“Family? Are you kidding me? We were never a family. You ignored your daughter, beat your wife, and stuck your dick between the legs of anything that walked.”
“Now, now … it takes two to tango.”
“Tango! Our marriage wasn’t a dance. It was a fucking concentration camp!”
“My, your rogue lover must be influencing you with some vulgar language. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that word come out of your mouth before.”
“Fuck you! Fuck your family reunion. Then fuck off, asshole!” She ended the call then screamed, gripping the steering wheel as if she wanted to rip it right off the dash.
Preston Iverson was the devil. He drew the absolute worst from her. All those years later and he still tortured her with his words. She needed Jackson. After escaping an abusive husband, she’d found comfort in the arms of a murderer. What were the chances?
*
After ringing the doorbell several times and knocking on both the storm door and side window, Ryn sulked back to her car. She needed the security of Jackson’s arms. Instead, she climbed back in her car and let the tears fall. In between sobs she laughed.
“He’s just not home. Why are you crying?” she asked herself, resting her forehead on her hands gripped around the top of the steering wheel. Not once in her adult life had she allowed herself to need a man—until Jackson. After dealing with Preston, she needed Jackson so badly her chest felt painfully hollow.
Bang bang bang!
Ryn jerked her head up and there he stood in a gray hoodie and jogging pants, face flushed, rapid puffs of air condensing between his lips and her window. He frowned, brow drawn tight.
She smiled, blinking her teary eyes. He opened her door.
“What’s wrong?”
Ryn leaped into his arms.
“Hey now … what’s going on?” He hugged her to him.
“You weren’t home.” Her words muffled into the neck of his hoodie. “Oh God. I didn’t mean it like that.” She pulled back, keeping her hands cupped to the back of his head. “It’s been a shit day … and I … I just really needed to see you. I know that sounds crazy but—”
He kissed her. Tasted her. Claimed her in the deepest recesses of her heart, places no man had ever been before. Ryn wanted to kiss him for eternity, or at least until he filled every inch of her mind, leaving no room for the pain of her past.
“It’s not crazy.” The whisper of his words over her lips chased away the events of her day, at least for that moment.
He moved to shut her car door.
“Don’t!” She gripped him tighter. “If you move then this moment will end.”
Jackson chuckled. “And what is this moment?”
Searching his eyes, she smiled. “It’s perfection.”
He laughed again. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Not in your arms.”
“Well, I did run nearly ten miles. I feel like a furnace—a sweaty, smelly furnace. I need a shower.”
She pinched her lips together, concealing her grin as she shrugged. “I like showers.”
His eyes grew wide. “Do you now?”
“I do.” She played with the strings to his hoodie.
“As I recall, you don’t take showers with men.”
“I’ve recently made an exception.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, biting her lip. “Younger guy. Tattoos. Geeky glasses. Fairly nice body.”
Jackson puckered his lips. A stern look appraised her with an unnerving intensity. “Fairly nice?”
“Yes. He could use some fat on his body. Women like little love handles.”
“Well if you need something to hold on to, I can offer you something rather large and quite firm.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“I suppose I could see whatcha got.”
Jackson smirked. “Follow me.” He took her hand and led her inside.
She sat on his bed, enthralled with every move he made, from something as mundane as untying his shoes to the more erotic show of him undressing. Every moment with Jackson was a pinch-me moment.
“Tell me about the tears.”
She looked at his eyes, having drunk in every other part of his body. “Maddie has a professor offering extra credit in exchange for sexual favors and her father condones that behavior. Apparently the job that successful women have to master before making it to the top is the blowjob.”
“Don’t let my sister hear that. She’d hunt down that professor and castrate him, then she’d do the same thing to your ex-husband.”
“So I should definitely say something to her?”
Jackson chuckled, but his smile faded within seconds. “I’ve had a shit day as well. We should have stayed in bed.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“I want you to take off your clothes.”
“I talk better with my clothes on.”
“I fuck you better with your clothes off.”
Ryn opened her mouth to reply. Nothing.
“It was your idea.” He crossed inked arms over his chest, completely comfortable standing naked in front of her.
“Yeah, I was emotional yet oddly more confident in the driveway.”
Jackson cocked his head to the side. Every look felt like an assessment. “We can fuck in the driveway, but it’s going to be cold and I have a hunch there might be something in the association’s code of conduct that prohibits it.”