Bang Read Online Free PDF

want to work together, Mari? Seriously?”
    He can tell from her face she knows exactly what he’s getting at. For an entire second, she looks stricken. Then her mouth firms back up into its stubborn frown. “This is our job,” she says, getting up off the bed. “We’re at work, we’re working. And Leo obviously wants to partner us again, so we’d better figure something out.”
    Jackson laughs. That’s so Mari, down to her core. Of course that would be her first priority. Suddenly he’s on his feet too. “Well, there’s an easy enough way to fix that, isn’t there?” he hears himself say. He feels nasty and out of control, but also oddly calm. He and Mari are yellers from way back. “Working together.”
    Mari pulls up like he slapped her. “For real? You want a new partner, Jack?”
    Which—fuck. Of course that’s not what he wants. That’s the last thing he wants, he fucking loves her, some days it feels like he’s hasn’t taken a goddamn breath in the last ten years without checking to see if she was breathing too. But he’s said it now, and it’s out there, and he doesn’t know how in the hell he’s going to—
    That’s when Mari launches herself at him.
    For one insane second, Jack actually thinks she wants to fight, some twisted version of the hand-to-hand exercises they had to do at the Academy a hundred years ago. He puts his hands up to catch her wrists mid-air just as Mari’s mouth crash-lands on his at a rough, artless angle, more like a head-butt than an actual kiss. Their teeth clink together hard enough that Jackson can feel it in the root.
    He kisses back.
    Right away Mari takes a step backwards toward the mattress, using his hands around her wrists as leverage to pull him on top of her on the bed. She tastes like coffee and Chapstick. Jackson swears. Mari does too but it’s a different sort of swearing, an oof as her knee comes up to push at him. Jackson lets go of her wrists right away.
    â€œMari,” he grunts, scrambling to cup her face and get his weight on his elbows at the same time. She’s hot underneath him, a squirming mass. “Mari, hey. Hey, talk to me here.”
    But Mari isn’t interested in talking. She’s biting at his mouth like an extension of the argument, sucking sloppily when she manages to capture his bottom lip, wriggling all over the place so he can’t get a grip on her. Jackson swears again, trying to position himself so he isn’t lying on her spleen. Finally he gives up and reaches down to rearrange her churning limbs himself, yanking her left knee up. His full weight ends up on her crotch for half a second, and Mari moans. Jackson freezes.
    Last time she was silent as a stone the whole way through, like fucking a blow-up doll. She only whimpered once. Jackson remembers because that’s what ended him.
    â€œMari,” he murmurs.
    This time, when she bites, Jackson tastes blood.
    â€œEasy,” he says, getting a hand on her chin and licking into her mouth in a way that could conceivably pass for an actual kiss and not some kind of last-ditch guerrilla warfare. Mari makes another sound. Then she’s reaching back and yanking at the coverlet, the sheets white and reasonably clean-looking underneath. Jack’s heart does a traitorous, hopeful thing inside his chest. This is really happening again, then, this thing he’s spent more than four months convincing himself definitely wouldn’t. This thing he’s wanted and wanted and wanted since he doesn’t even really remember when.
    â€œOff,” Mari orders breathlessly, both fists bunching in the starchy fabric of his shirt. Jackson lets her pull it over his head, his undershirt coming off along with it.
    â€œWatch it?” he mutters as she catches an ear. But Mari’s not listening. When he turns back to face her, her eyes are locked on his naked,