Free Jaxson's Song by Angie West

what’s with you?”
    “ Nothing. Just go, Kate,” he snapped, gripping the hem of his
dress and yanking it over his head. He sent it sailing across the
room before he turned to face her.
    “ Why are you acting like this?” Kate asked, making a valiant
effort to keep her gaze on his face, only now beginning to calm
from the turmoil Jaxson had thrown her into.
    Hands on his hips, he
regarded her with an unreadable expression. “What would you know
about how I normally act?”
    The question stung, much
as Kate figured he’d intended it to. What was she supposed to say?
That she’d lost control? Clearly, he knew that. She felt her face
heat. The moment when she’d sat in his parlor and said “I’m Kate,”
felt like it had passed weeks ago, not mere hours. But the reality
was, she didn’t know how he normally acted. She knew virtually
nothing about him. Shame flooded her again. She’d been about to
take her clothes off on her transvestite neighbor’s bedside
table.
    “ Goodnight, Kate.” Jaxson’s tone was pointed,
final.
    She had been dismissed.
Slowly, her initial embarrassment turned to anger. “Hey, I didn’t
force myself on you,” she argued. “You wanted me, too.”
    “ Well, I don’t want you here now.”
    “ Fine.” She hugged her arms around her middle, heat flooding
her face at his icy, controlled words. “The next time you fall over
your own pantyhose, don’t come crying to me.”
    His face clouded, and he
swung away from her to stare out the window.
    Kate watched a muscle in
his jaw tick as light from the street illuminated him in profile.
“Lock up when you let yourself out in the morning.”
    Her chest rose and fell
with each rapid breath. When he didn’t turn around, she spun on her
heel and stalked from the room, slamming the connecting bathroom
door behind her. She leaned against the solid surface for long,
agonizing moments while she struggled to find her bearings in the
shifting, churning sea of night.
     

Chapter Eight
    Not Alone
     
     
    K ate was up with the sun; an easy
enough feat, considering she’d spent the night tossing and turning
after leaving Jaxson’s bedroom. On any other morning, she would
have been dead to the world until at least six-thirty, maybe even
eight. Now that she was pulling a later shift and didn’t have to
wake Lilly up at seven, she’d planned to start sleeping in until
ten or eleven. And here it was at…she yawned and glanced around in
a half-hearted attempt to find a clock. There wasn’t one, but if
the pearl-gray light that was just beginning to seep through the
room was anything to go by, it was before six.
    Scenes from last night
assailed her almost the instant she sat up and put her feet on the
floor, and she groaned. What in God’s name had she been thinking
last night? If her mother had still been alive, Aria Delaney would
have been horrified to know her daughter had thrown herself at a
stranger. A transvestite stranger. Kate groaned, head in her hands
as visions of the previous night tormented her.
    She saw herself reaching
up to remove the last pin from Jaxson’s wig—his wig!—the tips of
her breasts grazing his arm for a brief moment. His lips on hers,
her butt on his nightstand. His erection pressed stiffly between
her legs, creating delicious friction every time she’d bucked
against him. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut as the full
memory of her wantonness rolled over her.
    There was no excuse for
her behavior. That was all there was to it. Kate let her hands fall
to the rumpled bed and forced herself to stand up and face the day.
She did the normal, mundane things that would have been done on any
other morning. First, she hit the bathroom and made an attempt to
look semi put together. After a couple of minutes, she gave up; her
hair was hopeless, the long, sleepless night had left her looking
pale, there were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her purse had
spent the night in the car.
    Hell, what did it matter?
Kate