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Just hearing him say that brings the heat to my face, to my solar plexus. Our eyes meet, and I know he wants to grab me, right now. To knock everything off this table, lay me down on it and take me . . .
But that’s not a fantasy we can act out here and now, not without giving these fishermen the free porno show of their lives.
Jonah keeps speaking as though he didn’t know I was already crazy hot for him. “You’re better at that than I am. Staying friends with exes. ”
Lightly I say, “Why is that, do you think?”
This is where most guys would give me a canned speech about how it’s better for the past to be the past. Or, worse, that talk about how their ex-girlfriends went crazy, which in context always means she dared to express anger at some point. Jonah, on the other hand, thinks for a few long moments before answering. “I tend to . . . compartmentalize. To keep the different aspects of my life separate from each other. So I don’t want to change my exes into the friends they never were. When it’s over, it’s over. ”
Sounds sane enough. I’m pretty good at handling ex-lovers, but I also realize I’m unusual in that way. Some people need to lock the doors behind them. Clean breaks aren’t the worst idea.
But then Jonah adds, more quietly, “I’m trying to do things differently with you. ”
Wait? When we break up?
No, of course not. Jonah invited me to join him here in Scotland. He brought me into another part of his life. I’m the one he wants to change for.
He slides his hand across the table until our fingers touch. I take a deep breath and look into his eyes. The intensity of the desire I see there—the need to own me not just in bed, but in every possible way—it thrills me. And terrifies me. I can’t say which emotion is more powerful.
This is the moment when I realize what tonight means. Jonah won’t want to play out a scenario tonight. The sex won’t be any fantasy rape. It will just be us, him and me, literally and emotionally naked.
Either I’ll have to fake my way through it, or I’ll have to tell Jonah the truth.
It shouldn’t be scarier than the dark fantasies Jonah and I have shared—but it is. It is.
Twenty-four
As soon as Jonah and I enter our room, he closes the door and reaches for me. Neither of us even turns on the light.
I sink into Jonah’s embrace and feel his lips brush against mine. As he winds his arms around me, our kiss intensifies. This isn’t the hard, punishing kiss he first gave me, or the gentler one we’ve shared after sex or at my front door after our first date. This is desire without violence. Passion that comes not from any fantasy but from the emotions we’ve kindled in each other.
Jonah’s hands slip beneath the hem of my sweater, and I feel his fingers brush along the small of my back. “I never get to tell you how beautiful you are,” he murmurs. “How much I love just looking at your body. Do you know how fucking gorgeous you are?”
“You’re the gorgeous one. ” Which is true. I’m attractive, but no more so than any number of women the average person sees on the average day. Jonah? He’s a breed apart.
Like no one else, I think as I unbutton his shirt—pausing only to let him lift my sweater over my head and toss it aside. The firmness of his abdominal muscles, the unreal disparity between the broadness of his shoulders and his taut, trim waist, even those storm gray eyes—Jonah is extraordinary. Anyone attracted to men would want him desperately.
But they couldn’t share his fantasy. Couldn’t give him what he really needs in bed. That’s only me.
Jonah’s fingers find the front clasp of my bra and click it, so that the lacy cups slide sideways, exposing more of my breasts. He pushes the straps over the curve of my shoulders. “Look at you,” he whispers as he starts caressing me. “I don’t get to do this enough. ”
I kiss the line of his jaw, his throat. His stubble is rough against my lips. “Mmm. Do what, exactly?”
“This. ”
Jonah lifts me just enough to toss me on our bed, then impatiently pulls off his shirt and lets it fall. He crawls onto the bed, his arms and thighs caging me beneath him. His kisses are warm against my skin as he moves from my neck to my breasts.
I whimper as the warmth of his mouth and tongue close over my nipple. Jonah sucks—he licks—he kisses—and he keeps going, drawing out the pleasure. Too many guys rush this; not Jonah. By the time he shifts to my other breast, I’m already writhing beneath him. Even as he sucks harder, his hand reaches for the button of my jeans.