Iron & Bone (Lock & Key #3) (20 page)

The door clicked open, and Grace and Jill swept into the waiting room, both of them beaming. I sprang to my feet.

“Super-baby is fine. We saw and heard the heartbeat. Here, look.” Jill handed me a photo of a mass of gray and black blobs. “She or he is doing great.”

“Great news.” I held her gaze. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, wait! I forgot to ask the doctor something.” She brushed past me and Grace and talked to the receptionist, who gestured her back through the open door again. I handed Grace the photo, and she studied it, probably for the hundredth time.

A few minutes later, Jill reappeared and slid her hand in mine. “All set. Let’s go. I’m starving.”

“What did you forget? Is everything okay?” asked Grace.

“You know me. I had a couple of questions about food and calorie intake. Now that I’m in the second trimester, I want to make sure I’m on the right track.”

“You’re so good about that.” Grace breezed through the front door and hit the elevator button. “Woman of steel.”

Jill squeezed my hand, her face pink.

We waved at Grace as she drove out of the parking lot, and I got Jill in the truck. I swung in and started her up.

“She said yes,” Jill said.

“Who?”

“My doctor, just now.”

I turned out onto the street. “Yes? About what?”

“She said yes about the sex.”

I tore my eyes away from the road and shot her a glance. “She did?”

“She did. Yes to everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes!” She laughed. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Grace. It felt…weird. Is that silly?”

“No, sweetheart.”

I squeezed her thigh, and her hand clapped over mine.

“My first trimester went well, and now that I’m in the second, I’m good to go.” She waggled her eyebrows. “But we should use a condom and lots of lube—water-based lube only, she said—if we’re going to have anal sex.”

“Ah.” Images of Jill naked and on all fours in front of me, her luscious ass squirming back against my cock jumped in my head. I adjusted myself in my seat.

“I’m in the mood for a huge breakfast now—waffles with lots of butter and syrup, eggs, bacon, the works.”

“Oh, yeah? What about all those calories you were talking about before?”

She leaned back against the headrest, a relaxed smile on her face, both her hands pressing mine. “I think I can afford the indulgence. I’m going to need the extra calories now. Don’t you think?”

“Baby, I’m still stuck on the way you said ‘lots of lube.’”

“Boner, focus. I want waffles. Really good waffles.”

“There’s only one place then. It’s in Pine Needle.”

“Two towns over from Meager, right? I’ve never been.”

“Not much to see, except for this great little cafe.”

Her hand stroked mine. “Is there a drugstore there, too?”

WE FINISHED OUR TERRIFIC
, terrifically huge, breakfast at the small cafe in Pine Needle, and Boner brought me home. I was so relaxed, so full of food, so happy that the baby was fine and that Grace was relieved.

We stepped into Rae’s house and were met with quiet. A text from Penny when we’d left the cafe had told me that she had taken Becca to her house for the morning as Rae was tired and would bring her back around noon. I peeked into Rae’s room where the door was ajar. She was asleep.

“Poor thing. Last night must have really stressed her out. She never usually takes naps this early in the day.”

“This shit’s gotta be hard on her.”

“It is. She’s a tough lady, but your son is your son—not to mention, your only granddaughter. I’m so thirsty. That bacon did a number on me.”

I went into the kitchen, got a glass from the cabinet, and filled it with water from the faucet. Boner came up behind me as I drank, a hand moving around my middle. He swept my hair to the side and gently bit my neck, and a shiver raced over my skin.

My head fell back against his chest. “Bone.”

“Can’t get enough of you.” His hot breath fanned my neck. “But gotta get back to the club.”

“No time for a quickie?” I leaned over the counter and pushed back against him. I couldn’t help myself.

A groan and a long string of curses flew from his mouth as his hands rubbed my hips and down my ass. He ground himself against me. My one arm flew back and went around his neck.

His hand went under my skirt, between my legs.

“Bone, God—”

“Jill, honey, are you here?” came Rae’s tired voice from within the house.

I jerked like a live wire, and Boner’s body stiffened against me.

“I’m in the kitchen, Rae!” I called out. “Just cleaning up. Be there in a minute.”

Boner moved again, his erection grinding up against my ass.

“Take your time. Did they say if it’s going to rain today, honey?” asked Rae from her bedroom as the voices of chirpy morning news reporters flared from her television set.

Boner pulled my skirt up further, and his hands ran up my bare thighs.

“I-I’m not sure!” I said.

He tore down my panties to my knees.

I sucked in air, my hands clinging to the edge of the counter. “Would you like a cup of tea, Rae?” My voice strained.

“Sounds perfect,” she replied.

