One Reckless Summer (16 page)

“Well, you look pretty,” he said, popping the top on his Coke, then asked, “Did you still dress like that when you moved away?”

She’d never much thought about it before, but said, “Yeah, a lot of the time. It’s appropriate ‘teacher wear,’ and I guess I’m just a
Destinyite
to the core.”

The corners of his mouth turned up just slightly. “I
coulda
told
ya
that,
pussycat.”

Without talking about it, both walked through the wide doorway to the living room. “Whoa,” he said, his eyes gravitating immediately to the big blank spot on the wall. “You took the picture down.”

“Just a little while ago, actually.”

He shifted his gaze to her. “Does it feel better that way?”

And she nodded without hesitation. Already, the room felt more like a
normal
living room, where people lived, laughed, relaxed.

“Wall looks pretty shitty,” he said on a chuckle, “but if it makes you feel better, that’s good.”

He took a long drink of his Coke but kept watching her, and again, she felt it, his look—this time it held lust, and if she wasn’t mistaken, actual…concern for her well-being.

They’d come a long way since that first night in the woods, but…taking control of the house was a first step to taking control of her life, and that meant taking control of her relationship with Mick, too.

And that meant she couldn’t have sex with him anymore. She just couldn’t.

Because every time, she could feel it pulling her in a little deeper, into his web of mystery that wasn’t so much of a mystery anymore. She could keep his horrible secret, but she couldn’t risk having…
feelings
for him. And—okay—she knew she’d
already
had feelings for him, related to their sex, but she couldn’t risk
more
of them. She was freshly divorced, just starting to get past the shock and pain of it all. And he was…well, he was trouble. Even if it was trouble not of his own making.

They stood a few feet apart, looking at each other, which made her glance down and start fidgeting with the hem of her top. John Cougar sang, “Ain’t Even Done
With
the Night” low on the radio—on a retro station from Crestview, the only signal that reached Destiny.

“You want me to go, don’t you?” Mick asked.

How could he tell? Well, didn’t matter—it made this easier. She looked back down, but then forced her gaze up to his.
Keep being strong—get your life back in order here.
“Yeah,” she said softly. Then shook her head. “I can’t…keep sleeping with you.”

“It’s not sleeping, pussycat. It’s sex. Really
good
,
hot
sex.”

She drew in her breath, felt a familiar flutter in her panties, and resolved not to let it deter her. “No matter what you call it, I can’t keep doing it. Because you’re dangerous, Mick. Do you understand what I mean?” He’d
felt
dangerous before, because she didn’t know his secret. Now that she knew it, danger was a certainty. Even if a part of her wished it wasn’t that way. Even if sex with him had been the most amazing thing to happen to her in a long time.

Slowly, Mick nodded. “Yeah, honey, I understand.” It was killing him inside, wrenching his guts into a knot, but he understood. She wasn’t the sort of girl who fooled around with criminals. And he wanted to argue the point, remind her how damn good they were together. He wanted to be selfish as hell, because her touches and kisses had become a balm to him over the last few weeks, and they were—more than anything—what had drawn him here tonight.

But Jenny Tolliver had been so…untouchable for his whole life that he was just amazed she’d ever let him touch her at all. And she had morals. And people to please. He’d gotten a few morals as life had gone on—but he’d never had anyone to please, anyone who expected something of him. Maybe if he had, things would’ve been different.

So, sure, he wanted to argue, tell her she was crazy to give up what had been the best damn sex of his life, and probably of hers, too—but maybe the time had come to start showing his pussycat some respect.

He was still mad as hell at her for sneaking up to the cabin—if she hadn’t, they’d both have a whole lot less weighing on them. But that aside, if she wanted him to go, he would go.

“Before I leave, though…”

Her eyes widened prettily. “Yeah?”

He tried to find the words he was seeking,
then
finally realized they were simple. “Thank you, pussycat, for keeping my secret. And for not hating me.” Then, setting his soda can aside on the nearest table, he stepped toward her, lifted his hands gently to her face, and lowered a kiss to her forehead.

