Maybe the type it liked.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s going to be no high-speed car chase,” Jack declared with a shrug, smiling out a fake apology before breaking out that irritatingly infectious grin. He was about to say something else—undoubtedly a tasteless follow-up joke—when Jill noticed his gaze flick subtly down towards where she’d just pulled her sweater over her lap to cover where her tights had slipped into her slit in the most vulgar way.
Instantly Jill realized that Jack must have noticed it earlier, his hungry gaze not missing the unintentional display by her wicked little pussy. Now that same little pussy clenched beneath her fleece tights and satin panties, and Jill gasped inwardly when she felt the unmistakable hint of wetness beneath all those layers of cloth, like the realization that Jack had basically seen the outline of her vagina did something to her body, something subtle but shocking, instinctive but appalling.
“Let’s go.” Jack hurriedly averted his gaze towards the front. It was the first sign of a flinch, and Jill blinked twice, puzzled at why a shamelessly cocky player-type like Jack would suddenly avert his gaze when so far he hadn’t given a damn about being obnoxious and tasteless.
Unless he’d suddenly realized he did give a damn.
“Go where?” Jill said, forcing herself to speak loudly so whatever her body was whispering would get drowned out.
“To get my bike.” Jack nodded towards the open road ahead. “Merge onto I-95 at the next junction. I’ll tell you which exit.”
Jill placed her hands on the steering wheel, exhaled slowly to calm her racing heart. She wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline from being scared for her life that was making her entire body tingle, but she needed to rein it in before this guy thought she was sending him signals. He might not want to murder her, but he was still a stranger with the strength of a bear who’d just been making shameless dick-jokes on the phone.
“You all right?” His voice was surprisingly gentle suddenly, like beneath that cocky devil-may-care attitude was a hint of sensitivity, a shred of a decent man who could sense when he made a woman uncomfortable. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry for scaring you. I’m not going to hurt you. Look, I’ll get out right now if you want, OK? You go on your way. Sometimes I forget that not everyone’s been trained to handle extreme situations by making tasteless jokes.” He opened the passenger’s side door halfway, looked back at her and smiled. It wasn’t that wolfish grin but a real smile, warm and reassuring.
Now suddenly Jill felt her feminine instincts doing all sorts of recalculations, like her subconscious was rethinking the label she’d put on Jack, reassessing his “type” after he’d broken his frame with that flinch, recognized that it was indecent to have gotten a glimpse of Jill that was more intimate than she’d intended.
The reassessment clicked to completion inside her like some ancient calculator enhanced by millions of years of female evolution, millions of years where a woman had to rely on her body’s intuition to make snap-decisions about whether a man was a predator or a protector, whether he would take what he wanted and leave or if he was the type to stay.
“Stay,” came the sudden response from that ancient intuition inside her, the word popping out of her almost unconsciously. “I mean, sure, I’ll drive you to your bike,” she added hurriedly, touching her hair and pulling nervously at her sweater, which was feeling awfully heavy and incredibly warm. “I . . . I need to get on I-95 anyway, so it’s on my way, it’s no problem, I guess.”
Jack looked at her now, those dark green eyes studying her profile again, his gaze narrowing subtly like he was curious, intrigued . . . attracted?
“Great,” he said quickly, breaking the rising tension with a casual shrug. He pulled the door shut, reached for his seatbelt, snapped it into place, glanced at her again, then grinned with a hint of wolfish victory. “Let’s go.”
3
“Where are you going?” Jack tried to sound cool and casual, but it was surprisingly difficult when his body was burning hot from being so close to this gorgeous babe with soft curves that made him want to pant like a wolf, howl like a hound, paw at the ground like a bull in season. They’d been driving for less than twenty minutes, had just gotten onto I-95, were maybe another ten minutes from the exit to Jack’s bike. But damn, it felt like a blissful eternity, time slowing down even though Jack’s heart was racing, his pulse pounding, his cock throbbing in his jeans, blood hammering in his eardrums.
Fuck, that glimpse of her pretty little slit wrecked me, Jack thought as he swallowed thickly, clenching his jaw and doing his best to gaze expressionlessly out the front windscreen. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her, didn’t think she’d caught him looking. But clearly she’d felt his lecherous gaze on her body, because she’d pulled her sweater down over her lap, blushed crimson under her soft smooth cheeks, touched her beautiful brown hair, shifted her gorgeous ass in the seat.
Well, Jack assumed it was a gorgeous ass. He hadn’t gotten a chance to check her out all the way yet.
Stop it, you damn pervert, Jack told himself angrily. It had been months since he’d been laid—the longest dry spell in his entire adult life, if he really thought about it. Hell, he couldn’t clearly remember the last time he’d been with a woman. Sure as fuck couldn’t remember the last time any woman had gotten him so worked up with raw desire that he couldn’t maintain his take-it-or-leave-it coolness, couldn’t pull off that devil-may-care swagger. Maybe it was the guilty realization that he’d scared this sweetheart with that carjacking attempt that was breaking through his player-cool frame? Had he really scared her that bad?
Of course you scared her, you dumb shit, Jack told himself as he rubbed the back of his neck and shifted uncomfortably in the seat. And you probably disgusted her too, with all those lewd comments and calling her honey and sweetheart and baby like you know her, like she’s yours.
Maybe she is yours, came the silent whisper from somewhere inside Jack’s tensed-up body. Maybe Indy and Ice were right. Maybe you’re next. Maybe she’s—
“I’m going where you told me to go,” came her voice now, reminding Jack that he’d asked her where she was going. “The exit where your bike’s parked.”
Jack blinked himself back from that strangely intense space where his hammering heart and his throbbing cock seemed to want the same thing—which was damn unusual for him. Usually his heart stayed out of the discussion when it came to Jack and women. It had always been simpler that way.
“No,” he said far too loudly because of the blood pounding in his ears. “I mean where are you going after dropping me off. You said you needed to take I-95 anyway.”
“Oh,” she said, curling a strand of hair around her ear, glancing at him, then blinking quickly and looking at the road again. “Philadelphia. Headed to a wedding.”
“Yours?” Jack grinned.
She rolled her eyes, chuckled once. “My best friend Nina.”
Jack glanced towards the backseat, where there was a blue dress covered in drycleaner’s plastic hanging from the coat-hook by the window. He frowned, raised his right eyebrow in her direction. “That doesn’t look like a bridesmaid’s dress. Aren’t you the Maid of Honor? She’s your best friend, right? You aren’t in the wedding?”
The woman shook her head, scratched her cheek, then sighed. “It’s complicated. Too complicated to explain. Besides, your exit is coming up next. Tell me which way to turn after the ramp.”
Jack blinked twice, then nodded and glanced down at his phone. “Take a left. It’s a couple of blocks down the main road. Strip mall.”