I leaned over on a groan and filled the electric kettle with water. I jammed it in its base and flipped the switch on it.

He kneaded my ass, tightly squeezing the flesh. I moaned as his fingers teased my rear entrance, slid down into my wetness. My skin heated with the promise of more.

His teeth sank into my ass cheek, and I let out a groan. I lifted myself up on my toes as he licked me, his fingers working me. This was something off the charts, something that satisfied another part of me, not just getting to the big O. I gasped at the torrent of pleasure thundering through me, my body a mass of electricity.

The kettle beeped, and as if on cue, I came.

He released his grip on me. His warm tongue snaked over the curve of my ass, lavishing the bite mark he’d undoubtedly left behind. That mouth then made a trail up my lower back. I held myself up at the sink, my legs wobbling, the room spinning at his sudden gentleness.

He chuckled, his face in my neck, and inhaled deeply, as if he were committing my scent to memory, feeding some sort of essential hunger. He let go of me, washed his hands at the sink, and splashed water over his face. I handed him a couple of paper towels, and he rubbed his face dry as I fixed my skirt.

“You going?” I was in a haze.

“Yeah, baby, I got to get to work.” He grinned. Devilish and playful all at once. “And you have tea to make.”

Right, the tea.

Boner let out a laugh and planted a kiss on my forehead. He headed out the back door.

“Wait!” I lunged at him, throwing my arms around his neck.

His eyes met mine, his hands pressing in at my sides. A slow smile lit up his face. He was surprised.

So was I.

I brushed his lips with mine. “Have a good day at the office, dear.”

His body shook with laughter.

JIMMY FALLON TAPPED
through a song-and-dance routine with a celebrity who was promoting his new movie.

Click
.

A Republican senator defended his harsh comments against the Democratic governor of his state.

Click
.

Ugly gold hoop earrings with diamond chips were bargain-priced on a home shopping channel.

Click
.

A hard-rock music video from the ’80s. The drummer shook his head so hard that all his crimped long hair rippled in his face as he banged on the drums, his sweaty arms shining in the colored lights swirling over him.

“Whoa
.”

My cell phone buzzed, and I absently reached over and grabbed it off the nightstand. My journal and pen fell, thudding on the carpet.

“Hello?” I crunched on ice from my glass of water.

“Jill?”

My body jumped at the sound of Boner’s voice, and my glass tipped, spilling cold water on my camisole top.

“Hi. How are you?” I sat up in bed and put the glass on my nightstand, wiping down the water from my cami.

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“Me?” I banged on the remote to mute the volume. “I-I’m good.” I pulled on the wet cotton fabric, flapping it against my chest.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day.” His voice was soft but intent without a trace of awkwardness. Blunt sincerity.

I closed my eyes and let his words, the supple tone of his voice, sink in, and they did. They penetrated like a wave of sound through every layer of skin, muscle, and bone and settled in my thumping heart.

“Me either.” I folded my legs under me.

Moments lapsed in charged silence.

He blew out a breath. “Shit, did I wake you up? I just noticed the time.”

“No, no, you didn’t wake me up. I’m in bed, flipping channels on the television. What are you doing? Are you at the club?”

The thought of him taking the time to call me, only to go jump Mindy or some club skank once we got off the phone, made my stomach harden. I was his old lady, but come on.

“No, I’m home.”

My chest relaxed, as if a thousand needles that had threatened to jab me suddenly disappeared.

“I just finished working out,” he continued. “But I couldn’t concentrate. Had to talk to you.”

“Why couldn’t you concentrate?”

“I still feel you on me.”

My eyes sank shut, a breath shooting out of me.

“Jillee?”

“Yeah?” I managed.

“Did you like it? Feeling me on you?”

Heat flooded my chest. “Very much. Very, very much.”

“I didn’t expect it,” he said.

“What didn’t you expect?”

“Feeling connected to you.”

My chest tightened.
Me, too.

“You reminded me that there’s still magic,” he whispered roughly. “That there are things of wonder still left to experience.”

The air knocked out of me at his confession.

“I’m guessing you liked feeling connected to me?”

A low chuckle erupted over the phone. “I liked it, Firefly. A lot. A hell of a lot.”

“What did you call me?”

“You’re like a firefly, Jill. You glow bright in my night.”

“You go chasing them regularly?”

“No. Not at all.” He took in a long breath. “Just once, when I was little. One summer, my mom and I stayed out in the mountains for a week. It was the first time I’d seen fireflies. I would stay up every night and watch them, dance around the field, trying to catch them. My mom got me this huge jar, and we managed to catch a lot of them. It was magic. The best magic ever.”