Forever, Jack (29 page)

Jack and I talked for hours as stars pierced the sky above the now dark water, and continued talking as the full moon rose. At one point, I made to leave his lap, thinking he was probably uncomfortable, but his hands tightened on me. “Don’t,” was all he said.

So I didn’t.

We talked more about his timeline for the movie, and he asked me all about the long process of getting into SCAD. I told him about my successes over the last few months and how it was hard to believe people actually wanted to see my stuff, let alone buy it. There were times when I felt like everyone was humoring me, maybe doing a favor to Faith who had been so supportive of me by putting me in her boutique and setting me up with my first gallery exhibit.

“Never lose your humility,” Jack told me. “But you need to own your gift.”

“I know. I’m not used to being so unsure of myself.” I ran my fingers through his soft hair, feeling the languorous effect of the champagne. “There’s only two things that have ever made me feel that way. My art and you.”

“Your work is beautiful. And you don’t need to be unsure of me,” Jack whispered. His hands came to cup my cheeks and draw me down, pausing with his face inches from mine. His eyes, heavy lidded, were on my lips.

It occurred to me that the moment in space and time before lips touch, the small exquisite sting of wanting, a beat of thirst, of yearning, was the most underrated part of kissing. There should be sonnets and epic poems written about the space before a kiss, and the thrilling rush that comes with the moment of contact.

My mouth moved greedily, sliding, and grazing his captured bottom lip with my teeth, soothing it with my tongue.

A low sound rumbled through Jack, and his hands were no longer so gentle as they gripped me, seeking and kneading, finding my back, my thighs, pressing me closer and fumbling with the knot belting my robe.

Our breathing picked up pace, but not rhythm, as it labored between now deep kisses and heart-pounding want.

Jack’s mouth slid down my neck, sucking at my skin, igniting my nerve endings in a flare that raced down to my toes. “I need to get you in a bed.” His hand slid inside my robe, across the skin of my belly and around to my back, his movement baring me to him. One shoulder of the robe fell back. He drew away, his nostrils flaring, raking his hooded gaze over my breasts and down to the juncture of my thighs as I sat astride him.

I reached down and undid the button of his cargo shorts then pulled the zipper down, revealing the strained fabric of his boxers.

His mouth parted slightly, and I heard the sound of his dry swallow. “Like, now,” he rasped.

“Are you going to do your caveman thing again?” I asked and giggled, because he was already moving to stand with me in his arms.

Wrapping my legs tight around his waist, I hung on as we dipped sideways through the door and nudged it closed behind us. I closed the curtains, one handed.

He backed up to the bed and sat down heavily. His mouth was instantly on mine again, and I lifted up and tucked my knees under me so I could take his t-shirt off and press closer. I wanted my skin against his.

The hard ridge of his arousal tortured me. I rocked forward, and he immediately responded, his hips bucking and pressing hard against my wet heat.

“God,” he breathed out roughly, pulling his mouth from mine.

Shimmying back, my breath choppy and shallow, I dropped to my knees on the floor.

“What are you doing,” he whispered, and the telltale flush across his cheekbones told me all I needed to know. His carved abdomen tensed.

“Getting you naked.” I grinned and helped him take his shorts and underwear down. Then moved between his knees.

“This,” he croaked and clutched the edge of the mattress, “may be the hottest thing ever. You realize I’m going to picture you sitting here like this whenever we’re not together?”

“Just sitting here?” I raised an eyebrow, and then reached out and grasped him. “Not doing this?”

“Shit,” he hissed, his skin flushing further.

I leaned forward. “Or this?” Out of the corner of my eye, I briefly saw his knuckles turn white as I took him in my mouth. I think he literally growled, and one of those white knuckled hands fisted in my hair as he surged up and moved with me. His reaction shot a bolt of reciprocal lust straight down to the pit of my belly.

“Fuck,” he rasped. “I don’t think I can do this.” He pulled me up. “I won’t last.”

He fumbled in his discarded shorts pocket for protection then pulled me back astride his lap, kissing me deeply.

I throbbed with anticipation.

“Take your hair down,” he whispered. His hand ran up my spine then skimmed around to my breasts, grazing over the sensitive peaks.

I gasped, arching forward, needing more, and getting it as his hands palmed and his mouth followed. He sucked me into his hot wet heat.

Shakily, I let my hair out of my bun, letting it fall damp and heavy down my back.

Jack pulled away and watched me. His fingers flowed over and around my belly. They skimmed my inner thighs, reaching between us, sliding over my slick and sensitive flesh, easing inside me and triggering whimpers from my throat.

“You’re so Goddamn beautiful, Keri Ann,” he murmured. Then he lifted me, one hand pressed to the small of my back, and guided me over him.

Oh God.

I was so ready, so wanting, but I’d also only ever done this once with him.

“This okay?” he whispered brokenly, his eyes searching mine. Rigidly still, his shoulders under my fingers were quivering.

I got the feeling he was physically struggling not to surge up into me. I nodded because I couldn’t talk over the emotion clogging my throat.

His hand skated up my spine into my hair, and he wound it up in his hand and kissed me.

As my tongue found his and slid deeply into his mouth, he pulled me down, easing me onto him. Taking me.

It was just too good, and we’d waited so long. The feel of him inside me filled my entire being with sharp and exquisite needles of ecstasy. My skin was on fire, every nerve-ending I possessed experiencing it firsthand. I pulled my mouth from Jack’s just so I could focus. So I could try and hold onto the cry that seemed about to be torn from my throat.

