Tempt Me Twice 1 (7 page)

After the filth of Kevin’s cave that I’d shuddered at even trying to clean, the faint smell of bathroom cleaner was appreciated. In fact, if I squinted, I could see an arc of dampness across the grey laminate of the counter, as if someone had just wiped it.

The thought that he might have cleaned for me, when I already had to be such an inconvenient guest, made me melt.

“Take your time.” Jax said before backing out of the room, keeping his eyes on me as he moved. “I’ll be in the living room.”

I was nervous. The idea of being naked in the shower without the protective barrier of the bathroom door was... it made me vulnerable. Vulnerable in a way I’d made sure I’d never be again, and I knew Jax would never hurt me, but the unease was planted in my psyche regardless.

It must have shown on my face.

“Kayla, relax.” Jax’s expression went from teasing to serious. “You’re safe. No peeking. I promise.”

I nodded stiffly, then turned to sort through the mess in the cardboard box.

The shampoo bottle that I’d first spotted leaking on Kevin’s lawn had slimed my mascara, my collection of hair elastics, my eyeliner. Having dried over the last day, it now formed a virulent crust that scabbed over almost everything in the box.

Eew
. With no choice, I turned the faucet to hot and began to rinse the gunk from the outside of the bottle.

“Hey, Kayla?”

I jumped a bit; I’d thought Jax had already walked away. But he was still standing there, that sexy, self-assured smirk back on his face.

“Y-yes?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but my hand trembled at the dark intent that was so plain on his face, and the shampoo bottle fell into the sink with a clatter.

“I won’t look. But I’ll still think about it.” With a grin that was pure, sex on a stick evil, he strolled back down the hallway, leaving me with an open mouth and pure wet heat between my legs.

He’d said that to distract me, to put me at ease, and I knew it. But it had worked... oh God, how it had worked.

It took all I had to strip and get into that shower, without dragging him back in there with me.

***

I
hurried through my shower, even though I felt grimy enough from my car ride to have lingered until the hot water ran out. Jax’s words... that look in his eye... had gotten me so worked up that it was tempting, so tempting, to slip my hand between my legs and give myself some relief.

But if showering in Jax’s bathroom without a door felt vulnerable... I couldn’t imagine doing
that
.

Even if the idea was actually kinda hot.

What was
wrong
with me? When had I become so obsessed with sex? I avoided revisiting the answer to that, since I knew it well enough.

Having scrubbed until I felt human again, I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in the towel, tucking the end between my breasts. I cast a surreptitious glance down the hallway, and assumed that Jax had kept his word. I could see the flickering light of the television from the living room, and he wasn’t lurking in the open doorway.

I refused to consider the possibility that that might, possibly, have disappointed me.

Reaching for my clean clothes, I prepared to drop the towel and dress as fast as I could. Except...

Oh, shit.

I hadn’t brought any clean clothes up from the car. I’d been too distracted. And the clothes I’d been wearing were currently soaking in the sink.

I’d have to ask Jax to go down to the car for me. There was no other option.

“Shit.” I looked down at myself, at the miles of leg that was revealed by my towel. Well, miles might have been me dreaming, since I wasn’t particularly tall
or
leggy, but regardless, the towel just skimmed the tops of my thighs.

It also showed rather a lot of cleavage.

Closing my eyes briefly, I reflected that all of my bashfulness over the shower had been for nothing. Jax was about to get a hell of a show.

“Um. Jax?” I called into the hall, a hand pressing protectively at the hollow between my breasts, where the towel was tucked in. Rationalizing with myself that the towel covered more than a bathing suit, and Jax had seen me in one of those, I was prepared to be a grown up about the situation.

“What’s up—” The words Jax spoke as he rounded the corner broke off into a strangled sound as he halted abruptly in the middle of the hall, eyes wide.

I felt a flush break out over every bit of skin that was available for him to see. And there was a
lot
.

“I forgot to get clean clothes from my car.” I kinda wished the floor would swallow me whole. Or else that Jax would keep looking at me the way his was, his eyes dark, forever. “Do you think you can run down and grab me some jeans and a T-shirt? Or lend me something of yours and I’ll go?”

