Eye of the Storms (Eye of the Storms #1) (17 page)

“You’ve banged her.”

“As friends. A couple of times. But not in a long, long time.” Rightfully so, his admission was indignant. A flash of perception crossed his face. “Is that what your date last night was all about?”

“Not exactly,” I fibbed, not wanting him to know I was so desperately infatuated with him. “Olivia tried to set us up a while back. And I told her I would after Tristan’s surgery.”

“And after all that waiting for a date, it had to be the weekend I came?”

“Well no. But you were coming to see Tristan—”

“And you,” he interrupted before I could play out the ploy.

And you.

No two words, or even three words, had ever made me so happy.

Taking my glass, he thrust both drinks aside, and his palms came to rest on my hips to pull me close. The hand snaking so familiarly under my shirt was cold from holding his drink, but it quickly warmed against the heat of my skin. Greedily, I couldn’t get enough of his kiss, and I found myself practically hanging on him in an effort to get even closer.

His hand splayed on my back, smashing our bodies together. Phase two was all downhill from here, or rather down the hall. As I thought of my bedroom, some sanity returned. Five years ago, we had hooked up for the sake of hooking up. And tonight? Tonight I had phased sex into some devious plan. A plan that, not for the first time, felt weird and wrong.

“Jack?” I wedged a hand between us, and when he pulled back enough to warm my face with his inquiring gaze, I pulled in a fortifying breath. “You’re not seeing anyone?”

A myriad of emotions crossed his face, and one seemed to be annoyance. “I thought we just cleared this?”

“You said not Miranda.”

An awkward silence stretched, and he still seemed exasperated with this line of questioning or maybe with the interruption.

And so I joked, “I’ve heard about rock stars. A woman in every city! I just don’t want to be your gulf coast girl.”

“What are you asking, Marissa?”

Oh hell… What was I asking? Was I trying to define our relationship, right here, right now? Because what faster way to scare away someone like him? I was an idiot!

“I’m not asking anything,” I tried to salvage a shred of humility. “I just don’t want to go where this is going if you have a girlfriend. It’s wrong.”

Picking up his glass, he drained it. I had definitely killed the mood, and I was regretting it now. I was about to drink to my own stupidity when he dropped to my level again, speaking against my lips.

“I’m not seeing anyone. No woman in any city. No one.” His lips brushed mine as he spoke, and his gaze sank into my eyes. “Is there anything else you need to clear up in this kitchen before we move to the bedroom and fuck like it’s been five years since?”

Hypnotized by his words, and heated with his look, I could only shake my head in one small chin movement.

“Anything you want me to sign?” He pressed, as he pressed a kiss to my mouth, and when I smiled at the humor, he did too.

A touch of our tongues had us heating up fast, and within seconds, the past minutes fell away as if I had never cock-blocked myself.

When he lifted me against him, I wrapped him with my legs, fusing us together as he headed into the other room, beyond the other room, and into my bedroom. His long strides caused our jeans to frictionally brush together, and with a whimper passing through them, my lips molded tighter to his. From the previous night, he must have recalled the layout, because even in the dark, he went straight for the bed and came down on top of me.

His fingers went to the buttons of my shirt, and I rose, flinging it off, along with the bra beneath it as soon as it was undone. His shirt came over his head at the same time, and we pressed together eager to feel skin to skin. Fervently, I traced each muscle and skimmed my fingers across hot skin. My lips were on his lips, his neck, his chest, taking in and tasting everything my hands were feeling. His reciprocation drove me to a frenzy, and finally crazed, I realized I was lying limp while he was tasting and teasing every bit of exposed skin.

By some sanity in the back of my mind, I was listening for any sign of Tristan being awake, any clank of his crutches. “Jack,” I gasped at the next flick of his tongue. “I should see if Tristan is asleep…”

He dragged his tongue across the expanse of skin just above the waistline of my low-rise jeans. My muscles jumped beneath wet skin, and I breathed in another unsteady breath. Lifting my head, I beheld the top of his dark head, and the visual aggravated the throbbing ache in the pit of my tummy.

