Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MARY

After Jace disposes of the condom, I head into the bathroom to clean up. I thought about wrapping a sheet around my body, but the way he looks at me—as if he didn’t get enough, as if he can’t—I like it. I stare at myself in the mirror, and I don’t recognize the woman I see. My cheeks are rubbed a little raw from Jace’s beard, but that’s not the real difference. There’s a new brightness to me, as if I’m Aidan’s dinosaur lamp, lit from within.

I can practically hear Molly telling me this is what a good orgasm does for a woman. Of course, she doesn’t know my secret. Only Glenn (shudder), Nicole, and Jace know. That should be embarrassing—mortifying—but…

Well, actually, it still is, but I can’t bring myself to care the way I usually would.

I don’t know what’s happening to me.

It’s like the painting on the wall cast a spell on me, the vivid red of that streak dancing into my soul, or maybe it was Jace who did that. Because he is the one who had me Googling bra and panty sets well after sunset the other night. And he is the one who made me realize that I don’t like blank walls and beige duvet covers and phones with their factory settings retained.

He is the one who made me want to dance again, and even though I’m out of shape, it felt so good, like slipping into the skin of a different Mary, one I lost somewhere along the way.

He is the one who made me realize that the world doesn’t always have to shatter in a bad way, that it can shatter in ways that send light radiating through your being and pleasure quaking through your body, down to your very molecules, in a way that makes you feel like you are at once flying and falling.

Losing control is more pleasurable than I’d ever thought it would be.

That tattoo I wanted to trace before, when I was fantasizing about him, it’s a rope attached to an anchor, the rope twining down his arm to his abdomen. No doubt something prompted him to get it, and I long to know what. There are others too—a large dragon and a compass star. And a small purple butterfly. Is that one for his nephew, Ben? Or—the thought shudders through me—a woman?

I know what he feels like inside me, the fullness of having a man that large within me, his big hands coaxing wave after wave of pleasure from me. It’s like someone’s been playing me as a guitar for years, only Jace discovered I’m really a violin. And yet, there’s so much I don’t know about him.

So much I want to know.

My gaze lands on a container of Dinorific bath bubbles sitting on the corner of the tub, and I suddenly feel dizzy.

What the heck am I doing?

I can’t start a relationship with Jace, no matter how good he makes me feel. For one thing, he’s probably not interested. I basically threw myself at him, and while I’m pretty sure he had a good time, I have to assume that 99% of single women would willingly give him their panties. Who wouldn’t want a man like that? For another, Aidan is attached to him, and it would absolutely crush him if Jace stayed away because of me. Look what happened the other day. I can’t do that to my son. I just can’t. Not after his father abandoned him. And the practical side of me, which insists on having her say, points out that I’m not technically divorced yet. I can’t be until January. There’s propriety to think of, right?

But the thought of telling Jace that we can’t do that again, when I already know it’s all I’m going to think about in whatever snatches of free time I have…

That’s when I remember Nicole’s idea.

Fuck buddy.

I’m fairly certain I can’t bring myself to say that, but maybe we could be a special kind of friends. Two consenting adults who enjoy—

Mind-blowing sex?

I think again of the way Jace touched me as he thrust into me, doing everything in his power to make sure that I came again , and a strange sound bursts from me.

“Mary?” he calls. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes! I’ll be right there,” I say, my cheeks going pink before my eyes.

Taking a deep breath, I leave the bathroom. I’m not sure what I expected, but he’s still in bed, the sheet only partially covering him. The sight of him makes that breath I sucked in come whooshing out, because he’s such a man, his hair mussed, his body hard and sculpted, his big manhood semihard. Such a man. There’s just no other way of saying it. And he’s in my bed.

I’m halfway there before I remember that I’m naked too. I start to lift my hands to cover my chest when he gives a slight shake of his head.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he says. “You’re beautiful.”

“So are you,” I say honestly, before I can think better of it.

Feeling tentative, I lower onto the bed next to him. As if he can sense my hesitation, he doesn’t touch me. He just stays close, looking at me with those warm blue eyes like the sea in summer. Making me feel a strange longing for him, even though he’s right next to me.

“I’m not so sure I don’t have anything to be ashamed of.” I play with the edge of the beige duvet cover. Which I may very well burn after the green one arrives tomorrow.

I’ll bet Nicole would dance around the fire with me.

“Why’s that?” he asks, bringing me back into the moment.

“You know. Because I’d never…” Even now, even after what we’ve done, it’s hard to get the words out.

He reaches over and lifts my chin. I look into his eyes and am surprised by the intensity of his expression, although I’m not sure why.

“If anyone should be ashamed, it’s Glenn.”

