The Bigger They Are… (Lovers on the Fringe, Book Two) (7 page)

She wouldn’t put it past Joss to have tried some mushroom because the locals told him it would help him see the monsters better. Or to have been bitten by some wild animal as he trekked through remote forest.

“Jenna, this isn’t about me. I’m fine. You just need to leave—”

The connection clicked off in her ear and she lowered the phone to stare at the blank screen.

What the hell?

“Jenna? Are you okay?”

Andy’s voice sounded strained but she put that down to her own baffled confusion.

Hell, five minutes ago, she’d been thinking about doubling the amount of great sex she’d had in her life. Now…

“Jenna?”

“Yes?”

She turned to find Andy staring at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher. Almost as if he looked sick to his stomach.

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “My brother…” She sighed. “He’s worried about me for some reason.”

“And your brother is…?”

She frowned before she could stop herself. Why did that sound like an odd question? Almost as if he wanted her to spill secrets.

Maybe she was reading too much into Andy’s tone, but…

He almost sounded like he knew who her brother was. Which was crazy, right? She hadn’t told Andy her last name, which seemed kind of silly now, considering he knew exactly how she liked him to stroke her clit to make her come.

So she deliberately misunderstood his question.

With a weak smile, she said, “Not usually a worry wart. He’s a…” Crackpot who believes in Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil. “He’s on a business trip to Scotland. I don’t have any idea what would set him off like this.”

Andy had no idea what would have set off Jenna’s brother.

Then again, he’d had no idea Jenna was Joss “That
fucking
SPAz” Durham’s sister before he’d slept with her.

Holy shit. What the hell were the odds?

Too fucking high.

So she can’t be.

Yeah, she is.

No way.

Yes—

Christ, he felt like Gollum. And that was not only creepy but depressing.

Joss Durham was the king jester of the idiot brigade otherwise known as the Society of Paranormal Abnormalities, a group dedicated to proving the existence of what they called cryptids.

SPAz was what the Fringe society called the self-proclaimed “researchers”—and yes, he used that word loosely—who believed in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and
El Chupacabra
and a whole lot of other things that other people knew were fictional.

Only they weren’t.

And the SPAz… They weren’t dangerous so much as a major pain in the ass. Most Normals wrote them off as crackpots, which was just what the Fringe dwellers wanted.

But some of them, like Joss, were a little smarter than the average bear. And when they got an idea in their head, they were like starving terriers with a bone.

Most Fringe dwellers gave the SPAz a wide berth, but some took the time to screw with their heads for fun. Hell, he’d messed with Joss personally a few times. The guy had an uncanny knack for showing up at the right place at the wrong time.

Like when a seven-foot, shape-shifting Yeti was visiting his American Bigfoot cousin and they decided to take a run through the woods to work off some steam.

That episode had been more than two years ago, and the couple of fuzzy pictures Joss had gotten had only made it as far as a few cryptid blogs.

Still, the guy was tenacious and surprisingly smart for a SPAz.

“So, your brother…what does he do for a living?”

Her expression turned even more pained. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about Joss. Hell, she was downright embarrassed.

She didn’t believe, not like her brother.

And now he didn’t know whether to be relieved or bummed. What would she do if he flipped the switch and pulled on his Yeti form right now?

With another woman, he might have gotten a laugh out of it. At the very least, a chuckle.

So why did he feel like a teenager who’d just been told Justin Beiber had married Lil Wayne and they planned to adopt a couple of kids and move to Europe?

Jenna dropped her gaze to her hands, twisting in knots in front of her. “He just got a new job, as a matter of fact. Filming documentaries.”

Shit, shit, shit.
“Oh yeah?” He tried to force some enthusiasm into his voice but it was like trying to smile while eating dirt sandwiches. “What kind of documentaries?”

Whatever she heard in his voice made her entire demeanor change. She stopped fidgeting, her hands went to her hips and she lifted her chin in the air as if she were going to battle City Hall for the right to sell lemonade on a street corner.

“The first one is about the Loch Ness Monster. After that he’s heading to France to do one on
loup garou
.”

Yep. No doubt about it. She was Joss’ sister.

He’d had the best sex of his life with the sister of his sworn enemy. Now he’d have to battle Joss with lightsabers on an inner-planetary playground—

Dude, overreact much?

He wanted to roll his eyes at himself. This wasn’t
West Side Story
, for chrissake. This was more like the soft-core History Channel version.

A Yeti and Joss Durham’s sister walk into a bar…

There was no way that joke ended with anything other than a bad punch line.

But damn, Jenna Durham sure packed one hell of a punch.

Andy thought she was absolutely beautiful. Especially with her hair mussed from sleep, wearing his shirt with her chin stuck in the air, daring him to say something asinine about the brother she obviously loved, even though she thought Joss was just a little off his rocker.

He should do it, piss her off so she stomped off in a huff.

And he would never see her again.

“That sounds…interesting.”

He offered her a lopsided smile because he couldn’t treat her like some backwoods nutcase who told people like Joss about their midnight encounter with Bigfoot. Sure, some of them happened to be telling the truth but still…

As she took a breath, Jenna’s shoulders softened and so did the look on her face. Her mouth curved back into a gentle smile and damn, if his cock didn’t sit up and make him want to beg her to come back to bed.

