145 - Straight Up

“Jesus, Dollface, can’t the press find a better mugshot of your man?  A picture of that ass would be better than the stuff they’re plastering across the TV screen all morning.”

Petey grinned into the phone.  No ‘hello’, no ‘how are you doing’, ‘what did the police say’ or any of that.  Gavin dragged her right to the important stuff.

“I’ll mention that to him.  Maybe you can take a snapshot of his ass and send it to the news station.” 

That got her a roll of the eyes and muttered, “Lord, God, Jesus,” from Jon. 

“Ya think he’d really go for it?”

“No,” she laughed, hating to burst his little gay bubble.  “I don’t think he’d go for it, but it was a nice distraction from what’s really on the news.  And speaking of distractions...  Think you could come up with something for a bachelorette party on the spur of the moment?  We rescheduled the wedding for tomorrow.  I thought we could all use a little fun tonight.”

“Hmmm…”  he mused.  “If you don’t mind throwing a little cash around, I can probably scour something up.  How’s about it Petey Pursestrings?”

“You’re such a smart ass. Why is it that I like you again?”

“Because I’m the only bitch in your life that you can snark back at, baby.”

There was more than a bit of truth to that statement.  “Cash throwing is not a problem,” she assured him with a defeated sigh. 

“Okey dokey, Snookums,” was his contented chirp.  Apparently, throwing cash agreed with him.  “Just you , the ex, the stepkid and Mama, right?”

That brought up another social quandary.  Jon’s mother.  Should she be invited?  Her loyal support last night had gone a long way in improving Petey’s opinion of the woman.  It wouldn’t feel right to ostracize her from the event.  After all, she couldn’t expect her mother-in-law to make an effort if she wasn’t going to.  

She flicked a glance at Jon, who was busy sending e-mails on his phone.  “No.  Jon’s mother, too.  And Matt’s wife, Desiree.”  Both of them might be unavailable on such short notice, but it wouldn’t hurt to extend the invitation.

Jon looked at her from beneath lifted brows.  She just shrugged at him.

“Oooo…” Gavin was cooing.  “Being the adventurous one, are we?  Well kudos to you, Miss Thong of Steel.  You’re definitely sporting your big girl panties, but that makes my mission all the more challenging.  This group could be a little too diverse to please everyone, all the time.  Just warning ya.”

“I realize that.  Can you make it work?”  A woman from each decade in life, from teens to seventies, was not your typical bachelorette guest list.  Diversity was nice, but it might just wreak havoc on planning.

Of course Gavin, being Gavin, acted as though the weight of the world had been hoisted upon his shoulders.  “It will be like a frickin’ circus, but I will come up with something.  Plan on seven o’clock and I’ll call ya back later with the deets.”

“I love you, Gavin.”  She’d been throwing those words around a lot this morning, but it felt good.

“Of course you do.  Hey.  How are you, by the way?  You know since they did that whole interrogation thing and you killed a guy and all?”

Her bark of laughter startled Jon, and he whipped his head around to give her a frown of admonishment.  Petey waved him off and spoke into the phone.  “What the hell?   I thought gay men were supposed to be sensitive?”

“Well, you’re not dead, and I find it hard to dredge up a tear for that bastard Tweedy Bird.  Throw a little Bette Midler on the sound system and I might be able to quiver my lip, but it ain’t gettin’ no better than that, Dollface.”

The unexpectedness that was Gavin drove away whatever stress had been lingering in a gale of giggles.  Its abruptness had Jon shaking his head with an unwilling smirk and he rose from the couch and muttering, “I don’t even wanna know.  I’m going upstairs while you girls talk.”

The playful kiss that she blew turned the smirk into a genuine smile, and Jon paused to drop  his own kiss on the top of her head before meandering toward his office.

It was good to hear her laugh and see her smile, but the side-effects of her flamboyant friend were going to take some getting used to.  He’d never known Petey to be a giggler.  She was more the dry sarcasm type of humor, even mischievously impish, but Gavin amused her in a way like no one else.  If he let himself, he could probably dredge up the tiniest bit of jealously over the fact.

Jealousy.

That brought something else to mind.  Those pictures from yesterday.  He wanted to see them again. 

Before the leather seat had absorbed any of his body heat, Jon bounced back up and redirected his steps to the bedroom.  He didn’t remember seeing the album here last night, but he’d been engrossed by more pressing matters. 

Searching blue eyes roved over the dresser, which was bare except for the King and Queen of Bling.  The nightstand surfaces were also devoid of any photo albums.  He pulled open the drawer in his bedside table, but the photos weren’t there either.  Curiously, he circled to Petey’s side of the bed and pulled out the drawer there.  Again, no photos.

“Could you call your mom and ask if she wants to go tonight?” Petey inquired, finished with Gavin and leaning her head against the doorway.  “I need to get ahold of Mom and Dot.  Oh, and I don’t have Desiree’s number.  Do you have it?”

“Where’s my wedding present?”

The ponytail that held her hair captive, slid back to center as she righted her head.  “Huh?”

“My wedding present,” he repeated.  “Where did you put it?”

There was an imperceptible tightening of her mouth and she deliberately folded her arms over her chest.  “In the guest room.”

Jon’s eyes scoured her face, trying to read the unspoken message there.  Was her gesture one of defiance?  If it was, he didn’t understand it. 

“What’s it doing there?” he demanded, sliding by her with a playful tug at her hair so that he could retrieve it.

Her words found him on the other side of the office heading into the hallway.  “I didn’t have time to shred it yesterday.”

Drawing up short, Jon pivoted on his bare heel and regarded her with incredulity.  “Excuse me?  Shred it?”

“I told you my feelings were hurt,” was her blasé reply, and a dainty shoulder pushed upward with indifference.  “I was going to destroy the source of my humiliation before it could cause anymore.”

