Bad Wedding: A Bad Boy Romance (7 page)

M
egan

I
had
no idea why I did that. None at all.

But I put my phone down and crossed my arms so I wouldn’t pick it up again. I was standing in the kitchen of my apartment, fresh off my shift at Drug-Rite, looking at another evening alone with my thoughts. With my fears. I felt like I could jump out of my skin. I was alive with frustration, all of it skittering over the surface of my skin like electricity.

So,
I chided myself.
All Jason Carsleigh has to do is text you, and you give him a booty call.

Was that what that was? Was that how he would interpret it? Was that what I had meant?

I was lonely, and I wanted to talk to someone. Though if I was honest, I didn’t just want to talk to anyone. Not my dad, not Holly.

Jason.

It was because I’d left things unresolved the last time, I told myself. I hadn’t exactly been nice to him. We had some baggage, Jason and me, but I didn’t want him to think badly of me. We were going to have to spend five days together, after all.

And after my appointment with Dr. Pfeiffer a few days ago, I’d been locked in my thoughts, alone. Despite his annoying side, Jason had a way of dragging me out of my own head. Of making me think on my feet. Of almost—almost—making me laugh.

Your skirt is riding up and your crush on me is showing.

Maybe he was just being a dick. Maybe he was just trying to get a rise out of me for something to do. Maybe he’d come over here and expect to hang out and watch some stupid football game, friend-style. Maybe he wouldn’t come over at all. He hadn’t replied to my invitation.

I wanted to live in the moment, I reminded myself. And… I wanted to see him naked again.

I pressed my knees together. I was wearing a thin sweater and a jean skirt, the clothes I’d worn to work. A cotton bra and panties underneath. My hair was down and I had very little makeup on. It wasn’t exactly a seductive look. Well, that was too bad. It was desperate enough that I’d texted him to come over, which he hadn’t bothered to reply to. It would be even worse if I doused myself in makeup and dug out sexy lingerie from my drawer. Assuming I had any, which I wasn’t entirely sure I did.

I’d broken up with my last boyfriend over six months ago, and he and I hadn’t had sex for at least the last month we were together. He’d seemed to lose interest, which had puzzled me at the time—our sex life hadn’t exactly been gangbusters, but for a guy to stop sleeping with you was weird. Then I discovered he’d been cheating on me, possibly with guys as well as girls, and than he dumped me and ran away to LA with a would-be actress. And I’d been celibate ever since, unless you counted the day Jason Carsleigh had made me come with his fingers in about sixty seconds flat, harder than I’d ever been able to do for myself.

I faffed uselessly around my apartment, tidying, and jumped when there was a knock on the door. I thought briefly about not opening it, but then I did. And then I remembered
exactly
why I’d texted him.

Jason was wearing a black sweater and worn jeans. His dark hair was tousled and his hands were in his pockets. The line of his shoulders, his long legs, his dark brown eyes, the slight shadow of stubble on his jaw—just by standing there, he pressed every one of my buttons. Every single one.

He caught the look in my eyes and smiled at me. “What’s up, Megan?” he said.

I tried to act casual while I swallowed in my dry throat and my pulse hammered in my veins. “Come in,” I said, my voice almost normal. He followed me inside, and I covered my nervousness with talking. “I guess you had a relaxing day of not working, huh?”

“I work,” Jason said, but the argument had no sting to it. He was looking around. “You have a nice apartment.”

He was so
big
in my place. Tall. All that muscle. He didn’t have a huge physique, a massive chest or arms, but he was plenty big enough. He’d been big enough to play football in high school, but the Marines had made his body like iron. I’d felt it through his clothes the other day. Yet I’d also seen him move with liquid grace, every muscle under control. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, and the sight of them made a hot pulse of memory start up between my legs.

As usual, I covered for the way he made me crazy with a dig. “I guess living at home puts a damper in your sex life.”

He turned to me and gave me a half grin that said my shots were going wide. “Not necessarily,” he said. “Not when the girl has her own apartment.”

I was speechless for a second.
Get a grip, Megan.
“Um,” I managed. “I asked you over because I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, leaning on one hip against my counter, the movement doing interesting things to the flat ripple of his stomach beneath his sweater. “What?”

