The Love Experiment Read online

  “Jackson Haley, mad cat person.”

  “As long as it’s not Derelie Honeywell, mad at Jack Haley.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “What’s worrying you most?”

  “I’m confused about whether we’d even be here without the experiment. I’m catching up to where you were last night.”

  “I’ve moved on. Now I see the experiment as a little like what would’ve happened if we’d been two single travelers who met up somewhere foreign. The only Americans we’d have turned to each other, shared the experience, hung out.”

  “And then gone our separate ways. Me to a wilderness somewhere—” she thought a moment “—like Australia, you to a big city like London.”

  “I’ve already seen London, but I’ve never been to Australia.”

  She swiveled on the step so she faced him instead of the street. “The point is we’d be a vacation romance.”

  “And if it was good, what’s wrong with that?”

  “That’s my problem. I can’t decide if we’re an experimental romance or more.”

  “And it’s important to you to know that before you come upstairs?”

  “I think so. I thought I was okay about a one-night stand with you. I’d like to be built that way, but I’m not.”

  “And?”

  “And you are.”

  “I was. Ask me why that’s changed?”

  “I’m not asking you because I’m not judging you. I’m a small-town girl, I’m not a prude.”

  “I don’t want a one-night thing with you, Derelie. I already know too much about you to think one night is going to be enough. I can’t promise the whole annual calendar, but I know I want to be with you till we run this thing out.”

  Oh, man. That’s what she’d needed to hear. “I wrecked the mood.” She’d been so sure what she wanted with Jack and all it took was a reminder that he’d had a full life before she came along to make her wobbly.

  “Blame Martha.”

  They should’ve gone straight from question whatever to bed. Do not pass go. Do not let the cat out. “My bag is upstairs.” That made leaving more awkward.

  “No, it’s behind us. I didn’t want you to feel pressured.”

  She turned to look and at the top of the landing was her gym bag. He’d made it easy for her to choose.

  “Whatever you want to do, Derelie.”

  She wanted him to keep saying her name, the joy of hearing it instead of Honeywell hadn’t yet gotten old. Who was she kidding, the stack of cards was a shock; the reason he kept them was worse. They hadn’t talked about this. The experiment was defective if it didn’t uncover threats to someone’s life.

  “You’d be the first person I’ve slept with who’s had death threats.”

  “Please don’t make it your special thing to hunt down others.”

  “How scary was it?”

  “I was glad I already knew how to defend myself. I’ve been attacked in the street. I was shot in the thigh with a dart gun outside the office once.” He rubbed a place on his leg. “That hurt. And it ruined a good suit.”

  Good Lord. “I knew you’d had death threats because it’s something everyone at the Courier knows about you, but I never thought about the practicalities.” It seemed like an abstract thing, like a car accident, a robbery, something terrible that happened to somebody else. “You got shot.”

  “Dart gun.”

  “But it could’ve been—”

  “But it wasn’t. The more we rely on social media, the more threats of harm and exposure are tossed around. I’ve been doxxed. I’ve been the subject of rumor campaigns. It goes with the dinkus. It’s the part of being famous I could do without.”

  “I understand that better now.” Threatened. Attacked. Shot. People came up to Jack on the street and online with the intention of hurting him. “But you didn’t quit.”

  “They win if I quit. I keep logs and records of everything because you don’t know what could turn out to be important. It’s such a habit I don’t even think about it.”

  “Did they get the person who shot you?”

  “No. It was crowded, peak hour. No clear suspect.”

  “You took something from that woman in the market.”

  “Her name and number. She wasn’t dangerous. I vaguely know her from the radio station. She was a straight up proposition.”

  “But you chose me.”

  “Over a woman hitting on me in the meat section? I’d choose you every day. That’s not even a question, Derelie.”

  She leaned into him. “I’ll come upstairs.”

  He leaned back. “We can watch a movie if you want.”

  “Can we not watch it and neck?”

  “You know, all those things I said about you, I forgot to mention that I love how generous you are.”

  “You’re the one who cooked, cleaned and provided for us.”

  “That generosity is inside you. It’s the way you are, the way you give yourself to others.” He turned her face to his. “I think it’s the sexiest thing. I’m going to have a smoke while you think about what you want to do.” He handed her Martha’s lead and went outside. He stood in the pool of light from a street lamp and rolled a cigarette, lit it and took a drag.

  Derelie watched his chest expand on the inhale and his head tip back as the hit of the smoke filled his lungs. What would Jack look like beneath her in bed? Would his body arch, would his chin tip up as their bodies came together? So what if they only had the weekend, so what if he’d been a player and they were just an experiment-fueled fling? That was the most obvious outcome anyway. She was annoyed with herself for these second thoughts.

  She was standing with Martha in her arms when Jack came back inside. He picked up her bag and they went upstairs to his apartment. It should’ve been awkward, the mood all messed up, but Jack made coffee, and he smelled so sweet from the cigarette and by the time they sat together on his couch Derelie was as turned on as she’d ever been.

