Forever in Blue Jeans Read online

  He took a few sips of the water, then gulped down the entire glass, his movements drawing her out of her thoughts. Again.

  “What’s in that thing?” he asked, pointing to the piece of cake with his fork, staring at it as though it might bite him.

  In a way, it had, she mused.

  “That is vanilla bean bourbon cake, except I didn’t have bourbon. I had to use dark spiced rum. It’s the buttered rum glaze that really gets you, that adds the extra kick.”

  “You might want to warn a guy next time.”

  Blue took the glass and refilled it. She handed it back to him with a grin. “And miss that reaction? Not on your life.”

  For the first time since he’d arrived, he smiled at her—a genuine, open smile—and her belly tightened, sending a shockwave between her thighs. This was not the tight, polite business smile he’d given her on the porch. She’d developed an instant hunger for him in Savannah, and seeing him again, here at her home in Blue Ridge, that hunger was back and ravenous. She’d recognized him as soon as he’d recognized her. Her insides had flipped over, and her nipples had tightened.

  It had taken everything within her to greet him with courtesy and respect rather than with her arms thrown around his neck and her legs hitched around his waist.

  She suspected he would have been shocked by it. Looking at him, watching him, the way he carried himself now, the proper, professional questions he asked, the hesitancy before he took the piece of cake from her, she was of the mind that he wouldn’t have welcomed such an overtly sexual greeting. All business and hiding that kind of attraction would be near impossible, though she’d been doing it since he arrived, so it was entirely possible he could too. It was in the looks he gave her when he thought she couldn’t see them, however. It was in the way his fingers curled in, then stretched out. It was in the way he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He might be angry with her, hurt by her, even resentful toward her, all of which she would understand, but he wanted her too. “Do you still drink only dark, imported beers?” she asked softly, figuring she would test the waters of…she had no idea. His eyes widened, and he began sputtering again. Blue bit back a smile. She had to admit, catching him off guard was kinda fun.

  “I, ah… I…” He drank half the glass of water. When he put it down, he glanced over at her, then away. “No.” The word came out sounding like a croak. It was cute. He took another long drink of the water, and when he’d collected himself, he raised his gaze to her, solid and sure. “I haven’t had one of those since that night.”

  “So, what do you drink now?” Inane, dumb conversation to be having, and by the look on his face, he thought the same thing, but she wanted to… She didn’t know what she wanted right then. She just knew she had to try and get beyond his outward mask.

  “Domestic swill.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t stomach the other anymore.”

  His gaze hadn’t dropped from hers, and she wondered if he was also saying he couldn’t stomach her. The idea of that hurt far more than she was dare admit. “I see.” She took his plate and put it in the sink.” Is working on my house going to be a problem for you?” Blue didn’t believe in beating around the bush, especially one she intended to jump right on into. She was crazy, she knew it. Crazy about him, crazy to try and push him into admitting he still felt it. Lucky for her, she was Southern, and crazy ran in even the best of Southern families. Crazy was not only invited down to dinner but expected to head the table.

  “Not for me, no. I can’t speak for you.”

  She covered the glass pedestal cake plate and gently pushed it to the side, then offered up a smile. “I don’t have a problem with it, Cort.” She turned on her flip-flopped heels and walked out the back door toward the carriage house she occupied.

  “I’m here to visit my friends and consider working on your house, though perhaps I need to reconsider the latter,” he uttered from behind her.

  He’d followed her out of the house. The passion and desire still sizzled between them. The circumstances were a bit different and quite a few years had passed, but the sparks were there, if not a little rusty and frayed. “You want the job, and it’s yours.” Statement, not a question.

  “You can’t know that I do.”

  At the front door of the house and with her hand on the knob, she looked over at him. “You’re still here, aren’t you?” He didn’t like being read, and he didn’t like someone else being able to predict him. She could see that in his eyes, in his defiant stance. Too bad, so sad. He was just going to have to get over it. “Besides there are things I remember about that night aside from the sex.”

  She stepped out of her flops and walked into the bright living room of her home. The walls were painted a pretty yellow, nothing too orange, nothing too white. It was a rich, warm color but bright enough to make one feel happy, cheerful. He followed her in, and she heard his exhale. For a moment, she stood with her back to him, giving him some time to take it all in.

  After a few seconds, she glanced over her shoulder to find his mouth agape, his eyes wide, and the pulse in his neck throbbing.

  “The pictures,” he whispered. “Not what I…”

  “Not what you what? What about them?”

  He studied the photos, and she studied him. She done some of it back in the big house, but here it was different, more intimate. He was in her personal space, and while his guard was still up, there was a crack in his protective gear. He kept fisting his hands at his sides, and once in a while he would swallow hard or lick his lips.

  She wondered about him underneath all his clothes. How had his body changed? Did he have tattoos now? Piercings? She also wondered if beneath his neat, detailed exterior, he was still dark and liked his sex a little on the rough and tumble side.

