Make You Mine by K.T. Quinn

16

Charlotte

He came to me in my dream again, just as he had before.

The door opened and he grinned at me. He was already shirtless this time, the muscles of his torso beautiful in the moonlight. The numbers tattooed on his arm seemed to dance as he stepped inside.

“You’re not here for your jacket,” I said, biting my lip. Waiting for what I knew would happen next.

Jayce led me to the bed, and my pants came off with ease. I moaned into the sheets as he went down on me, eating me out with lusty fervor. Like he’d been starving for me all day, and now that he’d given in he couldn’t get enough.

“I think you’re ready for something real,” he said as he stood, unzipping his pants. “I’m going to make you mine, Peaches.”

His cock slid out of his jeans, long and hard and glistening at the tip. I shuddered at the sight of it, and reached forward to take it in my hand, to feel the heat of it between my fingers, but Jayce snatched my hand from the air and grinned like he’d won the game.

“Don’t touch,” he said in that hint of a Georgia drawl. “Only feel.”

He spread my legs and thrust forward, burying every inch of himself into my wet heat. My ache of desire turned into an ache of contact as he widened my walls, filling me from base to tip.

“That’s fucking good,” he moaned in the darkness. “You’re better than I dreamed, Peaches.”

So are you, I wanted to say. But this was a dream, so he was exactly how he felt.

I ran my fingers over his skin, tracing the lines of his tattoos. Outlining the orchids on his arm and the numbers by the bicep, 3194, and then the other numbers, 8233. All the while Jayce fixed his gaze on me while gyrating into me.

“I’m gonna give it to you all night,” he said, moving slowly back and forth. “Slow and fucking steady.”

“Yes…” I breathed.

“By the time I’m done with you, you’re gonna be begging me to come.”

“Yes,” I whispered again, surrendering to the way he made me feel. Surrendering to his gorgeous body. “Yes, Jayce. Yes!”

He reached a hand down and rubbed at my clit, filling me with a powerful new ecstasy as I arched my back to take more of him…

*

My phone alarm yanked me out of the dream.

“No,” I moaned, slapping at it on the table. “No!”

I was so close. It was still there, I could feel it. I could still feel him. I slid a hand into my panties, which were practically soaked from my dream. I rubbed myself and imagined Jayce there in bed, pressing his hard length between my legs, filling me with every inch…

I rolled over and pretended he was taking me from behind. “Jayce,” I moaned into the pillow as my imaginary man made love to me, fingers digging into my hips. “Jayce, yes, right there, yes…”

I shuddered with release, gasping into the pillow as everything went white and intense and perfect.

As I pulled myself out of bed and showered, it felt strange to have had the dream after yesterday. Jayce had shown me who he really was: a jerk. I shouldn’t be thinking of him as anything other than that.

Then why did that feel so good?

I felt satisfied in that deep, exhausting way that came after really good sex. And it had to do with imagining Jayce’s chiseled body next to me, on top of me, behind me. And yet I wanted more. I wanted to chat with him during our work, flirt with him, make him smile at me.

But as I walked to work in the overcast morning, I realized I was still mad at him. Which was almost a relief, because I should be mad at him after what he’d called me. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him, but I did know I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. To let him know what he’d done wasn’t okay, even if he somehow thought he was protecting me from Sid.

And if some of that was my anger at Scott spilling over, then so be it.

I was planning on stopping in the diner for coffee, but Jayce’s truck was already waiting in the community center parking lot. And on the other side of it, seated on a bench, was Jayce himself. He held up two cups of coffee, and grimaced when he saw me.

“Can we forget yesterday happened?” he said, handing me a paper cup.

My anger and prepared speech disappeared. “How’s your arm?”

He flexed his joint. “Got a bruise that’s darker than my ink, but I’ll be all right.”

I took a sip of the coffee. “There’s a lot of cream and sugar in this.”

He gave me a small smile. “One might say it’s practically hot chocolate.”

“Just how I like it.”

Jayce drove us to a different part of town today, farther from the interstate and with a lot more natural trees. We came to a piece of land like a plantation, with a well-constructed farmhouse in the distance surrounded by a perfectly manicured lawn and a driveway flanked by tall oak trees. It was out of place compared with everything else in this town, except for the outer fence along the road, which was dilapidated and rotten.

