“Oh fuck.” He started to reach out for her but then pulled his hands back, clearly unsure if he was permitted to touch her. “I’m so sorry, I did not mean to scare you.”
She felt so silly that she’d had such a strong reaction. “No, you didn’t. I mean, you did, but it was my fault. I was just in my head and didn’t hear you. It happens a lot. It just…I can’t shut it off. It’s so loud in there.”
“Oh.” He grinned and returned to his seat. “Okay, so what is so loud in there?”
Jenna stared at him for a second, blinking.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She shook her head.
She’d told people that her head was loud for years, that she couldn’t turn off the noise. Asher, Bree, Blake, and all the people she worked with at her shops—no one, not one soul, had ever asked her what was so loud up there. Maybe they just all assumed they knew, because they knew herand D didn’t. But the way he looked at her, it was like he really wanted to know.
He picked up his glass of wine. “So?”
“You don’t want to know.” She chuckled, letting him off the hook. “Believe me.”
“I do.” He set his glass down and rested his forearms on the table. “Believe me.”
Well, he asked for it.
“Um, what’snotgoing on in my head would probably be easier to answer, it’s a shitshow up there,” she relayed honestly. “So there’s the logistical and practical side of things, the never-ending to-do list for my house, my business, and my daughter. Everything from groceries, which is not just shopping but also meal prepping for the weeks’ lunches and then also dinners, which no one likes, barely eats, and complains about.
“There’s laundry, finances and budgeting, which always come with unexpected expenses like new tires or a new water heater, or a parent you haven’t spoken to in seventeen years’ health issues.
“Then there are the rolling questions: did I remember to sew the tear in Blake’s cheer uniform? Did I take the car in for the oil change, did I remember to get it smogged before the registration is due? Blake’s constantly changing school supply needs, which she always tells me about last minute, and fuckingonline teacher portalsare going to be the death of me. Just a million balls in the air and constantly feeling like if one falls, you’re fucked.”
“You were married, right?”
She smiled and nodded. “Yep.”
He looked at her blankly as if he didn’t understand. He might be confused, but she was seeing things a lot more clearly now that she was speaking them out loud.
“Sononeof those things were his responsibility?”
“Apparently not.” She sighed. “But that’s just the constant ticker tape of admin. Thereallyloud noises are the emotional, invisible checklists. Am I doing enough? Was it the right thing to let her stay out till midnight? Should I have given her a phone at ten or made her wait until twelve? Is it good that she’s with her dad, or should I have kept her here? All I do is think about every decision I make and how it is affecting her, affecting me, affecting us, and trying to do my best, be my best, so I can be an example, so I can make the best life for her, for us.” She laughed. “I know it may not seem like it.”
“Of course it does,” he stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“How could you say that? You don’t know.”
“Your thirteen-year-old daughter is in California with her dad, and she called you to catch you up on her life, and I heard you say, ‘I love youmore,’ which meant she said, I love you first. You’re doing something right.”
Well,fuck. Was Jenna gonna have to marry this man? If there was one way straight to her heart, it was Blake.
No. That wasexactlyhow James got her, too. He went about it differently. He bought Blake gifts and pretended to be interested in being her dad. That’s not what this man was doing. This man was?—
Stop! That’s not what this was.Thiswasn’t anything. If it was something, she wouldn’t be spilling her guts to him like she was on Oprah’s couch. She was only doing that because this was one night of her life where she was giving herself permission not to be…well,notherself while more herself than she’d ever been.
Jenna had always considered herself a cautious woman, her pleasures measured, her appetites managed, her risks contained. But tonight she felt like someone had exchanged out her bones for coiled springs, her skin toosmall to contain the thrumming energy inside her. It was as if the years of single motherhood, of relentless practicality and silent, late-night longing, had condensed themselves into one glittering, precarious bead of possibility, nestled right here, in the dimmed light, across from a man who looked at her like they were the last two people alive on earth and the only reasonable thing left to do was ruin each other in the most delicious ways.
“Soooo,” she said, setting down her fork and drinking the last of her wine. “I don’t know about you, but I’m way too full for dessert. And I am still very interested in knowing exactly what those dirty, dirty things you’d like to do to me are.”
He stared at her, grinned, then reached for the bottle and refilled her glass. His hands were steady, but his eyes were flickering, as if he were calculating exactly how much truth to give her at once. “You’resureyou want to know?”
She was so turned on already, if she squeezed her thighs together, she might come just from him talking, so yeah, she was pretty sure. “Yes.”
The gentle hush of the suite seemed to collapse around them, compressing their tiny corner of the world. He drew in a slow, deliberate breath and pinned Jenna across the small table with the intensity in his stare as he leaned forward, forearms leaning on the table, voice low and intimate. "I want you on your knees for me," he said, his eyes locked onto hers. "I want to see you unzip my pants and take my cock out. I want to watch your lips part, your tongue slip out, and you take me in your mouth. I want to see those pretty blue eyes look up at me, desperate, needing it, not asking for it, but waiting for me to tell youwhenyou can have it.
