Page 33 of Ghost of a Chance

I t was funny how words like that could scar someone. Kirsty had felt that way about her first agent. The one who’d said she needed to write to trends until she learned how to write, period. Her agent had been right but those words had been hard to digest.

But this cut deeper for her. No wonder Jasper was having a hard time saying goodbye to Paul. That night had been monumental before Paul’s death.

“That’s some tough love.”

“That was Paul. In a way you remind me of him.”

“The tough part?”

“Sure, but more the way you care about Gia. I think…no hedging it, I wanted that for me and Paul but we were never there.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance.”

“Yeah. That night… I flipped him off, told him to fuck off just to prove how wrong he was. Walked away without a backward glance,” Jasper said, rubbing his hand over his eyes.

His grief was like a cloud hanging over him. There was still so much that she didn’t know. She hoped Aza could speak to whoever was trapped in the book. If the real medium couldn’t, they were all screwed. “Want to skip the party and maybe just walk?”

“Why?”

“You look like you’re about to—”

“Don’t say cry, or I will,” he said.

“It’s okay. He was your best friend and cousin and you were close,” she said, looping her arm through his. “Even you’ve admitted you haven’t really dealt with your grief.”

She started toward the corner he’d pointed to a moment ago.

Tipping his head back and, having done it herself, she suspected he was blinking to keep tears in his eyes.

There was nothing that made you feel more vulnerable than crying in front of someone. There was no disguising how deeply something hurt/moved/touched you were when you cried.

“I wanted to show you that I’m proud to be with you at a frat party,” he said. “I wanted to make out with you in one of the hallways so everyone else would be jealous that I’m with the hot, cool author.”

Stopping, she stood in awe at him. There was something about being with someone who emoted so clearly, like a big, fluffy dog, that really got to her.

She wanted to warn him to keep some of his feelings back.

That the world was going to hurt him…that she might someday, even though she liked him and liked being around him.

She was basically a loner. Eventually she was going to be back in her small safe house creating in her fictional world and he was going to be in Chicago. A few states and a world away from her.

Still, she couldn’t resist basking in how he described her. “We can make out here.”

“Here?”

“Definitely. On this corner,” she said, hoping to replace a bad grief-filled memory with a better one.

“It’s not raining though,” he said a slight grin teasing his lips.

“Is that your only requirement to make out with me?”

“I thought it might be yours,” he said as tugged her off balance and into his arms. His hands rested lightly on her waist, his head tilted to the side, blocking out some of the light from the streetlamp.

The moon was still behind him, big and bright. Somehow making this night seem magical in a way that normally she didn’t take the time to observe. She was different with Jasper. Lighter. More…hopeful.

Looping her arms around his neck, she went up on tiptoe, canting her body into his until she felt the wool of both of their coats brushing against each other.

The warmth of his breath brushed over her mouth.

She parted her lips, their eyes met, and she knew that this kiss, this night was changing something fundamental inside of her.

She wasn’t giving herself permission to change, it was already happening.

His lips were firm and soft. His kiss not as gentle as it had been before, when he’d been trying to soothe her past hurt.

He wasn’t as kind to himself as he’d been to her.

She hadn’t paid attention to that fact until now.

He was hard on himself. Saw his life as aimless drifting instead of seeing his own strength, his resilience.

The fact that he’d had a lot of blows in his life and still figured out a way to make it something he could be proud of.

When he lifted his head, she noticed that his breathing was heavier. So was hers. Lightly she ran her finger down the edge of his cheekbone. There was something sad and angsty about him that made her heart almost break.

“We have two choices,” she said.

“They are?”

“Continuing making out here and see how far we can take things without being seen,” she started.

“Or?”

“Something outrageous that will make you smile again,” she said.

“Both of those will make me smile,” he admitted, pulling her back into his arms. His mouth came down on hers again, hard and heavy. His hands were already undoing the buttons of her coat until he lifted her off her feet.

She forgot about where they were and about cheering him up. The kiss took her out of her own mind and into this place where only pleasure existed. Needing more of him, addicted to his taste and the feel of his hands as they roved over her body.

She was trying to get her hands under his coat when the streetlamp over their head exploded.

She screamed and jumped away from him.

“Fucking hell, Paul. Really?”

Her heart was racing. Jasper reached for her bag, opening it and taking out the physics textbook. He tossed it on the ground behind them and then took her hand, walking away from it, abandoned on the sidewalk.

* * *

Jasper was done with everything. Talking about Paul today had really brought his friend back. But this was too much. He was tired of literally chasing after a ghost, of digging up his past, only for it to bite him in the ass.

“Do you think we should just leave the book there?” she asked.

“I told you, it always comes back, and I don’t know about you but I could use a break from exploding lights and Judge Judy’s gavel,” he said. “Tonight it’s just you and me, as if we met for the first time and didn’t know any of this shit about each other.”

The look she gave him told him she thought he was losing it. Maybe he was. There was only so much a man could take.

“Just go with it. A fun night with you and me. Maybe then your answer to seeing me after will be yes,” he said.

Lacing her fingers through his. “It wasn’t a no. It’s just… I have a book due and—”

He put his fingers over her lips. “Life isn’t allowed to intrude tonight. Just you and me. Deal?”

It took her longer than he wanted it to before she nodded. “Okay. What are we doing?”

“Well, you’re going to have a college experience that you missed with me,” he said. “To start.”