“I will. Stay put.” For emphasis, he flicked the button through its denim slit, drew the fly zipper down, and suctioned a kiss to the skin he’d exposed. Pulling his shirt back on, he exited the room and was back in a flash, pushing the door completely closed. “Tylenol strikes again.” I could hear the fond smile in his voice, and his clothes rustle as they came off. “Can I turn the lamp on?”

A second after my assent, I was blinking in the light and basking in his admiring look. My eyes ran down his nude form, all long, lean, hard muscle.

Back against me, he whispered, “You’re just how I remember… And I remember everything, Mariss.”

The sweet words were whispered against my neck. “The way you look. The way you taste.” My hand was now in his, and the lash of his tongue on the palm, the subsequent stroke between my fingers, brought a groan to my lips and brought back the memories I held so vivid. Thinking of his tongue other places as he continued this tease—flicking and circling my palm, gliding against the webs of my fingers while darting between them—had me moaning again as other places heated even more unbearably. “The way you sound… I never forgot the sounds you make…”

Abandoning the assault on my hand, he sought my lips again, swallowing the next sound from my throat. My hand traveled down, wanting to pull the same sound from his lips, and the second my fingers closed around his dick, I was rewarded with a low rumble.

Everything resumed full throttle; I couldn’t keep up with his next touch or kiss, and my lips, tongue and hands could not get enough of him. Somewhere in this madness, the rest of my clothing was shed, and when his kiss strayed intimately to those ‘other places’, the reality replacing the recollections had me smothering my cries with a pillow.

Wild and sweet, fiery and intense the kiss continued—some special link between Jack and my body making it an experience only paralleled by the last time with him. His fingers knew me, ringing my doorbell from the inside as he sucked from the outside. Weakly I pulled him by his hair, silently begging for him to stop, and alternately fisted my fingers in his hair urging him to continue. If I had thought that was nirvana, I was soon reminded wrong.

Gliding up my body, he held a kiss to my lips, as we joined. My body remembered, welcoming and easily taking him in. For a moment, he paused, his tongue dancing with mine, until I could take it no longer. His reaction to my squeeze was a growling groan as he moved almost completely and agonizingly away before completely possessing me again.

We rocked and we rolled until I thought every cell in my body would explode with the intensity and my heart would burst with emotion.

Being with Jack was everything I remembered and more. The connection was mental as well as physical, and as I lay against him, sweetly sated, with our child in the next room, I couldn’t help but feel we were fated to be together.

Phase two. Complete
. At this point, after the depth of passion between us, phases were more of an amusing last thought as I fell asleep, no longer a direct plan.

A
n internal alarm woke me, and I stared into the shadows of the room, enjoying the feel of Jack’s leg twisted with mine and the sound of his breath. A few quiet snores, the ones I remembered from the hospital, intermittently broke up his breathing. Although I had hooked up with over a dozen men since Tristan’s birth, it had been more than five years since anyone except Tristan had been in my bed.

Tristan was the reason I woke, and my gaze spontaneously drew to the door we’d cracked open to listen for him after Jack and I were done and dozing. Padding to the adjoining bathroom, I took care of that urge, and my eyes blissfully fell to the two foil packets in the trash.

Stepping into a steamy shower, I began to soap up, and every brush of the loofah caressed skin still tingling from last night. After washing and rinsing my hair, I wrapped in my robe and returned to the bedroom.

Jack had moved to lay diagonal in the bed, as if searching for me in his sleep—at least that’s what I wanted to imagine—and now rested with his head on my pillow.

Easing back into the bed, I allowed my fingers what they craved, the slick softness of his hair, the smooth firmness of his skin, a trace of an inked arm, a trail down his chest to his stomach, and reluctantly stopped short of what I really wanted. Pulling in a deep breath of his scent, I contemplated the light of dawn through the slats of the mini blinds. Unable to resist, I pressed my lips to the warmth of his chest, then again… and again… unconsciously drawing closer to my craving and was rewarded when he responded in a very conscious state.

“Mariss…” That particular utterance of my name was an addiction. “Mariss, mmh…”

“Mmh,” I hummed the echo against him, around him, and savored his body’s immediate reaction. My lips and tongue paid homage to this piece of pleasure so great, my body still purred hours in the aftermath.

Minutes later, my cheek was against his chest, and he was mumbling in sated satisfaction about the best way to wake up in the morning.

