Missed Connections (19 page)

“It was just sex.”

His eyes darken. “It wasn’t ‘just’ anything, and you know it.” He steps closer, invading the space between us. He tangles his hand in the hair at the nape of my neck and presses his lips just above the artery—bastard biology giving away exactly how fast my heart is beating.

It wasn’t just a connection I felt between us. It was more like we heat-sealed together and obliterated the rest of the world when we touched.

“You do things to my body no one’s ever done.” Covering his hand with mine, I press a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “But, Jack…what we have is physical only.” My other hand wanders around his hip and pulls until we’re pressed to each other and I’m breathing in his peppermint breath, wanting to feel it on my skin again and hoping he agrees to the terms I’ve set.

“Fine. If that’s what you want, I’ll give it to you.”

“Mmm. Please do.”

He tugs and my leg rises, wrapping around, and he grabs my thigh, pulling me in tighter. His lips part as though he has something to say, but only a sigh comes out. Then his lips are on mine, and I taste the coolness of mint on the warmth of his tongue. Everywhere he doesn’t touch burns jealously for his hands. I’m feverish, shaking, and weak with desire, but I seize him by the belt wrapped around his low-slung jeans and tug him toward the bedroom.

We don’t make it to the bed.

It isn’t until Jack’s mouth works its way down my throat and chest that I realize my shirt and pants are gone. It’s so easy to lose myself with him. Grabbing his hair, I force his head back until he looks into my eyes. I kiss the little mole at the corner of his eye and reach down to remove his shirt. While he kisses and nibbles my collarbone and heads south, I yank hard, taking his belt off and smacking his ass with it.

“Hey.” He unclips my bra. “None of that.”

“Or else?” I slap him again.

He moves bullwhip-fast, bending, twisting, and grabbing my waist, but he’s upside down.

“What are you doing?” I figure it out quickly, when he straightens and my head points toward the floor, my stomach pressed to his, my shins resting against his collarbones. I hook my elbows around his calves. “This is teaching me a lesson? Giving me a head rush?”

He adjusts his grip, hitching me higher. “Not exactly.”

My hips twitch involuntarily when his mouth makes contact between my legs. He works me through my satin panties for a minute before slipping his tongue beneath the fabric.

“Please.” I brace my hands against the floor.

“Please what?” His tongue circles my clit and my elbows buckle and it’s a long moment before I can speak.

I moan. “I don’t even know.”

His laughter sends vibrations through his mouth and against my clit, and I come, hard, dizzy from what he’s done as much as from the blood rushing to my head.

Slowly, gently, he turns me around and sets me on the bed. I lie there spinning for a moment, breathing heavily.

“Still want to spank people?”

“If that was supposed to be a deterrent, you’ve failed spectacularly.”

He chuckles softly.

I point behind him at the floor. “For real. Can you pass me that belt?”

He crawls over my body unhurriedly, like a panther sneaking up on its prey, and lazily runs a hand up my side. I spread my legs just as he settles on top of me, gasping when he presses his hard length against me. He’s still in his jeans, and the material chafes me through my panties in the best possible way.

We grind together, locked in a kiss, arms and legs and hands sinuous and hungry. Jack sucks my tongue, and I bite his lip in retaliation and scratch down his back for good measure. His thumbs flick across my nipples and tease them through my bra, then his hand dips down to my waist, hips, the swell of my pubic bone, underneath the waist of my panties.

“Oh God.” I feel it, but he says it when he slides two fingers up and down, feeling how wet he’s made me, rubbing the pleasure-soaked fingers across my clit. But when he suddenly plunges those fingers deep inside and starts rhythmically pulsing them against
that
spot right there, my voice drops an octave and my back arches.

“Jack.”

“Yes?”

God, I love that smile. “I want you inside me.”

“And I want to make you come again first.”

“I need you to fuck me. Right. Now.”

His pupils dilate and his breath hitches. I cry out as he withdraws his fingers, but his lips crush my cries as he slides my underwear off, then breaks the kiss when he stands and removes his jeans and boxers. I can’t resist reaching over and stroking his cock. His abs flex, and the veins on his lower belly become more pronounced.

“Are you going to get a condom on, or are you just going to stand around with your dick in my hand all day?”

