Page 8 of Heavy Hitter

JIMMY LETS OUT A QUIET OOF AS HE CATCHES HER WEIGHT, STUMBLING backward into the tiny bathroom and kicking the door shut behind them. Lacey fists her hands in his hair. She’s an entirely different kind of kisser than he would have thought, nipping at his bottom lip and sliding her clever tongue into his mouth, her strong arms muscled tight around his neck. She tastes like cranberries and lime.

“Okay, hang on, hang on,” she gasps at last, wriggling until he sets her down on the tile. “Didn’t you literally just say your back is messed up? I’m going to hurt you.”

“You’re definitely not,” he tells her calmly, grinning against her brightly painted mouth. “Anyway, fuck my back. I’m retiring.”

“You’re retiring,” Lacey agrees solemnly, and kisses him again.

Jimmy works his knee between her thighs as he presses her up against the door, taking quick stock of his surroundings. The bathroom is a single-shooter, decently clean, with a tiny votive candle flickering on the edge of the sink next to the EMPLOYEES MUST WASH sign; still, it is very much a public toilet, and even if she is the one who picked the venue, he’s definitely not about to consummate this thing in the john of a drinking establishment so pathologically nondescript it might as well be called Bar.

Not that he thinks they’re going to consummate—

At least, he’s definitely not expecting—

Jimmy growls, a sharp zip of pain at the crook of his neck startling him out of his head. “Did you just bite me?” he asks incredulously.

“Um,” she says, lifting her head and looking at him a little sheepishly. Fuck, but she’s a beautiful girl. Jimmy knew that, obviously, but there’s something different about noticing it in the specific and not the generic way he knows most famous women are beautiful. Her mouth is a little too wide for her face. “No?”

Jimmy grins. “Lacey Logan,” he mutters—biting her back, just gently, all along the elegant cliff of her jaw. “Who fuckin’ knew.”

It goes on like that for a while, Jimmy cupping her ass and Lacey hitching a leg up like she’s trying to climb him, her fingertips sliding down into the collar of his undershirt. Jimmy palms a breast through her dress. He wants to do more than that, wants to peel down the cups of her bra and lick her nipples, wants to see her, but the dress is expensive and tight, the fabric thick and a little bit shiny with no give to it at all. Jimmy doesn’t know who designed this dress, but they can go screw themselves, truly. It’s got, like, three layers and a corset. It sucks. “What the fuck,” he mutters finally, still fumbling for a zipper and not finding one. Lacey throws her head back and laughs.

“Shh,” he chides quietly, giving up and dropping to his knees on the extremely questionable tile. Lacey’s eyes go gratifyingly wide.

“I’m wearing Spanx right now,” she warns him. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re planning to—but—”

Jimmy nods seriously. “Please believe me when I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I do not give a shit,” he promises, and slides the palms of his hands up her thighs.

In the end he does actually give a little bit of a shit, but only because the thing is also so difficult to get off, the high waist of it covering her stomach and rib cage. Jimmy peels it carefully down her body, rucking up her skirt and rubbing his face against the lower part of her belly. She smells private, like baby powder and a little bit like sweat. “Isn’t that so fucking uncomfortable?” he asks, using his index finger to trace the angry red line the seam of it left against her hip.

Lacey peers down at him, fixing him with an arch expression. “Actually, I love it,” she deadpans pleasantly. “I sleep in it now.”

Jimmy winces. “Point taken.” He ducks his head, then hesitates at the last possible second, glancing back up at her in the dim light of the bathroom. “Is this—?” he asks. It feels important to get affirmative consent. “I mean, do you want me to—?”

“Yes,” she hisses. “Of course I—I followed you to the bathroom, James.” She makes a face. “Do people call you that, even?”

Jimmy shakes his head. “No,” he says with a smile. “Nobody.”

“I’m going to,” she decides.

“Uh-huh,” he mutters, grabbing one smooth knee and slinging it over his shoulder, reaching up to cup her with one hand. “You can do whatever you want.”

Lacey grins again, that same luminous smile that momentarily undid him when they were sitting out there at the bar. “I know.”

It’s the quietest sex he’s ever had. Lacey hums softly, gripping the edge of the sink and tilting her hips against him, letting out the occasional sigh. Jimmy shifts his weight on the tile, trying to ignore the sharp twinge in his knees. He has no idea if it isn’t working for her or she’s like this all the time or she’s going over her tour choreography, but at the very least he wants to make sure he has her undivided attention, so he slides two fingers inside her and curls them, pressing with the heel of his hand.

Lacey almost kicks his face clean off. “Oh,” she gasps, her shocked gaze finding his in the half dark. “Oh my god.”

Well, thank fuck. “There you are,” he says, trying not to sound too openly relieved. “Hi.”

“You told me to be quiet!”

Jimmy grins into the crease of her thigh. “So be quiet.”

“So don’t do everything you can possibly think of to make me—” Lacey starts, but then he twists his fingers one more time and all of a sudden she’s arching sharply against him, her chin dropping back again to expose the long, graceful line of her throat. Jimmy hums his quiet encouragement into her skin.

“Oh my god,” she repeats a long moment later, clutching at his shoulders. Her legs are shaking a little as he sets her foot back down on the tile, unsteady in her ridiculous red shoes. “Oh my god, okay, come up here.”

Jimmy gets to his feet, trying not to wince too visibly at the way his knees are singing. Lacey stamps another kiss against his mouth. “That was—”

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