I took a breath and made myself say it. “I know I’ve been… short-tempered. Sort of crabby.” I tilted my head back for a second and made myself say it. “Bitchy.”

Jason frowned a little, the line of his perfect mouth easy to read. “I never said that.”

“No. You didn’t. That’s the thing.” I blew out a breath and plowed forward. “I have to admit that you’ve been almost nice.”

He was quiet for a second, and I knew he was searching my words for an insult. “Okay,” he said slowly.

“I have some stuff going on in my life,” I said. “Stuff that has nothing to do with you. Stuff that I haven’t told anyone.”

“So tell me,” he said.

It sounded so simple. But no. I had Jason Carsleigh in my apartment, sober and willing, and—if I was honest with myself—I was pent-up and horny and turned on as hell. If I started talking about cancer and genetics, he’d probably make a hasty excuse and get the hell out of here. No way was I bringing up the C-word right now, when I had my best shot at getting properly laid since that party five years ago. With—again, honesty—the man who still held the title of the hottest guy I’d ever seen.

“I don’t need to talk about it,” I said. “What I need is to forget about it.”

For a second he was surprised, even though I’d texted him to come over here. Then the frown left his mouth, and his expression relaxed. He understood me so perfectly in that moment that I felt a rush of pure anticipation come over me, mixed with nervous fear. This seemed more intimate than when I’d taken him on on the basketball court. That had been aggressive and fun, with a lightning crackle of sex in it. Now he just looked at me, dropping his gaze and slowly taking me in. He took a breath, and I knew from the soft inhale that he was turned on. By me.

“Okay,” he said.

He took a step toward me, and I panicked again. “Not in my bed,” I said.

He just shook his head and kept coming forward.

“And no staying over,” I said, watching him. “And—”

He reached me and pressed me into the counter, using his hips against mine. His hands came up and brushed my jawline, his thumbs pressing gently into my skin. “How about this?” he said in a low rumble in my ear. “I make the rules.”

I closed my eyes and stopped talking.

I felt his mouth on the skin just below my ear, his breath warm, his stubble rasping me lightly. He dragged his lips slowly over me, taking in every contour along the bottom of my jaw. I could smell him, a heady clean man-smell, could feel my own pulse against his fingertips. He angled my head again and put his mouth on mine, sucking my bottom lip between his teeth, flooding me with heat. I opened my mouth, and he pressed his fingertips harder into my jaw, pressing me open as he kissed me deep and hard.

Oh, God, Jason Carsleigh was the best kisser on earth.

He broke away after a long time. “Fuck,” he said softly. He dropped his hands and slid them under the hem of my sweater, dragging his fingers up over my skin to cup my breasts through my bra. “I remember these,” he said in my ear.

I was floating, on some kind of high, my body wired to him, my memory going back to the feel of him against me in the park and his fingers between my legs. “You do?” I gasped. His hands on me were hot, his thumbs slow and expert on my nipples. I felt it everywhere.

“Fuck, yes,” he said, dragging his thumbs over my nipples again as I made a little whimper.

“Jason—”

“Ssh,” he said in my ear. “You talk too much. I’m making two rules.”

Wordlessly, I nodded. I would agree to anything as long as he kept rubbing my nipples like that.

“First,” he said, dragging his teeth lightly along the side of my neck so I squirmed and grabbed fistfuls of his sweater, “what happens right now is done when it’s done. We both want to. We’re gonna do what we’re gonna do. No strings.”

That sounded good. I nodded again, pulling up on his sweater now, dragging my hands down to touch the perfect skin of his stomach.

“Second,” Jason said, inhaling a light breath as he felt my hands on him, “you give in and let go. Completely.”

Completely?
part of my brain thought, the remaining sliver that was still rational. Then he tugged down the fabric of my bra beneath my shirt so my nipples were bare and rubbed them again, and I remembered that this was what I wanted. To let go. Of everything.

“Yes,” I said, and leaned up and kissed him.

He pressed me back into the counter, and I felt him. Hard thighs, hard hips, hard everything. I squirmed against him as he dropped his hands from my breasts—it was agony—and tugged open the buttons of my jean skirt, letting it drop to the floor. In a second quick motion, he pulled my shirt off over my head and threw it away.

