In Too Fast

by Mara Jacobs

  He pumped a few more strokes as I came down from my high, then he rested his face in the crook of my neck. His body leaned in to mine, stretching me even further, and I gasped his name, feeling the aftershocks.

  We stayed like that—our bodies joined, with my feet still off the ground, Stick’s strong arms holding my—not insignificant—weight.

  I don’t know how long it was before he turned around, sliding me further onto his body as I left the wall. He carried me the few steps to the bed and grabbed the bedding with one hand, giving it a yank down so that he could lay me down on the sheets. He followed me down, still staying inside me.

  I tucked my head into his chest, placing a soft kiss on his pec, not wanting to look at him. Not wanting him to know he’d just completely destroyed me.

  As no other man ever had.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Stick

  I ruled the road.

  And then I was sideswiped by Jane.

  I left the bed. Left Jane dozing under the sheet. A shame to cover her luscious body, but when the sweat that we’d worked up cooled down, she’d be chilled.

  I shook my head as I walked to the bathroom, unbelieving that I was thinking shit about how a girl I’d just banged might get chilled.

  Except she wasn’t just any girl. And it wasn’t your regular old bang.

  It was Jane. And it was…unfuckingbelievable.

  The sun was nearly down and the guesthouse was dim. We hadn’t turned on any lights when I’d dragged Jane here. There hadn’t been time. I’d had her pinned against the wall too quickly.

  And then she’d ground against me and all logical thought had left me. Instinct—and desperately wanting Jane naked for months—had taken hold.

  And then I’d taken hold of her.

  I switched on the light in the bathroom and shut the door so the glare wouldn’t rouse her.

  I didn’t think she was asleep, just in more of a post-sex haze. And I was too, but I wanted to get rid of the condom and clean up a little so we could commence with round two.

  I peeled the rubber off, then stopped. Something looked a little different. It’d been a while since I’d had sex (since before that first kiss with Jane when I’d dropped off Yvette), but I knew what a used rubber looked like. Not that I scientifically studied them or anything, but if you see what looks like blood on anything, you take a closer look.

  I held the thing together at the top, then ran it under the tap so water would run off the outside of it. And the water turned pink in the basin. Yeah, blood.

  She could have been having her period, though she hadn’t brought it up and I hadn’t seen anything to make me think she was.

  Or she could have just started her period.

  But no. I knew. Jane had been a virgin until about an hour ago.

  I wrapped the condom in a couple of Kleenex (Dotty didn’t need to be dealing with the sight of that) and put it in the trash. I washed up and took a wet washcloth and dry towel back to the bedroom with me.

  “Hey,” Jane said as I sat down on my side of the bed. My side. Like we had “sides” already. Like I hadn’t been sprawled right in the center of this lush bed the nights I’d stayed here.

  But yeah, I’d take a side for sure if it meant sharing my bed with Jane.

  She had her back to me, lying on her side, the line of her curves playing like the most erotic roller coaster ever.

  “Hey,” I said. I laid the warm, wet washcloth on her bared shoulder, and draped the towel over her hip, on top of the sheet.

  She reached up and pulled the washcloth in front of her. “Thanks,” she said, and the hand and the cloth disappeared under the sheet.

  God, I wanted to be the one to push that warm heat against her tender flesh. But I let her do it. Losing your virginity against a wall in a bout of emotional—okay, angry—sex might have been more than any girl could handle in one day without the guy pawing at her afterward because he just couldn’t get enough of her.

  But again, this wasn’t any girl. And my guess was that Jane could handle just about anything.

  “Why’d you pick out a Corvette?” she asked. She put the used washcloth on the floor on the other side of the bed. The towel was next to disappear under the sheet. The movements she made drove me crazy with want, and I slipped under the sheet and pulled the duvet (or whatever Dotty had called it) up to cover my newly burgeoning woody.

  It didn’t work; Jane’s eye went right to it when she rolled over onto her back and looked over at me. A brow quirked, but she didn’t remark on it. Just repeated her question, which I’d been too horned up about the thought of her under that sheet to answer. “Why’d you pick out a Corvette?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You picked it out, right?”

  I tried to remember what I’d said that first day, and if I was giving anything away by telling her how it had gone down.

  “It’s okay. I know you would have done it. Grayson wouldn’t want to be bothered with choosing a model—beyond saying it had to be American-made. And my father… My father just wouldn’t have given a shit.”

  Yep, that was pretty much exactly how it had gone down.

  “You picked it out, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. I reached out and laid a hand on her hip. The towel was underneath her mostly, but part of it was lying over her hip, and a bit of her stomach.

  Caro had nothing but the best of everything—including in her little-used guesthouse—and the towels were big, fluffy and soft, but they felt like burlap next to Jane’s smooth skin.

  I rolled onto my side to face her, keeping my hand gently on her, as if I didn’t want to scare her off.

  She stayed where she was, on her back, looking up at the ceiling. I’d left the light on in the bathroom and the door about halfway open. The beam of light cut across our bodies around waist level. I raised the duvet up higher on her side, letting it rest just under her breasts.

