Chapter Thirteen Lacey

Chapter Thirteen

Lacey

L ACEY CRACKS ONE EYE OPEN AS J IMMY'S MOUTH FUSES OVER HER collarbone a few long, hazy minutes later, stealing a glance around his bedroom. It's nothing like she thought it would be, this house. Lacey doesn't know what she was expecting, exactly—Joanna Gaines farm decor? Black-and-white photos of baseball stadiums? Possibly she was expecting black-and-white photos of baseball stadiums, actually—but instead it's all wood floors and fireplaces and big leather couches, a place that invites a person to stay. Lacey wants to rummage around his pantry and page through his day planner. She wants to know everything about him there is to know.

For now she squeezes the back of his neck, then pulls away, sitting down on the edge of his neatly made bed and leaning back on her palms. "Take your clothes off," she instructs.

That surprises him, which was the point. "'Scuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I did." Jimmy raises an eyebrow, smirking. "Take your clothes off, how about."

"You've already seen me naked," Lacey points out. "Or partly, anyway."

"Not enough."

Lacey doesn't move. "James," she says, honestly impressed by how calm she's managing to sound right now, the way her voice isn't even shaking at all. "Take your clothes off."

Jimmy is quiet for a moment. His gaze is so, so even. "Okay."

He keeps his eyes locked on hers the whole time he's doing it: shrugging off his Henley and flicking open the clasp on his watch, sitting down in the armchair to do his sneakers and socks. He reaches back to tug his undershirt over his head like a little kid, rucking it up over the bulk of his shoulders, stands up to take off his jeans, then hooks his thumbs in the elastic of his boxer briefs and pulls those off, too.

"All right," he says, once he's naked except for a thin gold chain at his neck. "Now what?"

Lacey looks at him, at the hugeness of his body: his cock long and thick against his stomach, his muscular thighs spread just slightly apart. She wants him to fuck her until she forgets her own birthday. She wants to watch him get himself off. "You know," she says thoughtfully, "on second thought, this actually might be too much of a distraction for me. I think maybe I should head back, get a little bit of extra rehearsal time in, maybe schedule an interview or two—"

Jimmy makes a face. "Funny."

"I am funny."

"Not as funny as you think you are."

"Liar." Lacey stands up on two unsteady feet, crossing the carpet and reaching for him. She touches him for a long time, smoothing investigative palms over the warm planes of his chest and his stomach, running a finger down along the sharp cut of his hip. When she rakes her nails lightly over the high, round curve of his ass his entire body shudders, like she plugged in a hidden amp somewhere: "Duly noted," Lacey murmurs, smirking, and does it again.

Jimmy growls, then blushes, the heat creeping visibly up his chest and neck. "Yeah, yeah," he says, but he's smiling, rolling his eyes a little. He has a nice smile, Jimmy Hodges. She forgot that about him, from back in New York. When she reaches out and wraps her hand around his cock he just stands there, almost docile, his only tell the way his pulse is ticking wildly inside the soft skin of his throat.

Lacey strokes him a few times, curious: learning the weight and the curve of him, the faintly heartbreaking warmth of his skin against her palm. There's something kind of hot about it, being fully clothed and so obviously in charge here, like she's tamed some enormous animal. The quiet pleasure of bringing him to heel.

Eventually Jimmy gets bored, though, stripping her out of her jeans and top and sandals, his thick fingers surprisingly nimble as he works the tiny buckles. "This is nice," he observes, nodding at her frilly bra as he reaches back to pop the clasp open. "This for me?"

Lacey shakes her head. "My pilot," she says sweetly. "He likes a high-end undergarment."

Jimmy smirks. "You know what?" he says, scooping her into his arms and dumping her flat on her back onto the mattress. "I deserved that. I did."

"You did," Lacey agrees, stretching her arms up over her head, the tips of her fingers brushing his headboard. She's expecting him to climb up on top of her but instead he just stands there for a minute, staring at her, his plush mouth slightly open. "All right," she says finally, rolling her eyes at him. "Get on with it, will you?"

"Fuck off," Jimmy says easily—still gazing at her, one scarred knee up on the edge of the mattress. "You got to look."

Lacey squirms, but it's not like she's not enjoying herself. She's used to being looked at—hell, she's looked at more or less every second of her life—but there's something different about the way Jimmy Hodges is doing it, like he's making a game strategy in his mind for what he's about to do to her. "I guess I did." Eventually, though, it starts to feel like too much: the anticipation of it, how wound up she is after all these stops and starts. "Jimmy," she says, her voice coming out high and urgent. "Please."

