Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) (19 page)

“Ten minutes ago you said you were broke.”

“I didn’t say I was broke; I said I had bad credit.”

“Why don’t you just give him half the money and wipe your hands of this?”

“It’s complicated.”

“How so?”

“I didn’t push you on your dad, did I?” she asked.  “Please don’t push me on this.”

Jack searched her eyes, food forgotten.  “Would you ever get married again?”

“Probably not,” she said.  “Do you think you’ll ever
finish
getting married?”

He laughed.  “No.  Probably not.  I keep trying to get inside this…” He made a cube with his hands.  “This
box
that the world tells me I’m supposed to fit in.  To want the things, I’m supposed to want.  Do the things I’m supposed to do.  But that’s just not who I am.”

“So you don’t
want
to get married?”

“Maybe not.  Or maybe I just haven’t met a woman who can help me believe in it. I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you just tell it like it is, Aries?  You don’t want to get married because you’re scared your wife is going to walk away with half one day.”

“It’s so easy for women to say that.  Give it another hundred years, when
women
are making double what they’re making now—when
women
are the primary breadwinners, and see how quickly the tables turn.  How hesitant those
women
will be to walk down the aisle with a man who brings less than she does to the table.  Hell, marriage might become obsolete.”

“How incredibly sexist.”

“It’s not sexist.  It’s real.  Woman have always had the power, and for years, men have done a phenomenal job convincing you that you don’t.  But that tide is turning…”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Men marry women because they need pussy.  They need sex.  Women marry men because they need to be taken care of.  They need to feel protected.  Safe.  Emotionally, mentally, financially… But they don’t need
dick
the way men need
pussy. 
They never will.  Once we get to a point that the woman is the breadwinner, marriage will become a thing of the past.”

“Not as long as women are being conditioned to want it.  From the moment we’re born, we’re being told what we’re supposed to want.  What makes us the best woman.  A real woman.  ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.’  Who is singing that song on the playground?  Not the boys.”

“Is that why you got married?” Jack asked, motioning to her with his fork.  “Because society told you to?”

“No.  I got married because I was pregnant, so my version of that nursery rhyme was a little ass backwards.”

Jack chortled, and then his face fell.  “Wait… pregnant?”

The smile vanished from Nina’s face.  “What?”

“You just said you got married because you were pregnant,” Jack said.  “Are you somebody’s mom?” he beamed.

“Would that be so terrible?  You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Yes, it would be terrible.  Children are terrible.”

“Children are the
only
people on Earth who are worth a damn before the adults get to work screwing them up.”

Jack squinted.  “Are you somebody’s mom?”

She swallowed, her eyes falling.  “I was pregnant…”

When she struggled to continue, Jack sat taller, dropping his fork on his plate. It clanked, and he brought a napkin up to his mouth.  “I’m sorry, Nina… I shouldn’t have pried.”

She kept her eyes down.  “You don’t have to be sorry.  We’re getting to know each other, right?”

He nodded.  “Yeah.”

Jack didn’t push her, and she didn’t volunteer more information.  They finished their dinner with lighter subjects, both too afraid to continue delving any deeper than they already had.

***

After learning free nightclub entry was included with their dinner, it had only taken Nina half an hour, and two more glasses of bourbon, to convince Jack to take her upstairs and give her one dance.

Strobes blasted arrhythmic beams down on them as she dragged him behind her, and they had to turn their bodies to the side just to squeeze through the thick crowd—taking knees and elbows to various body parts in the process.

After waiting in line, Nina collapsed onto the bar, holding her breath when she felt Jack’s arms wrap around her from behind.  He pushed in close to save space, and Nina nearly screamed when the shockwaves hurtling through her became almost too much to bear.  The warm beds of his fingers brushed the skin between her pants and crop top, and she found herself meeting eyes with the bartender, desperate for a distraction.

Jack pushed in closer, his arousal pressed into her as she gave the bartender their order along with the free drink tickets that had come with their meal.

The bartender dropped their order in under a minute before disappearing down the never-ending line of patrons clamoring.  Nina swiped up their drinks, two vodka red bulls, which she’d insisted would transform Jack into a dancing fool.

He’d given her his signature skeptical look, but thirty minutes after they’d finished their drinks, she was able to pull him onto the dance floor with little argument or relent.

In fact, as the music pounded all around them and the strobe lights caught his smiling eyes and lips, he seemed almost eager.  Of course, in true Almeida fashion, he still had the presence of mind to make her work for it, pretending to pull back.  They both knew, however, that if Jack truly didn’t want to be pulled onto that dance floor, he wouldn’t have been.

Nina stopped in the middle of the floor, releasing his hand.  She took a small step back, wagging her finger at him with come-hither eyes.

He licked his lips and held her gaze.

When he didn’t come, she stretched her hands high over her head.  She took in his eyes, nearly gold under the flashing lights, as they moved down her body, her arms, her pert breasts, and her belly button, which was stretched into a tight line.

Nina bit her bottom lip and swayed her hips in time with the low bass pounding off the walls, holding Jack’s gaze the entire time.

He stepped closer, moving slowly until the tip of his nose had brushed hers.  His strong arms snaked around her waist, lingered at the small of her back, and tugged her in.

She gasped when his arousal hit her stomach.  Her lips swelled as they fell open in shock.  They swelled for more of him, his lips, maybe even a little taste of the hardness he’d just pressed against her.

They began a gentle sway to the hip-hop music, finding the slower—more sensuous beat—the beat that was hidden a few layers deeper than the one everyone else in the club was dancing to.