And he meant to step back then, he really did—but God, it felt good to be this close to her, so he stayed that way, smelling her hair, touching her soft cheeks, feeling frozen in time and just wanting to stay this way for a while. If he couldn’t have any more of her, this was better than nothing.

It was then that he realized she’d begun to tremble. Same as he had with her the other night.

Still touching her face with his fingertips, he drew back slightly to peer into her eyes, to try to understand what was happening.

She looked anguished. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“I know,” he assured her. “I get it, honey. It’s okay.”

“Only it’s not.”

Hell, he was confused. “Huh?”

“I can’t, but I just…”

Oh
. He got it now, from the look in her pretty green eyes—and warmth flowed through him. “But you want to.”

“And I can’t, unless you…”

“Unless I what, pussycat?” he breathed.

“Convince me,” she said.

The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms.

Lao Tzu

J
enny stood before him, horrified by her own words. It was like that first night in the woods. She wanted him like crazy, her skin tingled for him, her body ached for him, and she felt that if he walked out that door right now, she’d die.

But she couldn’t let herself have him. She couldn’t convince herself it was okay. “Good Jenny” strikes again. “Good Jenny,” who can’t be with a guy like Mick Brody. Yes, it was just like before—except the stakes felt much higher now.

His eyes were filled with as much lust as her body. She felt her heartbeat between her thighs. “What’ll it take,” he whispered warm, his voice heavy, “to convince you, Jenny? Just tell me and I’ll do it.”

“I…don’t know.”
Don’t break any laws. Don’t have your brother hidden away across the lake. Be the kind of guy who fits in my life.
All of them were impossible right now, and the irony was, if they were true, she’d have never met him again anyway.

He peered down on her, his eyes going darker as he said, “How’s this?” and lowered his mouth to hers.

The kiss was soft yet firm. She felt all the power he possessed shrouded in tenderness. She sighed in response and melted against him. And
mmm
, he was hard for her. Beautifully, wonderfully hard. She yearned for more.

But she also yearned for old Jenny, the Jenny who wouldn’t give a dangerous guy the time of day when he flirted with her from the end of her dock.
That
Jenny stayed safe. That Jenny lived in a prettier world than this one did at the moment.

When he kissed her again, deeper this time, it consumed her. His lush mouth moved over hers, his tongue pushed its way between her lips, and she couldn’t resist meeting it with her own. Kissing him right now felt like kissing the devil, like taking an apple from the serpent. This was her chance to say no, to convince them both that this had to stop, even if she’d practically begged him to seduce her.

So tell him no
,
say you can’t.

You’ll sleep better
tonight
,
feel stronger—once and for all.

But, oh God, she couldn’t. Because she wanted to be with him. And God help her, maybe Sue Ann was right—maybe it was about more than sex, and more than right and wrong. There
was
no casual sex—at least not for her. She’d tried to make it that way.
But how do you take a man inside you without feeling something afterward? How do you become that intimate
,
let him see the wildest parts of you
,
without feeling connected to him?

And despite herself, she wanted to be connected
again. Deeply.

So when he took her hands and led her to the couch, she let him. When he lay back and pulled her down on top of him, she didn’t protest. When he reached up to cup the outer sides of her breasts and stroke his thumbs across her nipples, she didn’t ask him to stop. Instead, she kissed him madly. And considered
herself
fully convinced.

He pushed her top up over her bra—a yellow lace one, because she’d felt like wearing nice lingerie lately—and groaned at the sight. “So damn pretty,” he growled,
then
drew her down for another kiss.

She quickly got lost in them, those kisses, barely aware that they were undressing each other as they made out. They stopped just long enough for him to pull her top over her head,
then
stopped again to get rid of his T-shirt. She ran her palms down his chest, the muscles of his stomach, as he massaged her rear,
then
reached underneath to pull her panties down.

“Unzip me, pussycat,” he told her.

She hadn’t done that before. The unzipping part. But she wanted to. So she worked at the buckle of his brown leather belt,
then
undid his jeans. It was impossible to lower the zipper without feeling the hard bulge there, and wanting it. She’d been trembling before and now she trembled again. He made her crazy with desire, crazier than she knew a guy could make her.

