twenty: in which she bed-hops

"A guy like you, should wear a warning" –District 78 & Cheesa, Toxic

********************************

Thanks to work, I didn't have to face Baron the next morning. I couldn't even get to sleep because I was so embarrassed, so naturally, I looked and felt like hell.

There was a crick in my neck and shopping bags under my eyes. My gray eyes, which could be called silver on a good day, seemed pale and hollow. And I was pissed off.

Naturally, I left my personal crap at the door once I got to work. Snapping at patients just wasn't my style, especially when the one person I wanted to yell at was at home, probably still sleeping peacefully.

I'd thought my day couldn't get any worse but once I found that someone had broken the coffee machine, I realized that it could. Iris was constantly yapping in my ear about how fun it was going to be once I moved in. Her roommate, Jana, had finally made a graceful exit, and I was free to slowly move my stuff in. Iris gave me a spare key and told me I could drop by whenever. I told her I would, once I could deposit my half of the rent into her account.

By lunchtime, I was cranky, surviving on the potent Kenyan coffee Sister Brady kept in her office. It was good, I had to admit, but it didn't lift my mood.

Moira found me sitting outside and handed me a giant slab of chocolate. "You look like you need it more than I do," she said, plunking onto the ground beside me.

"Thanks," I said, because yes, chocolate cured everything. I broke the slab in half and gave Moira one. "Do you have any idea why Brady keeps Plan B in her office?"

She laughed. "She's – what? – sixty? She's about as fertile as the Sahara."

"Well, these days, age is just a number. Pretty much everyone's fertile."

Moira eyed me. "Something you wanna tell me?"

"I was just wondering," I said, because this was between Sister Brady and me. At least I knew the older woman could keep a secret better than any pharmacist or other nurse who was sure to know me. Paranoia's just another one of my flaws.

"OK." Well, that was easy.

More silence, and then I couldn't take it.

"Hypothetically speaking, Moira," I began, "if a guy doesn't want oral but he enjoys sex with you and performing oral on you and well, everything else...what does that mean? And then when he finally deems you worthy enough of putting his penis in your mouth, he just vanishes afterwards without a word. Is that normal?"

"Whoa, whoa. Slow down, Maya," said Moira, holding up her hands. "Hypothetically, are we talking about an Italian-Israeli ex-con with motorcycle gang connections and an uptight nurse with hair as long as the Mississippi and boobs like beach balls?"

"Oh, my God. Shut up."

She grinned at me, tempting me to punch her teeth in. Jesus, what was wrong with me. I'd never been this violent before.

"Maybe you just sucked at...sucking," Moira said, laughing at her wit.

"I know for a fact that I didn't," I said through clenched teeth.

"OK, OK. It was just a joke. Jesus, girl." She bit her lower lip. "Then maybe it was the opposite. Maybe you sucked real good and it blew his mind and now he's thinking too hard about you on your knees. I have it on good authority that guys love it when we're on our knees. Maybe he wants to wife you and it scares him. Head can make guys do the craziest things."

"Seriously? I don't know if I should laugh, or call B.S."

Moira finished the last of her chocolate. "I only speak the truth. You remember Jens, right? The Swedish guy who wanted to be the fourth member of Swedish House Mafia and kept tweeting them links to his YouTube until they blocked him?"

"Icy blue eyes and dreadlocked blonde hair? How could I forget?"

"Well, I never told you about the time he proposed. It went like this..."

***

Jake was home, but Baron wasn't. I still hadn't decided if it was better this way, or vice versa.

"Honey, I'm home," I muttered under my breath, kicking my shoes off in the hallway. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. "Thyme... Chicken... Ooh, butter chicken. Ugh, I could marry this guy. If he wasn't an ass."

I went to the kitchen and leaned against the doorjamb, watching Jake cook. Surprise, surprise – no shirt. Just what was with this guy and an aversion to concealing skin? I saw the instant he realized that I was there, in the room. The muscles of his back tensed and he paused for a moment before going back to stirring the pot.

I came up behind him, until we were close enough for him to turn around and stare me down. He went on as if I wasn't there, and I didn't know if I was supposed to be mad or confused. I went for mad confusion and reached out to trace the thick black lines of the wings on his back. His skin was hot beneath my fingertips and he froze, standing before the stove with his back decidedly turned to me.

He was a fallen angel, that was for sure. Dark and poisonous and depraved.

I was the idiot mortal who just couldn't stay away; the idiot mortal who sank further and further into a pool of wicked sin and liked it.

Loved it.

I ran a finger down the dip of his spine, stopping at the waistband of his jeans.

"So...you're going to ignore me like a pouting child?" I said.

He reached out and flipped a few dials, turning off the fire. Then, he turned around. I backed away, staring at his face.

"What the hell did you do?" I exclaimed, stepping forward again.

"Looks worse than it is," he said, sounding so casual I could've screamed.

"Are you out of your damn mind? Your eye is swollen shut! Half your face is swollen!" I took a deep breath. "What happened?"

"Some asshole got too touchy with Bree at The Wreck. She hit him, he hit her back," he said, grabbing my wrists and stopping me from putting my fingers to his skin. "I kicked the shit outta him. The puѕsy brought his crew. End of story."

I refused to react to the way he was stroking the insides of my wrists with his thumbs. Instead, I tried to shake him off. "Two fights in one week, Jacob. Do you have a death wish?"

"Would you care? If I died tomorrow, would you care?"

