Jackson: A Sexy Bastard Novel (6 page)

T
he guitars are moaning
, the cymbals are screaming, and I’m barely thinking conscious thoughts anymore as I ease myself down his body, letting him feel every inch of me. When my face gets to his lap, I let my tongue flit out and tease the head of his cock as he sucks in a breath and runs his hands through my hair. Pressing his thighs farther apart with my palms, I glide my tongue down the shaft, and his whole body goes rigid. I’m high with the ability to make his body respond to me. Every tremor, every inhale is intoxicating.

Reaching between his legs, I cup his balls, gently pressing each with my thumb. He gasps again, straining beneath me, and I suck gently, gliding my hands along his thighs. The pressure builds as I suck harder, his cock becoming fuller, and more rigid. I let him push deeper, savoring the feeling of him straining against me.

“Skylar, I am about to come,” he says as he tries to pull my head back, but I want this. I want to show him I can be an unselfish lover too. I am so full of adrenaline, that I pick up my pace, graze my teeth against his skin and with one last attempt at pulling off
the
blow job of blow jobs, I deep throat him and swallow the tip of his cock.

Finally, he gives a low moan and comes, thick and sweet into my mouth.

I swallow once, twice, and then release him, licking my lips. For a moment, we stay like that: me kneeling, head in his lap; him pressed hard against the back of the couch, head back. Scratchy static sounds come from the turntable.

“The pool.” He says it so softly, I’m not certain I’ve heard him right at first.

“The pool. You wanted to see the pool, right?”

Of course. Allegedly that’s why I came over here to his house in the first place.

Before he can move, I’ve already risen. I need to get away from him, immerse myself in something cold, shock my body out of this hazy state of desire. I move through the living room, then the dining room, and finally come to a glassed-in “porch.” It’s essentially another living room, only encased in floor-to-ceiling walls of glass. Outside, heavy iron lounge chairs line the glittering aquamarine pool—evenly spaced and immaculately clean. The beauty of this place makes my head swim.

I approach one of the glass walls and follow it to the corner where I find the handle I was looking for. The “wall” is actually a sliding glass door.

“Skylar, wait.”

I don’t turn back. Instead, I pull the door open and step outside. The concrete is cold and rough beneath my feet, the air wrapping me in a thick chilly blanket. Not exactly swimming weather. But I don’t care.

Without turning to see if he’s followed me, I undo the top buttons of my skirt, and shimmy it down over my ass. Without breaking stride, I step out of the skirt and continue right up to the pool’s edge. The night air is still, the water as smooth as glass.

“Skylar!”

I turn and look over my shoulder. Jackson is standing just outside the open door, backlit by the house. I could run to him, and we could talk, analyze what is happening. But I’d rather do this.

“Bombs away!” I shout. And then I close my eyes and leap.

The sting of the water slapping my skin is a shock, but as I sink down into it, the warmth seeps into me and the sting fades. Breathing out in a cascade of bubbles, I rise to the surface and shake droplets from my eyes.

Jackson is standing at the pool’s edge, undoing all of those buttons he just so carefully fastened. His body is perfect, broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips, that V of muscle and pelvic bones pointing down, down, down. I smile.

“Coming in after all?”

He glances toward me. “I was thinking you might need supervision.”

“I’m pretty sure I already have super vision. Because in spite of those boxer-briefs, I can see a very erect—”

“Don’t make me come in there and get you.”

I float on my back and kick water in his direction, splashing him in the shins.

“Oh, now you’re getting it.” With that, he peels down his briefs and dives in after me. I kick more urgently, trying to swim out of reach, but he catches me by the ankles and yanks me under. I come up spluttering.

“Some supervisor you are!” I say. After some good old fashioned splashing and chasing, we wind up at the corner by the steps, his arms wrapped around me.

“See, isn’t this fun?” I ask as we both gaze out on the shimmering surface of the pool.

“What do you mean ‘see’?”

“You weren’t even going to get in the water!”

“True.”

“So see? Look what you would have missed.”

“I was right though: it is chilly. You’re getting goose bumps.” He runs a hand up my arm, which indeed is bumpy with gooseflesh.

“Oh stop!” I shrug off his arms and turn to face him. “What makes you so against having fun?”

“I’m not against having fun.”

“Oh yeah? What do you do for fun?”