  Her gaze traveled down his back. His ass was tight, and she could only imagine what it would look like in a pair of jeans. Or naked, especially since he’d been doing manual labor for so many years. At least she assumed he’d done some. The lights in the hotel room hadn’t been turned on so she hadn’t gotten a good look at him naked. He’d been wearing dress slacks that night too, but she remembered fantasizing about his ass in a pair of jeans. Did he still like his ass rimmed, touched, penetrated? Had he had a finger or toy inserted inside since their night? His prostate teased until he was writhing and bucking? Did he like his nipples played with? Licked? Nibbled on? Outright bitten? Just the memory of the things they’d done to each other had her pussy soaking through her panties and the muscles in her lower belly tightening.

  She was so sexually curious about him after all this time. Oh hell, who was she kidding? She was just curious in general and very specifically about him. He moved smoothly, methodically around her living room.

  “These aren’t at all what I was expecting.”

  Now she was confused. “Expecting? You knew about the pictures?”

  He answered her without turning around. “Yes. Decker told me last night that there were pictures.”

  “Ah. So, you’re not surprised?”

  “No, I’m-I’m surprised, I just… These aren’t what I was expecting.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that. Good or bad?”

  “Beautiful.”

  “You’re not turned off by them, then?”

  He looked over at her now, his eyes traveling up from her toes, stopping at the juncture of her thighs, then slowly making his way up to her chest, and finally her face. He simply stared at her for a few heavy seconds, then turned his gaze back to the picture he stood in front of: her naked breasts revealed by a shirt she had pulled up and held at her neck, her torso bare along with her hips, upper thighs, and her smooth mound. And the two tattoo artists bent over her…

  “Who took the picture?”

  “My friend, Neil. That’s him in the picture to your left.”

  Cort turned his head, and she followed the direction to the image of she and Neil locked in a tight embrace
with hands on asses and grins on faces. It was a goofy picture, but her favorite one of them together.

  “Were you and he lovers?”

  “Yes, for a very brief time.”

  “Really. Seems to be a pattern with you.”

  “It wasn’t like that with him.”

  “How lucky for him, then.” He turned away from her and moved to another picture on the wall. “These are you as well, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  Her tattoo. The one that graced her entire middle back and sides. The corset, complete with brocade design and lacings. She couldn’t even begin to count the hours it had taken or the incredible stinging pain she’d endured for it, but she hadn’t minded in the least. The moment she’d seen a picture of a similar tattoo on a woman, she knew she had to have one for herself. Hers was in color, though, a very pale pink, whereas the original design was in black and gray.

  “I have more in that series. My friend took them as the artist progressed through the corset if you’d like to see them.”

  “No.” The word was quick and sharp. He shook his head and blew out a breath. “It’s amazing, Blue.”

  She liked her name on his tongue. She hadn’t given him the name Blue in Savannah. She hadn’t given him any name at all. Everything about that night was fucked, except for when he smiled at her, when he touched her, when he kissed her, when he slid inside her as though he’d been created just for her. “Would you like to see it? The tattoo?”

  She expected him to say no, waited for it to come, instead he turned to her and nodded, taking a seat on the arm of her loveseat. There was another small crack in his veneer, and she wanted to widen it to a huge gaping hole.

  With slow measured steps, she moved toward him. She stopped close enough that if he reached out, even a couple of inches, he could touch her. She began to lift her camisole over her belly and just before revealing her breasts, she turned and presented her back to him, removing her shirt the rest of the way. She heard his intake of breath followed by the slow hiss between his teeth.

  She didn’t look over her shoulder but knew he had reached out before she actually felt his fingers on her skin. She could feel air crackle between and around them and wondered if he could too.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s breathtaking, and the detail…”

  He traced the ribbon as it wound through the inked-on eyelets, and when he got to the bottom, which was just above her bottom, he let his fingers drift and outline the lower edges of the corset. She lifted her arms above her head so he could move freely up her sides, then across her back just beneath her shoulder blades. Goose bumps rose on her skin, and her nipples stretched out, tight and tingling, aching for his fingertips to reach around and trace them next.

  She couldn’t contain the shudder in her breath. Then abruptly, his touch was gone. He cleared his throat, and she glanced around at him. He wasn’t looking at her any longer but had gone back to eyeing the pictures on the walls. She slipped her cami on and turned. His gaze met hers at just that moment.

  “How old are you now?”

  The question caught her off guard. “Thirty-five. Why?”

  “Aren’t you a little old to be…to be…” He waved his hand at the walls.

  “To be what? Sensual? Erotic? What, Cort?”

  “So open about it.”

  Blue wasn’t sure how to answer that other than to say, “No, I’m not too old to be so open about it, but maybe you’re too old to appreciate it. And who the hell are you to judge me? What happened to you?” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry.”

  She refused to believe she was wrong about him, about the man he was beneath the professional exterior. She’d seen the look, the hunger in his eyes. She’d fucked him before, touched him before, and knew that this detached Cort was not the real one. This man had a whole different personality than she was used to with friends, with others. He wasn’t open, wasn’t free with his thoughts, his feelings. He didn’t know her, and she couldn’t expect him to. She also didn’t know what she could and couldn’t expect him to do or say or feel.

