“I did.”
Pepper squirmed, squeezing her legs together.
“Does that make you uncomfortable?” I asked, even though I didn’t need her to answer. She was as uncomfortable as I’d ever seen her, but judging by the way her tits were hard peaks pressing against the fabric of her dress, she was turned on at the thought of it.
Maybe Pepper was a little freaky, too.
And if she couldn’t let that side of herself out with me, who could she show it to? Probably not anyone. I had the sudden urge to discover just what kinds of kink she might be into.
“Was that all?” she asked in lieu of answering me.
“No.” Even if the story had been finished there, I wasn’t ready to end this interaction. I wanted to draw it out as much as I could, figure out everything possible about what turned Pepper on. “I spanked her a few times, and she started getting wet. At one point, she slid her panties down, leaving her ass completely bare to me and everyone else who wanted to see. So I spanked her until the whole thing was red and hot. We left soon after that, but we didn’t make it far. We were both so turned on that we ended up fucking in the car in the parking lot. I’m pretty sure a few of the people from the party had followed us out and watched that, too.”
“Did you…like having an audience?” Pepper asked.
“I did.” I refused to look away from her. “I do. I like knowing that people are into what I’m doing. I like the bit of fear or embarrassment that comes with taking things that should be private and making them public. It only makes things hotter.”
My story had her breathing hard, like she was the one I’d just bent over my knee and put on display. “And she didn’t get upset that you spanked her, even though she’d asked you to?”
“Spanking isn’t for everyone. But for those who enjoy it, there’s nothing like it. For the giver and the receiver,” I added, just in case she ever thought she might want to give it a try. One thing at a time, though. “Anyway, enough about that. My turn. Truth or Dare?”
Pepper gave me a wary look and tucked one foot up under her.
“Guess I can’t say neither, huh?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t trust you to give me a fair dare, so truth.”
“I’ll make it easy on you,” I said, ignoring the way she rolled her eyes. “Same question. Kinkiest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Oh, right. That’s easy, hmm?”
“You telling me you’ve ever bared your ass in public and asked your guy to spank you?”
“Maybe I did the spanking,” she shot back, but she blushed so hard I couldn’t take her seriously.
“Or something worse, then?”
“I don’t know that worse is really helpful when it comes to things like this.”
“Just spill it, Pepper. Kinkiest thing you’ve ever done. Go.”
She pressed her eyes closed. “I had a threesome. Okay?”
Then she tried to get up and run off to the guest room, but I grabbed her hand and stopped her.
“Seriously?” I asked. I’d almost had my hard-on under control, but all my efforts were for naught now. The thought of Pepper with two people at once—a man and a woman, two men, I didn’t care—was hotter than I knew how to handle. “You really had a threesome?”
“Yes.” She still wouldn’t open her eyes, so I tugged her onto the couch beside me and anchored her to my side.
“I gave you a lot more detail,” I pointed out when she didn’t start filling me in. “No names,” I remembered to add.
“It was in college. We were at a frat party. We snuck off to one of the rooms upstairs and shut the door. We started fooling around, and he had me naked before another guy walked in on us. One of his friends. Things just…happened. It didn’t take long before the friend joined us. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he told me later that they’d planned it all along. Thought it’d be easier to get me to agree if we were already”—Pepper shook her head and waved her hand through the air— “in the middle of things, I guess.”
“And was it?” I asked, because I needed to make some mental notes. Not about getting Pepper to agree to a threesome, exactly. More to convince her to agree to something she might not be comfortable with at first, even if she would end up liking it.
But I couldn’t do what they’d done. I couldn’t trick her into something by getting her all hot and bothered, and then hope she’d be so far gone that she wouldn’t complain. That was a chickenshit way to go about things, and she deserved better.
Her expression was as sheepish as I’d ever seen. “I didn’t exactly fight the idea.”
“Did you like it?”
She blushed so hard I wondered that her hair didn’t turn red. “Yes.” But she stopped there, not elaborating.
“What did you like?”
“You’re being a jerk, you know that?” she said, but she laughed.
“Yeah, I know.” I winked. “So what did you like?”
She gave me a dirty look. “I liked that it was all about me. All about making me feel good. I mean, yeah, they both got off, but there were two of them focused on making sure I got off, too.”
“Did they—”
Pepper held up a hand and stopped me. “I think I’ve answered your question well enough. My turn. Truth or Dare?”
I supposed we could come back to that someday. At least now I knew that she was more adventurous than I’d given her credit for. “Truth,” I said. Based on the way things had been going, that was probably a better bet for continuing along the same path we were already on. If I asked her for a dare, she might dare me to lick a cat’s ass next.
“You said when you kissed me, you weren’t going to stop until you made me come. But you didn’t make me come. Why’d you stop?”
That wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all.
I took a moment to collect my thoughts. This wasn’t something to mess around with. We were making progress, and I didn’t want to take a step backward.
“I stopped when I did,” I said cautiously, “because I want you to be completely sober and clearheaded the first time I make you come. I want you to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I want it. That giving you that kind of pleasure means more to me than finding my own. I’m not going to take a shortcut like those guys did when you were in college, trying to trick you into something when you’re distracted by something else, whether it’s booze or being horny, or whatever.”
