Fish Out of Water (2 page)

And then he buried his face in his hands and cried.

“OH… OH
my God! Yes! Yes! Keep fucking me, asshole, don’t fucking quit!”

Jackson still
liked banging Jade like a screen door in a hurricane, but the woman was
loud
. And bossy. But oh God, could she work her inner muscles like a
champ
.

Best do what the lady says!

Jackson rabbited his hips until his six-pack ached, relieved when Jade screamed, “Holy fucking hell
yes
!” and gushed fluid around his cock, which was her signal for him to come.

Thank. God.

Well, she’d been screaming His name enough—maybe He was in the room.

Jackson orgasmed neatly, like flipping a switch, and collapsed on top of her, breathing heavily into the hollow between her ear and her shoulder.

“Good for you?” he asked.

“You know it, baby,” she purred, running a french manicure through his hair.

He panted for another moment before propping himself up on his elbows. “Don’t take this the wrong way, J, but you know, even when I’m in bed with a guy, I usually top.”

“Get your sweaty ass off me,” Jade muttered, pushing at his shoulder. “And stop talking about your icky gay habit. I need a cigarette.”

Jackson rolled over to his back and pulled the rubber off, then threw it in the trash next to the bed. “No smoking in the house—you know that.”

She pulled her lips away from her teeth and rolled her eyes. “You just got a free pity bang and you’re going to be picky about the smokes?”

Jackson let out a throaty laugh and grabbed a wet wipe from the bed stand, then cleaned the smell of sex off his body. Jade had soaked the sheets—he’d change them once she got up.

“Pity bang was mutual,” he said, shaking his head. Same old Jade. She’d actually come on to
him
that night. They’d been hanging around the office, shooting the shit, talking about the old days. He and Jade had lost their virginity together and weathered exes and next-exes together. Since Jackson wasn’t looking for a long-term thing
ever
, sleeping together when the opportunity arose was habit. The fact that Jade was a legal secretary at the defense firm Jackson did PI work for just ensured that they’d run into each other at opportune times in their libido/attachment cycle.

Jackson’s libido had, in fact, been jonesing for someone else tonight. That day he’d seen a certain counselor—tall, pale, slender, cold as a fish in the courtroom—take apart a dirty witness. He’d watched from the corner of the courtroom while nursing an aching erection. He and Ellery Cramer had been glaring at each other for six years, and Jackson was more than ready to stop being his fetch-and-carry boy and start being his fuck-and-suck-me boy, but Jackson had needed to grab a file for another lawyer at the firm, and by the time he’d returned, Cramer had already left.

Damn.

Well, it wasn’t like Jackson had a reputation for being a faithful lover—or even for honoring a crush. Jade had been ready, willing, and available, and she was better than sex alone.

And the woman was sexy and shameless. With a grunt and a sigh, she swung her legs over the bed and grabbed one of his T-shirts from the clean pile by the side of the bed. It hung past her thighs but clung tightly to her ample chest making her nipples stick out like pencil erasers, and she didn’t give a shit. Wearing that and nothing else, she strode to his tiny patio, pink microbraids swaying down her back. She stopped at the leather purse she’d left on the floor by her business suit to get her cigarettes.

Jackson stood up and started stripping sheets. Unlike Jade, he didn’t bother covering up a damned thing. Jade knew where all his scars were, and he’d long since given up keeping them covered.

For a moment the silence was punctuated by the rustle of linen and Jade’s deep exhalations sounding through the gap in the sliding glass door. About the time Jackson had tossed the dirty sheets in the hamper and pulled the comforter back on the bed, Jade ground out the cigarette and came back in, closing the door to keep the cool air in. She pretended not to see the rumple-haired shadow sliding in at her ankles.

“All Zenned out now?” Jackson asked dryly, throwing himself naked on top of the comforter.

“That is the ugliest cat I’ve seen in my life,” Jade told him, disdain twisting that full mouth.

“You say that every time you see him. Billy Bob is going to get a complex.” Billy Bob might have been a well-groomed Siamese in another life—one that didn’t involve going out into the neighborhood and fucking or fighting every other animal for a four-block radius. Jackson had started feeding him a year ago, when he’d been a gangly, sexed-out adolescent. He’d been missing an eye and half an ear, and had a big divot in the middle of his nose. Jackson could swear he’d seen the motherfucker dry-humping the neighbor’s German shepherd once, but if the poor animal had given birth to freakishly mutated catdogs, nobody had told Jackson.

