True Divide (18 page)

My lip curls up at the thought, just as I jerk open a vanity drawer to find a hair tie. The drawer nearly falls out, symptomatic of the broken something or other on the bottom side that doesn't properly stop it when it should. Jake steps behind me, smelling soapy, and when he leans around to grab the toothpaste, his still-damp chest presses against my back.

“I'll try to fix that before I leave. Or I'll do it next time I'm here. Either way, stop getting all Hulk Hogan on it in the meantime.”

I sigh a little and bend over to make a show of gently sliding the drawer closed, whispering sweet nothings and patting it as I do. “There, there, little drawer. Don't pout.” The posture shoves my rear back into him and Jake slips his hand up the outside of my thigh, under the lace-trimmed hem of the sleep shirt I put on.

“Just be gentler. You know how to do that, right? I happen to know you can use those hands pretty nicely when you want to.” Jake leans over me and thumps his other hand onto the countertop, pushing his body more forcefully into mine. Another press forward with his hips, and when I moan a quiet little satisfied noise, I get a grinding motion as a bonus. “Then after I fix it, you can yank the hell out of it all you want.”

Despite how I can feel him hardening under the press of our bodies, which means all I want to do is stop talking in favor of having him push my sleep shirt up, I manage to grumble out a response. “You and this obsession with fixing things. What's up with that?”

Jake stands up straight, then loads his toothbrush with toothpaste. He shrugs. “I'm good at fixing things. I like being useful. Does it bother you?”

Shimmying out from between him and the sink, I walk into the bedroom. “Not at all. But I'm not a complete incompetent. I've lived alone for years now and the house has yet to fall down around me.”

Water rushes in the sink for a moment and then Jake saunters out, distractingly naked, flicking the lights off in the bathroom as he does. “And have you fixed things? Because I would pay good money to see you working with a drill. Or a hammer, even.”

One of his eyebrows crooks up just as he comes to a stop in front of me, where I've perched on the edge of the bed with my knees up under me. Pulling my hands up, I lay them against his chest and settle my gaze there for a moment, then start to drag the tips of my fingers downward, only a gentle press of my nails against his skin.

“I don't need those things. I'm just good with my hands.”

Jake's stomach tenses when my nails run across the lowest part. Looking up through my eyelashes, I let my tongue peek out to swipe across the center of my top lip. One hand drops to graze across his cock, using the faintest touch possible. Beginning at the base, across the top, the entire length jerking with a twitch when I reach the tip and come to the underside, where the smooth skin is so sensitive.

“Hell, yes.” His head falls back. “Hands. Good.”

Jake brings his head back up and drops his hands to yank my sleep shirt up. Now that we've gone a few rounds, I'm already used to the way he undresses me so hastily. Not one to linger unbuttoning things slowly or dwell on the measured reveal of skin in increments, Jake wants it all off as quickly as possible. This morning, after I dragged him down onto the staircase, he actually leaned back and raised his hands in the air.
“Take your own clothes off. All of them. If I try to do it, something's getting ripped, and that sweater looks nice.”

Tonight, he doesn't have to say as much because at the first tug, I lift my arms over my head and let him strip me naked. His cock juts forward a bit when he tosses my shirt on the floor behind him, and the movement reminds me what I had in mind to begin with. As if he already knows, Jake's hands curl into fists at his sides, waiting. If I wait too long, those hands will unclench and I'll find myself against the mattress with him over me. No particular issue with that, but right now, I'd prefer to bait him into giving me a little of the lead here.

Taking him in my hand, I bow to kiss the tip, then suck a little. A long groan fills the room.

“You've been so good to me since you got here, Jake. Fixing things, feeding me. But it can't always be like that, you know.”

Jake growls. “Why not? I'm good at it. Let me take care of you.”

My hand tugs across his length, slow and firm. “Because sometimes I need to do things for you. Keeps things balanced. Like right now, what do you need from me?”

“Fuck. You know what I need. You. Your mouth.” His hips lurch forward with a jerk.

“But what do you really need? What do you need me to do?”

