Chapter 20 Cynthie
I can’t sleep.
It’s hardly a surprise, given the events of the day, but it’s still deeply frustrating.
I don’t want to be lying awake, tossing and turning while I relive the passionate, scorching hot kiss that I shared with a man I hate.
It’s bad enough that I’m going to be teased relentlessly for the rest of my life because I swooned away afterward.
Maybe they should all be applauding my dedication to the role of Regency ingenue, because according to Patty, the sight of Jack catching me in his strong arms and yelling furiously at everyone was like something out of a novel.
It wasn’t the kiss. Not really. It was the hangover and the lack of sleep. It was dehydration, and the fact I hadn’t eaten, before being drenched in freezing cold water while wearing a glorified nightie. But that isn’t going to stop the rest of the cast and crew from mocking me about it. For ever.
I’d have thought Jack would be loving this, that there’d be plenty of smirks and dry comments about his prowess, but he looked utterly traumatized by the whole ordeal. I half thought the paramedics should have been checking him over instead of me.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that Jasmine and Logan agreed we didn’t need to do another take of the actual kiss after my spectacularly embarrassing display.
Probably for the best, because I wasn’t sure I could go through that again.
I just hope that their confidence that they have a single, perfect take is not misplaced.
I have no idea how it will look on-screen. It feels utterly mad that it’s going to be on-screen at all, because the moment Jack’s mouth touched mine, I knew I wasn’t acting, and worst of all… I think he did too.
With a growl, I push my duvet away and swing my legs out of bed.
The clock beside me says 1:25 a.m. in big red numbers.
If I don’t get to sleep soon, I’m going to be totally useless tomorrow, and I cannot possibly have a repeat performance of today.
My best bet is to go and hunt out some chamomile tea, and hope that it quiets my noisy brain.
Unsurprisingly, the whole, giant house is shrouded in darkness, and I stumble along the corridor and down the stairs as carefully as possible. When I reach the kitchen door, however, there’s already a narrow strip of light underneath it.
My fingers hesitate on the handle. With a curious sense of certainty, I know exactly who I will find in there. I could turn around, go back to bed, but I don’t. Instead I push the door open.
Jack is leaning back against the long kitchen counter, a glass of water at his side. He’s wearing a pair of soft plaid pajama bottoms and a worn gray T-shirt. His hair is mussed, like he’s been running his hands through it, like he couldn’t sleep either.
At the sight of me, his head snaps up, and there’s a look in his eyes that I can’t quite decipher. He stands up straight, every line of his body radiating tension.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, and his voice is hoarse.
I push the door gently closed behind me. “I couldn’t sleep,” I say, warily. “I came to get a cup of tea.”
I don’t understand the mood between us: it’s dark and snarled, a tangled web of unspoken things.
“Are you feeling better?” he asks stiffly.
“I’m fine.”
I take a step toward the kettle. Toward him. He doesn’t move.
“I hate this,” he says, his voice low, vicious.
I don’t need to ask what he means; I understand all too well. I take another step.
God, I want him. I want him so badly it’s painful, and I don’t want to want him.
“I hate this too,” I whisper.
Time stops. We stand, frozen, for half a heartbeat, then Jack comes violently away from the counter, and I leap at him. We crash into each other, his mouth coming down on mine, hot and relentless, and I curl my hands in his hair, pulling it hard enough that he gives a low moan against my lips.
I want to bite and scratch and claw at him.
I want to tear him apart. I’m so feverish and so angry and his fingers on my skin feel so good.
His hands move to my ass, and he lifts me, my legs wrapping around his waist as he pushes me back against the fridge door, a shock of cold metal pressed against my back.
Jack rocks his hips and the sensation has more helpless noises escaping my mouth.
He kisses my jaw, my neck, clamps his teeth lightly around my earlobe, and I wriggle against him, the friction right there where I want it.
Jack groans. “Just once,” he rasps. “Just one time to get it out of our systems.”