“That cat….” Jade shook her head and made a mm-mm sound. “That cat is bad news.”

Jackson scratched Billy Bob under the chin, delighted when ol’ Billy purred for him. “For other cats,” he said affectionately, and Billy Bob began to drool shamelessly.

“Jackson?” Jade said thoughtfully. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Who were you waiting for tonight?”

Oh God. How embarrassing. He hadn’t thought she’d known. “You, darlin’—you know that.”

She gave him a sideways eye roll while pressing against the sliding glass door, still looking into the clear sky, and he felt suitably chastened. “I know you got a thing for him.”

Jackson grunted. “Out of our league,” he said softly. “You and me are street tacos and hamburgers. He’s filet mignon and caviar.”

She shook her head, looking away. “I’m caviar and salmon, you presumptuous motherfucker. Take me out on a date once in a while and you’d know.”

Oh. He’d hurt her—that was never his intention! “Sure, Jade. Name the place. We’ll kick back a bottle of wine and—”

“Why him?” She turned around and leaned back against the door.

He sighed. “’Cause he’s good. He really fights. It’s not just show.”

“You sure it’s not just the whole nasty gay thing?”

Jackson laughed and stretched. “I ever get soft with you?” he taunted. Because no. He played for both teams with gleeful abandon.

She shook her head and sighed, coming to the bed and stretching out next to him. The smell of cigarettes clung to her, reminding him of when they’d both snuck smokes as a kid. “You ever think we’re getting too old for this?”

Jackson grunted. Thirty—he’d already turned, but for Jade it was just around the corner. “Pity sex?” he asked, grinning dryly. “No one’s too old for pity sex.”

She grimaced. “No,” she said, her voice dropping quietly. “This thing we do where we know the other one will be around if we’re between special friends we fuck.”

Oh hell. “You thinking of breaking up with me, J?”

She rested her head on hand, propping up on her elbow. “My brother already has two kids,” she said soberly.

“Your brother knocked up Rhonda in college,” Jackson said, smiling. God, Rhonda was meant to be a mother—and Kaden was a father like none of them had ever had. Responsibility sat on Kaden’s shoulders so easily, it was hard to believe they’d grown up together.

A house, businesses, beautiful kids—things had turned out for K and Rhonda, hadn’t they? They were going strong. K might have needed two jobs to help support his family, but his family loved him. Every time K had a double shift, Rhonda greeted him at the door with dinner and a beer, and every time Rhonda stayed up late grading papers, K got the kids up for school.

Domestic as hell—they made Jackson wish for happy endings.

“Yeah,” Jade said. Her full mouth pulled tight in the corners. “I used to feel sorry for them, right? Because you and me, we got to go out and do big things.” She sighed. “But I’m lonely, Jacky, you know?”

Oh hell. “J—”

“Yeah,” she said, her face relaxing into disappointment. “It’s not me. I get that. You got your big exciting life, and you get to fuck anything that moves—”

“Hey,” he said, touching her cheek gently. “You and me—I love that we can do this.”

She sighed. “It’s… it’s too easy. I had a chance to go out the other night, and I thought, ‘I should just call Jacky up. I know he doesn’t have anything going.’ And it’s not that this guy was bad—it’s just that with you, I knew what I was going to get.”

Oh.

“No strings,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think we need to cut them.”

He sighed. “Yeah, fine. But….” He hated to ask. But J knew—knew why he’d rather have anyone, even a bad date, here some nights.

“I’ll stay the night,” she said quietly. “And any other night you need me. Just from now on….”

“You’ll sleep on the couch,” he said. Or the guest room bed. Hey, it was comfy. The entire little duplex was comfy. Not paradise, but he kept it neat, made sure the furniture didn’t screw up your back, kept the beds clean. He wasn’t there a lot, but the place didn’t suck.

“Yeah.”