With another look at the window, I unwillingly whispered, “You need to get out of here before Tristan gets up.”

Fully awake, he raised his head, and the shadowy pools of his eyes sought mine. “Okay,” he agreed. Then, “Wait, do you mean leave, leave? Or, is it okay if I move to the couch?”

When it came to important decisions about Tristan, he always double-checked with me, and this was reassuring, and endearing. One of his hands stroked through my hair, and my lips turned to the heat of that inked forearm as I answered. “The couch.”

Despondent, yet entranced, I watched as he returned from the bathroom and picked through the clothing on the floor as he dressed. Lastly, he pulled on his tee shirt. Then pouncing on the bed, he hunkered on all fours over me and raised goose bumps with a line of kisses down my body, then back up to my throat.

“Mariss?”

“Mmh?”

“When are you going to be ready to tell him?”

My muscles went rigid as he spoke against my skin, and I pushed at him, needing to see his eyes. The room was getting lighter by the minute, but I took the time to study his earnest expression. In the middle of the night, I had woken intertwined with him and idly fantasized telling Tristan that Jack was his daddy. But, in that imagining, we were also telling our son we were married, or were about to be married.

In my fantasy, there was a future with the three of us and no fear of me losing Tristan in this equation to some belated custody hearing.

“I don’t know…” Fingering the necklace dangling from his neck, I considered and softly replied, “We’ll figure it out today. Okay?”

With a last press of a kiss to my hairline, he bounded out of the room, pulling the door back to a crack behind him.

The sun was now bright, casting vertical shadows on the wall, and I closed my eyes, yet still couldn’t drift into any sleep stage although we had been up most of the night. I didn’t know what last night had meant in this ‘baby daddy/baby momma’ affiliation we had going. I only knew I’d wanted an encore with Jack for five years.

A vibration sounded from the nightstand, and my head twisted toward the source as the face of Jack’s cell lit up. Resolutely, I ignored it, but when it sounded again, only a couple of minutes later, my curiosity won. With a wary look, to the shadowy hall beyond the narrow door slit, I brought up the missed calls, finding them both from ‘Randi.’

At that precise moment, a text came through, and because I was holding the phone, I got a preview. Again, from ‘Randi’ reading,
‘Sugar, let me know as soon as you know
.’

Stretching my hand, I was about to return the phone when the next text came through from ‘Mom’ asking
‘Jacks did you tell her? I can’t wait to meet him. Call your mother!’

Letting the phone drop back to the stand as if it were a dangerous snake, I rolled over. Within seconds of settling comfortably, I heard the clink of Tristan’s crutches. He stopped in the hall bathroom and afterward pushed open my bedroom door.

“Morning, Momma!”

Mustering a liveliness that, after viewing the texts, I no longer felt, I return chanted the greeting, and Tristan asked, “Can I feed Bal…ly…?”

When his words dwindled, I rose to see what his wide eyes beheld and spied Jack’s socks and shoes among my discarded clothing. Falling to my pillow, I brought a reassuring hand to my robe, and in a desperate attention diversion asked, “What do you want for breakfast?”

Deciding he would choose a cereal, Tristan hobbled off, and after taking the time to pull on a pair of jeggings and a long tunic top, I followed. My bare feet hit the cool tile of the hall floor, and my strides stopped when I saw Tristan propped on his crutches before the couch. Jack was blinking the sleep from his eyes.

“Did you spend the night?” Tristan quizzed, and since I was behind him, unable to read his face, I tried but failed to read his tone.

Jack pushed Bally’s snout away from his face and sat up. “I thought if I was here when you first woke up that we could drive through McDonald’s and get some breakfast.”

“Okay.” Tristan took a couple of steps toward the kitchen, then undeterred, turned as he made a second inquiry. “But did you spend the night?”

Jack’s gaze came over Tristan’s shoulder to meet mine, and I only grinned back. Tristan’s persistence was a direct genetic link from his father, and it was fun to watch paybacks come back around to Jack.

“Actually, I did,” Jack admitted. “It got really late, and I thought we could surprise your Mom with some breakfast. Is she still asleep?” With an innocent expression, which would have fooled even me if I had not been staring into his eyes at that very moment, he made the inquiry.