“Thank you. But I know how it sounds. It sounds crazy. But Joss isn’t crazy. I mean, not really. He’s just…passionate.” Her smile had brightened as she started to believe her own story but now started to fade again. “Honestly, I don’t think he’s ever going to find any definitive proof. I mean, who really believes those stories about dinosaurs in the jungle and blood-sucking creatures in the New Jersey badlands?”

She stared into his eyes, as if pleading with him not to look too unkindly on her brother. She’d probably gotten more than her share of condescension from people who knew Joss and lumped her into the same fanatical group.

Only Joss wasn’t crazy.

There really were blood-sucking creatures in New Jersey except they didn’t live in the badlands. They lived in Trenton, which could conceivably be considered the worse of the two locations. At least the
chupas
thought so.

Dinosaurs? Well, he figured you couldn’t blame the Normals for mistaking dragons for prehistoric lizards. They did have common ancestors, after all.

Jesus, how the hell did he get himself into these situations?

Fry was probably laughing his ass off at the moment, although he wouldn’t know why. He’d always said some day karma was going to bite Andy on the ass.

Guess he’d be picking teeth out of it for a while.

“What about you, Jenna? What do you believe?”

What did she believe?

Now that was a loaded question, wasn’t it?

Jenna knew what her answer should be. She should smile, laugh a little, maybe shake her head and say of course she didn’t believe in Bigfoot. What person in their right mind would?

But her brother wasn’t crazy. Just a little…misguided.

“I believe there are probably creatures in the world we haven’t discovered yet.”

It was her stock answer when defending Joss. She’d perfected it over the years, gotten it down to as few words as possible so there was less to argue or discuss. And she hoped Andy would let the conversation die a natural death.

She’d really rather be doing something other than talking.

Because sex like they’d had last night was just as elusive as finding a living dodo bird.

“So what do you do for a living, Jenna?”

Annnnd
now she was going to bore him to tears and he’d be hustling her out the door and back to the bed-and-breakfast with an “I’ll call you” and a pat on the ass.

Then again, maybe she could distract him with sex.

Jenna never really thought of herself as a sexy person. She had all the necessary parts but when she thought about being deliberately sexy…well, she ended up more as a cross between Zooey Deschanel in
The New Girl
and Mayim Bialek on the
Big Bang Theory
—a cute dork who occasionally walked into closed doors because she was too busy thinking about tax deductions and getting excited about finding an extra thousand dollars in refund money for the
bodega
owner down the street from her office.

But she was still a dork. And while that might work for some guys, that wasn’t how she wanted Andy to remember her.

Instead of answering, and before she could have second thoughts, she stripped the t-shirt over her head, dropped it on the ground and gave him her best attempt at a sexy come-hither stare.

Which she didn’t think he noticed, because his gaze immediately dropped to her body.

Her chest, to be more precise. Andy was definitely a chest man. His gaze stayed glued to her breasts as she walked over to the bed, careful not to trip over the various pieces of clothing littering the floor. She didn’t think Andy would’ve noticed if she had. His gaze was fixated on her naked body.

Which she had to admit was pretty freaking arousing. It’d been dark the first time. She hadn’t caught more than a few glimpses of the full glory of Andy’s nudity. And she had to admit she wanted to turn on all the lights, open all the windows and let the light pour down on all that gorgeous man flesh. All seven feet of him.

As a matter of fact…

She stopped at the side of the bed and reached for the sheet covering his lower body. He barely noticed as she pulled it away from him, baring him completely.

Her mouth actually watered, that’s how gorgeous she found him. Tight muscles. Long, lean limbs. Huge, hard… Oh yeah.

She reached for that huge, hard shaft, already stiff and straining upward. So soft, so male. So irresistible.

She wished she had the courage to bend over and take him in her mouth but…

Well, why the hell not? This was her fling, after all. She was never going to see Andy again. And even if that thought gave her a curiously hollow feeling in her stomach, it also gave her more of a sense of urgency. And a sense of freedom.

Without releasing him, she knelt on the mattress beside him, gently grasped his cock then bent until her lips touched the thick crest.

She thought she heard Andy gasp but it sounded kind of garbled. Like maybe he’d almost swallowed his tongue.

She liked the idea that she’d surprised him. She also liked how he got even harder as she wrapped her hands around the shaft and let her lips and tongue play over the head.

“Damn, Jenna…”

He sounded breathless but the hand he laid on her head didn’t force her down. Instead, he cupped his hand on the back of her neck then let it slide down her spine before he dipped around to her front to cup her breast.

Even as he began to pant like a freight train, his cock straining, his fingers didn’t pinch too hard. Just hard enough. Her nipples felt tight, almost painful to the touch.

If she could’ve panted she would have. As it was, she was much too intent on making him come with her mouth.

He’d become her favorite treat and she loved the way he tasted.

So when he groaned and lifted her away from him, she actually thought of resisting. For all of about two seconds because she realized then that she wanted him to fill her.

Before she realized what he was up to, he’d set her on her knees and crowded behind her. His fingers stroked against her sex lips, slid over her clit, teasing her.

Slippery now with her moisture, his fingers glided inside her, only just penetrating. Not enough to really fulfill her.

She wriggled against him, trying to get him to sink deeper, but he used his free hand to tap her ass. It didn’t sting, but it did tingle enough to make her wonder if she’d like him to smack her a little harder.

So she wriggled again but this time he did go deeper.

As she moaned his name, her sex gripped his fingers tight, trying to suck him in.