The Love Experiment Read online

  She glanced at the clock on his side table. Three in the morning. She’d lost track altogether of how long they’d slept. “I need the bathroom and I need you.”

  He stepped aside to let her out of the bed, but his eyes didn’t leave her body.

  “You’re going to make me self-conscious if you watch me walk out there.”

  “Do I look like I care?” He sat on the bed and cataloged her body.

  There was zero doubt in her head he liked what he saw. That confidence boost got her to the bathroom, where she found a fresh towel on the closed toilet lid. She peed, washed up and cleaned her teeth. It wasn’t the middle of the night anymore. Ding ding, it was round two.

  “My turn,” she said, coming back into the bedroom, super conscious of the way her breasts swayed and swelled with her breath.

  Jack rolled to his back and held the covers up. “Have at me, sweetheart.”

  “How much control are you prepared to give up for me?”

  “How much control do you want?”

  “All of it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What’s my lesson?”

  “Your lesson?”

  “When I fight it’s always about redemption in one form or another. It’s always about working out my feelings for something that doesn’t sit right. When I fought after doing wrong by you, I was trying to learn humility and to be as generous as you are.”

  “You fought because you didn’t like what happened between us?” She frowned, uncertain, unhappy about that. She crawled onto the bed. What did he need from her? Sex, it was in his eyes and the gravelly nature of his voice. It was in the response of his body. What else? What was Jack Haley missing in his life?

  “Your lesson is love.”

  He grinned and made a grab for her. He thought she was joking, making a point like he had on the stairs—I love you is a cliché. She pushed him off. “No, my lesson, my control.”

  He dropped his hands, he still didn’t get it, but not every lesson took first time. She’d love Jack with her whole self and she’d worry later about why she wanted that so much more than the purely sexual experience.

  He was going to make it easy for her—he was hard, and on the top of the bedside table was the square of a condom wrapper. He was going to make it difficult, because she wanted to go slow but her body was ready for fast. She knelt at his side to avoid the temptation and took his jaw in her hands.

  “Your eye looks better.” She traced the outline of the yellowing bruise with her finger and he closed both eyes. She shifted forward to string kisses along the unbroken brow and then more gently across the one that’d been split.

  “I can smell you, us,” he said, a hand caressing her hip. She stiffened, a good-girl response. “I love the way you smell.”

  She parted her knees, a better response, and watched his chest rise on a deep inhale. He made her feel like a femme fatale out of a sexy movie. She took her kisses to his jaw and his throat and her hands to his chest, stroking thick muscle and the light fur he had over his pecs. He groaned and brought a knee up when she trailed a hand down his chest and sternum and rested it on his stomach.

  Jack hissed but not from pain, she hoped, when she flickered her tongue inside his belly button and then put her lips gently, gently to the bruise that extended from just under his ribs to the middle of his hipbone. She leaned over him, pressed her breasts against his side, her hair trailing across his chest and her closed hand over his erection.

  “Derelie,” he said in warning, and it caused a fluttery thrill to settle in her abdomen. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Only nice places. Trust me.”

  “Trust you. You do know trust isn’t high on my capabilities list.”

  Of course it wasn’t. His parents weren’t there for him, he spent his days writing about the way people were taken advantage of, and there was a puckered divot in his thigh from where he’d been shot with a dart gun. She played her fingers over that divot and then her lips.

  “Hey, all the action is back up here.”

  “Love means having to wait.”

  “Love sucks.”

  She laughed. “Not yet it doesn’t.”

  His hands came off the bed and she shook her head, stopping him from grabbing her. He groaned like he was in pain. “Not the feet, okay? I don’t like having my feet touched.”

  “Not the feet,” she replied, glad he’d given her that guidance.

  She examined his knees and his shins, she moved to straddle his legs, and other than that one time she’d wrapped her hand around him, she avoided touching his cock. She would. She wanted to see his eyes go half-mast, she wanted to feel his hands on her unable to help himself.

  The first touch of her tongue to the inside of his thigh and he lifted his head and shoulders off the bed. “You are torturing me, you know that.”

  Not intentionally—slow gave her time to adjust to him, to his smell, to his body, to the things he liked. She shoved him back on the bed and nuzzled his cock.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  After that, unspoken words growled in his chest when she touched her tongue to the crown of his penis. They spilled out, unintelligible when she closed her lips around it. She took as much of him inside her mouth as possible and used her hand to hold him. She let it get sloppy and mostly remembered to keep her teeth sheathed. This wasn’t her favorite thing to do, but she wanted to do it for Jack.

  She was ready to swallow him, but he stopped her with a hand in her hair and a whimpered plea.

  “No, not that way. I want to be inside you.”

  She wanted that too. A lesson learned.

  She could almost imagine calling it love.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sleep after great sex was sublime. Waking to find the giver of the great sex in your arms and having no inclination to want her out of your bed, your apartment or your life was positively uplifting.

  Jack usually found religion and release in the fighting pit and point size of a headline, but the curve of Derelie’s hip nestled against his side was spiritually profound. It was early, and he could hear the wind whistling around the side of his building and rain splatting on the window. He had no desire to move.