He was unsure as to whether to kick his own ass for hurting her, or spank hers for being so…  so… stupid.  The woman had to know he was nuts for her body.  It wasn’t like he could fake the hard-ons that she gave him with a touch, or a look. 

Slow, deliberate strides brought him close enough to hover ominously over her diminutive frame.  “For a girl genius, you can be awfully dumb sometimes.  Go get the book.”

“No.”

The stubborn set of her jaw and her shoulders was almost a turn-on.  What kind of a sick fuck did that make him? 

Enunciating his words slowly and precisely, he repeated.  “Go.  Get.  The book.”

“No.  We’re not going into this marriage thing with you believing that you can bully me into doing whatever you want.”

The blue sparks shooting from her eyes set a tiny surge of adrenaline to dancing a jig at the base of his spine.  He really was a sexual deviant sometimes.  Why else would fighting with Petey be better than foreplay with anybody else?

“We’re not going into this marriage with you thinking I’m indifferent to that sexy little imp body of yours, either.”  Uncompromising fingers curled around her wrist and he hauled her behind him toward the staircase.  “We’ll both go.”

“Jon, stop.”  She tried to dig in her heels, but he was too much bigger and stronger for it to be a deterrent .  “Don’t be ridiculous.  There isn’t time for this nonsense now.  We have people to call.  We have a press statement to prepare.”

“There will always be time for this.”

Trailing down the steps behind him was less trouble than tumbling down them, and her feet skipped after his until they’d reached the first level of the penthouse before growing heavy again.

“What exactly is this?” she demanded.  “Your caveman-esque need to dominate me?”

Oh.  She shouldn’t have brought up the ‘d’ word.  He hadn’t really shown her the meaning of domination, but if she insisted, he could certainly do the job.

“That, too,” he blithely agreed as they broached the guest room threshold.  “Where is it?”

Smacking at the hand that held her wrist captive earned Petey a dully uttered, “Careful, little girl,” but he did release her. 

She shot a look of insolence over her shoulder and went to huffily pull open the top dresser drawer.  From its depths, she withdrew the black leather album and unceremoniously slammed the drawer closed.  Petey was frowning at him when she shoved it into his chest with a pithy, “Here.  Happy damn wedding.”

His easy chuckle only annoyed her, and she got her back up again when Jon wouldn’t let her leave.  She was half-way to storming out the door when he latched onto her bicep and breathed in her ear, “Come sit with me while I look at it.  See how I really like it.”

The shiver that went through her left goose bumps on her arms and had her eyes dilating.  “I don’t want to,” she said just as softly, but he knew she was being purposefully disagreeable. It’s the reason he had absolutely no qualms about hauling her sassy little ass over to the bed anyway. 

“Too damn bad.”  Settled on the end of the mattress, he made sure their hips were snugged together as he flipped open the front cover and flipped through a couple of pages until he found what he’d been looking for.  “This one,” he informed her, a square finger coming to land on the right-hand page.  “This is the one that set me off.  Wanna know why?”

It was, in his opinion, the most erotic shot in the book.  Captured from a an angle, she was wearing the imp ears and tail, black boots and that was it.  She was crawling away from the camera, right hand planted on the ‘bed’, her bicep strategically covering the side of her obviously bare breast.  But it was her face that had set his jealousy to boiling. 

Wild hair in an ink cloud surrounding her face, she was looking back over her shoulder with an expression of sheer lust.  Sloe-eyed and pink-cheeked, she was biting on her glossed lower lip, the corner of it tucked into her mouth.

Petey turned from the picture to where he was staring expectantly at her.  “Why?”

“Because, you damn little imp…”  He stroked a thumb over her cheek and watched her eyes go soft.  “That’s how you look at me when I’m about to take you from behind.  The thought of you looking at somebody else like that – even a camera – made me madder than hell.”

“I was thinking about you when that shot was taken,” she confessed, eyes roving hungrily over his mouth.  “I was imagining the weight of your hands squeezing my hips too tight like they do when you’re trying to control yourself – or me.”

There was a rumble deep in his chest, and he stole her mouth with a hot jab of his tongue.  Petey purred from the back of her throat and roped her forearms around his neck as he took the kiss deeper.  Hotter. 

The album slid to the floor, unheeded, as his plundering hands pushed their way under the downy soft cotton of her psycho bunny shirt.  He gave it another two minutes before she pushed him away, but he was going to race hard and fast in those two minutes.

He wasted no time in pulling his palms around her ribcage and up to her arm pits, where his thumbs could scrape over the lace cups that he knew, without looking, were pink.  The sensitive tips housed inside immediately pebbled at his touch, and he used his grip to spin her around so that she was straddling his lap. 

Scraping the hard ridge of his erection along the heat between her thighs, he broke the suction of their mouths with a rasped, “Does that feel like I don’t think your body is beautiful?  That you don’t turn me on like a fucking light switch?”

Her heat engulfed him even as her glassy eyes regretfully regained their focus.  Lucidity was interfering in his moment.  He could sense it even before she gently protested, “Jon…”

Biting back a groan, he let his chin fall until their foreheads rested against one another.  “I know, Baby.  Not today.  I know.”

The softness of her little hand on his cheek drew him like a moth to a flame, and he nuzzled into it.  Her affection came as readily as her sass and it kept him on the verge of an adrenaline rush, not knowing what was coming next.  She was as much a paradox today as she’d been three months ago, but instead of fighting it, he now appreciated the complexity of Petey. 

Her “Thank you,” fluttered across his lips with the sweetness of cotton candy. 

Turning his face slowly, he nipped at the center of her palm.  “You can, and will, thank me after the wedding.  With interest.”

Next post:  Sunday, August 5