Her breath sucked in—only she hadn’t swallowed the water first, and then she was coughing, sputtering, and losing any shred of cool she might have hoped to retain in front of the last man she’d expected to meet there.
Instantly he was at her side, gently patting her back with the heel of his palm as he retrieved the water bottle that had spilled all over her lap. “Easy, Cali. You okay?”
Embarrassed, she nodded, looking him over. He was dressed for the beach in a white short-sleeved shirt open to the waist and a pair of long, narrow orange trunks that hugged his muscular thighs as he crouched beside her. “What are you doing here?”
“My afternoon op got cancelled, and Amanda mentioned you were heading down here with a few co-workers. She suggested I crash.”
Matt leaned forward to extend a hand, grin wide. “Right on, man. Glad to have you.”
Trish chirped in, “Definitely. Have a seat.”
They might be glad, but Cali wasn’t sure she could say the same. Being confronted with Jake after the way she’d treated him the last time they were together…she didn’t even know how she felt. Guilty, embarrassed, anxious, excited—there were too many emotions winding together to form a solid knot in her stomach to identify one over another.
Introductions were exchanged, and then Cali noticed the silence stretching a second too long. She dared a glance at Jake’s face.
Mouth tight, brow drawing down, he raked his darkening gaze over her from head to toe and back again. Following his gaze down to her body, she realized the damage one bottle of spilled water could do. Her cover-up was completely saturated, clinging to her like a transparent second skin and advertising Band-Aid sized panels of electric blue, barely covering enough to keep her legal.
Matt gaped from behind Jake, his mouth hanging open, eyes fixed in blatant appreciation. “Damn, Cali. And I didn’t get you anything.”
How embarrassing. Her arms crossed over her chest as Trish snickered beside her. “Matt, you’re an ass.”
But it was Jake’s reaction that had her heart stalling in her chest. Dark hunger and heat seared over her skin as he stripped off his shirt and wordlessly handed it over to her.
Self-consciously she tugged off the wet cover-up, pulling it free in time to catch his glowering scan of the beach beyond them.
She slipped her arms into one sleeve and then the other, trying not to think about the fact that Jake was now shirtless. About all that bronzed, sculpted torso, the six-pack of hard abdominal muscles or the flex of his bare back. About what the smell of him on the fabric she was wrapping around herself was doing to her body.
She swallowed.
Incredibly, spectacularly shirtless.
Matt chimed in, enjoying the spectacle far too much. “Yep, that shirt’s probably a good idea, since you’re looking so…chilly.”
Cali groaned, blushing bright. “Matt!”
Jake’s jaw flexed as he brushed her arms aside and jerked the lapels closed. Grim-faced, he worked the buttons between her breasts, down her belly, to where the last button of the too-large shirt hung between the tops of her thighs. He slowed as his knuckles brushed against the sensitive skin. Forcing her breath to steady, Cali took his hands in hers, pulling them free. If he touched her one more time, with that hot possessive fire blazing in his eyes, it wouldn’t matter that they were sitting inches from her co-workers in broad daylight. One more touch and she’d go up in flames.
Their gazes held for an instant before he broke away, jumped to his feet and gruffly announced he was going for a swim. Matt jumped up, laughing, to join him. Nodding toward the water, he clapped Jake’s shoulder. “Definitely time to cool off. Let’s go, Tyler.”
Some forty minutes later Matt meandered off to hit on some girl wandering along the bike path, and Trish closed her eyes, popping a pair of headphones into her ears. Waves lapped gently against the packed sand, a warm breeze blew in a quiet rush past her ears, and children squealed, racing against the advance and retreat of the cool waters creeping over the beach.
She could get used to this life. Easily.
Jake leaned back beside her, his triceps flexing as he shifted his weight to stretch out his long legs. A smattering of sand clung to the skin around his toes and ankles, drops of water beaded in the dark hair of his legs, while his still-damp suit hugged the muscles of his thighs and the contours of his groin.