  If not for a stolen parcel and Martha’s bid for freedom, he’d be lying here alone, contemplating more sleep, a long workout and time at his desk. And they almost didn’t get here. Derelie’s retreat had shocked him, but once he caught up to her on the stairs, he couldn’t help but sympathize.

  He was a rough choice for a lover, out of practice, out of favor with the whole dating scene. If he hurt her, it would be accidental and he had to hope she’d give him recovery time, because he wanted to keep this sparkling new thing she brought into his life, and not kill it cold with his traditional offhanded discourtesy designed to keep people at a distance.

  It might not be as easy to change as he wanted it to be. It was a new experiment and he wasn’t sure of the questions.

  He should get up and make her breakfast. He’d need to deal with the antithesis of romance, which was Martha’s litter tray. He needed a shower, a smoke, to check his messages. Things to do. A woman to have under him. He’d prioritize the latter. He knew he’d wake Derelie when playing with a strand of her hair wasn’t enough. He put a hand to her flank and curled it around her ass, brought his own body up hard against her. She came awake with a gasp and a shudder and that shouldn’t have excited him.

  Everything about her excited him.

  He rolled her so he could take her mouth, a taste of her before she was falsely minty. “Good morning.”

  “No.” Grumble. “It can’t be.”

  Not a morning person then, a delicious new discovery. “You can sleep some more.” When he’d finished with her. He liked her tasting of them.

 
She could’ve swatted his roving hands away, but she pressed into them instead. “Am I dreaming?” She hadn’t opened her eyes yet.

  “If you want to be.”

  “I’m in the Defender of the City, the great Jackson Haley’s bed.”

  He squeezed her delectable ass. “Knock it off.”

  There they were, those light, bright eyes, offset by her dark brows and hair and the natural ruby pink of her lips. “Good morning.” She stretched, and he used her movement to press more of their bodies together.

  “How good do you want it to be?”

  “That sounds like a challenge. I don’t do challenges before midday on Sundays.”

  “Shame.” He already had his hand to her pussy, his fingers teasing her opening. She moved to give him better access and he took it, making her grab his wrist. He stopped. “Are you sore?”

  “No. Maybe.” She moaned. “I like it.” She let a breath out. “Go slow.” She let go of his wrist and twisted to give him her mouth, and there was nothing shameful about what they did.

  He woke her fully with the tips of his fingers, with the length of them, tapping, curling, with the press of the heel of his hand. Pressure on the places that made her jerk against him, made her toss her head, buck her hips. He got a hint of desperation with nails in his forearm and a heady rush of satisfaction when her body rattled in his arms.

  His own forbearance was considerably frayed by the time he turned her over and entered her from behind. He was the desperate one now, up on his knees, hands on her waist, pleasure rippling up his spine and pain sparking from the bruising on his hip as he slammed them together.

  “Goddamn, Derelie.”

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.”

  Outside the wind and rain became a storm; inside, lightning lit him up, electric volts of energy and Derelie’s chant sending him over. A final thrust to take her with him, then he brought them both down to the bed, where he kissed her out the other side of that shared whirlwind and she sighed her contentment into his mouth.

  He resented having to leave the bed. Came back to find her smiling at him with her eyes closed and her arms out. Sticky and sweaty, beautiful. “I need to pee, but I don’t want to get up.”

  And his version of delightful.

  He couldn’t be madder about her. “It’s a dilemma.”

  He dove into her arms. No cool, no cool at all. “Ten minute snuggle and then I’ll make you breakfast.” Snuggle. He buried his face in her neck. One night with her and he’d morphed into a man who used the word snuggle.

  “Fifteen minute snuggle, and we shower and I cook you breakfast. It’s my turn. How do you like your eggs?”

  “Any way you want to serve them. I can’t remember the last time anyone cooked for me.”

  “I can’t remember ever having been pounded so hard.” He lifted his head to look into her face and she laughed at his distraught expression. “It’s a good thing. Please do it again.”

  He brought her lips to his. An array of unusual emotions felt very close to the surface of his skin. It was a distressing feeling, and the only way he could deal with it was to keep moving. If he slowed down to examine things it might wreck him.

  He hadn’t thought it would be like this. Told himself it was all a manipulation. Didn’t know she’d ignite such craving. Yeah, he wanted her in his bed and more. He wanted her at his table and on that old blanket he’d used for the picnic. He wanted all the questions and all the answers with her, but he didn’t have a decent up-to-date guideline for what happened with a girlfriend and that’s where this was going.

  He wasn’t entirely sure he was boyfriend material. But this was a pay grade above fling and a bank vault of gold more valuable than a casual hookup.

  “I’m going down on you in the shower,” she said.

  Oh fuck. “You’re trying to screw with me.”

  “Is it working?”

  “I’m an old man. And I’m hurt.” He groaned at the image of her on her knees. “You could do me permanent damage.” She snorted like a roll-in-the-mud farm animal. “Little heathen.”