  “I don’t want to watch a movie.”

  He shuffled closer, mug in one hand, the other arm going over her shoulder. “What do you want to do?”

  Bathe in his tolerance for her last-minute nerves. “I want to do you.”

  He closed his eyes and smiled. She used the moment to take his glasses off, urge him to put the mug down, and the next moment to kiss him, and the next to slide up on his chest and lean into him, and then all the moments bled together into a bliss of kisses.

  It’d been like this with the salesman. Forbidden, unexpected and thrilling, and Derelie had known wild physical pleasure that left her aching for more. She had that feeling now with Jack, but unlike her probably married salesman with whom she never exchanged names and had no illusions about, she knew so much about Jack and none of it dimmed the head rush.

  The man kissing her, holding her, and wrapping her tight against him had integrity and honor and a way with his tongue that was making it hard to keep still. “Please, Jack.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I want to sweat in your clean sheets.”

  He disentangled them and stood, gave her his hand and led her through to the bedroom. When Martha followed he looked at the cat and said, “You have to stay outside tonight.”

  Martha scooted straight under the bed.

  He looked at Derelie. “I can coax her out, but she’ll throw herself against the door until I let her in again. Can you handle me making love to you with my cat under the bed?”

  The way Jack looked at her, the near pleading in his voice made her shiver. “It’s a sacrifice, but I think I can manage.”

  He took his shirt off.

  The sacrifice was making her overheated and dizzy. But oh, that bruise went on and on. She’d seen it in the
park, but now she realized it went down below the waistband of his jeans. The jeans he unbuttoned, unzipped and eased off his hips as he toed off his shoes.

  Already shoeless, she stood on the bare boards of his bedroom floor in a haze of lust and concern. “Are you sure we should?”

  He stood in his stretchy boxer briefs, unbearably sexy and clearly aroused, and tapped a finger against the purple horror on his hip. “As long as you don’t knee me there it’ll be fine. You’re overdressed.”

  She looked down at herself. She was overexcited and her hands shook.

  “I’d like to help with that.” She looked up and he must have seen the whirl of emotion rolling through her. He put a hand to her face. “Who gave you those eyes, Derelie Honeywell?”

  “My mom. All us kids have them. Spooky eyes. I used to get called that at school. We all did.”

  He smiled so fully it transferred to her and she smiled too. It chased her fear about getting naked with him away.

  “I think they’re beautiful. I think you’re beautiful.”

  He put his hands to the hem of her shirt and dragged it up till she lifted her arms and he drew it over her head. As if that was some kind of special feat, it earned her an openmouthed kiss that took her breath away. He worked on her pants button and the zipper and then his hands were inside her cargoes and spread over her butt, bringing her body into contact with his.

  His skin was hot and she sizzled with the connection, with the press of his erection. It was a cold shock when he stepped away to drop her pants. That left her standing in her best underwear, grateful for the investment in something that was cute as well as functional.

  He climbed into the middle of his big bed and patted the space beside him. “We have all night, we have the whole of Sunday, come spend it with me.”

  Was she out of her mind for hesitating? The most incredible specimen of a man was laid out before her, offering himself up for her consumption. After all her talk about wanting wild hot sex, that he knew she needed this first time to be gentle and slow almost made her sob. She knelt on the bed and crawled to him, going lip to lip before she lowered herself into his arms.

  There was that silken heat again; it made her moan. It made Jack tighten his grip on her. These bedroom kisses were different from the picnic kisses, from the chair in the kitchen kisses, and the backed-up-against-a-restaurant-wall kisses. They weren’t about learning, nothing teasing, or shocking; they were about possession, they were about destruction.

  “Your mouth. I can’t get enough of your mouth,” he said, demonstrating that.

  She liked her mouth the way Jack used it. She liked her body the way he alternatively swept his hands across it and gripped, stroked and held. She liked his body, its lean hardness, its economical construction, that he was bigger than her, coarser, but that her smaller hands moving on his skin had an effect on him.

  She made him wince once when she pressed on his side, and once when she bumped his brow. Bang, bang. Two strikes and you’re out. “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing.” He tapped his lips with a finger. “Come back here.”

  To more kisses that wiped out her higher intelligence and switched on her carnal autopilot. She flicked her bra halfway across the room, she wriggled out of her underpants and lost them off the side of the bed. When they crashed together again there were no fabric barriers.

  Now his hands traveled over skin unseen before, over the rise of her breasts and the peaks of her nipples, over the globes of her butt and between her legs.

  “Fuck, you’re hot, sweetheart.”

  “You’re not too bad yourself.”

  He laughed. Apart from that odd moment in the market and the near tragedy on the stairs, he’d smiled and laughed a lot since he decided they were finished with the questions.

  A smile on Jack Haley’s face, not the one used on the side of buses and billboards, not the one in his dinkus that was more of a knowing smirk, made him look almost boyish; the tank-driving, firefighting, comic-book-writing soldier still in him was adorable.