“Oh…” Pepper reached for the beer again and drained the last of it.
Was she nervous about the implications of my words? Or was she trying to be sure she stayed good and drunk, so I wouldn’t do anything to make her come? I couldn’t be sure.
I took the empty bottle from her, along with the others from earlier, and carried them into the kitchen. “Maybe this is enough for tonight,” I said, rinsing the bottles in the sink.
“I’m f—”
“I’m not saying you’re too drunk,” I cut in. “I just think this has been a lot for both of us to process for now. Maybe you should go to bed. Sleep it off. See what tomorrow brings.”
“Jackson,” she said, not even attempting to hide the plea in her tone.
“Go to bed, Pepper.” I shut off the faucet and tossed the bottles in the recycling bin under my sink. “Before I change my mind and take you to mine.”
Six
Pepper
Jackson was already up and eating a bowl of oatmeal with berries and turkey sausage patties by the time I forced myself out of bed the next morning. I’d been tempted to crawl to the kitchen after trying, unsuccessfully, to puke up my guts in the toilet, but somehow I forced myself to walk upright, like a normal human being.
“Hungry?” he asked when I joined him.
I shook my head, wished I hadn’t moved that much, and filled a glass with water from the tap. Even the smell of his food was almost too much.
“Tylenol’s in the cabinet,” he said. “I don’t know how much it’ll help, but it’s w
orth a try.”
The only thing that would help right now was finding a way to rehydrate my body. I hadn’t had that much to drink in one sitting in years—probably not since I was going to frat parties in college.
Oh. Yeah. Frat parties. I’d told him about what had happened at one of those, hadn’t I? God only knew what else I’d told him, too. I chugged the water and refilled my glass before taking a seat on the stool next to him at the bar.
“Remind me never to play Truth or Dare with you again,” I croaked out. My voice sounded like it had been through the blender. Probably about right, considering the way I felt.
Jackson chuckled. “How about I remind you never to drink that much in one night again? Something tells me the game wasn’t your problem.”
In lieu of nodding, I raised a hand slightly in acknowledgment. That seemed like a much better course of action than anything that would require movement of my head, at least if I intended to remain upright and not puke everywhere. “If you say one word about this to my mother…”
“My lips are sealed.”
Except for when he’d kissed me, unless you counted them being sealed against mine.
Not at all what I needed to be thinking about right now. It would only make me hurt worse than I already did, because there wasn’t a chance in hell that he meant anything he’d done or said last night.
“I’ve got to head out for morning skate soon,” he said, nattering on like there wasn’t anything he’d rather be doing.
I glared at him for being so chipper and cheerful while I wanted to find a hole to bury myself in.
“Think you’ll come to the game tonight?” he asked.
Thousands of people. Lots of noise. Goal horns. Sounded like hell, even on a good day. And today was definitely not a good day. “I might just crawl under a rock and die,” I forced out.
Jackson laughed and got up. He rinsed his dishes in the sink before loading them into the dishwasher. “Maybe it’ll be better in time. And if not, it’s okay. You can watch here on the big screen with the sound off.”
I expected him to head off to his bedroom to finish getting himself ready, but he didn’t. He walked up behind me and kissed the top of my head, rubbing his hands up and down my biceps.
I stiffened. Couldn’t help it. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to make you feel better.”
“This isn’t what we do. This isn’t who we are.”
“No?” Jackson squeezed my arms before releasing me. “Maybe we should be.”
~ * ~ * ~
I spent the day nursing my hangover and trying to sort out all the crazy thoughts racing through my head. Maybe Jackson really had meant to kiss me like that. Maybe he felt the same way about me as I felt about him. Maybe the alcohol had only served to loosen us up so we could finally be honest with each other.
It was a nice thought, but I was still more than simply wary about allowing myself to think along those lines. Getting my hopes up only to have them come crashing down on me again wasn’t what I needed right now.
I needed a job.
I needed direction in my life.
I needed to find a way to move on from gymnastics, to find some new passion. Gymnastics and Jackson Maddox were the only two things in my life I’d ever been passionate about. Now, I’d lost one of them, and I was on the verge of losing the other. In fact, I might have already lost Jackson, too, because I’d been a big, fat idiot last night. Gymnastics had been taken from me in a flash, but I was going to lose Jackson slowly. I wasn’t sure which was more painful.
Those were the reasons I was here, not to hook up with Jackson—something I reminded myself of over and over again once my headache and nausea finally started to clear up.
Tomorrow, I was supposed to go up to the Miami Thunder headquarters and meet with Alex Dare. That should, at least, be productive in terms of finding somewhere to start figuring out the job part of things. But that meeting wasn’t until tomorrow. Today, I didn’t have to do anything other than get over my hangover and maybe go to Jackson’s game tonight, a thought that was both liberating and annoying.
By the time he came home from the morning skate and team video session, my headache was down to a dull throb and my nausea had passed. I was even hungry enough that I’d started making lunch.
