Prom Queen

But he didn’t lose control.

She nipped his lip, which only earned her a slight thrust into her hand. Damn it. Well, if he wanted a clear sign of consent, she was going to give it to him. Kissing her way across his jaw and to his throat, she tasted sweat on his skin. It was good. Too freaking good. “I want you Jake.” She squeezed his cock and went for broke. “I ache for you. Please. Just…please.”

“You’re using me.”

She didn’t have it in her to lie. Not now. Not about this. “I think we’re both guilty of that, if for different reasons.”

“Fuck.”

His muttered curse was the only warning she got. One second she had her hand in his pants and her mouth against his skin, and the next he spun her around. Her running shorts hit her ankles and his big hand on her back bent her over until she had to grab the tree in front of her to maintain her balance. “This is what you want, Jessie? Me to fuck you right here like a goddamn animal?”

He speared two fingers into her, the penetration drawing a gasp from her lips. His low voice growled in her ear. “Like this. To punish you for whatever the fuck has been going on in your head since you got off that plane.” He bent over her, his bare chest again her back, his ragged breath on her neck. “You don’t want me, Jessie Jackson. You want penance.” Jake reached around with his other hand and stroked her clit, gentle despite the way he drove his other fingers deep inside her.

It was too much. She couldn’t have stopped her orgasm if she wanted to, and she desperately didn’t want to.

Jessica cried out as she came. Her entire body shuddered and, this time, she couldn’t keep on her feet. Jake grabbed her around the waist with one arm while he gentled his touch with the other. “Fuck, Jessie. What the fuck are we doing?”

She didn’t know. She’d been in a free fall since she decided to come back, and instead of catching her, Jake had just added weights to her ankles.

What the hell were you expecting? It’s not his job to catch you anymore.

It was like being doused in cold water. Even after everything, a part of her had seen him at that airport and thought it was a sign. A sign that she wasn’t as bad back then as she’d thought, that maybe she deserved a happily ever after despite everything.

She should have known better.

It was fate giving her a chance to drop her guard before it went in for the kill. Jessica took a breath, and then another, but all she could smell was Jake’s clean and spicy scent. He surrounded her the same way he did physically. She needed space, and she needed it now.

She straightened her legs and made herself move a few shuffling steps away from him so that she could pull up her shorts. Mortification heated her entire body, and she couldn’t quite make herself meet his gaze. So she did the only thing a certified coward could do.

She ran. “See you back at the house.” Jessica turned and sprinted away from the trees. Her legs were a little wobbly, but she managed.

Just not fast enough to miss hearing Jake cursing her name.

Chapter Five

Jake didn’t go back to the Jackson house. He was too torn up inside and he didn’t know what to do with the anger that he’d thought he was long past. It fucking sucked having Jessica all but admit that she was using him like a real-life sex toy, but what did he expect? For her to jump off the plane and declare her everlasting love?

That wasn’t what he wanted.

He ignored the tiny doubt that rose with that thought.

What he needed was a slice of normalcy in the midst of all the crazy, so he went home. It was a good three miles, but the run gave him the time he needed to burn off the excess lust clouding his thoughts. He could still feel Jessica’s pussy tighten around his fingers as she came, and it was all too easy to imagine what it would have felt like if he’d thrown caution to the wind and fucked her like she was practically begging him to do.

He cut across the potholed street and rounded the corner to his mama’s little house. Oh, it wasn’t little with three bedrooms, two baths, and fifteen-hundred square feet, but it felt like a shabby dollhouse after being in the Jackson residence. He hated that, hated how they could make him be ashamed about the place he grew up in just because they were so damn insecure that they had to flaunt their money at every available opportunity. Jake’s father hadn’t been a fancy bank president, and his mama wouldn’t be caught dead in the Junior League.

Fundamentally different. He hadn’t cared about that in high school because he and Jessie planned on leaving this all behind the first chance they got. It was only when he was forced to stay because of his injury that he’d started to realize that what he’d had in Catfish Creek wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

Deep fucking thoughts, Davis.

He knocked on the front door just so he didn’t scare the shit out of his mama, and then opened it. “Mama?”

