Broken Records by Bree Bennett
Chapter 25
Lucy tasted like vanilla and frosting, sweet and sugary and addicting, and it was ruining all of Jack’s plans.
He pressed his mouth to hers, hard and intent, dancing and exploring, his teeth grazing her bottom lip. She made a small noise—one might call it a yummy noise—and slipped her hands around his neck. When she entangled her fingers in his curls, lightning shot down his spine, and he groaned and broke away.
“This isn’t—” he began, and then took her mouth again, because why the hell not? He walked her backward until her back grazed the counter, and she let out a little “Oh!” at the contact, a squeak of surprise that somehow made him crazier.
“This isn’t—” he tried again, speaking between kisses because that was more efficient. “This isn’t—” a kiss just below the ridge of her lip “—how this—” another to the slant of her cheekbones “—was supposed to—Christ, I love your nose—” a nuzzle of the feverish skin below her ear “—supposed to go.”
Her eyes flew open. “What are you talking about?” And Jack was going to answer, he really was, but instead, he kissed her again. Her elbows shook against the counter in a feeble attempt at support, so he scooped his hands under her glorious ass and lifted her onto the surface.
“Okay, knock it off for a second.” She slid back onto her feet and ducked under his arm, grabbing the wooden spoon from the table and aiming it at him.
“Are you holding me at spoon point?” he asked. She nodded, jutting the spoon out like a javelin. He took a careful step forward, and green frosting splattered onto his black T-shirt. He looked down at his shirt, swiping at the icing and tasting it in thoughtful appraisal.
“Vanilla?” he asked. She dipped her chin, and he hummed in approval. She poked him with the spoon again and he raised his hands in surrender, taking a seat at the table. Lucy sat on the opposite side, her cheeks flushed and her mouth post-kiss pink.
“What do you mean, ‘this isn’t how it was supposed to go’?” she prodded.
Jack rubbed at his jaw, surveyed the bowls of colored frosting, and dipped his finger into the purple batch.
Lucy smacked his hand with the spoon. “It took me twenty minutes to get that color.”
He sucked the violet icing from his finger. “I was going to tell you tonight that I’m done with all this. I can’t do it anymore. This pretending shit. Public pretending is bad enough, but this pretending we’re doing in private, it’s killing me.” He flicked his eyes to hers. “I was going to tell you that I’m done with contracts and planned public poses and separate bedrooms and just all of it.”
Lucy’s eyes had a faint, sorrowful look and he held up a finger. “But then I get home, to this house that I’ve always hated, and there you are. There you are.” The corner of his mouth tipped up just slightly. “Making cookies and dancing around my kitchen—our kitchen—getting frosting everywhere and wearing the ugliest apron I’ve ever seen—”
She squawked. “Hey now!”
Jack raised a finger again. “I was going to do this one thing right. I was going to come home and woo you. Woo the hell out of you. And now that I’m here, I can tell you that that is absolutely not going to happen.”
“Why not?” she whispered.
“Because I am about ten seconds away from throwing you back up on the counter and fucking you until neither of us ever thinks about pretending again.”
Lucy blinked. And blinked again. Jack used the opportunity to steal more purple frosting. He raised an arrogant, challenging eyebrow at her, but his stomach contorted with nerves.
Lucy stood, and walked to his chair on newborn foal legs. Every step sent electric spikes into Jack’s chest, piercing and exhilarating at the same time. He held out a trembling hand to her and—
“Prince played the Super Bowl once.”
Jack paused mid-reach, inhaled sharply, and then straightened, letting his arm fall. “All right. Let’s see where this one goes.”
A smile played around her lips. “It was Prince, so you knew it was going to be amazing. But then the show starts, and it’s raining. Pouring. It had never rained during halftime at the Super Bowl, not once, and for Prince, the entire heavens opened up, and he didn’t even flinch.”
Jack was a little confused, which was normal. But he was also mesmerized, shocks of awareness stirring and boiling his blood into a frenzy, and they weren’t even touching yet.
“And at the end, fireworks shoot into the sky, and he breaks into ‘Purple Rain,’ right there in the rain, and my God. You could feel the electricity from your head to your toes, and you just knew you were witnessing something you were so goddamned lucky to see. Everything good or bad, right and wrong, aligned in one perfect performance. One perfect moment.”
She gazed at Jack, her eyes flickering across his face, searching. “We may not have picked each other the conventional way, but we did pick each other, and every time I look at you…it’s Prince at the Super Bowl. Everything aligning in one perfect moment.”
She reached out to sweep a curl off his brow, and his hand caught hers, tugging her into his lap. This time, the kiss was tender, each brush of his lips questioning her, pleading with her, promising her.