Just for a second, Jimmy's eyes widen. Then he nods, climbing up onto the bed beside her and leaning over to dig around in the nightstand. "All right, princess," he says gruffly. "Hold your horses."

"You hold your —give me that," she says, holding her hand out for the condom. Then, off his faintly amused expression: "What?" she asks. "I'm modern."

Jimmy snorts. "You're something," he mutters, but he hands it over, both of them watching with interest as she rips it open and rolls it on with two shaking hands. Jimmy kisses her again once she's finished, bracketing her shoulders with both elbows and dropping down into the cradle of her hips. The weight of his body is almost enough to calm her down but the instant the tip of his cock catches she gasps so hard and so loudly Jimmy pulls back like she's kneed him directly in the nuts. "Sorry," he says, and for a second he sounds more panicked than she's ever heard him. "Fuck, sorry."

"No no no," Lacey says quickly. "Don't stop, just—" Oh god, she's like a cartoon cat riding a ceiling fan, her tail straight up in the air. "Look." She makes herself breathe. "There's just—a lot of preamble here, obviously, so I think we should probably both—you know. Adjust our expectations."

Jimmy nods seriously. "Adjust our expectations," he repeats, his eyes crinkling up just the slightest bit.

Lacey's mouth drops open. "Fuck you!" she says, shoving him gently. "Don't laugh. I'm serious."

"I'm not laughing," he says, and to be fair he doesn't actually seem to be. In fact, the expression on his face is so fond—is so intimate —she almost can't make herself breathe. "Lacey," he murmurs, ducking his head and scraping his beard gently along the valley between her breasts, "let me try to do this, okay? Before you decide it's inevitably not going to be as good as you imagined it being?"

Lacey presses her lips together. "Okay."

Jimmy swallows. "Okay," he agrees, and drops his head again, both of them watching as he notches himself inside her. Lacey pulls her legs up to make room. He takes his time about it, the rasp of his beard against her cheek and the slow, relentless way he's filling her, every single nerve ending in her body buzzing with pleasure. "You good?" he asks quietly, pulling back to check in with her, and Lacey starts to say yes but then he reaches down between them and the second his thumb finds her clit she's already coming, the orgasm bursting inside her fast and sudden as the chorus of a song.

" Oh ," she manages—crying out, grabbing at his shoulders. She doesn't even know if it feels good, necessarily, it's so unexpected. It just feels .

For a second Jimmy just stares at her in wonder. Then his whole face explodes into a grin. "How am I doing?" he asks cheerfully, once Lacey can speak again. "Just, in terms of your adjusted expecta—"

"Shut the fuck up," she says—groping for him, pulling his full weight on top of her. "It's not always—I mean, I was just—" She shakes her head. "Come here ."

"I'm here," Jimmy promises, and kisses her again.

***

" G UYS AND D OLLS! " L ACEY ANNOUNCES AN HOUR LATER, FLIPPING over onto her stomach to look at him in the dimness of the late-afternoon bedroom. "That's where it's from." She puts on her best old-timey New York accent, singing: "I got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere."

" Guys and Dolls ," Jimmy agrees, tucking one arm behind his head. They were quiet for a long time once they were finally finished; she thought maybe he'd fallen asleep. Lacey dozed, too, though she's not generally much of a napper, wrung out by the stretch and the satisfaction and how powerful it made her feel to undo him like that, to take him apart with both hands. She shivers at the memory of the sound that tore from his throat as he came deep inside her, so low and ragged and after-dark private that she already knows there's no way she's leaving this house before she gets him to make it again. "‘Fugue for Tinhorns.'"

"Are you a Broadway person?"

Jimmy chuckles. "No."

Something about the way he says it intrigues her. "Was your wife a Broadway person?"

"She..." He shrugs. "She liked musicals, yeah."

"Aha." Lacey props herself up on one elbow, pleased to have solved the mystery. She's about to ask him to say more about her— tell me about your failed marriage is a weird flex as far as post-sex conversation goes, probably, but she's curious—when her phone starts to ring in her jeans pocket. She leans over the edge of the mattress to pull it out, wincing a little when she sees her mom's name on the screen. "Hold that thought," she says, scrambling up off the bed and scooping Jimmy's undershirt from where it's puddled on the area rug, pulling it over her head as she goes.

"Hi," she says as she shuts the bathroom door behind her, sitting on the lid of the toilet seat and stretching the cotton over her bare knees, breathing in the warm smell of his skin and deodorant. "Everything okay?"

