27

The Stakes

Dinner was tense. Though not because they’d had sex yesterday.

Jack had kissed her cheek—out in the open in the parking lot!—when they’d gotten home from work today, and Mari didn’t think he seemed any more self-conscious than normal. More like . . . distracted. He kept leaving tasks half-done and he had to ask her to repeat herself twice, and that wasn’t like him.

She smiled to herself as she loaded spices back into her milk crate. Once, not so long ago, it had been normal for the man in her life not to care what she had to say. Now, it was odd enough to catch her notice.

In between his distraction, too, he asked all about her first day on the new crew. How Junior was. The other workers. She didn’t lie, exactly. Just downplayed how long the argument had been over how they dealt with the hydraulic leak on-site. And forgot to mention how many crude comments she’d pretended not to hear. Or the three times she had to request that Junior call her by her name.

“So they, uh, following the rules okay?” Jack asked, picking up the topic yet again. “Not pushing you to look the other way on nothing?”

“We’re getting by.” She hoped the casual words covered her unease. It was only a matter of time before they did something she’d have to write them up for, and then Rod would know she wasn’t going to be his puppet. She wasn’t sure what he’d do, and frankly she didn’t want to know. But she couldn’t go against her professional integrity, and she absolutely refused to let that crew do anything to threaten the animals she was there to protect. Even if there were only a few weeks left of this job.

Mari swallowed, and pushed her anxieties away, because there was no sense in getting Jack more worried than he clearly already was. Some things you couldn’t compromise on, and you just had to pay what it cost you.

She waited for him to fold her camp stove and pointed at the nook she wanted him to slide it into, in the back of her truck. “How are things on your site? Getting twice as many towers built now that Kipp’s not trying to talk to me all day?”

He snorted. “He’s almost as bad with following Lisa around.”

“How’s Lisa doing, by the way?”

“Ain’t cried once.” Jack hefted a water jug back into her pickup. “Maybe she got on meds or something since last time.”

Mari held back a laugh. Most likely, Lisa wasn’t crying because Jack wasn’t growling at her for enforcing rules that nobody had ever bothered to explain to him. He wasn’t much for following rules he didn’t understand.

“She said she volunteered. Even asked me to dinner again tonight at her and Marcus’s.” He dodged her a fast glance. “Told her my stomach wasn’t feeling too good. You better not tell her I lied.”

“Wouldn’t have been a lie if you’d eaten her cooking.” Mari slammed the tailgate quickly, before the sun-scorched metal could burn her palm. “So I think we can let that one slide.”

“Did you tell her to be nice to me?” His voice darkened. “Wasn’t like it was hurting my delicate little feelings for her to hate me, before.”

She locked up the truck, waving away a stray bee. “I think she’s curious about you, since I told her we were together. Plus, she said Marcus always pretends to know more about cars than her, but you knocked him down a peg or two when you agreed with her about that transmission thing.”

Her last comment was interrupted when her phone rang in her pocket. Hotaka had said he might stop by this week to borrow her ratchet set, but he hadn’t said what day. But when she checked her phone, the botanist’s name wasn’t on the screen. Her heart jerked, then started to race.

It was area code 262.

Wisconsin.

Again.

“Probably a telemarketer,” Jack offered, glancing from her face to the number displayed with no contact name. “Can just send it to voicemail.”

But if she did that, she wouldn’t know if he’d found her. She hit “Accept” and lifted the phone to her ear, only to feel chilled all over again by the silence. “Hello?” She pitched her voice low so it wouldn’t sound like her, and said it twice, but there was no answer. She hung up with a gusty exhale. Ridiculous, to get so jumpy over a simple area code. Tens of thousands of people lived in that area. For all she knew, Brad had moved since the divorce.

“Telemarketer,” she said. “You can always tell by the delay before the recording clicks on.”

“You okay?” He was giving her a strange look, and she scrubbed a hand over her face, knowing she must have gone pale when she saw the caller.

“Takes more than a telemarketer to scare me, mister.” She set off toward their rooms with a determinately casual stride. “Your beers or mine?”

“Mine.” Jack moved around her to unlock the door to his room, but once they got inside, he kept fidgeting around with different things and seemed to forget about heading for the minifridge. Distracted again.

“Something on your mind?” She touched his arm, bare beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt.

