Page 38 of Coerced

“Share that with me, will you?” I asked Gigi. “I want to set it up as his contact on my phone.”

“With that romantic song you use as his ringtone? Girl, you got it bad!” she teased me and looped an arm around my waist. “I know you tease him with Lab Rat, but I think of him as Alley Cat. He’s scarred and tough and the dumbest things get his back up, but scratch him behind the ears and he’s all yours.”

I snorted, and we giggled our way back to camp.

#

Kerry

“I said I was sorry!” Jax squealed. “I didn’t know it was your first time trying to kiss her.”

“What do you mean, trying to? Iwaskissing her, moron!” I tightened my grip on his jacket and shook him.

“Iguessyou could call that a kiss.”

“Shut up!” As heat skimmed across my cheeks, I shook him harder. “Why are you the way you are?”

Even though I shoulda given him a good hiding, my heart wasn’t in it. All I could think of was ditching him so I could go find Gemma. Kissing her wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I’d worried it would be.

John suddenly popped up next to us. I’d released Jax and sunk into a low crouch before I realized it was him.

“Gigi sent me.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “She said to give him an extra cuff from her, then started to mutter about how he fried her fritters.”

I started to walk back toward the camp, and my boys fell into step with me.

“Heh.” I sneered at Jax. “You’re in trouble now. When we get back to camp, Tennessee is gonna whale on you.”

“Good!” he laughed. “I love when she does. She jiggles in all the right places.”

“Stop right there.” John held up on hand. “Some of us don’t want to be corrupted by your debauched mind.”

“Yeah, right.” Jax rolled his eyes. “You and Tara have been together for what? Nearly a year? Are you saying kissing is as far as you’ve gotten?”

“Is there some kind of timetable here that I don’t know about?” I demanded. “I almost felt like it was too soon for a simple kiss. Is Gemma expecting something I haven’t done yet? Something I don’t evenknowI’m supposed to be doing? Argh! This whole relationship stuff is harder than I thought it would be!”

I stopped walking and stared at the snow.

She doesn’t seem impatient about it, though, and she’s never asked for more. So maybe it’s okay.

“How many girls have you been with?” Jax asked and sounded serious now.

“Too many. But I never had a relationship with one. And there’s never beenanyoneI’ve felt like this about.”

“Okay, Relationship tip number… What are we up to? Twenty? Twenty-five?”

“Shut up.”

“You go at the speed you’re both comfortable with. It’s about the two of you, no one else.”

“And you should have seen her face when she came back to camp,” John chimed in. “She was radiant and her eyes were all starstruck.”

“And that was from half a kiss,” Jax threw in. “If you want an incentive to speed things up, imagine finally getting her panties off and—”

The thought bypassed my brain and went straight to my hormones. I turned and flopped face-first into a deep snowbank.

“Can younot?” I snarled into the snow as he laughed like a hyena. “And don’t disrespect her by saying stuff like that!”

“But, just to be sure, you are interested in getting her panties off at some point, right?” He stopped laughing and it sounded like he’d hunkered down beside me.

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