Wild Fling or a Wedding Ring? (9 page)

The earth seemed to shift beneath her feet as his simple, straightforward words upended her world.

He had to stop touching her, stop searching her eyes as if he knew if he looked into them long enough he’d find the truth she so needed to hide from him. The truth that with their every shared word and accidental touch that same underlying heat from the first night they’d met flared to life.

Only if Amanda
wasn’t
using Jake to siphon information about Cali’s ability to handle the pressure of the job, then she was back to her initial theory.

This was
Amanda’s Jackson
.

Desperately, she took a step back. “Amanda asks me about you all the time, Jake.” This wasn’t what her boss would want revealed, but Cali had to believe it was better than giving in to the pull of his mouth and arms and his body again.

This disclosure was her last defense.

“She wants to know every time I see you, and she wants to know what we did, what you said, if you enjoyed yourself—
a million little things. Anything she asks, I tell her. There’s
nothing
just between you and me. She’s my boss, Jake.”

The corner of his mouth pulled to the side. And for a moment Cali couldn’t tell if he was disgusted, amused or both.

“Then it’s time that changed.” His thumb swept slowly across her bottom lip, tracing its lower edge in a back and forth rub that left her breath frayed, her mind reeling, and her resolve melting into a molten pool of need. “Where this is going, I don’t want Amanda to come.”

Desire swirled warm and thick in her belly, and unwanted heat spread across the surface of her skin. She couldn’t give in, and yet even as she thought it Jake shook his head, his expression stern. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she managed in a pathetic whisper.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want this.”

Of course she wanted him. But it wasn’t as simple as
want
alone.

T
HEY’D
returned to the beach to find Trish and Matt packing up with the rest of the group. A few minutes later they were settled in the backseat of a cab, riding in strained silence through the downtown city streets. She hadn’t answered him, refused to discuss it, and the irritation evident in the hard set of his jaw had her stomach twisting into knots.

A few more minutes and they were wordlessly cutting across the near deserted downstairs lobby to the elevators.

Jake punched the call button and raked his fingers through his hair, his usual smooth, easy motion now jerky with tension. They kept circling one another, trying out different interactions, but it always came back to sex. They couldn’t be near each other without having to fight it, and the fighting was getting harder and harder. It had to stop.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” she mumbled, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until the snap of Jake’s gaze—hostile, intense—alerted her.

“What?” he demanded, frustration radiating off him in waves.

She swallowed past nerves and need to meet his stare. “We can’t keep on like this. I can’t—”

Jake’s features hardened, his eyes grew darker, and in their depths she saw a warning that left the words dying on her lips.

But then he dropped her gaze, looked away, and when he turned back whatever threat she’d seen lurking there was gone. It was all easygoing, smooth Jake. Casual, without a care in the world.

Her heart clenched in her chest. It most definitely wasn’t a simple matter of want.

Grabbing her hand, he smiled that cocky smile and glanced around, checking out the lobby behind them.

“Hey, come here a second,” he said, pulling her gently around the corner to a doored-off alcove that led to the back alley of the building. What could he need to tell her that couldn’t wait for the privacy of the elevator car?

The door closed behind them with a quiet thud and then they were alone. Jake stopped, turned to face her, and seized her with a stare that was neither easy nor casual. The beige walls and worn linoleum of the small hallway crowded in around them, as if the space itself couldn’t hold out against the man in front of her.

He stood too close, his body too big, his emotions too raw. There in the harsh darkness of his blue-eyed glare she could see everything she wanted to ignore. The urgency, the anger, the heat.

He caught her wrist, closing his fingers around it like a manacle as he pulled her hand to his chest. His eyes locked with hers, daring her to try and hide her reaction to the hot flesh beneath her fingertips.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her heart racing.

“Making you touch what you can’t stop looking at,” he growled, pressing her palm flat, drawing her touch over the muscular terrain.

He was so close she couldn’t think, could barely breathe. Need twisted low in her belly as she remembered the taste of him, the feel of his hands cradling her. Everything she wasn’t supposed to have. Everything she wanted.

This wasn’t fair.

Jake searched her eyes and slowly withdrew his hand from hers, bracing one arm and then the other at the wall behind her. He’d boxed her in with his body, but it was her own desire that held her captive.

“It’s up to you, Cali. I’m not going to give you the easy out and take the control from your hands.” His gaze dropped meaningfully to where her fingers still splayed wide over hard muscle and male flesh.

