“I feel like we should give them some kind of excuse about leaving early,” I said to Jack. “Tell them I need to check on the baby, or—”
“They know why we’re leaving.”
There wasn’t much conversation on the way back to 1800 Main. The feelings between us were too raw. I hadn’t yet known Jack long enough to feel much comfortable ease with him—our relationship needed to be broken in.
But I did tell Jack about the talk I’d had with Dane, and he listened closely. I realized that although Jack comprehended Dane’s views, on a visceral level he didn’t get him at all. “He should have fought for you,” Jack said. “He should have tried to hand me my own ass.”
“What would that have accomplished?” I asked. “It’s ultimately my choice, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, you get the choice. But that doesn’t change the fact that he should have come after me like a damn Viking for taking his woman.”
“You haven’t taken me,” I protested.
He slid me a purposeful glance. “Yet.”
And my heart lurched in a ramshackle rhythm.
We went up to his apartment, which I had never seen before. It was several floors up from mine, big windows open to a view of Houston, city lights glittering like diamonds scattered on velvet.
“What time did you tell the babysitter you’d be back?” Jack asked, while I investigated the apartment. It was stylish and spare, with dark leather furniture, a couple of pieces of graphic statement art, a few touches of deco design, fabrics in shades of chocolate, cream, and blue.
“I said about eleven.” I touched the edge of a blue Depression-glass bowl imprinted with a swirly pattern. My fingers were trembling visibly. “This is a nice apartment.”
Coming up behind me, Jack touched my shoulders with his palms and let them coast down my upper arms, the warmth of his hands making the cool skin prickle pleasantly. He took one of my hands in his. Folding my icy fingers more tightly in his, Jack lowered his mouth to the vulnerable curve of my neck. There was a sensual promise in the way his lips grazed my skin.
He continued to kiss me there, searching for the most acute place, and when he found it, I backed up against him reflexively.
“Jack . . . You’re not still mad because Dane slept over, are you?”
His hand wandered along my front, charting every curve and plane, pausing at every flicker of response. My body caught a tense, pleasured arch. Dimly I realized he was gathering information, softly winnowing out the pulses and twitches from all the places I was most vulnerable.
“Actually, Ella . . . every time I think about it, I want to bend a crowbar in half.”
“But nothing happened,” I protested.
“That’s the only reason I haven’t hunted him down and dropped him.”
I couldn’t tell how much of the macho bravado was for show, or how much Jack actually meant. I strove for a reasonable, ironic tone, which was difficult as I felt his fingers slip beneath the edge of my neckline. “You’re not going to take it out on me, are you?”
“Afraid so.” His breath fractured as he discovered I wasn’t wearing a bra. “Tonight you’re in for it, blue eyes.” With indecent slowness, his hand slid over the round, cool weight of my breast. I leaned back against him, teetering on the heels of my silver shoes. The tip of my breast pricked up between his fingers, and he fondled it tenderly, his thumb spurring it into a resilient bud.
He turned me around to face him. “Beautiful,” he whispered. His hands went lower, following the clingy knit of my dress. His expression was intent, his lashes half-lowered until jagged shadows scored down his lean cheeks. And he breathed another word so softly I almost didn’t hear it. “Mine.”
Mesmerized, I stared into those dark eyes and shook my head slowly.
“Yes,” Jack said, and he brought his mouth to mine. I responded helplessly, my hands clutching the front of his shirt. His fingers threaded through my hair, fitting over the curve of my scalp, and he concentrated on my mouth, finding deeper angles, more intimate tastes, until my entire body was radiating heat.
Taking my hand, Jack pulled me to the bedroom. He flipped on one of a trio of light switches, and a discreet glow filled the room from some unidentifiable source. I was too unstrung to register much about the surroundings, other than to note that the bed was big and covered in amber quilts and miles of white linen.
I cleared my throat and tried to sound casual, like this was no big deal. “I don’t even get cheesy seduction music?”
Jack shook his head. “I usually do this a cappella.”
