Hot Pickle - J.J. Knight Page 0,38
cooler. “Did I get a hot pickle?”
“Of course you did. I wouldn’t dare deprive you of that.”
Her smile is like dawn breaking. My day is completely turned around. The inferiority I felt on the stage falls away. Bodybuilding brought me Camryn. It’s done more than I could have asked for.
She opens the pouch and quickly assembles her sandwich. “I’m starving,” she says before taking a healthy chomp.
“I’ve already eaten more than I want to today, but I know I will have to cram more in.”
“No lunch for you then?”
“Maybe in a bit.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Oh! I have chocolate for you.”
She unzips a side pocket on the complicated belt that holds all her brushes and tools.
After a bit of tugging, she extracts a slender bar and passes it to me. “Dark chocolate, almonds, cranberry, and bits of peach. Divine.”
“Sounds like it.” I tear off the end and take a bite. The chocolate melts against my tongue like sin.
“So good,” I say.
She sits up taller. “I knew you’d love it.”
We face each other, grinning foolishly. I feel completely and utterly happy.
She swallows another bite and says, “Dahlia said you ran into her. That you would only talk about me.”
“It’s true. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”
“This morning was something, wasn’t it?” Her eyes practically spark.
“I most certainly look forward to the next opportunity to kiss you like I mean it.”
She pokes the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth and chews slowly. When she swallows, she says, “I know a very quiet place here. I have another ten or fifteen minutes. You want to go?”
“Hell, yes.”
We exit into a long hall. We pass fewer and fewer competitors until it is almost quiet.
“In here,” she says.
We enter a large room filled wall-to-wall with stacked chairs. Camryn takes my hand and leads me to a far corner, well away from the door. “About as private as you can get in the middle of a competition.”
“Ms. Schultz, should I question your intentions?”
Her hand reaches behind my neck to pull me closer. Her kiss is soft, inquisitive, as if she’s asking me if it’s okay.
I wrap my arms around her to draw her close. I return the kiss as lightly and gently as she gave it.
Her arms encircle my neck. She tastes of pickles, deli meat, and mustard. It’s like home to me, growing up sitting on a stool in Grammy Alma’s deli, then my father’s, and now my own.
Her fingers slide into my hair, and I feel every part of her, breasts crushing against my ribs, even the ends of the brushes filling in her belt. My hands slide down her back, over the belt, and cup her luscious round ass.
She shifts closer, her mouth seeking mine with more fervor. Our tongues mingle, and I breathe in the scent of her, that combination of light floral and tanning solution that is uniquely her.
She breaks away for a moment, gasping. “I thought about you all day.”
I press my forehead to hers. “Same.”
“It was so hard to tan my brother. I wanted to tell him to get the hell out of my life and leave me alone.”
“Same for me at breakfast. It took everything I had not to say, ‘By the way, you can stop trying to control your sister.’”
She runs her thumb along my chin and jaw. “We’ll have to tell him eventually though, right?”
“I think we can worry about that later.”
I dive in again, desperate to have her mouth on mine. The kiss is frenzied, passionate, deep. Secretive. Dark. Thrilling.
I need more of her, so I move my hands beneath her thighs and lift so she straddles my hips.
The close contact has its usual effect, and I grind my erection against her body.
“It feels as good as it looks,” she whispers.
“Don’t tempt me,” I say.
“That’s exactly what I want to do.”
“Do you, now?” I press into her even harder.
She sucks in a breath. “We’re in dangerous territory.”
“Are we?”
“I’m desperate to do a whole lot more with you, and here we are in a room full of chairs.”
I clutch at her, moving our bodies together in a hard, grinding rhythm. Her eyes are half-closed, those heavenly lashes flirting with her cheeks.
Her phone buzzes once, twice, and then a third time.
“All my alarms,” she says. “I have to get back to the classic. I have so many clients who need me today.”
“But you’ll be here tonight?” I ask.
“Yes. I’ll be the one wriggling uncomfortably in my seat.”
“Make sure you don’t sit where I can