She swallowed, her mind reaching for justifications and denials just beyond her grasp.

He leaned closer, his words feathering against the shell of her ear. “You know what I see in that look you can’t stop giving me?”

Barely a whisper, “What?”

Jake pulled back, bringing them level. “I see you begging me to finish what we’ve started too many times. But I’m not going to answer to your eyes, sweetheart.”

Stifling a moan at the hot pulse of desire beating between her legs, she stared at this man she needed so badly but was too afraid to take.

“You can’t make yourself tell me to stop,” he growled, leaning forward to burrow his nose into her hair, “but passive acceptance isn’t enough.” His breath, warm and moist, teased the whorl of her ear as his lips rubbed against the outer ridge. “You’re going to have to say it.”

A desperate whimper escaped as the tip of his tongue flicked lightly at her lobe and then drew it into his mouth with a hard suction that pulled straight at her core.

“Jake,” she gasped, clutching at his shoulders, her hips moving involuntarily against his.

He groaned, circling her waist with his arm and pulling her roughly against him so she pressed against every hard plane
and ridge from his thighs to his shoulders. “Tell me,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

Her fingers numbed as they lifted from his chest, rose, and then pushed deep into the dark strands of his hair. There was no doubt, no denial anymore. Only need. Reckless and so intense it resonated through every cell in her body. The need to get closer. The need to feel him—his mouth, his body—against hers.

On a trembling breath, she pulled his face to hers and whispered against his lips, “I want you.”

Cali’s admission seared over his lips, slammed through his senses, and annihilated all restraint. He kissed her hard. Covering her with his mouth, his hunger, and every possessive claim he would never have acknowledged to exist within him. Their mouths fused and she opened to him. Gave in and gave herself over. No more refusals and skittish retreats.

She was in his arms
now
, beneath his lips, moaning around the thrust of his tongue as her fingers clenched a fistful of his hair.

Man, that felt good.

His hand slid over her bottom, urging her closer. Making her feel him.

“Jake.” Her breathless gasp and the tightening of her arms around his neck weren’t nearly enough. She’d made him wait, and now that he had her he needed to make her so mindlessly desperate that when his lips parted from hers she wouldn’t have senses left to come back to. They’d be obliterated, just like his.

Setting an urgent rhythm of thrust and retreat with his tongue, he nudged a knee between her legs, pushing his thigh against the warm notch there before pulling back. Her breath caught as his hand dipped into her bathing suit, his fingers curving into the slick folds of her sex.

At the touch of his fingertip her knee cocked against his thigh, and Jake pushed inside with one smooth, long stroke.

Cali’s broken, desperate cry caressed his lips as her tight wetness encased him so snugly, the sensation of it smoldering through his body straight into his groin.

God help him, she was so tight he was about to lose it just thinking about pushing inside her. Feeling her body ripple around him as he sank inch by inch, until he was buried to the hilt.

Damn it! They were in the hall and he had to stop. Get her into the utility elevator. Upstairs.

Into his bed. Hell, yes.

With incentive like that he should have had them passing the sixth floor already, but then her hand slithered between them. Into his trunks. And the ragged gasp ripping through the otherwise silent hall was his own.

She circled him with her fingers and stroked up his length as she rode first one finger, then spasmed around him as he pressed in a second.

His name, wrapped in another breathy moan, pushed him beyond control—sent him spiraling with only one goal to hold to.

Get inside her
.

He had to get inside that slick, wet, begging body. “Feels…good….” she panted as her motions became desperate and her hips tipped further forward, urging him on. “Need you… Please.”

Please.

His hand slipped from her bikini, and her heavy-lidded green gaze locked with his, her kiss-swollen lips parting in a silent plea.

Moving between her legs, he grasped the edge of the Lycra panel and pulled it to the side to expose her, to allow him access to the honeyed sweet center of her.

Brushing her hands from him, he caught one leg behind her knee and positioned it to his hip, bringing her into contact with his straining groin. Her hands flew to his shoulders, digging in as he bent his knees, lowered himself to catch the tip of his erection against her in one teasing sweep.

Her fingers clenched. “Jake….”

Poised to breach her body, he held back. “If I don’t stop now—” he growled against the sweet soft spot where her jaw met her neck. “I want to come inside you.”

“I’m on the pill. Please…I can’t wait anymore…I can’t stand it.”