  She was a saint in the shower. She made the cramped space work, though he might’ve put a fist through the tiles trying to hold back. A champion way to ease into a Sunday. Later, damp, and with a heavy pleasure buzz, he watched her navigate his kitchen, producing poached eggs and thick sliced toast, roasted tomatoes and mushrooms.

  “I’ve worked out what your comment about video means.” She nibbled her toast. He’d used his under the eggs. “For the story. We need visuals.”

  “Fake visuals.” She wore his T-shirt and he liked that, the familiarity of it. She had great legs. “For the story we’re colleagues who got to know each other better after a rocky start, not lovers.”

  She looked down at herself. “Staged as a coach. I should feel bad about that, but I don’t. You don’t have to out yourself.” Yeah, he did. “We need stills too.” She took another bite of toast. “What would you normally do on a Sunday?”

  “Sleep, work out, spend time at my desk, catch up on reading, file any story due for Monday I’ve not finished. You?”

  “Sleep, clean my place, shop, curl up with a book and talk to my family, lie about going to church.”

  Both of them passing through Sundays alone. “Is there anything you need to do today?”

  “Apart from call home, no.”

  He had an idea what they could do for the day. It included taking her to church so she didn’t have to lie so blackly to her mom. St. Longinus wasn’t open on Sundays. No fighting on the Sabbath, but Jack knew how to get inside. In the Uber car, he called Barney.

  “Haley, what jail and how much is the bail?”

  “Funny man.” He gave Derelie’s hand a squeeze. “I have a friend with me I’d like to show the church.”

  “A friend. That friend wouldn’t happen to be a woman?”

  “She would happen to be.”

  “The woman you fucked up with.”

  “That very woman.” Who was grinning at him.

  “This is progress. I like it. Key to the side door is under the big flowerpot growing a fine crop of dead twigs. I’ll be over there myself in about fifteen minutes, so don’t get up to anything you wouldn’t want an old priest to see.”

  Jack struggled to think what the old priest hadn’t already seen. He found the pot, one of several to fit the description, got the key and opened up.

  Derelie stepped inside and twirled around, stirring up dust motes in the weak light from the open door. “This is where you fight?”

  It was a large cavernous space once used to house a row of city buses waiting mechanical checks. Now it housed lockers, gym equipment, rubdown tables, and the pit itself.

  “I feel like I’m in something out of Fight Club.” That’d been Barney’s inspiration. “Are you really Jackson Haley?”

  “One and the same.”

  “I’m not sure you are.”

  He let her walk away so he could watch her move, but called after her. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I think there are two Jack Haleys and the one I took a shower with, ate eggs with, is the whole one.” Her voice had resonance, bouncing off the hard surfaces of the place.

  “And the other one?” His sounded bemused.

  She turned to face him, let him catch up the distance between them. She’d practically sat in his lap in the car on the way over and he wanted her close again. “He’s a good man, works hard, but he’s got a hole in his soul that needs patching.”

  Goddamn experiment. “Enough psychobabble analysis.” He took her hand and led her over to the pit.

  “You fight down there?”

  The pit bore no resemblance to how it was once used by mechanics. The walls were lined with heavy padding, bright bl
ue in the gloom. He’d left the main lights off and it still managed to look like something greasy and mysterious went on down there.

  “Official amateur boxing rules, proper equipment, with the exception of walls for ropes, referees who know their stuff and a manager who doesn’t take any shit from anyone and governs this place like it’s a kingdom. He’s a despot. His name is Barney and you’ll meet him later.”

  “Please don’t ever ask me to come watch you get hit. I’d hate that.”

  “No spectators. It’s not about that.” It was confession, two men and their failings hashing it out.

  “What about women?”

  “Twice a month there’s a night for women. Not as many women want to get punched in the face as men. That just proves they’re smarter.” He crowded Derelie into the barricade around the top of the pit with the intention of sampling her lips.

  “You’re not just brawling. You wanted me to see this wasn’t totally irresponsible.”

  He answered her with a hand to the back of her head and a soft kiss to banish the demons. There were a lot to banish, and it wasn’t until the big overhead lights came on they surfaced.

  “There’ll be no kissing in my gym unless it’s at the hand of a glove.”

  He pulled away from Derelie but kept her hand. “That cantankerous bastard is Barney.”

  Barney tossed and caught an orange. “And who might this be?”

  “I’m Derelie Honeywell. You’re the man who let Jack get cut up and bruised.”

  “An avenging angel is she, Haley?” That thought had crossed Jack’s mind already today. “He gets himself knocked about. If he trained harder it wouldn’t happen.”

  She looked at Barney and then slapped Jack on the arm. “Oh.”

  “Satisfied?” Barney demanded. He tossed the orange to Derelie.

  “I think so.” She caught it. “You’re not really a big grouch, are you?”

  “He is,” Jack said, same time as Barney said, “I am.”

  “Take your vitamin C.” Barney wagged a finger at Derelie. “And Jack, I got a feeling you’ve got something you want me to do for you.”