Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз (бесплатные серии книг .txt) 📗

I wanted to know what was wrong, why he felt so dejected, why he wanted to keep me away, but there was no time at all to ask.

Jake walked into the huge foyer, and said, “If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll ask which rooms you’re in.”

Mom was exclaiming about how the chandelier was done by the man who designed all the crystal in the Vanderbilt house and how the rugs were definitely Aubusson, wasn’t it obvious? When Jake came back down the stairs, he was followed by a lady with silver hair and his pretty gray eyes.

“Welcome! Suzanne, welcome! Brenna, we’ve been waiting to meet you. Jake talks about you incessantly.” She had the kind of stiff manners that were also supposed to be fun and cute, and I smiled while Mom gushed.

The Jake comment made me a little nervous, and I glanced at my mom to gauge her reaction. I knew my mother tended to think Jake and I were too wrapped around each other, but apparently, those words from the mouth of Mama D were completely fine. Mom even beamed a little.

It was all weirdly offset by Jake’s silence. It was almost sullenness, and it was so unlike Jake I just couldn’t make any sense out of it at all. I knew he was unhappy about things, but Jake was a roll-with-the-punches kind of guy. He didn’t usually let things get him so down.

Mama D led Mom away to her room, and Jake took my hand and practically dragged me to mine. When we got to the big, cheerful guest room (with my own bathroom!), Jake closed the door, dropped my bags and wrapped his arms around me and just held me, still and tight. My heart thumped like a puppy’s tail, all new, exuberant excitement. Jake, my Jake, was right here, right in front of me, and I just wanted to sink into his embrace and never let go

Like an eruption, our hands were suddenly everywhere, our faces brushed, and I tilted my head towards his so we could fall into sweet, melting kisses that burst into something harder and faster with every sweep of our lips. He was moving fast, his mouth hard and sweet as a peppermint candy, and he walked me backward to the bed, our mouths still attached.

I knew Mom was somewhere, maybe right next door, and his grandmother or anyone else could walk in at any second, but the intoxication of the weight of his body over mine more than outweighed any fear of getting caught.

There was this whole frantic rush of actions ebbing and fighting for dominance. I sighed into his open mouth, nipped at his bottom lip, tugged at his t-shirt, moaned at the soft suck of my bottom lip into his mouth. His hands pressed up under my hair like he had a direct line to my brain and knew exactly what would turn my body into a warm, swirling whirlpool of drowning need.

Jake’s mouth opened and pressured mine to do the same. I parted my lips and tasted him, pressed into him when he ran his hands over me because it felt like all the stress and sadness I’d bottled over the last few weeks got ripped off, like pulling the husks off summer corn. Whatever he couldn’t tell me with his words, he was sending a message loud and clear with the frenzied, sweet press of his body: he had missed me just as much as I missed him. That was a relief. I could work through whatever was wrong with him as long as I was sure it didn’t have to do with us.

Like us ending.

We were lying on the bed, his body nicely heavy on mine, and I squirmed under him so we met at every logical locking place. He was breathing hard, his forehead pressed to mine.

“What’s wrong, Jake?” I moved my fingers along the curve of his ear and the nape of his neck, then back up into his hair.

He shook his head and smiled, his crooked eyetooth deliciously familiar, and I popped a quick kiss on it. “Nothing. Not now. Not with you here.”

I moved my hand down between his shoulder blades, where his back was bunched with muscles. That was one of my favorite parts of him, one of the parts of his body that made my breath hitch in my throat every time I saw him. I never would have imagined the few inches between someone’s shoulder blades would have made me feel so much, but there it was.

I looked at his face, his gray eyes darting to avoid my gaze, his mouth too flat and twisted down. I knew Jake enough to know something was wrong, and I wanted to know how to unravel this knot of a problem. “You don’t seem like yourself,” I said softly, coaxing him to tell me.

“I haven’t been.” He blew out a long, labored breath and shrugged, then closed his eyes. I pulled the very tip of my finger along the impossibly smooth line of his eyelashes, back and forth in a touch so light it was barely a touch. “There’s a lot I want to tell you, but I couldn’t while you were away. And now it’s really hard to start.”

“Start wherever you want.” I kissed his chin, first in the exact center, then right and left, and back to the middle. “Tell me.”

He opened his mouth and there was a knock at the door. I jumped completely off the bed and scurried over to the other side of the room, where I tried to look busy by nervously unzipping my suitcase.

Jake growled a little, then moved to the door. I was expecting my mom or his grandmother or father, but there was a girl there instead. One I knew, though I couldn’t place her for a minute.

Then it hit me.

Paris.

“Hi Caroline.” I blushed, feeling the stupid embarrassment of meeting a casual witness of my past idiocy. The last time she and I were in the same room, I was welcoming the New Year by making out with Saxon and slow dancing with him for hours. My entire face flushed hot just remembering it.

“Oh, hey, Brenda.” She smiled just meanly enough to let me know it wasn’t an unintentional thing.

I felt instantly exhausted, and missed Evan with an ache that swelled and pierced from my guts up into my throat. I wanted to channel my crazy, brave friend. Evan would have jumped into between me and this girl and eaten her like an hors d’oeuvre, without one backward glance.

“It’s Brenna.” Jake leapt to my immediate defense, his voice already impatiently annoyed. “What do you need Caroline?”

She came in and sat on my bed, which was a really aggressive move, but I had no idea how to deal with it. This wasn’t technically my house or my room. Was I supposed to throw her out? Make a snide comment? Act cool about it? I had no idea what to do. I closed my eyes and tried to channel Evan, but I could only imagine her picking Caroline up by her glossy, highlighted hair. Thinking about Evan’s sometimes-militant insanity made me smile, but it wasn’t my style at all.

“I was just coming to ask if you and her--” she began.

“Brenna,” Jake gritted through his teeth.

Her smile was sharp and as dangerously sweet as a jagged piece of rock candy stuck in your throat. “Sorry…if you and Brennawould like to come to the beach for a bonfire tonight. I promise, I won’t make you get naked this time, and I won’t be so stupid like last time. As nice as it was to have you as my hero.” Her giggle was as precise a weapon as a throwing knife, and I could see a light in her pretty eyes when she realized that I was a clueless, punctured target. She’d hit her bull’s-eye.

Jake naked? Jake a hero? What the hell was going on?

Fury shook Jake’s shoulders, made his large hands into knotty fists at his sides, pulled at his lips so his teeth were bared. I had never seen his eyes glow with such pure hate. Never. “Get the hell out, Caroline.” He tore each word off at the end with a ferocity that gave me goosebumps.

Her shrug rose and fell in a cute bob that barely disguised her total, buoyant happiness. “Well, the invitation is open Jake. Oh. And Brenna of course,” she sang out with cheer so mean it stung like a hard slap.

She left and the air in the room crackled and snapped like a summer thunderstorm was rolling in. The fury that made Jake so rigid and upset had melted away, and all I could see were his eyes, unblinking and begging me to forgive…what? I backed away, suddenly fresh out of breath and wishing I could rewind back to Ireland where things were simple, my boyfriend couldn’t wait to see me, and he didn’t have some terrible secret to confess.