When he broke away again, he pressed his forehead to hers, his hands cupping her jaw and his thumbs caressing her cheeks. “I can’t tell you how all this will play out. I can’t make it easy and organized and predictable, the way you like it. But I can promise you that if I have to go through one more day and you’re not actually mine, not actually real, I’ll lose my damn mind.”
Lucy nodded, just once, but it was everything he needed. He shuddered with relief and held her close, smoothing her hair with his hand. She kissed his forehead, then moved down his cheekbones and across his jaw. Jack let her explore, staying perfectly still, his eyes closed, his head tilted back, his lips parted and breathless. He shivered when she finally nipped at his bottom lip, and Lucy smiled against his mouth. Then she kissed him, deep and hard, her tongue flitting and thrusting inside, and Jack was done with being still.
With a savage growl, he angled his head, driving the kiss deeper, plundering her mouth. His hips rolled upwards, eliciting tandem needy moans. He gripped her ass and lifted her, pinning her against him as he stood. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he gasped against her lips.
The distance from the kitchen to her bedroom was the longest of Jack’s life. There was a brief moment where he thought about giving up halfway and just rutting her right there on the stairs like a buck in heat. Twice, he crushed her against the wall long enough to free his hands for cupping and caressing, squeezing, and savoring. Finally, after kiss-fueled stumbles and gasp-filled gropes and one severely stubbed toe that would hurt like a bitch in the morning, they made it.
Jack laid her down on the bed, her dark hair falling across the blankets like a spilled bolt of silk. Her crimson cheeks, swollen lips, and glazed, expectant eyes were so much better than any lonely cold shower or late-night fantasy, though there had been many of those lately.
He settled on top of her, his hands shaking. “Anything special I gotta do?” he asked.
She tipped her head, studying him, and then ran her thumb against his stubbled jaw. “Whale songs,” she whispered with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Jack dropped his forehead to her collarbone, muffling his laughter against the fabric of her— wait, why was there still fabric anywhere in the vicinity?
An awkward, frenzied tussle followed, with clothing flying across the room like flags of surrender. Two pairs of pants. A cheap snowman-print apron. One standard black T-shirt stained with green frosting, and one band T-shirt that was most definitely not a Jack Hunter shirt. Boxers, a bra, one inexplicable sock, and a pair of panties, and then they were exposed to each other at last.
And Jack simply touched.
He touched the sparse freckles on her nose and followed them with his finger down her neck like a treasure map. He trailed a hand over the small curve of her breast, admiring the way his faintly food-dyed green and purple fingers danced over her smooth flesh like broken crayons on creamy parchment. He strummed the gentle bend of her waist and brushed the sloping arc of her pelvic bone. And then his finger dipped lower, into welcome wetness that led to writhing legs and arched hips and an inherent need to repeat the journey all over again with lips instead of hands.
There was the clack of a side drawer and the ripping of foil, one more kiss against the pulsing point at Lucy’s neck, and he settled into the welcome cradle of her thighs.
And then, despite a sordid history filled with debauched forays into bedrooms and exotic hotels and that one memorable shed in Iowa, Jack Vincent freaked the fuck out.
Every muscle froze, panic racing through his limbs like a spooked stallion. Lucy’s eyes widened immediately, and she reached a hand to brush his damp hair back, smoothing it behind his ear in a soothing rhythm.
“This doesn’t change anything,” he stammered out, his voice hoarse. Her brow wrinkled, but she continued running her fingers through his hair, gentle and calming. “I mean—it changes everything, but it changes nothing, right?” His voice lowered. “Right?”
Lucy wriggled a little until she could thread their hands together, and then she craned her neck upwards and brushed her lips against the tip of his nose. It was silly and spontaneous and somehow exactly the reassurance he needed.
Jack thrust inside, gasping as his mind disintegrated into simple one-word thoughts like tight and wet and necessary. Lucy’s eyes fluttered and she rocked upward, wrapping her legs around his back until their hips were flush.
“You feel…” Jack shook his head, at a loss for coherent words.
“I know.” Lucy nodded, and her eyes glistened. “You too.”
And then Jack moved again, and Lucy moaned, and it was everything. It was Prince at the Super Bowl and it was Neil Diamond’s teasing synth chords. It was Bowie howling and Elvis crooning and Diana wailing. It was wilted flowers on black and white tiles, and whispered assurances in the dark of the night, and a gentle hand on a warm forehead. It was cocoa and lavender, and it was a single stuttered sentence in the middle of a record store. And above all, it was something a whole lot like love.
And afterward, when legs gave out and heartbeats slowed and breathing evolved from jagged pants to satisfied exhales, Jack tucked her to his side, tracing her back with a lazy finger.
“Still real?” he whispered into her ear, brushing aside her bed-tangled tendrils.
“Still real,” she said, sliding her hand into his, her lost butterfly fingers dancing against his palm.
Pinky, ring, middle, index. Repeat.