Page 90 of Sweet Like Whiskey

“Yessir,” I mutter, stepping onto the bottom rung. Once I reach the top, I ease onto the platform and wait for Jackson to join me. It’s too dark to see where to go.

After lifting himself up, he walks past me, his boots crunching over hay. There’s a click of a lock, and then moonlight floods the loft.

“Is that a door?” I ask, heading his way. Jackson is standing beside an open space. There’s nothing in front of it. No stairs to the ground or even a railing to stop someone from tumbling through.

“Mhm. Access door for the hay,” he explains. “It gets lifted up through here.”

“Long way to fall,” I note.

“Which is why it’s better not to.”

“You’re just full of it tonight, aren’t you?” I snark, chuckling when Jackson snags me around the middle. He tugs me back toward the towering piles of hay, and we go tumbling down. My laughter gets lost in my throat when Jackson’s mouth finds mine, warm and insistent. He presses into me,grinding, and my thoughts scatter. “Jack.”

He eases back, sitting upright, his weight on my hips stopping me from chasing. My breath comes out in short pants as he twists the cap off the growler.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Jackson doesn’t answer, not verbally. He pushes my jacket and shirt up, his hand warm on my skin, his thumb stroking near my navel. Slowly, he tips the growler over my stomach.

Cool whiskey cider pools in my belly button, some of it spilling out when I gasp. Even though I know exactly what’s coming, it still takes me by surprise when Jackson scoots back and runs his tongue up my happy trail, into my navel.

“Fuck,” I mutter, hips punching up.

Jackson’s grip holds me steady, his lips sucking up the liquid as I squirm.

My head plunks back against the hay as he sits up again, lifting the growler for a second time. He looks silver in the moonlight streaming through the open door, and my heart races at the sight of him, athump-thumpI have no hope of controlling.

“Christ, Jack,” I nearly rasp. “What are you doing to me?”

Jackson tips another small amount of liquid over my belly button. “Romancing you.”

Two words. Two simple words, and I know I’m gone.

With a Montana cowboy between my legs in a hayloft and whiskey pooling on my stomach, I’ve gone and fallen.

And I have no desire to get back up again.

Chapter 22

Jackson

Ash looks irresistible. Incandescent.

The pale sliver of his stomach is like a beacon in the relative darkness of the hayloft, and I drag my tongue over warm skin and muscle to the hollow in the center that tastes of fall. Of caramel apples and smoke from a woodfire.

Ash groans as I lick the alcohol from his skin.

“Fuck, Jack.”

“Mm.”

He huffs a laugh, trying to pull his legs up. I keep my weight settled over him, smoothing my hand up his stomach to reveal more skin.

“That’s… all you have to say?” he asks, his stomach rising and falling underneath my palms.

“I can think of better uses for my mouth than talking,” I point out before making my way toward his nipple with my tongue.

Ash must agree because he grabs his jacket, fumbling to get the zipper open. His motions stutter when I pull his nipple into my mouth, but then he’s moving again, tugging the jacket off his arm. He nearly elbows me in the face when he sets to work on his shirt. He gets it over his head and off the same arm, the other remaining clothed.

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