Bad Boy Valentine (Bad Boys on Holiday Book 2) Read online

  As she pulled him closer, Jagger slid his tongue down her stomach, licking her along the waistband of her jeans. Slowly, deliberately, he unbuttoned her jeans and lowered the zipper, tooth by tooth, finally exposing the silk triangle of her panties.

  “So fucking beautiful,” he said, sliding her jeans off her hips. He dropped them to the floor, leaving her spread out on the countertop in nothing but her undergarments. “So sweet.”

  Jagger pressed his face to the silky fabric, tonguing her clit, soaking her panties until she could no longer tell where her wetness ended and his began.

  The panties were her favorite pair, but suddenly she resented them with the white-hot blaze of a thousand suns. She wanted them gone, leaving nothing between her flesh and the deep, delicious heat of Jagger’s expert tongue.

  Just when she couldn’t take another second of his teasing, Jagger finally hooked his thumbs through the lace that stretched over her hip bones and tugged hard, snapping the elastic and yanking the panties from her body.

  “Open your legs,” he growled, his words practically slurring. He was drugged, high on Kate’s scent, her taste, the blissed-out look in his eyes making her even wetter. As she spread her thighs for him, he slipped his hands beneath her ass, cupping her and drawing her closer, lowering his mouth to her body once again.

  Ohmygod.

  His kiss on her aching flesh was pure ecstasy. Hot, slippery, mind-erasing ecstasy.

  “Jagger,” she whispered, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, her hands fisting his hair. Her whole body superheated with the pleasure of his touch.

  Just like he always had, Jagger took his time with Kate, worshipping her flesh with his tongue, his lips, his breath. The scratchy feel of his stubble against her thighs made her so wild she almost came twice from that alone, but every time she got close, he pulled back, drawing out her pleasure, devouring her one kiss, one lick, one breath at a time.

  Orgasms had always been tricky for Kate. She could get there herself on occasion, but even that took a lot of concentration, a lot of fantasizing, and the results were never anything to brag about. She hadn’t slept with anyone since Jagger, but she’d gone on a few dates, fooled around with a few guys, none of which had managed to give her even a single tremor.

  But Jagger? He seemed wired to please her. He knew her hot buttons, her limits, and he worked them with an expert touch. Despite the time and the distance, he hadn’t forgotten a single thing.

  The sensation of his tongue on her flesh was almost more than she could bear. He teased her clit, then sucked it into his mouth, flicking his tongue against it until she was out of her mind with pleasure. Pulling back, he drew a slow, wet path along her lips, licking and teasing her entrance, his breath hot, his movements like pure liquid.

  And then, just when she thought her body might give out from a complete overload of sensation, she felt it—that initial freefall. The warmth pooling in her belly, spreading lower. The first tremble in her legs. The tightening of her muscles and tingling up and down her spine that told her this was it, she was heading over the edge and there was no going back…

  “Jagger, I’m—”

  “I know,” he panted, still kissing her flesh, licking her. “Let go, baby. Come for me. Let me taste you.” Moaning with raw desire, he flattened his tongue against her clit and pressed hard, rolling it against her body as the pressure built…

  “Oh God… Jagger!” She slammed her thighs together and pulled him closer, her bare shoulders pressing against the cold steel of the counter, her legs shaking hard as Jagger thrust his tongue inside, deeper, deeper…

  Fuck, yes…

  Kate came with a sudden, shuddering gasp, a shock of heat rushing from Jagger’s mouth straight to her core, a thousand tremors rocking her entire body as he palmed her ass, buried his face between her thighs, and licked and sucked and kissed her into sweet, boneless oblivion.

  She screamed his name as the orgasm rocketed through her. She thrashed beneath his endless kisses. She came for hours. Days. Years. She came until there was nothing left, until she was floating, until she was utterly and completely gone.

  And then, like a thousand butterflies suddenly released from a small, dark room, the giggles within her took flight.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kate was laughing her sweet, beautiful ass off.

