Wild in the Windy City Volume 3: New Year's Eve Edition Read online

  Lexi

  We’ve talked about most of the poetic greats when a song drifting from the ballroom catches my attention, and I interject, “I love this song. Now, that’s poetic.”

  Jared tips his head. “Snow Patrol?” he questions. He moves his head a little bit, and then he stands up, unfolding from the stairs where I eventually sat next to him. Holding out his hand, he falls into line with the lyrics of the song.

  “Come over here,” he sings, and my brows rise. I’m stunned while moving as he requested. His voice. It’s mesmerizing, and I realize all the times I’ve searched out the sound of it within Collision songs did not do it justice. He wiggles his fingers and repeats the lyrics, and I stand like the snake responding to the piper’s call. He guides me to step down, and then he tugs me into an embrace. He clasps our hands against his chest as his other arm wraps around my back. Jared leads us with the sway of his hips and the purr of his voice in my ear about love, loss, and pain. The potential for heartbreak, he hums against my ear, and I know there’s nothing I’d regret with this man. If this is all I ever get from him, I wouldn’t give up a second of it out of fear that he’ll break me again.

  My number can wash off his skin.

  His phone could be lost and crushed.

  And I wouldn’t risk missing out on this moment. In his arms. In the hall. Dancing.

  The song comes to an end, and Jared stills. A new song begins, and I quietly squeak, “I love this song, too.” Do I say it because I don’t want him to let me go? I’m not certain my motivation, but then he groans.

  “‘Shallow’ with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper? No, just no.” He laughs harder although I don’t know why he’s laughing. I do love this song, but it appears our dance is over. Jared slips his hand in mine again and turns for the stairs. “Come with me.”

  There’s a question in his voice. He’ll let me go if I say no, but I’m not ready to leave. I take the first step, knowing there’s no turning back. I’m falling for him all over again.

  I follow him as he leads us up three staircases and down an empty hall. I grip his wrist and turn back, worried someone saw us or a security guard will catch us, but Jared confidently strides forward. He presses through a door, and we stand on the upper deck of Navy Pier.

  “Holy crap, it’s cold,” I ineloquently state, and Jared immediately shrugs off his tux coat, slipping it over my arms as he turns me to look at the skyline of my city. My breath catches. “It’s so beautiful.”

  Jared steps behind me and wraps his arms around me, pressing my back into his chest. “I love this city.”

  My head twists, and my lips could brush his cheek. He doesn’t look back at me but keeps his eyes forward as he speaks again.

  “I lied earlier, Lexi. You aren’t beautiful. You’re fucking breathtaking tonight like that skyline.”

  Before I can respond, he sings again, his voice shakier in the cold air. “And I cry from the rooftops how I miss you.”

  “Jared,” I whisper, taken by surprise with the declaration.

  The hushed cry of his name turns his head, and his lips brush against mine. Soft. Sweet. Cautious.

  He pulls back, and his eyes meet mine, sparkling and dancing like the city lights backdropped by the near-midnight sky.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” he whispers back, apologizing for the kiss. I don’t know what to say, fearing an admission of wanting more would be too much to ask. He releases me and slips his hand in mine once more. “Let’s explore.”

  He walks across the upper level, the freezing lake breeze taking both our breaths until we reach another entrance to a turret of sorts on the end of the pier jutting out into the lake. We enter the area that can be described in no other way than an enclosed portico. The door slams behind us, and I spin.

  “Are we locked in?”

  Jared jiggles the door handle, then bangs on the window a second. Stepping back and staring at the closed door, he sighs. “It appears so.” I rush for the door, ready to test the handle myself when Jared’s arms slip around my waist, and his face nuzzles into the side of my neck.

  “Let’s enjoy the view a moment before we freak out, okay?”

  I nod, settling against him, and before my eyes leap up to the skyline Jared spins us to face the lake instead. Dark and ominous, it’s also beautiful, like black ink spreading over a blank page, and Jared and I remain quiet as if we might disturb the flow of water rumbling outside the glass enclosure.

  My mind drifts, and the words Jared sang repeat in my head.

  And I cry from the rooftops how I miss you.

