“Wrong again, Princess,” Jack responded. My eyes fluttered closed when he reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I normally bristled when anyone called me that, but from Jack, it felt like a term of endearment. “One of these days, you are going to believe me when I tell you I don’t do anything out of obligation. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. For that matter, if I hadn’t been interested in seeing you again, I wouldn’t have made plans.”
“But why?” I wasn’t even certain what I was asking him. So many things about this situation made zero sense. Why was he here? Why was he interested in me? What in the hell made me worth him showing up at ass o’clock on a Monday morning to hang out?
“Because there is something about you I can’t ignore. All weekend, I wondered what you were doing and if you regretted last week.” Jack grunted as he struggled to stand.
“Easy there, old man,” I teased, hoping to ease the conversation away from all…this. He was the one who left my messages unanswered, not the other way around. If he was thinking about me, all he’d have had to do was pick up his damn phone. “Wouldn’t want you out of commission.”
Jack reached around, giving my ass a tight squeeze. “That’s the last time you call me old,” he warned me. “Next time, there will be consequences.”
“Is that a promise?” I slid a hand up his chest to his shoulder, pressing my body against his, tilting my head back, silently begging him to kiss me.
Jack chuckled and shook his head. “As tempting as you are, Princess, why don’t we take this someplace a little more private?”
“You inviting me back to your place?” I glanced down at the keys still stuck in the lock of my door. “In case you forgot, I wasn’t sleeping in the hall for shits and giggles.”
Jack slipped around me, lifting up on the doorknob with one hand as he wiggled the key with the other.
“You’re wasting your time,” I informed him. He ignored me and gave the keys a tug. “I already tried that.” Paying me no attention, he eased the key into the lock until it turned. At least, I thought I had tried everything. When the sound of the bolt sliding back echoed in the hall, I wasn’t so sure. “How in the hell?”
Jack pressed his palm to my cheek, leaning in to kiss my forehead. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Slade. Just because I wear expensive suits and drive a fancy car doesn’t mean I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. He swung the door open wide, ushering me inside. “I lived in places even worse than this one until a few years after college.”
I highly doubted that. I rolled my eyes as I passed him. Now he was just trying to make me feel better. Well, it wasn’t going to work. All this morning had done was prove, yet again, how different we were.
“Think what you’d like, but I didn’t get where I am by spending money like it’s my last day on earth,” he explained. “I knew from a young age that I wanted to make something of myself. To do that, I had to save every penny I could until there was enough to invest. Once I did that, I did it again and again.”
I wandered into the kitchen, swiping the take-out containers on the counter into the trash can. Jack let out an audible sigh as he slipped past me. I couldn’t look at him; I knew that noise. He left me on my own for one damn weekend and I’d started sliding back into bad habits. “Sorry. I…”
“Don’t apologize to me, Slade. You’re the only person you’re letting down when you don’t pick up after yourself,” Jack told me as he reached for the can of coffee grounds as if he’d done it a million times before. “If we’d set rules before I left last week, then it might be a different story. The fact you feel guilty is quite telling though.”
“How do you figure?” Since he’d taken over coffee duty, I was left feeling pretty damned useless in my own home. My brain was still foggy from too little sleep and too much work. Nothing he said seemed to make sense.
Jack finished setting up the coffee maker, not saying a word until it was brewing. He cupped my ass, lifting me onto the counter. When he stepped between my legs and tipped his head back to look at me, my breath caught. His lips were drawn into a tight line, but his gaze was soft. No one had ever looked at me like that, and I wasn’t sure how it made me feel.
“I can't say for certain, but I have some ideas.” I shivered when Jack ran his hands over my thighs. His thumbs stopped so damn close to my dick, I started to get hard. With anyone else, I would have tried goading him into getting off together, but I doubted Jack would give in as easily as the guys I’d fucked around with in the past.
“Like what,” I asked. As I stared down at Jack, I was overcome with the urge to lean in and suck on his plump bottom lip. He kept exploring my body with his hands, his thumbs dragging over the now stiff fabric of my t-shirt. I might still be out of sorts and sleep-deprived, but, now that I was awake, I swore I could feel the stale beer dried on to my skin. I tried scooting away from him, but he dug his fingertips into my hips preventing my escape.
“Don’t run, Slade,” Jack pleaded. “I know this is all new for you, but I promise we will take things at whatever speed makes you comfortable.”
“It's not that,” I reassured him. “I'm just… All I wanted last night was to get into my apartment and take a shower. I may have had a little…incident with a bus tub and the swinging door. I probably smell disgusting.”
When Jack buried his nose in the crook of my neck, taking a deep breath, I squirmed again, trying to get away. When he held me tighter, I swatted at his hand.
“Quit it,” I scolded him. “I already know I reek like sweat and alcohol. I don't need to ruin the illusion by you knowing it, too.”
“Princess, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than that to turn me off. No matter what you look like or how you smell, I'm still going to be completely caught up in you.” He peppered a trail of kisses along the side of my neck.
“But why?” I repeated. Relationships were something I didn’t have a lot of experience with, and, on paper, the very concept of Jack being this interested in me made zero sense.
Jack brushed his thumbs across my cheekbones. He leaned in, kissing the tip of my nose and then my forehead. He pulled out the elastic restraining my hair and began combing it with his fingers. “You are absolutely beautiful, for one thing.” He slid his hands down my arms, tracing the tattoo on my forearm with a single fingernail. “You are a walking, talking contradiction. Pretty but masculine. Soft but strong. Guarded but needy. I want to break down the walls you constructed and show you just how amazing you are. I want to challenge you to be everything I'd be willing to bet someone in your past convinced you wasn't possible.”
“You can't possibly know all of that this quickly,” I scoffed. “You say this shit, but you don't really know me.” It freaked me out that he was sitting here acting like I was an open book, just because he had seen me in a moment of weakness last week at the party. I liked to think I was better than that at hiding all the shit I didn't want anybody to know.
“Fair point,” Jack conceded. “But that's what everyone faces when they begin pursuing someone. Unless you are entering into a relationship with someone you've been friends with for years, there are always secrets waiting to be revealed. All of the great romances in the world start with little more than a simple hello.”
I stifled my laughter over the cheese factor of Jack's statement. He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, as if daring me to dispute him again.
“Fine.” I let out a huff. “You win. But there have to be some rules here.”