He looks thoughtful. “I hang out with my buddies. Drink beer. Talk about girls. Well, their girls, and my lack thereof. My best friend owns an underground fight ring so we spend a lot of nights at the fights. That’s really fun.”

So he’s the only bachelor in his group of friends. Interesting.

“Okay. What else? Do you guys party? Go on trips?”

“We actually co-own a few clubs in Atlanta, so we manage those together.”

I raise my eyebrows. “That sounds a lot like work.”

“So?”

“So work’s not fun. Work’s work.”

“Work can be fun. I love what I do.”

“Fine. So you hang out with your friends, or coworkers, or whoever they are. And . . . what. Is that it? That’s all you do for fun?”

His silence stretches to the point of discomfort.

“Do you play sports?” I offer. “Take yourself to new restaurants? Go on any sort of adventures at all?”

“Now that you mention it, I do happen to recall taking this strange girl to a hygienically questionable Korean BBQ place. That was pretty fun.”

“Oh my god you are hopeless.” I push away from him and swim toward the center of the pool. “C’mon, let’s play a game, then. Relive your childhood a little.”

“What kind of game?” He swims after me.

“Marco Polo. Do you know that one?”

“Yeah.” He frowns. “But there’s only two of us.”

“Then it won’t be very hard for you to catch me, will it?” I float back a few feet. “Go under and start counting.”

“How long should I count for?”

“Do you know how to play this game or not?”

He smiles, closes his eyes, and submerges.

The night is so quiet, and the pool so still; the only ripples are from my movements, and the bubbles rising from where he is submerged. The moment the water has flattened itself completely, his head breaks the surface.

“Marco!”

“Polo,” I call and then dive underwater.

We circle one another, him darting forward unexpectedly, me springing away just in the nick of time. I pinch his butt. He splashes blindly. If I were “it,” I’d have cheated by now, but his eyes are squeezed tight—clearly a rule follower. I should have known.

Eventually, I swim up behind him, until I’m no more than a foot away. In the dim light of the house sconces, I can see the muscles of his back rippling and flexing beneath the water. I am dying to touch him.

“Marco.” His voice is soft, as though he can sense my closeness. The word hovers in the damp air.

Ever so carefully, I stand on my tiptoes and lean in so that my lips just barely brush his ear.

“Polo.”

His eyes pop open, and he spins, catching me around the waist. We stare at each other for a split second, eyelashes glistening, and then our mouths meet, tongues twisting, devouring as much of each other as we can consume. Chlorine has seeped into my every pore, and yet I can still taste him on my tongue. I can’t get enough of it.

His hands cup my ass as I clutch at his back, pressing my fingers into every plane of muscle. We are locked together, slipping and sliding against each other in our urgency. Yet the way he touches me: it’s as though I’m made of pure gold—hot, glittering, beautiful, and precious. He’s licking my neck, nibbling my earlobe, and I feel his erection press insistently against my leg. I take his hard cock in one hand.

“No.” He turns us so that now my back is up against the gritty concrete wall of the pool. Then he lifts me, gently, as if I weigh nothing. Only in this moment do I realize that my “pinning” him to the couch was a hoax, a joke played on me. He could have taken control any moment he wanted.

But he let me have it. And now he’s taking it back.

He sets me on the edge of the pool so my knees hook over the side, my legs dangling in the water. Then, carefully, with his palms pressing against the insides of my thighs, he spreads my legs.

My heart is racing with the thought of what he is about to do. No man has looked at me, has pressed his lips down there since . . . I stop the thought before it can complete itself. Instead I lie back and peer at the night sky. It’s a gray-black blanket covered in swirls of hazy clouds, lit silver by the moonlight. I can make out a star or two, but most of them have closed their eyes, leaving just the bulb of the moon illuminating us.

His tongue traces up the inside of one thigh as his thumb mirrors the movement on the other. My legs are so slick with pool water and my own desire that the sensation feels nearly identical. Then he is prying open my lips, and my breath shortens as he pushes his tongue inside.

Tendrils of hair have draped themselves over my face, but I don’t push them back. I can’t. The sensation of his tongue moving over me is almost too much to bear. My arms are rigid at my sides, palms pressed flat against the concrete. A lock of hair catches between my teeth as I gasp and try to claw the ground beneath me, surging toward climax. My back arches; I can feel my tailbone scraping, and I just want more. More pain. More pleasure. More of this. More of him inside me.

