I Want You Back (Want You #1)(23)

“Aww, Jax. You say the nicest things.”

I stalked her until she retreated with her back pressed against the big paned window. Although it was dark outside, a streetlight amplified the misty air, sending a soft wash of gold across the windowpanes, front-lighting her like an angel. “I’m glad you didn’t disappear on me.”

“Me too.”

“Still . . . I’m half-afraid you aren’t real.” Slipping my hand around the left side of her neck, I let my thumb stroke the sharp edge of her jaw from the tip of her stubborn chin to her ear.

“I’m real.” She blinked those enormous brown eyes at me, and I noticed condensation clinging to her long eyelashes. In that moment she was the most exquisite woman I’d ever seen. Nothing could’ve stopped me from leaning forward and tasting her lips.

Nothing.

I absorbed the dew on her upper lip in a slow slide of my mouth over hers. Then I let my mouth travel across her cheek, up to the corner of her eye, where I placed another soft kiss.

She rewarded me with a tiny gasp and her eyes fluttered closed.

By the time I’d finished exploring the planes of her face, her lips were parted as she exhaled rapid breaths. I increased my grip on the back of her neck and brought her mouth to mine.

Probably I should’ve eased her into this first kiss, but my hunger for her was overwhelming. After fastening my lips to hers, I devoured her. Each glide of my lips over hers forced her to open her mouth wider, to accept the teasing and plundering of my tongue.

That first taste of her made me ravenous. Reckless. I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my head.

Her pulse leapt beneath where I’d pressed my thumb into her throat, and then I felt her fingers sifting through my hair as she pulled me closer.

The thought of ending the kiss had me gripping her tighter. She must’ve felt the same, because my scalp started to sting from her hands fisted in my hair.

A truck door behind us slammed hard enough to rattle the window I had her pressed up against. That startled us both into backing off.

But we maintained eye contact. Neither of us felt the need to play it cool, acting as if that explosive connection was no big deal.

The huge smile on my face had her responding with a grin of her own.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” she said with a laugh.

“Luce. I—”

She placed her fingers over my mouth. “I want to do that again, and again, and again with far fewer clothes on. But I paid for that damn ghost tour, so put away that pout, Jaxson, and prepare for a fascinating history lesson.”

I nipped at her fingers until they fell away. “Oh, there’s a lesson in this all right.”

“What lesson is that?”

I angled my head and lightly sank my teeth into her bottom lip, watching her eyes turn molten.

“We might suck at history, but babe, we’ve got this chemistry thing locked down.”



* * *



? ? ?

    Jax?”

The voice yanked me back to the present. I glanced up to see Simone looking at me strangely. “Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“Just thinking. Why? What’s up?”

“I’ve got the current income and expense report pulled up, if you want to look at it.”

“Gimme a sec and I’ll be right there.”

Simone gave me another strange look but she let me be.

I closed my eyes, wanting to get back to the memory. I couldn’t recall a single thing about the ghost tour, but that first kiss still haunted me.

I wondered if Lucy ever thought of it and if she could keep it in that original context or if our past and my actions had distorted everything that had been good between us at one time. I’d ask her when we had our talk, even if the truth—her truth—might be hard for me to hear.

Brooding about what I couldn’t change . . . pointless as usual. I shook off my melancholy and got to work.





Five





LUCY




I hadn’t seen Jax at Lund Industries all week.

On Wednesday afternoon, he texted me after he picked Mimi up from school. Then I had a brief conversation with our daughter a few hours later, right before her usual bedtime.

And I could admit that it had been easier that Mimi was with Jax when I kicked off my heels at ten thirty P.M. I fixed myself a gin and tonic, filled the tub, dropped in a bath bomb and fully relaxed before sliding into bed an hour later.

I felt only marginally guilty for waking up refreshed.

I wondered how Jax was faring this morning with the demon.

So when he strolled into the PR department half an hour after the first school bell rang, his square jaw tight, his hair sticking up all over and his tie askew, I knew it’d been a morning from hell for him, like it usually was for me.

Jax slapped his hands down on my desk. “We need to talk.”

“I can take a coffee break in a couple of hours—”

“We need to talk now while the horror is still fresh in my mind.”

I glanced around the office. No one paid attention to us, even when there was extra interest when one of the Lund bosses showed up. I grabbed my coffee mug and stood. “Fine. Lead the way.”

I’d expected Jax to take us to the employee break room on the fourth floor. Instead, once we were in the elevator, he poked the up button. “Wait. Where are we going?”