We weren’t going to go slow, then. This, I liked. His gaze was dark on me, his lips parted, as if he was as worked up as I was. Maybe he hadn’t been with anyone since Charlotte. I didn’t care. Right now, he was mine. For however long it took, I was going to get the only thing I wanted, which was Jason Carsleigh’s huge, sexy body between my legs.

I pushed his sweater up over his chest and he pulled it off. I had stripped him at that party five years ago—he was right when he remembered that—and I drunkenly remembered it as good, but this was better. This was like unwrapping a present. I ran my hands down his chest, my palms touching the light dusting of dark hair that narrowed down his stomach and down again into the waistband of his jeans. His skin was warm and hard. I touched the lines of his stomach, his biceps, his shoulders as his hands slid over my bare waist. Then he gripped my hips and lifted me on to the counter, stepping forward between my knees.

He kissed me as his hands traveled up my back to unhook my bra. We were both breathing hard, and for once we weren’t talking. It was so easy—it wasn’t that he was so practiced, or that I was, but that we
fit.
There wasn’t a second in which my body was awkward with his. I gripped his shoulders, and I lifted my ass briefly off the counter as he slipped my panties down my hips.

He kissed down my neck, then my breastbone, bending his knees. My skin went hot, and I braced my hands on the counter, trying to stay upright. He took a nipple in his mouth, smiling as I moaned, and then the other. Then he left my breasts and trailed kisses further down my stomach.

The sight of his dark hair against my skin was making me crazy. “Jason—”

“Be quiet,” he said against my stomach. He hooked a finger into my panties where they were still looped over my knees and dragged them down. I pulled one foot out of them and he moved them slowly off the other foot, cupping my calf and my ankle before dropping the panties to the floor. I was fully naked now, my ass on the counter, my body leaned back on my elbows, my knees in his hands. He dropped lower, and then he pushed my legs apart and slid a finger over me as I gasped. He spread me, leaned in, and put his mouth on me.

We hadn’t done
this
five years ago. It was a gentle kiss, slowly exploring, his tongue moving over me in a long, slow sweep. My world narrowed into a single pinpoint of sensation, and I had no existence except the trembling between my legs, the hot slide of his tongue on me. I dropped my head back, closed my eyes, and gave in to it completely. My elbows ached and my ass was propped on the hard counter and I was completely, garishly spread open, but all I wanted was to feel that again and again until I came, until he made me scream.

He licked down, toward my entrance, and then up again, and my hips flexed, trying to lift off the counter and get more. He groaned against me, slid a finger over my skin, and licked over my clit in a tight circle.

His mouth came off me—I actually cried out in protest—and he leaned over me, pressing a kiss to my stomach, sucking so hard it would leave a mark. His arms were braced against the counter, his forearms flexed, his biceps like rocks, and I could see that he was working hard for his control. I reached down and wound my fingers in his hair, pulling it.

He lifted his head, and our gazes locked for one long, perfectly dirty moment. Then he stood as I pulled myself up off the counter. I put my arms around his neck as he gripped my hips, and he picked me up, wrapping my legs around him. He carried me like I was weightless, and we stayed locked together as he carried me to the sofa. When I kissed him I caught the tang of my own flavor on his tongue.

He put me on my back on the sofa, bracing himself over me. I dropped my hands impatiently to his jeans and began undoing them, and he let me as he kissed me again, his tongue stroking me. I didn’t even want to feel him through his boxers. I undid his jeans and pushed them down hard, hooking my fingers in his underwear, too.

He lifted off me to pull his clothes all the way off, and then he swore softly. “Wait a second.” He groped on the floor for his discarded jeans, pulled out his wallet, and pulled a condom from it. Thank God he carried one, because if I even had a condom, it was probably expired. He dropped his jeans again and ripped the package open while I just stared.

I’d seen his cock before. I remembered it very, very well. But I watched it, hypnotized. It was freaking
gorgeous.
It was massive, and beautiful, and hard as marble. My body reacted to just the sight of it, my muscles relaxing, my knees falling open.

Jason rolled the condom on, then braced himself over me on the cushions again. “My eyes are up here, you know,” he said, tilting my chin, looking down at me, grinning.