I Want You Back (Want You #1)(90)

I kissed her forehead, took her hand and led her into her bedroom.



* * *



? ? ?

Talk about surreal, stretching out on Lucy’s bed—happily she still slept in a king—like a starfish, with Lucy sitting on my ass and her hands working magic on my stiff muscles.

The crisp cotton sheets didn’t have her scent, meaning she’d probably just changed her sheets. In anticipation of me coming over tonight?

A sharp slap landed on my shoulder blade. “Don’t tense up.”

“Sorry.” I’d kept the tension from my body as I told her about Walker. I’d voiced my concerns that I hadn’t heard from Brady or Jensen, so I assumed they were pissed off at me too. Annika wasn’t mad; she hadn’t understood the delays either.

We talked about my potential new gig as a hockey coach.

We talked about her taking on more management responsibilities when Lennox went on maternity leave.

We talked about the furniture delivery schedule for my apartment.

We talked about taking a baking class with Mimi.

We talked like a normal couple reliving the week’s events, which was a milestone for us.

While we talked and Lucy had her hands all over my back, shoulders and arms, I’d kept my dick from going fully hard by imagining an ice bath.

But as soon as we stopped talking, the sensuality in her touch overwhelmed all of my senses.

When she leaned forward her hair trailed against the underside of my arms, making the skin there tingle. She pressed her fingers into my flesh so deeply that I felt the bite of her nails, which spun me into the past and all the times she’d dug her fingers into my ass, my shoulders, my spine, the nape of my neck as I moved inside her.

I thought I could keep it together by imagining walking naked through a snowstorm, but that’s when she went in for the kill. She scooted down so she could lay her upper body on top of mine.

Her naked upper body.

Her breasts pressed into the lower curve of my back. Her fingers circled my wrists. Her breath fanned over the damp spots she’d created as she kissed and licked the slope of my shoulders.

And her scent. Christ. That lemony sweetness eddied around me when we were skin to skin, and I wanted to rub every inch of her all over every inch of me.

At least a dozen times.

“This body of yours, sport.” She sighed dreamily. “It’s beyond fucktacular. Muscles, muscles everywhere I touch.” She licked the back of my neck, and I shuddered beneath her when she sank her teeth into that spot. “Everywhere I taste.”

Another delicate lick near my hairline sent goose bumps down my arms, and my erection jumped as if she’d tongued me there.

“I want you,” she whispered in my ear. “I want you so much I can’t think straight.”

Yes. Finally.

Her left hand moved up and down my left arm in a constant caress as she dragged her mouth across the slope of my shoulder, alternating kisses with the tender scrape of her teeth. She nuzzled my neck and breathed me in, and when she exhaled, that sexy hum of pleasure vibrated throughout my entire body, like a tuning fork that had hit the right note.

Then she started to rock her groin into my ass, and my body remembered what to do, how she needed me to move. As soon as my hips left the bed, Lucy snaked her hand between my body and the mattress, grabbing hold of my hard-on through my boxers.

Reality crashed down as if I’d been doused in an ice bath and then shoved outside into a subzero Minnesota winter night.

Panicked, I rolled away from her, dumping her back on the mattress. At first glance she still wore that naughty smile, believing that she was about to get lucky.

It sucked watching that smile fade into disbelief as I jumped back into my jeans.

“Jax. What is wrong?”

“I can’t . . . We can’t do this right now.”

“Yes, we can.”

I snagged my shirt and yanked it over my head. “No. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

“Go? Now?”

Her bewildered expression ripped at me, but somehow I got my belt fastened. “Yes.”

“At least give me a reason why you’re literally running out of my bedroom.”

Think fast. Then the perfect excuse popped into my head and I hated myself for it. “Mimi is in the next room, Lucy.”

“Jax, she’s sound asleep.”

“I . . . it just freaks me out, okay?”

“You are freaking me out. Can’t we—”

“No. I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll figure out Mimi’s schedule.”

I booked it out of her bedroom, grabbed my coat and shoes—without putting them on—and hoofed it to the elevator on the opposite side of the building.

Before I got into my car, I noticed my shirt was covered in feathers.

What the hell?

You knew if you kept chickening out this would happen.

Bullshit.

That’s when I noticed my down jacket had a hole. Every time I moved tufts of white floated out. Good to know I wasn’t morphing into the chicken on the outside to match the chicken that clucked inside me like crazy.

I took it as a bad sign anyway.

I tossed the coat in the garbage and shivered all the way home.





Seventeen