She looked at him and he could see in her eyes that maybe his very strong daughter needed a hug, too. “I guess.”
He wrapped his arms around her and brought her into his body. His chin rested on top of her head and when he felt her arms clasp him tight around his waist he knew that he was never letting her out of his sight again.
“Okay, you two, I’m sprung.” JoJo was back in her thin heels and looked nearly steady on them as she approached. “Also shockingly, I’m hungry. So what kind of meal do I get for saving Sophie’s life? I’m figuring it should at least include dessert.”
“Well, it’s got to be takeout since we have to get you to the apartment. Sophie, near-death-experience meal—what are your thoughts?”
Sophie bit her lower lip. “Szechuan. Or Indian. Something superhot and radical. Totally.”
Mark and JoJo shrugged. “Sounds like a plan.”
*
“IF I DRINK any more water, I will float away.” JoJo laid back on the couch with her hand over her stomach.
“That’s what you get for taking on the level eight spicy.” Mark used his chopsticks to pull the last piece of pork from the container.
“But I was so confident after handling level seven.”
“You guys are both turkeys. I went for the level ten and I’m still standing.”
“Yes, but you can’t see that your hair is actually on fire,” Mark told his daughter. The three of them had changed into comfort clothes and decided that eating while they watched Love, Actually was the best way to get over the frightening events of the day.
Mark, of course, had to point out that it was highly improbable that the prime minister of England would be caught kissing a girl backstage at a school show without his protection detail being nearby. After which he’d been pummeled by pillows.
JoJo wore one of Sophie’s Tshirts and pajama pants and Mark tried to pretend that he didn’t realize she wasn’t wearing a bra. Ogling his colleague was out of bounds. Ogling a woman in his daughter’s presence was also not cool.
Ogling a woman who had recently been hit by a car made him a bad person.
Still, every time she moved, he had to force himself not to look. It was official. He was a bastard.
Beyond his prurient thoughts, there was that other feeling. The feeling that he liked JoJo lying on his couch in pajamas. He liked Sophie sitting in the chair next to them, cracking open the cookies to read everyone’s fortune. He liked sitting on the floor, his back against the couch, making snarky comments about the romantic comedy that earned him hisses and boos until finally they resorted to physical violence.
He couldn’t say why he liked it. It wasn’t family, certainly. In fact, this felt weird to him. He tried to recall a time in the past fifteen years when he’d ever felt this…content. Contentment wasn’t something you found in Afghanistan. It wasn’t found in cold caves high on a mountainside. It didn’t overwhelm him while hunkered on cot in a military base bunker.
He used to think shooting the shit with other agents and military personnel was his idea of camaraderie, but this was different than that. This was more personal.
By reputation, he was a lone-wolf type. Always acting on his own, taking risks nobody else took. Mark cultivated that persona. He liked the idea that he was a separate entity. He liked the autonomy it gave him. Maybe the way Helen had tried to cling to him resulted in the need to always keep a few feet of space between him and anyone else. Honestly, he didn’t think so, though.
He’d simply been born that way. Which, in a way, made him want to apologize to Helen. To tell her he was sorry she felt he always had one foot out the door. Because it probably was how she felt. He knew it was how he felt.
That was what was so odd about this moment. There was no space. Not between him and Sophie. Not between him and JoJo. Yet he had no urge to get up. Instead he wanted to stay where he was. That freaked him out.
“Who wants ice cream?” Mark ran for the kitchen, telling himself it was not because he was in full-blown panic mode. But it was.
“Vanilla for me,” said Sophie.
“Me, too. Maybe it will put out the level-eight fire.”
“What do you want to watch next?”
“Please, something manly,” Mark said from the kitchen. He wasn’t sure he could handle another movie with people falling in love all around. Love was not in his vocabulary.
*
THEY DECIDED ON superheroes. Appropriately manly, without being unnecessarily upsetting. JoJo dozed off throughout the movie and when it finished she felt a hand on her shoulder, waking her.
“What’s your name?”
Josephine Elizabeth Hatcher. Wow, it had been a long time since she’d thought of herself in that way.
“Come on, honey. Wake up for me. What’s your name?”
JoJo couldn’t imagine who might call her honey. She had never been a honey in her life. Maybe babe, but certainly not honey. Honey implied sweet and she’d spent her life devoted to not being sweet.
“JoJo.”
“Where are you?”
“On the couch. We were watching movies with Sophie. It was nice.”
“It was nice. Come on. Sophie’s already in bed. Let me get you there, too.”
“I can stay on the couch.” She was fully awake now and sitting up. There was no reason to take his bed. Where he slept. Probably naked.
Now why the hell did she think that? The Penis thought was getting out of control. She knew she needed to forcibly end any thoughts about it, but tonight she didn’t have the energy.
“Trust me, you’re going to be sore as hell tomorrow. You’ll do better if you sleep comfortably. Now are you going to stand or do I carry you again.”
Carry me again.
Fortunately, JoJo didn’t express that thought. No, despite the circumstances of being hit and tossed over the hood of a car she still remembered very clearly what it’d felt like to be held by him.