  I spin in Jared’s arms, and my shoulder blades hit the glass behind me. “Those words…” My eyes move back and forth between his. “That’s a Collision song.”

  His brows rise. “You listen to Collision?”

  “I do now,” I exclaim, and a smile graces his lips.

  “I wrote that song.” Our eyes lock, and I have a million thoughts but only one question. Is that song about me…or some other girl? “See, I met this girl, and she had a profound effect on me.”

  “Profound?” I question, my heart rate skyrocketing as I consider all the women I’ve seen him pictured with over the past year. Jared’s gaze drifts to the water behind me, and I wonder why he’s holding me if some other woman was so profound.

  “Or maybe it was the piña coladas,” he jokes, arching one brow. I smack at his shoulder, and he catches my retracting fingers, drawing my palm to his mouth and sucking at the center pad. His eyes close as his tongue traces my lifeline before his teeth nip at the thickness under my thumb. “Maybe it was the rain.”

  “Maybe it was midnight,” I counter, going for a teasing tone, but instead, giving off a raspy gulp as his mouth moves to my inner wrist, sucking at the tender skin before scraping his teeth over it.

  “Midnight,” he mutters. “Has a time ever been so incomplete?”

  Was that more poetry? Another song from him?

  “I’m incomplete,” he mutters, and my brows pinch, but before I can ask him what he means, the sky lights in red sparks and silver explosions.

  I spin back to face the glass, pressing my hands on it like a child. “Fireworks.”

  “Midnight, I presume,” Jared mumbles, resting his chin on my shoulder.

  “Midnight,” I whisper, closing my eyes, recalling how he entered me once before. The slow slide. The slick skin. The fullness. Another spark illuminates the sky, and my head tips back. Jared takes this as an invitation to nibble at my exposed neck, and I won’t decline the invite.

  “Midnight feels ominous. Like I have sixty seconds to reveal things before it’s twelve oh one and some mysterious window closes as the door to the new year opens.”

  I want to speak, but his teeth nip my earlobe.

  “So here goes…there’s nothing I wanted more this evening than to be buried deep inside you like I was once upon a midnight. Secure inside you. Filling you while you filled me in ways I couldn’t have suspected, ways I can’t define, ways I want to repeat.”

  Another firework lights the sky, and I’m certain sixty seconds have passed, but I don’t move, frozen to the spot. The sound of my dress scrunching, the organza rising upward is the only sound.

  “Let me touch you, Lexi. Let my fingers make love to you if I can’t.”

  “Who said you can’t?” The raspy sound of my voice isn’t recognizable, but I’m so turned on by his confession that as the cool air hits the back of my thighs, I want nothing more than to have him inside me.

  “Lexi,” he whines into my skin. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

  “Okay,” I whimper, my forehead resting on the cold glass as my heart patters, and my stomach twists. I’m so desperate for him I might orgasm from the sound of his voice or the continued kisses on my neck, but his fingers stretch around my hip, heading for the promised land, and my knees spread. He’s right. It’s all kinds of wrong. I shouldn’t let him do this to me. I shouldn’t want to be with him again. But dammit, this my N
ew Year’s wish if I’m allowed to have one.

  His fingers slip over the waistband and into my barely-there thong to brush tenderly over skin throbbing with need and slick with desire.

  “Lexi,” he groans like a prayer and a curse word rolled into one. Sliding tentatively home, he fills me with two fingers, and my forehead presses harder against the glass. My palms squeak over the condensation caused by our warm breaths near the cool window. Jared pressing into my backside with the firm length at his zipper, teasing me in two directions. “I want in,” he murmurs against my shoulder, his lips open and sucking at my skin.

  I choke on an answer as his thumb strums over the sensitive nub while his fingers set their own rhythm of sliding deep and fast. He’s a guitarist, and I’m jealous of the instrument that feels this pleasure each time he touches the strings.

  “Jared,” I croak.

  “Come, Lexi.”

  “I need you inside me,” I admit, not wanting to lose the pace of his attention but needing more of him.

  “Fuck,” he hisses, withdrawing his fingers and fumbling with his pants. My forehead lifts from the glass and lightly thumps back as I clench my hands into fists. My body screams for his, and my core curses me for allowing him to halt the building tension.

