Until Jinx - Happily Ever Alpha World

Which meant I was free to talk to him.

It also meant I was totally out of my depth. See, that night at Daniel’s Bar, when I’d gone to the bathroom with July and Maddie, I’d had to confirm something that I wasn’t sure should have come as the shock it had to my best friend given how I’d lived my life. I had zero experience with men, unless it was family or one of the guys on my grandparents’ farm who counted as family.

What was I meant to say?

“I, uh,” I hummed, looking around and praying one of the dogs would come in.

Wheeling himself closer, he reached out and picked my dirty hand up, not minding one bit that he was getting clay shmootz all over himself.

“I didn’t say that to make you feel awkward. I said it so you’d start to open your eyes a little bit and see what’s in front of you.”

“The pottery wheel?” I joked weakly, then mentally kicked myself. “Forget I said that. It was lame. Listen, Jinx—”

“That’s another thing. Can you go back to calling me Jordan?”

Tilting my head to the side, I bit down on my lip and mulled it over. “How come? Everyone else calls you Jinx.”

“Yeah, everyone does, but you’re not everyone.”

To borrow the screech of my friend—internally, of course—Percy Jackson! What woman wouldn’t be grateful she was sitting down if a hot guy said that to her? And I can assure you, she would most definitely be blown away by those words, too.

Seeing as how I was that woman at this precise moment, it also guaranteed my capitulation to his request. “Of course I can.”

Smiling at me, he rubbed his thumb around the center of my palm, still seemingly oblivious to the crap I had on them. The moment felt too big and too weighty to point it out, though, and I didn’t want to ruin it. I might be clueless, but I wasn’t stupid.

Holding my eyes, he leaned in closer until his mouth was roughly an inch away from mine. “I’m going to kiss you, Sienna Blake,” he warned.

I don’t know where I got the guts from, but I raised an eyebrow, almost daringly at him. “Do you think I’d stop you, Jordan Jinx Quinn?”

And that’s how I got my first kiss, at the age of twenty-nine, and it started with both of us smiling. There were no clashes of teeth either, almost like we could read each other and kept it to light touches until the humor left us—which was all of zero point seven six seconds after it started. When it changed, he softly brushed his lips back and forth over mine until I pressed forward into him.

Gently, like I was as fragile as our project, he kissed me, not pushing me too fast until I flicked his lip with the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right but ask me if I cared.

All I could think about was how soft his lips were, and how much I loved the slight roughness of his beard on my chin and upper lip. How freaking good he tasted. And how much I never wanted it to end.

And, when he lifted his hand and cupped my cheek, carefully tilting my head to the side and deepening the kiss, I released the breath I’d been holding in a soft moan.

That one noise did something to both of us because we moved at the same time, him picking me up and placing my ass on his lap at the same time that I’d lifted to do just that. Wrapping my arms around him, I relished the feeling of having his around my back, and like not even the wind could fit between where we were tightly pressed against each other.

Why had I left it this long to do something like this? That question was rhetorical, because I highly doubted anyone else could ever make me feel like he did.

Leaving one hand braced on his back, I ran the other one up into his soft, dark hair and let the strands sift between my fingers before burying them in its thickness. Jordan did something similar, except he cupped my nape, almost like he was holding me in place because he knew my muscles felt like jelly.

I wanted to do this over and over again, and if it hadn’t been for a human’s need to eat and sleep, I would have suggested it to him.

“The boys—” Maddie shouted, then squealed, “Oh, shit, my bad. I didn’t know you were kissing. I’m not a cock blocker, I swear. I didn’t think… We were just…” she stuttered as Jordan lifted his head and, begrudgingly, we ended the kiss. “No, no, you guys keep doing that. We’ll go and get something from the house—my house—any house at all.”