He pushed in, shuddering at the cry rending the otherwise silent space. Too good. The snug hold of this girl who, before him, hadn’t been touched in so long—it was heaven and hell all at once. Gritting his teeth, he pulled back, retreating in measured increments, forcing self-control while she adjusted to his presence within her body. Then another thrust, deeper than before. Harder.

“Good…like that…more…please…please…please….”

Cali’s welcoming sighs and straining gasps built warm and wet against the skin of his chest as her body took him deep.

It was pleasure so exquisitely intense it bordered on pain, the breathtaking thrust and agonizing retreat so deliciously destructive her every last defense lay battered, in ruins around her unguarded heart.

“Don’t stop….” It was too good. Each kiss of flesh taking her higher and higher, until Jake jerked her standing leg to his other hip, opening her completely to the driving thrust of his body into hers.

Too good. Too much. And she was coming apart in his arms. Her body was seizing around his until she was caught breathless, suspended in pleasure, as his blue eyes bored into hers.

“Beautiful…so beautiful,” he gritted out, fingers digging into her thighs, branding her with his need as he drove deep one final time, roaring his release.

B
ROWS
resting together, their breath came in ragged bursts between them, bathing already overheated skin in a humid caress. Jake’s fingers curled around the smooth curve of her hip, his thumb stroking over that sexy bone in front.

What was it about this woman that drained him of his every last sense?

And what about
her
?

Cali was supposed to be the conservative one. The woman with all the concerns and issues. And yet once her switch had flipped—she’d practically been climbing his body to get him inside her.

Damn, it was hot.

But now what he needed was to get her out of this hall. Out of that fantasy, porn-star-next-door bikini and into his bed.

A rivulet of sweat ran from his temple, trickling down his neck. Okay, the shower and then the bed.

Reaching for her hand, he scanned the vacant hallway, once again stunned by his own disregard for privacy and convention. They were making an unhealthy habit of this kind of thing.

Really, he shouldn’t be smiling, suddenly aching to crow.

Cali had already adjusted her bikini, and Jake’s trunks
hung at a respectable level on his hips. “Come on, we’ll grab the elevator back here.”

She followed silently behind him, her steps dragging their pace until she drew to a stop. “I can’t believe that I—that we—” She broke off, searching his gaze as she waved her hand toward the alcove he’d never pass without smiling again.

“I know, another hallway. Sorry—”

Her lips pursed. “No, not that.” She glanced uneasily away and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “Hey?” he said softly. “Cali, look at me.”

Her hands fell limp to her sides. Shaking her head, she stared up at him, looking suddenly lost. “I can’t stop. I tried, but I want you so much. I can’t
not
touch you.”

Okay, that was good. He would have been positive—except Cali didn’t seem very happy about it. His jaw set.

“Jake, I need to explain. I know you don’t see it, but what we just did…. God, I didn’t even think about what it might mean for you.”

What the hell?
“Look, this hall’s seen enough action today.” He grasped her hand and led her toward the back. “We’ll talk on our way up.”

The utility car was open and waiting. Jake stepped in behind Cali and pushed seventeen. Then, arms crossing over his chest, he forced a neutral tone. “Explain.”

Cali’s anxious green eyes met his, and after a second she stepped into him. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, what her worry was, but with that single step everything fell into place. For once she wasn’t pulling away. Relaxing his stance to wrap an arm over her slender shoulders, he held her against him. “Just tell me,” he coaxed.

Her body tensed, and she burrowed so far beneath his arm he almost didn’t hear her when she squeaked, “Is there any way that Amanda might be in love with you?”
Almost.

His chin pulled back as he stared down at the amber tumble of curls tickling his skin. She had to be kidding.

He barked out a stunned laugh. “Amanda? You’re freaking out about Amanda?”

Cali’s fragile green stare turned sharp as the elevator doors opened at their floor. “Yes. The reason I’m ‘freaking out’ is because I’m afraid my boss—the woman in control of my future and livelihood—is in love with you.”

The last thing she needed right now was to have Jake laugh in her face, and Cali was halfway down the hall, clutching her arms across her stomach, trying to still the nerves, before Jake’s hand wrapped around her arm. Warming skin chilled by dread, he drew her to a stop.

“Amanda in love with me? You’ll come up with just about anything to try and keep us from happening.” He was irritated, accusing, as if her concern was some trite whim.

“Don’t try to make it sound like nothing, Jake.”

