Horse Play (Horse Play #1) (16 page)

I sighed as his fingers continued to pull my shirt up my torso, stopping just below my breasts. Yeah. This wasn’t sexual at all—well, not entirely.
Tease.
“I feel fine,” I told him as he pushed himself up onto his right arm, his face leaving the crook of my neck. “How does it look?”

His hand pressed against my hipbone; it hurt a little, but it wasn’t excruciating, so that was good. Slowly, he inched his hand up, adding pressure every so often. “You’ll let me know if it hurts?” I nodded, my eyes locking on his before he looked back down. “They’re fading fast. Except around here.” He ghosted his fingers over my two broken ribs, knowing that if he added any pressure there I’d be kicking his ass into next week. “If I had to guess, I’d say you’ll make a full recovery in less than the full six weeks. Less if you continue to listen to me and take it easy.”

“Yeah? You think?”

Jensen nodded. “Yeah, you’re lucky. The bruises around the break made it look so much worse. I’m not going to lie; from the way they looked, I was terrified that maybe you had internal bleeding.”

As I listened to Jensen, I suddenly remembered something he had said the morning after he moved in. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Jensen slid my shirt back down into its place, smiling at me as his sparkling blue eyes found mine again. They were mesmerizing. “Of course.”

“Remember when we first met?”

He smirked at me slyly. “It’s been a week, Madi. Of course I remember.”

“Not what I meant. I was just remembering how you said that you’d seen this kind of thing before …?” As I let my question trail off, I noticed that his eyes faded from bright to dull in a matter of seconds. “Well, I was just wondering what you meant by that?”

Jensen sighed, sitting up and running his hand through his hair. I remained on my back, staring at him curiously, my eyes moving down his solid back until I caught a glimpse of the top of his ass. His
naked
ass. Apparently, Jensen slept in the nude.
Awesome.
I couldn’t focus on that delicious little factoid for long, however, because I could feel the tension rolling off of him in waves. It worried me. I had just started to push myself up to sit next to him when he spoke.

“About four years ago, I found my sister in her apartment.” He paused, inhaling an unsteady breath and fisting his hair with his right hand again as he rested his elbow on his bent knee. Refusing to look at me, he continued. “She was living in Chicago at the time, and I had gone to visit her and her fiancé for the weekend. Robert.” He cursed under his breath after that. “We were friends. She met him because of me.”

This seemed to be affecting him on a much deeper level than I ever expected, and I didn’t know what to do. Stop him? Let him go on? Apologize? I had a feeling I screwed up. Not knowing what else to do, I pushed myself up completely and laid a hand on his bare back, silently letting him know I was there for him. That he could tell me anything.

“I knocked for a few minutes, but no one answered the door. It wasn’t like they weren’t expecting me; Lilah knew when my flight was getting in.” He shuddered beneath my touch before continuing. “Then—and I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me sooner—I tried the door and found it unlocked.” Jensen let out a dry, humorless laugh. “The place looked as though it had been ransacked. Shattered glass, holes in walls. As I made my way through the house, it didn’t appear that anything was missing, just broken. I wondered if maybe she and Robert had fought. It wouldn’t have been the first time, unfortunately.” He paused again as if trying to remember the details of what had happened—not that I needed them; maybe he just found this therapeutic. “That’s when I found my sister’s broken and bleeding body on the kitchen floor.”

I gasped sharply, and Jensen turned to face me. Tears had begun to form in the corners of my eyes as I envisioned what he must have seen. “She’s okay
now
,” he assured me.

“W-what happened?” I asked softly.

“Initially, we all thought she had walked in on someone robbing her and Robert. Lilah is quite scrappy, if that was the case she wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. I tried calling Robert while I was waiting for the ambulance to show up to take her to the hospital, but he wouldn’t answer. No one thought anything of it.”

The way his lip curled up into a sneer every time he talked about this
Robert
person was all I needed to fully understand what had happened. “
He
did it?”

He nodded once, breaking eye contact with me again to crack his knuckles. The pain he felt as he relived this part of his life broke my heart, and I immediately regretted prying. I really needed to learn to mind my own business.

“She had four broken ribs, a punctured lung and her right cheekbone had to be reconstructed,” he continued. Jensen was clenching his fists in his lap while the rest of his body had gone rigid as he recalled that day. When I slipped my hand over his balled-up fists, he seemed to relax. A little. “I had known him for
years
, Madison. And he almost killed my baby sister.”

“That’s not your fault,” I told him, taking my hands and cupping his strong jaw until his eyes locked on mine again. He looked as though he was about to cry, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy. Before I could even think about it, I moved toward him and straddled his lap. I wanted to kiss him. To take away any hurt or guilt that he must have been feeling. Was it wrong to want that? To want him? Now? Like this?

His strong arms encircled my waist lightly as I slowly pressed my lips to his. “Not your fault,” I told him over and over again between chaste kisses, my voice soft and breathless. I needed to comfort Jensen in any way I could. This kiss was nowhere near one of passion and desire; it was solace, plain and simple.

Inhaling a steady breath, Jensen removed his lips from mine. There was shame in his eyes, and I couldn’t figure out why. “I know,” he assured me, keeping his hold around me firm, yet gentle. “Robert was found and charged. Being in jail did little to reassure Lilah that he wouldn’t eventually get out and come after her, though. So, after she was released from the hospital, she came to live with me in Houston. That’s where she met her fiancé, Kyle. They started out as friends, as she was in no way ready for a relationship so soon, but eventually they fell in love and are now getting married. Accepting him wasn’t easy for me. I’m ridiculously over-protective.”

Hoping to get him to smile, I offered him a small smirk, running my hand over his stubbly jaw. “Hmmm. I hadn’t noticed.”