  He rubbed a thumb over the slightly raised scar on her hip. “What happened here?”

  “Tequila.” That earned her a sweep of his tongue there. “Memory loss.” That got his lips hot on her skin. “And a belief I was good at climbing fences.” That made him laugh then lick up her body, nips of his teeth and swirls of his tongue till he took her mouth.

  “Please make me come, Jack.”

  “Over and over,” he said, rolling them so he balanced on top of her. She nearly passed out at the way he looked strong enough to take on the world, at the way he looked at her, eyes dark and intense, inside the bruising which was already losing color.

  “Let me have you,” he said, with a kiss targeted at her throat, with a hand kneading her breast. “Let me make you feel good.”

  She offered herself up with a groan of agreement, with her back arched and her hands reaching, not to stop him but to urge him on. But the urge was in both of them, tidal, magnetic, clicking them together, slicking them closer. He used his mouth to touch her places that unlocked her muscles and laid waste to her bones and drilled a hole in her head, letting in such light and wonder she was scared to open her eyes.

  With his fingers inside her, he made her ache and tremble and rock her hips. With his mouth, he made her gasp and lose her mind. But it was all so quick she came down to a surge of disappointment.

  “Jack.”

  “Just getting warmed up.”

  “I’m so hot I think I boiled over.” She felt flushed top to toe.

  He dropped his head to her stomach. “Do you want me to stop?”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  He dared a lot. He dared with teeth and pinches and the soothing flat of his tongue. He dared to move her limbs to where he wanted them, to mold them around his body. He dared to simulate the sex they’d have, sliding his cock along her slit, his body shaking with the pleasure of that.

  “Jaaack.”

  She almost turned inside out when he pulled away, deprived of his heat and his mastery. But the short absence—while he opened a drawer, drew on a condom—only made her greedier. “You get those tests. You get them so you never have to leave me to suit up again.”

  He grinned. “Yes, Boss.”

  She laughed and flopped back on the bed. She was so strung out, her emotions were chopped into strands. She felt outraged to lose him to the mechanics of protection; she felt grateful to have him stretch over her again. Anticipation was a whip and desire was its sting, and the ricochet of feeling made her toes curl and her back arch.

  It felt like a threat when he entered her. Like he’d opened up a secret place inside that only he could, like he’d unlocked the core of her and burned the map so no one else would ever discover it.

  “So good, Derelie.”

  But it was a held breath, not yet anything but a tinge of fear, until he kissed her, cloves and cinnamon and coffee and sex and that was the lubricant, mouth to mouth on her anxiety.

  And when he moved, it was relief and tension all wound together and straining. He eased farther inside, stretching her, jerking back to do it again.

  “So good, Jack.” That ease became a raw dance of power and motion, a slap of flesh, the song of lovers, a spiraling uncoiling of pressure so vast and unplumbed the pinnacle was unreachable.

  “Let me have you.”

  She let go, a gush of heat and wet, a release, a whiteout, a loss of control that made her shudder. He let go too, shouting incoherently through his own orgasm, his body tense like a wire snapping to collapse against her a moment before he fell to her side.

  There was only unsteady loud breathing after that, sweat soaking into cotton and limbs glued comfortably together, and a cat with a wide-eyed WTF expression, staring in at them from the next room. />
  “Are you okay?”

  She was floating, drifting, unmade, remade. “I’m wonderful.”

  “You are.” He pulled away again. She heard water running, a flush, a drawer opening and closing. He spoke to Martha. He came back with a warm wet cloth, which she used, and slid alongside her and pulled the covers over them. She found herself bundled into his arms, awash with exhaustion.

  “Sugar overload,” she said. He kissed her behind the ear. “I didn’t get a turn to touch you.”

  “Stick around and take advantage of me later.”

  She fully intended to. “I don’t want to sleep.”

  “This isn’t done, Derelie. Not near done.” Fatigue made his voice thick and treacly, made what he said all the weightier.

  He was almost asleep already, so she let the comfort of his arm over her hip carry her into dreams, until their body heat woke her in a sweat some time later. He’d turned the lamp out and it was dark in the room. She needed to stretch out, she needed the bathroom, but she didn’t want to risk waking Jack.

  She could’ve woken the dead when she shrieked. Within touching distance two slits of light glinted.

  Jack was out of bed and had the light on in seconds.

  Martha sat on the sheet in sphinx pose and stared at Derelie with her pointy ears pinned back. Derelie’s heart thudded in her ears. “Oh my God, cat, you gave me a fright.”

  “Martha.” Jack clapped his hands, but Martha simply transferred her yellow eyes from Derelie to him, turned her ears around and sphinxed some more. He stalked around the bed and picked her up, holding her away from his body, her back legs and orange-and-white banded raccoon tail dangling. “You’re not supposed to scare the guests, especially the pretty ones I want to keep. Under the bed or out.”

  They seemed to reach an understanding. Jack put Martha down and she disappeared from view. He looked down at Derelie, gloriously naked and utterly at ease with that. “Do you need anything?”