As I spoke I let my stare drop to the floor, and what I saw on the way down had my heart leaping into my throat.

The undeniable evidence of Jax’s interest in what he was looking at was pressing against the front of the jeans he’d changed into sometime during my nap. He looked... big. And aroused.

My mouth was dry as I dragged my stare back up to his face. I knew he was attracted to me. I didn’t know
why
, since I sure as hell wasn’t his type, but he was. But this... whatever this was between us... I didn’t know how much longer I could ignore it.

Maybe I’d made a mistake by coming here and thereby fanning the flames.

Or maybe that was why I’d come in the first place.

“Jax.” I took a step toward him without meaning to, then stopped.

Maybe it would be better for everyone involved if we figured out just what was between us.

Or maybe that was just an excuse, my brain making excuses so that I could have what I wanted.

But why couldn’t I? Nick and I were not together. Jax and Nick were not friends, though that pained me.

But shouldn’t at least some joy be salvaged out of this whole clusterfuck of a situation?

Taking one more tiny step, then another, I found myself as close as I’d been to Jax earlier, when he’d backed me up against the couch. I could feel the heat emanating off of his skin in waves, the desire as palpable as my own.

He’d kissed me once before, and it had made the earth move.

What would happen if
I
kissed
him
?

Rising up onto my toes, I placed my hand flat on his chest. Beneath my fingers, through the worn cotton, I felt the beat of his heart stutter.

“Where are your keys?” Abruptly, Jax backed away, breaking the spell that was weaving us together. Combing his fingers through his hair, he looked anywhere but at me.

“What?” Fogged with the intensity of what had just almost happened, I blinked and tried to keep up.

“Your keys, Kayla?” Jax took another step back, and what might have been was shattered. Cold little tendrils of rejection snaked their way into my veins.

“It’s unlocked,” I finally managed, and my voice felt like it belonged to someone else. “Thank you.”

Oh, man. Oh, shit. What had I just done?

I stood frozen until he returned, his jaw set. He handed a pair of worn jeans and a faded grey T-shirt to me and, to my mortification, a pair of purple striped cotton panties and a black bra.

For some reason, the fact that he’d remembered to get me underwear reminded me of the fact that, until he’d met me, Jax had been fully, one hundred percent gay. Maybe it was the attention to detail, or maybe the thoughtfulness, or maybe it was just that I figured a straight man would prefer a woman with no panties at all.

Whatever the reason, alarm bells began to shriek in my head, reminding me of the zillion and one reasons that any kind of
anything
between us was a bad idea.

They sounded in my head while I raked a brush through the dripping snarls of my hair, then slicked it back in a wet ponytail. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I grimaced, wondering what had aroused Jax at all in the first place.

The severe look of my hair pulled back while wet didn’t suit me at all. Without makeup, my skin tone was both pale and overly pink. I had long eyelashes, but they were so pale that without eye makeup they disappeared.

“Well, you’ve seen it all now,” I muttered to myself, unable to bring myself to pry any of my compacts or tubes of lipstick from the purple crust that connected them in the box. “And even if your cock seemed to like it, you’re not interested.” Scowling, I hung my towel up to dry, tidied up after myself as best I could, then exited the bathroom.

“I’m ready.” I called out towards the living room. When a hand closed over my upper arm from behind me, I shrieked and batted it away.

“Sorry.” Jax smiled as if he’d shoved all of the awkwardness of moments before down deep. “I thought you heard me. Let’s go.”

That simple touch on my arm had my nerves rioting around beneath my skin once again. Lips parting before I could stop them, I wondered how on earth he could be so normal after the intensity of that almost-kiss.

My cheeks burned as I understood. He might be inexplicably attracted to me, but I was just a curiosity to him. No, that wasn’t entirely fair—I was his friend, too. That, I knew, was real.

But he wasn’t overly inclined to scratch this strange itch. He probably hoped it would go away.

Maybe it
had
gone away, until I’d shown up at his door.

Well, I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself, a victim of unrequited love. I would just follow his lead, and act like that almost-kiss hadn’t happened.

Which it hadn’t.

