The Next Play: Part Three Page 3

  Raw emotion flashed through his eyes at her words, but she didn’t know if it was because she’d agreed to let someone watch them fool around, or if he was pissed at the idea of her being friends with Lucas. She wanted to ask him which it was, but his devastatingly talented mouth was already covering hers, his tongue stroking across her bottom lip, then licking its way inside, and she moaned like she might die if he stopped doing it, thinking that if he fucked like he kissed, the pleasure might be so intense she didn’t survive it. He rubbed and stroked, took and teased, and she was a shivering mess within seconds, barely able to remember why she had to reach down and grasp his thick wrist, stopping him as he started to push one of his hands up under her dress.

  “Jonah, wait.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wait? Christ, was she trying to kill him? Because he wasn’t lying when he’d said he’d been in pain all night. He’d swum fifty laps in his pool when he’d gotten home, and his dick had still been rock-hard. Even after he’d jacked off in the shower, imagining how she’d looked on her knees in that tiny bathroom, sucking his cock so fucking sweetly it’d blown the memory of every other blowjob he’d ever had right out of his mind.

  Cheeks pink and lashes fluttering, she said, “It’s, uh, not a good time for that.”

  “A good time?” he said back to her, lust obviously making his brain slow on the uptake, because she was looking at him like she expected him to know what the fuck she was talking about. “Are you worried about someone hearing us?”

  A small, embarrassed laugh fell from her lips. “Well, yeah. There’s that too. But I’m talking about a certain time of the month.”

  Understanding hit him hard and fast. “Sweetheart, is that why you did what you did last night, instead of letting me touch you?”

  “No, I—”

  He cut her off before she could finish. “Jace, I want to be with you. I need to be with you. And I don’t care if you’re bleeding, except if it’s making you feel bad. I could’ve held you, rubbed your back. Hell, I’d be happy to do anything to you and for you. You bleeding isn’t going to turn me off from that. Not in the least.”

  Her rosy lips twisted with uncertainty, as if she didn’t quite believe him. “Seriously?”

  Jonah wrapped his arms around her, trailing one hand up the feminine curve of her spine, until he was cupping the back of her head, her golden curls like silk against his skin. “Yeah, seriously,” he rasped, so hard he thought he might do himself some kind of permanent damage if he didn’t get inside her soon. “It’s not anything I’ve ever done before, but you’re different, angel.” Pressing a tender kiss between her brows, he added, “To be honest, I have a feeling it could be pretty fucking hot.”

  “You’re crazy,” she laughed, as he lowered his head and took that sweet, smiling mouth in a deep, wet, scalding kiss, and he wondered if she really had any idea how fiercely she affected him. He honestly didn’t think she had a clue, which just made her that much more appealing, when he already wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his entire life.

  Crushing her against his chest, he tore his mouth from hers and put his lips to her ear, growling, “Jace, damn it, I need to have you.”

  She tensed against him, and he took her precious face in his unsteady hands, his chest heaving as he searched her beautiful eyes and groaned, “When, sweetheart? How long are you going to make me wait?”

  “I…I don’t know,” she stammered, sounding panicked, and his heart sank when he saw the tears forming on her long lashes.

  “Fuck, don’t cry,” he said in a hoarse rush, pushing her curls back from her face again with one hand, the other curving against the side of her neck. “I swear I’m not pushing you. I just want you so goddamn badly that it’s killing me.”

  Gripping on to his biceps, she swept her tongue over her trembling lower lip. “I want you too. I just… I’m just not…”

  “I know, baby. I know,” he breathed, feeling like a jackass. Pressing his lips to her forehead again, he said, “I’ll wait. However long it takes, I’ll wait.”

  She threw her arms around him, hugging him with surprising strength as she turned her head and pressed her cheek against his chest, the tender gesture making his heart clench.

  Shit. First that crap with Liz, and now he was making her tear up. The last thing in the world that he wanted was to make her feel bad, or like he was pressuring her, and he felt like a dick for not having better control over his mouth.

  “You know I loved what we did together this weekend, right?” he asked her. “That it blew my fucking mind?”

  “Really?” She tilted her head back, staring up at him with a hopeful, but questioning gaze. “You didn’t need the crowd of people, like you had at the club?”

  “No, sweetheart, I didn’t need the crowd.” He had to push the low words past his tight throat, surprised by how true they were. He hadn’t really thought about it until then, but just having Jocelyn’s beautiful green gaze focused on him was a thousand times more powerful than even the biggest crowd at Vane had ever been. And he knew it was because she wasn’t just looking at his exterior, but what he had inside as well. That she cared about more than just how ripped he was or the size of his dick. That she cared about him, and about making him feel good. Making him happy.

  “And I don’t want to talk about the fucking club anymore,” he added in a low voice. “I just want to move forward.”

  “Just tell me one thing.”

  The back of his neck prickled with unease, but he was determined to give her the truth, no matter what she asked him. “What do you want to know?”

  Softly, she said, “When it’s just the two of us, does it make you as hot?”

