Page 41 of Jason
“Making you come,” he muttered, and with two fingers, quickened the pace.She began to move against his hand, and it seemed to Jason that the water was lapping the rock in time with their rhythm.He stroked her until she made a soft cry and dropped her forehead to his shoulder, shuddering with her release.
He kissed her neck, her ear, her cheek.That had been hugely arousing.
She took gulps of air until her breathing had returned to normal and he’d removed his hand.She sighed and stared up at him with eyes glassy with contentment.“Happy now?”
Jason grinned.“Exceedingly.”He kissed her mouth.“Lets get out of here.We still have one more place to see.”
Mallory buttoned her pants.“This is so crazy, Jason.What are we doing?”
She didn’t mean the question to be answered, he took it, but he was wondering the same thing.His thoughts were confused.Between Darien, and the crazy tension between him and Mallory, and the problems with Cass, and the crisis of having to move this series ahead without a star, he wondered why he chose now to start this with Mallory.It was a question that needed answering, and was going to answer her.When the time was right.
“We’re definitely crossing this cove off the list, right?”she asked.She clung to his arm as she stepped off the rock and made a little leap onto the sand just beyond.
“Probably.”
“Definitely,” she countered.“It’s too expensive.”
“Then where do you suggest the killer hide his boat?”
“What about the pier?It’s not exactly on the beaten path.”
They continued their discussion of the killer’s need to move relatively unseen as Mallory strapped into her life vest and carefully climbed back on the boat.
In the car, Mallory had a message on her phone from the head writer.She put her on speaker and the three of them talked about alternatives to cutting the forest scene and still shaving seven minutes.
They carried on as if nothing had happened last night or in the cove.They carried on like they always did, as if the crazy tension between them didn’t exist, except when it was unbearable, and Jason guessed they would carry on like that until it erupted again.
It was a full day by the time they were done.Jason dropped Mallory at the Bickmore and drove out to the estate to get his things.He stopped by Nana’s cottage to tell her he’d be working in town for a few days.
He found his grandmother on her porch in a rocking chair enjoying her standard cocktail—whisky, straight up.
“Hey, Nana,” he said, and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“There you are.I wondered if you’d gone back to Los Angeles.”
“Not yet,” he said.“Mind if I join you?”
“You know where I keep the good stuff,” she said, and nodded to the door of her cottage.
Jason went inside to her kitchen and poured a little of the Blackthorne whisky, then joined his grandmother on the porch.He filled her in on what had been happening with the show and the scandal of Darien as they watched sailboats heading back to the harbor.
When he finished his drink, Jason got up to go.“Got some work to do, Nana.There’s still plenty of L.A.hours left in the workday.”
“All right,” she said.
Jason started for the porch stairs, but he paused and glanced back at his grandmother.“By the way…an old guy over at Dead Man’s Cove told me an interesting story today.”
“What’s that?”
“He said that Great-grandpop killed a bootlegger for working out of his part of the ocean.”
Nana stared at him.“Alistair?”
Jason nodded.“I told him I’d never heard that, and he said Blackthornes liked to keep their secrets.And, you know, Aunt Claire said she’d been keeping Uncle Graham’s secret.Was that it, Nana?That sounds like something Uncle Graham would not want floating around out there.Do you think—”
“No, I do not,” she said flatly.“Whoever told you that is talking about that bootlegger that drowned off Dead Man’s Cove.He wasn’t murdered!He and his band of nitwits drank the whisky they were bootlegging, and he got so drunk he fell off and drowned.His body washed up in that cove and your great-grandfather sent a crew down there to haul his dead ass out of there.That was just rumor going around because the man’s kin wouldn’t accept that he was stupid enough to drown himself.”
Jason chuckled.“Good to know.The story was just crazy enough that I couldn’t help wonder.”