  Jagger stood before her, his heart pounding, his mouth drenched with the taste of her sweetness, and he couldn’t find the fuckin’ words to tell her how much he’d missed her. How much he’d thought of her over the years, night after night, week after week.

  She was curled on her side, still lying on the countertop in nothing but her black bra as she fought to regain control. She was laughing so hard, her eyes were squeezed shut, tears streaming down her face.

  Jagger wanted to make good on his earlier threats. To slide her off the counter, bend her over the edge, and bury himself so deep they’d have to pry them apart with a crowbar…

  But he couldn’t. All his macho talk, his filthy fantasies, his raging fuckin’ hard-on, and when it came right down to it, he just couldn’t do it.

  The sweet sound of her laughter drove home the point like a hammer and nail to the skull.

  He’d fucked her over so hard, damned near ruined her life, then showed up again after eight years and turned everything upside down again. She’d let him in tonight, and would probably do it again in a heartbeat—he knew she’d felt so damn good melting in his mouth, coming with the stroke of his tongue. But he couldn’t take any more from her. He was lucky she’d even let him keep the job. Now he was here in the kitchen after hours, eating her cupcakes, eating her, thinking he had any claim on her? Any right to even breathe the same air?

  Fuck, no. He’d given that up the moment he’d walked out on her, and he was a rotten asshole for thinking he could have her again. In any way.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  “Jagger?” She finally opened her eyes, staring at him with a drugged, loopy gaze as the last few giggles escaped. “That was…”

  “Shhh. I know.” He took her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, then released it, forcing a smile he just couldn’t hold. Not when she was looking at him like that, her face glowing, her eyes hopeful, and then—suddenly—confused.

  Her clothes were scattered all over the damn place; he turned away, grateful for a job to do, and hunted them down, leaving them in a pile next to her.

  “What’s… But I thought…” She sat up, clutching the ruined shirt to her chest as he backed away. “Where are you going?”

  “This isn’t… we can’t…” Jagger shook his head, knocking the words loose. “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. I never should’ve let this happen.”

  Her cheeks turned the color of apples, and she lowered her eyes.

  “It’s not you,” he rushed to add, but the words were weak and stupid. Useless. “You’re beautiful. You’re amazing. I just… This was a bad idea, Kit-Kat.”

  “I have to go. I have to… now.” She hopped off the counter and yanked the clothes over her naked body, frantically looking around the kitchen.

  “Kate.”

  “I need my bag.” The shirt flapped open, but she ignored it, pacing the kitchen in a frenzy. “Where is my bag?”

  “Kate!” Jagger grabbed her arm. “I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t go.”

  She lowered her eyes to his hand, fingers curled possessively over her arm. When she met his eyes again, they were cold, all of her walls back up.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she said coolly, and he knew before she said it what was coming next. Jagger closed his eyes.

  “I’ll be right back, Jagger,” she said, her voice laced with acid. “That’s a promise.”

  Ouch.

  Jagger didn’t pretend to understand Kate’s motives, but those words hit their fuckin’ mark, piercing a hole in his chest like a goddamn bullet. The shock and hurt must’ve been plain on his face, because she dropped her eyes again, unabl
e to look at him.

  “You been saving that up a long time,” he said, still holding her arm. Despite his anger, he couldn’t let go—it was all that was keeping her here. “Feel better?”

  She shook her head, fresh tears glistening on her cheeks.

  “You think I wanted to let you go?” he spat. “That I wanted to walk away? Every night I spent with you, all I could think about was us. Our life. Our future. The kids we’d make together. The whole damn white-picket-fence life. I fuckin’ worshipped you, Kate. You were my everything.”

  “Then why did you walk away?”

  “Jesus Christ, Kate. I got arrested.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. I would’ve—”

  “No. No fuckin’ way. I couldn’t stand the thought of you wasting away your life, waiting for my sorry ass. I couldn’t put you through that. Not like… I just couldn’t.”