He actually seems angry, and seeing his anger on my behalf, I can’t help it, I reach up and kiss him, savoring the firm press of his lips, the brush of his whiskers against my cheeks, and the slight nip he gives me at the end.

“He called me frigid,” I say as I pull away, not quite sure why I’m telling him that.

He actually laughs, his Adam’s apple bobbing with it.

“What’s so funny?” I ask, giving his shoulder a little shove.

“You, frigid?” he sputters. “You’re like liquid fire. Only a fool would call you frigid.” His expression turns serious. “I didn’t know you could dance like that.”

There’s a funny feeling in my chest, something I don’t quite understand.

“I haven’t in a long time. I gave it up before my parents died.” I didn’t mean to tell him that. It’s not really a friends-with-benefits conversation, which reminds me we haven’t even had a friends-with-benefits conversation.

“Why?”

“Why?” I ask, stuck in my head.

“Why’d you give it up?”

The weird thing is that I want to tell him. Maybe because I’m still so unaccustomed to being asked personal questions. Glenn never bothered to ask about my feelings or motivations, and talking about emotions—his or anyone else’s—doesn’t come naturally for Aidan. All I know is that Jace’s interest puts a knot of feeling in my throat.

“It’s stupid, really,” I say.

“I doubt that,” he says, almost in a growl, as if he’s offended on my behalf that anyone, myself included, would call me stupid.

I touch him, because I can, tracing that rope from his arm across his chest, and the slight shiver he gives emboldens me. “I loved ballet. No one knows this besides my mother, but for a brief period of time, I considered applying to dance school. It was foolish, of course, and she disapproved. Her preference was for me to pursue being a lawyer or an accountant, like her.”

“And then?”

I trace the outline of the anchor, feeling the play of his muscles, the hard press of them. Wanting him again. Wanting him in a way I hadn’t known I could want.

“I overheard my dance teacher talking to a friend. She was talking about me .”

He frowns but nods, encouraging me to continue.

“She didn’t think I had what it took to make it as a dancer. I was good but not great, and only someone great would get anywhere. Then she said—”

Why am I telling him this? He’s nearly a stranger. Except that doesn’t feel quite right. This man has known me in a way so few people have. He’s known me in a way no one has.

“What did she say, Mary?” he asks.

I take a breath, long and deep. “I’ll tell you another time, Jace. I can’t right now. I quit ballet after that. In college, I joined a dance group, but Glenn thought it was a waste of time, and then my parents died, and I…”

And that’s when he reaches for me, tucking me close to him, my head beneath his chin, his hand possessively on my hip. His semihardness pressed against me. “I understand. Losing my dad changed everything for me. All I can tell you is that I loved seeing you dance. I loved seeing your enjoyment,” he says as his hand strokes my hip. “Just like I did when I was inside you.”

Suddenly, I do feel like I’m molten inside. He’s getting hard again, something I hadn’t realized could happen so soon—does he have another condom? Please tell me he has another condom—and his words and his hands send a quiver through me.

Closing my eyes, I take calming breaths, trying to cool myself down a little. Because we still haven’t spoken about what this thing between us is. What it means.

Or rather what it can’t mean.

But that’s the last thing I want to do. Because I want to know everything about this man. I want to ask about his dad. About that car he destroyed. About the sister who won’t talk to him. Such questions, though, might lead somewhere, and we…we just can’t. Not right now anyway.

“Jace,” I say, my voice wobbly as his hand dips down to the vee between my legs. “We need to talk about this. About what we’re doing.”

“I’m listening,” he says into my ear, his breath hot against my lobe. Then he nips it slightly with his teeth, and the sensation of him pressed against me, so hot and big and manly, his hand moving over me like I’m that violin I imagined, my earlobe pinched between his teeth—that on its own is almost enough to make me come. Like I had a repressed well of pleasure building up inside me all these years, and now that it’s been tapped, it’s ready to burst like a shaken soda.

“I’m finding it hard to speak when you do that.”

He chuckles. “Are you asking me to stop?”

“No!” It comes out a little too desperate, but he doesn’t react. He just stills his hand on my hip, rubbing little circles there, the brush of his callused fingertips against my skin unbearably erotic.

“You were saying?”

“It’s just…” Suddenly I’m glad I’m facing away from him. “I think we need to keep this arrangement casual. Because of Aidan. He’s attached to you, and I don’t want to be the one to come between that. I was thinking we could maybe be…”

Fuck buddies. Fuck buddies. Fuck buddies. For a moment, I can’t remember there’s another word for it, maybe because his dick is so hard against me, his hand stroking my naked flesh, the heat of him engulfing me, and my mind is uncharacteristically silent, my body deciding it’s past time she got her turn at the wheel.