Jake looks down at me with a confused, annoyed expression. When I peek up through my eyelashes and bat them a few times for good measure, he smirks, suddenly understanding what I'm fishing around for.

The words I suspect it may bother him just a bit to say. A request that he would rather fulfill than consent to ask for.

Bending down, he takes my head in his hands and kisses me. One long, slow, tender kiss. With his lips still brushing mine, I can feel his mouth curve into another small grin.

“
Fix it.
There, I said it. Now get to it.”

10

“R
ise and shine, pretty girl.”

A light kiss lands on my neck and shoulder, and then, before I can sort out all my annoyance from my sleepiness, Jake's out of bed and rummaging through his bag at the foot of the bed. I can hear the rustle of his pants, the clink of his belt, the zipper coming up—each thing happening without any of the sluggishness that normal people who just woke up might demonstrate. When he jostles the bottom of the mattress by pawing his hand heavily against it, I groan and yank the covers over my head.

“No stalling. Up and at 'em. Dress warm and wear shoes you can hike around the snow in.” With that, he's down the stairs at what sounds like a full trot.

Shoes I can hike around the snow in. Does that mean a pair of snowshoes? He must mean boots. But with the exception of my wellies, all the boots I own have a high heel of some kind. And the use of the word “hiking” implies that high heels are out. . . . Either way, whatever he has planned sounds
awesome.

Twenty minutes later, I make it to the top of stairs dressed in the heaviest-weight-denim skinny jeans I own, a fisherman's sweater that I thought looked adorable online but arrived so shapeless I should have returned it but never did, and my ever-reliable wellies.

At the bottom of the staircase, kneeling on the floor of my entryway, Jake is stuffing a neatly folded blue tarp into a large backpack. A hatchet, a small hand saw, and a bundle of rope sit on the floor around him.

Well, hell's bells. Really? This would be just my luck. Only I would end up reconnecting with my first love and invite him into my home after exchanging a few emails and phone-sex rounds, only to find out he's possibly a serial killer. His nonexistence on social media makes sense now, along with his supposedly spending so much time in places like Alaska, where there are plenty of places to ditch a body unnoticed. On top of that, he's not even the kind of serial killer that might do me the solid of knocking me out with a little chloroform on a rag first.

Jake looks up toward me and the immediate grin he puts on fades just as quickly when he sees the blank look on my face. “What's wrong?”

“I don't see the duct tape you'll smack over my mouth when I start to scream, but I'm sure you have it stashed somewhere in that bag. Just so you know, people will notice I'm gone. And you will definitely be the prime suspect.”

He screws up his face and looks around aimlessly. Only when his gaze drops to the floor and he scans the area around him do his shoulders relax and he starts to laugh.

“Holy fuck. Out of context, this shit does look weird.”

I stay perched at the top of the stairs and raise my brows. Jake lets the pack drop to the floor and chuckles again.

“I'm taking you out into the woods, for sure. Once we get far enough out—you know, where no one can hear you scream—I'm going to use this hatchet. Hopefully I won't need the hand saw, but that depends on how troublesome things get. As long as things go according to plan, I won't use the tarp and the rope until the very end. Because . . .” Jake nods his head and pastes a somber expression on his face. “We're going to get a Christmas tree.”

I peer out the corners of my eyes. When I do, my sight line drops, and just beyond where Jake sits on the floor, barely across the threshold to my living room, a couple of ancient cardboard boxes are stacked. Each box has “Xmas” lettered in permanent marker on it, in my mother's loopy cursive. Boxes I haven't dragged in from the shed out back in years. I stopped putting up a Christmas tree a long time ago because I'm not adept enough to string the lights around properly, inevitably leaving gaping holes and creating an overall visual design imbalance that only seems to represent my potential spinsterhood in colorful blinking lights.

Jake rises from his knees and shuffles up the stairs to me. When he reaches me, his hands come to cup my face lightly. “Even if I won't be here with you on Christmas Day, I want you to have a tree. I saw those boxes out back when I went to grab your dad's tools and realized you don't have a tree up. Kate's lending us her truck so we can go up into the county forest service area and pick out the one you want. Then I'll hack it down for you, load it up, and we'll drag it in here and set it up. Sound good?”

