Page 177 of My Five Daddies

“Does this mean that the truce is permanent?” heasks.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I say, pushing himaway.

He laughs and stumbles back toward the door. “Don’t be mad, Tara girl. I’m just giving you what youwant.”

“Asshole,” I say with a smile. “Go away and let me do myjob.”

“Fine. But I’ll be thinking about thatkiss.”

“I bet youwill.”

“In my shower. Right now.” He grins and winks atme.

I groan. “You’re so crude. And still making jokes like a high schoolboy.”

“I’ll never outgrow a good jerkoff joke.” He waves and leaves the room, and I can’t help butlaugh.

I feel like I’m floating, but I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking. I can’t trust Jackson, not at all, and I still think there might be something between him and Holly. I don’t want to just be some idiot he uses and abuses again. I don’t want to let him back into my life just to have him destroy me all overagain.

I don’t think he understands what he did to me when he left. I was torn to pieces, totally devastated. I basically didn’t speak for a week, and did nothing but cry into my pillow every waking minute. The pain was something I’ve never experienced before and I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it, notcompletely.

Kissing him and letting him back into my life is just begging for that kind of pain again. But god, it’s also begging for a pleasure I haven’t felt in solong.

It was a good kiss, a damn good kiss, but I don’t know how far it can go. If I let him, he’ll take even more from me, and I’m not sure I can get any of it backagain.

But I want to feel that pleasure. I want to feel even more pleasure. I want him and badly, and I don’t know what todo.

11

Jackson

It was exactlywhat I thought it would be. No, actually, it was so much fuckingbetter.

It was like coming home. But it was like coming home to find that your house had grown up and gotten a fantastic fucking pair oftits.

Okay, maybe that metaphor’s pretty fucked and mixed to hell but whatever. Kissing Tara was better than I expected, and I had some highexpectations.

I’ve been thinking about seeing her again and finally kissing her one more time for years. There were some dark points overseas where the thought of holding Tara in my arms one more time kept me fucking going. I thought about her over and over again, used the memories I had of the two of us to keep me going. She’ll probably never really know how much she saved my life. There’s no way she could understand, even if I tried toexplain.

I’m understandably distracted an hour after I finally got to kiss the woman I’ve been dreaming about for so long when my agent callsme.

“You got dinner plans,” Mickey says tome.

“I do?” I ask him, just getting into myapartment.

“Yeah, you fuckin’ do, so get dressed. There’s a car coming in anhour.”

I smile to myself. Normally this would annoy me. I hate when Mickey forces me into these last minute fucking glad-handing networking bullshit dinners, but whatever. I’m in a good moodtoday.

“All right,” I say tohim.

He pauses. “That’s it? Just allright?”

“Yeah,” I say. “What, you want me toargue?”

“Hell no. The producer of your film wants a meeting with you, so you better be on your bestbehavior.”

That gets my attention. “Any specificreason?”

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