Chapter 28
Avery found me sitting on his stoop when he got home from work, and he didn’t press me for details as to why I was there.
He just fed me snacks and waited with a sympathetic ear if I needed one.
But after a few hours of him looking down at his phone uneasily, he finally confessed I was making him late for a date.
Anna was a mess at last check, so I’m assuming she wasn’t who he was going out with, but I didn’t ask.
I didn’t want to bring her to mind just before he dined with someone else.
Still, the prospect of being at his place if he decided to bring any date back after dinner was bleh, so off to Margie’s I went.
I found La there, though I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Margie and La fed me properly, La making an osso buco so delicious, with a sauce so flavorful and complex, it had me wondering if that’s not what won Margie over.
But gracious as they were, letting me loiter there for hours and even offering to let me sleep over, the loaded looks they were sending one another forced me to accept that I was interfering with amorous plans left and right today.
There are no lights on in my apartment. I shine my cell light on the room and slip off my shoes.
My heart dive-bombs to my heels when I see that the last open space between our apartments has been covered with drywall, the last sliver of a connection between our places severed.
I set my bag down and suddenly feel like crying.
I run my hand along the wall, feeling like Fortunato from “The Cask of Amontillado.” That single panel of drywall has sucked all the air out of my lungs, out of the room. I want to expire from loneliness.
I let myself into my bedroom and scream.
Jack is lounging in my bed. His feet are crossed, his back propped against my headboard and all the pillows I own. He’s reading. He looks up. I gasp.
Not only is Jack Craig in my bed, flipping through my new copy of The Pirate Duke’s Revenge, but he’s also wearing an eye patch.
“Your eye,” I say.
“Scratched cornea,” he says. “Went to the clinic after you ran away.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “I’m so sorry, Jack.”
It’s not a real eye patch. It’s gauze taped to his head. But with his dark shock of hair, his broad shoulders cradled by my pillows, and my saucy reading material resting on that belly I have daydreams about… He’s the fucking Pirate Duke incarnate.
Goddamn it.
I lick my lips. “Why— Why are you here?”
“We didn’t get to finish our conversation.” He sounds almost polite. Deceptively so.
“It’s late. We’re both tired. I told you. I’m sorry about before. I’m a mess.” I’m loitering at the threshold of my bedroom like I’m a visitor, which I hate, so I step fully into the room. “You sure you hurt your eye and not your head? Seems like you’re lost. Your bedroom is ten feet to the west.”
“My apartment is east of you. Come here.”
“But—”
He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands. “Can you come here?”
“Why?”
“What are you going to do? Stand there all night?”
I cross my arms. “We’ll cross that bridge while you live under it.”
He huffs out a laugh and approaches slowly. Prowling.
Then he’s standing in front of me, and I’m tipping my head to look up at him.
“What do you want?” I don’t mean it to, but it comes out in a whisper.
He picks up a lock of my hair, running it through his fingers, feeling the texture of it.
He smells like crisp soap, a hint of pine, and the promise of something very bad.
He’s looking down at the strands of hair he’s playing with.
And then he runs that lock gently up my neck. Goose bumps erupt up and down my arms.
“I have a theory,” he says.
My heart is beating like a tin-pan symphony inside my chest. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you’re using therapy as an excuse. A wedge to avoid getting involved with me.”
I can’t catch my breath. His voice is soft, weaving its way around me, tugging me closer.
“No,” I murmur, my heart contracting with the knowledge he’s right.
He leans forward…and brushes my nose with his. “Yes.”
I blink. He’s looking at me with that inscrutable mix of detached observation and amusement. My lips feel heavy. I need his mouth on mine. “What—” My tone almost sounds desperate. “What is happening right now?”
“Whatever you let happen. You want me. I want you. We like each other. God knows why, but we do. I’ve already seen the worst of you, and I want more.
You’ve seen the worst of me. We’ll take it slow.
And every time you get the urge to bail, I need you to remember that I live next door. You can’t run far.”
I’m going to hyperventilate. I want him to get the hell out of my place so I can sort this all out in my head. I want to push him back on that bed and mount him like a racing jockey.
“‘You can’t run far.’ That is so romantic,” I say.
“Breaking balls is better than breaking hearts. I’ll take it.”
I choke out a laugh, still trying to regulate my breathing, still resisting the urge to rub up on him like a cat in heat. The pull to touch him, to be near him, is more intense than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s terrifying.
While I’m wrestling with myself, he crushes my reserve with a few firm words. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
I tilt my chin up ever so slightly, and he catches my lips in a slow, sweet kiss that seems to seep into every cell of my being, puffing them up, filling me until I could float away at the pure sensation of it all.
The kiss from the closet was a frantic thing, the hunger of two clawing people desperate to get at each other.
This, though… At first, it’s a whisper of his lips against my full bottom one, and then it deepens, languid and careful, the kiss of someone who has all night.
Something in me snaps. I try to take more, demand more.
I clutch his back, his firm ass, trying to pull him to me.
But still he sips, small kisses, small slides, small grazes.
I take his hand, urging him to run it up under my shirt, growing frustrated when he keeps it on my hip.
He smiles against my mouth, knowing what he’s doing to me.
In response, I press the palm of my hand hard against the heat of him, rubbing him through his pants, relishing the firm feeling of him.
He groans, some of his willpower draining away.
I fumble with his fly, moaning into his mouth.
My phone begins vibrating. He lifts his head, amused, while I cling to him and pant.
He runs his hand from my throat down my torso and then around to my back, slowly pulling the phone from the back pocket of my jeans.
He places it in my hand and then slides his hand back to my rear, cupping and squeezing before taking a shuddering breath.
“Okay. We take it slow starting now.” He presses his lips to mine again in a quick peck.
I don’t know what else to do now that my brain has been irrevocably broken, so I look at my phone. Text. From Lucas.
Can you talk?
It’s a second before I register any of it. Jack glances down and sees who the message is from.
“He— He probably just wants to talk about the tabloids.”
“Hmm.” He returns to my bedside, grabs his keys from the table, and slips on his shoes.
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” Jack boxes me in until I feel my back touch the wall.
He plants his hands on either side of my head, then bends to plunder my mouth with his tongue until I’m on the verge of overheating and my toes feel like curling.
“What—” I gasp, when he lifts his head. “What if we do this and then I refuse to talk to you again?”
“I might give some thought to punishment.”
My breath stutters. “Being subjected to your personality ought to do the trick.”
He straightens and smiles. “Clever way of making sure you keep me near. You’re fooling no one, 5A. Come lock up behind me.”
At the door, he gives me another lingering kiss, his hands running along my back, my ass, pressing me up against him.
My hands are in his hair, and I’m weak when he gives me a loaded look.
It sends a rush of heat through me. I catch sight of the mess I’ve made of his hair, and I vaguely wonder what I look like to him.
In the mirror, I see copper hair disheveled, lips swollen…
I glance down. My bra is askew and partially peeking out from the neck of my now dangerously low top.
“How did you unhook my bra?”
He shrugs. “The hooks fell apart on their own. Sword in the stone–like.”
I push at him, and he laughs. I close the door in his face for a change.
And I’m left not knowing what the hell just happened.