathless. “I’d fist my hand in your hair, angle your head until you were exactly how I wanted you, and kiss the ever-loving shit out of you until you were hot and wet and squirming to get closer to me. I’d kiss you so hard you’d be panting. Aching. Ready to come the second I put my hands on you. But I wouldn’t touch you. Not yet. I’d draw it out using only my lips and teeth and tongue until you were desperate, shaking, and begging for more. Even then I wouldn’t touch you where you wanted me to, because that’s how you’ve made me feel for as long as I’ve known you. Frantic. Desperate. Needy.”
Those words about summed it up, in terms of how I was feeling at the moment. He didn’t even have to lay a finger on me, and I was already slick and swollen.
“You shouldn’t tease me like that,” I muttered.
“Tease you? You think I’m teasing you?”
“Aren’t you?” There wasn’t any other good reason he would say anything like that. I’d gone and screwed up by letting slip the direction my thoughts had taken, and now he was using that against me, along with the fact that I was definitely more than a bit tipsy.
Jackson let his eyes roam all over me, which only made me hotter than I already was. “Why don’t you try me?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know—”
“Try it. Kiss me and see if I don’t do exactly what I said I would. I dare you.”
“I don’t want a dare.” At least not that one. “That’s not how the game works. I’m supposed to get a choice.”
He looked disappointed, his brow creasing for a moment before his expression dropped back to normal. “Fine, then you want to give me truth instead?”
Not really, but I’d started this game. Damn it. Why had I thought it was a good idea? “Yes,” I said. “Truth.” Maybe he’d go easy on me. Probably not, but a girl could hope.
“Okay. Tell me what you would do if I kissed you like that.”
“You wouldn’t,” I spluttered.
“I would.”
I shook my head, sure the alcohol was screwing with my interpretation of the situation.
“I will,” Jackson said. He sounded like he meant it. He’d been sounding like he meant it. Fully serious. Not joking at all. This wasn’t the sort of thing he would joke about, and I knew it, even if my brain was having a hard time keeping up with reality.
“Why would you do that?” I whispered.
“Because I’ve wanted to kiss you and more for years, but this is the first time you’ve ever given me any indication that you’d be on board with it.”
Every breath I took sparked a new series of tiny explosions inside my chest, my belly, surging out toward my fingers and toes and lips.
“So is it all in my head?” he asked. “Just something I’ve been hoping would happen for so long that I’ve convinced myself it’s real? Or will you react the way I think you will when I kiss you?”
When I kiss you. Not if. Jackson was talking about it like it was a foregone conclusion. Like he truly intended to follow through with what he was saying.
“How do you think I’ll react?” I asked.
“I think you’ll try to climb me, but not so you can put me in a headlock.” He looked good enough to eat when he said it, too.
Despite my better intentions, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from licking my lips, and a thrill rushed through me at the way his eyes followed the path of my tongue.
“Am I right, then?” His voice was rough, like simply getting the words out was enough to leave him straining. “Will you be all over me when I kiss you? Climbing me? Trying to crawl inside me?”
“I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“It’s not. It’s a really bad idea.” But he inched closer to me on the couch, taking the throw pillow from my hands and tossing it to the floor so there was nothing between us.
“So bad,” I murmured.
“The worst, really.” He was so close his heat swamped me, drawing me in toward him like a moth to a flame. I was powerless to resist. Especially when he settled his hand on top of my forearm and slowly inched upward along my bare skin.
I shivered. “Thought you weren’t going to touch me,” I said, somehow putting some heft behind my voice.
He leaned in, closer and closer. “That was the plan.”
I shifted, as if to move away, but somehow my lower legs ended up draped over his thighs. “This is a bad idea.”
He tucked his other hand under my knee and tugged until I was seated on his lap. “You already said that.”
“So did you.”
“So obviously, you agreed.”
I did. Still. But Jackson brushed the side of my breast with the pad of his thumb, and a great, whooshing breath flew through my lips. Inhalation. Exhalation. All at once. “I don’t think we should do this,” I said, but I grabbed hold of his collar with both hands and dragged myself closer to him. Stupid. Really, really stupid of me.
“I know.” Jackson’s lips were only a hairsbreadth from mine. His warm breath fluttered over my skin, leaving me flushed. “But I want to.”
“So do I.”
Through my dress, he circled my nipple with the tip of a finger. It came to a taut peak, straining for more.
“Dare you,” he said. And smiled. It was his half-sweet, half-cocky smile that had always melted me, getting me to forgive him within seconds no matter what he’d done to earn my ire.
Damn him. Jackson knew I couldn’t resist that smile, and even more than that, he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I would pass up a dare.