“God, you taste like fucking candy, baby,” he half-growls against my flesh. “Sugary-sweet. I knew you would be.”

Right at the moment I am about to come, his mouth releases me and he trails his tongue back down my thighs, lapping at the juice that has seeped out of me. His fingers press into the crevice between my hipbones and my thighs, and everything in me clenches.

“Please, Jackson,” I rasp. “Don’t stop.”

In response, he chuckles, deep and low, and his mouth returns, tongue circling sweetly and then more intently until I’m shuddering all over. The moment when I think I might not be able to take it anymore, his tongue bats my clit. I see stars. Every nerve in my body screams, and I convulse, coming harder than I have in a very long time.

When it’s over, I remain on my back, feet dangling in the water. I lick my lips and taste sweat and chlorine and utter bliss. Holy shit. I would never, in a million years, have thought that someone like Jackson would be capable of doing something like that. He seems so refined to have moves like that.

Up in the sky, a few more stars have awoken and are blinking sleepily through the wisps of cloud. The world is so full of beauty. It’s amazing to think how little of it we notice.

Contentedly, I swish my feet back and forth making a promise to myself. No matter where this thing with Jackson leads, I will find the beauty in it. Because really, in our brief, fleeting lives, there is nothing more. Just the beauty. Just the
now
.

T
he saying is “early
to bed, early to rise” but in my case it’s “go to bed whenever, and then get up at the crack of dawn anyway.” So, here I am, scrambling eggs at seven forty-five in the morning—and that’s after pacing around my house for an hour and a half. My body urgently wants to go outside into the open air and move, and what I’d normally do is go swimming. But if I even so much as look at the pool, I’m going to think about things. Things that I don’t really want to think about. Things that give me a massive hard on.

So, I beat the eggs a little more viciously with the fork, clinking and scraping the sides of the glass bowl as if they are the insides of my skull.

Last night. What I did. With Skylar. I don’t know where my fucking head was at. I spent all that time last week telling Cash and Ryder and the rest of them how I’m ready to look for a wife, and then I went online and found Maggie, who is pretty much the perfect candidate. I took her on a date, a really nice, respectable date . . . and wound up finishing off the night with a face full of Skylar’s delicious pussy. Skylar: who checks off literally zero boxes on my wife checklist.

If I weren’t me, I’d ask myself how it happened, but I know full well; I just don’t want to admit it. The date with Maggie was . . . well, it was boring. She’s beautiful and smart and successful; she’s exactly the sort of woman I want to be with.

And then Skylar called and I just lost my mind. Threw the whole wife-hunt out the window and ran to her aid. And for what? Because her smell is intoxicating? Because I never know what she’s going to do or say? Because she has this weird effect on me where I don’t know what
I’m
about to do or say?

Fuck, Jackson. You gotta stop thinking with your goddamn dick.

“That coffee smells fucking amazing.”

I jolt upright. Skylar is standing in the doorway. My hoodie hangs to her knees, and the sweatpants pool around her ankles. Her hair is a completely disheveled, white-hot disarray, her eyes are barely open, and I swear to god she looks more fuckable than ever.

“Good morning.” I turn away before my thoughts become evident through my jeans and pour the egg mixture into a pan on the stove. “How’d you sleep?”

“Good. Great.”

After blinking a few more times, she wanders over to the closest cupboard and opens it.

“How are you so perky already? It’s . . . .”

She looks around until she locates the clock on top of the stove.

“. . . eight o’clock on a Saturday
morning, for Christ sake.”

“I’m an early riser.”

“Apparently.” She closes the cupboard and opens another one.

“What are you looking for?”

“Coffee mug.”

“Here, sit down.” I go around the counter and pull out a stool for her. “I’ll get you your coffee.”

Mutely, she abandons the cupboard and walks toward the stool. Her ass sways and her legs flex as she climbs onto the stool. It’s all I can do not to groan out loud. As I return to the other side of the counter, she puts her elbows up and props her chin in her palms.

“So whatcha cooking? Omelets?”

“Just scrambled eggs.” I retrieve two mugs and fill them with coffee, sliding one over to her. “Did you want an omelet?”

She takes a sip and grins at me over the lip of the mug.

“If I say yes, are you going to change the whole menu?”

I know she’s teasing, but I don’t know how to respond. Because I would have made her an omelet, if she’d asked.

“Scrambled eggs are great,” she reassures me.