He came into the kitchen and grinned. “Smells good. Feeling better, then?”
“Some.” I took out a spoon and filled it with some of the pasta sauce I’d loaded with veggies and lean proteins and a ton of flavor, holding it out for him to taste.
“I meant you smell good,” he said, tasting the sauce anyway. “This is good, too, though, just like everything you make.”
I decided to ignore his comment about how I smelled. “If only I could find a way to put my skills in the kitchen to use.”
“Who says you can’t? I know plenty of guys who don’t know how to cook but need to eat right.”
Hmm. There was a thought. Not that I had a clue about how to get started along that path. Still, it was something I could bring up tomorrow with Alex. He seemed to think he knew how to get me pointed in the right direction for whatever I wanted to do, so this could be a way to test that theory.
“You feel better enough that you’ll come with me tonight?” Jackson asked, filling a couple of glasses with water.
The pasta water had started to boil, so I emptied the box and threw in a bunch of salt to season it. “Will you be mad if I don’t?”
“I think you know by now that I’m never mad at you. At least not for long.”
“Not for long?” Something lurched in my stomach. I focused all my attention on preparing lunch, not looking in Jackson’s direction in case he could read the anxiety in my eyes. “Does that mean you’re mad at me now?”
“Not mad, exactly. Frustrated? Something like that.”
“Why are you frustrated?” I asked, even though there were any number of reasons he could and should be annoyed with me after last night.
“Because you still want to believe everything that happened between us last night was only a product of all the booze in your system.”
That only made the lurching turn to flutters and tingles.
“What are you saying?” I forced out.
He slipped behind me, his fingers gently untangling the mess of my hair, and suddenly I couldn’t take a full breath. “It wasn’t a mistake,” he said. “Not as far as I’m concerned. I want to see where this takes us.”
I fought the urge to lean back against him. Stirred the sauce to busy myself.
“I’m scared, too,” Jackson said. “Of what could happen if it doesn’t work. But I think it will. I think we both love each other enough that we’ll be okay, no matter what happens between us.”
“You love me?” I whispered.
“You know I do.”
I did, but I’d never imagined he could love me the way I loved him. The way he loved me was different. It had to be. Wrapping my head around what he said was proving to be more difficult and more intense than I’d ever imagined, even though it was all I wanted and more. I was an emotional wreck. And that part was definitely not solely due to all the alcohol I’d had last night.
I’d never believed in fairy tales; I’d always believed in hard work and persistence. That was how I’d clawed my way to the top of my sport. It was how Jackson had managed to become a professional hockey player even though all the scouts had overlooked him and he hadn’t been drafted. It was how he’d gotten out of Livingston, and it was how I intended to get out, too, or at least to stay out now that I was here.
But now my life was starting to resemble a fairy tale. I only hoped it would have a Disney-esque ending instead of something along the lines of how the Grimm Brothers told their stories.
“I have to tell you something you’re not going to want to hear,” Jackson said, and I immediately tensed.
“Something bigger than telling me you love me?” My effort at keeping my tone light wasn’t very effect
ive.
“You were quiet so long I figured you weren’t ready to hear it. So there’s something else I need to tell you.”
I sighed, bracing myself for whatever would come next. “What’s that?”
“Barnes wants to throw a party to welcome you to town. A bunch of the guys’ll be there, with their wives and girlfriends.”
“For me?” If the party was for me, I couldn’t exactly skip out on it. “How many is a bunch?”
“Probably everyone on the team except LeBlanc. Don’t kill me.”
“I won’t kill you.” I might hold a grudge, though. “Did you at least try to talk him out of it? Or talk him down to just a few of the guys on the team instead of everyone?”
“He announced it to the whole team before he said a word to me about it. It’ll be a big end-of-the-season bash, so it’s not just about you.”
“But I still have to go.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I talk about you all the time. The boys want to get to know you.”
“When is this party going to be?” I needed time to prepare myself for more socializing.
“Since we have a few days off in a row in the middle of the week, Wednesday.”
That wasn’t much time, especially considering I’d already had to suffer through the Thunder party last night with no warning. So maybe it wasn’t such a fairy-tale life after all. Damn it.
Seven
Jackson
Since Pepper was going to have to go to this party even though she would rather do anything else, I’d been fully aware there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d be able to work herself up to go to the game that night. She needed time to decompress and get her head on straight for the next round of socializing she’d have to suffer through. She loved people, but being around too many of them too often was all it took to drain the life right out of her. I understood that much about her, even if I wasn’t anywhere close to the same, so I didn’t give her a hard time about it.
She’d said she’d watch us on my big screen, so I knew she’d seen me play what was essentially the best game of my pro career, as far as I was concerned. I’d scored a power-play goal, gotten an assist on what ended up being the game-winning goal, and I’d even had a fight with New York’s captain after the guy laid out one of our young forwards with an ugly hit. Yeah, I’d had a Gordie Howe hat trick. I was still amped up when I got home a little after eleven.
Dare To Love Series: Dreaming Up a Dare (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 5
