“What are you doing?”

“Reciprocating.” Jillian smirked as she moved her thumbs across the screen.

Ryn: How do you feel about anal play? I’ve always had a thing for m/m porn. Is your sexy ass as tight as the rest of your body?

Jillian tossed Ryn’s phone to her. “No matter what, don’t text him again or answer any of his texts.

Ryn stared at the message—horrified. “What if he takes it seriously?”

“Oh … he’ll take it seriously.”

“What if he’s…” she grimaced “…okay with the idea.”

Jillian giggled. “Then I guess you’d better add a strap-on and a bottle of lube to your order tonight.”

Ryn’s eyes remained glued to her phone. “He’s not responding.”

“Ah … excellent. Just as I suspected, he thinks you’re serious. God, I’m good.”

“Jillian?” Greta called. “Are butt plugs contraindicated if I have hemorrhoids?”

“Oh my God,” Ryn mouthed. Jillian winked before excusing herself to help Greta.

She stared at her phone, willing Jackson to reply, but he didn’t.

An hour and three glasses of Sangria later, she placed her order and walked back across the street while Jillian and Greta finished up with the rest of the ladies and their orders.

The alcohol almost erased the memory of Jillian’s prank—almost. Jackson opened the door with his body covered by a pair of jeans and an Eat Local T-Shirt.

*

The quiet ones were always the kinky ones. Jackson assumed with a fair amount of confidence that Ryn was the exception. Her skittish reactions to his sexual advances pointed in the opposite direction of kinky. The text, however, surprised him, and he wasn’t easily surprised. The tipsy, sexy, cock-hardening woman at his door was a partial explanation for the bold message. The still slightly disturbing part was drunk people didn’t get new ideas from alcohol. The alcohol just brought out thoughts that were already in their brain.

Her eyes perused his body then a giggle escaped as she homed in on his shirt. “Eat Local.” She bit her lip, glassy eyes meeting his gaze. “I’m local.”

Jackson found the deep, uninhibited tone of her voice to be quite sexy.

“Miss Middleton, are you drunk?”

Twisting her lips, she shook her head twice. After a few seconds she narrowed her eyes and nodded as if her thoughts couldn’t keep up with her body. “A bit, I’d say.”

“Keys.” He held out his hand.

“I love that you’re younger than me, yet more responsible.” She handed him her keys.

Ryn lost her brother in a drunk driving accident. He knew she’d give him the keys without question. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.” He took her hand and led her to her car.

“I love it when you hold my hand. People don’t do that much these days. Everyone’s too busy texting or holding their phones to their ears to pay attention to the people around them.”

He helped her in then got in the driver’s side. “I agree,” he said.

“You do? Aww … see you’re not too young for me after all. If I said the same thing to Maddie she’d tell me something like ‘holding hands is for old people.’ It seems like kids these days are either texting each other from across the table or practically screwing each other on the dance floor of some club.”

Jackson chuckled as they pulled out of the development. He’d been on those dance floors many times, and they usually led to a bathroom, back alley, or backseat fuck before he went home alone. But Ryn was different, he was different. That Jude guy died and there was no reason to wake the dead.

“Greta is hilarious and she has a huge crush on you. God, I hope I have half her spunkiness when I’m her age. She must have ordered one of everything from that catalog. I think she’s secretly trying to kill her husband so she can ride off into the sunset with you and your Woody.” Ryn giggled. “Did I mention that was the best Sangria I’ve ever had?”

Jackson smiled. Ryn’s random chattiness made her a fun drunk, although she seemed just a bit tipsy as her words were not slurred enough for it to be considered drunken babble.

“Did you buy anything?” Jackson asked as he pulled into her driveway.

She turned, wearing a tightlipped grin and a playful sparkle in her eyes. “I did.” Her brow furrowed. “Hmm … the funny thing is I can’t remember for sure what I did get.” She shrugged then eased out of the car.

Since she’d left him painfully turned-on after his shower earlier that night, his need to be with her felt urgent. However, her butt-clenching text had him second guessing where their relationship was headed.

“I really appreciate you going to Greta’s party tonight.” He stopped at her door, hands in his back pockets as she stepped inside.

Her eyes were all over him as she wet her lips. “Aren’t you coming inside?”

A great question.

A sly sexy grin pulled at her lips. “Are you still standing on my porch because of the text?”

The confirmation that it wasn’t a drunken text didn’t help ease his apprehension.

“I … I have an early lesson in the morning and I didn’t run today so I need to get that done first thing tomorrow.”

She raised a single brow. “You drove my car. How are you going to get home?”

Another great question.

“Do you have to work in the morning?”

She nodded.

“I’ll walk. It’s not really that far.”

Ryn sighed. “If I were like … twenty minutes more sober, I don’t think I’d say this, but I’m not there yet so I’m going to tell you. I bought new lingerie: a black lacy bra and a matching thong—the kind I don’t have to hide in my refrigerator.”

A confident Ryn in black lingerie had a good chance of blocking out the vision of her kinky alter ego in a strap-on penis acting out some fucked-up m/m fantasy. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

Chapter Nineteen

Even under the lightly numbing veil of Sangria, Ryn felt something so different about the way Jackson looked at her. His eyes filled with desire and something else. That something else happened in the extra few seconds his gaze lingered before he touched her. It felt as though he disappeared and in the next breath when he returned, his face lit up with an emotion that looked like gratitude. But for what?

Her nerves were a ticking clock so she took his hand and led him upstairs, commanding Gunner to stay downstairs. When she released his hand and turned, he leaned against the shut door, arms crossed over his chest. The heat in his eyes lit a fire in her belly and a bit lower too.

“Let me see everywhere you don’t have a tattoo.”

His words could not have been more sobering, evaporating any residual alcohol from her bloodstream.

“I-I don’t have any tattoos.”

“Show me.”

Her shirt had stayed on when he fucked her against the refrigerator. Maybe the lingerie statement had been misleading. She imagined them in her bed, under the covers, lights off.

Motioning to the wall next to him, she nodded. “Shut the light off.”

A clenching, nauseating feeling knotted in her stomach as he shook his head.

“I’m … well … I’m ten years older than you and my body shows it. And you …” She wrung her hands together feeling an inch tall for being so self-conscious. Jackson Knight wasn’t just ten years younger, he represented the pinnacle of physical perfection at any age.

“On our first date I told you someday I’d tell you what makes a man sexy. Remember?”

She nodded. Her reference that day was to him. The point being that nothing made him that way … he just simply was sexy.

“Take your clothes off and I’ll show you that what makes me sexy in your eyes is the desire you see in mine.”

After a deep breath, she fought through her insecurities and unbuttoned her blouse with shaky hands. He just stood there, watching her undress, watching her fall apart from the inside out. One man made her feel like a hundred sets of eyes seeing her in her most vulnerable state.