Page 17 of Jacking Jill

Jack shrugged at the receptionist, let out an exaggerated sigh, snatched up the shopping bag of clothes he’d picked up from a Burlington Coat Factory on the way, then bounded towards the elevator and grabbed the doors before they closed on him.

“Are we having our first fight?” he said with a grin as he got into the elevator with Jill and the doors slid shut and the elevator jolted to a start. “Shit, does that mean I really have to sleep on that folding bed? Those things aren’t built in my size.”

“Well, your ego is most certainly built in your size,” Jill muttered while staring at the dull brushed-steel elevator doors. “Extra-large.”

Jack chuckled, took a breath, then sighed. “All right, look, I made an executive decision to nix the room-swap. Don’t want to attract too much attention, stand out in any way. And we’d definitely stand out by getting into a discussion about swapping rooms because we don’t want to share a bed. We’re supposed to be a couple, Jill. Besides, that woman wouldn’t have agreed to switching rooms anyway.”

“How do you know she wouldn’t have agreed?” Jill turned to him, her eyes open wide, mouth open wider. “Oh, right, I forgot. You’re an expert in the female psyche. My bad.”

Jack groaned as the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors slid open. He placed his palm on the sensor to hold the doors while Jill rolled her suitcase out into the carpeted corridor. He strolled down the empty hallway behind Jill, letting his gaze fall on her behind, doing it so unconsciously that he didn’t realize he’d been staring at her gorgeously round ass moving beneath her long wool sweater until his gloriously big cock moved beneath the crotch of his suddenly-tight button-fly jeans.

Jack lengthened his stride as Jill got to their room. She slid the keycard into the door, then pushed the door open and stormed inside, letting the door swing shut on Jack like she was trying to make a point. He slammed his palm flat against the door before it closed, pushing it open with more force than he’d intended.

The door flew open all the way, jamming the rubber stopper against the inside wall with a thud that reminded Jack of those two silenced bullets hitting that poor gas station attendant thud-thud.

“Sorry,” Jack said, closing the door softly when he saw Jill jump from the sound of the impact.

Jill glanced at the closed door, which was steel-reinforced fire-proof metal that would probably stop a bullet—perfect for a mafia-frequented hotel. Then she glanced at the bed, turning her face away from Jack, perhaps to hide the flash of panic that streaked across her cheeks.

“Hey, listen,” Jack said gently when he remembered that this woman was at the tail end of what had to have been the wildest day of her entire life. Sometimes it was easy to forget that most civilians would go their whole lives without seeing a dead body that had just been shot and was still bleeding. And then Jack had scared her half to death with the attempted carjacking. Oh, right, and on top of all that he’d thrown in that macho swagger, made all those jokes about sharing a bed when it was absolutely fucking inappropriate to push it that far with a woman who must still be reeling in shock.

Shock not just from the day’s events.

But from the day’s decisions.

One of which Jill had to be rethinking right now.

And one which maybe Jack should also be rethinking, shouldn’t he?

Now suddenly Jack felt himself reeling in shock. Not from the action or its aftermath, but from the sickening realization that he’d fallen into a trap some of the recently-hitched Darkwater guys—Hogan and Fox in particular—had warned him about.

“This thing with the names is a mindfuck,” Hogan had warned Jack the night of Ice and Indy’s wedding reception at the Wagner house in Upstate New York, after most of the guests were gone and it was just the Darkwater crew. The other guys were inside the house messing with Ice, who was trying to kick them out so he could take his new bride to their wedding suite on the third floor. Jack had found himself out on the back porch, cornered by Hogan and Fox, who’d been part of the not-so-joking teasing that had gone down earlier that night about Jack being next. “The name thing is hard to comprehend even for the Darkwater guys like us who’ve been hitched,” Hogan had said. “At times it feels meaningful and symbolic. But other times you simply can’t take it seriously, can’t accept that it’s anything more than coincidence with a bit of nudging from Benson’s psychological compulsion to recruit guys in alphabetical order.”

“But whatever you believe—and trust me, brother, you will go back and forth between belief and disbelief—it’s a hell of a mindfuck,” Fox had added with enough seriousness that Jack knew this wasn’t just more ribbing. “Because now you’ve got the letter J stuck in your mind, and so your subconscious will begin looking for women with J names. It’s like that psychological experiment where they tell people to count the red cars on the highway, and suddenly it seems like there are way more red cars than you’ve ever noticed—that every second car is now red!”

“And then suddenly you’re trapped in that mental limbo.” Hogan had rubbed his clean-shaved jaw, taken a long swig from his beer bottle, swallowing and then shaking his head. “Where you wonder if you’re playing a mind-trick on yourself or if there really is something to Benson’s fate-and-destiny stuff.”

“Well, I’m not worried,” Jack had replied with far more cool confidence than he felt right now looking at that queen-sized bed which felt surreally symbolic, mesmerizingly meaningful. “I’ve already worked my way through the entire alphabet forwards and backwards in my hound-dog life. Which means Benson’s streak is already broken. Otherwise I’d be married to a Jessica or Jennifer or Josie or Jane by now. And I’ve never even come close, boys. No way this big swinging dick is ever going to be satisfied with one pussy forever. I’m just not wired that way.”

Though maybe I’m being rewired, Jack thought as he stared dumbly at the big empty bed covered in a blue-green flowery bedspread that made his head spin. Rewired just from being around this woman, just from being close to her. If it’s a trick, it’s not just a mind trick.

Because I feel it in my body in a way I never have with a woman.

Hell, it’s not just a body trick either, Jack thought. It’s an everything trick, like everything changed the moment I took that exit off the highway and chose to leave my bike there to take a piss.

Is this how fate stacks the deck?

Is this how destiny deals the cards?

But how the hell do I play this hand?

Do I fold my cards or go all-in?

Jack rubbed his eyes, tried to shake off the strangely overwhelming sense of being dragged into something, pulled by something irresistible and immense, something vast and powerful. A tidal wave, a spinning whirlpool, a . . . a vortex? Hell, what the hell did that even mean? Had being around Benson and the Darkwater guys already brainwashed him?

Maybe, Jack thought. And if so, what’s the right move to get un-brainwashed? Do I walk away right now? Hell, maybe I do walk away.

Except Jack couldn’t walk away. Not just because of the Darkwater mission and Diego Vargas and that mystery contact. But also because Jill had her own mission, and she was going to need his protection whether she understood it or not, wanted it or not. Which meant that it no longer mattered if Jack was thinking himself into a trap because of Jill’s name.

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