“I was going to make bacon and toast, too, if you want any.” I return to the stove. “Oh, and I have orange juice.”

“Geez, pulling out all the stops! It’s like you’re trying to keep me around or something.”

I pause, hand hovering over the bacon. “I don’t think anyone could keep you anywhere you didn’t want to be.”

The smile that creeps across her face reflects a tinge of surprise.

“But since you’re here,” I continue as I pull out another frying pan and arrange slices of bacon across it, “I figure I ought to treat you right. You know?”

“Works for me.” She finishes her coffee and pushes the empty cup across the counter. “Such a gentleman. Must make your mother proud, huh?”

I try to keep my face impassive as I reach for her cup. My mother. She probably would be proud. She’s the only reason I know how to make any of this. Dad never made her breakfast except on Mother’s Day, and even then he usually only managed oatmeal with slices of banana. But she was always very grateful.

I keep my eyes glued to the dark drops swirling around the bottom of her coffee cup as I carry it over to the machine for a refill.

“Yeah, she would be.” Despite my effort to hold it steady, my voice has thickened and I swallow hard.

“Sorry, did I say something?”

I avoid meeting Skylar’s eyes as I hand the mug back to her, but I see the muscles of her shoulders visibly tighten.

“No, no.” I clear my throat and turn back to the stove. The eggs are firming up, and I break apart the skin that’s forming with my spatula. Maybe we’re actually perfect for each other. She’s a girl who doesn’t like to talk about feelings, the past, or the future. And I sure as hell don’t want to talk about the past.

“Do you want toast?”

“Sure.”

The kitchen falls silent but for the sizzling of the bacon and the eventual pop of the toaster. A minute later, I slide onto a stool beside her and set plates in front of us both.

“Bon appetit.”

We clink coffee mugs and set to work. It’s been a long morning, and I’m ravenous, so I clear my plate quickly. When I’m done, I glance over and see that Skylar has eaten almost as fast as I did.

“Wow.”

“What?” She looks up from her bite of toast.

“That was . . . fast.”

“You already finished yours.”

“True. I just thought that maybe you wouldn’t want all of that. It was kind of a lot.”

“Guess you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” She makes a loud slurping sound as she drains the last of her coffee and then sets the cup on the counter with a contented sigh.

“So, can I ask you a question?”

She leans back and takes me in, her eyes scanning me. Assessing me.

“Sure. Shoot.”

“Does this thing we’ve started, however awkwardly it began . . . does it have legs? Am I going to get to see more of you?” I shouldn’t be going here, it’s too soon to ask, but I can’t stop. We can avoid the past, but I have to know the future, to plan for it. This is what I do—with women, with life.

She stiffens. A look of what I can only describe as panic flashes across her face, but then it’s gone, and she’s swinging her legs freely beside the legs of the stool.

“Well, you’ve seen an awful lot already. How much more do you really want to see?”

It’s false bravado, I suddenly realize. This girl is scared of committing to anything. Or maybe just to me.

“Look, if this is about your job—about how we met, I want you to know that I don’t care. I don’t ever have to see you at work again.”

Her brow wrinkles in confusion.

“You’re not allowed to have any kind of outside relationships with patrons, right?” I ask her.

Suddenly she’s laughing uproariously, rocking so far back on her stool that I’m afraid she might fall.

“Oh, god,” she gasps. “You think . . . you think I’m a stripper!”

What is she talking about?

“Uh—I know you’re a stripper. I saw you, Skylar. Onstage.”

She’s clearly trying to calm herself down, but every time she’s almost settled down, a new round of trilling laughter bursts out.

“I’m not . . . a . . . stripper,” she finally gets out. “Oh Jackson. All this time you thought I was . . . .” She’s can’t stop laughing. Her face is flushed, eyes squeezed tight, entire body shaking with mirth. If I weren’t so confused, I’d be bowled over by her adorableness.

“You’re not a . . . .”

“No!” She finally manages to catch her breath. “My friend, Missy, works there. We had a longstanding . . . debate that we wanted to settle.”

I raise my eyebrows, even as my brain tries desperately to catch up with what she’s saying. She was onstage at Lace. I saw her. She was doing insanely sexy moves around a stripper pole, for money. But she’s not a stripper?

“Missy thinks it’s harder to be a stripper than a ballerina. Excuse me—an
exotic dancer
.” Skylar rolls her eyes. “Anyway, we made a bet. She bet me I couldn’t get up onstage and perform at Lace.”

