A Pair of Jacks (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (7 page)

He let her come apart as his fingers pinched the swollen bud of her clit. He knew he’d timed it right when she clawed at his shoulder with an urgency that made him shiver as her nails scored his skin.

“Ohhhh, Jack, don’t stop…please don’t stop,” Marie begged, spiraling into an orgasm that left her breathing ragged as Jack coaxed the last bit of sensation out of her body. He watched her swim in the climax he offered her, thinking he’d never seen a woman so open to pleasure without the need to make it a relationship.

When she opened her eyes to smile at him, Jack settled over her, nudging her legs apart, so he could cradle himself in the V of her legs. His erection found its way home, pushing between the sensitive folds of her pussy to enter the tight confines of her body.

Marie liked it hard, Jack read that early in her reactions. He gave it to her like she wanted, without hesitation. When the engorged head of his cock pushed through the outer barrier of Marie’s cunt, Jack shoved his hips forward, hard, burying himself in her liquid heat.

Marie returned his passion, straining upward, helping him as he shoved into her.
Fuck, she’s tight.
She clamped around him with every thrust he made. Her legs wrapped around his waist and her heels dug into his hips, pushing him deeper into her pussy with every stroke.

Jack groaned low in his chest and Marie did some little thing with her inner muscles that made his head spin. He plunged into her with a controlled passionate violence and she whimpered in pleasure, her legs tightening their hold around his hips. Unconsciously, she dug her fingernails into the skin of his shoulders, sinking deep enough to draw blood.

“
Fuck, woman
.” He was breathing so hard, he could barely speak. His balls ached to be released and he stroked faster, groaning as she deliberately worked those inner muscles again, contracting on him until he thought he’d explode.

“Jack.” She screamed, and he came, his climax tearing through him, slamming into Marie as she jerked up to meet him, pulling his head down for a kiss. Her body twisted against his on the knife-edge of her orgasm and Jack felt his own body begin to shake, his muscles tense in response, and he gave her everything he had, collapsing against her when they both had reached their limit.

Reno was waiting for them on the porch when they rode back to the ranch. Jack dismounted with Marie in his arms, refusing to put her down. He carried her up the steps and into the house like he might a small child.

“She okay?” Reno asked worriedly.

Jack pushed past him, heading upstairs to the bedroom. “She’s fine. Got a little scare from a pack of wolves.”

Reno’s eyes narrowed when he got a good look at Marie under the house lights. “Yeah, I can see how scared she is.”

Jack glanced down at Marie, giving himself away in the process. She didn’t look scared. She looked like a woman who had been well fucked and thoroughly satisfied. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes looked dewy and unmistakably content.

“Leave it alone, Reno,” Jack warned, glancing at the man who had been his brother for the last twenty-five years. He knew Reno wanted her too, but hell, Reno wanted every beautiful woman he came in contact with. And he usually got her, too. Marie was different. Jack wasn’t going to let Reno have a fling and then move on like he always did. Except, in all fairness, none of the ladies Reno left behind seemed to complain. He’d stayed friends with most of them. Well, maybe not with Debbie Branson. She still wanted to cut his balls off, but she was the exception.

Jack carried Marie all the way to her bedroom, setting her down gently, smiling once before he lowered his face to kiss her goodnight. “You get scared, or have bad dreams, you yell, okay? I’m next door.”

“I’m on the other side,” Reno said dryly, standing in the doorway, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe with his arms crossed. “If you don’t want to wake up Jack, just thump on the wall, honey. I’ll hear you.”

The men glared at each other, but it was a good-natured challenge. Marie laughed, stepping forward, hugging them both in turn. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for everything, guys. See you in the morning.

* * * *

Reno settled into bed, putting his hands behind his head. He should back off. It was obvious Jack wanted the woman, but damn, something about her made it impossible to just hand her over to his brother without a fight.

He thought back to the times he and Jack had shared everything in their lives. He could remember being four years old and staying with his grandparents while his mother and father went to the hospital to bring him back a new brother. Reno was pretty excited about having a brother. He really wanted an older brother so he could hang around with him in the park and play ball without Mom watching him, but he’d take a younger one. In a year, when he was a big kid, he could take his little brother to the park by himself.