“Friends with benefits,” I finish, clearing my throat. God, my whole body must be flushed pink from need and embarrassment.

He doesn’t speak for a long moment, but his hand starts moving again, cresting my breast. Tweaking one nipple, then the other, fingers sliding down the slope of my stomach.

“I don’t want to hurt him either, Mary,” he says in my ear. “I’ll take what I can get.”

I should be relieved, but a little feeling of disappointment stings me, like I’d hoped he would argue. Which is beyond ridiculous, so I squash the bug and ask, “I’m hoping one of the things you can get is another condom.”

His laugh rumbles through him, and for a moment, a terrible moment, he lifts away from me. But then he’s back, lying behind me again, his fingers circling that spot that Glenn only found a few times but which Jace seems to have a road map to.

“I want to take you this way,” he says. “I’ll be able to touch all of you.”

“Now,” I say, my need spiraling higher as he plays with me. “I need you now.”

He withdraws for only a moment, and then he’s easing into me again—the heat and heft of him filling me, one of his hands on my breast, the other on that spot that drives me wild. The first thrust is almost enough to make me come again. His dick is…it’s a work of art. If it were socially acceptable, I’d commission Adalia to make a painting of it so I could hang it on my wall, right beside The Fortune-Teller Series #3 .

I’m surprised to feel tears in my eyes, because this feels so unimaginably good—and I just told him I only want to be his friend.

Friends have sleepovers, right? Because that’s what I found myself telling Jace when he asked me if he should leave after our second time. Actually, what happened is that he started getting dressed, and a wave of wild, irrational fear washed over me. I felt certain that if he left like that, in the night, I’d never see him again. And I grabbed his shirt from him so hard I almost ripped it.

“I like this side of you,” he said with a smirk.

I told him it was dangerous to drive so late on a Friday, because people drank and then drove, and that’s sort of true. The real reason, though, was that I wanted him with me, with a need that frightened me.

His answer was to throw the shirt on the floor. I would have folded it, but I was surprised to find I kind of liked the look of it there. Like we couldn’t be bothered to make it neat and tidy.

When I woke up before him, I actually pinched myself, because the whole thing seemed too wild to be true—the painting, my drinks with Nicole, dancing, and Jace. Just everything to do with Jace. Then I tried to sneak into the bathroom so I could put on makeup and do something about the mess of my hair, but just as I went to leave the bed, he pulled me to him, his grasp firm.

Friends do brunch too, don’t they? Because I still didn’t want him to leave this morning, and we both needed to eat, and I didn’t have anything else to do while Jace was in the bathroom washing up, and…

I started making some pancakes, and now I’m so busy mooning they’re on the verge of burning.

Jace must be finished in the bathroom because I hear footsteps behind me, and then he wraps his arms around my waist. Even though we’ve spent hours wrapped up in each other, literally, it still sends waves of wanting through me.

“Are you aware that you gave them Mickey ears,” he asks in amusement, “or were you running on autopilot?”

Autopilot. Definitely autopilot.

My default is to be embarrassed by this sort of thing, but I find myself laughing instead. Because it’s funny, and I can tell it’s not meant as a criticism. “I hope you like cartoon mice.”

“It’s not every day someone makes me breakfast,” he says, squeezing my hip. “I’m not about to critique your food design choices.”

Not every day. I’m tempted to take that as a sign that last night wasn’t his typical Friday, but it would be dangerous to believe that.

He steps away to pour himself some coffee. I watch him in my peripheral vision—I literally can’t help myself—so I see when his gaze lands on the Charlie Brown tree, just visible from the open threshold of the kitchen.

I feel a twinge of something at the memory of Aidan insisting he won’t decorate it unless Jace helps. To erase it, I blurt out, “I was seven when I figured out there was no Santa. My mom always used this special wrapping paper for our Santa presents—it was red and shiny, and she said they made it in the North Pole. But my dad forgot the rule that year, and he wrapped my birthday present in it. When did you find out about Santa?”

His smile is soft and sad, and I realize I shouldn’t have said anything. This is probably another of those personal questions you don’t get to ask when you’ve told someone you can’t be in a relationship with them. But then he says, “My mom loved Christmas. She always made a big deal of it. We’d put up our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, and for the next month, there’d be Christmas music, cookies, and wrapping presents. But when I was a little younger than Aidan, my dad sat me down in his workshop. ‘You’re becoming a man,’ he said, ‘and it’s past time you learned the truth. The only kind of workshop that exists is like this one here. The only kind of magic is the kind we make with our hands.’ He told me our family business was the best gift he could give me, better than anything a jolly man in a suit could bring.”

I gasp. “He didn’t.”