  Those babies should never—ever—be covered up at all, but I could deal with the sheet. When she’d breathe, the sheet would rise and fall on those sweet tits with just a hint of her nipples jutting against the white, crazy-high-thread-count cotton.

  Nothing had ever tasted sweeter than having them in my mouth.

  “Stop staring at my boobs and answer the question,” she said, though her eyes were closed.

  I smiled, maybe because she couldn’t see it. “You’re a Corvette, Jane, all the way.”

  She stilled for just a second before a grin crossed her face. “You mean because I’ve got great curves and am fast?”

  “No, though you’ve got great curves.” I moved closer, and my hand edged up her body, off the towel completely (thank God) and over those great curves. I cupped one of her tits in my hand and flicked my thumb across the nipple, it already pebbling and hardening at my touch.

  “And I’d hardly say fast. It’s been eight weeks. Twelve since Betsy’s wedding.”

  She didn’t ask eight weeks since what. She knew it was that day with Yvette. The day she’d sat in front of this huge place and told me about coming there as a kid with her mother.

  The day she’d pissed me off and I’d kissed her senseless.

  Well, that actually could have been any day in the past eight weeks.

  “You’re a Corvette because you announce your presence. In some ways you want people to notice you.” I thought of the funky clothes she wore, so different from what Lily and the Bribury Basics wore. Jane never wanted to blend in, and yet… “You don’t want to announce everything about yourself. You want to define yourself. Not let somebody else do it.”

  “And Yvette does that?”

  “Yes.”

  She waved a hand in dismissal. At least, I thought it was dismissal. My mind was thinking about how great it felt when she moved with my hand cupping her. I squeezed her and brushed my thumb against her nipple again, and she squelched a moan, I supposed not wanting me to know how much she liked it. But she did press her thighs toge
ther, the sight of which made my dick all the harder.

  “How do you figure I define myself? I’ve been nothing but a pawn my whole life. If that debacle in there today proved nothing else, it proved that.”

  I pulled my mind away from how great her tits felt and tried to get it right, feeling like I had to get it right. Not so I could keep feeling her up (and hopefully get her hands on me, too), but because I could sense something in her. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she was vulnerable, but…a shield was down. Not down very far, and surely not down for long. But I knew it was my chance to take a shot.

  “That’s the thing. You know you’ve been a pawn in other people’s games, but you refuse to play. You’re trying to make the rules bend to your advantage.”

  “That’s just playing their game, learning what they’ve taught me by example.”

  “Maybe. But maybe you’ve got everyone fooled and we’ll all be playing by your rules.”

  “Ha, I’ve got no one fooled.”

  My hand slid down, regretfully leaving her soft breast, and I rested it on her belly, just above her mound. “You don’t think everyone is fooled about you not being a virgin?”

  Everything about her stilled. I brushed my hand gently from hipbone to hipbone, not saying a word.

  “Well, of course you figured it out. You’ve probably been with tons of virgins.”

  “Fewer than you’d think,” I said, which was the truth. In my neighborhood, girls didn’t stay virginal very long once they’d hit puberty.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, but didn’t look over at me. I sat up a little, resting my head on my hand, my elbow on the bed, looking down at her.

  “You want to talk about it?” Words I’d probably never in my life said to a girl before. Yet they rolled off my tongue pretty easily. I wanted to hear Jane’s story.

  “God, no,” she said. She moved to cover her face with a hand, but I took it in mine and returned our clasped hands back under the covers to rest on her hipbone, her palm flat on her skin, mine on hers.

  “Why the big talk about wanting to bang the prof? Talking about slut-shaming you, and that you’d been with other guys?”

  She shrugged, and I watched as the sheet edged a tiny bit lower. “I never actually said I’d been with anyone.”

  I thought back. She was right. “No, you didn’t. But you certainly implied that you…had more experience than you obviously have.”

  “It’s nobody’s business who I have or haven’t slept with.”

  “You’re absolutely right, it’s not. But why the misdirection? Why not just say nothing?”

  She turned her head away from me, and I thought that maybe she was putting the shield back in place. I squeezed her hand, but didn’t say anything else.

  She turned her head back, but continued to look up, not at me. “You know that incident with Edgar Prescott?”

  “Who?”

  “That old guy at Betsy’s wedding?”

  My body tensed just thinking about that old perv’s hands on Jane. “Yeah?”

  “Stuff like that’s been happening since I turned thirteen and grew these,” she said, bobbing her chin in the general direction of her tits.

  She had a stellar body—tall, but all curves. Though you wouldn’t know it with the goofy, baggy clothes she wore.

  Ah…that was why the baggy clothes.

  “Boys my age I could handle. I put them in their place.”

  I smiled down at her. “I’ll just bet you did.”

  “But there were a lot of Edgar Prescotts. Men who knew my story, knew my mother’s history. Men who assumed the apple didn’t fall far from the slut tree.”

  I tensed again. I knew she would have handled Prescott if I hadn’t gotten to them. But had there been others, when she was younger, that she hadn’t been able to handle?