“You mean unaccompanied?”
“No, I haven’t done this unaccompanied since I was fourteen.”
My breathless laugh ended with a gasp as Jack reached out and tugged gently at the tiny snaps that held the front of my dress closed. The sides listed open, unveiling the full round shapes of my breasts, my white silk panties.
“Look at you,” he whispered. “It’s a crime for you to wear clothes.” He eased the dress off my shoulders until it dropped to the floor. A severe blush spread from head to toe as I stood there in high heels and panties.
Clumsy with urgency, I tugged at his black shirt, and Jack moved to help me strip it off. His chest was powerful and emphatically defined, the large muscles mortared with smaller ones in between. Hesitantly I touched the rough dark hair on his chest, drew my fingers through it. He felt maddeningly good. I let him pull me closer, his arms wrapping around me, and my hands slipped around to his back. The tickling brush of hair against my breasts, the long, delicious kisses, flooded me with sensation.
Feeling the way I had molded myself against his body, my hips urgently cradling the shape of his erection, Jack eased me back with a smothered laugh. “Not yet.”
“I need you,” I said, red and shaking. It was something I had never said to a man before. And even as I said it, I remembered what Jack had said in the parking garage: “. . . you know if you start something with me, it’ll go to a place you and Dane never went.” It was true. It was absolutely true. I was going to let Jack get close in much more than a physical sense. The enormity of the risk I was about to take scared the hell out of me.
Feeling the reverberations of my panic, Jack pulled me between his thighs and gathered me against his chest. He held me wordlessly, with infinite patience.
“I guess . . . ,” I managed to say eventually, “I don’t feel all-the-way safe.”
“Probably because you’re not.” Jack hooked his fingers at the side of my panties, drawing them down. “But in a few minutes, darlin’, you’re not going to give a damn.”
Feeling dazed, I let him take off the panties, and I obeyed his urging to sit on the edge of the bed. I tried to reach for one of the silver shoes.
“No,” Jack murmured, sinking to his haunches in front of me. He pushed my thighs open with his hands, his face intent.
I tried to close against him. “The light,” I said bashfully. But Jack pinned me in place, and despite my wriggling objection, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against me, there, in a full searching kiss. In a matter of seconds I was moaning, frozen in place as the pleasure surged and buzzed with each silky flick of his tongue. It went on and on until the desire was too much, and I clutched his head hard and close. He took my wrists, pulling them down to my sides, and just held them there.
Manacled in his grip, spread open, I breathed in low cries as he gnawed and licked and ate gently into the softness, and the sensation built until my inner muscles began a frantic, involuntary clenching.
Jack pulled back, leaving me floundering. I was weak, desperate, my pulse brutal in its force. As he stood between my thighs, I reached for the front of his pants to unfasten them. My hands felt encumbered, as if I were wearing mittens.
Jack was heavily aroused, his erection taut and dusky. I touched him in wonder, gripped the pulsing heft, breathed against the engorged head. He went still, and I heard a faint groan. He tolerated my careful touch, the warm suction of my
mouth as I tried to taste as much of him as possible. But in a matter of seconds he was easing me away, muttering, “No . . . I can’t. I’m too close. I’m too . . . wait, Ella . . .”
Stripping off his clothes, he joined me on the bed and tugged me toward the center of the mattress. He took interminable minutes to remove my shoes, unbuckling the tiny straps when it would have sufficed to slip them over my heels. And then he was over me again, his mouth at my breasts, one of his thighs nudging insistently between mine. I reached up to him, my palm flattening on the flexing surface of his back. His mouth found mine, and I went pliant, supine, moaning and resistless. Clasping me securely, he eased us to our sides, his hands venturing everywhere.
Our entwined bodies turned in a slow revolution across the wide bed. It was a sensual altercation, the way we rubbed and slid, with me trying to entice him inside and Jack resisting. He delayed and teased and tormented my aching flesh until I begged him in a hoarse whisper to do it now, I was ready, now, now—
He rolled me to my back and spread my legs wide. I complied with an expectant groan, tilting my hips up.
