It meant everything.
Wild’s brain was on excitement overload. Not only was he hanging out with Jaz in a capacity that was decidedly more than buddies, but also the place they were at was fucking awesome. Parker’s Adult Arcade was set up in a warehouse and had everything from paintball to laser tag to ax throwing to an adult bouncy house obstacle course. It was like someone had reached into his brain, pulled out all of his favorite things, and put them all in one room. He’d have to come back here with Mad. He’d love the hell out of it.
“I can’t wait to embarrass you at this,” Jaz said as they waited for their time to throw the axes. She’d been making threats like that all night—telling him she was going to kick his ass in this and that. And the majority of the time, she wasn’t wrong. For someone so small and pretty, she was fiercely competitive.
“You don’t stand a chance. I’m practically a world champion at darts. I’m going to rock at this too.”
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Please. You can barely hit a piece of drywall with a sledgehammer.”
Wild narrowed his eyes at her. “Have you and Maddox been talking shit about me?”
She giggled, and it made him unable to hide his smile. Man, she was fun. Wild couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed a date this much. And unlike Mad, who was picky about who he’d dated in the past, Wild had been on lots of dates—mostly first dates but dates all the same.
When it was their turn, Wild motioned like a gentleman for Jaz to go first.
Jaz scoffed. “You’re the world champion. Show me what you got.”
“Okay. But don’t blame me when you’re too embarrassed to take your turn after seeing how awesome I am.”
“Just throw the damn thing.”
Wilder laughed as he approached the guy holding the ax. The man gave Wild advice about how to stand and aim and then handed him an ax and got the hell out of the way. Wrapping his hands around the handle, Wild staggered his stance like he’d been instructed and stared at the target, willing himself to do well. He pulled the ax back over his head and then quickly brought his hands forward, releasing it at what he thought was precisely the right moment to split the target right down the middle.
He was wrong. So very wrong. The ax sailed wide to the right, embedding itself in the plywood for a half second before clattering to the ground. Hearing snickering behind him, he slowly turned around. “Okay, so it’s a little different than darts.”
Snorting out a laugh, Jaz said, “Ya think?”
“I just need to get the hang of it.” He got five throws. Surely each one would get progressively better.
Spoiler alert: they didn’t. He only made contact with the target once, and the ax was somehow sideways when it happened. When he stepped back to let Jaz have her turn, he tried hard to not seem like his ego had been slightly bruised by his performance.
“That was…informative. Thank you.” Jaz tried, and failed, to fight a smile as she spoke.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s see how you do before you talk any more smack.”
After receiving the same instructions Wild had, Jaz got in position and took aim. Her throw was strong and precise, causing the ax to sail through the air and slice into the target. It wasn’t a bull’s-eye, but she not only managed to hit the damn thing, she managed to throw it hard enough that it stayed put. The worker pulled it free before she took her next turn. Which was even better than her first. With each throw, Jaz inched closer to a bull’s-eye. She never actually got one—thank God—but she came damn close.
As they walked away, Wild threw his arm around her shoulders. “I feel like I got hustled.”
“Would it make you feel better if I said you kinda did?”
“No. But tell me anyway.”
Jaz huffed out a soft laugh before saying, “My mom’s second husband used to like to go out and chop down his own firewood. He had a cabin in the mountains, and we’d go up there on weekends when we were kids. He’d disappear for hours each day and come back in sweating and hauling wood. One day I asked if I could go with him, he said sure, and we became instant chopping buddies. So while I’ve never thrown an ax before, I am pretty familiar with handling them.”
“Is this the same guy who taught you how to put down a hardwood floor?”
“One and the same.”
Wilder squeezed her shoulder. “He sounds like a great guy.”
“Yeah, he was definitely my favorite.”
“Favorite?” Wild asked, thinking the phrasing strange. Jaz hadn’t shared much about her family. Little tidbits here and there, but she tended to be vague on the subject.
“Favorite of the stepfathers.”
“How many have you had?”
“Mom will be marrying husband number five in a couple of months.” Wild must not have done a good job of keeping the surprise off his face, because Jaz continued. “My mom had my older sister, Isabella, right out of high school. Her parents and his kind of forced them to get married shotgun style, and from the stories I’ve heard, it was truly toxic. She eventually got pregnant with me—I don’t know if it was an accident or she was trying to keep him around or what—but as soon as he heard the news, he skipped off to parts unknown. He wasn’t there when I was born, nor a single day since.”
Jaz sighed heavily, and Wild was just about to tell her she didn’t have to talk about it if she didn’t want to when she began to speak again. “I think he broke something in her. I think she spent so many years trying to hold on to him that she decided she’d never try to hold on to anyone in that way again.” Jaz looked up at him and gave him a small smile. “Except her girls, of course. Us she’d hang on to with shackles if she could. Anyway, it seems like she’s constantly searching for her Prince Charming, marries him as soon as she thinks she’s found him, but as soon as the fairy tale starts to fade, she’s gone. Her second husband was around the longest because he’s the father of my younger sister, Ariel, and my mom tried to stick it out with him. But ultimately, he became part of her pattern. She serves them with divorce papers and never looks back.”
