Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Chapter 4

Jax

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I suggested a drinking game.” Poppy’s eyebrows had a challenging arch to them.

I took a minuscule sip of my drink, gesturing to the game board. “We’re drinking. It’s a game.”

“It’s checkers ,” she said, enunciating her words as clearly as someone drunk could. “How is this the only game you have at your house?”

It was the only game Henry liked to play, and the hours we spent staring at each other over that checkers board were some of my best memories. Sharing that, anything, with her was firmly on the list of Lines Not To Be Crossed with Poppy.

Instead of answering, I merely held her gaze. “You wanna play or not?”

She let out a dramatic sigh that had my lips fighting the urge to smile. “Fine.”

With her chin resting in her hand, Poppy tucked one leg up against her chest and studied the board with slightly unfocused brown eyes. Her hair dried slightly curly after getting wet in the rain, and she had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders .

The rain pelted the windows outside, and her attention kept bouncing between the board and the storm.

“What is it?” I asked begrudgingly.

The line of Poppy’s throat moved on a visible swallow. “You won’t, like, lose power or anything, will you?”

“I have a generator if that happens.” I moved one of the black pieces, waiting for Poppy to take her turn, but she was still staring at the front of the house. Inexplicably, she smiled. “What’s that look for?”

She shook her head, snapping herself out of whatever memory she’d been wading through. “I hate storms,” she murmured. “Always have. When I was little, I used to be afraid of the trees all around our house. That they’d fall and crush my bedroom ceiling while I was sleeping.” Gingerly, she moved her red piece, sitting back in her chair when she finished. “I woke up one night, terrified to stay in my room, and my dad heard me crying. He was still up watching TV. Came into my room and when he saw how upset I was, he let me get out of bed and come downstairs for some ice cream. As I got older, we just kept doing it. Every time it stormed, I’d stay up late with him. He’d put on a movie and we’d eat ice cream straight from the carton.”

Throat tight, I tapped my thumb along the edge of the board. “You still scared of storms?”

Her eyes locked on mine. “Not when I’m not alone, no. But if you had ice cream, I wouldn’t turn it down,” she said wryly.

“You’d have to call your Uber back if you want to get some of that,” I told her.

Poppy didn’t answer, content to watch my next move carefully.

We played silently for a few minutes, moving our pieces around the board. It wasn’t uncomfortable silence either, much to my surprise.

In all the years I’d known her, since she was a fifth-grade toothpick with braces, this was the most time I’d ever spent alone with her. The conversation over reheated pizza was easier than I thought it would be. We talked about work—the place we crossed paths the most. Her brother was also my boss, even though I had more freedom than most of the people who worked for Wilder Homes. If she questioned that, I’d never heard about it.

Poppy managed the office, and as the family construction business was on the cusp of expanding into a physical store, that would be her domain as well. We talked about her brothers—or she did most of the talking, I did most of the listening—and more than once, just like now as she moved one of her pieces, I caught myself staring.

“What?” she asked. Her eyes flicked up to mine. “Something on my face?”

How honest did I want to be? The whiskey loosened my tongue, that was for sure, and I chose my words carefully.

“I’ve avoided being alone with you for years,” I said gruffly. “Everyone in your family is so damn stubborn, I shouldn’t be surprised you pulled this off.”

She smirked. “I noticed. Did you think I’d tie you up on the bed and never let you leave?”

I gave her a long look. No one would ever be tying me up anywhere, no matter what their smile did to my insides. That would also go unsaid, locked up in a dark, dark place never to see the light of day.

A slight eye roll was all I allowed in reaction, but she grinned all the same. “No,” I responded patiently. “It just didn’t seem … prudent.”

Everyone in Poppy’s family knew about her crush on me. And there was a strange sort of relief when she decided she was going to start dating. It lessened a pressure banded around my chest that I’d never wanted to dig into. It was also, not so coincidentally, the longest stretch I’d gone without any last-minute trips in the past five years .

If she’d ever put that one together, I’d give her a fucking medal.

“Tell me about the worst date you’ve ever been on.”

I took a slow, slow sip of my drink because the addition of alcohol to this evening was … unwise. If it took me an hour to drink this one, all the better. The truth was, it didn’t really matter how slow I drank, because already, the pressure of having her there morphed from something that might get me murdered to maybe this wasn’t so bad .

