In Your Wildest Dreams (21 page)

"It's okay," she murmured. "No big deal."

He reached for the button in front, deftly undoing it before sliding her zipper down. "Why don't you just let me take 'em off you," he whispered.

Let him take your jeans off and God knows
what
you '11 do.

Lose control? Definitely.

Get that horrible shriveling, shrinking feeling that always seemed to strike at the most critical moment? Probably. In fact, the first hints of it were stealing into her already, replacing passion with a tinge of prickly nervousness.

She shut her eyes.
Why does this have to keep happening?

"Uh-oh," Jake said. Only then did she realize she'd gone completely still.

She raised her gaze, her
lips
trembling not from passion now but embarrassment. "I'm sorry."

He smoothed his fingers back through her hair, his eyes earnest. "It's okay."

She shook her head. "No, it's not. I don't like this any more than you do."

He shifted to lay his head next to hers on the thick cushion, bringing their faces incredibly close. "What is it that makes you stop exactly?" His voice remained as gentle as the still water beyond. "What are you feelin' right now?"

She thought for a long moment and summed it up in one word. "Just
...
nervous." "Nervous how?"

She closed her eyes, unable to keep looking into his and summon an answer at the same time. And as for that answer, she'd never truly examined the emotion before now—she'd always been too busy running, trying to escape from the situation. "I guess maybe I'm worried
...
it'll hurt." "Hurt?"

"The sex. The penetration."

His eyes narrowed. "Why do you think that,
beb
?
Is it always like this?"

She shook her head against the vinyl. "Not with other men. But
...
this is different. When I'm with other guys, I always stay
...
in control. They don't make me feel
...
you know
...
wild
for sex. But you do, and somehow I worry that if I'm not careful
...
that if I'm not fully in charge of the situation
..."

"What?"

She shook her head and pushed back an unpleasant memory before it quite made it to the surface of her mind.

But he must've seen it flit through her eyes. "What are you thinkin' about? Tell me."

She shook her head again. "Nothing, really. Just something that happened a long time ago, but I don't like thinking about it, so it's
...
nothing."

He
li
fted
his palm to her cheek. "Sounds like
some-thin'."
Again, she shook her head, but he pressed her. "Tell me, Stephanie. What's this 'nothin" in your mind?"

She swallowed fretfully, uncomfortable at dredging up the recollection.

"Please," he added.

That was the part that got to her. When Jake went all tender, he was
impossible
to resist.

"Once," she began softly, somehow thinking that if she spoke quietly the memory might not seem so real, "I drove home from college a day earlier than my parents were expecting me. I came bouncing into the house in a great mood—it was Christmastime, end of the quarter. It was nine or ten o'clock at night and Tina wasn't home— spending the night with a girlfriend.

T walked in, about to shout hello, when I heard my mom and dad arguing." Her throat seized a bit, threatening to close up, but she pushed on. "So I stayed quiet, and I listened, and what I heard was
..."

"What?"

"My mom was
...
crying
...
and telling him she didn't want to, because it hurt
...
and he was
...
making her anyway."

"Mon Dieu,"
Jake breathed, his eyes gone starkly sad.

She girded herself, just as she had that night so long ago. "So I walked back to the front door, and I made a lot of noise like I was just coming in, and I yelled out, 'I'm home!' Anything to stop it, you know?"

He nodded softly.

"A minute later, they were both in the kitchen listening to me explain how I got out of classes early, and my mother was getting out cookies and milk
...
and it was over." She took a deep breath. "But I've always had to wonder, ever since, how often it happened that way." Sighing, she shook her head. "So you see why I don't think about it. I just
can't."
She leaned her head back to look at the stars, seeking out the crescent moon as a distraction. "I don't know why that passed through my mind right now—it just does sometimes, but I kind of
...
block out the thoughts." She feared she sounded a
li
ttle
manic.

When she lowered her gaze back to Jake, he spoke gently.
"Chère,"
he began, pushing her hair out of her eyes with warm,
gent
l
e
fingertips, "don't you think this probably has somethin' to do with why you're afraid to have sex? The kind of sex that makes you lose control?"

Dear God. She thought about arguing, but his words made perfect sense. Or sort of perfect anyway. She was no psychologist, but
...
when had she become so dense? "I
...
I never thought about it that way before. I mean, since I hardly ever let myself think about that night." She lowered her eyes, planting them on the front of his
light
gray T-shirt, studying the hard planes of his chest where the cotton lay snug against him. "Before that happened, I was a virgin. But I wanted to have sex—badly. And then I did, once, with the guy I'd been dating for a long time
...
and it hurt."

"Oh," Jake said, sounding sad for her.

