21

Losing Your Head

It always started out innocent.

They’d share dinner in the driveway, she’d pack her stove and cooking supplies back into her truck while he washed the dishes, and then they’d settle into Jack’s room in time for their favorite home renovation show. She always sat on his bed, so he did, too.

Some nights he held off for an hour, sometimes only five minutes. But eventually he’d crack, edging his hand closer to hers so his knuckles nudged her own. Or maybe leaning over to press a quick kiss to her cheek. And that was all the invitation she needed.

He’d have been happy if all he got was any one of those small touches. If the back of his hand could simply rest against the heat of hers until they fell asleep against the wall, he’d probably have dreamed about nothing else all night. The idea that he could lean over and kiss her smooth cheek and she let him? Well, he wasn’t anywhere near used to that.

But Mari . . . she was fierce. The hand holding, the times when he put his arm around her, it seemed like a heated energy would swarm up in her as soon as he got close, and she wasn’t able to sit still anymore without her lips finding his. Her knee slipping up onto his thigh. Her breasts nudging closer, pressing more deeply into his chest with each breath she gasped. It didn’t take him too many days to consider that maybe she was just waiting on his first touch, to tell her it was okay to do what she really wanted to be doing.

So he started reaching for her sooner.

He was most comfortable starting with a kiss, and he loved her lips. They touched him nicer than anything he could remember. It was so perfect he would almost get disappointed when she moved on from there . . . but then as soon as her tongue found his, he’d forget all about those innocent little closed-mouth touches and growl into her. His hair would end up as thrashed as hers, even though it was shorter now. His shirt would ride up as they’d slip lower on the bed. The sheets always got bunched and clammy with heat, the bedspread shoving annoyingly at their ankles.

Their legs . . .

Somehow they’d always get tangled up, couldn’t seem to lie side by side without his knee pushing between hers. As soon as he became aware of that, of the demand he didn’t mean to be making on her, he’d pull it back. But then she’d end up kneeling half over him, her inner thigh rubbing his until his cock would do its best to bend his zipper teeth out of shape.

For hours, she’d come back to his mouth. Even when her favorite show about rehabbing farmhouses came on. Even when she was out of breath. Even when he hadn’t shaved and her face grew red and chapped from his five-o’clock shadow. It seemed like there was a spark in her that kept getting bigger the more they tried to rub it away.

Jack decided maybe her ex hadn’t been too good at kissing.

Not that he figured he was. Hadn’t had much practice. Kissing was just what you did to keep from having to look at each other when you were getting ready to hook up.

Of course, he hadn’t done a whole hell of a lot of that, either. He wasn’t great at spending time with women. Didn’t know what to say, or what really he was supposed to do with them. He took them out, sure, any idiot could do that, but they didn’t seem to have much fun just staring at him across a table or a bar.

Jack couldn’t blame them—he wasn’t much to look at.

Back when Vernon had been alive, Jack used to go to his house for dinner on the regular, and he remembered how his old foreman had acted with his wife. They’d been married fifteen, maybe twenty years. They were always talking soft and low, or joshing each other and laughing together. He envied that, but the girls Jack dated never seemed to find him funny.

So he ended up with the kind of woman who just wanted a quick ride now and again, maybe somebody to fix her sink when it leaked. That worked okay for a while, and he figured the more sex he had, the better he’d get at it. But instead, he seemed to get worse.

Then again, like Leroy had always said, Jack was good at one and only one thing, and that was disappointing people. Even when they didn’t expect hardly anything at all.

The exception appeared to be Mari, who seemed to think he was rather good at kissing. She must have had odd standards, because she thought he was funny, too. Sometimes, when it was just the two of them, he even felt like he might be funny, as if the world were a little less heavy than usual and it wouldn’t hurt to attempt a joke.

Mari was a strange woman all around because he could talk to her. She seemed perfectly happy to chat about animals they’d seen that day, and the best way to refinish a floor, and all sorts of things about Alabama and his bike.

Right now, though, she wasn’t doing much talking. They were to the part of the night where he’d slid halfway down flat, his head still kinked up against the rumpled pillows and her knee between his. She had rolled up on her side to kiss him, and he was deeply, thoroughly distracted by how her hand had found the bare skin of his stomach. His skin felt like he was clocking a fever of 130, maybe higher. The sheets clung to his back and Mari’s hand was cool and slim. Different from his heavy body in a way that made every movement of it the most interesting thing he’d ever felt.

Unfortunately, it was also calling up a restless energy that normally made him slam the door open and kick-start his bike to ride until the wind whipped it all away. He wasn’t about to go any-damn-where at the moment, so instead he cupped a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her in tighter, using his teeth against her lips for the first time, his tongue getting more demanding with hers. Tension tugged under the skin of his belly, pulling from where she was touching over his bare hip bone and thrumming all the way up into his shuddering heart.

His dick had gotten thick and hard, shoved up against his jeans so that it was starting to feel almost good. He broke away from her to gulp a breath, and even that tasted hot. The AC rattled away in the background, but it might as well have been in the next county. Mari only lasted one breath before she came back for more, her lips not sweet anymore but slightly swollen from beard burn as she pressed in for a dueling, groaning kiss that left his thigh muscles twanging.