That’s how I knew I was fucking buzzed.

Poppy had laughed, more than once, at something I said. I wasn’t funny, had never been funny. And maybe it was a testament to her blood alcohol level that she found me as amusing as she did, but no matter where it came from, it was … pleasant. Enjoyable.

Inside, at least.

Outside though, the storm raged, ice coated the windows and the howling gusts of wind elicited creaks and groans from the house. It was a ruthless type of storm, the mere sound of it had me feeling cold, so I’d lit a fire while Poppy toed off her shoes and tugged a blanket off the couch.

By silent agreement, we’d ended up at the table. Sitting on the couch, for me at least, felt too informal. Too comfortable. And nothing about this was comfortable.

“I don’t go on dates,” I admitted, holding her gaze unflinchingly as I answered. “Which you know.”

She conceded that with a soft hum. “I guess I’m curious then,” she said. “They’re not dates. But you have drinks with them. Or meet in the grocery store and then have drinks. Or you just … meet someone and decide, ‘this is the person I want to have sex with tonight’?”

“Poppy,” I ground out. “This is not a conversation I will have with you.”

“Why not? Maybe I’m curious about your approach. I’m a grown woman who lost possession of her hymen years ago, and?—”

My tortured groan, the kind dragged from the pits of my black soul, cut her off. “Holy shit, do not talk to me about your hymen.”

The second thought was nipping quick at the heels of what I’d just said; Who did you have sex with for the first time? I’d bite my fucking tongue off before I asked that .

Poppy continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “I could totally be a one-night person, I think.”

All manner of dark thoughts clouded my head, and I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.

“This has to be a nightmare,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s the only explanation. I got drunk, passed out, and I’m having a nightmare right now.”

“I am very real, I assure you.”

My hands dropped, and I pinned her with a heated glare. “I’m fucking aware.”

Poppy’s cheeks flushed a soft-pink color, and this time, she looked away. Her questions signaled a clear and obvious shift. One I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for. It was the shift I’d avoided for years, when she grew from a gawky teenager with stars in her eyes to an undeniably beautiful woman who, under any other circumstance, would be exactly my type.

Keeping the truth of that was the thing I never really even admitted to myself. It was tucked so far back in the recesses of my mind. I didn’t think about it when I saw her at work, I didn’t think about it if we were with a group having drinks at the bar, and I certainly wasn’t sitting at home pining.

But across the relatively small stretch of my kitchen table, with a weakened verbal filter and a violent storm outside that felt like an omen, I decided it didn’t really matter if I admitted it to myself. The risk of any dangerous truth came with action, and there’d be none of that. Not if I could help it.

But while she sat there and tried to decide whether she wanted to push this topic with me, her graceful fingers toying with the glass in front of her, the desire to indulge that whisper of a thought was there before I could stop it.

It was like pulling on the end of a thread, batting it around until more of it could be seen. The thought grew and grew, clouding my head until the fog cleared, and all that was left was an admission I couldn’t deny. If I imagined myself sitting across from Poppy at a bar, I’d want her.

I’d want to go home with her for a night, and it wouldn’t have taken me long to admit it either.

Once admitted, the truth had a cunning way of clouding my head with images of how that would play out.

With a slight tilt of my head, I studied the height of her cheekbones, the straight line of her delicate jaw, the arch of her dark eyebrows, and the impossible length of her eyelashes. When she smiled, it was like a spotlight on her lips—pink and soft-looking.

And this was just her face.

Anything below her neck had me shifting in my seat with an immediate hardening in my pants because my eyes traveled lower. And lower.

Oh yes. I’d want her. And I might not even be able to wait until we found a bed. In the back corner of a dimly lit bar, if the chemistry bubbled up between us anything like it was right now, I’d tug her into a hallway, the back of the parking lot, push her into the back bench of my truck, lift her skirts and find all the ways to make her scream my name.

I’d never had a type when it came to the shape of a woman’s body. I loved curves, and I loved sleek, toned bodies. Whatever Poppy was, it fucking worked. Slender through her waist and hips, trim legs and toned arms, and the slope of her cleavage had my mouth going dry. A luscious, tempting mouthful. They were high and firm, and if someone stuck a gun to my head, I’d bet every single red penny to my name that they were tipped with a soft-pink nipple that tasted like fucking candy.

