I watch her for a minute, unable to hide my smile. When she walked in the door earlier with her flushed cheeks, braids, and red dress that made me choke on my tongue the first time I saw her in it, I felt a kind of… rightness settle over me. Then something else came over me when I realized she was checking me out with eyes that didn’t belong to some disinterested tenant just crashing in my spare room for a few nights. She wanted me. It was right there, plain as day, and I felt like sighing with relief and then pulling her down on top of me so I could see what was under that dress.
But she was also panicked, and that’s never a good sign, so I let it lie and focused on celebrating her promotion or whatever we’re celebrating. I’m still not sure.
So here we are on the deck an hour later, both of us having changed into warmer clothes to combat the cold breeze coming in across the water and chatting about Larry King and Jill’s opinions on, well, everything.
I’ve been trying to work up the guts to invite her to Thanksgiving at my mom’s house, but I’m afraid she’ll read into it in a way I don’t intend her too. The problem is I still haven’t decided what my intentions are, so until I do, I can’t invite her. My mom’s been texting me ever since I got that damn recipe from her, asking if I’m bringing anyone. I keep putting her off.
If I only knew what was going on inside Jill’s head, all of this would be so much easier. But she’s hard to read these days, and God knows I haven’t done a very good job of inspiring much confidence. We’re like two blind people walking through a room full of spilled Legos and occasionally getting drunk together.
A glance at my watch tells me it’s past midnight. I’ve got work at nine tomorrow, and it’s probably time for Jill to start sleeping off her wine. I push to standing and hold out my hand. She takes it without hesitation, and I pull her up. We’ve come a long way since that first day when she pinched me and called the cops.
“Is this the part where we dance?” Her grin is mischievous, and she’s so damn pretty, I can’t help but smile right back at her.
“Sure, Sunshine.”
“I love it when you call me that.” Her voice turns breathy, and damn if I’m not dying to kiss her.
She must be thinking the same thing because she goes up on her tiptoes and closes the distance between us. The first touch of her lips on mine sends a jolt of electricity straight down my spine, and my hands lift to cup her jaw in case she has a mind to retreat. Her skin is even softer than I remembered, and her lips are sweet with a touch of wine and a warmth that has me slanting my head for more.
When her tongue sweeps across the bow of my upper lip, I groan and deepen the kiss so I can taste more of her. She wraps her arms around my waist and slides a hand up the center of my back, pulling me in closer. It’s a rush of tongues and lips and teeth after that, both of us trying to get closer, get more, until I’ve got her pushed up against the clapboard siding by the door and her leg is circling my thigh, grinding her pelvis against my painful hard-on.
Nothing is stopping me from stripping her bare right here on my deck and taking her against this wall until neither of us can talk or breathe. I’ve never wanted anyone so badly in my life. I’ve never been so damn hard in my life. And she’s making whimpering noises and pulling at my shirt, begging me, “please,” over and over. We want this. We need this.
I break the kiss, and she gazes at me with dazed, lust-drunk eyes before leaning back in, but I pull her with me to the door instead, intent on getting us somewhere horizontal. When I jerk the door open, the damn thing sticks, and I let out some choice expletives.
Summoning a shocking level of composure, given the circumstance, Jill closes the door slowly with one hand before pulling it fully open. “You have to be gentle, or it’ll stick.”
I respond by bending down to kiss her hard and then pulling her inside with me, making her shriek with laughter and slap my ass. We’re both smiling like idiots by the time we reach my bedroom door, and then it’s a freefall into that lust-haze again, both of us practically clawing at each other’s clothes to remove them as quickly as possible.
We both lose our jackets and shirts, and then she goes for the button on my jeans while I drop my eyes and take in the sight of her glorious breasts straining the confines of her pink lace bra. I need my mouth on them as soon as humanly possible. But she’s struggling with my button, and when I study her face, I see her concentrating hard on the task. My first instinct is to laugh and tease her, but then I remember the wine. The fucking wine.
I grab both her hands and still her movements.
“Third time’s a charm, I promise,” she says on a laugh and looks up at me from her kneeling position on my floor. Her smile drops when she sees my expression. “What’s wrong?”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“So?”
“You’re not thinking clearly.”
“Thinking is for suckers. Let’s get naked.” She sends me a naughty smile and pulls her hands free, but I take a step back.
“Jill, we can’t.”
“Yes, we can. You see, it’s a simple matter of physics. The round peg goes in the round hole. Ta-da!” She makes a crude gesture with her hands that would normally have me laughing, but both my good sense and my case of blue balls are killing my sense of humor.
“You know what I mean. The last thing I want is for this…” I gesture between us. “to happen, and you wake up regretting it.
“Milo, it’s just sex.” She’s tipping the scales from amused to perturbed.
But I’ve already fallen off the cliff to dumbstruck. Because there’s no way on earth that anything between Jill and me could ever qualify as “just” anything. She’s always been more to me, and even when I’ve tried to deny it, I never believed it for long. It’s the reason she’s followed me around all these years, and it’s the reason it feels like hot daggers in my chest when her actions and words let me know I’ll never be more than a pitstop, a time-killer, a project to her. She’s my sunshine, but I’m just her summer vacation.
I don’t say anything. I can’t.
“Fine.” She picks her shirt up off the floor and stands. “God forbid you ever break the rules when it’s something I want.”
I’m not sure what she’s talking about, and maybe it’s the wine, but I let her finish without responding.
“Milo Papatonis, author of the most complicated moral rulebook in history, ladies and gentlemen.”
I don’t follow when she stalks out of my room and up the stairs, shutting her door with a quiet snick instead of the slam I was expecting.
I don’t see Jill for two days, which isn’t all that surprising since she works both lunch and dinner shifts most days and Bran said Rayna and Jill have been hanging out a lot. I admit part of me was holding out hope that Jill would come down the morning after and announce that she was not only sober but crazy about me and jump my bones. Yeah, I wasn’t holding my breath. Maybe she’s embarrassed because she got a little drunk and I saw her without a shirt. Or maybe she was trying to scratch an itch and doesn’t even remember. Or maybe—and this is the one I’m betting on—she regrets kissing me entirely and is pissed off I took advantage of the situation.