Page 84 of Some Kind of Haunted

Not when he angles his head and takes the kiss somewhere wild.

Then it’s more than mouths. His arms are around me, hard and hot, and his grip makes me breathless. I reach my hands up and rake them through his hair, the way I’ve thought about doing before.

It’s hot. It’s all this chemistry that’s been swirling around us from the beginning, but it’s more than that, too. It’s this thing between us I can’t put my finger on.

Maybe this is meant to be. Maybe that’s what my mother told him. Maybe this has been preordained from the start and far be it from me to complain about fate when it has abs like Jack.

I shrug out of Nora’s cardigan and he starts to lift my pajama top off, and I’m not complaining, I’d be happy to return the favor, but . . . “Don’t you have a bed or something?”

“It’s my grandma’s old bed upstairs or my grandpa’s office cot.” He pulls the neck over my head, then drops my pajama top on the diner floor. “Or here.”

“Here works.”

Here definitely works, because Jack sits me on his counter like I weigh nothing and steps between my legs and his mouth is on mine again. His hands are everywhere. Hot and rough. That same intensity he uses in the kitchen, but it’s all on me.

I manage to wrestle his shirt off him without losing too much contact with his mouth. Then it’s skin and heat and him.

Like he’s mine.

I think that for him to be so mad about it, about me and the moment we met and my mother telling him about us, he must believe that he is mine. Whether he likes it or not.

So I suppose I set out to make him like it.

It’s easier without words. With just mouths and bodies coming together. His hands on my pajama bottoms, shoving them down and out of the way. Then his hands on me, beneath my panties then without them, making me want to make the kind of noise I absolutely can’t, so I kiss him instead.

We get ferocious. He makes me buck against him, then my hands are on his fly, until I finally find him.

He picks me up again, his grip hard and sure, and I wrap my legs around his waist.

And we both groan when he pushes inside. Deep. Then deeper still.

There’s a pause. A stillness, while my heart hits like a kettle drum and I can feel his pulse like a goddamn percussion section and yes, they match. His forehead against mine. That green stare that right here, right now, is as naked as I am.

Only then does he move. Only then do I move.

And we don’t need words here. We both know.

We build it together, back to kissing so we groan in each other’s mouths.

Until that flashing, blinding, life-altering moment that feels like it must shake the whole building. The whole block or town or something.

I thunder apart around him. He shudders in my arms.

Then we stare at each other, still breathless. Still connected. My arms are still looped around his neck. His hands are still on the tops of my thighs.

Now we know, I think. Exactly what this is.

Though maybe I say it out loud. The way his gaze shutters, I think I probably did.

Jack sets me back on the counter and starts picking up clothing. He hands me my underwear and pajama bottoms and I slide off the counter to put them on. He doesn’t hand me my top. He bunches it up and puts it over my head for me, then tugs it into place and helps me with the sweater, too, pulling my hair out of the collar to boot.

It’s an intimate gesture. Sweet, I’d call it.

But not to his face. Especially when he starts looking intense once our clothes are back on.

“I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do with this,” he mutters.

I look behind me at the counter. “Call the health department about potential code violations?”