His eyes came up to hers. Tumultuous with more thoughts than their simple conversation should have brought up. They were such a bright, piercing green that her breath got all tangled up at having their full focus on her. And then he came to her, his hands cupping her neck, his mouth coming down on hers harder and faster than the careful kisses he’d risked so far. Mari didn’t think they moved, but suddenly the thin, sun-heated door was at her back, his thick chest closing her in.

Jack was not distracted now.

Upset, maybe. Intense, definitely. But he was kissing her with such tortured, begging rasps of his chapped lips that she could only cling to him, her arms trying to hold softly enough to comfort him because she didn’t dare stop him long enough to ask what was wrong.

Every time she thought he might be pausing, he came back for more, until they were both panting and her nipples had gone sensitive and peaked beneath her shirt. He leaned his forehead against hers. “It’s good. Having you back. Here, I mean. Not off on Junior’s crew.”

She laughed breathlessly. “Well, hello to you, too. I would have put in for a transfer weeks ago if I’d known I’d get this kind of welcome at night.”

“I just . . . Be better if I knew you were okay, but . . . Dunno, it’s dumb, but—” He seemed to give up after his third try and kissed her again. Hard and long and sweet, until one of her hands was fisted into the side of his shirt and her pulse throbbed hazily in her temples.

“It’s not dumb,” she said, when he finally relinquished her mouth. “Can I . . . would you let me try something?”

He nodded, his rough thumb skimming along her cheek. He kissed her forehead once, quickly, before he pulled away. Like he was saving up that little touch for later.

Her heart squeezed a big, painful beat at that, and she took his hand and tugged him toward the bed. Didn’t even bother turning on the TV to pretend that’s what they were doing. Instead, she started unbuttoning his shirt. Deliberately, not with the cramped frenzy of getting them both undressed in the cab of his truck yesterday. But slowly, with the time to enjoy the strong chest emerging beneath the gapped fabric.

He got tense, shifting his weight from foot to foot like he wanted to pull away, but wouldn’t. She was confused until she saw his big shoulders hunching forward, and recognized the movement. It was the way her body always caved in on herself when she was insulted. It was the hideous self-consciousness of your own shortcomings.

The last button came free and she slid her hands up his chest, across those glorious shoulders.

“Look at me.” Her voice came out low and private, more a murmur than a whisper, and his eyes startled up to hers. “I don’t think you know how you look to me.”

She let her hands crest his shoulders, pushing the shirt off so it fell to the floor behind him, her palms traveling down his back, even when she felt the ridges and roughness of old scars. She’d glimpsed just the edges of them once, beside the new burns from the metal of the tower, the bloody rip from when a drill had slipped the other day. None of it seemed to get much more than a wince out of him, and she couldn’t imagine being so impervious to pain.

It was respect for that toughness that glowed in her eyes now, and pure desire for the strong body half-bared in front of her. She pushed up on her toes and kissed one shoulder, a bit of mischief darting through her. “After all the time I spent staring at these shoulders at work, I deserve to see the rest of the package.”

When her heels came back to the ground, his eyes were confused and a touch wary, but longing echoed underneath.

Those scars hadn’t all come from work, she knew that. At least some of them must have come from what was done to him as a child. But the depth and breadth of the healed wounds just made her feel . . . powerful. Because he’d risked worse than those to leave whoever had done that to him, and he’d been brave enough to do it anyway. After all that pain, all that humiliation. And she had, too.

It was the stakes they’d faced, slashed across both their skins in marks that would never fade or smooth. And yet they’d both stared down that cost and stolen back their lives for themselves.

She was fucking proud.

Of him. Of herself.

That made the sight of every scar thrill desire deep in her belly. Like the roar of a motorcycle, the whistle of wind at the edge of a cliff. Danger, denied.

It was sexy as almighty hell, and she knew he saw it in her face as she pushed him down to the bed and crawled up over the top of him, taking out the ferocity of her feelings on his lips.

She pinned his big wrists to the bed, and his muscles flexed, all those years of swinging a heavy hammer corded tautly beneath her grasp. But he didn’t flip her over, just stayed put and let her take charge of the moment. The fly of his jeans bulged, nudging the inside seam of her shorts.

Mari dipped to kiss his neck, which shuddered with his ragged breathing. He smelled like soap from his after-work shower, tasted of just a hint of salt from cooking tailgate dinner in the desert heat.

She got lost in kissing his chest, in touching all the muscles that she’d already admitted to watching for so many hours of her workday. It was intoxicating, to be the one allowed to see him like this, to touch him and feel him tremble in response when he avoided everyone else’s hands.