It had been a miserable winter night, cold and rainy with a lot of snow coming down. That excited Reno even more because he knew it was close to Christmas and he’d get to show the baby all the lights and presents. His mom told him the baby wouldn’t understand, but Reno hadn’t known how anyone couldn’t understand what Christmas was.

He lay awake for hours, worrying his grandma half to death by repeatedly asking when they’d be back with the baby. She finally got firm enough with him that he stayed silent, but as soon as she left the room, he went to the bedroom window, watching for the car to return.

He fell asleep with his head on the windowsill when flashing red and blue lights woke him up. He first thought his dad had made a surprise for him, bringing the baby home in a police car. Sometimes Dad did stuff like that. He was a cop, and once in a while, he took Reno for a ride, letting him turn on the lights and siren when they reached the town limits and no houses were nearby for the noise to disturb.

Reno jumped up, planning to greet them when one of the officers looked up at the window where he stood and it wasn’t his dad. A woman officer looked up at him with tears on her face. Reno got a really bad feeling. When his parents thought he was asleep, they’d talked about things they didn’t want him to hear. He remembered his dad talking about going to people’s houses to tell them someone had died. Reno wondered who had died that his grandma knew.

After Christmas, he went to live with his aunt and uncle, Sallie and Walter Eagleman, because his grandma said at her age she couldn’t raise him. Grandma explained that Aunt Sallie and his mom were sisters. She promised him Aunt Sallie would care for him like his mom, too.

Despite the love he found in the Eagleman home, Reno talked a lot about the baby brother that had been killed in the car wreck that also took both of his parents’ lives. If he couldn’t have his mom and dad back, he still wanted a brother.

Reno smiled to himself remembering that’s what he’d asked for the next Christmas. He remembered the shocked look on Sallie and Walter’s faces, and the whispered conversations he’d overheard when they thought he wasn’t paying attention, but it wasn’t long before seven-year-old Jack came home to live with them and be his older brother.

Jack took the job of being an older brother way too seriously. And that was the problem. Reno owed Jack a lot, even more than Sallie and Walter knew. He fixed just about every mess Reno got into as a kid, and Reno managed to get into several. Jack took the fall when Reno stole a car in their high school days. He sat silently, taking all the blame while Walter berated him for doing such a stupid thing. The car belonged to a friend of Walter’s and that was the only reason it didn’t go on Jack’s record. The man refused to press charges when he found out about Jack’s involvement.

Now, Reno thought his brother wanted this woman and he should just step out of the way and let things progress in their normal fashion, except he couldn’t. Something in Marie’s striking cinnamon colored eyes held him captive. She wasn’t like the other women he had toyed with. If he had to put his finger on the difference, he couldn’t have explained what it was. But he’d find out. Given time, he’d know exactly what made Marie Maxwell so special.

* * * *

Jack flung the sheet away from his naked body, letting the cool breeze from the open window drift over his heated flesh. He remembered the feel of Marie under his body, her tiny frame passionately giving him back as good as he gave. He knew this tryst could be nothing more than a temporary arrangement and he would get his heart broken. It happened once before, years ago, and he vowed it would never happen twice. But once again, he found himself in an impossible situation, and despite what his head told him, his heart followed its own path. He knew there would be no hope for a long-term commitment. Not in their line of work. Commitment created its own dangerous vulnerability. Something neither he nor Marie could afford in their high-risk careers.

Jack closed himself down, stopping the pain before it started, shutting off his feelings like he had learned to do when he was a kid. He remembered the hell his life had been before Walter Eagleman stopped beside the road that day and put him in his battered old Ford truck, eventually taking him home to Sallie.

It had been a cold February day. A thick snow lay on the ground and Jack’s mother put him outside because she was turning tricks to get enough money for groceries and drugs.