She cleared her throat, and I blinked sluggishly. My brain tripped over the uncivilized fantasies, and I took another sip of the whiskey to yank myself free of them.

“I’m still going to call them dates,” she said primly, and based on the heated look in her eyes, she saw exactly where I’d been staring. “And I’m sure you still have stories, even if you don’t feel like telling them.”

What the fuck was wrong with me?

I had a hard-on that could be seen from space, and saliva pooled under my tongue from the thought of my mouth on Poppy Wilder’s tits and my hand under her skirt.

With a clench of my jaw, I tipped the remainder of my whiskey back and swallowed it, even though it burned like hell, and I was the biggest fucking idiot in existence.

Slamming the glass down, I pinned her with a hard look. “You know exactly why I shouldn’t be telling them,” I snapped, an unmistakable roughness to my voice that she should’ve heeded as a warning.

It was supposed to intimidate her.

She was supposed to back off. But no. She’d been raised in a family that taught her differently, and those fucking Wilders were all so fucking stubborn, she met that hard look with an undaunted, slow arching of her brow, and fuck if that didn’t get me even harder.

Poppy tipped her head back, finishing off her drink in a far more graceful fashion than I managed, and the glass settled back on the table with a delicate clink.

“All this time, I thought you avoided me because you were uncomfortable with my attention. Because I was an annoying kid in your eyes. Or you were being respectful of my brother.” She slowly stood from her chair. The lithe movements of her body as she shrugged off the blanket had my hands tightening into helpless fists on my lap. Then she braced her palms on the table and pinned me with a stare so direct, so open in what she wanted from that it sucked every fucking ounce of air from my lungs. “But you are terrified of me, aren’t you, Jax?”

If I moved my eyes even a single inch, I’d be able to see straight down her shirt. I’d be able to see the color of her bra, so I kept every growling instinct focused on keeping my gaze right on hers.

“I’m not scared of anything, Poppy,” I said as evenly as possible. “Least of all you.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger or distrust, but like she was weighing the truth of my words and found me coming up short.

I was too drunk for this.

My head was swimming dangerously, and I needed her away from me. Now.

Pushing my chair back from the table had her straightening to her full height, still so much smaller than me. But damn if she didn’t raise her chin in a dare.

“Should we switch to truth or dare?” she asked lightly.

That didn’t deserve an answer. Crossing my arms over my chest, I prayed to whatever deity who would listen that my hard-on wasn’t too visible. Thank God I was still wearing jeans from my workday. If I’d switched to my normal gray sweatpants, I’d be in trouble.

“I think it’s time for bed, Poppy,” I growled.

A mischievous smile hovered at the edges of her lips, her eyes glittering in the dim light of my kitchen. Why didn’t I have every fucking light on in the house? Why did I start a fire?

What an idiot I was.

None of this was harmless, no matter what her plans were when she showed up shivering at my front door.

I jabbed a finger in the air. “Don’t you smile at me like that. This isn’t funny. ”

“It’s a little funny,” she said airily. “In a million years, I never thought I’d have Jax Cartwright running scared.”

Was my eye twitching? It had to be because the tension in my face felt like my cheekbones would shatter, like my molars would be ground to dust.

“I’ll get you a blanket and a pillow for the couch,” I ground out.

“I need something to sleep in too,” she added casually. My eyes slammed shut, the mental image of Poppy wearing one of my T-shirts had me swallowing down a groan.

“Fine.”

As I yanked a blanket out of a basket in the family room, she took a few steps closer. “If we’d played truth or dare, you know what I would’ve chosen?”

“Nope, and I don’t care,” I snapped.

“Truth, first, because I know you well enough that you’d never dare me to do anything,” she continued as if I hadn’t morphed into some grunting entity incapable of pleasantries. “Eventually, I would’ve dared you to kiss me. Just once. Just so I know what it’s like. So you do too.”

Slowly, so slowly, with the blanket clutched in my hand, I turned to face her, my brows high. “You must be drunk off your ass if you think I’d do it.”

The words were harsh in my head, something I yelled so loudly that my voice filled every corner of the room. But in reality, in that dark, fire-lit room, they came out differently. There was a distinctly uncertain edge to what I said, and my voice was choked, squeezed tight from the images bombarding my whiskey-addled brain.

