Page 58 of Body Check

His rugged features fracture, my name crossing his lips on an exhale, and then he yanks me up off my knees. He pulls open the driver’s side door, his energy drink falling from the roof to the cement, and ducks his big body inside.

There’s asnap!of what sounds like the glovebox closing.

A relieved, masculine sigh.

And then those arms are banded under my butt as he hikes me up into the air and rounds the front of the car. He deposits me gently on the hood, his hand circling mine until I feel something square press into my palm.

A condom.

My heart sinks at the realization that he has one in his car.

Have there been other women? Has there been anyone but me? He said there isn’t anyone in the picture before he kissed me in Chicago, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been anyone else since our breakup. I can’t blame him if there was—we’re divorced—but it feels like knives are diving into my heart at the thought alone of Jackson being with someone else.

Maybe evenmanysomeone else’s.

His smoky Texan accent pulls me out of my head. “Don’t go there,” he demands, framing my face with his hands and crushing my mouth with his before coming up for air. “No one. There’s been no one since you. Fuck if I know, but those condoms might already be expired.”

I crack a grin. “Don’t romanticize this with talk about the pull-out method.”

His brown eyes stare down at me, his mouth curving in a wicked grin. “It worked when you were eighteen.”

“You think so?” My fingers dance up his chest, over the C in Cornell, as I marvel at the sinews in his biceps, exposed by the sliced-off sleeves of his T-shirt. “I specifically remember having to put the condom on you for our first time.” I lean in. Kiss his chest, right over his heart. “You were so damn nervous, fingers all a-tremble.”

His familiar boom of laughter settles the frayed nerves of my soul, the worried edges that we’re doing something wrong here, even though the only people we’ll be hurting with this mistake are ourselves. If it is a mistake at all. I’d prefer to think of it as . . . destiny.

“Let me tell you a little secret,” Jackson murmurs against my ear, his nimble,un-trembling fingers undoing the buttons of my jeans with practiced ease. “You had me so worked up, I would have died without you touching me. Yeah, I was shaky. I had the girl of my dreams alone in her dorm room, laid out on a twin-sized bed with pictures of her grandparents and brother staring down at me from the wall.”

I gasp as he tugs my jeans and underwear down the length of my legs, leaving my butt naked on the cold hood of the car. Probably unsanitary—but nothing about this night is classy or white-poster-bed-worthy.

It’s dirty and a little wrong and so many degrees of catch-your-hair-on-fire hot.

Iloveit.

“Don’t forget the picture of my childhood dog,” I say, still clutching the condom as I lean back to stare at Jackson. His cock bobs confidently, long and thick, against the loose fabric of his T-shirt. “Rex was watching and judging the whole time.”

“Little furry bastard,” Jackson teases, his fingers now dancing along my upper thighs. “He was the worst. First and last time any of them watched us get it on.”

He’d taken the pictures down and bought me proper picture frames, which he never failed to turn facedown whenever he got me naked.

And he’d gotten me naked a hell of a lot back then.

“No one is watching us now.” My voice is huskier than normal, even to my own ears.

“No,” Jackson returns a moment later, his thumbs sliding along the crease of my hip and pelvis, “no one is here to watch us.”

Those dancing fingers of his swoop inward as he leans forward, one hand lifting to grasp the back of my neck and pull me in for a heated kiss that curls my toes. I wait for reason to burst into my brain, all sorts of yellow caution tapes and red stop signs to send my full throttle to a sudden standstill.

It never does.

My brain goes virtually empty when Jackson nips at my bottom lip, chuckling low at my needy whimper. And when he finally gives me what I need, his thumb dragging over my clit—circling so slowly with barely any pressure that I nearly go mad, a glint of naughty playfulness in his dark eyes—all rationale flees the vicinity.

I arch my back at his electric touch.

Grip his forearm in a silent demand formore, more, more.

Open my mouth and beg out loud, “Yes, there. Right there—”

The hand at my neck goes to my left leg and he pushes it wide, hiking my thigh up onto the car. “I wanna see you, sweetheart,” he growls. “Allof you.”

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