Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2) (5 page)

She laughed softly. “Where is that bunker going to be again? New York or Vancouver?”

He’d brought her back to that zone, but he didn’t want to leave himself there. “So what do you say, Lindsay?”

“It’s just three weeks, right?”

“You can think of it as a temporary thing all you want, but I’m in this for as long as you’ll have me.”

He didn’t know if that would work. It was different, with Lindsay, because he’d let her know too much about how his personal life worked. She knew when he was with somebody, could stack them up together, find patterns, preferences, compare histories. It was unnerving to try and make himself be seen as one way by someone who had seen not just who he was, but every kind of person he was, with every other person.

She tugged at his waist and pulled him toward her, and he claimed her mouth before she thought of more reasons to doubt him.

So maybe there’s something to this, not casual sex.

Or he’s that great of an actor.

He couldn’t have been acting though. She’d seen him unguarded. It felt like one of those times. Lindsay didn’t think of him as an
actor
anyway, never mind if the rest of the world did.

She had never seen his show. Too bad, because the lushly photographed series about two mysterious immortals, solving crime in different time periods per ten-episode season, was something she would have liked to watch. But between wrapping season one and its airing, she found out that he had started exclusively seeing his co-star Jessica Fontana. Beautiful, thin, flawless Jessica Fontana. When the show premiered, she kept finding reasons not to watch it, and then never did. It was on cable, and they weren’t shy about nudity. He had more than one love scene with his co-star, and she didn’t feel like seeing him in that context, for the first time, with someone else.

Mine,
she thought, as she kissed him. It was irrational. She was having feelings about this, when she had told herself that she didn’t need to.
My Jake.

It was his fault; he was so damn into it. He groaned into her mouth like he was restraining himself, when he was already robbing her breath and pushing her into the wall. She felt him hard against her belly, and she gave him an appreciative stroke.

“We need to be on the bed,” he said. It sounded like he was begging.

She reached up to undo the buttons on the back of her dress; it would be easier to do standing up. Shrugging her shoulders one way and then the other made the dress fall. After kicking her pumps off, all that was left was her, and the red lacy bra and panties that she’d decided to wear, thinking she’d be in bed with someone else.

Lindsay hoped that wouldn’t bother him.

It looked like it did for a moment, when he caught her eye, and then he went for the clasp to get the thing off her as soon as possible.

“Beautiful,” he whispered into her neck, her breasts in his hands already. For what seemed like a long time he stood like that, holding her there, his breath a caress against her shoulders. She thought he’d be...rougher. She didn’t know why. This reverence was disorienting.

She went for the buttons on his shirt. It smelled floral and fruity, also spicy like cinnamon, from sitting for hours in the cutest hipster tea shop in the world. She’d been checking out the spines of the books she’d helped him carry; he’d been reading. Everything.

Something was up with him. Would he eventually tell her what?

Then his shirt was off, and he was beautifully sculpted muscle. His waist was trim, his stomach harder than it looked when they were jogging together around the neighborhood. She knew that when his season started filming, in April every year, the first month was all working out. Physical training. Stunt preparations.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, her hand on his shoulder.

“Not anymore,” he said, and she didn’t understand that. She meant the working out, pushing his body so much to make it marble-like perfection. Maybe she should have said something clear, instead of blurt out half a thought. But then he had lifted her up, brought her down to the soft, cool bed, and pulled her panties by the waistband down her legs.

He had his back to her when he dropped his pants, then his boxers, so she got a view of that hard butt of his. She rose up on her knees, moved to the middle of the bed, and waited for him to turn around.

When he did, she inadvertently bit her lip. Everything about him was radiating desire, for her, for what he wanted, and was going to get, right then. Was this always present between them? It couldn’t have been, but now it was as obvious as an erection. She felt stupid all of a sudden, to have gone without this for so long.

Naked as she was, he crawled up the bed, mimicking her position until their knees touched. There was a condom packet in his right hand; he’d be all clear in August. She was on the pill and had made a habit of taking the test twice a year, like him, because they were essentially getting their results together.

“Did you change your mind?” he asked.

Usually his dark hair and tendency to give a good glower made him seem more intense than he was. Right then he was all gentle, no sharp edges. Like she could actually hurt him.

“No,” she said.

“Because you might see a man spontaneously combust, if you change your mind,” Jake said, as he tore the foil open.

“I said I know what pleases me.” It was hot, so hot, how he took his cock in his hand and rolled the condom over it. “I thought we should start with that.”

He had no complaint. Her small hand on his chest led him to sit, back against the pillows and the heavy wooden headboard.

“For fuck’s sake,” Jake groaned. “This is perfect. This is how you like it?”

“Sometimes,” Lindsay said, holding on to his shoulders as she lifted a knee and straddled him. Feeling him against her. Almost inside her.

“You like being fucked deep, don’t you? I can give you that. Let me.”

She felt him there already, on her, but she held on for a second thinking that there was still a way to back out of this. Maybe there would be a way to get this done, to scratch this itch, and go back to where they were. Comfortably friendly. Expecting nothing. But no, she realized, they had passed that point a long time ago. For her it might have been this morning, when he surprised her with his kiss, but for him to have thought about this, and set everything in motion—he was in. So in. So much that if she said no, things wouldn’t be the same, even if she fooled herself into thinking that it would be.

Might as well enjoy it.

She took him inside and sank down, all the way, faster than he expected. It ached in the best way. She thought of what he said, combusting, but it would be her, she’d catch on fire if she wasn’t careful, and she hadn’t even moved yet.