Poppy didn’t respond, merely stood there with a patient, understanding look in her eye, just barely masking the banked heat in her chocolate-brown depths.

This night had turned us both into entirely different versions of ourselves. This confident, sexy version of Poppy was my nightmare, and I couldn’t even pretend to be polite anymore, the fear of her effect on me filing down any civility I had left.

I leaned closer, my voice rough and low and just on the edge of cruel. “What makes you think I kiss any of the women I fuck, Poppy?”

Her throat moved in a delicate swallow, and she blinked a few times. “You don’t?”

“Don’t need to,” I told her. “No one’s complaining, trust me.”

She sucked in a slow breath. “Too intimate for you, I’m guessing.”

Kisses created feelings. A false sense of what was possible and what they expected. It was easier, years earlier, to make that distinction in my head.

“Something like that.”

Poppy tilted her head. “And what if you fall in love someday?”

I sucked in a short breath through my nose. “Okay, fine, in the catastrophic event that pigs are flying and hell freezes the fuck over, then sure, I’d kiss that person. But I won’t ever do that, so it’s a moot point.”

The pink of her tongue flashed when she licked her lips, something quick and fast, and I wasn’t sure she did it consciously. All the blood rushed south … immediately.

“But sex is … safe?” she said quietly. “You can fuck them and move on, and there’s no attachment because you didn’t do this one, little thing.”

Poppy saying fuck did strange things to my insides, the tightening of a screw and the lifting of the hairs on the back of my neck.

I made a small noise of concession, probably because I didn’t dare speak for fear of what might come out. The room already felt like it was on fire with this change of subject. My brain defiantly conjured a host of vivid images, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop them .

What would happen if…

What if. What if. What if.

If my hand snaked around the back of her graceful neck, fingers digging into the mass of her dark hair, and I licked into that soft-pink mouth to see how she tasted and what she’d do. If her body would arch into mine and if she’d moan helplessly while she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed up on tiptoe to get closer.

I could wreck her with a single kiss. Drag us both into some fiery pit where the only way out was through naked, writhing skin and the kind of release that split the world open.

Fuck.

Fuck .

We held like that for an impossibly long moment, her chest heaving as she breathed deeply, an anxious tell that she was just as stunned by what she’d said as I was.

Her eyes searched my face, a desperately confused sort of wrinkling in her brow.

Did she know? Could she guess what I was imagining? That I could immediately recognize how good it would be, and that I wanted it so badly that my hands shook from the restraint needed not to touch her?

“What if I was a one-night person?” she whispered. In the dark room, firelight danced off the graceful features of her face. “What if that’s all I wanted from you, and I promised we could walk away tomorrow unscathed?” Underneath the cage of my ribs, my heart thundered wildly. The hesitation was damning, and she knew it as she took a small step closer, eyes glowing, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. “I want you out of my head, Jax.”

Again, my eyes pinched shut, and fuck, my throat dried out so thoroughly that I couldn’t force a denial. The words were anchored heavy in my stomach, and I couldn’t push them up and out .

Then, then, a whisper-soft brush of her fingers over my forearm had my eyes snapping open.

Why was she so close to me? The sweet scent of her had my head swimming, and I sucked in a slow breath, desperately yanking on every shred of discipline buried deep under my skin.

“One night,” she said again. “I think you want it too. But if you tell me you don’t want me, I’ll never speak of it again.”

Why couldn’t I lie to her?

They were just words—easy to speak out loud. It didn’t matter whether they were true or not , I told myself.

I don’t want you.

I don’t want you.

Say it, I screamed in my head. Say it.

But I could imagine the pain flashing in her eyes, and I’d sooner pluck my skin off than cause her any more hurt than I already had over the years with my forced indifference. I shoved the blanket in her hands.

“Good night, Poppy.”

She sucked in a quick breath, clutching the blanket to her chest.

“Bathroom is across from my room if you need to use it. I’ll set a shirt on the counter for you.” Then I glanced down at the floor, cursing every single thing about this whole night. She swayed slightly, running a visibly trembling hand through her hair.

The reminder of our mutually lowered inhibitions, the millions of reasons touching her was the worst thing I could possibly do was exactly what I needed to brush past her and walk away.