One of These Nights (21 page)

He opened his eyes, warm brown dusted with gold, and watched her watching him. She felt him move one of his hands between her legs, pressing hard against the swollen nub of her sex so that every thrust produced sparks of rapidly intensifying pleasure. She skimmed her hands down his chest, watching the muscles in his lower belly begin to flex and jump as he thrust up into her. Zoe tightened around him, crying out, her thrusts growing wild as she hurtled toward another climax.

Jason squeezed his eyes shut, arching beneath her with a shout as he came, shuddering, losing himself in her. Seeing him that way was all it took to push Zoe over the edge, her pleasure imploding, crashing through her with wave after wave of sensation. She could do nothing but ride them out, moving until she collapsed on top of him, utterly spent.

She was dimly aware of his strong arms encircling her, holding her close while she shivered with the tiny aftershocks of her climax. He nuzzled her hair, pressed a lingering kiss to the top of her head, and then tucked her face against his neck as he dragged the comforter over the two of them. A slight shift in position, a click, and the room went dark. Zoe snuggled more tightly against him, wanting nothing more than to wrap herself in his warmth and stay there, possibly forever.

“Zoe,” he murmured, and then pressed a soft kiss to her ear.

“Mmm.” She couldn't talk. She didn't care about talking. All she cared about was staying right where she was. Fortunately, Jason seemed to be on the same page, sighing her name one more time as though it meant something wonderful before his breathing grew deep and even.

Zoe rested her hand against his chest, lips curving into a soft smile, before drifting to sleep to the steady, comforting beat of his heart.

J
ason woke up in a rumpled mess of bedsheets, on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes and his good leg bent at the knee, unsure whether he'd been asleep or dead. He hadn't slept so deeply in ages, the kind of sleep that restored every worn-down bit of a person, and he felt good, really good, for the first time in a very long time. Apart from the stupid cast, he was loose and limber, his entire body relaxed from having been used very, very well during the night. They'd slept wrapped around each other, surfacing twice to make love with the kind of intensity that produced even more amazing sleep. He lay there with his eyes closed, letting his mind drift back over his hands on heated skin, gasps of pleasure, whispers in the dark that demanded more, now,
please
.

That really happened. She was really here.
He'd imagined it for so long that it hardly seemed possible, but last night had been better than any daydream. It was going to change things—but things between them had already changed so rapidly that it was hard to worry. All that mattered to him right this second was that Zoe wanted him as much as he wanted her, and the resulting explosion had been one for the ages.

The rest would work itself out. For once, he felt too damn good to worry.

Jason breathed in deeply and turned his head to the side, breathing in the light vanilla scent that was Zoe. When he opened his eyes, though, there was no one there but Rosie. As he stared at her, she snorted in his face, licked her nose, and then sighed in her sleep.

He sat up and looked around, confused. Her clothes were gone from the floor, and the door was shut. The alarm clock said it was eight a.m., late for him but hardly oversleeping. His euphoric haze faded as he maneuvered himself out of bed, pulling on his boxers and then grabbing his crutches.
She took off. She left and didn't even bother waking me up.
No matter how he tried to stop it, by the time he opened the door his mind had already conjured dozens of reasons why she might have vanished, each worse than the last.

He was so determined that she'd left that it took him a few seconds of staring to process that Zoe was perched, fully dressed, on a stool at the kitchen island. She was reading the paper, her curls piled on top of her head in a way that was both messy and inexplicably sexy. While he watched, she lifted a steaming mug to her lips, had a sip, and then realized she was no longer alone. Her eyes shifted from the paper spread in front of her to connect with his, and the shy pleasure in her expression banished all his dark thoughts like so much smoke.

“Hey,” she said. “You're up.” Her eyes dropped to his boxers. “Well, kind of.”

“I thought you left,” he said.

Her brows lifted, stormy gray gaze turning cool. “That's not very flattering.”

“Bed was empty, house was quiet,” he said, making his way toward her. As irritated as she might be, he noted the way she looked him over while he moved. He couldn't say he minded, though his boxers weren't going to disguise the direction of his thoughts if he didn't get his brain out of the gutter. “I didn't mean I wanted you to leave.”

She set the mug down, swung her legs off the stool, and met him at the entrance to the kitchen. She rose on her toes, hands lightly placed on his bare chest, and pressed her lips to his for a kiss that was initially sweet.
Initially.
Jason's entire thought process short-circuited as she deepened the kiss, turning it into a slow, thorough, and extremely arousing good morning. By the time she pulled back, she could have no question about whether he wanted her here.