  “It never went too far, and most stepped back with a few good verbal shots.” And I’d just bet she shot some good ones. “But a rumor started at boarding school about a teacher and me. And I just kind of let it go. I was tired of it all by then. Tired of denying the lies. So I just let it hang out there.” She shrugged. “I never said anything ever happened when it didn’t, but I never said it didn’t, either. By the time I got to Bribury I was kind of used to the sexual swagger.”

  “It’s just part of the shield,” I said, not really intending to say it out loud.

  I thought she’d bristle, and when she moved, I knew she was going to turn away from me, get out of bed. I didn’t even want to examine how much the thought of that killed me.

  But she didn’t leave. She turned to her side, facing me. She untangled our hands and put hers under her head, her palm resting along her cheek. Her other hand moved to take mine, and she placed them both back on her hip. And I swear to God, my breath hitched and caught just looking at her as she watched me.

  “I don’t like how much you get me,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” I whispered, my eyes on her lips, still a little puffy from the angry kisses against the wall.

  “I get you, too,” she said, her mouth now inches from mine.

  “I know,” I said, and bent my head the few inches to kiss her.

  I drove back to Bribury that night, Jane wanting to sit in the passenger seat.

  We’d gone two more times, and each time it just got better, though I would have sworn that was impossible. But I was learning her body, much like you learned a new car. And, better yet, she was learning mine.

  Yeah, I taught her well how to handle a stick. And with more than just her hand.

  It was midnight by the time I’d gone back into the house to get Jane’s and my stuff. The house was dark except for the under-counter lights in the kitchen, left on by Dotty so I could see.

  I peeked in on Caroline and made sure she was okay. She was deep in sleep with the monitor on so Dotty would be able to hear her if she needed anything. I had one for the guesthouse, too, on nights I stayed. Which were now more and more frequent.

  Jane met me around the front of the house—said she didn’t want to go in in case Caro was still up. “She’ll know what we’ve been doing,” she said, and a cute little blush crept up her cheeks.

  Honestly, I didn’t think Jane was capable of blushing.

  Jane sat beside me in the car, reclined a bit, her eyes closed. Presumably putting her shield back in place. I drove with my hand high on her thigh except when I had to shift. I expected her to brush it off, but she didn’t.

  We drove in silence and I thought about the past twelve weeks since Betsy’s wedding. And even the events that brought me to the wedding.

  Brought me to Jane.

  I’d been summoned to go to the wedding by Spaulding. About a week earlier he’d made me an offer I couldn’t refuse (and yeah, it had felt a little Godfatherish at the time), but it would be contingent on Caro’s approval. I’d lain pretty low at the reception, blending in as only a thief knew how to do, until I saw Jane. More significantly, Jane in that dress.

  She’d been a total ball buster the few times I’d been around her when she’d been with Lily. But there was just something about her that stayed with me.

  I didn’t want to be drawn to her—especially after I found out who she was. And I knew she didn’t want to be drawn to me, either. I could tell she thought I was nothing but a douchebag criminal who was weighing down her best friend’s boyfriend.

  She wasn’t wrong. But she didn’t really know me.

  But now? Yeah, I kind of thought that she did. About as much as I was getting to know the real her.

  The shield made it tough. And there were days when I didn’t even want to bother trying to get through it. She was a lot of work, Jane. And I wasn’t even sure it was worth it.

  Until today. Being inside her. All that energy—anger, fear, but also determination. She was just…fierce. I didn’t doubt for one minute that if she ever harnessed it all, she could rule the world.

  And she wouldn’t be able to d
o that with an ex-car-thief by her side.

  She knew it. Knew it from the beginning, even before I grasped it, before I’d even really thought about her and me. And it had royally pissed me off.

  Not that I was looking for a life partner at twenty-one or anything. Shit no. I loved the freedom I had—needed it in my line of work.

  My previous line of work.

  I had a couple of very loose, very casual “friends with benefits” situations here and there, mostly with women in my “network” who were just as happy as I to keep it no strings attached.

  But even that, casual as it was, I put an end to after that first day I’d kissed Jane. I’d known even then something was going to happen with Jane, something I didn’t want or deserve. Something I fought every time since that day I’d brought her Yvette.

  Yvette. Christ, Jane was the most original girl I’d met, and she couldn’t have come up with something better for a Corvette than Yvette?

  I must have grunted my amusement, because Jane turned out of her fog and softly said, “What?”

  I liked the fierce Jane. The Jane that gave as good as she got. Hell, gave a ton better than she got. The Jane who took none of my shit and called me on it every time.

  But this Jane? Highlighted by the glow of the dash, leaning back, her hair tousled and eyes still just a tiny bit dazed.

  This Jane made me forget that it was a very bad idea for us to be anything more than fuck buddies.

  Because…I wanted so much more.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking.”

  She smiled at me, and my memory raced to just a while ago when she’d smiled at me before taking me in that sweet (and yet tart) mouth.

  “First time for everything,” she said, with no real bite. The smile stayed with her as she turned her head back to the road.

  I would have to move very slowly with Jane. Not that eight weeks from first kiss (real kiss; I didn’t count that bullshit on the dance floor) to falling into bed wasn’t excruciatingly slow.

  Not that I hadn’t gone home and jerked off thinking about what might have been every time I drove away from her in Lot H.