  She at least wanted him to still feel the connection they had, that one connection, that one perfect moment.

  “I’m younger than you.”

  His words drew her out of her own head. “And? That has what to do with it?”

  “It—”

  “My age has nothing to do with anything. What’s wrong with the art? You just said yourself it was beautiful, yet now your voice is cold, full of distain.”

  “Nothing is wrong with it. You’re just…naked in some of them or at least partially naked with your…and your… They’re hanging in your living room.”

  “So? It’s my living room. I can hang whatever I want to hang on the walls. No one sees this stuff but me and friends from time to time. So what?” What was his issue?

  She watched him, watched the wildness, the heat, the hunger in his eyes. He pressed his lips together hard enough that the edges paled to white, and again he fisted his hands at his sides. He couldn’t stop looking at the picture where she was bare from chest to mid-thigh. What was he looking at? Her tits? Her shaved mound? Or was it the hands of two men on her body? “Do you want to see it?”

  He shook his head sharply and exhaled a breath she didn’t even know he’d been holding. “I need to go.”

  “Cort…”

  “I need to think about this. I’ll let you know Monday morning what I’ve decided.”

  It looked as though he had to force himself to look away from the picture and walk toward the door. Blue wanted to say something—anything—to get him to stay, to get him to talk. “I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  He wasn’t looking at her, and his hand was on the latch, but he’d stopped moving. That was a good sign, right? “I’m sorry. For that night, well, not for what happened during the night, but for… I’m sorry for leaving while you were sleeping.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Bullshit it didn’t matter. “Say that to my face.”

  For long, hot minutes, he didn’t move, and she didn’t breathe. “Blue…”

  He dropped his hand from the doorknob, and though she expected him to turn his head in her direction or walk back over to her, he did neither. He turned his whole body toward her and stalked her, one heavy footfall after another until he had her crowded back against the arm of the loveseat. He towered over her but leaned until he could get in her face. His gaze roamed from her eyes down to her lips and stayed focused there for a moment. She thought he might kiss her, wanted desperately for him to kiss her, but then he lifted his head, and his eyes met hers and… He wasn’t going to kiss her.

  “It. Doesn’t. Matter.”

  The words were succinct, measured, cold. And he didn’t mean them. Oh they hurt like hell to hear, but the shifting in his eyes just before he opened his mouth told her they weren’t true.

  He turned away again and this time got the door open, only he didn’t walk through it out onto the porch. “Who the hell are you?”

  Blue rushed over to find Neil standing on her doorstep, a slightly bemused look on his face.

  “I’m Neil, and you are?”

  “The fuck out of here.”

  Chapter Two

  “Cort, wait.”

  He didn’t. He stomped out the door and down the steps. He took long strides to the back of the plantation house and disappeared inside. She and Neil both stared after him until they heard the slamming of a truck door a few minutes later and an engine roar to life.

  Neil looked at her. “Who was that?”

  “A past indiscretion.” She looked at her friend. “What are you doing here? I thought you were off with what’s-his-name.”

  “How long ago was Mr. Past Indiscretion? And how come I’ve never heard about this?” he asked, completely ignoring her question. “He looked a little miffed.”

  Miffed? Yeah, that was the difference between the two men. Cort
would never use the word “miffed.” Not for anything. Neil, on the other hand, had finally realized he was more feminine than masculine and about six months ago had fully embraced it.

  “I don’t think he liked finding you standing there; then again, it could easily have been that he is still pissed at me. Maybe it’s both.”

  “Oh the jealous kind, is he? Nice. They are so hot, and you haven’t had one of those in ages. Come to think of it, you haven’t had any kind of ‘one’ in ages.”

  “Nice of you to point that out. Again. You and Rosie keeping a tally sheet?” She reached out and took his hand, tugging. “Come inside and I’ll tell you all about him.”

  “Did you tell Rosie about him? Does she know?” Neil stepped over the threshold by an inch if that and dropped his overnight bag on the floor. “Okay, I’m in. Tell, tell.”

  Blue laughed at his eagerness. “No, Rosie doesn’t know either.” She reached out and tapped his smiling mouth with her finger. “And wipe that grin off your face. I’m sure she’ll know soon enough.”

  “Of course she will.” Neil took her by the arm and dragged her over to the couch. Plopping down on it with her, he said, “Now, tell me.”

  “Okay. Remember a few years ago, I took that trip to Savannah after Aunt Violet died?”

  “Yeah. You wouldn’t let me or Rosie go with you to let Aunt V go. We were so worried about you going alone.”

  She smiled and snuggled into his familiar warmth. “I know.”

  Neil kissed the top of her head and pulled her in close with an arm around her shoulders. “What does that have to do with tall, dark, and grumpy?”

  “I met him that weekend in a bar down on the river.”

  “Uh-oh. What did you do, B?”

  She nudged him in the side and lifted her head from where it rested on his chest to look at him. “What do you think I did? You saw him just now, right? What would you have done?”

  “You’ve got a point there. The man did have the best eyes and those lips… Damn, girl. When you do manage to find them, you always find the good ones.”