Chapter 23 Jack
JACK
I might have let him keep walking if he hadn’t said that. At the very least, I would have let him keep his hair.
The switchblade I kept in my pocket was in my hand before the thought had fully formed in my brain. My body acted on instinct. One quick swipe of the blade was all it took. Feeling the sudden lightness, Sam’s dad froze, then turned around with a shock-slackened face.
I held up his two-inch ponytail like a trophy. “It’s just hair. It will grow back. Boys will be boys, right?”
“You’re a psycho.” He jabbed his finger in the direction of my chest while backing up a step because he wasn’t stupid enough to put an appendage within grabbing distance of me.
“Maybe I am.” I shrugged. “Something you might want to consider before you hurt someone I love.”
I looked at Sam, who stared back at me with round eyes.
I didn’t feel great about that, but the kid needed to learn to keep his hands to himself.
“That’s not yours,” I said, pointing at Maya’s hair in his fist. He’d cut it right above the black hairband that kept her braid from coming undone. “Give it back to her.”
Looking thoroughly chastened, he handed it over to Maya. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Maya looked at it and shrugged. “Okay.”
Okay? I blinked.
“You need to do something about your manny,” Glen said, and I realized Janie was behind me.
“Oh, I plan to,” she said.
And she was livid.
“I’m not going to apologize.” I faced Janie in the soft glow of the porchlight with my arms crossed defensively over my chest. “You know how kids who slice open animals turn into serial killers? Well, kids who cut little girls’ hair because they won’t hug them turn into date rapists.
If his dad isn’t going to teach him how not to be a little piece of shit, then someone else has to. I did the world a favor.”
Maya was asleep, completely untraumatized by her forced haircut, her hair freshly washed and braided. She’d spent the car ride home yapping about the party and how she couldn’t wait for her aunts to pick her up tomorrow. I was closer to a meltdown than she was.
“I’m not asking you to apologize. Trust me.” Her voice turned wry. “I’m the last person who would make anyone apologize to a man who hasn’t learned to keep his hands to himself. Anyway, his hair was stupid. Growing a ponytail in the back doesn’t make balding in front any less obvious.”
I shifted restlessly. Cutting Glen’s hair wasn’t enough.
I still had all that adrenaline in my system with nowhere for it to go.
I needed to hit something. Or…fuck someone.
I tried not to let my gaze linger where the hem of Janie’s skirt met her pale thighs.
She had her knees pressed together as she faced me from the swing.
I kept waiting for her to relax, for her knees to drift apart enough to give me something to jerk off to tonight, but she kept her thick thighs locked tight.
I wasn’t proud of it.
But I pushed that shame aside and peeked again.
“Maya still wants to be friends with Sam, so I’ll need to do some damage control,” Janie went on, completely unaware that I was trying to eye-fuck her and completely unhelpful about it.
“I’ll give them a few days to cool off and then invite Glen and Cheryl for coffee or something to clear the air.
They can’t honestly be mad that you cut his hair when Glen was totally fine with Sam cutting Maya’s. That would be so hypocritical.”
I sighed. “I hate to shatter your rose-colored glasses, honey, but people are often hypocrites.”
Her lower lip fell open and she blinked at me.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She didn’t just shake her head. She shook her whole body. “It’s been a while since you called me honey, that’s all. It surprised me.”
I speared my fingers through my hair and tugged. “It’s hard as hell keeping myself professional around you. You’re sitting there thinking up ways to be a good mom to Maya, and I’m trying to look up your skirt.”
She snorted and looked away, her cheeks pink. “You’re trying to look up my skirt, and I’m pressing my thighs together because I get wet every time I think about the way you stood up for Maya.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m such a good mom,” she muttered sarcastically under her breath.
Like hell was I going to let her talk shit about herself.
Like hell was I going to let her keep her thighs together.
I was kneeling in front of her before she got the last word out. “In the first place, you are a fantastic mom, and trust me, I know what a fantastic mom looks like because I have one myself.” With a hand on each of her knees, I stared her straight in the eyes. “In the second place, how wet?”
I watched her struggle with herself. I watched her relent. I hope she didn’t feel like she lost the battle, because it felt like winning to me.
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, leaving it glossy. “Find out for yourself.”
Bad Janie was back. Thank fuck. It was a mystery to me why she kept this part of her locked down tight, but goddamn, it was beautiful when it rose to the surface. Fucking glorious.
There was no resistance as I pushed her knees apart.
My palms slid up her inner thighs with slow, ruthless intention, giving her every opportunity to stop me.
When I got to her core, I paused, tracing the lace hem of her cotton underwear with my thumbs.
Goosebumps broke out on her soft thighs and her breath hitched.
She watched me with hooded eyes. “Are you going to sit there petting me, soldier, or are you going to find something useful to do with those fingers?”
“Honey, I’ve got nowhere to be. I’ll be taking my time here, thank you.”
But my thumbs apparently had a mind of their own, because they met in the middle. I could feel her damp heat through the gusset of her underwear and I had my answer. Very wet. She was very fucking wet.
I groaned. “Fuck, Janie. You’re soaked. Is this all for me?”
“All for you,” she whispered.