They matched smiles, and Nina circled her arms around his neck.  The desire in his hooded eyes seemed to climb inside her and take over, becoming a part of her and taking the reins.  In seconds, her panties were wet, and she could feel the soft sweep of her wetness every time she swirled her hips.  She clenched her thighs together and gasped when she caught her clit in a vise, beginning a torturous climb to her peak from just the wag of her hips, and the heat in his eyes.

Never breaking their gaze, she turned her back. He followed her as she moved, his body never disconnecting from hers.

She pressed her backside into his, brushing her ass to his hard column the moment she had her back to him, ravished by need.  When his fingers tightened around her hips, a blast of shock went through her, and she covered his hands with hers and began the slow sway again.  Her pussy hummed back to life, growing warmer and fuller with each second, begging for the hardness grinding against her.

His breath cooled her collarbone as he cuddled his face into her neck.

Being without their everyday necessities had left them with no scented products to carry or guide their attraction.  As they moved together, breathing each other in, delving into their natural musk, they gasped with a need so natural and innate, it was impossible to deny.

Even to the people around them.

“You’re so sexy!”

Nina’s eyes popped open--she hadn’t even realized she’d closed them—and she caught eyes with a leggy blonde in a red dress, who was wobbling in a pair of sky-high heels.  Her blue eyes were hooded and drunken, along with her Cheshire-cat smile.

Nina blinked at her, having forgotten that there was still a world spinning outside of the man curled in close behind her, who she could still hear panting gruffly next to her ear, warming her neck with his gasps and yanking her into his erection, which was growing stronger by the minute.

When Nina didn’t respond, the blonde leaned in, attempting to project her slurred words over the music.  “I love the way you dance.  You’re sexy!”

“Thank you.”  Nina beamed as the blonde was pulled away.  She watched her go, waiting until her blonde head vanished in the thick crowd.  She reached over her head and wrapped her arms around Jack’s neck.

He encircled her in his arms completely, and when she looked up and saw his eyes closed tight and his lips sealed to her neck, she nearly came undone.  The blonde had barely managed to pull Nina out of the warm dance bundle they’d wrapped themselves into, but it was clear Jack was still gone.  Any hint of arrogance had vanished, leaving a man who was just a man, so taken by the woman in his arms that he had nothing left to give but his deepest need, his deepest truths.

When he opened his mouth against the skin of her neck, sucking and lapping at the sweaty skin with his tongue, Nina finally rejoined him in that honest world—and she was gone again.  Her nipples tightened at the mixture of heat and wetness he placed on her neck and down her shoulders, his eyes still closed tight with his desire, his face serious with intent, eyebrows pulling tighter with each new expanse of skin he sucked, ravenous as he savored her like she was the last bite of food he’d ever eat.

Only after he’d tasted every patch of skin he could reach did he come back to her ear, taking the lobe between his teeth.  “You feel so good, Nina.”

His knee came between her legs, and she pushed against his strong thigh, tightening her arms around his neck as their sways grew into grinds.  She pressed into the rock solid swell of his leg, nearly gasping when it occurred to her that she could easily finish herself off doing just that.  As she ground against him, aching to fulfill a torturous need, seeking the kind of relief only he could give, she realized that it still wasn’t enough.  It wouldn’t be enough until she had him in bed.

In an instant, they were far past dancing, struggling to satiate the kind of carnal call that could never be answered in public.  The hold he had on her waist had grown in fervor, displaying his strength and control in a way he never had before.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he whispered, licking softly at the skin along the edge of her ear.  Clawing his fingers into her belly, he tried to pull her closer, but every inch of their bodies was already sealed tight.  “I want to be inside you.”

She craned her neck and kissed the bottom of his chin, brushing her nails through the hair at the base of his neck as her wet kisses traveled up his jaw and to his ear.  Her arms came from around his neck, and she reached back to circle them around his waist, tucking her hands into the back pocket of his jeans and pulling him into her swirling lips harder.  Tighter.  They gasped together.

“You’re making me so wet, Jack.  There’s nothing I wouldn’t let you do to me.”  She sucked the skin at the valley between his neck and his chin.  “What do you want to do to me?”

“I want to eat you until you come,” he moaned, his hand traveling across her belly button, going flush before moving up, dangerously close to her heaving breasts.  “I want your cum all over my dick.”

“Have you always wanted that, Jack?”

“
Yes
.”

His hooded eyes opened just a sliver, just enough to give her a view of the raw animal emotion gleaming.  Their hungry hands traveled and clawed for more as their lips met slowly.  The gentle kiss set off a spark that rolled through them, from their head to their feet and back again, deepening every time it reached their lips until their mouths were open as wide as they could go, sealed together as their tongues swept, wet and soft, in time with the music, taking the place of their previously rocking hips in need and fervor.

Soon, they weren’t dancing at all, unable to give a sliver of their attention to anything but that desperate kiss, the passionate smacks of their lips so relentless that it nearly took over the room and boomed over the music.

They broke away, foreheads pressed together and opened their eyes.

“Upstairs,” Jack said, waiting for her to nod her agreement.  “Now.”

With their breathing labored, and their fingers entwined, just as Jack went to pull her off the dance floor, he came face to face with a pair of wide hazel eyes, acne-prone chipmunk cheeks, and a snaggletooth smile.  He didn’t know how long the young girl had been standing behind him, but after accidentally bumping into her, he could see in her eyes she’d been there for a while.