She wanted to keep doing this, for years. To go to sleep with him and wake up with him and know that no one else could see him naked but her. But Mari was used to wanting and never being able to have, so she pretended just tonight was enough. That she didn’t need a plan, or a future. And his body was very nearly distracting enough to make her actually forget those things.

By the time she got to undoing the button and zipper of his pants, it wasn’t so much a decision as it was a craving.

She still checked in with him, letting the heat in her body burn from her eyes when she looked at him. He nodded without her having to figure out how to ask the question. His Adam’s apple bobbed. His jeans hit the floor.

---

—

Mari undressed herself after she undressed him, and Jack wasn’t sure if she did it because she knew how much he wanted to see her, or simply because she didn’t want him to be alone in his nakedness.

He only managed to choke out a sputtered sound that quickly turned into a groan when it became clear what she’d wanted his pants off for. Her mouth was hot and wet and hungry on his cock, her hand sliding down his shaft in sweet consolation when she couldn’t take him all.

After yesterday in the truck, when she changed her mind about doing this, he hadn’t dared hope she’d ever want to. Now, he could hardly think past the pleasure.

What he did know was that heat was surging up through him, tension pooling in the root of him, the muscles in his hips begging to thrust. The head of his cock was so sensitive that when she sat back a little and ran her tongue from base to tip, he flinched and made a strangled sound, tingles blanking out his thoughts.

He didn’t know how that was possible, how release could just be nipping at his heels after a few short minutes of Mari when sweaty, awkward hours with another woman had never once gotten him excited this fast.

He started swearing, fumbling for her shoulder to hold her back so he wouldn’t get it in her mouth when he went. She looked up at him, her hand still curled protectively around his shaft. “It’s all right. You don’t have to stop.”

His eyes damn near fogged over from the heat, but desire was driving him now, and the longing pulled words from his mouth that he wasn’t sure he’d have ever been able to say otherwise. “Would you want—”

“Yes.” She moved up over him, then grimaced. “Except my condoms are in my purse, in my room.”

“Bought some this morning.” He threw an arm out and—thank fuck—made it to the nightstand without having to move, digging out the plastic-wrapped box and a bottle of the same brand of lube he’d seen that she had bought. She took over condom duty, and he reached down to pet her and help her catch up to his raging level of arousal. His fingers twitched when he found her slippery instead of dry, and his forehead creased.

She laughed softly at his surprise, her face bright with a smile. “I like it, doing that to you. Didn’t used to. I think I do now.”

Her hand wrapped around the length of him, her palm smooth with lube, and he thrust up into her grip, his head falling back on the bed. Hellfire, he wanted to fuck like a demon right now. Wasn’t wholly sure he could trust himself with her in such a state. He started to sweat as she rolled the condom down over his sensitive tip, then slicked it with more lube sliding beneath her tight grip.

“You gotta stop me. If I go too hard or deep or—you gotta,” he insisted.

“I will.”

“And don’t pretend, if—”

“I won’t.”

“And we can stop if—”

This time she quieted his words with a gentle kiss. “I don’t want to stop.”

She took his dick inside. She had to wiggle to get it to slide, and then she held tremblingly still while he pushed up, slow so it’d be smooth on her, biting the shit out of the inside of his cheek to keep control over himself. He tasted blood and his head whirled until he remembered to breathe, and he’d never felt so good all at once in his entire born life.

Her breath was stuttering a little, too, and he stopped only halfway in. The part of his shaft left out in the cold throbbed and ached, and he tried his level best to ignore it. “You all right?”

“I, uh . . .” She laughed breathlessly, her eyes closed and face flushed. “My ex wasn’t quite so, um, fulfilling in that area. This is . . . very nice.”

His dick fisted harder, and blood rushed hot in his chest. It shouldn’t feel so good, to hear that her husband had a tiny prick. It probably made him a caveman, but he enjoyed the idea that her ex hadn’t filled her up the way he could. His hands flexed on her hips and he arched, gave her more.

“I can take it all,” she whispered achingly. “I like it deep.” Her lashes fluttered as she sank down onto him, her small breasts trembling with the movement.

Deep.

The word roared silently in his chest, like it was some kind of key twisting in him, unlocking things he probably shouldn’t be thinking. Definitely shouldn’t be feeling.

Her legs flexed as she rose up. “Last time, you let me do what felt good to me.” She braced her hands on his shoulders, her eyes soft on his face. “I want to know what it’s like when you do what feels good to you. Please? I’ll stop you if it’s uncomfortable.”