“There’s no trying here. It
is
nothing. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Cali, I thought we’d be past this now, but you’re still creating problems, and what I can’t figure out is why. Do you get off on the drama?”

Cali took a step back, her eyes locked with Jake’s. “No.”

That was ridiculous. She loathed drama. Her every painstakingly selected action was taken in pursuit of security and calm. A life she could count on. But how could he know that, when her life had been nonstop chaos since the moment he’d walked into it?

Opening his apartment door, Jake tossed the keys she hadn’t even realized he’d retrieved into the dish atop the secretary table, then stalked past her. “So if that’s not it—” he turned on her, arms crossed over chest “—then why are you working so hard to keep this thing from happening?”

It wasn’t about keeping them from happening. They’d
happened. Hard. It was done and…wonderful. But the fact that she’d stopped fighting Jake didn’t mean there wouldn’t be consequences. Her stomach sickened. Potentially for both of them.

“What part of ‘my boss is in love with you’ don’t you understand?”

“The part about it not being true,” he answered flatly. “Amanda isn’t in love with me.”

She stared at him, finding her grounding again with a few feet of space between them. “You’re a guy. Your kind is notorious for missing this sort of stuff.”

“And now she insults my intelligence, too.” He stalked across his living room, rested a palm against the wall and glared back at her over his shoulder. “Seriously, what is it about you that I can’t just—?” He shook his head and, looking frustrated, left the rest to hang, making her feel like a fool.

“You don’t hear what she says, the way she goes on about you,” she said, pleading for understanding. “The near threat in her voice when she talks about
her Jackson
. And it isn’t just me imagining it. I mean, there’s a part of me that’s maybe a little unreasonably jealous, but I knew she had it bad for you
before
we even met.”

Staring out the window, he asked, “Has she ever said anything even remotely close to ‘I’m in love with Jake’?”

“She says she loves you all the time,
Jackson!
”

“Don’t start with that,” he warned, before blowing a harsh breath out in a disgusted burst. “She loves me like a
sister
. We grew up together.”

Oh, please. Enough was enough. Cali stormed across the room and threw up her hands beside him. “Like you grew up with your ex-wife,
her sister
?”

He shook his head, jammed his fingers into his hair and balled them at the base of his skull. “I’m telling you you’re wrong. And I swear you know it too. This is just another
excuse. Like you not being able to handle a serious relationship. You know that’s not what I’m offering. Like you not having
time.
You’ve got time. I see you
all
the time—as unconventional as the hours may be. Like you not being interested.” He waved his hand at her. “I’d say we negated that point downstairs.”

Just the mention of it sent a skitter of chills across her skin, tightening her nipples into beaded points. As if lack of interest had ever been the issue. Couldn’t he understand her concern?

He moved on her then, his hands going to the two buttons securing the shirt he’d given her to wear. He unfastened them in short order.

“What are you doing?” she snapped nervously.

“Taking my shirt back.”

Ignoring his hands, she tried to make him see. “Everything—all my concerns, all my hesitation—has been about my job, but I wasn’t thinking about
you
.” Her voice was low but steady, even as he pushed the shirt off her shoulders to the floor, cursing under his breath as his gaze raked down the expanse of her very obviously interested body.

“You’re making me insane.” His eyes, dark like turbulent waters, shot to hers. “Do you have any idea?”

“My career, Jake. I don’t date because I put everything I have into doing my job better than anyone else. I fight for every promotion. I nail every deadline. I’m driven to the point that I don’t even notice men.” She licked her lips, nervous and frustrated. Determined. “Until you. It wasn’t a lie or an excuse. It’s what I was trying to do. Only when I’m with you…none of the rules apply. Even knowing how Amanda feels about you, I can’t resist.”

He let out a snort. “Hell, the way Amanda talks about you, I pegged you as having more sense.”

“Wha—?”

She squealed as his hands locked over her hips and he tossed her over his shoulder. “Jake! What are you doing?”

His shoulder digging into her belly with each step, one large hand gripping her bare thigh dangerously close to the juncture between her legs, Jake strode down the hall of his apartment, passing several doors before turning into what had to be his bedroom.

Cali arched up, her hands bracing above his butt to see the room he slept in. Slate walls contrasted with tobacco-finished furniture. A charcoal rug stretched across the majority of the floor, and geometric-based lamps sat atop the various surfaces. The room, as she took it in in one dizzying spin from her perched position, was all clean lines and organization. Different from the rest of his living space, but somehow equally fitting.