“For that? You’re getting fucked hard.”

“Promise?” I trace one of those veins toward his cock with my tongue, slow like cold syrup dripping from the bottle. He twitches in my hand, and I trace my lips from the base of the shaft to the head, keeping my eyes on his as I take as much of him as I can into my mouth. What I can’t suck I stroke with my hand, so every inch of him is being touched. I swirl my tongue faster, suck harder, and when he pushes me back, triumph ripples through me.

He gets a condom from the nightstand and rolls it on, never looking away from me once, dark and delicious promises in his eyes. I know I’m in trouble when he kneels on the bed and pushes my knees up and apart in a position that spreads me wide but still allows him to get close. He squeezes my ass, then he strokes my thighs and pushes into me with one slow movement.

That first gentle slam into home is the best, like a relief, but all I want is more. And Jack gives it to me. Deep thrusts, shallow thrusts, all while rubbing my clit. Wanting him even closer, I throw my legs around his hips and squeeze until he moves on top of me, missionary-style. His pubic bone rubs against my clit, and I feel myself tighten around his cock while he drags himself out and pushes back in.

“Harder,” I urge him.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

And he slams into me with a force that drives me over the edge in three more pistons of his hips, and I scream his name while he keeps pounding into me, riding me through the pleasure until he stiffens and comes a moment later. I close my eyes and squeeze him tightly. Senses completely overloaded and satisfied, I nearly doze off with him still buried inside me.

Chapter 20

Friday finds me ridiculously excited to get my check and get the hell out of Inner Space for the weekend—especially since Phucking Phyllis ruined my last one, and Fern and Ziggy ruined Monday. Even at the law firm, I never counted down the days, hours, minutes until the workweek was over. But when I glance at my net pay, there’s a problem. Ziggy wanders out into reception. I decide to tackle the small issue first. “Ziggy? I’m short on my check.”

“Yeah, that’s from when you came in early.” He answers that like he was waiting for me to bring it up.

Wednesday, I’d stayed up way too late talking to Blake online. I guess that threw me off when I set my alarm, and I stumbled through my morning routine an hour early. But I came in and realized I was horrifically early and got right to work. I’d done dishes, cleaned, and typed up a couple of insurance forms before Ziggy came in at nine thirty. “But I was working the whole time. You came in and saw me. You even had me doing things for you.”

He nods. “Yeah, but we didn’t ask you to come in then. It’d be different if we asked you to come in early or stay an hour late, but we didn’t. So that’s on you.”

My left eye twitches. “Right, but that’s not the only issue. You guys didn’t pay me for that Monday you had me come in—or the hour you had me come in to check on Blake.” The Monday they had me work so I couldn’t get Dad’s pills.

Ziggy looks baffled. “If you have an issue, you’ll have to talk to Fern.”

This is absolutely unacceptable. “Okay.”

“You may not be happy with the situation, but this is what’s happened, and it couldn’t have happened any other way. Just breathe into it.” He breezes out the front door, taking an early lunch.

So. Violently. Annoyed right now. Twelve hours isn’t a small amount—at least not to me.

Needing to burn off some energy, lest I crane-kick the phone through the front window and run after it screaming with glee at my newfound freedom, I head to the back room and begin folding sheets.

Elise, a new massage therapist, rushes into the back. “My client’s here early! It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I’m late too, so I put her in a room and she’s getting undressed, but I feel terrible about keeping her waiting.”

I nod in commiseration. “They’re never early unless you’re running late.”

“For real. Crap!” A thunk, and the sound of something spilling.

I turn and survey the scene. Laundry soap is
everywhere
. In the sink, on the counter, inside the laundry basket, in the garbage, and on the floor. All over the floor.

“I’m so sorry, Sarah! I tried to get a towel and bumped it with my elbow.”

The best I can fake is a weak smile. “It’s okay, Elise. You go see to your client. I’ll clean this up.”

She looks like she wants to cry, which makes me feel better. She didn’t do it on purpose, so there’s no point being mad at her.

“I promise, I’ll—”

I hold up a hand. “You’ll do nothing. It was an accident. Just go take care of your client. I’ll clean this up.”

“You are the nicest person ever. Thank you.” She hurries out of the room, and I grab the broom and sweep up the soap, tipping it into the garbage.