“That’s deep,” she gasped, feeling every inch of him inside.

“It’ll get even better.”

“Just
wait a second.
”

Their lips met, briefly, enough for her to remember the other parts of her body that were being ignored by her fixation on his massiveness inside her.
You wanted this. God, get it together.
She took a deep breath and moved. Tentatively thrust her hips. Took him in even deeper, until she found her rhythm, and each descent had her gasping. Until he thrust his pelvis up against her rhythm, his timing more urgent, jagged, chasing something. It reminded her of how he ran, and why she’d let him go ahead and he’d wind up waiting for her. He sprinted. He was sprinting now. His hands went around her hips and she stopped doing the work now, because he was thrusting up and hitting all the right spots, plural because she was feeling it
everywhere
.

Lindsay was moaning. She could hear herself and she wished she didn’t, wished she didn’t sound like she was almost there when they had started like a second ago.

“Wait,” she said, pushing his chest down.

He didn’t slow down. “Are you close, Lindsay? It’s okay. We have all night, babe. Don’t hold back, take it now.”

Looking down and seeing him slide into her was making it worse, making it faster. What had she even done for him? Nothing yet. Nothing extra.

“Lindsay,” and his voice was rougher now. “Take it. Come. What do you need me to do? You want it faster?”

And he thrust faster.
Oh God.
She was going to break. In many, sharp pieces, like a porcelain figurine dropped from high up. “But—”

“Lindsay.” His pounding made his breath and words short, terse. “This is all I’ve been dreaming of. I want to see what you look like when you come. You know you want to. What do you need? Tell me.”

She didn’t need anything else. Another few thrusts and she’d be screaming. She didn’t know why she said it anyway. “Pull my hair.”    

“Holy fuck.” Jake wrapped a handful around his fist and did just that. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

Knew what?
But there was no time to ask the question, just enough to see the smug satisfaction on his face. Lindsay’s head tipped back and everything inside her set off. Fireworks. Geysers. Her eyes were shut tight throughout this complete loss of control, only vaguely registering him stiffen all over, inside her, around her, then become gentle again, his mouth recovering on her breast.

It felt like she floated down to earth. She let him slide out of her, and then rolled over on her back.

Still sitting up, catching his breath, Jake pulled the condom off. She was looking at it, registering that it was slick with come, but unable to say anything. Her mouth was numb. Her whole body was numb.

He held the condom up so it wouldn’t drip. “I can last longer than that, don’t worry,” he said. “But damn it you were just—I needed to be there with you.”

***

She was still quiet later, and maybe it got him concerned.

“Lindsay.”

Lindsay wasn’t asleep. But she was lying there with a hand monitoring her pulse. Waiting for it to slow down.

“I’m alive,” she joked.

“What are you thinking?”

Truth was, her brain was a bit blank. She was feeling things – the pleasant hum from earlier that still hadn’t completely left. The soft sheets bunched up around her. The air, getting a little colder, as it moved over her skin.

“We never did this before why?” she said.

As soon as she said it she began to remember. Because he did this a lot. Back then, even after the talk about casual sex, the story about a possible STD, if that hadn’t scared her off and she managed to sleep with him anyway, she’d simply have been his Friday night. Or his Ms. November. Maybe keeping her distance in this particular thing was what made them closer in other ways. Would they have stayed friends this long? Would he have continued to wander into her life, her home, her family’s routine?

“I used to think that if you had just asked, then we would have, easy,” Jake said, his body stretched out beside her. “But maybe we didn’t because I wasn’t ready.”

She didn’t know what he meant by ready, but that explained what she felt. Maybe back then, she wasn’t ready to have him drop out of her life once he was “done.” The strange thing was, this didn’t feel like that at all. This felt like the opposite, and it was…different. It might take some getting used to.

“How dramatic,” she said, chasing that feeling away with humor, with a roll toward the body next to her, with a kiss.

Lindsay learned early on, because they were friends who told each other things, that Jake didn’t have family nearby. His parents were never married, and when his father died, he had been shipped off to relatives with a small fund meant to help defray the costs of raising him. The fund lasted for the most part until the first few years of college, but he had never felt welcome in his aunt’s family. He was essentially a guy who lived with them, whose rent had been prepaid until he was eighteen. The house in Fremont was one of his father’s properties, and despite it requiring a longer drive to the university, he preferred to live in it rather than a dorm. He didn’t want to continue living with virtual strangers.

Lindsay was living at her sister’s house in the same neighborhood because she had to. Cordelia was ten years older, and at the time Lindsay started college, was married for three years and had two kids within that time. Their parents had passed away in a car accident when Lindsay was ten; Cordelia and her husband Rusty had been like her parents too, in a way.

It was the right thing for Lindsay to do, stay with Cordelia to help with the kids. She worked out her class schedule so she’d be able to watch Zane and Brian and give Cordelia enough time to stay sane. By the time she had graduated, both were in preschool and supplementary daycare, and she was free to move across the country to finally be on her own.

But Christmas was always spent at home, in California. Jake was there that first year because he had no plans, and she’d tossed him an invitation for the heck of it. He came back the following year, despite already living in Canada, or LA when he wasn’t doing the show. Zane and Brian adored him, treated him like a fun uncle. Rusty was just happy to have another friend, and they kicked back on the porch with beers every time he came over. Lindsay liked that he liked being around them.