74. Chapter 74
“Two beds. Perfect. One for sleeping, and one for shagging.”
Shagging. Is that what we’re doing?
“Shouldn’t you tell Marc where you are?” Lindsey asked. She’d only seen a glimpse of Declan’s friend at the concert. He’d offered her more of his panty-potion and got lost in a mosh pit.
“Naw, told him to piss off.”
He was already sampling the nape of her neck. It felt good. Wrong, in a way. But good. Under different circumstances she would’ve appreciated the attention.
She shifted to slow things down, and he shoved his tongue in her mouth and cupped her left breast. His mouth was urgent, slippery with cheap rum.
At the concert, she thought it was Jase coming back from getting drinks who’d wrapped his arms around her. But the hands on her stomach had been too small, the cologne stinging her throat too bright. Then she’d looked to her left and found Jase dancing with a blonde in a miniskirt.
Now Lindsey was in her hotel room with Declan, ruminating about the random woman who was allowed to dance with Jase, to kiss him, even though she probably didn’t know anything about him besides his first name.
If she even knew that. What made her so special she should get to feel his hands on her body or his lips on her mouth?
To experience what was sure to be the best sex of her life with a man whose skills should have their own patent?
It wasn’t fair. What does she have that I don’t?
She’s not Graham’s ex-girlfriend.
It was the argument to end all arguments. Their absolute truth, as he reminded her tonight.
The concert blonde had never dated Graham, and she undoubtedly didn’t have any rules against Jase touching her, and their tryst would only take one night of Jase’s life—or a spicy page or two, depending on the novel—and it wasn’t any more complicated than that.
Lindsey couldn’t meet Declan’s intensity with her mind straying to Austin to the kiss outside Hog Heaven.
The small, yet thorough taste of how much her body had been sleeping for the past year and Jase’s ability to wake her up with his tongue.
How she’d been aching with unquenched need.
The intensity of their first time, how he’d sealed their bodies together, the hair’s breadth of space between their mouths, the orgasm he’d drawn from a place so deep it was almost painful to reach.
Lindsey was suddenly nauseous at the thought of him being intimate with another woman, and she choked on Declan’s cloying cologne, the wetness from his eager mouth coating her lips. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away.
“What? What’s the matter?” he asked, his rum-riddled eyes blinking her into focus.
So many things.
She gasped. “I need some air.”
“Sorry, babes.” He smiled. “I couldn’t help myself. You just taste so good.”
He kissed her neck and slid his hands down to the skirt she wasn’t wearing for him.
“You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“I know what I want,” he said into her throat. “I wanted you the first time I saw you.”
“Wait,” she said. “I need a minute.”
“You all right?”
No. “Yeah, I think I just want…” Someone else?
“You want something to drink?” he asked. “Grease the wheels?”
“Yes. Do you have anything?”
“I’ve got some rum.” Declan pulled a small plastic bottle from the pocket of his cargo shorts. “It’s bad but it’ll do in a pinch.” He grabbed the ice tub from beside the TV and said, “Don’t worry, babes. I’ll get us some ice so we can have a proper drink.”
“Okay.”
“Stay here,” he called over his shoulder.
Alone, she pulled at the ties on her chest for the space to take a full breath.
What am I doing? Think. Think. Did she really want this?
There wasn’t a lot of time to decide. He’d be back in a few minutes, and after a drink or two he’d want to show her exactly how much he wanted her.
She ran her fingertips over the shagging bed and cringed.
This was her idea. Sort of. Graham was so pissed about having to stay in Lake Havasu City until sunset, she’d texted Declan for another reason to draw this stop out.
She never thought Jase would let her go home with Declan, though. She figured he’d clobber the Brit on the head and carry her away caveman-style again, not grab the first woman within reach. Another failed ploy for his attention.
“Damn you, Jase,” she said.
She yanked at the bottom of her ridiculous skirt, which only stole inches from her stomach, and locked eyes with a stranger in the mirror above the dresser. She didn’t recognize the woman staring back who was trying so hard to be someone else.
Someone who would drive Jase wild.
Lindsey would remember Lake Havasu as the place she realized she wanted Jase Young. Hard.