Wrapped Around My Finger (7 page)

“Which is the perfect reason to get out of dodge.” I leaned forward, like maybe I could touch her. “I haven’t done this in a long time. And I’m actually glad we’re arguing. We’ll say what we really think. This won’t be easy until one of us decides to move to the other one. Then we’ll have new issues. But there’s got to be some compromise.”

“Our first fight.” Leah laughed softly. “I guess the make-up sex will have to wait until I get down there.”

Yes.
“I won’t be able to keep my hands off of you when you get here.” Thinking about it brought the life back to my cock. “I can’t wait to wake up with you in my bed.”

She scoffed, rolling her eyes playfully. “The last thing I want to do in your bed is sleep. I expect to have quite the introduction to your bedroom. Every time we’ve had sex in a new place, it’s been pretty incredible. You’ve set a precedent.” Her finger brushed against the screen. “Let me grab my planner so we can figure what works for both of us.”

We picked a weekend at the end of the month. Leah wasn’t kidding about her schedule being full. She rattled off her commitments, and it sounded just like my old schedule. All I’d wanted was time to myself when it was happening, but now I wanted it back. I was being too hard on myself, it had only been a couple weeks since I quit escorting. With all my endless excuses about why I stayed in, now I realized it was because I didn’t have a plan once I was out.

“I’m so excited about this. I can’t wait,” Leah said, blowing me a kiss before the screen went black. I missed her already. Fuck, I always wanted what I couldn’t have.

L
eah

Palm trees made me ridiculously happy. I associated them with vacation since that was the only time I ever saw any. I closed my laptop and dug my phone out of my bag to take a picture out the airplane window of the palm tree and sent it to Jagger.
I am minutes away from kissing you,
I wrote.

I had time to get myself together while everyone got their stuff out of the overhead bins. I worked the whole flight to Miami and raced to turn on my auto-responders before I lost the internet. The only thing I cared about this weekend was Jagger.

It didn’t matter that this was a bad time, juggling all the work stuff, I had to come. It wasn’t fair to expect Jagger to always come to me. He’d done the all the heavy lifting so far travel-wise. The butterflies in my stomach were going crazy. Seeing him was always exciting, a stolen moment, but being on his turf scared me. It could change everything. What if against this backdrop, he didn’t see me the same way? If I didn’t fit in his life? I’d never done a long distance relationship before. I shouldn’t have anything to worry about, but as I walked through the airport, my belly clenched with doubt.

I got lost trying to find baggage claim, I was in such a daze. Jagger waited for me at the bottom of the escalator. It took everything I had not to push through the people ahead of me to get to him. He pulled me into his arms as soon as he could reach me. People bumped into us, muttering, but I didn’t care. My lips were on his, and immediately I knew I was where I belonged.

“You’re brave,” I said when we stopped kissing. It was funny, I knew every inch of his body, but distance had dulled my senses. The electricity surprised me every time as it flowed between us, threatening to become something dangerous if left unchecked. “This is scary.”

Jagger cocked his head, confused. “What are you talking about? You travel all the time.” We walked to the baggage carousel hand in hand. “Unless you’re afraid of flying. Is that why I had such a hard time getting you down here?”

“No, it’s not that. You were always going to something unknown. It’s...” I stopped to grab my bag. Jagger beat me to it. I was pretty flustered. “Everything’s always been on my terms. What if—“

He took my face in his hands and kissed me before I had a chance to finish my thought. “You’re kind of a control freak.” He smiled against my lips. His voice was low and husky. “And I like it.”

I laughed. “Nope. Not this weekend. I completely surrender to you.”

“I like that even better.” We were close enough that his erection was obvious against my belly. “You won’t be sorry.”

The sunshine kissed my skin as soon as we got outside. I had to be careful, in paradise with this man, I could easily become addicted. And my life was somewhere else...

Stop it,
I told myself.
See where the weekend takes you.

Jagger’s car was as sleek and sexy as he was. I peeked in before getting inside. The backseat was tiny. “Damn. No room for a quickie.”

“It wouldn’t be a quickie, Leah.”

Everything inside me fluttered. The current was different on Jagger’s turf. Much more sensual, like either of us had been able to think of anything else since we’d last seen each other. Or we were trying to distract ourselves from the truth.

