Chapter 21
Two months later…
“We have to stop,” Jodi groaned softly against his lips, but she didn’t loosen her death grip on his shoulders or stop grinding down on him. No, instead, she widened her legs, desperate to get closer.
“We’re taking it slow,” Danny ground out, one hand beneath her shirt, caressing her bare breast while his other hand shoved its way down the back of her pants, snaked beneath her panties and cupped her ass.
“We are taking it slow,” Jodi reminded him, grinding as hard as she could against the large bulge in his pants that had been driving her out of her mind for the past month.
They were taking things very slowly and it was killing her. For the first month, they’d kept it to short kisses stolen during their dates and even longer kisses goodnight. At some point in the last four weeks, she’d found herself climbing onto his lap, grinding down on him and…enjoying it.
It had surprised her just how much she liked it.
She liked everything about him, from the way that his hand felt wrapped around hers, the way his lips felt against her skin, the way his hands moved over her, the way he held her, the way he made her heart race, and the way that he made her gasp.
Over the past two months, he’d surprised and amazed her.
He treated her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.
He took her out on romantic dates, which usually ended in disaster, but left her smiling each and every time.
He’d taken her on a romantic dinner cruise, taught her how to play laser tag, took her to play paintball in the woods, taught her to play basketball, taken her to a concert and a picnic, cooked her dinner, surprised her at her temporary office at City Hall most days with lunch, and just made her smile.
It didn’t matter if he was burning dinner or accidentally setting his apartment on fire when he tried to surprise her with a candlelit dinner, he just had a way about him that made her smile.
Danny still irritated her from time to time, but now he apologized before she got a chance to come up with another way to get rid of his body.
When he pissed her off, and he still did that frequently, he brought her flowers, chocolate, and a pint of ice cream to make up for it, along with an apology and a promise to try to stop being an asshole.
“Jodi,” Danny groaned loudly, making her smile because he only called her by her first name when he was nearing the point of no return. The point where he came close to saying the hell with it and forgetting about his plans to take this slowly.
“We should stop,” Jodi said, panting as she pulled back only to moan as he followed the move with his mouth and began licking and suckling her neck.
She laid back against the steering wheel, pulled her legs up until they were bent and she’d shifted until her bottom was rubbing against the hard bulge in Danny’s pants.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and groaned as he moved his hands to her hips.
“You feel so fucking good,” Danny groaned against her neck as he tightened his grip on her hips and moved her, shifting her back and forth across his lap.
She moaned loudly as she closed her eyes and allowed her head to drop back against the windshield as she lost herself in his touch.
“Are you wet for me?” Danny asked, moving her harder against him.
The only response she could manage was a moan, but it seemed to be the answer that he was looking for because he rewarded her with a hard rub.
“I bet you’re soaking wet, Jodi. I’d also be willing to bet that you’d be tight for me,” Danny growled against her skin, his hands moving her in a rhythm that had her gasping for air and grinding down on him harder. “I bet sliding inside you would feel better than-”
A hard knock at the driver’s side window interrupted whatever he was going to say and had her groaning pathetically and whimpering a bit as she buried her face against his chest, struggling to catch her breath, and for the second time in her life, contemplating throttling someone with her bare hands.
Before she could move off Danny’s lap, not that she was really capable of doing that at the moment, the driver’s side door was thrown open and Greg, looking seriously pissed off, was standing there, glaring at them.
“You said you were coming right back,” Greg bit out evenly.
“Oh, umm, sorry, I just got distracted for a minute,” Jodi said, blinking.
“A minute?” Greg repeated back in disbelief. “You’ve been out here for over an hour!”
“Oh, ummm, well,” Jodi muttered, glancing at the clock on the dashboard and tried not to wince. “I was just on my way back inside,” she lied, shooting him a smile and not quite able to meet his eyes as she hastily climbed off Danny’s lap and-
Was pulled right back onto his lap and thoroughly kissed. “Come over after your friends call it a night?” Danny asked, teasingly brushing his lips against hers. “We’ll watch really bad 80’s horror flicks, devour a pint of ice cream and finish what we started?”
She rolled her eyes as she climbed off his lap, already knowing that they wouldn’t finish what they’d started and she wasn’t going to get more than a spoonful of ice cream before he devoured the entire pint.
“I’m only coming over if I get my own pint of ice cream,” Jodi said, pretending that she just had a craving for ice cream and wasn’t planning on devouring an entire pint of ice cream with the hopes that all that sugar and yumminess would make her forget just how badly she wanted to jump him.
“I’ll see you later, Tinkerbelle,” Danny whispered softly against her lips.
“Have fun at dinner,” Jodi whispered right back, stepping away from him as she gave him one of those sweetly shy smiles that he loved before she turned around and headed towards the front door, leaving him with Greg, the bastard that was staring at Tinkerbelle’s ass like it was a delicious morsel that he couldn’t wait to take a bite out of.