I slipped one thumb under the cotton and ghosted up her seam, wet and warm and silky. She shifted toward my touch with a sharp inhale and my gaze flicked to hers. “Pull up your skirt. I want to see.”
Janie caught the hem with her fingertips and slowly dragged her skirt up her thighs, teasing me. My dick twitched with every new inch she exposed. When she lifted it past the blue triangle of her underwear, she widened her legs a smidgeon more. Fucking tease.
“Show me.” My voice came out husky and raw.
“Hm. Should I?” she wondered. Her hand went between her legs and she toyed with the lace there. “I don’t know.”
I swallowed a groan, watching her fingers drive me insane. “You should. You definitely should.”
With a little laugh, she hooked an index finger under the hem and pulled her panties to the side, shivering as the cool night air hit where she was hottest. I covered my mouth with my fist and leaned back on my heels for a better view. Copper curls and pink flushed skin.
“Damn, you’re pretty. Like a sunrise,” I murmured. “What am I going to do with you?”
Her laugh was breathless and strangled. “Fuck me, I hope. Otherwise I’m going to feel pretty awkward about flashing my pussy at you.”
“Oh, I’m going to fuck you, Janie,” I promised darkly.
“I’m going to fuck this pretty pussy every way I can.
With my fingers.” I pushed two inside. When I pumped them in and out, she moaned softly.
“With my tongue.” Still pumping my fingers in her slick pussy, I leaned in and swiped her clit with my tongue.
She gasped, her fingers diving into my hair.
“With my dick.” Impatient for all of it, I dragged her panties down her legs and tossed them aside.
“Yes,” she whimpered. “Yes.”
I loved her like this. My lips curved into a smile and I pressed every word to her pussy. “I’m going to make such a mess of you, honey. Because that’s what you do to me. You turned me inside out, made me break my own rules, made me want things I don’t know how to want.”
I kept at her with my mouth and fingers as she writhed against me.
Her nails dug into my scalp, a sharp flick of pain that kept me steady.
I added a third finger and stretched her wider.
Her breaths came on loud pants now as she pushed closer and closer, her pussy tightening around my fingers.
I didn’t draw it out. Didn’t make her wait.
I latched my lips around her clit, sucked hard, and sent her flying.
She soaked my fingers, my tongue, and I lapped up everything she gave me.
“Jack,” she muttered as I grabbed her wrists, taking her with me as I pushed to stand. “Jesus fucking Christ, give a girl a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute. My dick is so hard the wind could make me blow right now. On your feet, honey.”
She swayed against me with a soft chuckle. Her hands cupped my face, squishing my cheeks a little, eyes dark and sparkling as they met mine. “You literally made my knees weak, soldier. Good job.”
No commendation had ever felt so good. “I’m happy to repeat it any time you ask. Hands on the rail, Ace.”
I spun her away from me so she faced the inky velvet sky and flipped her skirt up. She shivered, her hands tightening on the rail. I unzipped my jeans and groaned with relief when my cock sprang free.
“The stars are out,” she said.
The only stars I cared about were the ones in her eyes when she told me over her shoulder, “I’ve always wanted to be fucked under the stars.”
“Happy to oblige in making all your sex fantasies come true.” I lined myself up at her entrance, dragging the weeping head through her wet slit so she knew I was there, and then slammed home.
For a moment, all I saw was stars but not a single one of them was in the sky.
“Oh, my god,” she whispered. “Oh, my god.”
I couldn’t move. I was dangerously close to spilling on the first thrust. I blinked and forced myself to focus on something other than the warm, soaked pussy clenched around me like it was made to take my cock.
The constellations above us. There was the frying pan.
One of the dippers. Hard to tell if it was big or little without the other one to compare it to.
“Jack,” Janie commanded. “Move.”
I moved, pulling out slowly and then snapping my hips flush to her ass again. “Like that?” I teased. “Or…” I pulled out again and this time only pushed halfway in again, thrusting in rapid, shallow thrusts. “Like this?”
She groaned. “All of it. I want all of it.”
“All of what, Janie?” I was merciless, taunting both of us with what we wanted.
“All of you.”
I slammed into her so hard, so deep, that we both cried out. “You want me? Or you want my dick?” I leaned over her back, caught her chin in my hand, and forcibly turned her face to mine as I fucked us both to the edge. “Tell me.”
“Both.” Her eyes were dark and luminous in the moonlight. “I want both.”
And then she braced against the rail and pushed back against me, meeting my thrusts with thrusts of her own, and I lost my ever-loving mind.
I pounded into her with feral fury. My fingers dug into the soft flesh of her hips and when I finally felt her pussy clench around me, her orgasm took me over the edge with her.
I collapsed over her, holding my weight so I wouldn’t crush her against the rail, and breathed into the sweat-damp curve of her neck. “You can have it,” I roughed out. “All of me. You can have it.”
“Mmm.” She reached behind us to rub the back of my head and gave a happy little laugh. “Good. I’ll take it. I’m claiming you for the next two months, soldier. You’re mine until September.”
September.
Because that was when I was leaving.
I had thought that was what I wanted. To escape a life that had made me feel claustrophobic since the moment I had pulled into town back in November.
I didn’t feel claustrophobic now, with Janie’s warm, sated body beneath me and the whole Colorado sky above me.
Two months wasn’t enough. I wanted so much more.