We could go back to being friends. Good friends. The kind of friend that I’d come here to ask for help.

“Let’s go,” I agreed. I’d almost convinced myself. But when Jax placed his hand at the small of my back to usher me from the apartment, a gesture I was pretty sure he didn’t even know he’d made, I knew I was lying to myself.

His touch made me burn.

“Y
ou’re eating dessert for dinner?” Jax rubbed a hand over his nose, puzzled, as the waitress placed a slice of cherry pie dripping with juicy red goodness in front of me. He had ordered a burger, and it looked good, but I was satisfied with my choice.

Shrugging, I slid my spoon through the flaky crust, then dragged it through the mound of vanilla ice cream that was melting into a sticky river on the plate. “I’ll eat salad after, if I’m still hungry.”

When a girl tried to kiss a guy and was flat out rejected, I figured she’d earned a plate full of empty calories. After Nick and I had split, I’d eaten more brownies than I currently cared to recall.

Jax shook his head, and I braced myself, preparing for the lecture Nick would have given me on nutrition. Instead Jax picked up his own spoon, bent over the table, and snagged a bite for himself.

“I forgot just how cute you are.” He ate the bite he’d stolen from me, and I tried not to stare as he chewed and swallowed. “Damn, that’s good.”

Looking down at his own burger, he eyed my pie. “Trade you.”

I grinned; I couldn’t help it. He’d succeeded in chasing my bad mood away. I shook my head.

“It’ll go straight to your hips.” I flushed as I spoke. There wasn’t a thing wrong with his hips, those lean bones that framed the tightness of his taut abdomen.

Raising an eyebrow at me, Jax lifted his burger for a bite. Once he’d swallowed, he pinned me with that look that told me my time had run out.

“Okay, spill it. Just so you know, I’m very happy that you’re here. Very happy,” he added, reaching across the table and touching my hand briefly with his own. The tiny touch, his thumb rubbing over my palm, made my pulse stutter.

“But?” I asked wryly.

“But I know you wouldn’t have come without a damn good reason. So out with it.”

Grimacing, I told him about the eviction, and about the money missing from my account. He listened patiently, like he always did, and I could see him churning it all over in his head.

“Again, not that I’m complaining. But why didn’t you go to Nick?”

I couldn’t read the expression in Jax’s eyes as he asked the question.

“I know you said that you weren’t on great terms, but I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t help you.”

Oh boy. I’d deliberately left out that bit of the story, but Jax wasn’t giving me an inch.

“Nick wants us to get back together,” I finally admitted quietly. Drawing my spoon through my ice cream, I divided it in two, then smushed it back together into one big mound. I wasn’t sure how Jax would take the news, and sure enough when I finally scraped together the guts to look up, I caught the flash of hurt in his expression. It was quickly covered up, hidden behind that inscrutable expression, but it made me uncertain about what I was about to ask.

Was Jax still nursing feelings for Nick? Not that I was one to talk, but the idea that I might be set aside in favor of my ex-boyfriend—that I would just be counted out of the equation—was hard to take.

“I’m guessing that since you’re here, you didn’t take him up on that.” Jax’s eyes narrowed as he spoke.

“Aah... we had a fight. So, no. I didn’t.” What I didn’t add was that I hadn’t actually said the word ‘no’... but after Nick’s reaction to Jax texting my phone, I couldn’t imagine that there was any hope left for us.

“And where do I come in?” Jax laced his fingers together and leaned on his elbows; I couldn’t look away from his stare no matter how much I wanted to.

Every time he looked at me, I felt like he saw straight through to my very core.

“I’ve told you about my family,” I started slowly, pushing my plate away and twisting my paper napkin in nervous fingers. Last summer, when Jax and I had spent so much time together, I’d told him about my needy mom, about all of my siblings, and even a bit about life back in Louisiana.

I hadn’t told him everything, though.

“I know someone in my family took my money.” I explained briefly about TJ, about how he’d just gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and about how I’d caught him going through my laptop.

Unlike Nick, Jax didn’t immediately insist that the bank would be able to do something for me. Instead he tilted his head to one side, listening intently, and gestured for me to continue.