He eased inside me, and the entire world seemed to stop as I felt the low, thick slide. I clutched at his shoulders, my nails indenting his skin. Pushing deeper into my shrinking body, Jack murmured that he would be gentle, just relax, relax . . . and he went deeper and held, while I felt myself yield by slow degrees.
His face was right over mine, his eyes as dark and bright as hellfire. He stroked the hair back from my forehead. “You’re gonna have to get used to me,” he whispered. I nodded as if in a trance.
His lips caught at mine. He nudged within the wet constriction of my body, gentle in the way only a big man could be. He was sensitive to every breath and heartbeat, searching for a perfect bias of flesh and movement, and when he found it, I cried out helplessly.
Jack nearly purred in satisfaction. “You like it this way, Ella?”
“Yes. Yes.” I gripped his back, my hips lifting into his weight. He was solid, heavy, impaling me with disciplined strokes, and I began to struggle beneath him, wanting it faster, harder. A quiet laugh filtered through his raspy breathing. He pinned me down and forced me to accept his pace, and after what seemed like forever, I found myself relaxing into the pleasure. My head tilted back as his arm slid beneath my neck, and his mouth wandered over my throat.
He thrust in a tireless rhythm, in and in, the friction slippery and sweet and carnal. I reached the height of the excruciating rise, and then it all began to fragment and I came in voluptuous jolts, my knees clamping on his hips. He rode it out until the last spasms had faded, and then he moved in a few final thrusts as he found his own release.
Afterward, I lay quiet and trembling in Jack’s arms, feeling the hot slick of him between my thighs. I turned my face into his chest. My body felt heavy with satisfaction, tender as a fruit ripened to full-slip sweetness.
“Rest,” Jack murmured, pulling the covers over my naked shoulders.
“Can’t,” I mumbled. “Downstairs. The babysitter . . .”
He kissed my hair. His voice was a stroke of raw velvet. “Just for a few minutes. I’ll watch over you.”
Burrowing against him, I dozed gratefully.
In a while, I blinked and stirred, filled with the dreamlike awareness that something had changed. Me. I felt uncertain, undermined, and yet it was a strangely good feeling.
Jack was propped up on an elbow, staring down at me with surprising gravity. One of his fingers came to trace the edge of my smiling lips. “That was the best I ever had, Ella. There’s not even a close second.”
I closed my eyes as he traced the wings of my brows. And I reflected that the difference between good sex and mind-blowing sex had been a quality of attention I’d never gotten from Dane. Jack had been wholly absorbed in me, intensely focused on my responses. Even now he touched me as if the contact between our bodies was a language all its own. His caressing fingers moved down to my throat. “Your skin is so soft,” he whispered. “And your hair is so silky. I love the way you feel . . . the way you move . . .” His thumb ran slowly along the edge of my jaw. “I want you to trust me, Ella. I want every part of you. Someday you’re going to let go with me.”
I turned my face into Jack’s hand, pressing a sideways kiss in his palm. I knew what he meant, what he wanted, and I didn’t know how to convey to him that it wasn’t possible. I would never be able to lose myself entirely in lovemaking—there was a guarded center to my personality that no one would ever be able to reach. “I just had sex with the light on,” I said. “For God’s sake, isn’t that enough?”
He laughed and kissed me.
Even sated as I was, the feel of his mouth against mine was enough to start me simmering. Settling my palms on the angles of his shoulders, I followed the rises and curves of solid, efficient muscle. “I saw you with Ashley tonight at the party,” I told him. “She’s very beautiful.”
Jack’s mouth quirked without humor. “That fades the more you get to know her.”
“What were the two of you talking about?”
“She’s bitching to everyone about her problems with Pete.”
“That’s her husband? Was he there?”
“Yeah. They seemed to be doing their best to avoid each other.”
“I wonder if she’s been unfaithful to him,” I mused.