“Jake?” Her voice came from deeper in the house, and he followed the sound to the kitchen. She was elbow deep in flour, her dark hair pinned back like it always was when she was working. She smiled when she saw him, her entire face lighting up. “I got your message, so I wasn’t expecting to see you until after the reunion”

“I had some free time.” He leaned against the doorframe. Thirty seconds in this house, and the tension riding him was already dissipating. “What are you doing?”

“Oh.” His fifty-year-old mother blushed like a teenager. “It’s Mr. Willis’s birthday tomorrow, and I thought it would be neighborly to bring him a cake.”

“Neighborly.” He kept his tone mild, but her blush said more than enough. “This would be the Mr. Willis who moved in six months ago—the same one who took over for Mrs. Carey at the library.” His mama had mentioned the man in passing, but Jake hadn’t put two and two together.

“The very one.” She took a breath, looking like she was about to step onto a battlefield. “Your daddy died two years ago. I miss him—we both miss him. But I’m not dead, Jake Lincoln Davis, and I’ll thank you kindly not to make me feel guilty about taking this cake to my neighbor.”

He crossed the kitchen and took her hands in his. “Mama, I wouldn’t dream of it. We both miss him, but if you want to…” He didn’t even know what the right word was, and his mind shied away from the thought of his mama doing the physical acts that came along with romantic relationships. There was no replacing his dad, but Jake was twenty-eight-years-old—he wouldn’t make his mama feel bad because she was healing. God willing, she had decades left to live, and he didn’t like to think of her living it alone.

“If you want to date someone, you are more than entitled to.” He squeezed her hands. “I want you to be happy.” He knew she’d been lonely here in this house without both him and his dad. It was only a matter of time before her grief faded enough for her to move on. He understood, mostly. He also wasn’t about to let the parts of him hurt by this show on his face. “Just be safe. What do you know about this Mr. Willis?”

She squeezed his hands back, and then frowned at him. “I know enough. Don’t you go being all overprotective now.”

“That’s my job.” He dropped a kiss onto her cheek and retreated. “Do you want me to take a look at that leaking pipe you mentioned when we talked this weekend?”

“Oh.” If anything, she blushed brighter. “Mr. Willis came over yesterday and fixed it right as rain.”

Something in his chest lurched, just a little. He wanted his mama happy. He did. But it was starting to sink in that she was well and truly moving on. It was bittersweet, to say the least. “I’m happy for you, Mama. I really am.” And if it wasn’t completely true, he’d fake it for her sake until it was true.

“Thank you.” She wrinkled her nose. “You smell something fierce. Why don’t you go take a shower and change into some of the clothes you have packed away here and I’ll put you together a sandwich?”

“Will do.” He wasn’t hungry, but he?

??d eat anyways.

And he’d check out the former leaking pipe in the bathroom while he was at it.

***

Jake hadn’t come back.

Jessica lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. She should have known better than to push him like that. In hindsight, he was right—she was using him, just like she’d used people back in the day. It just figured that she’d lost so much of the girl she’d been, but she hadn’t lost the most negative aspect of it.

She turned over and looked at her phone. She could call Brooklyn or Cora to talk this out, but it felt like too much effort. She knew what they’d say: buck up and power through. Neither of them ever had problems facing down their fears. Brooklyn ran straight toward what she was frightened of. Cora might not go that far, but that was probably because she wasn’t afraid of anything. Jessica had always felt like she was half a step behind them, though they’d be horrified to hear that.

It was her problem. Not theirs. She’d be a goddamn adult and face it down herself.

A faint tapping on the window had her bolting up in bed. She twisted to see what was making the sound…and let out a choked laugh. Jake. She padded to the window. It took more muscle than she remembered to get it open, but then there was nothing between them. He crouched on the porch roof, wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that he hadn’t had on earlier. He went home.

Of course he went home. Just because she’d left Catfish Creek behind didn’t mean he did the same. She’d envied Jake’s relationship with his parents—open and loving and uncritical—so it made sense that he wanted to check in on his mama.

Especially since he obviously hadn’t been ready to deal with Jessica.