She was practically on top of him now, one breast pressed against his chest and the other tormenting his clenching biceps on the arm that was sandwiched between them. He could feel her flat, soft belly against the back of his hand and the warmth of her leg thrown over his. He shifted without meaning to, jumpy with all the parts of her he could feel. That ratcheted up the heat between them a couple of extra degrees as the center seam of her jeans rubbed brightly across his leg.

Her hand slipped under his shirt. Under. His abs flexed, and he didn’t mean to thrust up against her, it was just a reflex because of how high was her hand going and where was she going to touch him and, fuck, his heart was starting to flail and could she feel that?

Jack was about to come out of his skin, but he didn’t want to draw back to catch his breath because then she’d stop touching him, and he desperately wanted to know where she was planning to put that hand. Instead, he took out all his agitated energy on her mouth. Normally, he let her lead, but somehow in the firestorm of his disjointed thoughts, he forgot about that.

He hauled her toward him. Now it wasn’t just her hand caressing him, it was all of her. The taste of her was everywhere, along with her soothing, smooth scent that he’d gotten so used to lingering on the pillow next to his when he went to sleep alone. She was making tiny panting, whimpering sounds in between snatched breaths. He could feel the hard points of her nipples through her shirt and bra, and it drove him wild.

Now she was the one writhing, rubbing their bodies together like she was twitchy, too. Her leg clamped down over him and her lips fell away from his.

On sheer instinct, he tightened the muscle of his thigh, boldly pressing harder where she was rocking herself against him. Her breathing stuttered and stopped, the nails of her hand digging into his bare chest.

Jack did not move.

Her hips jerked, her center grinding down on him for just an instant that he liked way more than he probably should. His cock was twisted all up in the band of his underwear, doing its level best to tear his belt straight open. He needed to adjust so bad he was getting light-headed, but he didn’t dare disturb a thing right now when she might be about to—

A breath hiccupped out of her, and then she started breathing again, sagging off-balance down against his shoulder.

Instinctively, his arm went around her, gentling from her neck down onto her back as he pulled her into more of a hug. His trapped arm tingled from a lack of circulation, and he guided her to lie on top of it anyway because that brought her as close into his side as possible. The room seemed quieter, and uncertainty thrummed in his head.

“Did you just—”

She hid her face in his neck and let out a breathless laugh. “Oh my God. I’m ridiculous. I’m so sorry. Clearly I’ve been out of the swing of things for so long that all it takes is a little kissing and I lose my mind entirely.”

Their legs were still tangled, and he shifted, rubbing the inside of his thigh against hers.

She’d . . .

Just like that?

With her pants still on?

Had he . . .

No. Like she said, it’d just been a long time. He was so close these days that he practically lost it every time she bent over to look into the bushes. Besides, she probably hadn’t been taking the edge off every night like he had.

She still wasn’t looking at him, the languid softness of her body turning to something more self-conscious and motionless, so he moved his head enough to kiss her cheek. It landed just in front of her ear, and when she didn’t move to kiss him back, he stroked one hesitating hand down her back. Usually, all it took was one touch to let her know he was in for whatever. Right now, maybe it was gonna take a little more.

He remembered the cold shame that followed when you shot off on your own. Hadn’t happened to him in years—just the first couple of times he was fooling around. Once with Jayci Mead playing doctor behind his daddy’s shed when they were really too old for that game. Which wasn’t really about doctoring. It was mostly her bossing him into doing all kinds of things he wasn’t too sure about until the very end. Probably she’d just been mad because when he came, it hadn’t been one of the things she’d ordered him to do.

The second time it happened was the first time he had sex, a couple of years after Jayci Mead. Both times, the girls had started out happy and ended up disappointed, and he took off. He did not want Mari to take off. He didn’t want Mari to feel any of the things he’d felt on those days. Which was a big part of the reason he was leery about taking this past kissing.

He moved more strongly this time, shifting her fully onto his chest and wrapping both his tingling and his awake arm around her in a solid hug. He kissed her hair where her head rested timidly against his shoulder. “We can watch the TV for a while if you want,” he whispered. “But just so you know, I want you to do that again. Soon. Tonight, if you want. Liked it.”

He could feel the line of his cock caught between them. Huge and obvious. It wasn’t so embarrassing right now, though, because maybe it would be a hint that she wasn’t the only person getting excited.

She let out a little laugh that hitched in her throat. “I just . . . keep losing my head with you. I’m sorry.”

He craned his neck but couldn’t reach her, so he rolled them onto their sides, still holding her tight. His elbow dug into the mattress, and the pins and needles in his arm turned into swords and sabers, but he didn’t give a shit. Ducking his head, he kissed her real soft. Wanted to give her that nice calm feeling she gave him sometimes.

Except one tiny kiss wasn’t enough. He wanted another, then he stole a third. Then he remembered he’d meant to say something comforting, but instead he went back for a fourth kiss because he loved, just positively fucking loved, the idea that she lost her head with him.

“Like you this way,” he finally managed, his voice all fucked-up and growly. “Like you—” He got stuck there, casting about for the words to explain how she was so much different than other people, but it didn’t matter because she must have finally caught his green-light cue. Her lips collided bruisingly with his.

She pushed him over onto his back, and his pins-and-needles arm subsided into blessed numbness even as his dick became absolutely, definitely not numb.

Jack decided then that maybe it didn’t matter if he was garbage in bed. Maybe he’d found the answer—messing around seemed to be their golden ticket. He was perfectly happy to dedicate the rest of his life to figuring out more ways to make her feel good. As long as he kept his pants on, he might not even screw this up.