Wild had no idea what to say to that, so he uttered the only truth he could think of. “Sounds like a really tough life.”
“Yeah,” Jaz murmured. “It really is.”
Wild thought about what Jaz had told him, his brain connecting her mom’s story to his own. Not that they were similar because Wild never even let things get to the fairy tale stage. When he left at midnight, he was always careful to not leave any shoes behind.
Shaking the thoughts from his mind, he asked Jaz what she’d like to do next.
Taking a moment to look around, she pointed over to an inflatable obstacle course. As they made their way over, she said, “Let’s make this one interesting.”
“What’d you have in mind?”
They arrived at the course, and she turned to face him, sliding her hands around his waist. “If I win, you have to kiss me.”
Wild raised an eyebrow. These were terms he could get on board with. “And if I win?”
“I’ll kiss you.”
Wild was turned on by how brazen she was. He knew she’d kissed Maddox on their date. She’d told him almost as soon as he’d picked her up because she didn’t want there to be any secrets between them. He was glad she’d been honest, but the news didn’t bother him in the least. “You’re on.”
The two got ready to race, and when the whistle blew, everything became a blur. Wild climbed up and then slid down. He hoisted himself over things and crawled under others. And when he finally got to the end, he sent up a prayer of thanks that Jaz wasn’t waiting for him. And though she wasn’t far behind, that didn’t stop Wild from being smug.
“Guess you win,” she said.
“Guess I do.”
And later that night, when he collected his kiss outside of her apartment door, pulling her to him with his lips hovering above hers as he waited for her to close the distance, Wild felt a piece click into place. He felt her lips smiling again
st his as she pressed them firmly together, nipping at his bottom lip, prompting him to open up for her tongue to sweep in. Usually the aggressor, it was heady for Wild to cede that to someone else. To let someone else direct the kiss as he followed her lead was everything he never knew he was missing. He let his hands drift down to cup her ass and notch her against him so that her pelvis rubbed against the hardness that was trapped in his pants. She moaned at the contact as a shiver ran up Wild’s spine.
Her arms wrapped more tightly around him, causing him to literally bend to her will as he stooped to accommodate her shorter stature until he decided it would be easier to hoist her up. She wrapped her toned legs around his waist, gyrating slowly against him, the kiss frenzied as they tried to devour one another.
A throat clearing caused them to freeze with their lips still attached.
When Wild’s eyes snapped open, he saw Jaz staring back at him, amusement evident in her gaze. They slowly parted, and Jaz looked down the hall at her elderly neighbor who’d made the noise as she passed. “Sorry, Mrs. Gramble,” Jaz called after her.
As the woman unlocked her apartment door, she said, “Just didn’t want you to get arrested for indecent exposure before you got to the good stuff,” over her shoulder before disappearing and locking herself inside.
Jaz and Wild looked at one another and burst into laughter. Wild set Jaz down, though she kept her arms around him. “I had a great time tonight.”
“Me too.”
Jaz smiled softly. “I’ll see you at the gym tomorrow?”
“Definitely,” Wild whispered before leaning down and taking another soft kiss. Then he stepped back from her and waited for her to let herself into her apartment before adjusting himself and heading to his car. As he drove home, Wild pondered a great many things, but one thing was for certain: he’d never looked forward to a tomorrow as much as he did right then.
Chapter Sixteen
“What’s your favorite kind of ice cream?” Jaz asked.
Maddox tried to remember the last time he had more than a few spoonfuls of ice cream, but he couldn’t. He and Wild didn’t keep it in their apartment, and he never really got dessert, even on his cheat days. But somehow he’d let Jaz convince him to go to a homemade-ice-cream shop, which was probably a mistake, because he was now plowing through a bowl of chocolate peanut butter cup drizzled with hot fudge.
He’d have to get up early to run a few extra miles tomorrow. But even though he hated running, getting to watch Jaz’s tongue sweep across her cone so it didn’t drip would be worth a fucking marathon if that’s what it took. “Vanilla,” he said.
Her eyebrows narrowed as she laughed. “Then why did you get chocolate peanut butter?”
“Oh,” he said, looking down. “Yeah, this was my favorite. But then I started watching what you’re doing to that cone, and I changed my mind.”
Jasmine glanced at the vanilla on top of the sugar cone she was holding and then brought her eyes up to meet Maddox’s again. Then she ran her tongue over her bottom lip to catch some of the ice cream at the corner before holding the cone up to his mouth. “I can share,” she said.
The irony of her words wasn’t lost on him, but he chose not to comment. The idea of sharing Jasmine hadn’t bothered him yet, though he definitely tried not to think about what she may or may not be doing with Wilder. Besides, it wasn’t like the three of them were out on a date together. No one sitting outside the ice cream shop knew she was dating someone else.
And more than that, he had such a good time with her—was so attracted to her—that he’d hold on to her like he was a kid trying to hold on to the string of a fucking balloon as it blew around in the breeze. So he did what he’d been doing more of lately: listened to his instincts rather than his brain. He scooted a little closer to her on the bench and leaned down to put his mouth on the ice cream she was offering him.