Safe.
She decided every woman should try it at least once, but no woman should ever get used to it. It was an illusion.
She gingerly made it onto her feet. The ice bag she’d kept on her hip all night fell to the carpet as a squishy bag of water. JoJo bent to pick it up, but Mark told her to leave it.
“I’ll refreeze it tonight so you have it ready for tomorrow.”
Tomorrow she would be fine. Tomorrow she would go to her hotel room. Because two days of this was too much. Too much like…something she didn’t want to name.
“Do you want some ibuprofen or something? I’m not actually sure what I can give you with the concussion. I should have asked the doctor.”
“No, I’m fine.” Like he’d said, she was a little sore, but nothing she couldn’t live with.
He followed her into his room. When she stopped in front of the bed, he stepped around her to pull the comforter down.
“I changed the sheets if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Not really, but she obviously looked stupid standing in the middle of the room looking at the bed as if it might bite her.
She climbed in and let him tuck the comforter around her. It was such a silly gesture. She was a grown woman. Still, it made her teary.
“I’ll check on you in a few hours,” he said as he stood over her.
For a second she had this crazy idea that he might kiss her. Then he did exactly that, leaning over and placing a gentle kiss in the center of her forehead.
“Thank you for risking yourself to save my daughter’s life. I owe you.”
Uncomfortable, JoJo rolled away from him, deeper into the comfort of the bed.
It smelled like him. She knew it would, too, fresh sheets and all.
“You don’t owe me,” she mumbled, trying to hold on to the idea that they were only two people who worked together. “It’s my job.”
“Right. Sleep tight…at least for a few hours.”
JoJo decided she was too uncomfortable to sleep. It didn’t feel right to sleep in
a bed that smelled like someone else. She’d never done it before. She would simply lie still and then pretend to wake up when he shook her the next time.
*
“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”
“Hmm?”
“Come on, wake up for me. What’s your name?”
“JoJo.” Had she slept after all? She must have or she wouldn’t be so groggy.
“Why did you get those tattoos on your neck?”
She could feel the gentlest touch of fingers caressing the side of her neck under her earlobe.
“To hurt him.”
“Your father?”
JoJo nodded. “And to be different from her.”
“Your sister.”
“My twin. Julia.”
“Okay, go back to sleep.” JoJo had no problem obeying the command. She buried her face into the pillow and let his scent wrap around her as securely as the blanket.
“You smell good,” she muttered.
She was asleep again before she heard his answer.
*
“JOJO, WAKE UP. What’s your name?”
“You just said it,” she grumbled. She was having a really nice dream about soft kisses and caresses along her neck. Was this interruption really necessary?
“Where are you?”
“In your bed.”
She heard a soft grunt then.
“Who am I?”
“Marky Mark?”
“Okay, now you’re just being mean. Given that the sarcasm has returned, I think we can assume you’re safely out of the woods. Sleep tight, we’ll be here when you wake up.”
We’ll be here when you wake up.
Again JoJo found herself tearing up, but this time the tears slid into the pillowcase. The words sounded so nice. We. Mark and Sophie. Family.
Damn, she thought, that was the word she didn’t want to use because it hurt too much.
Staying with them…it felt like family.
CHAPTER TEN
JOJO WOKE SLOWLY, stretching and bending her body every which way. Her hip still throbbed a bit but her head was clear. For moments she relaxed in the comfort of the bed, feeling deliciously content. Which was strange given how interrupted her sleep had been.
She vaguely recalled the late-night visits from Mark. In one she was fairly sure he touched her. She recalled his fingers on her neck and it brought a corresponding dull heat low in her belly.
Game over.
It was time to stop denying that she thought about him that way. The man was whip-smart. Always her first turn-on. Tall, lean and built, a deadly combination. And completely sure of himself.
Any woman’s definition of hot.
Beyond those qualities there was something so much more seductive about him. It was the mystery. The idea that at any given time she didn’t know which Mark she was going to get. Funny Mark. Serious Mark. Tender Mark. Badass Mark.
She didn’t know if other women saw all the facets of him, but she was silly enough to want to be the only woman who did. Mark had a bad-boy quality that he held in check. Similarly, he could be compelled to lift women from the sidewalk and carry them in his arms. She’d bet when he’d been an agent, dealing with other female agents, he’d kept that tender part of himself well hidden.
It was a nice idea, JoJo thought. To think that she knew what made Mark tick. It implied he’d let her get close in this short span of time. It suggested that the trust he had in her, not only to protect his daughter, but also to show her the many sides of himself, had been almost instantly won.
There was a danger in closeness. JoJo knew that too well. The closer he allowed her to get to him, the more she risked the reverse being true. Mark knowing what made her tick.
It was scary.
It was also thrilling.
She closed her eyes and let herself do what she rarely allowed. She thought of him, about the way he made her feel. She thought about what each touch he’d bestowed on her had done to her gooey girl middle.
She thought about what it would be like to have sex.