He took me to a restaurant on the beach. Palm trees shaded the outdoor deck, with sand below us, and the ocean going on forever. It was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as my host. Sunglasses pushed his long hair away from his face. His shoulders were broader than I remembered, and his T-shirt strained against his muscles. This was the place he belonged. So many things made sense now.

“We’ll be eating out a lot,” he said when we sat down. “I can’t cook like you do.”

“Let’s pick up some stuff. I’d love to cook for you at your house.” Jagger was the only person who ate my cooking willingly. I was cursed with a love of cooking and stuck in a sea of picky eaters. And cooking for him, in his kitchen, made it mine in a way. I wanted that. To leave my mark, like scraping my fingernails down his chest.

His dark eyes glittered in the sunlight. “I’d like that.” No one ever did anything for Jagger.

Everyone around us was in sweaters and sweatshirts, but this was a heatwave for me. And I planned on taking advantage of it. I shrugged out of my sweater. My arms didn’t usually get to be free in the wild; I thought they made me look big unless I covered them. But Jagger had seen me naked many times, and he had no complaints. Being around him gave me confidence I didn’t know I had. Jagger made me feel beautiful. Even more than that, desirable.

“I’ve missed looking at you,” he said. “We see each other every day, but it’s different in person.”

“I was thinking the same thing at the airport. When I saw you standing there it took my breath away like it was the first time.” The waiter came and of course I ordered sangria. It was five o’clock somewhere, and I was on vacation. “What do you have planned for the weekend?”

Jagger ran his teeth over his bottom lip. It was still swollen from my welcome at the airport. We’d kissed for so long I was still breathing his oxygen. “You’ll see.”

Tease. “I want to see all the places you’ve told me about,” I said. He made them sound magical. And the photos he showed me were even better, giving me a chance to see everything through his eye. I moaned when the first sip of sangria hit my lips. It blew the stuff I’d had at home out of the water. “This is perfection.”

“Welcome to Miami. You sure you want to cook? Wait ‘til you take your first bite of your lunch.”

I’d get some inspiration, and see what I could come up with. “Come clean. Were you only eating my cooking to be polite? There’s got to be a reason Kari brings takeout every time she comes over.”

“You’re an amazing cook. But I want you to relax.” Jagger stared at the ocean. We were on an open deck, with the waves lapping the shore below us, salt water air tickling our skin. Something was off. Usually, when we were together, his eyes were on me. It made me uncomfortable at first, and then I’d come to crave that feeling, being the center of his universe. Shit. I hoped he didn’t regret inviting me.

“What’s wrong?”

He startled like he’d forgotten he had company. After a deep breath, his smile returned. “I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands this month.”

“But you’ve been taking pictures.” Each of Jagger’s photos was like a song. I loved the way his face lit up when he talked about his photography.

And it did. He leaned forward, back from wherever he’d just drifted off to. “Yeah. I got some great stuff yesterday. I’ll show you when we get to my house.”

“Can’t wait to see it. But something’s bothering you.”

He opened his mouth but didn’t speak right away, searching for the right words. “I’d been tired of escorting for a long time. Now that I’m not doing it, I’m having a hard time figuring out who I’m supposed to be. I know it was just a job, but it was a big part of who I am.”

“It’s never just a job.” I picked up the garnish on the side of my glass and put it in my mouth. Jagger’s hungry gaze followed the motion. “I felt like a bull in a china shop when I worked in retail. I needed to express myself in a certain way and I couldn’t do it when I was there. Once I started actually doing interior design, so many parts of my life opened up.”

“Exactly.” That was the most animated I’d seen him in a while. Possibly since he left my house at the beginning of the month. He took another deep breath. “Good. You understand. For the last eight years, I’ve done what everyone else wants. I never asked for what I needed, because it wasn’t about me.”

“But now it is,” I said softly. Someone hurt Jagger somewhere along the line because he’d shut completely down. This wasn’t normal guy inability to speak a woman’s language, this was something so raw that it had broken him once, and I was pretty sure he thought it could break him again. Maybe the next time he wouldn’t recover. “Tell me what you want, Jagger. I want to make you feel the way you make me feel.”