“Good?” she asked.
“The best,” he answered. “I’m definitely on Team Vanilla now.”
Maddox’s voice was low and raspy in a way that Jasmine was certain he wasn’t aware of. The man had no idea how sexy he was. He didn’t have the swagger or the cockiness that Wilder had, but that was part of the appeal to her. He was sure of himself in a way that seemed more intrinsic—a quiet confidence that ran through every cell in his body. She could feel it when he lifted his hand up to cup the back of her neck and pull her toward him. And when his lips touched hers, there was a lightness to the kiss that had her practically moaning with need.
She’d thought about his mouth since he’d kissed her the first time, but they hadn’t done anything more yet. Jasmine wanted to take things slowly, move at a pace each man was comfortable with. But the gradual build was killing her. Images of Maddox working out with his shirt off, all sweat and heavy breathing, filled her mind as their kiss deepened to something that definitely wasn’t appropriate for a family atmosphere. Maddox seemed to realize the same because the kiss became more innocent, his lips moving more slowly over hers until they stopped completely.
Biting at her lip as their foreheads touched, she could see from the way his mesh shorts tented that he was just as turned on. “We should probably just finish our ice cream,” she said.
Mad cleared his throat and inhaled slowly, like he was trying to get his body under control. “Right.”
They went back to sitting side by side again, their attention directed in front of them at the passing cars and the people walking by as they ate some more. When Jasmine’s hand went to Mad’s thigh, he said, “I think I’m done.”
“Me too,” Jaz said with a smile and an ache low in her core that she hoped like hell Maddox would attend to.
The only conversation they had after that was the one with their eyes. Even though Maddox shouldn’t have had much of an appetite, he was looking at her like he could eat her alive. And with the thought of Maddox running his tongue all over her body, she walked with him to his truck, which was parked on a side street about a block away. But they never made it inside.
Jasmine found herself pressed against the passenger door with Maddox’s body holding her firmly in place with his hips. She’d never contemplated having sex on a residential street before, but now she was thinking just that. The thought of wrapping her legs around Mad’s waist as he pounded into her had her legs practically buckling beneath her as he ground his erection slowly against her stomach.
She wasn’t sure what he was willing to do, so she let him take the lead. When his mouth moved down her neck, she moved her head to give him access. And when she felt his fingers slipping beneath the hem of her tank top to graze her skin, she put her hand on his and guided it up a bit so he knew she was right there with him, desperately wanting him to take things further. And it wasn’t only because she physically needed this man to touch her. She wanted to show him what he did to her, how he made her feel.
Somewhere in the back of her mind was a voice that was telling her she wished she could show Wild the same thing—wished she could show them both together. But she silenced that voice entirely, at least for now, and focused on the hand that was moving up her torso, the fingers that played with her nipple when they found their destination. The combination of Maddox’s groans and his large, rough hands on her soft breasts caused parts deep inside her to contract.
She moved her hands to his ass, which was probably the most perfectly round and muscular one she’d ever felt. She dragged her nails against his skin and slipped her hand down the back of his shorts, which caused his muscles to clench and his hips to move more wildly. Moments later, she moved her hand toward his front, slowly and carefully, to make sure it was something he was comfortable with. And when she reached his cock—unbelievably thick as she took it in her hand—she felt compelled to ask, “Is this okay?”
“It’s perfect,” he practically grunted out. “God, I’ve been waiting for you to touch me like this for so fucking long.”
Thoughts of Maddox fantasizing about her, maybe even touchin
g himself to thoughts of her, had her begging him to touch her too, to put his fingers inside her until she came. And suddenly there they were, stroking each other on a public street as the sun faded over the nearby houses.
At first, she tried to keep quiet, but it wasn’t long before she didn’t care who heard them or who saw them. The fullness she felt from only Mad’s fingers had her imagining what it would feel like to have his cock filling her instead. It felt so warm in her hand, so long. And she could feel him strain, his muscles tensing, as he told her he was going to come.
“You want me to keep going?” she whispered.
He laughed softly in her ear and said, “I’ll be really disappointed if you don’t.”
That made her smile. “I meant more like we could do something else. If you wanted. Go somewhere else.”
“I like what you’re doing right now,” he said, and when his thumb ran over her clit, she nearly let go completely.
She was so lost in sensation, so overwhelmed by Mad’s fingers on her—inside her—and how slick the tip of his dick was from his pre-come. She moaned greedily as he thrust his fingers into her harder, stroking her in a way she would never even think of doing to herself. It made her move faster over his length, pull more frantically when she knew they were both so close.
Mad came first, come squirting from him in hot bursts that landed on the part of her stomach that was exposed due to Maddox’s hand under her shirt. He groaned heavily with his orgasm, and she managed to wait until he was done, until the evidence of his pleasure began to drip down her skin before she allowed herself to find her own release. Her entire body quaked as she clenched hard around Maddox’s fingers. Drawing out her orgasm with every stroke, he gradually decreased his speed until all of his movements stopped completely, and she was left feeling like she was one gigantic exposed nerve.
Misadventures in a Threesome Page 11