He grunted out a breath, his heart beating so wildly he could barely hear her over it. She wouldn’t ask for that if she knew how far gone he already was. He could barely stay still right now. Slow was totally beyond him, and the pressing, arching exploration she’d done? Utterly impossible.

Gritting his teeth until he was sure they’d crack, he flexed his hips. Just enough to rub the head of his cock deeper in her. Even that was enough to make blackness shudder in his vision.

“Mmm,” she hummed. “Can you . . . a little harder?”

Fuck. Hell. Jesus’s sandblasted sandals.

He rolled her onto her back and withdrew from her body, hovering for a stretched second before he powered back in. She gasped, knees coming up and toes curling hard into the blankets, nails biting the scars in his shoulders. He did it again, living on her stuttered gasps. Going faster when her head fell back.

He couldn’t find one thing so far that he liked that she didn’t seem to like even more. Her knee had jerked up toward her chest with his last movement, so he wrapped his arm around it. His next slide in went even deeper, like they fit better this way, and he nearly whimpered.

Mari’s fingers clenched, trembling where she gripped his arms and urged him on, and the leash on his control went ragged. He forgot about the long, smooth strokes to satisfy her the way her ex couldn’t. Instead, he jerked against her in tiny hard jabs so he didn’t have to leave her body but could still find that spot that locked him in deep. The one that wrung low noises from her throat and made tingles run down his spine and gather heat in the muscles of his legs.

How could she feel this wet through a condom? How could she manage to grip and fist his cock the way she was, and damn, was she doing that on purpose, or was that just what happened when she liked the way he was fucking on her?

He was breathing through his gritted teeth now, every beat of his heart like a shout as he powered into her just to feel her clench and wriggle and ah God—

It took him without warning, like a waterslide gone steep so everything just dropped out from underneath him and pleasure burst through his body. More and more and more of it, so he might have yelled, startled by the force of it. By how long it went, picking him back up when he thought he didn’t have any more left.

He fell unevenly onto his elbows, the hard motel mattress biting into them. “You—” he gasped out. “Did you?”

Mari blushed pink and glanced away as she nodded, the smile tugging on her lips so damn cute that he had to kiss her even though he couldn’t half catch his breath yet.

“Ungh,” he said, not sure what word that was supposed to have been, but pretty fucking pleased about his entire state of affairs at the moment. He pulled out of her and flopped over onto his back, lungs heaving to catch up.

She curled into his side, and it took him a lot longer than it probably should have to finally get his heart rate to settle down, and then to work up the motivation to get rid of the condom. But when he came back, she settled right onto his shoulder like he’d never left, and kissed his collarbone, making his heart jump.

“I like the truck,” she said, “but I think I like the bed even more.”

He gave her a squeeze, not bothering to hide his grin.

After a while, he couldn’t help but start to think about the situation, and he must have tensed up or something, because her head tipped back.

“What is it?”

“Just . . . why do you think it works so much better with you?” He gestured at himself. “Ain’t no smaller.”

She chuckled. “Um, I think with you, I’m usually excited enough that things are just . . . easier.”

He considered that. He usually hadn’t messed around as much before sex with his few other women. They hadn’t asked for it, and he’d been afraid to try anything they didn’t initiate. But with Mari, he knew she liked him using his fingers on her, and the more she wriggled and panted, the longer he wanted to do it. It just seemed to make things more awkward, with other women, when he’d attempted different ways of touching them.

“Didn’t know what I was doing before,” he admitted. “Didn’t know how to ask. It’s easier, with you. To know what you like.”

Now she really did laugh. “It seems as if I like everything, when you’re doing it. So yeah, it’s probably easier.” She kissed his jaw. “Don’t be shy to ask about things, if you’re curious. I might blush, but I’ll also probably have a really good time answering your question.”

He grunted, rubbing slow circles on her lower back because it cuddled her farther into him and made her get all relaxed feeling.

“I like that you’re comfortable with me,” she whispered into his neck.

“I, uh—” He hugged her naked body against his side, his throat scratchy all of a sudden. “Same thing. Like that, too. Want you to be okay.”

What he wanted was for her to always be where she was right now: her little breasts pressed against his ribs, her skin warm against his while both their bodies hummed with the pleasure of what they’d just done. Far away from all those other filthy workers and their eyes following her. Far away from Junior, and anything hurtful he might say to her when Jack wasn’t there to put a stop to it. He wanted her to stay with him, pretty much forever.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to make that happen, but he was thinking on it. A lot.