“Yes,” I pant, almost beyond thought. “Once. Now.”
My mouth finds his again, and I bite down on his bottom lip. His hand cups my breast over my thin pajama top, and when his thumb brushes across my nipple, I whimper. I’ve never felt like this before. I didn’t know I could feel like this.
He relaxes his hold on me for a moment, so that I slide down until my feet are back on solid ground.
Our bodies are pasted together. He holds me there, caged against the fridge, and when he looks at me, I see my own wildness reflected back in his eyes.
Before he can kiss me again, I grasp the bottom of his T-shirt, tugging it up in silent demand, and he’s happy to follow my lead, leaning back so that we can dispose of it, and his T-shirt is quickly followed by my own top.
I run my fingers over the lean muscles of his chest, down his stomach, which ripples under my touch.
He bites out a curse, bends down, and flicks his tongue over my nipple.
The world goes fuzzy. I swear I can taste colors.
As his lips travel over my chest and throat, the sandpaper feeling of his jaw a delicious roughness against my skin, his fingers drop to my waist, dipping below the band of my pajama shorts. When he touches me, I think I’m going to come apart there and then.
“Oh my god, Cynthie,” he says, the words strangled. “You’re so wet.”
He slides one finger inside me. Two. I ride his hand, delirious. He crooks his fingers and I see stars. His mouth punishes mine in a hard, frantic kiss while he swallows all the needy little moans that slip from my lips, drinking them down like they taste delicious.
Past reason, I reach for his trousers, tugging them off. When I take him in my hand, he hisses. His eyes are pure, feral animal. There’s more kissing, more touching and it’s not gentle or tender; it’s increasingly desperate. We clash like we’re fighting, like we can’t get enough of each other.
Then, we’re on the floor, and he’s underneath me, gloriously naked, and my fingers wrap around his wrists, hard , pinning him to the ground as I straddle him, leaning down to sink my teeth into his shoulder.
Jack makes a sound like a snarl and rolls us so that I’m underneath him. He yanks my shorts off with such violence that I wonder if he’s ripped them clean in half. Not that I’d care either way, because now he’s here against me and there’s nothing between us, nothing at all.
Suddenly he stills, looks down at me, pupils blown wide with lust. “Are you sure?”
I think any other time, with any other person, I’d be able to appreciate this careful consideration. Even in the grip of this moment of madness, I recognize that it is something good and right, but I can’t help it when I snap, practically sobbing, “Yes, for fuck’s sake. Yes. Now .”
And then he pushes into me, and his hand comes over my mouth to muffle the scream that flies out of it, and he’s so big and I’m so full, and my body is on fire, everywhere he touches me.
He leans down to kiss me again, and his tongue thrusts against mine in time with his hips, and I’m vicious, my fingernails digging into his back.
When his hand reaches down between my legs and he circles my clit as he rocks into me, a warm, building sensation starts in my toes and spreads through me until suddenly, I detonate, fracturing around him in a million sharp-edged pieces, and sobbing his name, totally stunned by the force of my own orgasm.
“Fuck, Cynthie, fuck,” Jack groans. “So good.” And then, pressing his face into the side of my neck to stifle his own exclamation, he follows me over the edge. The two of us lie, shuddering for air, suspended from reality, while there is only this: his mouth on me, my hands on him.
Eventually, I come back to myself. Floating back from wherever I went, to settle in my body, and I’m aware that the floor is hard and cold underneath my back, and that Jack is hard and warm on top of me. I touch a shaking hand to my mouth, tasting blood.
Jack lifts his head and looks down at me. His cheeks are pink, his hair stands on end, and I realize the blood in my mouth is his, that I’ve bitten his lip that hard. His expression is one of absolute shock.
“I…” he starts, but he clearly doesn’t know what to say next.