I yanked on his collar and brought him down to me.
Hard. Hot. Wet. Almost bruising in its intensity. This was no sweet kiss.
Both his hands came up to grip my hair, like he’d said he would, and he tilted me until I was exactly how he wanted me. He nipped at my lower lip until I opened and let him in. I moaned, but the sound got lost in our frenzy.
His cock pressed against my thigh. I couldn’t stop myself from sliding my leg back and forth to stroke him. He growled into my lips and tightened his grip on my hair, locking me in place for his feverish assault.
“You make me crazy,” he said when he came up for air.
“You are crazy.” And so was I, for allowing this to happen.
He held my head still, staring down at me, his chest heaving. So was mine. My grip on his shirt was so tight my fingers hurt, but I couldn’t let go. I didn’t want to go back to the real world. I wanted to stay here, in this moment, for as long as possible.
Because in the real world, Jackson and I didn’t kiss like this.
In the real world, we were just friends. Nothing more.
But this? This was more.
And it scared the crap out of me.
“Your lips are swollen,” he said, the half-sweet, half-cocky grin coming back.
Once I caught my breath, I said, “So are yours.”
He was wearing some of my lipstick now, too. I reached up to wipe it away, but he sucked my finger into his mouth and nibbled on the tip. I shuddered, trying to hold on to this moment. Because this couldn’t be happening. It was a drunken fantasy and nothing more.
“So I guess you didn’t quite climb me when I kissed you,” he said, winking. “This time. We can save that for next time.”
“That’s assuming there’s going to be a next time.” Which there couldn’t be. We’d have to be more than just drunk to take this any further than we already had.
“What makes you think there won’t be?” Jackson finally released his grip on my hair, teasing his fingers through the length of it to work out the tangles he’d created.
The longer we stayed as we were, the heavier reality hit me. I tried to shift myself off his lap, but he put his arm around my waist, anchoring me in place.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
I shook my head, letting out a huff of frustration. “We both know this was a big mistake. We knew it before we ever did it, and we wouldn’t have done anything at all if we hadn’t been drinking.”
With his hand still on my waist, he curled in his fingers. Softly. Possessively. It was such a simple thing, but it brought up a sense of longing and a fresh wave of lust that I would have a hell of a time tamping down again.
“Maybe it’s a good thing we were drinking, then,” he said.
“I think you’ll be singing a different tune in the morning.”
“It’s not morning yet. And maybe you’ll be the one changing your tune.”
I scowled to let him know I doubted that would happen.
“Fine. Maybe you won’t be.” He finally loosened his grip on me, and I scurried off his lap to put as much distance between us as I could without escaping to another room.
“Promise me something,” I said, grabbing another throw pillow and holding it to my belly, like it could protect me from the thousands of horrible scenarios playing out in my head.
“Anything.” His response was too quick. Too certain. Like he’d give me anything I asked for, no matter what it might be. But there were still things he couldn’t give me. I knew it, even if he didn’t.
“Promise me that we won’t let this come between us. That no matter what happens, we’re still going to be friends just like we always have been.”
“What if I don’t want us to be friends anymore?” he asked.
My stomach lurched. I knew we shouldn’t have done this. I should never have kissed him or let him kiss me. I should have kept it all to myself. The idea of me and Jackson ever being anything more than friends was nothing more than a fantasy.
And now, I might even lose him as my friend.
“Just friends, I mean,” he said. “I want more.”
“Friends with benefits?” I joked.
He shook his head, as serious as a heart attack. “Benefits are good, but no. That’s not what I mean, and I think you know it.”
“What I know is that none of this would be happening if I hadn’t had too much to drink.”
“Point taken. You might recall I tried to get you to stop. Or at least to slow down.”
I shot him a glare.
He sighed and scraped a hand down his face. “Look, we can’t go back in time and un-kiss. All we can do is move forward.”
“And promise we won’t let it change anything.”
“You’re full of shit if you honestly think we can stop things from changing between us now.”
He was right. And I knew it. But I didn’t want to admit it. The thought that we were going to lose what we’d always had, that everything was going to be different between us now, was more than I could take in.
I wrapped my arms tighter around the throw pillow, holding it to me like it would protect me from the blow.
But it was too late.
“Let’s not think about it anymore tonight,” Jackson said. He smiled again, the same way as always. “Let’s just play some more Truth or Dare, and we can sort all of this out tomorrow. When we’re sober and we’ve had time to sleep on it.”
Something told me the light of a new day wouldn’t make anything better, but unless I intended to spend the whole night as miserable as I felt at the moment, there wasn’t anything else to do.