Now that she says it, I do remember: when I saw her coming out of the club, after I’d already been kicked out, she or her friend had said something about “winning.” I hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but now it’s all starting to make sense.

“So you’re a ballerina.”

“Right.” She pauses, and her eyes look suddenly sad. “Well, sort of. But yeah, I mean, that’s how I was trained.”

Now it all fits. The open face, the firm, supple body, the ability to . . . I shake myself before my mind can strip off the hoodie and sweatpants and open her legs slowly, wider . . .

“So what did you win?”

“My earnings, of course.” Her frown turns into a grin of satisfaction. “And bragging rights.”

“That makes it seem like you only settled half the bet.”

“What do you mean?”

“You proved you can do what she does, but she didn’t prove the inverse. You should make her get up on stage and do a—I don’t know, some kind of ballet move.”

Her eyes light up. “You’re good at this.” She pauses. “Maybe an arabesque or a straight leap of some kind. It wouldn’t be fair to demand too much.”

Her face softens as she contemplates. It’s an expression of wistfulness, longing. Maybe love, even. I watch her for a minute before I continue.

“Okay, so if you’re not a stripper, and I guess you are not a ballerina either, what do you do?”

“A little of this, a little of that.” She gets up from her stool and goes around to the stove.

“Can I get you something?”

She shakes her head as she lifts one of the last slices of bacon out of the pan.

“Well, I know you just got a job at The Library. But that’s only part-time, right?”

“Right. I do a bunch of other stuff, too.” She finishes the slice of bacon and goes back for the last slice in the pan, catching herself only at the last second. “Did you want this?”

“It’s all yours.”

“So yeah,” she continues, crunching down, “I teach yoga and barre, too. Kinda just whatever comes along, you know? I don’t like to plan too far ahead.”

That last comment sticks in my gut, but I push past it.

“What is barre?”

“It’s basically an exercise class that was inspired by ballet.”

“You must be pretty good at that, then.”

She shrugs, smiling to herself, and starts opening cupboards again. When she eventually locates the glassware, she selects a glass and proceeds to fill it with orange juice.

“So that’s my life, wrapped up into one uninteresting nutshell. What do you do?”

“I’m an architect.”

She pauses, considering, and then nods. “That explains the house.”

I wait for her to ask me more, but she just drains her orange juice and sets the cup in the sink.

“Well, I guess I should go find my clothes.” She glances at our pile of dishes. Do you need help cleaning up?”

“No, no, go do your thing.”

One by one, I rinse the dishes, concentrating on scraping every last speck of food off of their white porcelain surfaces. Don’t think about the future. Don’t ask her anything stupid. She doesn’t want to talk about the future. Just like you don’t want to talk about the past.

I’ve just finished loading everything into the dishwasher when she reappears, fully clothed.

“I guess all I need now is for you to point me in the direction of the nearest bus stop,” she says. “Or the train, if that’s closer.”

“No, no, I can drive you.” I wipe my hands on my sleep pants and approach the doorway. “Let me just change—”

She stops me, placing a hand against my chest. “I can take myself home, Jackson.”

“Okay.” I like hearing my name roll off her tongue. And I like the feel of her hand on my chest even more. Probably too much. “When will I see you again?”

“Just relax, Jackson. You don’t have to plan this all out.” She tilts her head, considering. “How about the next time you have something fun and exciting to do, and you want company, you can call me up? And I’ll do the same.”

“Okay.” I can’t bear to let her go just yet. Instead, I lift her hand and kiss the tender skin on the inside of her wrist. So fragile, so vulnerable.

So unlike Skylar herself. She’s strong as shit. It’s a cross between endearing and fucking terrifying.

Before I know it, I’ve pulled her into me and am tilting her head toward mine. Her lips are so soft, her body a silk-covered missile against my chest. My hand begins to creep beneath her skirt for the other softest part of her, but she stops me, smiling.

“Hey, why don’t we save some more surprises for later?”

I release her reluctantly.

“Is that what you want?”

“No. I want you push me up against the wall and fuck the living shit out of me.” She shifts away and readjusts her skirt. “But this way we’ll have something to look forward to. For next time.”

Next time
. Music to my ears.

“Okay.” I shove my empty hands into my empty pockets. “Until next time, then.”

“Until next time.”