Thank God for my need to breathe, because it gave me a moment in which to regain my common sense.
"All right, McGuido," I whispered near silently into his ear as I broke the kiss, pointing a finger into his chest with an accusatory oomph that to an outsider only looked like a fumbled attempt at a grope. "What the hell is going on here?"
Jack's face broke into a wide grin as he pulled me even closer toward him, cradling my face in his hands, sort of like a Mafia kingpin might do just before he kisses your forehead and okays a hit on you. "Bethie," he started. "Bethie Wethie baby pie. I've missed you so much."
If I weren't wearing sensible flats I would've ground my heel right into his foot. I wanted answers, not simpering nicknames.
"Jackie Whackie," I said, emphasis on whack, "What are we going to do with you?"
"Oooh, baby, I can think of a million things," he purred up against my lips, grinding his pelvis against mine, which my duplicitous body readily welcomed with open, well, er, you get the drift. But then I realized, face-to-face as we were, that the last thing I had to eat was a tuna fish sandwich shortly before noon and oh, God, my breath probably smelled like my cat Snowball's.
I pursed my lips, breathing only through my nose, not daring to emit any cat food odors his way, and leaned again toward Jack's ear. "I bet you can, Jackie poo. But isn't that how we got ourselves into this thing in the first place? Tell Bethie how you expect to fix our little problem, baby."
Jack had a great idea of how to fix it, walking me backwards across the room until the backs of my knees hit the conveniently-located mattress, where I tumbled down, Jack and his locked-and-loaded Uzi landing above me with an "oof."
Now there have been times that I have done the bedroom backstep onto a mattress willingly, knowing full well what was to follow. But I'm sorry, Jack could be the most gorgeous man in the tri-county area but I've watched Dateline and I've seen those reports on bedbugs and we were, after all, in a house of ill repute.
Isn't this precisely where budbugs start?
I pushed against Jack, which went against every grain of desire surging forth in my body. I mean, my brain was going on nuclear power plant meltdown red alert, telling me not to reject what had just landed atop me with all the welcome of a long-awaited homecoming. It just goes against the Girl Code to turn away somebody as hot as Michael Francis Xavier Jackson. But I once had to stand alongside my sister Eloise for three hours as we picked nits out of my niece Amber's cascading blonde locks, so I know of infestations. And I couldn't help but envision microscopic things ten time worse than head lice converging upon my t-shirt and Levi's and finding a place of comfort there. No way was I gonna be home to that.
As Jack grabbed my hands and stretched them above my head, nestling down to settle his mouth over mine yet again, I employed a tactic I learned in my self-defense for florists class they taught at last year's Flowers for All Seasons convention. You wouldn't know that there is a dire need for floral delivery defense tactics, but there is.
I rolled with my core strength—thank God I do ab work every time I crave Peanut M&M's, which is about two hundred times a day--achieving an entire log roll right off the mattress and onto the hard linoleum floor.
"I forgot you like it rough," Jack trumpeted for all the bugs in the room to hear. And I don't mean the bed bugs.
"Ruff," I growled back at him, which was all it took for him to bend his head down and start to nibble along my neckline, working his way from that sensitive area right behind my ear all the way down to the lower V of my Nine Inch Nails t-shirt. And that wasn't the only thing involving at least nine inches at that point. He paused for a moment, almost silently asking permission for what he was about to do.
I looked up at Jack then and lost all thoughts of infestations, his brown eyes swallowing my fears of the unknown, of bugs, mobsters, and bridezillas who would likely lop off my boobs in my sleep to exact revenge.
"Jack," I panted, hating myself for yielding to my shameless hussy self in a moment of horny desperation, but loving the compromising moment in which I found myself. What can I say? The last time I was on the verge of being ravished by a handsome man I woke up, only to realize that has never happened to me—even my dreams dropped the ball on that one. You can imagine how gravely disappointing that revelation was.
"I need to know three things before I go any further with you. Your mother's maiden name; your favorite dish your grandmother cooked for you; and do you promise to do right by me and the baby?"
I set my hand between us, resting it on my "pregnant" belly.
Jack knit his eyebrows, looking confused, wondering if I was serious, but answered. "McLanahan. Bridget McLanahan. Child bride of Seamus Jackson, Irish twins and Irish triplets in the span of six and a half years. She's a saint, and don't forget it." I swear he crossed himself. But that would be a first, a man invoking the holy trinity at a time like this. My eyes must've been playing tricks on me.
He then continued, "Grammie McBride made the best Brunswick stew--light on the carrots, heavy on the barley. Served it with cakes made from corn meal."
I wish I'd had a grandmother who catered to me like that. My grandmother was good for a bag of chips and a swift kick in the behind if I said anything too sassy.
Any man who cares enough about his mother and his grandmother's cooking can't be bad at heart. Could he? I licked my lips. Which he took as a cue, because he licked my lips too. And then licked a trail along my jawline, down the center of my neck, stopping again at that tricky V in my shirt. The air conditioning must have been broken because I felt decidedly overheated at that very moment. And somehow the air had become thinner, because I was breathing awfully heavily, which is so not like me. I hardly even noticed the stains on the ceiling or the bars across the windows. The place almost seemed like home, what with Jack fitting to my body like a hand to a glove and all.
"And three," he said, rolling his hips against me subtly, this time hitting that all-too important V between my legs, "I swear on my life I'll do everything I can to protect you."
The scent of woods and man and desire overwhelmed me, which explains why I thought that abandoning my morals—those same ones that usually would keep me from hog-wrassling a Mafia princess' ex-fiancè on the second floor of a safehouse-doing-business-as-a-bordello without a second thought. But he sounded so sincere…
Just then I felt Jack's rough, able hands inching their way up my t-shirt, apparently deciding that neckline V was merely pointing toward a detour that would allow him to get to his destination just as easily. And then my hands found their way down the back of his sexy black pants, the ones still being held up with suspenders, the ones that matched his burgundy cumerbund, and I was just starting to cop a real feel of his buns of steel when someone started pounding on the door.
"Ahem." There was no mistaking that little quasi-soprano throat-clearing. A woman was staring down at us. A tall, honey-skinned woman with the most garishly made-up face I've seen since Cher retired. A tall woman with what appeared to be chest-hair sprouting from her push-up bra, and two of the hairiest legs sporting silk stockings and garter belts that have probably ever been seen in the free world.
"I said ahem," he/she repeated. "Were you not going to let me know you were here, Michael?"
Have a comment? Share it on our Forum - Romance in the Backseat Ning - Here
Read the next Installment by Maggie Marr - Here
Want updates on new videos and when the new pages post? Follow me on Twitter - RITBS_Terry