I Want You Back (Want You #1)(112)

Propping myself on my elbows, I watched her enjoying my body. Her little hums of approval as she licked my nipples. Her deep inhale as she nuzzled the hair between my pecs. Then an actual growl as her tongue traced the groove of flesh between my waist and hips known as an Adonis belt. She went a little crazy there, and that in turn made me crazy, especially when the ends of her hair randomly arced across my flesh—little tickles of sensation and my body tightened in anticipation.

When Lucy reached the end of—or the start of, depending on your perspective—my happy trail, she looked at me as she swirled the flat of her tongue around the head of my dick.

That visual was permanently etched in my brain as was the next one: her sucking my shaft in deep until the tip hit the back of her throat.

Watching her watching me, I understood why she’d pushed me on this—intimacy shouldn’t have boundaries. She’d broken the last one with every lick, suck and sexy, flirty look from beneath her long eyelashes.

And I’d forgotten how amazing this felt.

One thing I hadn’t forgotten? She liked it when I took charge. I curled my hand around the bottom of her jaw as I began to move my hips. “I’m not gonna last.”

Her smirk said she knew that.

After she’d blown my top, she crawled up my body, lazily dropping kisses across my skin, turning me into a mass of gooseflesh from head to toe.

“There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I cracked one eye open. “I don’t know. Maybe you’d better do it again so I can be doubly sure.”





Twenty-three





LUCY




I hadn’t gotten good and pissed off at Jax for weeks.

Weeks.

But as it was now the twenty-third of December and I’d yet to see the Santa gift for Mimi that he swore he’d purchase, I’d reached the pissed-off stage.

He’d been burning the candle at both ends since he’d taken over Lakeside, as he’d also been dealing with the bar remodels, some issue at the office building he owned that he was being very vague about, as well as the bowling alley. He’d missed half of our cookie baking night with Calder, Rowan and Jensen. He’d arrived just in the nick of time to Mimi’s school holiday program. And I suspected the man hadn’t shopped for a single Christmas gift.

Which was why I showed up at Lakeside when I knew he wasn’t there so I could snoop through his office and see if he had gifts stockpiled that he hadn’t brought home.

Margene chased me down the hallway after I booked it past her office.

“Hey. Lucy. Jax isn’t here.”

I know. “That’s okay. I’m just looking for something he might’ve left here.”

She stepped in front of the door, the bells on her elf hat jangling. “You can’t go in there.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s two damn days from Christmas. What if he’s got your present on his desk?”

I couldn’t help but ask, “Does he? Have you seen it?”

She shook her head.

“Of course you haven’t, because I doubt the man has bought even one gift. But it’s not my gift I’m worried about, Margene. He wanted to be ‘one hundred and ten percent’ involved in the Santa thing, so I let him take care of it. It’s roughly thirty-six hours before that gift needs to be under the tree for Mimi. And if he’s dropped the puck on this . . .”

Her shoulders slumped. “I ain’t gonna lie. I’m here all day, every day, and I’ve not seen Jax carrying in any packages, nor has FedEx or UPS delivered any boxes with his name on it for the past week.”

“Just fucking awesome.” I leaned against the opposite wall. “Better start looking for another job because I’m gonna kill him.”

Margene snickered. “Maybe he had that stuff sent to his folks’ place? Or even Nolan’s? Knowing that little snoopy miss would find it here and—”

“Because hiding it someplace other than in our six-thousand-square-foot apartment with locking cabinets and tall shelving that Mimi couldn’t possible access even if she had a ladder . . . makes so much more sense?”

She reached out and patted my shoulder. “Men suck at holidays, sweetie. The decorating and the shopping and the cooking and the wrapping and the freaking out about being in charge of everything—that falls on women’s shoulders every year. Even when we swear next year we’ll go the minimalist route—fewer gifts, simpler meals, less social obligations. My husband was as surprised as the kids when they opened their gifts on Christmas morning, because he didn’t have a damn clue what ‘we’d’ bought them.”

“Jax has spent one Christmas with Mimi. One. And it wasn’t even an entire day.” I breathed in. Breathed out. “I’m not looking for perfection. But I feel like this is the last year the jolly man in the red suit will still hold that magic for her. I want Jax to get to experience it with her. If her Santa request isn’t met . . . she’ll be disappointed. And I’ll be upset because her disappointment is one hundred and ten percent avoidable if I would’ve taken care of it like I always do.”

“Maybe that’s where Jax is right now,” she said a little loudly. “You need to have some faith in him.”