She could definitely get used to this life. Much too easily.
She swallowed, forcing her gaze to the distant horizon. There was so much she could make her own here, without risk to her career. It was only a matter of remembering the one line not to cross.
The Jackson line. The line where his casual arm around her shoulder reverted to his hands, demanding and skilled, covering every inch of her body.
There were so many reasons not to want him—Amanda, her career, her heart—it should have been easy. And yet she’d begun to question them all. Amanda in particular. Obviously there was an attachment there—one that ran deep. But Cali had begun to question the number of times her boss had facilitated she and Jake meeting. Even today she’d told him where to find her. Ensured Trish would let her know she expected Cali to take the break with everyone else. Or maybe that was just some selfish, destructive part of her, searching for a convenient excuse to justify the reactions she couldn’t seem to control.
Jake caught her attention with a jut of his chin toward the cityscape behind them. “How about a coffee and walk?”
Caffeine was always good, and what had happened between them the week before needed to be addressed. “Sounds good.”
Smoothly, he rolled to his feet and stood, offering a hand to pull her up.
When they’d gotten a fair distance from the MetroTrek crowd, Cali brushed at the sand from her hips and took a steadying breath. “I should have called you. What I said—how I acted—it wasn’t fair.”
Jake cocked his jaw to the side. “I knew how you felt about work and sex. It was a mistake…but only because of the call.”
Her heart tripped as she thought about all the reasons she’d been telling herself the entire incident was a mistake. She could have voiced them, but instead let the subject lie.
“So, how’s the job going these days?” Jake asked as they headed up to the path.
Cali considered. “Really well, but there are more issues to contend with than we initially anticipated. And I think someone seriously undershot the scheduling projection.”
“Yeah? That’s got to be frustrating.” The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he scanned the lakefront ahead of them. “I’m pretty sure there’s a coffee stand right up here. So, will you be able to make it work?”
She glanced at him, shielding her eyes from the sun as an unpleasant thought took root in her mind.
“What?” he asked, that gorgeous mouth pulling up to the side.
Yeah, what? She was paranoid. Only maybe there was another reason Amanda kept throwing them together.
“Nothing…it’s just— Well, you’re always so interested in my work.” It wasn’t that he seemed overly curious, only she knew Amanda wasn’t above using friends and subordinates to check up on each other.
She couldn’t believe that. But still she ran a quick mental tally of every work-related comment she could summon to memory. Nothing that would make her look weak. Nothing unprofessional. Almost nothing. She had to take on faith that the incident in the bar hadn’t been recounted.
“Not that I’m complaining,” she added hastily, feeling like a jerk for questioning what was probably nothing more than polite conversation. Unless… “And of course I can completely handle the job. It’ll require some juggling, but that’s what I do.”
Jake stopped walking and, catching her hand, turned her to face him.
“Hey.” His blue eyes, serious and more intensely beautiful than the bright sky behind him, met hers. “No matter what you say, you know I wouldn’t mention it to Amanda, right? She’s a friend, but whatever happens or is s
aid between you and me is just that. Between you and me.”
The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet as his simple, straightforward words upended her world.
He had to stop touching her, stop searching her eyes as if he knew if he looked into them long enough he’d find the truth she so needed to hide from him. The truth that with their every shared word and accidental touch that same underlying heat from the first night they’d met flared to life.
Only if Amanda wasn’t using Jake to siphon information about Cali’s ability to handle the pressure of the job, then she was back to her initial theory.
This was Amanda’s Jackson.
Desperately, she took a step back. “Amanda asks me about you all the time, Jake.” This wasn’t what her boss would want revealed, but Cali had to believe it was better than giving in to the pull of his mouth and arms and his body again.
This disclosure was her last defense.
“She wants to know every time I see you, and she wants to know what we did, what you said, if you enjoyed yourself—a million little things. Anything she asks, I tell her. There’s nothing just between you and me. She’s my boss, Jake.”