  “Not like my mother,” she finished. “That’s what you meant.”

  Her voice broke on the last word, and it damn near ripped his heart out. Kate’s mother was a heroine addict who’d landed in jail when Kate was just a toddler. As she got older, Kate visited her every month without fail, right up until her senior year of high school, when she just couldn’t take her mother’s endless empty promises. The woman had shattered her daughter’s heart, and Jagger spent too many nights after those horrible visits helping Kate glue the pieces back together.

  A year after Kate had stopped visiting, her mother died in prison, never knowing what a beautiful daughter she had. What a beautiful woman Kate had become.

  Jagger wasn’t about to put Kate through that again—not for him. He wouldn’t do it then, and he sure as hell wouldn’t do it now.

  “You have no idea the hell… the… God.” Kate tried to yank her arm away, but he only tightened his grip, refusing to let her go. Her eyes blazed. “How do you think it felt to have your uncle show up, packing up all of your things from the apartment that we shared? The bedroom that we shared? I’m sitting on that bed crying my eyes out, begging him to give me some little scrap of news, and all the while he’s just looking at me with so much pity. Like I had no idea how bad it was about to get. Well shit, Jagger. He was right. Loving you was the worst thing that ever happened to me. You wrecked me.”

  “I didn’t want you to see me like that, Kit-Kat,” he said. “I just wanted you to forget me. You should forget me.”

  “Yeah? What about what I wanted? What about what I want right now?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I fucked up and went to jail. I’m sorry—”

  “I was never mad at you for going to prison, Jagger.”

  “Then what is it? Tell me.”

  “What difference would it make?”

  “At least give me a chance to apologize. To try to make it right.”

  Kate finally yanked her arm free, swiping the tears from her eyes. She picked up her bag and looked at him one last time, her words slicing through him like a hot knife. “There’s nothing you can do to make it right. All you do is run away. You did it back then, and you’re doing it now.”

  “What? You’re the one leaving!”

  She shook her head, tears still leaking down her face, her voice a cracked whisper. “Because you’re already gone.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back in her grandmother’s apartment—her apartment, though it was still so hard for her to think of it that way—Kate slammed Gran’s big metal mixing bowl onto the counter and dumped in the flour and baking powder. Even after all this time, she didn’t need to measure anything; she could make the recipe in her sleep and blindfolded.

  They’d always been Jagger’s favorite, her Chai Spice Love Bites. The ones he’d asked about tonight and she’d deflected, pretending to be clueless. But what could she have said? No, I haven’t made them since you left. They reminded me too much of you, of everything we lost. I can’t even make a chai latte for a customer without thinking of you.

  The night he got arrested, she’d stayed up past sunrise making batch after batch, passing the time as she waited for his return, ignorant to his plight. Even after his uncle showed up later that morning with the news—Jagger was in jail, didn’t want to see her—she still held out hope. But then he’d refused to see her, refused to even glance her way at the arraignment. After his sentencing, after he’d been shipped off, she’d tried to visit him in prison, and still he refused her. She held out hope anyway, telling herself he just needed time. Space. Weeks turned to months turned to years, and Kate kept on baking those damn chai cookies. It was as if she thought they’d somehow magically reach him, bring him back to her—like he’d just walk through the door one day, gather her into his arms, and ask if the cookies were still warm.

  But as it turned out, the cookies weren’t so magical after all, and every single batch had ended up in the garbage; eating them would’ve been too painful.

  By the third year, long after she’d moved back in with her grandmother, long after she’d lost contact with Jagger’s uncle, she finally stopped making those godforsaken cookies.

  Until tonight.

