He tensed for a moment before his thumb continued its movements, this time skimming across my taut nipple.

I bit my lip and involuntarily arched slightly into his hand as he hissed out a breath and pressed his hard arousal against my bottom, hitching his leg further up between mine.

His breathing was hot and heavy against my neck, matching my own, and I rocked against him as the deep throbbing inside me picked back up from earlier as if it would never be satisfied. He groaned, and his arms tightened around me and pressed me down against his leg.

An unrecognizable sound of pure need and lust escaped me. Why did I have to wear pajama bottoms and a t-shirt? Why wasn’t I wearing some cute little spaghetti strap night-shirt with no panties? Before I could talk myself out of it, I untangled myself from Jack’s leg to push down my pajama bottoms. There was just something about being in a dark room, and being in a drowsy state, that made all my inhibitions and nerves fade away.

“Stop, Keri Ann. Please,” Jack whispered against my ear and stilled my hands.

It was like a bucket of cold water. I was instantly mortified.

“I want you too much. You have no idea.” He squeezed me and kissed my shoulder.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. His words were a soothing balm for my pride, but I still felt like a heel. Self-doubt crept in and left a heavy calling card in my heart, and I cringed at myself in the dark. Nice one, Keri Ann ... you offer to get naked for a guy, and he turns you down, with an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ line.

He rolled me over and kissed me softly on the lips before moving a little distance away. Although he still kept an arm across me, I felt bereft. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and thought about counting sheep.

T W E N T Y – F O U R

I woke up with a pounding headache left over from tequila and sugar. “Ow,” I croaked and clutched my head. Water, I needed water. It was morning, but barely. Jack! It suddenly all came back to me.

“You okay?” came Jack’s voice from the foot of the bed. I opened my eyes to find him sitting with his elbows resting on his parted knees, watching me.

He was still in just his boxers. He stood up and left the room. I heard the water running in the bathroom and the medicine cabinet open and close. He came back with a glass of water and two aspirin.

I accepted them gratefully and shifted up onto an elbow. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

My cheeks burned as a collage of images of us in front of the fireplace downstairs fluttered through my head. Of course that was followed by the memory of my blatant invitation to him during the night that he flatly turned down.

I couldn’t get a gauge on what he was thinking. He had come over last night to say getting involved with me was a mistake, I reminded myself. I swallowed the pills and water down nervously and decided on diversion as the best tactic. “Do I snore or something?” I asked.

“What?” His eyes widened a moment, then he broke into a laugh and shook his head slowly. “No.”

When he didn’t say anything else, I got up and walked past him to the bathroom to freshen up. Joey’s door was open so I guessed Jazz had gone home early. She probably felt about as bad as I did. Jack hadn’t moved when I got back. I stood uncertainly for a moment, and then got back into the warmth of the bed.

He didn’t follow me, but stood and walked around the room looking at all my pictures and shelves crammed with books and frames and keepsakes, stopping at a few and commenting here and there. I watched his muscled frame with the snug black boxer briefs hugging his butt. That was a hangover cure right there, but the bundle of dread inside me, waiting for him to say what was on his mind, kept it in check.

“Pride and Prejudice and Twilight are next to each other?” he asked, looking at my bookshelf. “I’m assuming you don’t have any kind of system?”

“Actually, I do. I keep books in the order I read them.” I could map the timeline of my life by the order in which my books were kept.

“Seriously?” He looked back at them. I was waiting for some smart-ass comment about how or why I had gone from Jane Austen to Twilight. Not that I saw much difference between the yearning of a young girl for a seemingly unattainable guy in either story.

The irony of my current situation wasn’t lost on me.

“So what period am I in right now?”

“Oh, um ... ” It was the summer my parents died, but I didn’t want to bring the mood down. “Summer before my freshman year at Butler Cove High.”

“Did you like the Jane Austen?”

“I thought the poor girl, rich guy thing would seem ... trite, but then I read it and ... well, it was good.”

He nodded. “It was.”

Of course he’d read it. Why not? My perfect guy was also a bookworm.

“Slave Species of God? I didn’t know anyone else had read this?”

“You’ve read it?”

“Yep. Totally changed—”

“Every history class you were ever taught?”

“Yeah.” He laughed and moved on.

“See any you haven’t read?”

“Plenty. I don’t do bodice ripping romances ... sorry.”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

“Don’t tempt me.” He winked over his shoulder.

I breathed a small internal sigh of relief at his implication, but I still felt like I was missing something.

He moved on to several framed pictures I had. One was of Joey and me taken a few summers ago in a two-man kayak. One was of us with my parents sitting on the front porch steps around the time when we first moved here. I was about 10 years old, bracketed by my mom and dad, my hair an unruly riot of brown curls. I was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt that had a huge Hello Kitty on the front, and I was smiling a huge smile with teeth too big for my face. Joey stood tall and sullen on the other side of my father with a Tarheels basketball vest on.

“You haven’t changed much,” Jack commented with an amused tone. I threw one of my small toss pillows at him. He smirked. “Are these your parents?”

I nodded. My mom with her bare face, long straight brown hair and light yellow sundress was beautiful despite her tight smile in the picture. My father had curling light brown hair and wore a completely straight face, neither smiling nor frowning. I often stared at that picture wondering what was going on in their heads, wishing I could remember anything that would give me a clue about what they were thinking that day ... or any day. Were they happy to have moved here or was it a burden? Perhaps they’d had no other choice.

“That was taken right when we moved here.”

“Where did you move from?”

“All over. My parents traveled a lot. My father always had some kind of business that needed tending to, and we would move. The last place I remember was North Carolina, but Butler Cove is the longest I’ve stayed anywhere. And I lived here every summer with Nana, so this felt like home anyway.”

“What did he do, your father?” It was a natural question, based on the information I had provided. I hated this topic.

“He was in sales with a company in Savannah. Let’s talk about something else.” He was always selling something, always doing a deal, always about to make it ... this time. Always up and down.