Stranger Read online

  “Sam I am.”

  When had his voice become so familiar? “I got your messages. All of them.”

  “Your secretary’s good.”

  “She’s my office manager,” I said. “And yes, she is.”

  “Uh-oh.” Sam made a shuffling noise. “It’s a good thing I’m wearing a sweater, cuz I think you’re cutting me cold, darlin’.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Shit,” Sam said. “Grace, don’t be mad at me.”

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Shit fritters,” Sam swore. “When girls ask that question, what they really mean to say is,

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be mad at you?’”

  I refused to laugh with as much resolve as I’d made not to call him back, which is to say, not much. I did stifle it behind my hand, though. He must have heard me anyway.

  “You want to know why I didn’t call you for two weeks?”

  “I don’t, actually. I don’t care.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Sam said. “Don’t break my heart.”

  I thought of Jack’s face between my legs. I thought of coming from Jack’s tongue. I opened the album and touched a picture of Ben’s smile, and I thought of Peggy Johnson’s too-bright eyes and the slash of her wrong-shade lipstick.

  “What do you want, Sam?”

  A beat. “To talk to you.”

  A pause. “About what?”

  “Do I need a topic?”

  “Why didn’t you call me for two weeks?” I flipped the pages of my album through pictures of the past.

  “I had to go back home for a while. Settle some things.”

  I laughed, but it wasn’t a nice sound. “Oh? Where’s home?”

  “New York.”

  “They don’t have phones in New York?” I sighed. “Forget it, Sam. Just forget it, okay?

  This whole thing is just stupid.”

  “Grace,” Sam said. “How could you miss me if I didn’t go away?”

  I actually took the phone away from my ear and stared at it hard before putting it back to my ear. “You didn’t call me because you wanted me to miss you?”

  “Not a good idea?”

  “Not even close,” I told him. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait! Grace, don’t hang up. I’m sorry.”

  I closed my photo album on the face of someone I’d once loved. “Me, too, Sam.

  Goodbye.”

  I hung up, and he didn’t call back.

  “I didn’t think you’d call me again so soon.” Jack sprawled on the rumpled motel bed, taking up a lot of room and leaving very little for me.

  I didn’t mind. I curled on my side, my ass touching his thigh and one of his arms brushing the top of my head. If I wanted to roll over and face him, I could put my face directly against the dip of his waist. I didn’t move.

  “Grace?” His fingers toyed with my hair. “You awake?”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking I should move but unwilling at the moment to get up. I could take a shower before I left, so I wouldn’t have to ride home smelling like sex. I sniffed the inside of my wrist, which smelled so much like Jack I didn’t want to wash it just yet, even though the real thing was still there with me.

  He rolled toward me and the bed dipped. Our bodies touched. We’d been sweating in the midsummer heat, but now I was glad the room’s air-conditioner didn’t do more than blow out intermittent puffs of stale, lukewarm air. I liked the way our skin stuck together when he pressed himself against my rear. I felt the tug of his fingers in my hair.

  “What are you thinking?”

  This question seemed so unlike anything a dude would ever ask that I actually turned halfway to look at him. “Why do you think I’m thinking anything?”

  He smiled and shifted our bodies so we aligned more comfortably. “You’re just quiet, that’s all. And usually you’re up and out of here. I figured…Hell, I don’t know. I thought I’d ask, that’s all.”

  His sweetness touched me. “I don’t have to be up and out of here unless I get a call. Or our time’s up.”

  “Our time’s not up. Not unless you want it to be.”

  I didn’t. Not yet. I blamed inertia, but that wasn’t quite it. It was nice, lying here with Jack after a session of really rousing sex. It was nice having him twist my hair into small dreadlocks and feel him against my body.

  “Do you like this?” I asked. Too late, I realized I hadn’t meant to ask it quite that way.

  “Your work, I mean.”

  “I like this.” Jack shifted again and we adjusted ourselves into a companionable tangle of limbs.

  “How’d you get started?” I pushed up on one elbow to look at his face.

  He laughed. “Some guy offered me two hundred bucks to sleep with his girlfriend and him.”

  “Both?”

  He laughed again, stretching a little. I admired his body without pretending I didn’t, and traced the lines of his tattoos with my fingertip while he answered.

  “Us both with her. Not me and him.”

  “He just asked you, out of the blue?”

  Jack grinned. “Yep.”

  “Hmm. How did you know he wasn’t some sort of freaky serial killer or something?”

  Jack laughed and shrugged. “I didn’t. And he wasn’t. It was all good. Two hundred bucks to fuck his old lady, who was a smoking-hot piece of ass, by the way. I figured I could do that again. Asked around. Got hooked up with the agency and here I am.”

  “Here you are.” I slid a hand down his thigh to squeeze the muscles of his calf.

  His hand came around to grab my butt and squeeze. “Here we are.”

  I let my hand drift up and down his leg. “I should go.”

  Jack rolled us both quickly, surprising me. He pushed my hands above my head, pinning my wrists. “Not yet.”

  His cock pressed the inside of my thigh. “Again?”

  He nodded and dipped his head to mouth my throat. “Again.”

  He was very, very good. I was more than happy to let him kiss my neck and breasts, and to run his tongue in tickling traces over my belly and hip. We didn’t even need a game to play.

  “Jackhammer,” I murmured, eyes closed, as he ran his hands down my body. “You fuck like a jackhammer.”

  “You like it that way,” he said in a low voice against my thigh. His breath, hot, gusted over my skin. “Sometimes.”

  I had paid him to know how I liked it, but for a moment, having him be so certain opened my eyes wide. Jack didn’t seem to notice. He moved between my legs to nuzzle and lick. I thought for a moment I was going to freeze, that my mind would override my body and keep me from the pleasure I knew very well Jack could provide.

  Deep breath. Don’t think about it. Don’t…

  “Holy hell,” I whispered. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “Practice,” Jack murmured against me, and I imagined I felt the curve of his smile. “Lots and lots of practice.”

  “Tell me about it,” I urged as he moved his hand to take the place of his mouth. “The women.”

  “What about them?” He slid a finger inside me, then another, while I arched.

  “Tell me how you fuck them.”

  “Every one is different,” Jack said. He touched my clitoris, rubbing, then left me for a moment to return with a condom. “The way they smell. Taste.”

  He ran a hand over my body. “Feel.”

  “Tell me how you feel.”

  He knelt between my open legs, his prick in his hand as he rolled a condom down over it.

  He put his hand on the bed next to my side and nudged my entrance with his cock. I held my breath, waiting for the moment he’d slide inside, but Jack took his time. I’d called him Jackhammer, but he was teasing me now.

  “I like to watch the way their skin changes color when they come.” He touched the heat on my chest and at the base of my throat before pushing forward, inside me. “I like the sounds you make, and the way your nails feel i