I decide that kissing him so hard he stumbles a little is a sufficient response.

An hour later, the sun has finally risen and on the drive we've drunk our way through the thermos of hot chocolate I insisted on making before we left the house. Jake steers Kate's truck to the far edge of a dirt service road and shuts off the engine before scanning the area around us. Winter has dumped a healthy amount of snow already, so sizeable banks of snow remain and the nearly all-white palette is broken up only by the dark green of ponderosa pines dotting the landscape.

Jake tilts his head and peers about through the windshield, eventually seeming to settle on a space that suits him. With his forearm resting lazily atop the steering wheel, he gestures off toward the right with a flick of his wrist.

“That hillside looks good. With the slope being north-facing, probably some decent ones in there.” Jake tips his head and continues to inspect the area. I nudge him in the side with my elbow to get his attention, which is easy to do since I've taken up the appropriate country-girl spot on the bench seat, right up next to him.

“Thank you for this.”

Without turning my way, he grins. “Don't thank me just yet. You're going to have to get out and walk around in nature, and probably trudge through some deep snowdrifts, all in hopes of finding a tree that will most likely bear a strong resemblance to a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.”

Reaching around him, I make to open the driver-side door, and Jake leans back with a laugh, hands thrown up in faux alarm and surprise. “OK, then. I guess we're getting out now. Let me just get out of your way.”

Just to emphasize it all, I crawl out over him and land in the snow outside the car door with a wildly uncoordinated landing, saved only by his quick thinking and good reflexes. Arms around my waist, he manages to press his lips to my neck despite the coat, scarf, and sweater that might impede a lesser man. Once he sees that I'm steadied, a swat lands on my ass, combined with instructions to move so he can get his backpack on.

Thankfully, I'm only going to be responsible for walking and keeping myself upright as I do; Jake, with his pack strapped on, also takes on carrying a water bottle in one hand and the hand saw in the other. We make our way toward the area he seems to think will yield the perfect tree and he starts up a steep bank, which only leads to another even steeper hillside. Jake stops and turns back to see me looking around, still standing on the edge of the roadside. Shouldn't there be a trail or something? A nice pathway, perhaps with signage that makes it clear where the best trees are? Along with directions to the chestnuts roasting on an open fire?

Jake doesn't take this approach, I guess, and the moment he sees me standing there confused, he seems to know exactly what I'm thinking. “No trail. You'll just have to follow me.”

And off he goes. I stay put, still a bit unsure about this hiking expedition. He may look cute and seem perfectly adept at finding his way, but just making it up that first steep, snow-covered embankment looks like too much for me and my fashionable footwear.

Already twenty paces ahead, Jake's boots continue to make a loud crunching noise with every step, but the sound is growing more faint. I consider going back to the truck. But when he stops, turns back, and starts my way again, then sidles down until he's close enough to reach out his hand toward me, I'm pretty sure I might just follow him anywhere.

“Charlie Brown tree” is right. After two hours of stomping around in snow so deep it cleared the top of my wellies, I stopped, refused to go any farther, and randomly pointed at the tree that looked the least like kindling. Jake then chopped the spindly, skinny, anemic-looking tree down with three precise whacks of his hatchet. It landed in the snow, and the sound it made when it hit was similar to that which those frosted animal crackers against my window made.

But now, I don't care how scrawny or frail it might be—sitting in my living room, with the white twinkle lights Jake strung in evenly spaced rows, the tree is perfect. We've spent the afternoon decorating it, laboring over every ornament's placement as if this puny twig of a tree were on display in the White House. When he takes and gingerly places the aqua-and-gold-glittered vintage tree topper where it belongs, we both stand back with our hands on our respective hips and grin like goofs at the sight.

It's already dusky outside, and Jake moves across the living room to switch off the overhead light fixture. The room goes dark. All except for our wonderfully flawed, magnificently feeble little tree. No question, our tree lights up the whole damn house.