He didn’t smile, though, instead he closed his eyes and turned his head to the right.

“Hey,” I said softly, placing my hands on his jaw, my thumbs stroking his morning scruff. “What is it?” He seemed reluctant to open up, and I know I said I wasn’t going to push him, but I couldn’t help myself. Something was gnawing at him, and I wanted him to know I’d be there for him. No matter what, and in whatever way he needed me.

Another minute passed by, and I was just about to leave it alone; if he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready. Who was I to push him beyond that point? But, with a heavy sigh, he shook his head. “What I’m about to tell you is … well, it’s not something I’m proud of, and I don’t want you to think any less of me.”

“Less of you? Jensen, I—”

“I went to prison.” His blue eyes snapped to mine, gauging my reaction.

The blood in my veins ran cold.

Before I could say anything, Jensen tried to explain further. “I flew out to Chicago one weekend—I told my family I was flying to New York for business. I tracked Robert down at a bar. He was there celebrating his acquittal with a group of friends and his scumbag of a lawyer.”

My mouth fell open, but no sound came out; I knew exactly where this story was headed.

“I watched him from a dark corner like some kind of predator waiting to attack. I watched as he laughed and drank his legal troubles away while my baby sister was suffering emotionally back home.” There was a brief pause. “I followed him into the restroom, waited until the one other guy who was in there left, and then I let him know I was there.”

I slid off Jensen’s lap, my right leg still casually draped over his thighs. His gaze followed me. “I didn’t kill him—though I would be lying if I told you the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

“Wh-what happened?”

“I did to him what he did to Lilah,” he told me, his voice even. “Unlike him, I didn’t have a barracuda for a lawyer, and I wound up serving three years for assault and battery.”

“Three years?”

Jensen released a dry laugh. “I got off lucky, likely due to my sister’s own recent assault at Robert’s hands. I could have been in there for twenty-five.” Looking down at my bare leg, Jensen placed a hand on my calf. I jumped, not because I was afraid of him, but because I wasn’t expecting it.

He didn’t see my reaction that way and slid his legs from under me until he was facing away, his feet firmly on the ground. “Right. That’s pretty much the reaction I should have expected,” he said with a light laugh that broke my heart. “No one outside our family, her doctors, or the authorities know. Lilah didn’t want everyone to look at her with sympathy when she moved back to Tennessee. You’re the first person I’ve told. Your dad knows, too—but only because I was having a hard time finding work and my parents inquired on my behalf. He didn’t even bat an eye.”

“Of course he didn’t,” I said, shaking my head; it didn’t surprise me that my father would do something like that. Focusing all of my attention back on Jensen, I crawled across the space between us and sat on my knees behind him. I wrapped my arms around him and rested my chin on his shoulder. He breathed a sigh of relief and brought a hand up and gripped my wrist. “You’re a good man, Jensen. It’s important you know that.”

Turning his head, he leaned his forehead against mine, and I offered him a smile. “Thank you.”

There was an instant shift between us now that he’d told me more about his past, and while I was glad for it, I could still sense he was nervous. “I like you, Madi. More than I should, but I’m in no place to give you more.”

I released my hold on him and sat up so he could turn to face me again. “Neither am I,” I assured him. “This is enough.”

Jensen’s blue eyes drifted down to my lips, and he reached out to cradle my face. I inhaled, my breath shaky, as he moved his face closer. “You’ll let me know if it gets to be too much for you?” When he lifted his gaze to mine, I nodded, and he closed the gap entirely.

His lips were warm and gentle against mine, but it didn’t take long for the desire we shared to burst forward. With an explosion of lust, Jensen moaned against my lips, and I took that as an invitation to deepen our kiss. His fingers tangled into my hair, and my hands moved down his chest, but before they reached his waist, he pulled back with a chuckle.

We were both breathing heavily as I pressed my forehead to his, and he closed his eyes, most likely in an attempt to collect his thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “You have this way of making me lose control.”

Smirking, I shrugged. “Sometimes letting go can be good.” His hands moved down my back, his fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt just above my ass.

Jensen pressed a kiss to my lips before wrapping his arms around me. He started nuzzling my neck again, his warm breath tickling me. I giggled. He hummed, the slight vibration working its way beneath my skin and down my body. “You smell delicious. What is that? Cinnamon? Why do you smell like cinnamon?”

It was almost impossible to focus on his words as they left his mouth—his mouth that was peppering feather-like kisses on my shoulder. When his question finally reached my brain, I pushed him away, scrambling to get off his lap. His eyes were wide and apologetic, almost as though he thought he had crossed some kind of boundary he hadn’t meant to.

“I made a French toast casserole!” I exclaimed, suddenly realizing that it was still in the oven and probably on the verge of burning.

“You made a what?” he asked as I moved for the door.

I watched as he turned and stood up. My cheeks filled with a deep blush when I caught a glimpse of his ass before I had the common courtesy to turn away. I’d completely forgotten that he was naked during that whole conversation. “Um, a French toast casserole. It’s basically French toast, just cut into cubes with chunks of apple. Then you bake it until its golden brown and top with whatever you want. I made whipped cream and sliced some strawberries. I’m going to go take it out of the oven before it burns.”

I rushed down the hall as quickly as I could without overexerting myself, screeching to a halt when I saw my dad sitting at the kitchen table. A long string of expletives lay on the tip of my tongue as our eyes met.

Chapter 12. A Happy Surprise

“
D
ad. What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you. Smelled your famous French toast casserole baking and invited myself to breakfast,” he told me, his face showing no sign of happiness. He looked intense. He knew something was up; I could feel it.