Forever, Jack (24 page)

“I came in the back way,” Jack said quietly, his fingers stuffed in his jean pockets. His shoulders were hunched up under what looked like the sage green t-shirt I’d been wearing earlier.

My cheeks throbbed with heat and my chest expanded with embarrassment. How long had Jack been standing there listening to Joey and me? Long enough to hear my declaration? Perhaps even long enough to hear the pitiful story of the house. I couldn’t tell by his eyes, but they looked intense.

“Hector said it was okay. Sorry to interrupt.” As Jack stepped toward us with his hand out, his eyes finally left me and went to my brother.

That seemed to spur Joey into action. He approached Jack and took his hand.

Jack nodded at my brother, who matched his height. “Jack. We’ve never officially met. I apologize for that.”

I bit my lip. The last time they’d seen each other in person was in Savannah, when I’d practically run into my brother’s arms after I’d said goodbye to Jack. Not to mention Jack had just decked my brother’s best friend.

“Joey. Good to meet you,” my brother said and shook Jack’s hand firmly. Joey cut his eyes over to me a split second, and I knew he too was wondering how much Jack heard, and also acknowledging that he himself had heard me, understood what I was saying. We would talk about it again, I knew, but right now my brother was giving me his temporary blessing.

“I hear you’re walking my sister home tonight.” He looked back at Jack.

Jack gave a slight nod and winked at me. One of those twinkling, slow and sexy winks that melted my insides and made me instantly self-conscious that he’d done it in front of Joey. “If she’ll still have me.”

“I do believe she will.” Joey raised an eyebrow at me, but seemed to have missed whatever it was I’d just experienced from Jack’s wink.

“Yeah, uh, just give me a few.” I quickly turned back toward the bar and tried to remember my close down checklist. “Joey, you finishing this beer?”

“Sure.” He walked over and Jack followed. They both sat.
Awkward.

“You want something, Jack?” I asked.
Please say no, so we can get out of here faster.

“No, thanks, I’m good.”

“Wow, I get it now,” said Joey about twenty minutes later as we made our way home by the light of the almost full moon, chatting about everything and nothing. Joey, bless his heart, had politely been asking about Jack’s movie and making conversation while Jack tried his best to look engaged. He’d grabbed my hand as we left, his first contact since he’d arrived. And now his fingers wouldn’t keep still.

Hidden by the shadow of our bodies as we walked, Jack’s fingers were sliding up my wrist, skating my pulse, down my hand, skimming my palm, and then sliding languidly between my fingers, as if they were my legs.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Get what?” I managed to ask Joey and immediately cleared my throat, pretending my breathy response was just a vocal mishap.

“Being with you two is like being in the showers in the girls’ locker room after volleyball practice. You have nowhere safe to look.”

Both Jack and I burst out laughing, our moment temporarily suspended.

“Soooo not what I was expecting to come out of your mouth.” I raised my eyebrows. “What the hell do you know about being in the girls’ locker room after volleyball?”

“Oh, you have
no
idea what Colt and I got up to in high school,” he said cryptically.

“God, and I don’t want to.
I
played volleyball!” Well after they’d both left school. Thank God.

Joey laughed. “I don’t think principal Holt could wait to see the back of
The Butler-Graves Offensive
, as he called us. On and off the field, we were kind of a nightmare.”

“Joey was center and Colt was quarterback of their high school team,” I explained to Jack.

They launched into a discussion about football and high school sports.

Jack had been at school in New York City and mostly played basketball but said he still missed Rugby from being in England, so they discussed the similarities and differences in that and football.

All the time he spoke, Jack never once let go of me, and sometimes in a pause in the conversation or when Joey was talking, he’d amp up his sensual assault on me. He’d change it up completely like kneading gently as his hand slid down mine one moment, or scraping his fingertips over my pulse so lightly, I almost thought I’d imagined it. By the time we got to my back porch and he released me, I was on internal meltdown.

Joey shook Jack’s hand, nodding goodnight to me with an odd look when I didn’t follow, and went inside.

We stood for a few moments after Joey’s departure, then Jack turned to me.

I ran my eyes over his large frame. “Are you wearing the same t-shirt I borrowed from you earlier?” For some reason the idea that I’d taken it off and he’d put it on thrilled me.

Jack nodded. “I like the way you smell.”

And hearing him admit it was better.

“In the interests of keeping my promise to you,” he said softly, “and keeping us a secret, I’m not going to kiss you right now. If anyone’s following us, or watching, this would be a prime opportunity.”

I instantly felt the sharp edge of anxiety clip the edges of my mood. The urge to look around and look for someone spying on us was almost too much to resist. I tried to picture what someone would see if they were watching us right now. Two people standing close together, face to face, but not touching. Total innocence.

But my hand still tingled from his seduction. So did the rest of me.

“I
want
to kiss you, but we’re not doing it out here, and I doubt Joey would appreciate me coming in right now,” he whispered with a sexy grin that quirked his dimple.

He folded one arm across his chest, and the other came up and ran a thumb over his bottom lip as if in thought. Then he inhaled a short breath and speared me with a shadowed look from under his ball cap. “Right now this bottom lip I’m touching is literally aching to be on yours.”

