I tilt my chin up ever so slightly, and he catches my lips in a slow, sweet kiss that seems to seep into every cell of my being, puffing them up, filling me until I could float away at the pure sensation of it all. The kiss from the closet was a frantic thing, the hunger of two clawing people desperate to get at each other. This, though… At first, it’s a whisper of his lips against my full bottom one, and then it deepens, languid and careful, the kiss of someone who has all night.
Something in me snaps. I try to take more, demand more. I clutch his back, his firm ass, trying to pull him to me. But still he sips, small kisses, small slides, small grazes. I take his hand, urging him to run it up under my shirt, growing frustrated when he keeps it on my hip. He smiles against my mouth, knowing what he’s doing to me. In response, I press the palm of my hand hard against the heat of him, rubbing him through his pants, relishing the firm feeling of him. He groans, some of his willpower draining away. I fumble with his fly, moaning into his mouth.
My phone begins vibrating. He lifts his head, amused, while I cling to him and pant. He runs his hand from my throat down my torso and then around to my back, slowly pulling the phone from the back pocket of my jeans. He places it in my hand and then slides his hand back to my rear, cupping and squeezing before taking a shuddering breath. “Okay. We take it slow startingnow.” He presses his lips to mine again in a quick peck.
I don’t know what else to do now that my brain has been irrevocably broken, so I look at my phone. Text. From Lucas.
Can you talk?
It’s a second before I register any of it. Jack glances down and sees who the message is from.
“He— He probably just wants to talk about the tabloids.”
“Hmm.” He returns to my bedside, grabs his keys from the table, and slips on his shoes. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” Jack boxes me in until I feel my back touch the wall. He plants his hands on either side of my head, then bends to plunder my mouth with his tongue until I’m on the verge of overheating and my toes feel like curling.
“What—” I gasp, when he lifts his head. “What if we do this and then I refuse to talk to you again?”
“I might give some thought to punishment.”
My breath stutters. “Being subjected to your personality ought to do the trick.”
He straightens and smiles. “Clever way of making sure you keep me near. You’re fooling no one, 5A. Come lock up behind me.”
At the door, he gives me another lingering kiss, his hands running along my back, my ass, pressing me up against him. My hands are in his hair, and I’m weak when he gives me a loaded look. It sends a rush of heat through me. I catch sight of the mess I’ve made of his hair, and I vaguely wonder what I look like to him. In the mirror, I see copper hair disheveled, lips swollen… I glance down. My bra is askew and partially peeking out from the neck of my now dangerously low top.
“How did you unhook my bra?”
He shrugs. “The hooks fell apart on their own. Sword in the stone–like.”
I push at him, and he laughs. I close the door in his face for a change.
And I’m left not knowing what the hell just happened.
29
“Am I using therapy to keep Jack away?” I moan to Wendy. I snap a thread on the poor pillow-bird’s beak with my nail and quickly set it down before I can inflict more damage.
“Do you think you are?”
“Maybe? Yes? I think.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Have you met me?” I ask archly.
Wendy spreads her hands out, conceding the point. “Okay. But there’s no rule that says you have to remain single or chaste while doing this work. You can give yourself permission to explore it.”
“I guess you can’t write me a doctor’s note to get me out of it?”
“Do you want to get out of it?”
I wrinkle my nose, annoyed with this Socratic questions-answered-with-questions thing. “No, I don’t.”
Wendy nods.
I flop back against the sofa cushion. “Can’t you just…tell me what to do?”
Wendy smiles, but slightly, as if in response to a joke she’s heard told many, many times before. She probably has. “No. And you don’t want to be told what to do, either.”