Not sex with anyone, but with him. What his naked back would feel like under hands. What his hands would feel like on her breasts. She caressed herself under the T-shirt she wore and wondered if he’d known she hadn’t been wearing a bra last night. In her life she’d never been aware of the sensation of cotton rubbing against her breasts. But she had been last night. Every time she shifted on the couch and he turned to look at her.
Cupping her breast, she felt the weight of it and tried to imagine how his hand would feel. Would his skin be rough? Would he squeeze her, or use his fingers on her like he had when he’d touched her neck?
It hadn’t been a dream. She knew it hadn’t. She couldn’t bring the entire moment into focus, but that feel of his fingers running along her neck now made her shiver.
For a little while, she thought, only for a little while would she let herself imagine what it would be like. Her nipple under her fingers tightened and she plucked the taut flesh, imagining what he would do. He’d tug on them. Maybe a little too hard. Hard enough to make her feel it.
Then he would take a nipple into this mouth. Because that would be like him, too. Hard, then soft. Rough, then tender, so she understood there was no one Mark, but many Marks and she was in bed with all of them.
JoJo licked her finger and touched herself, wondering if this was how it would feel.
Maybe. Only stronger. More intense. She started to ache between her legs. A reminder that her sex was still a part of her body, even though she tried so hard to ignore it. It was shameful, maybe even a little sinful, that she let her other hand trail down her body, under the band of the pajama pants she wore, into her already damp panties. Because as she’d been thinking about him, she’d been trying to expand that light caress on her neck to cover her entire body.
This was so wrong. She hated to do this to herself. Hated it when her body reminded her that it wanted what she deliberately deprived it of.
She shouldn’t be doing this. She shouldn’t be doing this here. But oh, did it feel good to lie in a bed that smelled of Mark. To imagine she was surrounded by him. That it was his hands on her breasts, his fingers teasing her sex. To feel those things that other women did. That he’d done to other women.
Other women. Not her.
She couldn’t stop. No, she didn’t want to stop. She slipped a finger inside her body, pretending it was his, surprised by how wet she was, how easy it was to stroke inside her body. She turned her face into the duvet that had covered her while she slept and inhaled his scent and thought about how it might feel to have him lie on top of her, come inside her body, to thrust hard and deep.
She groaned as a surge of pleasure rippled through her body and that flicker of intense heat immediately froze her hand.
No. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair. She wasn’t supposed to feel this good. Ever.
JoJo pulled her hands away from her body, laying each out to the side as far away from her body as she could, straining against a physical need she would not satisfy.
A gasp had her swinging her head to the door. Mark stood in the doorway like a piece of marble that had been sculpted. His jaw was tight, his eyes were like dark shiny diamonds. His hands were two fists at his sides. He was hitting one fist against his thigh.
For a moment neither of them moved. Then like a man breaking free of his marble cage, he forced his legs and his body to turn. Quietly, he shut the door behind him.
*
IT COULD HAVE been minutes or maybe an hour before he heard the sound of his bedroom door opening. It didn’t matter. He was still hard.
Shifting on the couch to once again find room in his jeans for his erection, Mark clenched his two hands together and waited. He listened to her bare feet padding along the floor and thought to suggest she could borrow a pair of his socks.
But sock made him think of cock and he was trying to control himself.
Quietly, she sat next to him, dressed again in the clothes
she’d been wearing yesterday. Her high-heel pumps dangling from her fingers.
Fingers he wanted to suck in his mouth. Desperately.
She’d showered. He could smell his soap on her skin. He thought about her body under a stream of hot water. He thought about him with her in that shower, naked. When he’d first heard the sound of rushing water—which he had because he’d been on the other side of his bedroom door with his head pressed against the wood in a moment of pure agony—he had actually reached for the doorknob. Something stopped him.
No, not something. He knew what had stopped him.
Shit.
This was not supposed to happen. He was not supposed to want her. She was wrong on so many levels. Except his body didn’t agree.
His body was an idiot.
“So, this is a little awkward.”
“Really? You think?” He cut off his sarcasm, deciding he at least needed to explain his actions. “I heard you gasp…I thought you might be in pain.”
“Right. Okay. Let me start,” she began as if she’d spent the time apart planning exactly what she was going to say. “First, Sophie?”
“She’s with Ben Tyler. He and Anna took her for the morning. I didn’t want to leave you and she needed to get to practice and rehearsal. They made it seem like they just wanted a preview of the show. She knew better, but it’s fine. I think she’s figured out she’s not going to be out of anyone’s sight until this is over.”
“Okay.” For a moment she said nothing. “You understand that when this is over I have to quit.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t see any other way around it. He wanted her. Sexually. And he knew, somehow knew, that what she was doing in that bed was more about him and less about scratching an itch. The way she turned her face into the blanket as if she was taking in his scent. He closed his eyes, not to block the memory, but to hold it. Hopefully forever, because he’d never seen anything so erotic in his life.
“Sorry.”
“I don’t think this is something you can apologize for. It just happened.”
She nodded and then must have decided there was nothing left to talk about. “I’m going back to the hotel to change, then to head over to the Kimmel Center. I can be there when Ben and Anna drop off Sophie so they can leave if they want.”
For the First Time Page 12