A moment later she took him in her hand and they both gasped. She looked in his eyes and he held her face in his hands. “That feels so good, baby,” he told her, and she squeezed lightly and listened to him moan. Then bit her lip, realizing that she did still retain
some
control here. Control over his pleasure. And she wanted more.

So she massaged and caressed him as he reached up to push her bra straps from her shoulders, letting her breasts tumble free. She watched him hiss in his breath as she worked harder,
then
leaned forward, urging him to take one beaded pink nipple in his mouth.

He licked gently, firmly, making her surge with moisture beneath her skirt—then he pulled deeply on her breast, making her cry out.

She pushed down his jeans and lifted her skirt and pressed her softest flesh against his hardest and they moved together that way, slowly, while the rough, dark unshaven stubble on his chin abraded the sensitive flesh of her breast.

She needed him inside her. And she wanted to show him, so she used her hand to position him,
then
thrust down.

Sounds of deep pleasure erupted from them both. “So big,” she whispered. “So perfect and big.”

“All for you, pussycat,” he murmured. “Every inch.”

She bit her lip as her body
spasmed
with fresh sensation,
then
moved on him rhythmically, like an instinctive dance, one a woman is born knowing. He held her hips, watched her move, and she felt freer than the last time they’d been here, in this room, on this couch, freer to seek her pleasure, freer to let him watch her every sway and undulation.

The orgasm came quickly, furiously, accompanied with high-pitched whimpers she didn’t try to hold in. She felt them echo off the walls around her, felt the raw, stark intimacy wrapping around them both—the same as what they’d shared before…but different somehow.

“You’re so damn beautiful when you come,” he growled up at her, and she breathed in the rawness of it, of him, took it into her lungs and let it settle there.

And then he began to pump up into her harder, rougher. Her breasts bounced with the movements; he penetrated her more deeply. They looked in each other’s eyes as she met each hard stroke. More rawness. More starkness. It made her wild inside.

So she moved harder against him, too, and she cried out at each plunging upward drive. He held her ass; she clawed at his chest with her fingernails. She reached a point where she felt almost overwhelmed and wondered how much more she could take, felt tears of intensity gather behind her eyes but held them back—and considering that she was on top, she’d never felt more taken by a man, not even in the woods. She grunted with each thrust; she bit her lip and leaned her head back, closing her eyes—and finally he said, “Aw, God, Jenny—I’m coming in you!” and the last few strokes nearly lifted her off the couch.

Afterward, they lay that way, him still inside her, her head nestled against his chest. She felt her bra still half-falling around her, felt her skirt gathered between them, felt the disarray.

Damn it. She’d truly meant not to do this, truly meant to say no. Now that the insanity of full-on lust had passed, she remembered why. Danger. It hung all around him. And she couldn’t live that way.
Could
she?

“Oh God, why do I keep doing this?” she murmured into his chest. Then shut her eyes—she hadn’t meant to utter the words out loud.

His voice
came
soft, calm, tired. “Relax, pussycat. It’s just chemistry. We have it. A lot of it. Nothing wrong with feeling good.”

Unless the guy who makes you
feel
good is the opposite of everything you ever thought you wanted. Unless he confuses the hell out of you about what’s right and what’s wrong.

And despite the truth in it, the word
chemistry
stung. She’d told him sex meant something to her, but maybe he hadn’t heard that part. And if this kept on…oh God, Mick Brody could
not
mean something to her, something
serious
. She had to stop this!

Except that, clearly, he already
did
mean something to her. She kept trying to tell herself he didn’t. But she’d kept his deep dark secret from her father, who she loved and cherished and respected. And she craved his body. And she wanted to know what went on in his mind.

Oh hell, she
cared
for him. Mr. Danger. Mr. Scary Lover in the Woods. She
cared
for him! Like a woman cared for a man. This was bad.

She didn’t need a man in her life at all right now, let alone a dangerous one.
You. Must. Stop. This. Once and for all.