Jayce parked the truck next to the road where the driveway began, right on the edge of the property. A pile of new lumber was stacked on the side. “We’re on fence-mending duty,” he announced as he hopped out of the truck.

I frowned at the fence. “What’s the point of keeping that house and lawn so nice if you’re just going to let the perimeter fence go to crap?”

Jayce smirked over at me. “Why pay someone to fix it when you can wait and eventually have it done for free? Even the rich folks in this town are stingy, Peaches.”

The vertical fence posts were still in good condition, Jayce determined after a quick check. It was just the horizontal posts that were broken and rotten. Jayce used a hammer to tear off an old plank, then carried the new one over from the pile by himself. It was about ten feet long, thick and heavy, but he bore the weight with ease.

I held up one end of the wood to the fence while Jayce held the other. He nailed his side into the vertical post, then came over and did the same to mine. He swung the hammer with all the skill of a craftsman, each nail only requiring three smooth blows before it was buried in the wood.

After the first few sections, Jayce and I loaded up the bed of his truck with wood and drove along the fence so we wouldn’t need to keep walking all the way back to the pile. The work was easy but exhausting; even just holding up the planks while Jayce did all the work left my arms drained and noodly.

“Saw you ride by the diner last night,” I said after a while. “On your bike.”

“Huh,” he grunted.

“Where were you going?”

“Nowhere,” he said a little too quickly. “Just out for a ride. It helps me think.”

I studied him for a few moments. I’d hit on something. “You sure? You drove down a little road going off into the middle of nowhere, and came back a minute later.”

His hammer stroke missed the nail head, catching it on the side and bending the nail at a 90 degree angle. “It was a good place to turn around,” he said, flipping the hammer to wedge the bent nail out of the wood.

He was definitely hiding something, but I didn’t think pushing it would make him talk. “I saw Sid and his boys last night, too. They were riding with a cement mixer. Can you believe that?”

“That’s strange,” Jayce said, though by his tone it wasn’t strange at all.

“What was that all about?”

He shook his head, turned his blue eyes on me, and then shook his head again. “Something you shouldn’t stick your nose into, Peaches.”

“I bet they steal construction equipment,” I mused out loud. “I have no idea how much one of those things costs but it has to be more than a normal car. A hundred grand, or maybe even two. Worth stealing.”

Jayce snorted.

“Am I close?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You were totally in a gang of cement-mixer-stealing bikers, weren’t you?” I joked as we moved to the next post. “No construction site is safe from the Copperheads! Oooo!” I made my two fingers into snake fangs and swiped at the air menacingly.

Jayce didn’t think it was much of a joke. “I said don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, come on. That was funny.”

Jayce smirked and looked like he was about to tease me back, but then a car came down the driveway from the plantation house. It kicked up dirt as it went before turning down the main road toward us, approaching slowly. It was a shiny Cadillac, white with gold trim. Something even a seventies pimp would say was gaudy. It pulled up next to us and the window rolled down.

“Beautiful mornin’ under God’s blue sky!” Judge Benjamin declared.

Of course it’s his place.

I glanced at the clouds. “Not much blue today.”

He gave me a huge smile that bordered on mocking. “Oh, it’s up there. You just have to look on the bright side, honey. Don’t be so negative.” He glanced at Jayce and gave a nod. “Y’all are doin’ a good job.”

“Thanks,” Jayce said curtly.

The judge was wearing casual clothes again, and his fishing gear was in the back seat of the Cadillac. I bit back a sarcastic comment.

“How many more hours you got?” he asked Jayce. “Nearly done, eh boy?”

Rage fought its way onto Jayce’s face, and he pushed it down with visible effort. “Too many hours left.”

The judge glanced at me.

“About a hundred,” I said.

The judge whistled as if he weren’t the one who handed down that sentence. “That’s a long time to be working outdoors, but it’ll leave you with a more humble outlook on life. By the time you leave Eastland, you’ll be thanking me.”

I doubt it, I thought behind my patronizing smile.

The judge pointed at the fence. “Make sure y’all haul away the old wood. Don’t want to have to file a complaint with Mindy if the job’s not done right. Wouldn’t be very fair. You two have a pleasant day, now.”

He rolled up the window and drove away.

“Prick,” Jayce muttered.