  She didn’t know what strange, mysterious force had called her to make them now, but she went with it, creaming the butter and sugars, adding in the spice mixture. The comforting scents of cardamom, ginger, clove, and cinnamon calmed her, and soon she settled into the familiar rhythm of mixing, scraping, stirring, shaping. By the time she put the first batch on the baking stones in the oven, she was done crying. Second batch, she was even humming a little tune. And by the time all of the cookies were out on the cooling racks, the whole kitchen smelled like chai tea, and Kate was feeling okay again.

  Baking had always been her elixir, her cure-all.

  Just like it had been for her grandmother.

  She thought of Gran now, of all the heartache the woman had endured—losing her husband to cancer at a young age. Losing her daughter to addiction. Raising a granddaughter who didn’t want to be tamed as a teenager, and then later, taking her in once again as an adult, after her life with Jagger had fallen apart.

  Gran had picked Kate up off the floor and dusted her off more times than she could count. She’d taught her how to be strong. How to be independent. And she’d taught her how to bake.

  “Sometimes you need a good cry,” Gran used to say. “And sometimes you just need to put a damn cake in the oven and get over it.”

  It was good advice, and in the years since Jagger had left, it had helped save Kate from the worst of her heartache and despair. Eventually, it led her to launch her dream business, saving her from a meaningless, passionless career.

  But anger? Nothing could’ve saved her from that.

  Jagger had made her angry all over again tonight—infuriated her. His words still twisted in her gut, making her feel hot and itchy, pathetic. She knew it was ridiculous, but seeing Jagger shut down and pull away so quickly, hearing him voice his doubts so soon after what they’d done together… God, it was awful. It felt like losing him all over again. Like he’d decided, once again, she wasn’t good enough. Not for him. Not for the truth.

  It brought back all the old feelings, the very bedrock of her anger.

  Of course she was livid with him for getting arrested, for throwing his life away, for sidelining all of their plans, for refusing to let her in after everything went down. But Jagger had it all wrong tonight. Deep down, it wasn’t the fact that he’d gone to prison. They could’ve worked that out. She would’ve waited for him if he’d given her any indication that he’d wanted her to.

  No. When it came right down to it, the thing that had upset her most about that night—the thing that had kept her awake for months and even years after—was that she’d wanted him so, so badly to stay with her, but he hadn’t.

  He’d picked them—Rage and a bunch of asshole guys he didn’t even know all that well—over her. And that one choice, that one decision… it had altered the course of both of their lives forever.

 
She’d never get over it.

  She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. Because without that anger, that silent rage and resentment that had fueled her all these years, what else did she have? Who was Kate Molina if not the woman who’d been left behind?

  Stop the pity party, girl. You’re a graduate of NYU. You’re the woman who built a bakery from the ground up. Who scored a highly coveted event with a major corporate sponsor that will do wonders for the business. Who has a fiercely loyal best friend, an apartment she can actually afford, a grandmother whose legacy of love lives on.

  And you’re the woman who’s still in love with Jagger Barnes.

  The thought struck her like lightning—a bright, shocking flash.

  Love?

  Yes, she was still attracted to him. Yes, she still felt… something for him, a thing that lurched in her chest whenever he walked into the bakery or said her name, and lurched again whenever he left.

  But… love? How was that even possible? The Jagger she used to know and care for didn’t even exist anymore. He was a twenty-four-year-old kid back then, for the love of God.

  But maybe that Jagger had never really existed, either—not exactly as she’d always assumed. Obviously, she didn’t know him as well as she’d thought back then.

  Kate had accused him of running away, but ultimately, she’s the one who let him leave. And whatever issues had led him to commit the crime in the first place—whatever he couldn’t talk to her about back then—well, there was a reason for that, too. She played a role in it, whether she wanted to admit it or not. It had always been easier to blame him all these years because he’d been convicted of a crime. Bad. Obvious. Black-and-white. Cut-and-dried. When it came to the ending of their relationship, he was clearly the offender, and she was clearly the wronged party. Case closed. Right?

  Kate popped a warm cookie into her mouth and closed her eyes, letting the spicy, buttery deliciousness melt on her tongue.