  More fireworks explode as I hear the telltale rip of a foiled package. I close my eyes, not wanting to imagine Jared covering himself or stroking himself behind me. His knees bend as he lowers behind me, lining us up.

  “It’s not midnight,” he mutters. “But I’m still going to go slow and keep it tame like lovemaking.”

  “No,” I groan. Nothing can replace the first time we were together. A bed. Tender touches. His mouth on mine. This is another night. Another midnight—actually, minutes past—and I want it different. I want it hard and fast.

  “Fuck me,” I whimper as he thrusts into me, sharp and deep with my request. Fuck midnight and lovemaking. Fuck piña coladas and promises. Fuck getting caught in the rain. I want to be chased. I want to be sought out. I want this man to fall apart.

  His hands grip my hips hard as he pistons in and out of me, forcing my front to plaster against the glass. My cheek slips along the condensation. My fingers fumble with no purchase. My legs tremble as Jared pummels into me, and I feel reckless and free. I feel exposed and open, and for the first time, I’m doing it in the position as we stand. I’ve never done anything like this—back to front, public, another one-night stand. Because while I feel each ridge and rut, each thrust and tap, I know Jared Kane is going to disappear again, and I need a new memory of him.

  “You’re going to wreck me, Lexi,” he mutters as one hand releases my hip and slips forward, returning to circle my trigger spot. Within seconds, I light up like the dark sky before me. Red streaming lights and sparks of silver and a burst of blue with the thunderous sound, and then another rush with more exploding color and a pop-pop-pop before the hiss of spent confetti floating to the ground. As I’m falling into the abyss of two orgasms on top of each other, Jared stills, slamming into me so hard my hips hit the glass.

  His own display of fireworks begins with a jut and a jolt, and my insides tingle as I feel every pulse of him. He pulls back only a hair and presses forward once more as if spilling again, releasing an overflow, until his forehead rests on my shoulder.

  “That was too fast,” he mutters, rolling his head on the curve of my shoulder.

  “That was incredible,” I reply, and he shifts to smile into my neck.

  “Better than a piña colada?” he teases.

  “Better than mint chocolate chip ice cream,” I reply with a short laugh.

  “I don’t think that’s a song,” he says, slowly peeling himself off me but remaining attached.

  “You could write me one.” My eyes close on the request, feeling as if I’ve asked him for something deeply personal instead of a flippant suggestion.

  He’s quiet for a moment as he slips free from me.

  “I don’t really have anything to…” His voice fades and slowly I feel distance wedging between us. I’m instantly cool from the absence of his front from my back. His coat has long since fallen off my shoulders, and Jared reaches for it. “I should be better prepared for these things with a handkerchief or something.”

  My insides run cold at the comment.

  Better prepared. These things. I’d laugh at the use of such antiquated words if I wasn’t suddenly feeling stabbed by the rest of his statement. I bend down for my thong, which slid to my ankles. Stepping out of it, I use the scrap to swipe at my inner thigh.

  He mutters my name, but I’m falling in a sense, slipping underwater as my body is satiated but not relaxed by his recent comment.

  “Did you hear what I said?” he asks, and I nod.

  “I heard,” I reply, my lips feeling bee stung and numb. His brows pinch, but I can’t look at him.

  “Hey, what’s happening here? Was that too rough? Did I mess this up?”

  I pause, risking a glance at his puzzled face and shifting my eyes to the finale firework display. A ruckus and rumble like no other vibrates the glass at my shoulder, tearing open the sky with color like the ripping of my heart in my chest.

  How rashly we make decisions in a moment. Sixty seconds. One minute. Midnight.

  “Lex,” he groans, pressing his lips to my shoulder, but I flinch. “What did I do?”

  I shrug, not looking at him, keeping my eyes on the brilliant display although the performance blurs with liquid. “I guess next time you’ll be better prepared.” Like me, next time. There will be no next time. “For these things.”

  “Hey.” His voice rings sharper. “That’s not what I meant. I meant I didn’t behave very gentlemanly, and I want to take care of you, which I didn’t.”

