Page 49 of Look What You Made Me Do

“Which ones am I supposed to hit?” she asked as she took the stick.

The action caused his jersey to slip off her shoulder and Jake’s gaze dropped to the exposed flesh drawing attention to her braless state. Involuntarily, his gaze moved lower to where her erect nipples tented two spots.

“Don’t worry about that,” he dismissed, his voice husky as he dragged his gaze to her face. “Just go for the easiest.”

“Alrighty then.”

Choosing the closest ball – a green – she drew back the cue, botched the forward motion and missed the mark, grazing the side and barely budging the ball. “Wow.” Jake blinked. “You really are hopeless.”

Her stance was awful, her cue positioning terrible and her aim shocking. Ordinarily Jake would give someone this bad a few pointers, especially if they were an attractive woman. He’d be up there behind her, invading her space under the pretense of showing her how to hold the cue.

But he didn’t need that kind of temptation tonight.

“You want me to point out the mathematical patterns on this table or work out the probabilities of each shot? I’m your girl. You want me to sink the ball? Not so much.”

Jake chuckled. “That’s okay. I’ll just play really badly and let you win.”

Setting the butt of the cue on the ground, she shook her head. “I know this may be a revelation to a jock like you, but I actually don’t care about winning.”

He snorted. That’s what she thought.

“Yes, you do.” Jake leaned over the table, setting up a shot that even Cerberus could make. “You just need the right incentive. Like a high school?” She’d fight to the death for Deluca and they both knew it. “Red into the center pocket.”

Ella glanced at the indicated shot. A beat passed then she sighed, leaned over and smacked the white with her cue. The red bounced off the edge and ricocheted to the far side.

Jake winced. “Too hard.” He strode to the other side of the table and positioned himself to line up another ball. “Sometimes you have to go softly.” Gently Jake nudged the white to cozy up to a yellow that was sitting square with the pocket.

Lifting his eyes, he found her watching him intently and every cell in his body hummed with an electrical charge.

“Sometimes you need a slow hand,” he murmured as her blue eyes locked on his. “A gentle touch.”

For damn sure he wasn’t talking about snooker now. But Tracey Chapman was crooning about city lights and being someone and heat flushed through his system and throbbed through his groin and it suddenly felt like every moment they’d ever had together had been leading them to this one.

Breaking eye contact, she righted her cue and Jake moved the hell away as Ella came around to take the shot. But if he thought distance would help with the heat situation, he was wrong. It only intensified as she leaned across the table in his too-big jersey and it slipped from her shoulder again, the neckline gaping a little.

There was no way in hell Jake could stop his gaze from drifting south to the swell of her breasts. To that creamy rise of flesh he remembered too well.

He drew in a shaky breath as he remembered how good her breasts had felt in his hands. Remembered how good she’d tasted.

His dick, predictable as ever, joined in the walk down memory lane and he knew there was no way it was going away while she was braless beneath his eighty-seven.

As if she could read his thoughts, Ella’s eyes lifted from the ball and met his. There wasn’t any doubt that she’d caught him looking down her top. She didn’t object though, or call him out on it, she just took the shot.

Without looking at the ball. Or the table.

Just looking at him as she pushed the cue and Tracy Chapman promised things would get better.

She missed the yellow completely although it took her straightening before Jake registered it. And breathed again.

Clearing his throat, he said, “You should keep your eye on the ball when you’re shooting.”

Jake forced himself to peruse the table, to get the game back on track. The snooker game. It had been a tumultuous night. A tumultuous few weeks. It would be dumb to read too much into what was happening right now.

“Here, try this one.”

He maneuvered the white into another good position and they played on, the jukebox pumping out easy tunes as they played the longest game of Jake’s life. Between her hopeless aim and that damn jersey, he was fighting a losing battle with his temper and his libido. He talked her through the moves, giving her pointers as they went, demonstrating with his own stance, his own cue, but Ella was stubbornly uncoordinated.

Which should have made a difference to his dick, but it didn’t. He preferred sporty women, ones who enjoyed this type of recreation and could hold their own. He especially loved the ones who could whip his ass. But his erection didn’t seem to care how bad she was as long as she kept bending over, her tits flashing, her ass snuggled nicely into his old sweats.

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