Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Jackson
“ J ax.”
Fucking hell, my head thumps . And the world is shifting around me. Spinning, twirling, rolling… No, wait, that’s me. I’m spinning.
“Jackson.”
A husky female voice washes over me, and my dick goes rock hard. I think I’m the reason for that rasp. God, I hope so. Pretty sure I remember something about making her scream my name. Or maybe that was a dream. I float away, cupping my erection in hopes of finding that dream again.
“For god’s sake. Turn loose of your dick and wake up.”
I’m shoved. Hard. And jolt awake. That raspy voice belongs to Magnolia.
I peel my eyes open and cuss, slamming them closed again. I toss an arm over my face. “Turn off the lights.” Jesus Christ. My throat is made of gravel.
There’s a snicker and some shuffling, then the bed jostles again. “There. Wake up, Kermit. ”
“What the fuck, Magnolia? We had an agreement.” I try to blink my eyes. Nope, still too much light.
Wait. My hand’s on my dick.
My naked dick.
In front of Maggie.
I jolt upright and leap from the bed. The hand on my cock is now doing a piss-poor job of covering me and the very solid staff standing straight out in front of me.
“Pretty sure I’ve already seen all of you. And then some. Up close and personal. Quit acting like a prude.”
Awareness is a bucket of ice-cold reality. Maggie sits on the bed in a room I don’t recognize, wrapped in a sheet. She’s obviously very naked if I go by the pile of green material in a heap on the floor just inside the door.
A fire-exit diagram hangs on the back of the door. “We’re in a hotel room.”
Jesus Christ, why won’t my brain come back online?
Maggie flops back on the bed with a groan. “Oh god.”
Somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious, I hear a different version of those words from her lips, and I double my efforts to hide my erection. The glorious expanse of naked skin above the top edge of the sheet isn’t helping matters.
She covers her face with one arm, cursing under her breath. The linens on the bed are a tangled mess, as is her hair. I’m butt naked, as is she.
And my body is responding on some subconscious level.
Jesus. Oh, holy shit.
“Did we hook up last night?”
She lifts her arm enough to open one eye and glare daggers at me. “Gee. What makes you think that?”
The stream of disbelief emanating from that one eyeball is cut off when she covers her face again. I take advantage and hustle to find my boxers, not that they’ll help contain my situation. Maybe I need to go for the pants too.
Both garments are wedged under the comforter that’s strewn on the floor. I snag them and beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom. Once business is taken care of, I splash water on my face and take a good, long look at the idiot in the mirror.
Okay. Okay. This is no big deal. I had sex with Maggie. I’ve had a ton of sex with a ton of different women.
But none of them were her .
“Fucking hell.”
Am I upset that it happened? Or that I don’t remember it?
Definitely because it happened.
I wrench the door open, ready to barge out and beg her forgiveness, and am momentarily stunned by the sight of her trying to don her dress.
Her back is to me, and the hem of the gown is all wadded on one side, like she threw it on and didn’t bother to pull it down.
She’s reaching to try to do up the zipper, making the cutest feral noises in her struggle.
Apprehension that I’ve just fucked up the best non-relationship I’ve ever had grinds me to a halt.
Morning-after awkwardness is why I never spend the night with a woman.
But this is my Mags. And I don’t know where we stand. Do I help her? Do I get on my knees and apologize?
Standing in the doorway and watching while she struggles is an asshole move—that much I do know. She’s nearly in a full-body convulsion trying to reach the zipper, so I cross the room and settle my hands at her waist. “Let me help.”
She stills at my touch, and I fight the urge to help her take the dress back off. “Is this okay? My hands on you?”
A single nod is her answer, but she still won’t give me her eyes. I don’t know why having her consent now feels important since we’ve already crossed a line, but it does.
Letting my fingers slide down her hips, I untuck the dress.
The swish of the material sends my dick right back to a semi-erect state, but the dress now hangs like it’s supposed to, even if it’s got some wrinkles it didn’t have last night.
The porcelain skin of her back stands out in striking contrast to the dark green material, and I have the sudden urge to sweep her hair to the side and taste the line of her neck.
Instead, I pull the edges of her dress together to zip her up.
“Gotta say, I’ve never helped a woman dress before.” Even that gets no response from her, but the way her chest rises and falls tells me she isn’t unaffected by my nearness. Or maybe she’s really pissed off and doing a good job of not eviscerating me.
There’s something oddly erotic about the act of helping her get dressed. It’s intimate. Intense. Personal.
I wish like hell I could remember the last few hours.
The zipper is halfway up when I realize the issue. It looks torn, like the teeth are missing. Holy fuck . Did I rip her dress off last night?
“Um, I don’t think this is going to work.”
That gets a response, and she whips her head to the side, haunted eyes meeting mine. “What?”
I scratch my chin, feeling like the biggest dumbass ever. “The zipper. It’s broken.”
She spins away and goes to the mirror, and I follow because, obviously, I can’t stay away from her. “Oh no. What the hell am I going to do? I can’t walk out of here like this.”
She’s looking into the mirror over her shoulder, tugging and pulling and making the whole thing worse as the zipper part separates from the material. I step closer and skim my hands around her waist, grabbing her hands and stilling them behind her. “Mags, it’s okay.”
She stops fighting, and her shoulders sag. Her forehead hits my chest, her warm exhale skittering across my skin.
“What did we do, Jax?” The tiny, miserable voice sounds an awful lot like my own internal what the fuck .