“Wouldn’t be out of character,” Jack said dryly.
“That’s sad. But it justifies what I’ve always thought about marriage: you can never promise to love a person forever. Because everything changes.”
“Not everything.” Jack eased back onto the pillows and I stretched against him, settling my head into the crook of his shoulder.
“Do you think she loved you?” I asked. “I mean, sincerely loved you?”
He sighed tautly. “I don’t know if there was ever any love on her part.” He paused. “If there was, I ruined it.”
“Ruined it?” I sensed this was territory that had to be navigated with care, that remnants of pain, or regret, were still part of the landscape. “How did you do that?”
“When Ashley left me for Pete, she told me—” Jack broke off with an unsettled breath.
I climbed over him fully, draping myself over his hard, furry chest. “Trust works both ways, Jack.” I reached to the ruffled disorder of his hair and slid my fingers through it gently. “You can tell me.”
Jack looked away from me, his profile as hard and perfect as a face on a new-minted coin. “She said I wanted too much. That I was demanding. Needy.”
“Oh.” I knew that to a man with Jack’s pride, that was about the worst thing a woman could say to him. “Were you?” I asked in a matter-of-fact way. “Or was Ashley trying to put all the blame on you for the fact that she cheated? Because I’ve never been a big fan of the look-what-you-made-me-do defense.”
The tension eased from his body. “Ashley sure as hell never took responsibility for anything. But the truth is, I probably was a pain in the ass. I don’t do things half-measure, including falling in love.” He paused. “I have a possessive streak.”
He seemed to believe he was telling me something new. I bit the inside of my lower lip to keep from laughing. “No kidding,” I said. “The good thing is, Jack, I have no problem telling you where to draw the line.”
“I noticed that.”
We stared at each other as smiles started on both our faces.
“So,” I said, “after Ashley cheated on you, you spent the next several years scoring with every woman in sight, to show her what she’d missed out on.”
“No, that had nothing to do with Ashley. I just happen to like sex.” His hand slid down to my bottom.
“No kidding.” I rolled away from him with a gasp of laughter and hopped out of bed. “I need a shower.”
Jack followed readily.
I stopped short as I flipped on the switch in his bathroom, an immaculate well-lit space with contemporary cabinetry and modern stone vessel sinks. But
it was the shower that left me speechless, a room made of glass and slate and granite, with rows of dials and knobs and thermostats. “Why is there a car wash in your bathroom?”
Jack went past me, opened the glass door, and went inside. As he turned knobs and adjusted the temperature on digital screens, jets sprouted from every conceivable place, and steam collected in white drifts. Three rainfall streams came directly from the ceiling.
“Aren’t you going to come in?” Jack’s voice filtered through the sound of abundant falling water.
I went to the glass doorway and peeked inside. Jack was a magnificent sight, all bronzy and lean, a sheet of water glimmering over his skin. His stomach was drum-tight, his back gorgeous and sleekly muscled.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” I said, “but you need to start exercising. A man your age shouldn’t let himself go.”
He grinned and gestured for me to come to him. I ventured into the maelstrom of competing sprays, battered with heat from all directions. “I’m drowning,” I said, spluttering, and he pulled me out of the direct downpour of an overhead spray. “I wonder how much water we’re wasting.”
“You know, Ella, you’re not the first woman who’s ever been in this shower with me—”
“I’m shocked.” I leaned against him as he soaped my back.
“—but you’re for damn sure the first one who’s ever worried about wasting water.”
“How much, would you say?”
“Ten gallons per minute, give or take.”
“Oh my God. Hurry. We can’t stay in here long. We’ll throw the entire ecological system out of balance.”
“This is Houston, Ella. The ecological system won’t notice.” Ignoring my protests, Jack washed me and shampooed my hair. It felt so good that I finally shut up and just stood there, letting his strong, slick hands run all over me while I breathed in the steam-laden air. And I washed him, dreamily sifting my fingers through his soapy chest hair, tracing the wonderful masculine textures of his body.