46. Chapter 46
Truth: I loved his dad more than I loved Graham—if I ever loved Graham in the first place.
“Hey.”
Lindsey turned from the beer selection in the garage fridge to look over her shoulder at Jase.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
She grabbed a can off the shelf—something with a gold rim, she wasn’t sure what—cracked it open, and slugged it down.
What am I doing?
Truth: I have no idea.
He let the side door close behind him. Lindsey slammed the empty on the workbench next to the fridge and stared at the naked redhead on Jason Sr.’s pinup calendar on the wall stuck on July 1990.
Jase’s hands found her waist, pulling her back against his chest. There was a roughness to his grip she expected after a few drinks.
“You taste so fucking good,” he murmured into her throat.
Graham and Helen had left the main garage door open after going through totes and boxes earlier, leaving Jase and Lindsey exposed to anyone who came up the driveway.
It should’ve made her want to pump the breaks, but she couldn’t think with Jase’s hands roaming over her body.
One slid under her tank top, his thumb grazing the bottom edge of her bra, the other covered her zipper, pressing her into the erection she felt through the back of her shorts.
Maybe it was purely from experience that he knew how to adjust the pressure of his fingers to the hitches in her breath, and how to scrape his teeth over her skin to send goose bumps down her neck.
Maybe it was just that it was his mouth on her throat and his hand pulling down her bra and his scent filling her nose that made her crave his touch.
Truth: No man has ever made me feel this way.
He squeezed her nipple and sucked on her neck like he meant to leave a mark.
Truth: I’m afraid no man ever will again.
It was jarring, the unfortunate truth that there would be other men in her future, and other women in his. He thought she didn’t notice his phone buzzing twenty times a day, and the one time she caught a glimpse of the screen she saw it was Chloe calling.
Lindsey wasn’t secure enough in whatever this was to ask him why the bartender from Monterey was blowing up his phone, mostly to keep from finding out he was biding his time until he made his way back to California. To her.
They were nine days into his father’s latest plan, and despite him chasing her down at the Haunt saying everything she needed to hear to forgive him, this…
arrangement…seemed built on the same impermanence that kept Jase at an arm’s length from everyone else.
She could map out his naked body in perfect coordinates, but Lindsey didn’t know Jase now any better than she did at the end of the trip.
What his plans were once time ran out, what he wanted from life, what he wanted from her.
What he was most afraid of.
So she asked him.
Jase’s voice was muffled by her earlobe in his mouth. “What?”
“The game,” Lindsey said. “You never answered. What are you most afraid of, Jase?”
He paused and she thought she’d killed the mood. Then he unbuttoned her shorts and slipped one hand underneath her panties.
“What do you want to hear, Sundress?”
Two fingers slid through her. She gasped and closed her eyes.
“The truth,” she said, and those fingers sank inside, reaching deeper until she had to grab the workbench to stay on her feet.
“Nothing, Sundress.” He settled into a slow rhythm, fingering her. His hot breath, the timbre of his voice on the edge of her ear, sent shivers down her body to the pad of his thumb pressing into her clit in time with his thrusts. “Everything I love was already taken away from me.”
She opened her eyes, grateful to be facing the wall. There was more promise in the saucy pinup’s eyes than in the man behind her, who already had everything he loved taken away from him.
Lindsey fought to keep her voice steady despite the dejection settling through her and the steadily coiling ache between her legs.
“Your dad?”
“You really want to talk about this now? While I’m fucking you with my hand?”
When he said fucking you, he lifted her up on her toes and squeezed her breast.
“I just”—she clenched around a third finger that stole her breath and her sanity—“need to know.”
“My dad.” He pulled out and slid back in, lifting her again. Her knuckles were white, pushing down on the workbench to relieve some of the pressure between her legs. “My mom.” Out and in, three fingers stretched her.
“Is that everything?”
Her knees trembled and he clutched her chest to keep her upright.
“Stop talking and come for me, Sundress.”
Her nails bit into the wood bench as those three fingers worked her inside, bringing his thumb to her clit and pulling it away again, over and over. Pressure, release. From full to empty to full again. Stretching then collapsing. Stretching. Collapsing. Stretching—
“Is that everything?” she repeated through clenched teeth.
He paused and curled his fingers, hitting the spot inside only Jase had ever found.
“My home,” he said evenly.
“I didn’t think—”
She cried out at the unexpected jolt of pleasure shooting down her center, dropping through her like the striking of a bass drum. The sudden tidal wave of an orgasm throbbed on his hand and seized every muscle in her body.
He waited while her limbs stopped twitching and her breathing slowed before pulling his fingers out of her body, out of her shorts, and turning her by the shoulder to look at him.
“I want you to have it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t lost it too.”
“Jase.”
It was all she could say. It was all she could do.
He kept his eyes on her as he unbuttoned his pants, pulled himself out, and worked the fingers that had been inside her along his own rigid length.
“Nothing scares me, Sundress,” he said again.
Truth: I always fall for unavailable men.
Emotionally, physically, metaphorically, literally, every which way unavailable. Graham, Jase, even Jason, could never love her the way she wanted. The way she needed.
Hard, how Jason Sr. had said in a dream. He’d promised her a finale at the end of the trip and all she got was a broken heart and a box she still hadn’t opened, tucked underneath Jase’s bed.
Since she’d rather bruise her knees on the concrete garage floor than keep looking into Jase’s eyes, hungry for her in a way that weakened her knees yet unafraid of losing her since she wasn’t someone he loved, she lowered herself in front of him.
This man always seemed to be hard. Insatiable. One woman would never be enough, no matter how much she craved him.
Lindsey put her mouth on him, tasted herself on her tongue, and took him to the back of her throat.
“Fuck,” he bit out. It was his turn to brace himself on the workbench. His turn to flinch when she grabbed his balls just a little too tight or grazed his shaft with her teeth.
His hands curled into her hair—to control her pace, she thought. Then he tensed and held her still. He was looking over his shoulder.
“Hold up,” he muttered.
Headlights were shining in his face.