Chapter 4 #2
Better to just rip the Band-Aid off. “She knows about us,” she said quickly, her words blending together, but one look at his face and she knew he understood.
He made the same face his little sister did when she was unhappy about something, his lips forming a thin line, green eyes narrowing, not in anger, but in annoyance.
“Caroline’s sharp; I’m actually surprised she didn’t figure it out sooner.” He rubbed at his face, sitting back in his chair. “What did she advise you?”
Indy’s brow furrowed as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, a hand landing upon his thigh. “I told her it wasn’t any of her business.”
Jack took her hand in his, entwining his fingers with hers. “Champ, it is her business. She’s your agent, it’s her job to protect you in situations like this.”
“Situations like what?”
“Situations that are potentially damaging to your reputation.”
“You’re not a situation, Jack,” she said, not liking this conversation at all.
“You know what I mean.”
She could see him pulling away, not actually, but in his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the sudden tension in his hand. She made a choice. She raised their joined hands to her lips, pressing a kiss against his wrist before sliding out of her chair and slipping into his lap.
“Pretty sure I can’t do this to a situation,” she whispered, taking his face in her hands, brushing her thumb across his mouth. His tongue snuck out, nudging her finger, and she smiled before leaning in and catching his lower lip between hers, nipping at it lightly.
One of his hands trailed around to the small of her back, drawing her body tightly against his; the other hand cupped the back of her head, fingers twisting into her hair, tugging on it just a little and then harder as she groaned into his mouth and arched into him.
Whenever they were together, he was always testing, figuring out what she liked and giving her a little more of it every time.
It was how he approached everything, that brilliant mind of his experimenting until he found just the right formula for success.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, he wrenched his mouth away from hers.
Then, with the slightest increase in pressure from his thumb, he angled her head just right, his lips finding that spot just below her ear that he’d discovered the day before, closing around it in a hot, wet kiss. Her entire body jumped at the contact.
“Fuck.” The word slipped out, but it seemed to spur him on.
He stood quickly, settling her on the table.
Indy’s hands fumbled at his shoulders, trying to keep their bodies close, but he didn’t let her get far, his hands at her hips, flexing against them for a moment before pulling her against him, groans escaping their throats in harmony.
“Do you know what you do to me?” he asked, but she responded without words, shifting her hips, feeling his reaction to her. “Shit,” he ground out from between clenched teeth. “We can’t… we can’t do this here.”
She leaned back, trying to catch her breath, but it was nearly impossible with his mouth still hovering over her pulse point.
“Okay,” she said, trying to untangle herself from him but only succeeding in running her entire body against him.
“Indiana,” he groaned, his head dropping to her shoulder.
“Sorry,” she said, her tone letting him know she wasn’t sorry at all.
“Yeah, you sound it,” he bit out, but she could hear the humor in his voice.
Finally, he stepped away, giving her the space to climb down off the table.
He fell into his chair and she sat back down on hers and the moments bled together as they simply sat in silence.
No awkwardness, just a comfortable quiet.
“It’s getting harder to stop,” she said, her voice still laced with everything she felt for him.
Jack chuckled. “It’s always been hard to stop.”
Had it? He’d stopped them in Bari, insisting he wanted to take it slow, but now it felt like an excuse. Was it that they were keeping it a secret? Or something else entirely?
“You have it down to an art form,” she said, and she couldn’t help the slight bitterness that slipped into the words.
Jack clearly caught her meaning and turned to her fully, looking deeply into her eyes. “What I have in mind is not going to happen where anyone could walk in on us.”
There was a note in his voice she’d never heard before, and now she would do pretty much anything to hear it again. Indy actually rubbed her thighs together as she said, “What do you have in mind?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Indiana, when we’re together for the first time, it’s not going to be some quickie with my pants around my ankles and your shorts on the floor, in my parents’ house or in your dorm, where we have to stay quiet and I have to sneak out after.
I know exactly what you need, and once we have a little bit of privacy, I’m going to give it to you. ”
She swallowed before taking her lip between her teeth, biting down hard. Jack smirked and she could practically see him filing away her reaction in his mind, knowing she liked it when he talked to her like that.
“I, um, I have…” She cleared her throat and ran a hand through her hair, unable to look away from him, mind reeling at the thought of his voice, commanding and firm, talking her through every spark of pleasure his body could bring her.
“Paperwork?” he asked, tapping the folders on the table that they’d managed to avoid sending to the floor.
Indy’s heart rate struggled to even out. “Paperwork,” she agreed, opening the first file with a shaky hand, trying to remember what Caroline had said about any of them.
“Hey,” Jack said, covering her hand with his. The fire in his eyes wasn’t gone, but it was down to embers compared with the raging inferno just moments before. “I think I can help with that.”
With a final heavy breath, she smiled. “Thanks.”