“Shit,” Jack hissed and then groaned. “You feel so good.”

He rocked his hips, and I opened my eyes, my teeth clenched, as the sensations barreled through me with his movement.

“How could you possibly feel this damn good?” His eyes implored me desperately, like I could answer him. As if I’d woven some spell over him.

I didn’t know.
I’d
certainly never known anything like this. Even the unbelievable first night we’d shared paled when compared to the depth of emotion that was attached to the feel of Jack beneath me. Jack inside me. Jack holding me and sliding in and out of me as I moved on him. And God, I was moving. I couldn’t help it. I was propelled by a need so strong, I couldn’t catch my breath over it. “God, Jack ...” I sobbed out, no longer able to hold anything back.

The climax when it came, ripped it’s way through me so fast I barely heard Jack as he held me tight to his chest murmuring calming words and sliding his fingers through my hair, keeping me anchored to him.

Afterwards we moved into a tangle of naked flesh, limbs, and sheets, his mouth making love to mine, and then finding my aching nipples. I arched into his kiss, his arms under the bow of my spine, holding me up. His hands and mouth roamed the landscape of my body, searching out all my secrets, creating future fantasies, and coaxing me into a trembling mess of hot torturous need that only existed for some kind of release.

“Please,” I managed at some point.

“I want to go slow for you,” he breathed. He settled between my legs, and I flashed back to our first time, when we’d made love in this same position.

My hands raked through his messy, dark brown hair, and I lifted his face to mine. “I don’t,” I said. The imaginary images of him and Audrey were fading with every moment we spent together, but I wanted them gone. I wanted it to be
us
I saw when Jack was wild and not gentle. “I like slow … but also fast,” I murmured, echoing his words from the other night.

His lower body surged against mine, hard and heavy against my thigh, so close to where I was aching and needing. Again.

“Soft, but also rough,” I scraped my nails over his skin and up into his hair. He hissed in a breath, his green eyes darkening, watching my mouth, waiting for the words he knew were coming. “Gentle … then really …” I closed my hand firmly in his hair and swallowed, building up courage, looking him straight in his eyes. “Really … hard.”

Jack expelled a rush of air, sharp and deep. Seconds passed, his mouth tightening like he was struggling for control.

I moistened my lower lip and caught it between my teeth, a little nervous at my own boldness, waiting for what he would do.

He lifted his body, a dark carved shadow in the low lamp light and took my hands, pinning them on the bed either side of my head. Eyes blazing, his mouth curving into a lopsided grin, his knees pushed my legs wider. “You asked,” he said finally and slammed into me hot and hard.

I cried out, but he didn’t stop.

I didn’t want him to.

He knew it.

Jack was fierce, and glorious. A face etched with determination, with need, and with an aching reverence that had me shuddering beneath him. An animal, yet also a man. A driving force of nature whose eyes blazed as his skin glowed with sweat, and in that moment, and that moment alone, I became a woman. I was no longer the girl he knew. I was a woman who’d forged her own future, made her own choices, had experienced heartbreak and first love and now demanded to be made love to as an equal. I had wants, I had needs, and right now my need was to watch Jack Eversea, my Jack, my sweet, vulnerable, yet closed and guarded Jack, lose it.

Surging and arching up, I wrapped my legs around his waist and matched him, stroke for stroke. The feel of him overwhelming, and so right.

His eyes closed and his hands gripped mine tighter, his weight pressing them into the bed and his body quaking. “Jesus,” he growled.

“Look at me, Jack,” I whispered through my labored breathing, echoing his words to me when we’d first made love.

He obeyed, his eyes almost black, his pupils were so large, and I felt him slowing.

“No, I need you, Jack. Don’t ... don’t stop.”
Please. Don’t ever stop.
I arched up further, tilting my hips, the momentum coming from some deeper, primal part of me.

“Ahh, God, Keri Ann, I—shit.” He gasped through clenched teeth, his thrusts coming faster. Harder. “I can’t,” he managed. One hand left mine and thrust under my spine, yanking me up to him so our bodies were flush, skin against slick skin.

The contact made me shudder and cry out, igniting the fuse inside me and pulling me with him as he lost all semblance of restraint. My hands both suddenly free, I clutched his back and my fingers dug in, holding on as we moved, straining against, yet pulled willingly into the tide of release.

Daylight piercing through the slits between the drapes found us still wrapped around each other. I came awake slowly, taking stock of our surroundings and the feel of Jack’s heartbeat thudding steadily against me. Images of all the things we’d done last night, interspersed between sleeping and more talking, replayed through my mind, sending another wave of longing through me. That thing where he’d flipped me onto my belly and run his tongue down my spine …
God
. And the things he said … I felt like a goddess to Jack. A worshipped, fall-to-his-knees goddess.

He’d never called me any term of endearment, like baby, or sweetheart, always my name. Over and over, my name. Like a prayer falling from his lips. It was raw. A reminder with every sensation that it was
us
, right there in that moment.
Me
that was making him feel the way he was feeling.

Jack had been right, our being together was as real as it got. It was more than real. It made everything else, every thought, every idea that didn’t include him, seem muted and faded. How on earth was I going to exist as anything but an extension of
us
? How the hell were we going to keep this secret?