"Where are you?" her mom wants to know.

"Um." Lacey hesitates, looking out the window at Jimmy's teeming garden, the tidy rows of trees beyond the fence. It was strange and a little disconcerting when she got out of the SUV earlier, the quiet, rural seclusion of this place. There's normally at least a house manager at Lacey's: someone making the coffee and cleaning the bathrooms, someone slipping her clean underwear back into her drawers. She's so used to having help that she barely even registers the extra bodies at this point. It's the solitude that catches her off guard. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean? It's a perfectly normal question. Are you home?"

"Oh," Lacey says, getting up again and easing open the mirror above the sink, peeking inside Jimmy's medicine cabinet: painkillers mostly, plus about a thousand vitamins and supplements. Another box of condoms. A brush. "Um, yeah. Also, you know what I meant to tell you? You were totally right about the choreography for ‘Fameland.' I dropped the extra turn and it worked like a charm."

"I told you," her mom says—momentarily distracted, just like Lacey knew she would be, and they chat for another minute before she tells her mom she needs to go.

"I ordered food and it's going to be here in a second," she lies, hoping her mom won't ask what restaurant. "I'll call you later."

Back in the bedroom Jimmy is still prone on the mattress, the tiny gold pendant on the chain he's wearing lying flat at the base of his throat. "Are you Jesus-y?" Lacey asks, crawling back up the bed and picking it up to look at it more closely; it's warm, from the heat of his skin.

Jimmy snorts. "Am I what ?"

"You heard me." She drops the medal back against his chest and stretches out beside him, propping herself up on her elbow and tapping his sternum with one finger. "That's Jesus, isn't it?"

"It's Saint Michael the Archangel," Jimmy corrects her, "but no. I was raised pretty Catholic, I guess, but I wouldn't describe myself as Jesus-y."

"No judgment." Lacey shrugs. "A lot of my fans are pretty Jesus-y. Also, a lot of my fans are Wiccan."

"You've got a lot of fans."

"I do," Lacey agrees.

Jimmy smirks, looking at her with something like amusement as he smooths one calloused hand down the curve of her side. "Was that Slenderman?" he asks, nodding over her shoulder at her phone on the nightstand. "Who called just now?"

"Wh— Toby ?" That makes her laugh. "No."

"Just asking." Jimmy lies back and shrugs into the pillows, scratches idly at his broad, bare chest. "Heard you guys might be getting back together."

"He's going to super bummed to hear I just had sex with you, then."

"That's what I was thinking."

Lacey rolls her eyes. "I told you I was never getting back together with Toby," she reminds him, slinging one leg over his hips and settling herself on top of him, rubbing herself idly against his belly. "And if you thought I was, we could have just talked about it."

"We could have," he allows, smiling a little. He keeps looking at her like this, Lacey notices: his face open and easy, like here is a person you could tell weird, secret stuff to and it would probably be fine. He reaches up and curls his hands around her waist, squeezing a little. "Nice shirt."

"Thank you," Lacey says, planting her palms on either side of his body and leaning forward so the neckline gapes open. "I stole it from some guy."

"Poor bastard," Jimmy says, working his palms up underneath the hem and cupping her breasts, swiping his thumbs along the sensitive skin of the undersides. "Probably already knows he's never going to get it back."

"Probably," Lacey agrees—or starts to, anyway, losing the end of the word in a gasp as he pinches her nipples.

"That feel good?"

"Yes," Lacey admits, arching her back until he gets the message and does it again, harder this time. "But also, like. I've had orgasms before, all right? I'm not having, like, some kind of nineteen-seventies Judy Blume novel sexual awakening with you here."

Jimmy nods pleasantly. "Great," he agrees, letting go of her body long enough to pull another condom from the nightstand. "I have no idea what that means."

It's slower this time, Lacey sore and sweetly swollen, Jimmy's mouth on her shoulders and her breasts and her neck. "You're better in bed than Toby was, okay?" she says finally—breathless and laughing, the last dregs of the orgasm still fizzing through her; in the end he grabbed her hand and dragged it down between them to help her along. "Is that what you want to hear?"

Jimmy seems to consider that. "I mean, I wasn't fishing," he says, flipping them so she's back underneath him in one smooth motion, weirdly agile for a person his size. "But sure, a girl likes to get a compliment from time to time."

Lacey pulls her knees up, shifting her hips as he sinks back inside her. "Is that what a girl likes?"

"Yeah," Jimmy says, grinning down at her in the fading twilight. "Yeah, I think it is."