“He did,” he says with a small smile. “That was my dad, though. He meant every word. My sister was only a couple of years older, but he didn’t include her in our talk. I guess she found out from the other kids at school.”

“But you were so young! Kids need to believe in magic. They need to hang on to it for as long as they can.”

He smiles at me. “I don’t think you need to worry about Aidan just yet. He told me that he’s trying to make a time machine so he can visit the ankylosaurus in its natural habitat.”

He’s trying to deflect, to shift the topic from him, but I’m not done with what he told me. “So your dad was pushing you to join the family company when you were that young?”

He nods, his mouth a little firm in the corners. “From the day I was born.”

From what I read, he was running the family business at the time of his arrest. Does it still exist? Does he blame himself if it doesn’t? Did his father’s death have anything to do with what happened with that car? I’m about to ask him something else, but the smell of burning batter makes me flinch. I hurry to flip the two pancakes in the pan.

“Oh no!” Without thinking about it, I say, “Don’t worry, I’ll eat those.”

He walks over, glancing into the pan. A crease forms between his eyebrows. “Why would you?”

“Because there won’t be enough batter left for me to make new ones for both of us.”

“Then we’ll go out,” he says. “Or I’ll make more. There’s no reason for you to eat burnt food.”

It’s a small gesture, as such things go, but it makes me think of what Nicole said last night— you don’t need to apologize for existing, Mary. This is what I do, what I’ve always done. Ever since I started helping Mom make family dinners as a teenager I’ve taken the burnt parts, the imperfect pancakes, the food that fell apart before it made it to the plate, the smaller pieces. It was a habit that followed me into my failed marriage. Up until now, no one has ever commented on it.

Emotion clogging my throat, I extend my foot to the trash can pedal, step on it, and flip the ruined pancakes in.

“That’s my girl,” Jace says, and a thrill runs through me, from my chest to the tip of my head and the soles of my feet. “Now, let’s get you some pancakes.”

“But you only have shorts! It’s freezing outside today.”

“We’ll run from the car,” he says with a grin. “Nothing like some good morning cardio.” Then his gaze drifts to the drawers beside the stove. “Speaking of which, is it still there?”

I don’t need to ask him what he’s talking about. I just nod, my nerve endings all firing at once.

“Good.” He smirks. “We’ll check on it later.” Then he sweeps me off my feet and carries me to the hallway. I laugh in surprised delight as he sets me down beside the shoe rack.

But he’s barely gotten one of his shoes on when his phone buzzes. He takes one look at the display and immediately answers. After listening for a few moments, he swears under his breath, then says, “I’ll take care of it. Stay inside.”

He finishes tugging on his other shoe, the phone still pressed to his ear. Seconds ago, the look in his eyes was soft and fond, but now he seems hard. Closed off.

Everything in me tightens.

Has something bad happened? Is Ben in trouble, maybe? Guilt stabs me at the realization that I don’t know enough about Jace’s life to catalog the bad things that could have happened.

But I don’t have any time to feel guilty about that, because he hangs up with a gruff “goodbye” and stuffs his phone into his pocket. Reaching for my face, he cups my cheek, running his thumb over my bottom lip. “We’ll have to get pancakes another time, friend .”

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Has something happened to Ben?”

Surprise crosses his face. “No.” Then he pauses. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to my sister since two Christmases ago.” He swears again, then runs his hand through his hair. “That was my neighbor. Roger. His cat escaped, and he needs help rounding her up.”

I have a sudden image of a man as big as Jace calling for help finding a cat, but that doesn’t line up.

“Why does he need help?”

“He’s in his eighties and has Parkinson’s. I can’t let him roam the streets looking for Cleo. I don’t even know that he’d be able to pick her up if he found her.”

My heart swells. I start to put on my shoes, and he shakes his head. “Mary, you don’t have to do that. I have no idea where Cleo might have gotten off to.”

“Friends help friends,” I say, lifting an eyebrow. “Besides. I have resources you don’t.” I gesture to the photo of Maisie on the wall. “As you know, my sister runs an animal shelter, and she’s trained me well. No animal left behind. Even if it is a cat.”

Once I get the second shoe on, he helps me up, looking at me with an intensity I can’t read. He doesn’t pull his hand away as we walk toward the door, and neither do I.

I open it to a tower of Amazon boxes stacked on my stoop. Did I really order that much? I only remember the duvet cover, the phone cover, the bra and panty sets, and—oh yeah, I spent another half hour buying some Christmas presents for Aidan.

He laughs, but it’s an almost delighted sound, so different from his demeanor seconds before. “This is why Amazon is taking over the world, you know.”

But it’s not a jab, like the ones I’m used to. He’s teasing me, and I find I quite like being teased by him.