I stopped fighting. "Of course! I'm mad because I care! I'm mad because I know you enjoy doing this. You like beating the crap out of people and you like getting the crap beaten out of you. It's sick."

"It's who I am," he growled, bringing his face close to mine. "I told you. I'm a twisted fuсk who'll probably die before forty. I've made peace with that."

"How can you say something like that? Just let me go. I'm done with this conversation." I pushed at him; he only held on tighter. Again, I stopped resisting. "So why don't we talk about yesterday instead? You...came in my mouth and left. I felt so great about myself, by the way."

Like I'd expected, his hold on me loosened, and I pulled myself away from him. He tore his hands through his hair, making it look even more disheveled.

"I didn't want to do that," he said.

"What, come in my mouth or leave?"

"Both."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How does that make me feel? That I have to force a guy to let me pleasure him?"

"You didn't force me to do shit."

"If I recall correctly, you said no, and I said yes."

"Maya, this is fuсking stupid. Just let it go," he snapped. "It was good. You suck coсk like you were born to fuсking do it. Best I ever had, and I've had a lot."

He caught my hand mid-air before it could connect with his cheek. I made a sound of frustrated anger and he brought me flush against him, forcing the fight out of me.

"That's what you wanted to hear, isn't it?" he hissed into my ear. "That seeing you on your knees, wanting to lick my coсk, was the sexiest thing I've ever seen? That I looked into your gorgeous silver eyes and I was fuсking gone, blowing my load in your mouth?"

"You left," I murmured. Pitifully, might I add.

Jake's breath heated the shell of my ear. "You leave me every goddamn night. I think I left for the same reason." His voice was soft, and I melted against him, letting go of every trace of fury inside me.

I got it. I so got it.

It was becoming too much. Strings were attaching and it was getting scary. Hell, I was forced to admit that what Sebastian and I had had was a close friendship. It had been nothing like this. This... This was explosive. Corrosive. It was nothing like I'd experienced before.

The big, bad Jacob "Ripper" Ford was afraid of me.

I pulled back, lifting my head to look at him. I suppressed my need to grimace at another sight of his battered face. "Did you have that looked at?"

When he mumbled something about a bag of frozen vegetables, I grabbed his hand and sat him on a stool. He kept a first-aid kit under his sink alongside his toolbox, and I brought it out. Standing between his legs, I got to work on his face. Mostly, I ignored the heat he was emitting and the way his hands settled on my hips, as if he couldn't keep from touching me now that we were as close to good as we could be.

When I was done, he reeked of antiseptic and ointment but at least he was clean. I washed my hands then went upstairs to take a shower. I came downstairs to find only two places set for dinner at the island.

"Where's your brother?" I asked, my voice laced with suspicion.

"Relax. I didn't kick him out," said Jake. "He's out trying to forget his French girlfriend, if you catch my drift."

I hopped onto the stool beside his. "So he's in the country because of a broken heart. That's sad."

"Pretty sure there's a town full of broads with superglue in hand to mend it." Jake placed a plateful of what I'd correctly guessed was butter chicken before me. My mouth instantly watered.

"Have you ever had your heart broken?" I asked, picking up a fork.

Jake rounded the island and fell onto his stool. "You need to have a heart in order for a woman to be able to break it."

"Cut the crap. You're not as heartless as you make people believe you are." I sighed around my second forkful of rice. "Dear Lord, thank you for Jake Ford's competence in the kitchen. Amen."

Jake threw his head back and laughed. "You need to know that you're the only person I cook for, and that's only because I'm tryna get into your pants."

I rolled my eyes. "Speaking of articles of clothing, where's your shirt?"

"Washing machine. You know, the blood –"

"I don't want you to die before you hit forty."

There was a long stretch of silence after I got those words out. I meant them. I tried to imagine a world without Jake in it. Without his unapologetic disregard of privacy in all aspects of my life. Without his flashes of angry cruelty, without his moments of kindness. Without his kisses, without his strong arms around me. Without him.

My throat clogged up.

"I won't," he was saying, stroking the side of my face until I had to look at him. His eyes, when they met mine, were wide with confusion. "Damn it, sweetheart, don't cry. I don't know what to do with that right now."

"I'm not..." But my voice trailed off when I felt the wetness on my cheeks. "Crap."

Jake pulled my stool to his, until our legs were touching. He leaned in, putting his mouth to first one cheek then the other, kissing my tears. Licking them away.

"Babe, I'm not worth it," he said, his voice gentle. He sat back. "I'm stupid and fuсking insane and you shouldn't waste your tears on me."

"You're worth it." I pointed at my face. "These tear ducts don't just work for anybody, OK?"

He gave me a wry smile. "I'm honored."

Later, we lay on the couch together and watched TV, which was an experience in itself. Jake's eyes would be on the screen but his fingers were on me, playing with my nipples through the flimsy fabric of my top and kneading my breasts as if this were the most natural thing to do in the middle of a Pawn Shop episode. My breasts were already so sensitive, and his ministrations simply made me squirm, wanting more. I thought I couldn't doze off with his hands all over my chest but it turned out that I could and I did.

The next thing I knew, I was in his bed and he was sentient beside me, playing with my hair.

"I started my period today," I said sleepily, "so we can't do it."

"Uh-huh," he said, kissing my forehead. "You're still sleeping in my bed."

"Yes." I closed my eyes, snuggling in to his side.

"It wasn't a question, babe." His arms came around me and my head rested on his chest. "I just wanna hold you."

I may or may not have imagined the last part.