Oh.

He went on, “I’d like to slide my hands into your hair, then down your back, and pull you really close against me. You feel amazing when you’re against me, do you know that?”

I wasn’t sure if I shook my head or nodded, but my body definitely swayed toward Jack. I held it in check.

“Damn,” I whispered. “When you decide to tell me what you’re feeling, you don’t hold back, do you?”

His hand lowered from his mouth to join his other arm across his chest. Anyone watching would never guess what was coming out of his mouth.

I was poised, waiting for his next words. Desperate for them.

“You feel so good against me, you make me want to strip you and slay dragons for you at the same time.” His dimple flashed. “And do you have any idea how good your mouth tastes? How amazing it feels when my tongue slides over your lips and touches yours for the first time?”

I gave up trying to control my breathing. “Jack,” I managed between two shallow breaths. I’d barely stopped a whimper escaping. My mouth felt dry, so I moved my tongue to find moisture and licked my lower lip.

“God, and when you do that? You fucking kill me.” He breathed out. “I should stop talking to you because watching you react is about to do me in, and I may not be able to keep my promise.”

“Don’t stop talking.” I half laughed, half gasped. “This could be the best non-kiss in the history of non-kisses.” My body was functioning on a deep, subsonic, resonating throb. It had started with his
handiwork
on the walk home and was now in the realm of desperation.

He shifted and winced and tightened his arms across his chest. “Okay,” he said. “Although I may have been a bit ambitious about what I can handle. My threshold is a little low when it comes to you.”

“So you can dish it out, but you can’t handle it?” I asked, winking at him. “What were you doing to my hand on the walk home, Jack?”

Jack looked at me and sucked his lower lip into his mouth, catching it with his teeth before releasing it. “I was caressing your hand the way I want to touch your body.” He paused.

I tightened my arms around my middle as if I could reign in the heat swirling through me.

“Slow, then fast … soft … then … rough.” He exhaled an unsteady breath. “Gently … then really, really hard.”

Holy shit.

The whimper escaped me before I could stop it. But I didn’t care over the rush of hot lust sluicing through me from top to bottom with a roar like a waterfall.

Both of us stood in shock.

I was seconds away from combusting, and he hadn’t even touched me.

By the look on Jack’s face, he felt the same way.

“If I don’t turn around and leave right now, I’m not going to give a shit about what anyone sees or thinks,” Jack croaked.

He stood a foot away from me in space and time, but he could have been inside me, given what my body was going through, or a thousand miles away, given the frustrated ache that went along with it.

“Come inside,” I managed. “I don’t care what Joey thinks.”

“Yes, you do.
I
do. He thinks I only want one thing from you. In this split–second of time, he wouldn’t be far wrong. But I want more, a lot more.” He exhaled and brought one hand up to the back of his neck. “Please. Go inside, Keri Ann.”

Trying to get my head working through the haze of hormones that had been unleashed, I didn’t respond for a few moments. Then I nodded and jogged up the stairs and inside without looking back.

I closed the door and sagged against it, my heart pounding in my ears. My body was a flushed and gooey mess of confusion and want.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm down. I was confused because I’d been wanting to take it slow. But all of a sudden I was willing to throw my fears of having a public relationship with Jack aside. I couldn’t reconcile the way I was reacting to being with him with the part of me that shied away from who he was and what he stood for.

The kitchen light was still on.

“You okay?” Joey asked, making me jump as he came around the corner.

I put a hand to my chest. “Yep, Fine. You startled me. You gonna stay up and study?”

“Actually, no. Did you see the moon? It’s almost full. I think I’m going to go for a full moon paddle. You want to join?”

It had been one of our favorite things to do growing up. It was always an even bigger treat for me, as I’d get to stay up late, and hang out with my older brother who at other times was too busy with friends and football to spend time with me. But I just wasn’t in that mind-set tonight.

I sighed. “Nah, but you should go ahead. Actually you should call Jazz, she’d love it. She can use my kayak.” I don’t know where the suggestion came from.

Joey started. “It’s late,” he said. “She won’t want to come.”

“Are you afraid she’ll read more into the invitation than you want her to?”

He turned away. “Maybe. Anyway, she’s with someone now.”

“Yes, yes, she is. So you could, I dunno,” I rolled my eyes, “
go as friends
?”

“Come on. Come with me, I need to talk to you.”

I did love a midnight paddle. “Just a short one, I’m beat.”

He held his hand out. “Keys. I’ll get the kayaks in the truck.”

I nodded and fished around in my purse then tossed them.

Joey caught the keys and I stepped aside to let him out the back door.

“Joey,” I said, stopping him before I changed my mind. “I want to be with Jack, and I’d really like you to get over your reservations about him, about us together.”

“Look, Keri Ann. I get it, but I don’t have to like it. As far as I’m concerned, he could and probably will, leave anytime, and you’d be right back where you were.”

I swallowed my disappointment at his reaction. “Jack wouldn’t come inside tonight, or even kiss me, out of deference to you. So I believe he got your message loud and clear. Thank you for being so protective, but … do you think you could tone it down a bit?”

“Go get ready, let’s talk on the water.”