Page 29 of This Time Around
“Hm, this box looks familiar,” she said.
God, the sweater was as soft as it looked. Or maybe that wasn’t the sweater. There wasn’t much blood left in Jack’s brain, and he took a deep breath, flooding his senses with her.
“My grandma used to keep old letters in a box like this,” Allie was saying, though Jack could hardly make out the words through the buzzing in his head and the feel of all that softness pressed against him.
Her hair tickled the side of his neck, and Jack breathed her in again, knowing full well that was just compounding the problem. She lowered herself to her heels and stood looking up at him. Those dark green eyes fixed on his, and he looked deep into them, thinking of shaded forests and dark, warm places.
He reached for her without thinking, palming the curve of her waist and pulling her tight against his body. He watched her pupils dilate, her lips part.
“Allie.”
“Hm?”
Her lashes fluttered, and Jack tightened his hold on her waist. “That was a very nice try.”
She blinked. “What?”
“The boob graze. The hair tickle.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It was a good trick when we were eighteen.” He reached up with his free hand to brush her hair off her forehead, rewarded by her sharp intake of breath. “Back then, the boob graze would have distracted me from an appendectomy.”
He watched her eyes darken, and she licked her lips again. “You’re saying I’m not hot enough to be a distraction at thirty-six?”
He almost laughed. “I’m not saying that at all.” He was still gripping her waist, and he leaned in to brush his lips over the top of her ear, triumphant when he felt her shiver beneath his palm. “You’re still hot as fuck.”
He drew back, half expecting her to slap him. He probably deserved it. He was being cocky as hell, and rude, too. She had every right to haul off and smack him.
But he watched her throat move as she swallowed, and knew from the flush in her cheeks that she wasn’t unaffected by her own attempt at seduction. She’d gotten to herself, too.
“But I’m smarter now,” he said. “Smarter than I was at eighteen, anyway.”
“I noticed,” she whispered.
Something flashed in her eyes that he’d never seen before. Awe, maybe. Respect. All the things he’d wanted to see when he’d shown up to gloat the other night.
But he hadn’t expected to see those things up close. Not like this, with his hand on her waist and her pelvis arching toward him. He wasn’t sure if she was responding to a desire to distract him from the contents of the steamer trunk or plain old desire. Did it matter?
He pulled her closer. She came willingly, head tilted back, breasts curved toward him. He was kissing her before he’d made up his mind to do it.
The momentary shock of it melted into something else as Allie arched against him, arms lifting to twine around his neck. What had started out as a game had morphed into something else, and it took every ounce of Jack’s self-control not to get swept away.
He was still kissing her and the sensation was both foreign and familiar, like revisiting the scene of a party where he’d had too much champagne. She was soft everywhere—lips, breasts, thighs—every place where her body pressed against his was warm and yielding.
“Jack,” she gasped, grinding against him.
He broke the kiss and reached for the clasp above his hip. “For the record, that’s my hammer.” He let the tool belt drop to the floor and reached for her again, pulling her tight to his body.
Her eyes widened a little and she glanced down before smiling up at him. “But that’s not.”
“Nope.”
He kissed her again, remembering all over again what this felt like. He’d almost forgotten, or tried to, anyway. Not kissing—he’d done plenty of that—but kissing Allie, all her sharp edges giving way to something softer as she curled her whole body into his.
She made a soft moan in the back of her throat, a sound so subtle he would have missed it if he hadn’t been listening for it. But he was listening. He was listening to the thrum of his own heartbeat in his ears, the whisper of her hair sliding between his fingers, the soft patter of rain on the oak leaves outside.
She broke the kiss just long enough to murmur, “Don’t stop,” before moving her lips back to his. He agreed without words, sliding his hand around to cup her ass. He would have remembered the curve of it anywhere. He could have picked it out of a lineup of a hundred asses, a visual that jackknifed through his brain and made him dizzy all over again.