She looked so sad. He grabbed his boxers from the pile of clothes on the floor, then slid them on in a quick movement. It was still hot, in spite of the little AC unit cranking away, so after he turned off the light, he kept his spot on top of the comforter. He lay back down facing her, and in whispers, like the teenagers they had been, they talked about their childhood, growing up off Del Paso Heights, going to MLK Junior High, where the prostitution and drug trade had happened on campus, in full view of the public, before school.

The place had been cleaned up since then. It still wasn’t a great district, but at least the kids didn’t have to wade through drug deals to get to class. That didn’t change the fact that Jackson and K had fought their way through school, back-to-back sometimes, to keep themselves and the girls safe.

They had a lot of stories, Jackson and Jade. It was good to get them out in the dark of the night so they could say good-bye.

AT SIX
o’clock in the morning, Jackson’s phone rang, and Kaden cracked their little world wide apart.

ELLERY CRAMER
knew his tie was perfect, but he checked it anyway as he got off the elevator on the fourth floor. Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper was one of the best criminal defense firms in Sacramento, and it didn’t get that way because its employees neglected details.

And Ellery wanted his name on that list of partners so bad.

When he’d first gotten his degree, he’d dreamed of opening his own practice, but no. His sister had run numbers on that—she was an actuary—and had determined that his best chance for financial success lay with hooking up as a junior associate and working his way up to partner.

Six years after signing on with Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper, he was one of their most trusted trial lawyers, and he was conscious of the honor.

He was also conscious of his suit.

Today he wore the silver pinstripe, which, although it didn’t complement his dark hair and eyes at all,
did
make him look severe and imposing, and he was all for that. He’d spent two hours cross-examining a witness that day and had enjoyed making the guy—a police officer, no less—crumble like a cookie.

Ellery did so enjoy his petty torments.

But as much as he enjoyed destroying police officers on the stand, he wouldn’t ever mess with Leonard Pfeist’s secretary. Nope—Ellery was
very
good at knowing who to toady, and the secretary was the heart of the firm.

“Good afternoon, Jade,” he said pleasantly and was greeted with a heavy-eyed scowl in return. Ellery gaped at her, uncertain of how to respond. Granted, he and the firm’s legal secretary weren’t close. Jade was a little too rough around the edges for Ellery to really warm up to. He got that Leonard Pfeist, the most junior of the partners, did the hiring, and
he
seemed to rely on Jade’s street-smart, tart-mouthed presence, but Ellery had been brought up conservatively. Between Jade’s unapologetically vibrant appearance and the female sexuality that rolled off her like perfume, her whole presence made him
very
uneasy.

But he’d never seen her look like she could rip someone’s head off with her bare hands, and that was the way she was looking at him now.

“Took you long enough,” she snapped. “Did or did your schedule
not
say you were supposed to be in the office an hour ago?”

“I was in court!” Ellery objected. “It went—”

“I know when it went to. And I know you stopped for coffee and probably to schmooze that judge you’re always trying to flirt with. What you
needed
to do was to be
here
because you’ve got someone here who needs your fucking help!”

Ellery stared at her, his mouth opening and closing in surprise. Smart-mouthed, yes, but never insubordinate—never
rude
. “Uh—”

“Take it easy on him, J—he didn’t know.”

Oh great.
Him
.

Ellery stared at Jackson Rivers with a distaste that had nothing to do with the man’s looks. Dark blond hair, green eyes, and a square jaw—if the remains of an adolescent acne problem hadn’t roughened his skin, he’d look like a movie star. As it was, he appeared weathered and capable—stringy, no-bullshit muscle and an uncompromising glare. Jackson was the law firm’s head PI, and while the job was not supposed to be as glamorous as television made it look, Ellery had always wondered if maybe Jackson Rivers didn’t break a few rules to be so goddamned good at what he did.

Need a witness background? Yeah, sure, he was there. But he was there with the
dirt—
the stuff that made the witness unreliable, the stuff that Ellery could use to keep a client out of prison.

But it was just not fair that he was so goddamned
beautiful
. That broke a rule or two that Ellery really loathed. Jackson was good-looking and personable. He and Jade had history and kinship; they seemed to speak a different language sometimes. Jackson would swagger into the office and shake hands with Leonard Pfeist and flirt with the other secretaries and face the clients, confident and unafraid….