I push my palm against his chest. “Maybe you could get off me,” I suggest. My voice is uneven.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Jack looks down at where our naked bodies are still joined, and his eyes widen, darting up to meet mine. “Oh, shit,” he whispers, and I come to the same realization at the same time. “I’m so sorry, Cyn… I didn’t… We didn’t…”
“I’m on the pill,” I croak. “And I get tested.”
“Okay.” He nods, his eyes drifting closed. “Me too. Get tested I mean. And I’ve never… I mean not without protection before.”
“Me neither,” I manage.
“But I should have checked, before ,” he says, and he sounds angry. This time, fortunately, I realize it’s with himself. “I can’t believe I just…” He looks down at me again, sighs, his expression troubled, and then he eases off of me.
I feel alarmingly naked. Like a whole new level of nakedness exists without the warmth of Jack’s body on mine. He grabs his pajamas and pulls them on, before handing me some kitchen towel so that I can clean myself up.
This is the moment when it fully sinks in that I just had sex with Jack Turner-Jones on the kitchen floor where absolutely anyone could have walked in on us, and the insanity of it is dazzling .
What the hell is wrong with me? And why, why, why did the first orgasm I have ever had with another person have to be courtesy of someone I can’t even stand? God, my ears are still ringing.
Fortunately, it turns out my own pajamas are indeed still in one piece, and I waste no time in putting them back on. Then Jack and I stand across from each other once more.
“So… that happened,” I say.
Jack’s mouth pulls up on one side. I try not to think about kissing it, about how the desire I feel for him hasn’t been tempered at all—that it’s worse than ever.
Because of course it is. I want to scream at myself.
It’s like I’ve never read a romance novel before— just once to get it out of our systems?
That shit notoriously never works . I want to hurl myself at him and wrap my body around his like a vine.
I am so fucked.
I think Jack might be reaching a similar conclusion because his expression grows wary.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” I say before he can. I can’t face another rejection like last night, but the words suck all the air out of the room.
His eyes shutter, and he takes a step back. He rubs a hand absently over his chest. “No,” he says after a moment. “Probably not.”
Perversely, I realize it’s not the answer I wanted.
I don’t know how to handle this. Do we still hate each other?
I thought I hated him, but maybe… maybe I don’t.
Maybe—and this feels like the scariest thought of all—maybe I could have very different feelings for him.
If I let myself. It’s hard to concentrate when my entire being is still singing with the intensity of what we just did.
“It was a mistake. We don’t even like each other,” I say, and a pathetic part of me, one that I wish didn’t exist, hopes that he’ll disagree.
“I don’t think what we just did had much to do with liking each other,” he says instead, and he runs a hand through his hair, smoothing it back into place and undoing the work of my busy fingers. Removing the evidence.
It’s the wake-up call I needed. He’s made no secret of how unwelcome he finds the attraction between us, his words shouldn’t come as a surprise… and still, there’s a pain in my chest, still my stomach drops.
“Right,” I say hollowly. “So now we can just… pretend this didn’t happen.”
After a beat, Jack shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “Like you say, it was a mistake. It’s not as if it’s going to happen again.”
I keep my face as neutral as his, even though the fact that he really does consider what we just did a mistake makes me want to throw up.
There’s no way I’m giving him the upper hand.
There’s no way I’m going to let this… madness derail me when everything I’ve ever wanted is within my grasp. I can’t believe I was so reckless.
“No one can know,” I add quickly.
“I’m not in the habit of sharing details of my sex life with people.” Jack’s voice is cold, remote. “Especially when it’s going to make me… make both of us look unprofessional.”
He’s right. He’s right, and I’m so pissed about it. I feel the unwelcome sting of tears at the back of my eyes.
“Cynthie…” he says then, his tone uncertain.
I paste on my most glittering smile. “Good. Now that we’ve got that out of our systems, we can go back to hating each other,” I say. “It should be easy enough.”
And with that I hurry from the room, leaving the door open behind me. I move away from the cold light that spills out into the hallway.
Away from Jack.
Never again , I swear to myself. I’ll never forget myself like that again .