It didn’t matter.
Jimmy and I stood almost toe to toe, watching each other warily.
“I bought it for you,” he said. “You don’t accept it I’m throwing it out. You wouldn’t want that would you?”
“That’s blackmail.”
“Yeah. So sue me.”
I crossed my arms. “Say you’re sorry.”
He groaned. “Lena.”
“You had sex with me and then you were horrible and you hurt my feelings. That’s no small thing. It’s actually, in the scheme of things, pretty damn big.” My fingers tightened around his strong wrist. “And two orgasms beforehand doesn’t make up for it. Apologize and mean it.”
“It just … wasn’t what I expected.”
“The sex?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What did you expect?”
“I dunno.” His forehead went all crinkly. “Something less good.”
“It was only good? I thought it was great.”
He rubbed at his face with his hand. “Fuck. Fine, yeah, it was great. Your * feels perfect and I can’t think about anything else, all right?”
I had to smile. “Well, at least you’re enamored of one part of me.”
“That mean you forgive me?”
“No, not even close.”
“Damn it, Lena.” His arms went around me, pulling me in tight against him. My face was all mashed up against his chest. His hard, unyielding chest on account of the fact I’m reasonably certain he’d stopped breathing somewhere during this process. Thick steely arms froze into position around me.
“Jimmy, are you actually hugging me?”
A grunt.
“Okay, you’re doing very well.” I set my chin on his chest and looked up at him. “I’m proud of you.”
“You’ll stop ignoring me now, and we can go back to being … us?”
“Yes.”
The air rushed out of him. “Good. That’s good.”
I wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could. He was my Romeo in black jeans and this story had just as much a chance of dying as tragic a death as the original. And still, all of the love I had for him in my heart spilled over, filling every part of me with those familiar warm fuzzy feelings. I’d been ‘in love’ before, sure. The difference here was, I loved him, all of him, and there’d be no easy getting over it this time. Every part of me wanted him, I yearned for him on the cellular level. There could be no escaping emotions of this magnitude. His good and bad, dark and light, his nice parts and his nasty.
Everything he was, I loved, and it left me feeling utterly helpless.
Because if he knew it, if he ever suspected the entirety of the truth, that this wasn’t just some passing fancy? Well, I’d be out on my ass so fast I wouldn’t even hit the ground for three blocks. So I loved him in silence.
In return, he patted me on the head.
“Glad we got this sorted,” he said, his arms falling back to his sides.
I squeezed him tighter.
“I should get back to it. The guys’ll be waiting. But Lena, can you do me a favor?””
“What?”
“Keep the camera. Please. I want you to have it.”
“But it’s so expensive.”
“It’s just money, Lena. Relax. I’ve got more.”
“Well, I’m finding it harder and harder to resist.”
“Then don’t.”
I sighed deep, ever so surreptitiously rubbing my breasts against him (don’t judge me). “Okay, but only because it would be terribly rude not to accept such a generous gift.”
“It’s nothing, really. With my kind of money, it’s a drop in the bucket.”
I studied his face and sure enough, his usual calm, no care demeanor had returned. “Oh.”
“All right?” His feet shuffled, the connection between us suddenly severed. “We good?”
“Twenty G,” said Ben’s deep bass voice softly from somewhere behind me.
“I’m not taking your money again,” answered Mal. “It’s too easy.”
“Fine, forty thousand says they’re through by Christmas.”
“Why are you always betting against true love, Benny? What’s with that?”
“It’s all bullshit,” Ben muttered.
“Ben,” said Jimmy. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“Sorry.” Some grumbling from Ben. “Didn’t realize they could hear us.”
“Of course we can hear you, you idiot. We’re not deaf. Enough of this.” Jimmy stepped back, hands gently but firmly disentangling me from him. My grabby hands never stood a chance. He was just too strong, damn it. “Time to get back to work.”
“Wait.” I wrapped my hands around my sides, so they’d feel less bereft. “Did you mean it, what you said before about me maybe trying being Pam’s apprentice on tour?”
“Yeah. She suggested it, so talk to her. She said you had a natural talent and could do with another pair of hands helping her out.”
“But I thought you wanted me to keep working for you as your assistant?”
He drew his lips to one side, in query almost. “Figure you’re gonna probably get sick of that eventually. You’ll get bored. You work with Pam, then you can still work for me and do other stuff as well.”
“So it’ll be like a second job?”
“Sure. Why not.”
“I’ll give it some thought and have a talk to Pam.”
“You do that, and then take the opportunity. It’ll be a great experience for you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“What about sex?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“I want to have it again. With you.” his voice dropped low. “What do you say?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
He stared into my face, saying nothing for a good long while. Agitated fingers started tap, tap, tapping against the small of my back. Eventually, he said, “We still haven’t gotten each other out of our systems yet, have we? So the original reasons still hold.”
My heart stopped. “We, huh?”
“Yeah.” He paused, sighed. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is. It’s nice to hear it.”
“So, I think we should do it, try some different positions, and mess around a bit. Might fix things, you never know.”
“You genuinely believe that giving scissors, the butterfly, or dragon a whirl is going to fix things between us?”
His eyes glazed. “Lena…ah, man.”
“What?”
With the motion of his hand, he directed my attention downward. Huh, things were definitely happening in his pants.
“That’s not my fault if you can’t control it. It’s not like it’s attached to me.”
He groaned. “Well, us having sex’ll definitely fix one thing.”
“True.” Whoa, there really was a hell of a bulge behind his fly. And there went my panties. Cold thoughts. Boring thoughts. “But you didn’t react well to good sex with me last time.”
“That won’t happen again. I promise.”
“You do, huh?”
“Absolutely.” He stepped closer. “Boy Scout pledge and all that.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who was in Boy Scouts.”
“I wasn’t. But I can still tie a hell of a knot.”
My mouth opened, but yeah … nothing. Oh, the evil dirty thoughts dancing behind his eyes. I longed to hear all about them in detail.
He grinned. “That’s about the first time I’ve ever seen you lost for words.”
“Shut up.” My face, it felt flambéed. I cleared my throat a few dozen times. “Anyway, I’d just like to take this opportunity to say how awful I personally feel that you enjoyed having sex with me. No really, Jimmy. I’m sincerely apologizing on behalf of my vagina, here.”
“Yeah, okay.” He turned his face away, trying to repress a smile. “Now you’re enjoying this a little too much now.”
“Impossible.”
“And I know about the flowers you sent to Liv from me.”
“You do?” My ecstatic fell back a few notches to something more subdued.
“She called, sounded pretty damn happy about them. How much did you spend exactly?”
I forced out some laughter. “You said money wasn’t a big deal, you’ve got lots more.”