  “Oh, you took care of me,” I snip, sarcasm not pretty in my tone. He tips my chin, so I look at him over my shoulder.

  “I want to take care of you. I want a lot of things from you. I don’t deserve you after what happened the first time, and now look what’s happened again. I can’t seem to help myself when I’m near you. Did you hear what I said? You asked me to write you a song, and I did. I wrote a whole fucking album for you.”

  I blink at him, new liquid filling my tear ducts. “What?”

  “Lexi, I haven’t gotten that night out of my head, and I’ve been searching for you for sixteen months. Every corner. Every city. Every girl who was a bobbed brunette.”

  I straighten as I shift to face him.

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant…”

  I hold up a hand, but he grabs my wrist again and brings my palm to his mouth.

  “It isn’t like that. I’m not like that. The random thing. It isn’t me.”

  I don’t believe him, and it shows in my expression. His eyes have found mine, but his lips remain pressed into my palm.

  “Let me prove it to you.”

  “How?” I laugh.

  Jared

  “How?” The question reverberates between us. She’s sassy, which I don’t recall from before, but I like it even though I normally don’t like that kind of back talk. She isn’t being coy or bossy or all-knowing, but curious with a pinch of disbelief.

  “Midnight.”

  “Jared,” she groans, and I realize I’m tempting fate with my desire to hear her grunt my name again.

  “Where I live, it isn’t midnight yet. Pacific time. I have two hours before the clock officially rolls over. Give me a do-over on tonight.”

  “I don’t need a do-over,” she says, disappointment filling her voice. “It’s just how I wanted it.”

  I’m surprised by her candid admission, and a little disappointed she isn’t giving me a second chance. Actually, I’d be on my third. My head falls forward, and I close my eyes, blocking out the tips of my shoes and her exposed toes in the strappy heels of hers until her hand cups under my chin. I’m still holding her other hand, afraid to let go of her for fear she’ll disappear like she did on that morning.
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  “What would you do over tonight?” Her voice falls softer, quieter, as though she’s afraid of my answer but still ask the question.

  “I’d want to see your face when you fell apart. I’d want to take my time. I’d want to have not lost the past sixteen months.” My voice rises with the growing pressure in my chest. Dammit, I don’t understand what it is about her, but I don’t want this night to end so soon.

  “So you want to do it again?” Her tone shifts, lilting a little in question and anticipation.

  “Hell, yes,” I say.

  “Right here?” she whispers, and my brows pinch. No, I want a bed. I want to lay her down in this dress. I want to peel it off her and watch her writhe under me, naked and pliable and willing.

  But she’s slowly lifting the sides of her dress, and my heart rate matches the ascending material as does my traitorous dick, which doesn’t seem to care about the tender stuff. I groan out her name in a mixture of physical pain and struggling willpower.

  “It’s embarrassing to admit, but as nice as a bed and all sounds, I’ve never done anything like this. Just like the first time, you’ve given me a new experience, and I don’t think I’m ready for it to end.” Her dress rises higher, and I realize her panties are tossed on the ground. She’s naked and bare under all that material. “And my body feels electric. Like a live wire…or a firework. And I want to spark again.” She pauses. “I don’t think my legs can carry me away from this spot, so it needs to be here.”

  The quiet surrounds us as the fireworks have died, and the sky settles back to deep black like her dress. I step up to her, stroking her cheek before lowering my mouth to hers. A tentative kiss slowly grows to something more until she’s clinging to me, desperate once again, and I realize her words are my sentiments. I don’t think I can walk away from this spot. This atmosphere. This night without one more time against this window.

  With haste, I’ve opened my pants and sheathed myself, and holding up her skirt, I slip inside once more. It’s slower this time, the drag and return, the pull and the push. I draw it out as much as I can with a hand cupping her thigh, lifting her leg to rest against my hip. She balances on one foot with her back pressed against the glass, and this time, I can see her eyes despite the darkness. They match the dark lake behind her, and their depth is as deep. I’m not bothering to wade slowly but jumping into the deep end despite the tempo I’ve set to prolong entering her, filling her, completing her once again.