  A smile kicked up the edge of his mouth, because that was an easy one. “Honestly? I wouldn’t give this up for anything in the world. It’s not just hotter and better, Jace. It’s in a world of its own. There’s no comparison.”

  She was shit at hiding what she was feeling, and he knew in an instant that she didn’t believe him.

  “I swear to God that I’m not lying to you, sweetheart. Being in your mouth, and having you in mine—it was the fucking best that I’ve ever had. There isn’t even a close second.”

  She lowered her gaze to his chin, and took a quick breath before saying, “Are you going to want to take me there?”

  The answer was on his lips without even having to think about it. “Fuck no.”

  His time at Vane might have started out as a “Fuck you” to Valerie and his old man, but it’d become a crutch. A fucking wall that kept emotional distance between him and those he was shoving his dick into. And none of those things had any place between him and Jocelyn. Not when he was trying to build something here. Something that would last, until the goddamn end of time.

  “But you told me I had to open my eyes,” she said, staring up at him again, and he frowned at the reminder.

  “That was before,” he grunted.

  “Before what?”

  His response was little more than a croak. “Before I realized that scaring you away was going to fucking destroy me.”

  She blinked and gave him a tremulous smile. “Oh.”

  Needing to lighten the mood before he started to bawl like a baby, he smirked as he moved his hands back down to her round little ass. “Actually, there’s something else that I need to confess.”

  She got a weird look on her face, like she wasn’t sure whether he was teasing her…or was about to drop a massive bombshell on her. “Um, okay. I’m listening.”

  He told her about how he’d been responsible for the heat in the conference room the day she’d been working in there with him and Lucas, and she smacked his arm as she laughed. “You idiot! I can’t believe you did that!”

  “Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures,” he drawled, just as his phone buzzed in his inside jacket pocket, signaling an incoming text message.

  “You’d better check that,” she said, when he made no move to
see who had contacted him. “It might be Nic. Don’t you two have a meeting coming up soon?”

  “Shit, I almost forgot about that,” he muttered, unbuttoning his jacket so he could get his phone. But when he read the message, he saw that it wasn’t from Nic at all.

  “You’re smiling,” Jocelyn murmured, “so it must be good news.”

  Slipping his phone back into his pocket, he said, “Gabe and Denny want to have everyone over before they head out of town to visit her parents. They’re thinking Thursday for dinner, and they want us to come and bring Davey so that everyone can meet him.”

  “Oh. That’s, um, really sweet of them. But I think Davey and I will pass.”

  “What? Why?” he asked, getting a sick feeling in his gut. She’d stiffened up on him again, and he could tell that something was wrong. He just didn’t know what. Was this still about the club? Liz? His friends?

  Stepping back from him, she ran her hands over her arms like she was trying to ward off a chill. “I just think that it might be…awkward.”

  He lifted his brows, wondering what in the hell the problem was. “Why? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”

  “What? No!” She was starting to look a little pissed. “What a horrible thing to say.”

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he cocked his head a bit to the side as he stared down at her. “Well what the hell am I meant to think?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” she said in a rush, and she had that same weird fucking look on her face again. The one that made him think she was about to accuse him of something shitty, like tripping an old lady or kicking a cat.

  “Come on,” he coaxed, stepping close to her again. “It’ll be fun, I promise. And I want to show you off.”

  A wry smile twisted her lips. “You already have.”

  He instantly frowned. “Not like that. I…I couldn’t do that again. They were too close; too much a part of it.” With a strained laugh on his lips, he told her, “To be honest, now that I think about it, I actually wanted to kill the fuckers for even looking at you.”

  She bit her bottom lip as her gaze darkened with confusion. “But that’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  “No, sweetheart, it’s what I needed,” he explained, shaking his head again. “With people who didn’t matter. But my needs have changed. I told you that Friday night, when you literally had me begging you for a second chance.”

  The soft burst of laughter on her lips made him smile. “You deserved it,” she told him, and for a moment he thought they were going to be okay. That they’d gotten past the uneasiness. But then she bit her lip and nervously wrapped her arms around her waist, her pulse beating hard and fast at the base of her pale throat, and while he wanted to believe it had something to do with hormones, his gut told him it was something more. That there was something seriously wrong.

  “Damn it, Jace, enough,” he scraped out. “I can tell that something’s bothering you. What aren’t you telling me?”

  She cast a quick look up at the clock that hung over his office door. “We can, um, talk later. If you don’t get going soon, you’re going to be late for your meeting.”

  “I don’t care about the meeting,” he bit out, dreading whatever the hell she was going to tell him. “Damn it, just talk to me.”

  Her lips parted as she brought her worried gaze back to his, but someone knocked on the door before she could get a goddamn word out.

  “Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, just as Nic’s deep voice came through the door.

  “Come on, man. Are you ready?” Nic called out, rapping his knuckles against the wood again. “We’ve got to go.”

  He scrubbed a hand over the bottom half of his face, then pinned her with a hard look as he said, “I’m coming by your place after the meeting.”

  Curling her fingers around the thin purse strap that still hung over her shoulder, she said, “I don’t know if I’ll be home. I might go do some early Christmas shopping while Davey’s with Rey.”