The corner of his mouth pulled to the side. And for a moment Cali couldn’t tell if he was disgusted, amused or both.
“Then it’s time that changed.” His thumb swept slowly across her bottom lip, tracing its lower edge in a back and forth rub that left her breath frayed, her mind reeling, and her resolve melting into a molten pool of need. “Where this is going, I don’t want Amanda to come.”
Desire swirled warm and thick in her belly, and unwanted heat spread across the surface of her skin. She couldn’t give in, and yet even as she thought it Jake shook his head, his expression stern. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” she managed in a pathetic whisper.
“Don’t tell me you don’t want this.”
Of course she wanted him. But it wasn’t as simple as want alone.
CHAPTER NINE
THEY’D returned to the beach to find Trish and Matt packing up with the rest of the group. A few minutes later they were settled in the backseat of a cab, riding in strained silence through the downtown city streets. She hadn’t answered him, refused to discuss it, and the irritation evident in the hard set of his jaw had her stomach twisting into knots.
A few more minutes and they were wordlessly cutting across the near deserted downstairs lobby to the elevators.
Jake punched the call button and raked his fingers through his hair, his usual smooth, easy motion now jerky with tension. They kept circling one another, trying out different interactions, but it always came back to sex. They couldn’t be near each other without having to fight it, and the fighting was getting harder and harder. It had to stop.
“Maybe it’s better this way,” she mumbled, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until the snap of Jake’s gaze—hostile, intense—alerted her.
“What?” he demanded, frustration radiating off him in waves.
She swallowed past nerves and need to meet his stare. “We can’t keep on like this. I can’t—”
Jake’s features hardened, his eyes grew darker, and in their depths she saw a warning that left the words dying on her lips.
But then he dropped her gaze, looked away, and when he turned back whatever threat she’d seen lurking there was gone. It was all easygoing, smooth Jake. Casual, without a care in the world.
Her heart clenched in her chest. It most definitely wasn’t a simple matter of want.
Grabbing her hand, he smiled that cocky smile and glanced around, checking out the lobby behind them.
“Hey, come here a second,” he said, pulling her gently around the corner to a doored-off alcove that led to the back alley of the building. What could he need to tell her that couldn’t wait for the privacy of the elevator car?
The door closed behind them with a quiet thud and then they were alone. Jake stopped, turned to face her, and seized her with a stare that was neither easy nor casual. The beige walls and worn linoleum of the small hallway crowded in around them, as if the space itself couldn’t hold out against the man in front of her.
He stood too close, his body too big, his emotions too raw. There in the harsh darkness of his blue-eyed glare she could see everything she wanted to ignore. The urgency, the anger, the heat.
He caught her wrist, closing his fingers around it like a manacle as he pulled her hand to his chest. His eyes locked with hers, daring her to try and hide her reaction to the hot flesh beneath her fingertips.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her heart racing.
“Making you touch what you can’t stop looking at,” he growled, pressing her palm flat, drawing her touch over the muscular terrain.
He was so close she couldn’t think, could barely breathe. Need twisted low in her belly as she remembered the taste of him, the feel of his hands cradling her. Everything she wasn’t supposed to have. Everything she wanted.
This wasn’t fair.
Jake searched her eyes and slowly withdrew his hand from hers, bracing one arm and then the other at the wall behind her. He’d boxed her in with his body, but it was her own desire that held her captive.
“It’s up to you, Cali. I’m not going to give you the easy out and take the control from your hands.” His gaze dropped meaningfully to where her fingers still splayed wide over hard muscle and male flesh.
She swallowed, her mind reaching for justifications and denials just beyond her grasp.
He leaned closer, his words feathering against the shell of her ear. “You know what I see in that look you can’t stop giving me?”
Barely a whisper, “What?”