Honestly, with the number of crumbs and bits on the floor with the powder, you’d think I don’t sweep every day, but soon enough it’s cleaned up. How ironic is it that I’m cleaning up cleaning supplies? What if it had been floor cleaner? That would have been even more ironic. Or convenient—just add water. On the downside, there’s only enough laundry soap left in the box for about three and a half loads. Fern or Ziggy will have to pick up more tonight or tomorrow morning before we open.

Ziggy pokes his head in. “Sarah? The phone was ringing.”

“Sorry, Ziggy. One of the therapists accidentally knocked the detergent off the shelf, so I’ve been back here cleaning it up and didn’t hear it.” No way I’m landing Elise into it. She’s too nice and I want to keep her here.

He looks around as if trying to see the mess, but I’ve already swept it up. “Oh. Well, did you put it back into the box?”

“Uh, what?”

“Did you sweep it up and put it back into the box?”

He’s kidding, right? “It fell on the floor.”

“Right, but that happened before, and we just swept it up and tipped it back into the box. Saves money.”

“There was dirt in it.”

“It’s soap.”

It was on the floor. I’ve told him. How can I be clearer? “Most of it fell into the garbage.”

“Oh. I’ll pick up more after work.”

I feel my eyebrows do something unattractive to my forehead when I walk out of the kitchen and head back to reception. What the hell? Are they going bankrupt? Is this why they’ve shorted me an hour and are trying to squirm out of paying me properly? Phyllis’s sabotage aside, is my job secure at all, or have they mismanaged this place right into the ground? Maybe they’re just supremely cheap.

“Sarah?” Fern has snuck up on me while I was lost in a cloud of rage and worry. “Ziggy says you wanted to discuss your check.”

“Yes.” Keeping my voice mild is the way to go here. They made a mistake, no big deal—as long as it’s rectified. “You guys shorted me twelve hours on my check.”

Fern laughs. “This can’t be right, Sarah. And we’re not paying you for the hour you came in early.”

“The big shortage is from the Monday you had me come in. Remember? I needed to get my dad’s heart pills that day?”

She grabs the nearby calculator. “That’s only eleven hours total.”

“Right, but the day before, you had me come in because Ziggy had booked someone with Blake but hadn’t told him.”

“You know.” She begins punching the buttons. “I honestly never thought you were so materialistic, Sarah. Don’t we take care of you here? Good hours, relaxing work environment. You’re practically family.”

This is how they treat family? “I’m not asking for anything extra.”

Fern digs in her handbag and comes up with a checkbook. “You’re young, Sarah, and still have time to make something of yourself. But you’ll get nowhere in this life—or after—if you give in to the trappings of this money-hungry society like everyone else.” She fills out the check, clearly angry judging by how hard she’s pressing the pen to the paper, and I try not to gape at her words.

They had me type up the invoices, so I know that Fern and Ziggy’s little workshops cost eleven hundred dollars
per person
for a weekend. They do two or three per month, times about eight participants each time, which equals who the hell are
you
calling materialistic? Not to mention the weekend retreat they throw at some nearby resort in the middle of nowhere, which costs four thousand dollars per person, and they don’t run it unless there’s a minimum of ten people in the class.

They’ve done two this year and had five last year. Call me crazy, but if they were really all about the energy and making the world a better place, they wouldn’t charge such exorbitant prices for their workshops.

Fern hands me the check, and it’s the amount they shorted me—minus the hour for Sunday, and the extra hour I came in early. Her smile is tight. “Think about the life you want. The life you need. You’re worth more than money, and I shudder to think about how long it’s going to take you to figure that out.”

She’s right that I’m not just a dollar sign, but unfortunately, my landlord doesn’t accept interpretive dance as payment. No appropriate retort finds me before she leaves. I got what I’m owed and what’s right, but it still somehow feels like I’ve lost.

Chapter 21

I almost turned Jack’s invitation down, but that felt like letting the hippies win, so I agreed to go out with him. And as an added “screw you” bonus, I bought a new dress to wear tonight as a tip of the hat to my
materialistic
generation. Have the hippies never heard of stimulating the economy? My plan for the future includes rocking this dress and dancing my ass off with Jack.