  Worry clogged his throat. “Christ, don’t try to blow me off like that. We need to talk about this, Jace. Whatever the hell this is.”

  “I know,” she whispered, twin bright splotches of color burning in her cheeks, while the rest of her was deathly pale. “And we will. But right now you need to go.”

  He stepped so close that she had to crane her head back to hold his stare. “Forget the fucking meeting.”

  “But Nic—”

  “Nic can do the damn meeting on his own,” he growled, turning and quickly heading for the door. He cracked it open, and didn’t even have to say anything, his friend’s dark eyes widening with understanding as Nic took in the look on his face. But Jonah still said, “I’m sorry, man, but I’m not going to make it.”

  “Everything okay?” Nic asked, arching one black brow, and he knew that Julie had probably told Nic he was with Jocelyn.

  Instead of answering, since he didn’t know what the fuck was going on, he said, “I’ll call you later,” and shut the door in Nic’s worried face.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, her tone strained. And maybe even a little bit embarrassed.

  “Like fuck I didn’t,” he ground out, turning and leaning back against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “Nic can handle the meeting. And I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything anyone was saying anyway, so there’s no point in me being there.”

  “Jonah,” she sighed, looking like she wanted nothing more than to shove him out of the way and escape.

  At the end of his patience, he growled, “Just tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “Okay. All right.” She started to pace back and forth in front of him, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the purse strap tighter and tighter, and without looking at him, she blurted, “I…I know about you and Denny and Gabe. About that night last summer, when the three of you were together.”

  At first, Jonah thought he must have heard her wrong. But the look on her face as she cut him a quick glance told him that the nightmare was real, and she really had just said those words to him.

  “Fuck!” His guttural voice was raw and clipped. “How?”

  Instead of answering his question, she stopped pacing, drew in a shuddering breath, and lifted her chin, locking her troubled gaze with his narrowed one. “Why haven’t you told me?”

  He fought the urge to cross the ten or so feet now separating them so he could yank her into his arms, his body so tense his shoulders were straining the seams of his suit. But keeping his distance was probably the smartest move he could make at that moment, because he could see the anger in her building, her breaths quickening as her mouth trembled.

  Choosing his words with care, he said, “I didn’t tell you because it’s not something that has anything to do with us. It happened months ago, Jace.”

  She gaped at him. “Seriously? She’s my friend, Jonah. And you’ve fucked her. That kinda seems like an important detail to share with a woman when you start dating her!”

  He exhaled a hard breath that burned in his throat. “How did you even find out? Did Denny tell you?” Because if she did, he and Gabe were going to have some serious fucking words about it.

  “It wasn’t Denny,” she said tightly, her angry gaze sliding away.

  “Then how?” he demanded again, straightening away from the door as he rubbed one hand over the hard edge of his jaw.

  “I got an anonymous text,” she mumbled, still not looking at him. “Two of them. But only the first one was about your…threesome.”

  “Say all that again,” he said slowly, certain he must have heard her wrong that time.

  She sniffed as she jerked her gaze back to his. “Someone texted me. The week before last, after you kissed me in your office. I had just gotten on the elevator when it came through, and it said: Ask Cartwright about his best friend and the admin/fiancée. About how they both fucked her at Harrison’s apartment one night last summer.”

  “Son
of a bitch!” he roared, so angry he wanted to put his fist through the wall. “This happened over a week ago, and you’re only just telling me now?”

  “Gabriel has—”

  “Whoa,” he said with a harsh laugh, unable to believe what he was hearing. “Gabe knows?”

  She gave him a nervous nod as she wet her lips. “He does. I ran into Denny after I got the first text, and I was…upset. I showed her the message on my phone, and asked her not to tell anyone. But she wasn’t comfortable keeping it from Gabriel, and she told him a few days later.”

  He snorted as he laughed again—not that there was a goddamn thing about any of this that was funny—unable to wrap his head around the fact that the jackass hadn’t shared any of this with him. What the ever-loving fuck? It had to be some kind of sick joke, because no way in hell did any of this make sense.

  Sucking in a couple of deep breaths, he squeezed his eyes shut as he pinched the bridge of his nose, struggling to keep his fucking cool, when he felt like he was about to shatter with tension. He lowered his hand, so angry and terrified he was going to lose her that he couldn’t see straight. “You said you’d received two texts.” Lifting his head, he locked his burning gaze with her dark, watery one. “When did you get the second one?”

  “Last night, after you left.”

  “What the hell did it say?”

  She pulled her bottom lip through her teeth, like she always did when she was nervous or upset, and quietly said, “Cartwright can’t hide his true colors forever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because the truth is gonna hurt.”

  “Christ,” he muttered, his chest shaking with another gritty, bitter rumble of laughter as he rubbed at the back of his neck. “It seems pretty obvious that someone’s trying to scare you away from me.”

  “I know. But Gabe already has a special part of the security team here at Atlas looking into it. They’re monitoring any incoming messages on my phone.”

  “Wow,” he murmured, lips twisting into a smirk. “I bet whoever’s doing the monitoring got a kick out of that text I sent you this morning.”