“I miss the sex.”

Really? That was the big reveal? “I think we can take care of that this weekend.”

“It’s not the same thing. When I’m with you, there’s a more than just a connection of our bodies.” Jagger stopped and nodded at the waiter when the food came. But he seemed frustrated like he thought I was laughing at him. I understood what he meant, to a point. Sex with him was insane. “You take me to a place I didn’t know existed. But the rest of it was this raw, physical, almost selfish need to get off. Don’t worry, you more than get me off. I can see it on your face, but what I’m trying to say is it’s two different things.”

I swallowed my food and thought about what he said. Jagger was right, my lunch was out of this world. I’d ordered Mahi Mahi on a bed or rice with vegetables, but it had been cooked and seasoned to perfection. Maybe I didn’t want to cook. No, I did. For completely different reasons. “So it’s something purely physical instead of caring about what the other person needs, is that what you mean?”

“Yeah.” He pushed his food around on his plate. “It’s not what we have.”

“We can try it.” My mouth went dry when our gazes locked. There was something different there than I’d ever seen before. Primal, but it was more than that. Jagger was scared. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be two separate things. Maybe if you put them both together, it will be even better.”

Now it was purely primal. “You’re willing to play around a little bit?”

“I want to make you happy.” My heart thundered in my chest. “And yeah, I’m willing to experiment. I haven’t had the chance to do any of that.” Rich and I had sex so infrequently at the end there was no need to mix things up. Any other guy between him and Jagger was a one shot deal. For a reason.

“I know. We need to figure out what you like.” His tone changed. I recognized it from the first night we met, when I brought him into my bedroom and he somehow convinced me to get myself off in front of him. At the time, it had been a giant leap. Just thinking about it gave me some ideas. “This isn’t all about me, Leah. If you want to try something, this is the time. Raven’s not here, and your job is a thousand miles away. In fact, give me your phone.” He held his hand out.

“What?”

“Did you bring your laptop?” He grinned, his hand still out. I nodded. “I’m confiscating them. No sneaking off to work while you’re here.”

“I’ll agree to the laptop, but I keep the phone.” This scared me more than the sex. “No work. But just in case something comes up with my family.”

“One of the reasons I wanted you to come to me was I wanted you to get away from everything. Yeah, you moved from Boston to DC when you got divorced. But when was the last time you just let go?”

He was right. I’d been working so hard, making up for lost time in the last few years, I barely took time to relax. Time slowed down when I was with Jagger, to something lush and luxurious. Forbidden. There were so many reasons I’d fallen for him. “Only when I’m with you.”

Jagger reached across the table and touched my hand. I laced my fingers in his and squeezed them. “I’m so glad you came.”

“Me too.” I’d forgotten to breathe. “So, tell me what a typical client was like. What she wanted. And what you liked about it.”

I could barely get the last sentence out. I’d asked him this before, but never let him finish. I braced myself for the details.

Jagger relaxed. Now we were truly on his turf. “There wasn’t one type. Everyone needed something different. There were plenty of women like you, who wanted a date without the bullshit. And honestly, they bored me, until I met you. I didn’t get many of them because I’m not exactly the guy who gets chosen for a black tie event. The other guys get a lot more of that stuff, and that was fine with me. The longer I did it, the more I needed something different, too. Barry set me up with the clients who asked for certain things.”

I took a long sip of my sangria. “Like what?”

“Some of them liked to be dominated, but a few liked to top me. It was all a game. Because they were my clients, they were always in control. But it was a game I liked, never knowing what to expect. I could play the role. Be someone else for a little while. Others liked it rough and wanted to push their limits. They hired me, so there was no reason to hold back.” He paused, gauging my reaction. I wondered if he could tell I wasn’t breathing. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

The last time I let Jagger tell me a little of this before I shut the whole thing down, he’d said that people hired him to fulfill what they’d been refused by their husbands or were too afraid to ask for. And I made him stop because that was the category I fell into. It wasn’t the only thing I’d been refused, by a long shot. There was a reason why we’d been brought to each other. Jagger filled in all the cracks where I’d been broken and made the scars disappear. I wanted to do the same for him.