It was the same way that all her guy friends now looked at her.
“Not going to happen,” Danny said, leaning back against his seat as he regarded the man that up until a few months ago, had never looked at Tinkerbelle as anything more than a kid sister.
“You never know,” Greg murmured, his eyes still locked on Tinkerbelle’s retreating ass as it swayed slightly from side to side.
“I know,” Danny said, chuckling darkly as he sat back and clipped his seatbelt. He shut his door, turned the engine on and wasn’t surprised when the knock came at his window a minute later.
“I’ve known her longer,” Greg said before the window was all the way down.
Danny looked straight ahead, nodding thoughtfully. “That’s true, but that also means that your chance has come and gone.”
“Maybe,” Greg murmured, “maybe not.”
“You planning on finding out?” Danny asked, his humor quickly fading even as his respect for the man rose.
“Maybe,” Greg said, turning to shoot him a grin, “maybe not.”
Danny nodded slowly, reaching for his door handle. “You on duty?”
Greg’s grin grew bigger. “Nope.”
“Good to know.”
“But-”
“Not a word!” Jodi yelled, slapping an icepack against Greg’s face.
“Ow!”
“And stop being a baby!” Jodi snapped, grabbing the bloody paper towel and band-aid wrappers as she stormed across the kitchen, slammed her foot down on the trashcan pedestal a little harder than was probably necessary and threw the trash away.
Shaking her head in disgust, she walked over to the sink and turned the hot water on.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Greg said, standing up from where she’d told him to sit down and shut the hell up a half-hour ago when she’d found him on the ground trying to fend off blows from the other man that she was no longer talking to.
“Jodi,” Greg said, sighing heavily as he walked up behind her and placed his bloodied hands on either side of her on the kitchen sink, boxing her in, “can we just talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jodi said, sighing heavily as she scrubbed her hands clean.
“There could be,” Greg said just as she felt his lips brush the top of her ear.
“Oh, my god!” Jodi gasped, quickly turning in his arms. She looked up at him, scanning all the cuts, bandages, and quickly darkening bruises, worry twisting her stomach as he stared deeply into her eyes.
He leaned in, tilting his head to the side as he came closer. “Jodi,” he whispered, ducking his head and-
“Ow! What the hell?” Greg demanded, but she ignored him as she twisted and turned his head, looking for a head injury that would explain why he’d suddenly lost his damn mind.
“We should get you to the hospital,” Jodi said, trying not to panic and wondering where she’d put her car keys. Maybe she should call an ambulance? Head injuries weren’t something to play around with.
“Wait,” Greg said, shaking his head as he stepped back out of her reach, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Getting you to the hospital!” Jodi snapped, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.
Time was of the essence here!
“Because I’m trying to kiss you?” Greg asked, frowning.
“Yes!” Jodi snapped, shoving past him to find her keys, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her to a stop.
“I’m fine, Jodi,” Greg said, sighing heavily as he used his hold on her to turn her around.
Worrying her bottom lip, Jodi let him turn her around. “Then what’s going on?”
He entwined their hands together, caressing his thumb over the back of her hand. “I’m trying to kiss you, Jodi,” Greg said softly as he pulled her closer.
“Trying…to…kiss…me,” she mumbled back, trying to make sense of what he’d just said when he leaned down to-
“Whoa!” Jodi yelped, slapping her hand across his lips.
“Ow!” he winced, stepping back and pressing his fingertips against his split lip.
“Why are you trying to kiss me?” she demanded, not giving a damn that she sounded a bit hysterical because this was her best friend and best friends didn’t kiss each other!
“Because I want to,” Greg said, reaching for her again, but this time, she saw him coming and jumped back.
“Now? Seriously?” she couldn’t help but shake her head in disgust. “Five years ago, when you took me out, the idea of kissing me turned your stomach and now suddenly, you can’t seem to keep your lips to yourself?”
“It didn’t turn my stomach!”
“Really? Because you could have fooled me,” Jodi said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You didn’t want me to kiss you!’ he snapped.
“No, you didn’t want to kiss me!” she snapped back.
“The hell I didn’t!” he shouted, getting in her face.
“I-”
But he wouldn’t allow her to get a word in. “I asked you out because I was attracted to you, but by the end of the date…” he let his words trail off with a shake of his head, “you started acting like I was your brother, not a date.”
“You started to treat me like a kid sister!” she snapped, pissed that he was playing this game with her.
“Because that’s how you acted! Like my kid sister! We’d barely got through our first drink when you started treating me like a brother and by the time I walked you to the door, you’d placed me firmly in the friend-zone.”
“No, I didn’t!”
He sighed heavily as he headed towards the front door.
“Yeah, you did. You do it with every guy,” Greg said, only to pause with a lazy gesture towards the front door before he added, “except for the asshole living across the hall. You treat every guy you meet like he’s your long-lost brother, even that asshole that you were going to marry. ”