Pregnant at sixteen, kicked out of the house and with nowhere to go, she picked up work in a local strip club. The owner kept her hidden from the law until the baby came, but as soon as she could service the customers, he pimped her out for a neat little profit, letting her keep Jack upstairs in a crib so she’d remain pliable to his demands. When she asked to become a dancer instead of a whore, he got her hooked on the pills. It went downhill from that point on.

Outside, seven-year-old Jack tried to peek through the windows of his mother’s bedroom to see what she and the stranger were doing. He held on to the edge of the windowsill, hopping up and down as he tried to catch glimpses without getting caught.

He heard a lot of noise and his mother’s screams a couple of times. She warned him that while she entertained, he couldn’t come back inside for anything, but Jack had a feeling something was wrong. He’d never heard his mother scream before. He looked around the house until he finally found an old water pail that might serve as a footstool. Carefully placing it under the window, he stepped up with one foot, balancing himself by holding onto a long forgotten rose trellis that was now rotted and hanging only by the few rusted nails that survived.

Squinting to peek through the battered mini-blinds, Jack saw a naked man leaning over his mother, beating her with the buckle from his belt. Her face looked like a battered mess. She held her hands up, trying to protect her eyes, but obviously she was too weak to defend herself. Without care about the noise he made, Jack dropped off the bucket and went tearing into the front door of the house, stopping only long enough to get the gun his mother had hidden under the edge of the sofa. He wasn’t supposed to know it was there, but he’d found it one day by accident when a ball he’d been playing with rolled under the couch.

With trembling hands, Jack held the heavy gun out in front of him, running into the bedroom to scare the guy. He didn’t know how to shoot the gun, but he knew people were afraid to have a gun pointed at them. They always stopped what they were doing and held up their hands. That’s all he wanted, to make the guy quit beating hitting on his mother.

“Stop hurting my mom,” he screamed. The man turned to him in a cocaine fueled rage. His eyes were so glazed over, they looked like varnished black pits of anger. Even at his age, Jack knew something wasn’t right. He’d been exposed to his mother’s drug addiction all of his life, and while he didn’t know exactly what drugs the man took, he did understand he was high. His mom acted funny sometimes when she used drugs. She would change from a sweet mother to an impatient and sometimes cruel disciplinarian. Jack didn’t know any other way of living, drugs were just a part of life.

“Put the fucking gun down, you brat.” The man turned to him, lurching off the bed. Something about the look in the man’s eyes scared Jack so badly that he pulled the trigger when the man lunged toward him. Instinctively, he knew if that man got hold of him, he would die. All these years later, Jack still remembered his confusion and fear as the man kept coming while blood spurted from the small hole in his chest. The bullet should have stopped him, but as a child he didn’t know what the kick of a cocaine high could do.

Jack pulled the trigger again, his arms swinging wildly as the recoil from the pistol painfully jolted his wrists. He missed, steadied his aim, and pulled again, just like he’d seen on the cop shows. This time, the man went down and didn’t move.

Dropping the gun, Jack ran to his mother, but she was out cold, blood streaming from the cuts on her face. He turned back outside then, waving down the first vehicle that passed, which happened to be Walter Eagleman in his battered old Ford truck. Thank the fates for stone-faced Walter with his soft heart.

Walter calmed Jack down, then checked on his mom, called emergency services and dialed the sheriff’s office. And all the while, Walter made him feel he hadn’t done anything wrong in killing a man. When Jack asked him if the man inside his mother’s bedroom had died, Walter soberly told him the truth. When Jack asked if it was his fault that he’d killed the man, Walter put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “Son, it’s a plain fact of life that some men deserve to die. You saved your mother’s life and yours, too. You’re a hero.”

Jack never saw his mother again after that day. Walter and Sallie told him she went to a hospital to get better and when she healed, she’d come back for him. Years later, he found the adoption papers she signed over to the Eagleman’s less than a month after Walter had taken him home.

Suddenly, the cool breeze felt colder than Jack’s memories and he shivered, tossing the sheet over himself again. He hadn’t thought about his mother in a very long time. He wondered if Reno ever thought about his parents, or if he’d outgrown the memories of a four-year-old child.