Upon returning to DePaul after Christmas, she'd had that one night with Jason, when he'd tempted her past the point of no return. It had started out so good, but ended terribly. Afterward, she'd no longer been interested in sex—in fact, for a while the very idea of it had simply made her ill. And maybe it had made her think of her parents, too, stirring up the memory she'd wanted so desperately to forget. She'd been unable to explain any of this to Jason and they'd broken up by Valentine's Day. "Since then, I've never let myself lose control during sex—I just couldn't give that power up to a guy."

"Because of the pain?"

"And
...
I guess maybe never wanting to let a man have that kind of freedom with my body—like my dad had with my mother."

"Have you, uh,
had much
sex?"

"Some. But I've always controlled the situation, never let it get too wild, always kept it very mild—boring, actually. Up to now, it's always just been"—she shook her head, embarrassed, but still trying to be honest—"a thing that happens sometimes at the end of a date. Because I wanted to feel
...
normal. But I've never been with a guy since college who made me really
want
it again, who made me feel
...
you know."

His eyes widened slightly, hopefully. "Like / do?"

She nodded, whispered. "Yeah."

They stayed quiet for a moment, until finally Jake lowered a tender kiss to her forehead. "I'd never hurt you,
chère.
I'd never let you feel any pain."

She looked up into his eyes. "I guess, logically, I know that. You've been nothing but patient, and"—a sigh of pure longing escaped her—"sexy as hell."

He grinned, clearly pleased.

"It's just
...
hard," she said. "To let go. To trust somebody that much."

He nodded and said, "Then what about this? What about we don't have sex, you and me?"

Despite everything, disappointment barreled through her. "Huh?"

He smiled softly at her confusion. "How about we just fool around? No sex, no pain. And there's plenty you can do foolin' around."

She blinked. "And
...
that'll be enough?"

"We'll make it be enough. Trust me."

Chapter 13

As
Jake scooped her into his arms, she bit her hp and laced her fingers behind his neck, thrilled to her very core. That was the one saving grace of her horrible affliction— it never seemed to outlast her desire for him. Not even close.

She looked up at his strong face, his stubbled chin, as he carried her through the door and to the bedroom. Lowering her to the bed, a massive piece of furniture she'd failed to notice the first time she'd passed through, he stood back and stripped off his T-shirt, tossing it on the floor.

The sight of him in nothing but well-worn blue jeans nearly stole her breath. And if the bulge at his zipper was any indication, he remained delectably hard. She wondered why that excited her so much if she wasn't going to have sex with him.

Kicking off his shoes, he stepped toward the bed and
re
li
eved
her of her wet sandals. "These may not recover," he told her, studying one before letting it plunk to the floor.

"I'll live," she replied, just watching him, absorbing him in a way she'd never quite given herself permission to do before now.

Jake padded across the room on bare feet to an old record player in a little
suitcase like
container, where a stack of albums lay on the turntable—he lifted them up on the center spool, setting them to drop and play. The room's windows were pushed open wide, admitting the same scents and sounds that had punctuated the air outside, and a ceiling fan spun above, sending down a surprisingly cool breeze. A few seconds later, though, those sounds were blotted out by the dreamy sound of Etta James singing, "At Last."

The utter sensuousness of the old song swept Stephanie away that much further as Jake joined her atop an old quilt. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, his hand sliding to rest on her stomach. "We'll go as slow or as fast as you want,
beb
—you just let me know if I do anything wrong."

"Wrong
isn't the right word for it." She owed him this, at the very least. "Nothing you've ever done to me was wrong. It was just
...
too much for me, that's all."

He leaned closer, slamming his hand upward, across one breast, to gen
tl
y caress her cheek. His forearm stretched up the center of her chest. "Then you'll tell me what's too much, no?"

She nodded, the spot between her thighs ting
li
ng.

"Good," he whispered, bending to kiss her.

He hoped like hell it wasn't too soon to do that again, but it was pure impulse driving him; he needed to feel her supple
lips
under his. They exchanged soft, sweet kisses for a few moments, and it felt almost easy to Jake—like maybe just kissing was enough, like maybe it wasn't going

to rip his guts out not to sink himself inside her sweet body the way he'd been wanting to since they'd met. He knew it wasn't tore—soon enough they'd get to the gut-ripping part—but he'd do his best not to let
h
is torture show. Her story about her parents had pulled at his heart, and he wanted everything that happened tonight to be exac
tl
y what she needed. He wanted to take away her fears.

When their kisses ceased, he nuzzled his nose against her silken cheek. "How's that?"

She smiled. "You taste good—
always
taste good. Minty."

"Mmm," he purred, dragging the tip of his middle finger slowly down the side of her neck and onto her shoulder, then under her tank top to play with the strap of her bra.

"Why is that?" she asked gently.

He gave a soft chuckle. "I gave up smokin' a few years back. Now I'm addicted to mints instead."

"Ah." She tipped her head back into the pillow. "Well, as addictions go, that's not a bad one."