I wish I could answer her and tell her it was the best night of my life. Instead, I say, “Whatever we did, we did it together.”
Releasing her hands to hold her by the hips, I walk backward, pulling her into my lap when the backs of my legs hit the bed.
I rack my brain for something to take away the panicked expression on her face.
“Look, we’ve grown close over the years.
We go chasing down adventure every month.
We’ve even had a few instances where we’ve fallen asleep watching a movie together. ”
It’s a half-assed justification, but I cling to it.
Her eyes grow even wider, locking on to mine, and her entire body tenses. “Alice.”
“She’s gonna kill me.” She’s always warning me about my random hookups.
My perfect little sister, who’s never fucked up a thing in her life, who constantly reminds me to be a better man.
If she gets wind of this, she’ll probably be mad at Maggie, for sure.
Especially since she had a front-row seat to the fallout of Harmony and knows firsthand how bad things got between me and my sister.
How Harmony played us both, how Alice took her side, but also how I pushed them both away and cut Alice out of my life for a while. How I walked away from everything.
Maggie’s hands cup my cheeks. “She can’t know, Jax.”
“So, what are we gonna do? Pretend it didn’t happen?
” I don’t know why, but that option doesn’t sit well with me.
Maggie isn’t Harmony. This isn’t the past repeating itself.
But the thought doesn’t make me feel any better, nor erase the fact that, apparently, I had sex with my little sister’s best friend.
Although now that I put a label to it, I’d consider Maggie one of my best friends too.
“Well, neither of us remember it… at least I don’t. Do you?”
Regrettably, she’s got a point. My male pride takes a hit. No guy ever wants to know his performance was forgettable.
“And if you get this job, you’ll be leaving. Also, Alice would kill us both.”
She’s right, but I don’t have to like it. “But she knows we hang out and go hiking and stuff. She’s never said anything to me about having a problem with it.”
Her eyes close, and the color drains from her face. “I’m too hungover for this conversation right now.”
Same, but also, now I need to know. “Has she said something to you?”
She shakes her head.
Okay, then. Relief settles in my gut, heady and sweet. “Okay, so we’re going to finish getting dressed. And when we leave this room, we put the drunk night behind us.” Except, what if there’s a souvenir? My heart stutters in my chest. I don’t wanna ask, but I know I need to.
“But, Maggie… I didn’t have condoms. Did you?”
She huffs a laugh—one I can’t tell if it’s sarcastic or something else. “I don’t carry condoms, Jackson. Why would I ever need them? But don’t worry your pretty head. I’m on the pill for cycle reasons. Unless you gave me some STD, we should be fine.”
“I’m clear,” I mumble. Christ, my emotions are all over the place.
I definitely don’t like the idea of her carrying condoms, nor why she might want to.
And yet, at the same time, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I can’t remember if we had sex and am kicking my own ass for it, because having her in my lap feels exactly right.
I take advantage of her broken zipper and slide my hand up her back to grip her by the neck. Something about the action triggers a memory for me.
Her reaction is instant. She stills and stares at me. Yeah. It’s coming back to her too.
She swallows, then licks her lips, and I give up fighting an erection.
We have to get out of this room, or I’m going to toss her back on this bed, and there will be no question about if we fucked or not.
“We need to get out of here. You wear my jacket. Once we leave this room, what happens at the Mansion, stays at the Mansion. Nothing else changes between us.”
She gives a single jerk of her head before sliding off my lap and shrugging on my coat. A nude-colored undergarment drops into her handbag before I’ve even moved. Deflated at the eagerness in which she’s moving, I follow suit and finish dressing.
Jesus, I’m a conflicted mess.
I’m about to slide my socks on when there’s a gasp from the guest chair. She’s grimacing, looking down at her feet, one of those fuck-me shoes dangling from her fingers.
“What’s wrong?” I don’t mean for it to sound so impatient, but I’m so fucking torqued by this morning after. And this hangover is thumping pain through my head.
I round the end of the bed and note the huge red blisters that line her feet .
“Guess I should’ve known better. I never wear heels,” she says, inspecting the row of raised skin.
“Shit. That looks painful.”
“Yeah, well, blisters happen. Guess my feet swelled.” She tries to slide the strappy number on.
“Stop. You put those on, and those blisters are gonna rip open. Here.” I toss her my socks. “At least wear these till we get to the car.” I’ll fucking carry her if I have to.
Wearing my socks and coat to cover her busted dress, Maggie looks into the full-length mirror just before we leave and shakes her head. “God, I hope no one sees us sneaking out of here.”
Those blisters and the regret she obviously has over the whole event are enough to have me hustling her out the door. “We’ll hit a side door.” I don’t like that she’s embarrassed, but I’m still going to do my best to take care of her.
The lobby is half full, but I don’t recognize anyone as we hurry to the side exit. Regardless, Maggie hides behind her hair. I want to take her hand or pick her up and carry her. But maybe she’s right, and it’s better to just run head down in the ultimate walk of shame.
Despite her grumblings that she’ll call an Uber, we make it to my Jeep, and I stand guard while she climbs in. The few short blocks’ drive is spent in silence, the tension so thick I roll the window down just to be able to breathe.
When we reach her place, she’s out and at her front door before I can think of my next move. And then she’s sliding inside, closing the door. Running away and shutting me out in one fell swoop.
That’s my normal MO, not hers.
For the first time in my life, I don’t know what my next move is. I only know that now everything has changed.