She lay there against him, berating herself for her feelings even as he remained inside her, until he gently used his hand to lift her face, to make her look at him. “Listen to me, pretty pussycat,” he said. “I might be all kinds of trouble for you in every other way—but me and you, like
this
…it’s good, honey.
Real
good. And there’s just nothing wrong with good, hot, wild sex.”

And that’s when it hit her—like a ton of bricks.

Good, hot, wild sex. That’s what she had with Mick.

Truly
passionate
,
intense
,
untamed
sex.

The kind that…Terrence thought she couldn’t have.

She could scarcely believe it had taken her this long to realize it.

Terrence was wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong. And maybe she’d known that all along in her heart—but not in her head.

I can do it. I can be wild! I can be uninhibited! I can be good in bed!

Take that
,
rat bastard! Shows what
you
know!

“Um, what’s going on?” Mick asked, and she realized she was lying there suddenly grinning at him like a fool.

She tried to form an explanation. “I…I just…think you’re right. There’s nothing wrong with good, hot, wild sex.”

He blinked, clearly surprised. “
That
was easy. Except for the other times I said that and you didn’t believe me.”

She couldn’t explain that she’d just had a major revelation. She couldn’t tell him that what had seemed morally heinous to her a few minutes ago suddenly felt exhilarating and amazingly
right.

But she felt it deep down inside her, in her soul. A new freedom. A new sense of victory over the world. It was just like taking down the picture. She was a grownup and she could do what she wanted. She could have all the wild sex with Mick she desired.

And…she could do it, she resolved,
without
caring about him. At least in any serious I’d-be-lost-without-you sort of way.

As for all the gooey, girly emotions she’d just been wading through…well, screw those. She just wasn’t going to feel that way anymore. She was going to be tougher, stronger, more like a guy.

And as for the bad parts, the scary stuff, she just wouldn’t think about those. Those were…across the lake—far, far away.

Because the revelation she’d just experienced was…deep, serious,
transforming
. It changed…everything. Or it would if she let it.

And she was ready to let it.

No more mushy emotions. No more fear. From now on, she would only think about the good stuff with Mick. And maybe that wouldn’t be so hard, because the good stuff was
very
good indeed.

It was at Caroline Meeks’s bunko party the next evening that Jenny found a chance to pull Sue Ann down an empty hallway while the other ladies were gathered around a fondue pot complimenting Caroline on her new drapes.

“I’ve had a major breakthrough,” Jenny said.

Sue Ann spoke low, to make sure the ladies down the hall of the big Victorian house didn’t hear. “You’re telling your dad?”

Jenny shook her head. “No—I’m having
rockin
’ sex with Mick.”

Sue Ann blinked. “Um, where’s the breakthrough? I already knew this part.”

Jenny held up one finger. “But the point is
,
it’s
rockin
’. It’s wild. It’s crazy.”

“Yep, yep, and yep. Still not getting the newsflash.”

“Terrence didn’t think I could
have
wild sex.”

Sue Ann’s eyes lit up as she leaned her head back to say, “
Ohhhhh
.”
Finally
, she got it. Then she added, “Rat bastard,” for good measure.

“So I’m feeling kind of…elated about it all,” Jenny said.

Sue Ann blinked. “Just between you and me, Jen, I didn’t realize that
you
didn’t realize you were having wild sex with Mick, or I’d have told you.”

“I realized it—it just hadn’t hit me how much it totally contradicts Terrence’s stupid explanation for why he cheated on me.”

“Stupid is right. That dumb asshole.”

Jenny drew back in slight surprise. It was the first time Sue Ann had ever varied her name-calling. “No rat bastard?”

Sue Ann’s reply was matter-of-fact. “I’m getting a little bored with it, so thought I’d go a new way.” She shifted her weight from one dainty kitten-heeled sandal to the other. “Anyway, I’m really happy for you, I mean it. I hate that that jerk made you feel so bad about yourself. But, uh, now I need to know—exactly where
do
things stand with lover boy Mick these days? Besides the
rockin
’ sex part.”