“We’re talking! This—this is crazy.”

“I’m done trying to talk sense to you,” he answered without slowing. “I’m resorting to alternative means of communication.”

Within a few steps they’d entered the master bathroom. Distracted by the fixtures and decadence, she didn’t register that the water hadn’t been brought to temperature before she was deposited in the shower stall—not until Jake wrenched the dial and an icy deluge rained down from the overhead fixture. Cali danced on her toes, spinning for the door, but Jake caught her shoulders and held her in place as the cool water chilled them both.

“Now, that’s better,” he belted out, shucking his trunks beside her.

“What are you? Crazy?” she demanded, her lungs tight from the cold. She pushed her hair back, blinking the water from her eyes as she tracked over the hard, bare lines of Jake’s naked body. Surely by now she should have been prepared. She’d touched and sampled so much of him, but never all at once. Not like this.

“Aiming for a cooler head,” he replied, inordinately pleased with himself. “Thought we both might benefit from one.”

She noted his heated gaze and crossed her arms over her breasts, trying to hide the evidence of nipples that had puckered impossibly tighter. But Jake merely grinned, brushing her arms away, and then let his focus drop lower still on her body. “Though maybe we ought to clear this up fast, because I’m not sure how long it’s going to last.”

He was right. Already the temperature of the water had begun to rise, and with it the heat building steadily within her core.

“Amanda is not in love with me,” he said, cutting to the chase.

How could he even know? “But—”

“No, let me just get this out, so we don’t have any more misunderstandings or confusion. You need to stop looking for excuses and start using that sharp intellect of yours to put it together. Amanda is not in love with me. She’s been setting us up from the start. Trust me on this. I’ve been through it before. Though I have to give her credit for more subtlety than she usually manages, this is definitely a set-up.”

Cali stared up at him, wanting so badly for it to be true. So simple a solution. No one would get hurt. No risk to her career. “Prove it,” she challenged, praying he could.

Arching a brow, he gave a thoughtful nod. “Okay. Reason one: she has
never
asked me to do even one thing for any of the employees she’s had coming through Chicago before. But you I’ve got living next door— Time for these to go.”

His fingers flicked at her hips and the string ties at the sides of her bikini bottoms were loose and falling open. Her knees snapped shut, but Jake wasn’t deterred, his hands already moving to her breasts, thumbs beneath the fabric, pulling the scant cups to the sides so they trapped her bare breasts between them.

He groaned, catching the turgid peaks between his fingers
briefly before moving to untie the strings of her top. As if on cue the three tiny panels of Lycra fell away, leaving her naked beneath the shower spray. Jake followed the streams of water sluicing down her shoulders, breasts and belly with a gaze so intent she could swear she felt his touch. “God, that’s nice.”

Staring back at him, she couldn’t agree more. Every part of her body was wound tight. Her pulse throbbed in time with the ache between her legs. She was already exposed. Already hot. But resolving this was imperative. “You said there was an issue with the temporary housing.”

“Fine.” Back on task, he pulled the shower gel dispenser from a built-in shelf in the tile and squirted a handful into his palm. “Fair enough. But, for the record, whatever emergency there was, she didn’t mention it until
after
I’d told her about the vacancy opening up next door to me.”

She liked it, but as proof went it wasn’t exactly rock-solid. If she was going to put this behind her once and for all, she wanted something concrete.

Jake pulled her closer and, wrapping his arms around her, began lathering in slow lazy strokes over her shoulders, neck and back. “Reason two: when I told her I hadn’t been able to get much time to talk with you this week, she suggested I hit the beach today. Even going so far as to speculate on what kind of suit you might be wearing. She thought white bikini. I went with pink. Just goes to show how fun being wrong can be.”

Cali swallowed. That was something. But still….

Jake’s hands slipped down her arms to where her hands had come to rest against the muscles of his stomach. She hadn’t even realized. She’d gone to rot.

Taking one hand in his, he squeezed a dollop more gel into her palm and pressed it back into his flesh, letting her skim up his chest to that mind-blowing spot that had led to the demise of her control down in the hall. It was even better with soap.

“And Reason three: she’s got a picture of me on her desk from when I was a year old. Droopy diaper hanging half off my butt, full-on snaggletooth smile, and saliva covering three-quarters of my face. It’s not the kind of love you’re talking about.”