I nodded resolutely. “Fine. But it’s my turn. Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” he said without hesitation.
Now I needed a safe subject. Too bad nothing safe came readily to mind. “How’d you find out about Elle and LeBlanc?”
The remnants of Jackson’s smile dissipated with my question. “Really? That’s what you want to know?”
“Yes. No.” I tucked my feet up next to me, needing to move. This kind of movement wasn’t anywhere near enough, though. The only thing that would really help would be to get up and pace or go for a walk out on the beach, but I might as well admit I was trying to avoid all the discomfort between us if I did something like that.
“Know what you should’ve asked me?” he said.
“What?”
“How many cold showers did I have to take after all the times you put me in a headlock would be a good start. Or maybe how many times I called the girl I was dating by your name on accident and had to cover for it. That’d be a good one. Or you could ask me how long ago I realized no woman I ever dated would stand up to my idea of the perfect woman because none of them were you.”
“Just stop, will you?” I said before he could keep going with that nonsense. “We’ve both had too much to drink—”
“I haven’t,” Jackson cut in. “You have. You’re drunk, but I’m fine. I’m saying these things because I mean them, but you don’t want to let yourself believe it, so you’re trying to convince yourself it’s just the alcohol.”
“Damn it, Jackson.” I didn’t want to admit he might be right.
“Damn it, Pepper,” he said, mocking me.
I threw the pillow at him. He caught it before it hit him in the head, and he tossed it on the floor to join the other one, both safe and sound out of my reach.
I scowled.
“Fine,” he said. “You don’t want the truth about something like that, come up with your own question. Ask me what the kinkiest thing I’ve ever done was, or my craziest fantasy. Whatever. I’m an open book.”
I got up and headed back to the kitchen, taking another beer from the fridge to buy some time. Yeah, it was the last thing I needed at the moment, but I did it anyway.
Arya came out and jumped onto the counter, probably hoping I’d give her some people food. Not going to happen. I scratched her behind the ears before I had to go back and deal with all the stuff squeezing the air out of my chest.
“Drinking more isn’t going to change anything, Pepper,” Jackson called out from the living room.
“So tell me the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done,” I said. Not that I wanted to know. The only thing I wanted to do at the moment was crawl into bed and pretend nothing about tonight had happened, because waking up tomorrow and having it all disappear was going to hurt more than I could bear.
Five
Jackson
I shouldn’t have suggested that as what she should ask me, because if I really told Pepper about the kinkiest thing I’d ever done, she might run and hide in her bedroom. She’d definitely never look at me the same way again.
But it was too late. I’d already made the suggestion, and she’d asked. If I wasn’t honest with her now, how could I ever expect her to believe that I really, honestly wanted her and would do whatever it took to have her in my life? I had to tell her the truth.
“You should come in here and sit down,” I said, since she was still in the kitchen with Arya and a fresh beer.
She took a long swig, eyeing me over the top of the bottle, before finally returning to the couch. I didn’t miss the fact that she sat as far away from me as she could possibly get.
“You sure you want to know?” I asked. “Because I could—”
“All right. If you’re sure.” I reached for her bottle and took a sip, grinning when she glared at me. Then I set the bottle on the coffee table, close enough to me that it would be well out of her reach. “Back in—”
“Wait,” she cut in. “Don’t tell me who. I don’t want to know that part.”
I tried not to laugh, but it was difficult even if I fully understood the sentiment. If the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want to have a clue who she was talking about doing dirty things with her. “Fine. No names. Just details. We were at a party. She was wearing a tight, short dress—a lot like the one you’re wearing, actually. Every guy in the room was looking at her all night instead of the girls they’d come with, and it made me jealous. Yeah, I knew she was coming home with me that night, but I didn’t like the way they were constantly staring at her. I knew what they were thinking. How they were trying to undress her in their minds. So I took her off to a corner of the room to give her a piece of my mind. Instead of listening to me gripe at her about it, she suggested I punish her.”
“Punish her?” Pepper spluttered. She reached for the beer again, leaning over so far that she gave me an excellent view of her cleavage.
“Yeah, she wanted me to punish her for making me jealous. She said she’d been trying to get those looks all night long because it made me grumpy and cranky, which always meant dirtier, hotter sex that night. So maybe I should bend her over my knee right there and spank her. And without waiting for me to decide how I felt about that, she pushed me down into the nearest chair, tugged the hem of her skirt up to her waist, and lay down over my knee. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to watch.”
“And you spanked her. Like she was a naughty little girl. With all those people staring.”
Dare To Love Series: Dreaming Up a Dare (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 4