Zoe gave him a slow smile, her eyes hazed with pleasure. “Let's get something straight. I wouldn't leave without saying good-bye, okay?”

“Okay,” he replied. He would have been perfectly happy to demonstrate how glad he was to hear that, but Zoe stepped away, though she looked just a little regretful.

“I'm going to have to get home and change for work,” she said. “And you probably want to sort things out with your mother.”

He screwed up his mouth. “I do?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “How about
you ought to
? She's still your mother. You should be able to talk, at least, before she rolls out of town in a cloud of righteous indignation.”

“That's a picture.” Knowing she was right didn't make the idea any more palatable. Jason blew out a breath. “I guess. She can't stay away forever. Her stuff is here.”

“Well, maybe she'll leave sooner, now that she hates me,” Zoe said, settling herself back on the stool and picking up her mug. “So, there's that.” She neatly folded the paper and put it aside. Jason watched her, unsure whether he should feel strange about the fact that even the way she was constantly tidying up after herself was charming to him.

“She doesn't hate you,” he said. “She just doesn't like you.” He quirked a smile at her when she gave him a look over the rim of her coffee mug, then slowly put it down.

“Is there some nuance there I'm going to catch the next time I run into her, or are we just talking about the difference between her being extremely unpleasant and, say, trying to stab me? Because if so, I'm not sure the distinction matters.” She looked away. “I probably shouldn't have gotten into it with her. I was worn-out and I unloaded. That's on me.”

He shrugged. “Like I told you yesterday, you're not the only person who has a hard time dealing with her. She tends to push people until they snap. It's like her special gift.”

“You ever snap?”

“Occasionally. But I have a long fuse. That's
my
special gift, I guess.”

She blushed prettily and laughed. “One of them.”

Jason grinned. He couldn't help it. He wasn't particularly vain, and he'd never been into bragging about his sexual prowess, but it was good to know he hadn't gotten too rusty. He hopped over to the counter and set about getting his morning coffee, feeling her watching him. The kitchen was warm and cozy, but there was a new tension that blossomed as soon as they stopped talking. There were plenty of unspoken things hanging in the air between them, Jason thought, invisible but weighty. And most of them had to do with where they went from here.

“So,” she finally said, “speaking of last night . . .”

Jason felt himself tensing and had to force his shoulders to relax. Every misgiving he'd had, every hard-earned shred of experience, surfaced and began pummeling him with reasons why she was getting ready to let him down easy.
It was great but it'll never work. It's not you; it's me.

“I think,” she said slowly, “it would be nice if you and I really gave this dating thing a shot. Now that we've put the cart before the horse and all that.” When he turned to look at her curiously, she smiled at him. “Not that I'm not glad we're so, ah, compatible. In some ways, at least. But this . . . all of this . . . hasn't been the best way to get to know each other. So maybe we could try doing it the traditional way? Start over.”

“Fancy dinners and artsy movies?” he finally asked, only half-joking. He didn't see why they should have to start over when things seemed to be clicking along just fine. Besides . . . she was bound to want to do things outside his wheelhouse, and he didn't know how concerned he should be.

Zoe narrowed her eyes at him. “Try burgers at Beltane Blues and renting an action flick. See, this is why we need to hit the reset button. You still think I'm secretly a snob.”

“No, I don't.”
Bull. You just like her anyway.
It was the unflattering truth. He still couldn't imagine her in jeans and a T-shirt, out at the spring barbecue on the beach. In fact, he thought the sight of such a thing might rip a hole in the fabric of space-time.

She pressed her lips together and leaned back on her stool, watching him skeptically. “Mmmhmm. Tell you what, then. Let me take you out. I'll pick something I like to do. You get to be surprised and apologize for making the face you're making right now. If it works out, you pick the next spot. If I don't run screaming, my turn again. Deal?”

He shifted uncomfortably and took a swig of his coffee. Apart from the presence of his mother, which was never a welcome addition, he didn't see what the problem with this past week had been. They'd eaten. Hung around the house. If he could have walked around the square, that would have been fine, too. He hadn't realized just how nervous the thought of moving from fake relationship fraught with sexual tension to actual relationship with a boatload of potential problems made him.

He hadn't been with anybody serious since Sara, and he knew damn well Zoe was no fling. She wasn't built for it.