“How much do you have planned?”

“Not a thing. I’m making this up as I go,” he said. He needed this and he suspected she did too. Their lives this last week had been completely driven by their careers and these damned ghosts. “We’re hitting the party tonight. You said you really didn’t enjoy it last time, and I want you to.”

“Uh, that’s not necessary,” she said but didn’t resist when he drew her back toward the house.

Music was blasting from inside the house, the intense bass pulsing throughout the building, and of course since the house was off the campus drinking was legal for anyone twenty-one and up. UVM was pretty strict about drinking on campus and in student housing.

The house was a large brick one that looked like it had been here since the Revolutionary war, but it was really built in the seventies. There was a large porch that was shadowed now that the streetlamp was out. The moon didn’t reach it through the trees surrounding the facade.

He pulled her toward a corner tucked away from the crowd with a wooden bench that was secluded from the rest of the party. He sat down on it and pulled her onto his lap. It had been too long since he’d held her.

It had only been last night when she’d been in his arms, but that was way too long.

She wrapped one arm around his shoulder, sitting crossways on his lap. Her head rested on his shoulder. He lowered his to kiss her. Her mouth was perfect for long leisurely kisses, when it wasn’t delivering the perfect put-down or smile to take the sting off her acerbic tongue.

Tracing the shell of his ear with her finger, she sent tingles down his neck and straight to his dick. She shifted, gently rubbing herself against him as she turned to kiss him more deeply.

That slick turtleneck that hugged her body seemed to have no end, frustratingly he couldn’t find the way to get to her skin.

Her soft laughter made him look up.

“You growled.”

“Your shirt is a pain.”

“Is it?” she asked, opening his coat and then pushing her very cold hands against his stomach.

“Yikes, woman.”

“Cold hands, warm heart.”

Seeing her cheeky grin was totally worth her freezing touch. He shifted her hands up to his chest and then hugged her close until his thoughs touched hers.

Her tights were smooth and soft against his fingertips, the calluses from his guitar playing rubbed against them. She shifted, her legs parting as her mouth trailed kisses and love bites over his neck.

Each breath was all Kirsty, the scent of cinnamon and fall, then the slight musk of arousal as he turned her on. Slowly he moved down the outside of her thigh to her knee.

“Stop dicking around.”

“I’m teasing you,” he responded. He continued grazing her inner thigh, brushing his fingers against her pussy as he slid his hand higher until he found the top of her tights and slipped his hand inside them.

* * *

Teasing her. He sure was. They were in public at a frat house.

The words filtered into her head. But at this moment she didn’t care.

His idea had seemed silly to her and if there was one thing she wasn’t it was silly.

But sitting in the dark, the sounds of the party muted through the walls and the full moon overhead.

There was something freeing in pretending they were just two lovers.

His kisses were addicting and he was driving her to the edge of some kind of sexual need that she’d never experienced before.

She tried to squirm around to reach his dick, figuring if he was in her hand, he might speed things up. But he kept her locked to him, his palm possessive on her stomach.

He rubbed his finger lightly on the top of her sex which was sending shivers down to her clit. She was wet, swollen. As much as she enjoyed his teasing she craved more.

Trying to move her hips was also a losing proposition, so she arched her back and turned her head until she could continue kissing the side of his neck. He groaned, bucking against her. His fingers dug into her skin as she drew his head down toward hers.

His tongue drove into her mouth with the same rhythm she wanted on her center. So she reached between her own legs, putting her hand over his and guiding his finger to her clit.

He smiled against her mouth, his finger found her and he tapped lightly against her.

She arched against him and moaned into his mouth.

He kept touching her until she knew she was going to come.

Arching against him with more urgency, sucking his tongue deep into her mouth, her orgasm rolled through her.

She turned her face into his neck as she rode it out. Then turned on his lap straddling him and reaching for the zipper of his jeans.

He brushed her hands aside and freed himself. She shifted to go down on him and he leaned back, his hands in her hair as she circled her tongue around the tip of his erection. He moaned as she took him deeper into her mouth. Holding the back of her head as he thrust up into her mouth.

She sucked him deeper into her mouth, moving on his cock until he pulled her off of him. “I want to be inside of you when I come.”

She kept stroking his dick. She had a condom somewhere. Thankfully he pulled one from his back pocket. He slipped it on and she perched top of him.

“Brace yourself on the bench,” he said.

She did, spreading her legs so he could enter. She felt the tip of him at the entrance to her pussy, and then he pushed into her. Fuck. She moaned at how good he felt inside of her. Didn’t even care if someone could hear. He leaned over her, his voice guttural in her ear.

“God, I love fucking you.”

She shivered as he guided her into each of his thrusts.

This was addicting. She wasn’t sure what she’d do when they left Burlington.

Blocking that, she focused on savoring the feel of him driving into her, praising how she made him feel, whispering into her ear that he wanted to keep doing this all night.

Then she felt the tension in her getting tighter. She was on the edge of another orgasm. She turned her head and he leaned over to nip at her lips as he drove even harder than before.

She started to shiver and then her orgasm washed over her. Calling out his name, she felt her pussy tightening on his cock as he held himself still for a moment before thrusting until he groaned her name against her shoulder. She felt his cock throb inside of her as he emptied himself.

She couldn’t catch her breath. It was an awkward position to be in, riding cowgirl on a cold wooden bench, but she would stay this way for as long as he held her.