For the sake of her own sanity and emotional well-being, she stayed away as much as possible. She doubted that was something Jake would understand. Most people didn’t. Yesterday, she and Kate had barely glossed the surface explaining Sharon’s family to their friends. Sharon had deliberately made it sound like they were kooky, absent, but she hadn’t gotten into how they made her feel or how much she tried to stay away from them.

Since Jake had asked and he was actually going to meet them, she figured he deserved a little bit more of a warning, but she could already feel the judgment coming.

Taking a large swallow of her wine, she leaned forward to display her cleavage a little better, putting her hand on his knee. He blinked, and she could almost see him mentally switching gears.

The little smile on Sharon’s face as she leaned forward, one hand on his leg, the other holding her mostly empty wine glass, was one of seductive enticement. This was new. She always gave as good as she got, but she usually waited for him to take the lead.

Then again, she obviously wasn’t interested in talking more about her family - a fact that disturbed Jake. Family was important to him, it was one of the most important things to him, whereas she’d just made it clear that it wasn’t important at all to her. Which left them... where exactly? Because it seemed like another way they were incompatible for being anything more than fuck-buddies.

Her dark eyes glittered as the wine glass tilted and red liquid dripped out, splashing down on the creamy swell of her breasts.

“Oops,” she said, with a little quirk of her red lips. “Spilled.”

Of course, he didn’t really need to figure out their whole future right now. They still weren’t even technically dating. Like she’d said, nothing had really changed. He needed to stop borrowing trouble.

Especially when she was offering up much more interesting alternatives.

Jake leaned forward, bowing his head down and swiping his tongue over the spilled wine, cleaning it from her skin. She giggled and gasped a little as he took extra care in making sure he got every last drop. With a little growl under his breath, his arm snaked out to wrap around her waist and pull her onto his lap, straddling him.

With one leg on either side of his thighs, the short, tight skirt of her little black dress was pushed up to the point where it could barely be considered decent covering. Deliberately, Jake held up his wine over her breasts, which were now directly in front of his face, and tipped some more of the liquid onto them.