He didn't think he was, either. That, more than anything, was what had the hair at the back of his neck prickling to attention. The way he was already so attuned to her presence, hungry for it, had alarms going off in the back of his mind. He'd jumped too quickly once, and he'd never really stopped paying for it. Letting that happen again was out of the question.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Any reason why the setup needs to be so, you know, formal?” That worried him, too. It sounded like each of them ought to hold up a scorecard at the end of the evening. It was practical, he guessed. And very Zoe, from what he'd seen.

“Yes,” she said, and crossed her legs primly, threading her fingers together over one knee. In an instant, she'd morphed from Tousled Morning Zoe to All-Business Zoe. He would have laughed, if that hawkish gaze hadn't been fixed on him. “Tell me something, Jason. Where am I from?”

He groaned inwardly. It was too early for a pop quiz. “Georgia.”

“No,
where
in Georgia?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then realized he had no idea. She seemed to understand this and pressed on.

“Okay, how many brothers do I have?”

“Um. Some?”

“What was my daddy's business? Where did I live before I came here?
Why
did I come here?”

“You . . . like New England?”

The gaze sharpened to a glare. “Let's try something else. What kinds of things do I like
besides
New England? Name anything. I'll wait.” She bobbed her leg up and down, and Jason could almost hear the
Jeopardy!
music playing in the background while he tried to come up with some facts. He knew plenty of things . . . more than he'd be able to articulate to her . . . but he'd sound like he'd been pining for her. Which he hadn't. He just happened to think about her often enough, and pay enough attention, that he'd figured some things out. But rather than explain that, he scrambled.

“Jesus, Zoe. You, ah, like dogs. And art. And Chinese food. And me.”

“Count yourself lucky on that last one.” She sighed. “Jason, I get that this has not been the best week for you to pick up on all of this stuff, but we've known each other for more than two years. We share friends. I have tussled with you over price, hunted up pieces for you, and fussed at you for your dirty shoes more times than I can count. We've spent a lot of time together this week. And then last night . . .” She trailed off, stopped.

“You wish we'd waited,” he said. Maybe they should have, though he would never actually believe it. What was between them had been simmering a long time. Prolonging the agony wouldn't have made much sense. Unless they'd finally killed each other over, say, Zoe's vacuum breaking due to some twigs snapping the beater bar, they were always going to end up right here.

She was shaking her head. “No, I don't wish that. Maybe it's because I've known you so long now. It was less ‘too soon' and more ‘finally,' if that makes sense.” She was blushing again, and he found it impossible to stay irritated with her for trying to prove this particular point.

“What I'm trying to say is,” Zoe continued, “if we're going to try to do this, to be together for real, then I think it's high time you and I really got to know each other. Taking turns planning dates is a good way to start.”

He wasn't as sure about that—it sounded a little organized for him. But the look on her face, lips set in a line that indicated she was willing to argue but eyes pleading with him to just
agree
, for once, pushed him into an answer.

“Fine,” he said. Then he grumbled, “Maybe I should get a notebook.”

Her pleasure, at least, alleviated some bright burst of anxiety he felt at the idea of being dragged along on any number of the things he'd once had to do. Antiquing, for instance. Or some kind of coffeehouse thing involving poetry. Overpriced martini bars. Movies in which one of the leads died at the end, complete with a tear-jerking monologue. What would she pick?

He had no idea. And what would
he
pick? He actually had some thoughts on that . . . but there was a big difference between imagining taking someone someplace and actually doing it.

He knew that well enough.

She got up and came to him, interrupting his thoughts, slipping her arms around his waist and surprising him with a bear hug strong enough to make him grunt, then chuckle. Cool and standoffish Zoe liked to be touched, he thought. That was one thing he'd learned about her this week, from the moment she'd held his hand that first day at lunch. She'd sought him in little ways from the start, whether with the brush of her shoulder against his or reassuring pats or the kisses that had undone him last night. Little surprises, but good ones. Maybe that boded well.

Jason relaxed into her embrace, stroking a hand over her curls, down her back. Zoe leaned her head against his chest and sighed with what sounded like contentment, and he looked down at the top of her head, his brow furrowed even as his lips curved into a half smile. All this time, he'd seen a beautiful, sensuous woman with an attitude like a storm trooper. As it happened, there was a lot more waiting underneath. He felt the aching pull deep in his chest that he'd almost forgotten, a warning that he still had things to lose.