Afterburn (Jax & Gia 1)

“Hi.” I studied him, seeing that soft warmth in his eyes I’d missed so much.

“I’m sorry we didn’t make it to the bedroom.”

“S’okay.” I smiled. “I’m not complaining.”

“I’ll get you there as soon as I can walk.”

“Getting old, Rutledge?” I teased, knowing that at twenty-nine, he was in his prime.

He looked at the raised ceiling with its pretty moldings. “Out of practice.”

“Yeah, right.” I threw my arm over my face, hiding my reaction. I couldn’t think about him with other women. It made me crazy. “I read the papers, you know.”

“Escorting a woman somewhere and fucking her are two different things.” He leaned over me. Catching my wrist, he pulled my arm above my head and exposed my face. “But it feels good to know you’ve been keeping tabs.”

“I wasn’t.”

Jax flashed his dimple at me. “Okay.”

He rose up to his knees and sank back on his heels, removing the condom. His movements were easy and unaffected, but the sight of his half-hard cock glistening with semen made my mouth water.

I pushed up onto my elbows and licked my lips. “Come here.”

He responded instantly, his cock stiffening and lengthening. “Jesus, Gia.”

I moved toward him.

“Shower,” he said hoarsely, pushing unsteadily to his feet, then holding out his hand to me. “I’ll taste like rubber without one.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.” He pulled me up. “Once I slide into your mouth, I’m staying there awhile.”

I looked at him, taking him in, finding him so damned sexy standing there—tall and bare chested, his jeans open and shoved down, his cock exposed and curving upward toward his navel. I’d never seen anything so blatantly masculine and erotic.

This was the Jax I knew. And loved so much.

“Look at you,” he murmured, his thumb brushing over my swollen lower lip. “You’re so fucking sexy. So soft and beautiful.”

“Right.” My mouth curved as I checked myself out. My jeans and torn panties clung to one leg and my shirt was shoved up over my breasts. No doubt my hair was a mess. “Spoken like a man who just had an orgasm and wants another.”

“Don’t.” He caught my chin, tilting my head up. “You can’t ask me to give you everything I’ve got, then take it lightly. It’s not fair.”

“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t, is it?”

From the tightening of his jaw, I knew he got the message—he’d taken me lightly...then left me behind.

Crouching, he held my jeans down so I could pull my leg free. Then he caught my hand and led me around the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table.

We crossed the taupe carpet to enter a bedroom boasting a king-size bed with a dark wood headboard matching the desk and armoire also in the room. There was a seating area by a window that stretched up to the high ceiling, and the entry into the bathroom was a beautifully simple archway.

I tried not to show how astonished I was when Jax flipped the light on, but was glad he didn’t look at me because I was pretty sure I failed. The room was huge, with a shower that could accommodate three people and a separate sunken tub with jets. A television was embedded in the wall and the dual-sink vanity resembled the heavy wooden furniture in the bedroom.

I had to ask. “Did you book this room thinking you’d get me to come here?”

“I hoped.” Jax let me go to turn on the shower. I whistled, impressed by the giant showerhead embedded in the ceiling, which sprayed water straight down like a waterfall.

He faced me with a smile that dazzled me. “Can I finish unwrapping you?”

A sharp ache spread through me. Gia, baby, you’re my present to myself after a long, hard day. One of the many things he’d said to me back in Vegas that had made me love him.

I wondered suddenly if that was just who Jax was and the way he talked to whatever woman was with him at the time. Maybe he hadn’t a clue about how sweet nothings like that could turn a girl inside out. Or maybe he did. The thought depressed me.

“Hey.” He caught my chin, tilting my head back. “Don’t check out on me now. I’m here. I’m in this.”

“For how long? The weekend?” I backed away, some niggling sense of self-preservation warning me to get out while I was ahead. “I can’t do this, Jax.”

His jaw tightened. “Gia...”

I turned and hurried through the bedroom to get my clothes.

“What the fuck?” he snapped, grabbing my arm as I crossed over the threshold into the living room. “You wanted this.”

“It was a mistake.” A huge mistake. I was too invested in my feelings for him to find closure this way.

“The hell it was.” He tugged me around to face him, grabbing me by the forearms so that I couldn’t get away. “Why did you ask for this? You wanted to come here. You wanted me to make love to you.”

“I wanted to fuck you,” I growled, hating how he recoiled from my words. “I wanted to get past the tension so maybe you’d start giving me the truth. I don’t want any more of your smooth-player bullshit. It’s not real. You’re not real.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? This is as real as it gets, and you know it.”

I yanked free and stalked farther into the living room, feeling foolish in only socks and my Rossi’s T-shirt. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Time for what? Me?” Jax’s long stride easily overtook mine. He reached my jeans first and stepped on the cuff, pinning them to the floor. His arms crossed his chest, displaying the raw power of his ripped body to perfection. He didn’t care at all that his pants were still undone, although he’d hitched his boxer briefs up at some point along the way.

“I don’t have the time or patience to pretend like we’re building something here when we’re not.” I fixed my ponytail, trying to focus on putting myself back together—at least on the outside.

His scowl depended. “Who’s pretending?”

I threw up my hands. “Why do you talk to me like you do? All that crap about unwrapping and missing me and...and all of it! Why can’t you just be real about what we have, what we’ve always had—nothing but great sex?”

“We’re not just fucking,” he growled, leaning forward. “You don’t fall in love over nothing but sex.”

“Do I have to be in love with you? Does it make it better for you if I am?” To my horror, I felt my eyes sting with tears. “You’ve already gotten into my pants. I don’t understand why you have to act like this is a romance. Don’t make something that should be simple so complicated for me!”

“Baby, we’ve never had simple.” He exhaled harshly and reached up to rub the back of his neck.

“What do you want from me, Gia?”

“I think we need to focus on what you want from me, since what I want is irrelevant.”

He scowled. “That’s not true.”

My hands went to my hips. “I want a commitment, a chance, some effort made to see how far this thing between us could go. You’ve already shot that down. So what’s left is what you want.”

“I want you.”

“You want to fuck me,” I corrected. “Why can’t you just be matter-of-fact about it?”

“Gia.” He shook his head and sighed. “I’m an asshole to everyone else in my life. You’re the one thing I’ve cherished. Don’t make me stop.”

“See? Like that! Why do you have to say stuff like that? Why can’t you just say you like me or something—”

“Because I don’t just like you. You get under my skin. I think about you damn near all the time and I get hard. I see you and I forget who I am. You don’t know what you do to me.” Jax’s voice lowered dangerously. “You make me want to rut, Gia. I want to pull you beneath me, work my cock into you and ride until you’ve wrung me dry. You make me need—”

“Shut up!” God, I was quivering, my hunger stirring in response to the heated waves of desire sizzling off him.

“You know how it feels. You’re feeling it, too. Let me give it to you.”

“No!” The refusal cut deep, like restraining part of myself with barbed wire.

“Give me tonight.” He reached for my hand and squeezed too tightly. “One night.”

I laughed softly even as my sight blurred. “One night to screw me out of your system? That’s a cliché, Jax. It never works. Great sex doesn’t stop being great just because you gorge on it.”

“So we’ll have a night of great sex. We both want it. Need it.”

“I don’t need this.” I tried to reclaim my hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“The hell you don’t.”

Nothing but the truth would work with Jax. He read me too easily, was too adept at homing in on a challenger’s weakness and exploiting it.

“I can’t do this,” I said again, holding his gaze. “I’m not like the women you’re used to sleeping with. I can’t do it for fun or to scratch an itch. Not with you. I fell for you the last time. I can’t do it again.”