The Charlotte Chronicles (Jackson Boys 1)

I’m still struggling with the reality of being able to touch him whenever I want. To know that the embrace is really happening. It’s his mouth trekking its way around my jaw, down my neck. It’s his rough, calloused fingers deftly undoing my blouse and dipping inside my bra to rub over my tender and sensitive breasts. It’s his thick erection rubbing between my legs until I’m reduced to a mindless puddle of squirming want.

The shrill sound of his phone going off breaks our trance.

“Shit,” he breathes harshly.

“We’d better go.” With some reluctance I push him away and go about repairing the damage he inflicted to my makeup and clothes in about five minutes flat.

“I don’t want to go,” he whines, flicking his phone to silent. As he sits on the stool next to me, I bite my lip to keep from laughing. With his head hanging down, he looks like a sad little boy.

“If we don’t, they’re going to call all night, and pretty soon they’ll show up at your door, pounding on the wood and disturbing everyone.”

“You’re right.” He stands up and runs a hand through his hair. His mussed hair and heavy-lidded eyes are criminally hot. I’m not leaving the apartment until I’ve got a little armor, so I slick on a new coat of lip gloss and run a mascara wand through my pale eyelashes so I don’t look totally hairless around my eyes.

“If anyone should be upset, it should be me,” I say, watching him through the mirror.

He screws up his face in confusion. “Upset about what?”

Still holding my mascara brush, I point to his reflection. “Look at your tight T-shirt, how it shows off your big chest muscles and isn’t even covering the bulges in your biceps. It’s like you want some girl to come over and run her hands all over your body.”

He comes up behind me and crowds me with his big body. “Is that right? Well, I’d have to tell her that if she touches me, my woman will go apeshit on her.”

“Then if anyone touches me inappropriately, I’ll knee him in the balls and then tell him my boyfriend is going to hit him so hard, he’ll be traveling back in time.”

Nate can’t suppress a laugh. Lightly swatting me on the ass, he chuckles. “All right. No more smart remarks about your shorts. For the record, my T-shirt is an extra-large. This is the way it fits.”

“Are you bragging about your size?” I tease.

“Who needs to brag about this?” he shoots back, cupping himself through his shorts. His thick length looks so hot in his grasp that I have to bite my cheek to keep from moaning out loud.

Instead, I shoo him out and tell him to get dressed. When he leaves, I let out a sigh of relief. Another minute with him standing with his dick in his hand and I would’ve jumped him.

We finally get out of the apartment without ripping each other’s clothes off again, although there was a tense moment at the door when he slammed it shut, pressed my back up against it, and proceeded to kiss me until I was weak-kneed and he was wearing all my gloss.

I’m going to have to buy two tubes of all my favorite colors at the rate I’m reapplying lip coloring.

Flannery’s is a self-proclaimed Irish pub, not too far from the Del. A green sign with white lettering over the entrance says “Kiss him, he’s Irish.” Nate tells me that the front of the bar is deceiving because it looks no more than about ten feet long.

The real action is in the rear, no pun intended. Nate maneuvers me through a throng of people, half of whom look like tourists and the other half military boys. You can generally tell which tribe each belongs to simply by haircut.

Over the bar hangs what appears to be at least a couple hundred glass mugs, each with a name etched on them. “How do you get a mug?” I ask.

“You buy it.” He grins at my disappointed face. “Wanted a more romantic story? Like I had to wrestle a bear or something?”

“Or maybe shoot an apple off the top of the head of the bartender.”

“I’m not sure Flannery’s workers’ compensation policy covers that,” he says wryly. His hand pushes me forward until we reach the patio, which is twice as large as the interior of the bar.

A group of men and women surround three small square tables pushed together toward the rear of the patio. As we approach, nearly all the males stand. One of them looks like a young Ron Howard barely out of his Mayberry days, with a smattering of freckles and wild reddish blonde hair. Next to him is a weathered face sporting the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on a person.