Jake pulled back, bringing them level. “I see you begging me to finish what we’ve started too many times. But I’m not going to answer to your eyes, sweetheart.”
Stifling a moan at the hot pulse of desire beating between her legs, she stared at this man she needed so badly but was too afraid to take.
“You can’t make yourself tell me to stop,” he growled, leaning forward to burrow his nose into her hair, “but passive acceptance isn’t enough.” His breath, warm and moist, teased the whorl of her ear as his lips rubbed against the outer ridge. “You’re going to have to say it.”
A desperate whimper escaped as the tip of his tongue flicked lightly at her lobe and then drew it into his mouth with a hard suction that pulled straight at her core.
“Jake,” she gasped, clutching at his shoulders, her hips moving involuntarily against his.
He groaned, circling her waist with his arm and pulling her roughly against him so she pressed against every hard plane and ridge from his thighs to his shoulders. “Tell me,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.
Her fingers numbed as they lifted from his chest, rose, and then pushed deep into the dark strands of his hair. There was no doubt, no denial anymore. Only need. Reckless and so intense it resonated through every cell in her body. The need to get closer. The need to feel him—his mouth, his body—against hers.
On a trembling breath, she pulled his face to hers and whispered against his lips, “I want you.”
Cali’s admission seared over his lips, slammed through his senses, and annihilated all restraint. He kissed her hard. Covering her with his mouth, his hunger, and every possessive claim he would never have acknowledged to exist within him. Their mouths fused and she opened to him. Gave in and gave herself over. No more refusals and skittish retreats.
She was in his arms now, beneath his lips, moaning around the thrust of his tongue as her fingers clenched a fistful of his hair.
Man, that felt good.
His hand slid over her bottom, urging her closer. Making her feel him.
“Jake.” Her breathless gasp and the tightening of her arms around his neck weren’t nearly enough. She’d made him wait, and now that he had her he needed to make her so mindlessly desperate that when his lips parted from hers she wouldn’t have senses left to come back to. They�
��d be obliterated, just like his.
Setting an urgent rhythm of thrust and retreat with his tongue, he nudged a knee between her legs, pushing his thigh against the warm notch there before pulling back. Her breath caught as his hand dipped into her bathing suit, his fingers curving into the slick folds of her sex.
At the touch of his fingertip her knee cocked against his thigh, and Jake pushed inside with one smooth, long stroke.
Cali’s broken, desperate cry caressed his lips as her tight wetness encased him so snugly, the sensation of it smoldering through his body straight into his groin.
God help him, she was so tight he was about to lose it just thinking about pushing inside her. Feeling her body ripple around him as he sank inch by inch, until he was buried to the hilt.
Damn it! They were in the hall and he had to stop. Get her into the utility elevator. Upstairs.
Into his bed. Hell, yes.
With incentive like that he should have had them passing the sixth floor already, but then her hand slithered between them. Into his trunks. And the ragged gasp ripping through the otherwise silent hall was his own.
She circled him with her fingers and stroked up his length as she rode first one finger, then spasmed around him as he pressed in a second.
His name, wrapped in another breathy moan, pushed him beyond control—sent him spiraling with only one goal to hold to.
Get inside her.
He had to get inside that slick, wet, begging body. “Feels…good….” she panted as her motions became desperate and her hips tipped further forward, urging him on. “Need you… Please.”
Please.
His hand slipped from her bikini, and her heavy-lidded green gaze locked with his, her kiss-swollen lips parting in a silent plea.
Moving between her legs, he grasped the edge of the Lycra panel and pulled it to the side to expose her, to allow him access to the honeyed sweet center of her.
Brushing her hands from him, he caught one leg behind her knee and positioned it to his hip, bringing her into contact with his straining groin. Her hands flew to his shoulders, digging in as he bent his knees, lowered himself to catch the tip of his erection against her in one teasing sweep.
Wild Fling or a Wedding Ring? Page 8
