Project Virgin

Jesse felt like a wild thing as he stood there, still so hungry for her it bordered on desperation, and he thought for a moment it might actually kill him. He was still keyed-in to her delicate scent, to the heat of her body, to the arousal he could see as plainly as if she’d written it in marker on her forehead—her flushed cheeks, her too-bright eyes, her shallow breaths.

  “Michaela.” Her name was like a song in his mouth, and he still didn’t know what to say. Much less how to say it. None of this was okay with him. None of it was what he wanted.

  But he wanted her all the same.

  “This isn’t me,” she hissed at him, and then she went back inside the bathroom and closed the door. A quiet click, not a slam, and then the lock turned and he didn’t know if it was to keep him out or her in.

  And Jesse stood there in that dim little room with both of their phones ringing too loud and too insistent from their far-off real lives where this never would have happened, need like a fist around him, clenching him too damned tight to breathe.

  *

  Michaela had no idea what woke her that night.

  She jolted awake, then gasped for breath while her heart did its level best to climb straight out through her ribs. She sat up in a rush, feeling wild and under attack, and clapped both of her hands to her chest as if she could make her heart behave with her own two palms.

  It took one hard kick against her chest to remember where she was. Another to figure out why. That she was still in the same dinky little motel room, on this snowy side-of-the-road, somewhere in Montana, still nowhere close to home. The room was dark. There was only a fitful sometime-light poking through the curtains they hadn’t quite drawn shut over the windows, and it took her much longer than that to realize it was the moon out there, high and bright.

  She pulled in a breath and looked around, sleep still clinging to her.

  Jesse.

  His name was like a burst of sensation inside of her and she shifted against it, as if that might ward him off, and it took another long moment to realize she couldn’t hear him anywhere in the room. She already knew he wasn’t beside her. He hadn’t taken the bed again with her when she’d finally decided it was time to crawl under the covers and put this day behind her as best she could.

  “It’s a huge bed, Jesse,” she’d snapped at him, pretending she couldn’t feel his palm against her belly all those hours later like one of those cattle brands she’d been so certain she wanted nowhere near her. But she could. She still could. “There’s no reason we can’t share it. We’re not mindless animals.”

  He hadn’t said much to her after she’d come out of the bathroom and managed to face him in the wake of their near-kiss. It had gotten almost as cold inside their room with the heat on as it had been outside, she’d thought, or maybe that had only been the air between them. They’d taken a grim march over the even more treacherous road in the bitter dark to grab something for dinner, had eaten in the same brooding silence once they’d hauled it back to their room, and it had been Michaela who had turned on the TV to find refuge in as many silly sitcoms as possible, and no matter if she normally hated that kind of thing. It was a laugh track or a lost mind. She’d chosen the former.

  But it only meant when he’d turned the full force of his dark, brooding attention on her, she’d felt it. Oh lord, had she felt it.

  “Speak for yourself,” Jesse had growled.

  It had taken her a long time to fall asleep, liked a martyred burrito wrapped up way too tight against the night—and against her own urges.

  She moved to the edge of the bed now, scanning the room as she went, but there was no sign of him in the shadows on the floor. There was a leftover tangle of blankets near the radiator where he’d flopped down hours earlier and the bathroom door hung open, showing the dark and empty tiled room beyond. The clock on the side table declared it was three seventeen a.m. in neon green and Jesse was gone.

  Michaela swung her legs over the side of the bed and got up, moving to the window without really questioning what she was doing. She didn’t think he’d simply leave her here or, she was quite certain, he would have done so earlier today. She glanced over to assure herself his duffel was still on the floor. It was. But what could he possibly be doing at this hour?

  She pushed the curtain back and saw a figure out by the SUV they’d parked in the lot out front what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was Jesse, of course, scraping the ice and snow from the SUV’s windows, the moon dancing over him as he leaned over the windshield with that restrained male grace that made her feel… cottony, all the way through.

  A wise woman might have gone back to bed and left a man who wanted to scrape snow from a car in the dead of the night to his own devices. She recognized that. But Michaela moved over to the door and swung it open anyway.

  It was cold. So unbelievably cold. It didn’t rush in so much as seep against the frail protection of her thick socks, her pajama bottoms, and the long-sleeved shirt she’d worn to bed tonight as if it had been last night’s tank top that had caused all the trouble between them. The sky was impossibly dark outside the moonlight and achingly, endlessly quiet in a way it never was in Seattle. As if there was no separation between them and the sky and the great universe hovering on the other side of the moon, all one tremendous stillness.

  “Go back inside.” Jesse’s voice was low and yet held that same steel-laced command she’d heard him use on the phone earlier. “It’s too cold out here.”

  She ignored him, but her body certainly didn’t. It shivered awake in a hurry, her nipples pebbling and a rush of heat like a deep ache low in her belly. Michaela told herself it was the cold. Not his husky, deliciously male voice.

  Not him. Definitely not him. It was the temperature.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, rather than continuing to lie to herself.

  He finished the side of the windshield he was working on and then pulled back, shaking off the scraper at his side. He took his time looking at her in that bland way, as if what he was doing ought to be so obvious it didn’t require comment. It set her teeth on edge.

  “I can see you’re scraping the windshield, Jesse, thank you,” she managed to say without letting too much of her temper bleed into her voice. “Why are you doing it at three-fifteen in the morning?”

  He opened the nearest car door and tossed the scraper inside. Then he slammed it shut and started toward her, and she didn’t know what gripped her then, as he moved. A sense of thick, pulsing foreboding. It was that unreadable expression on his face, that dangerous gleam in his eyes. The way he never shifted his hard, tight focus from her.

  It was the way she felt inside, thrilled and altered. Alive.

  Her toes curled into the carpet below her feet, hard. And she understood something then she should have recognized the moment she’d set eyes on Jesse in the bar back in Marietta, when she’d been struck silly at the sight of him—something that had never, ever happened to her.

  Maybe it was the moonlight, reflecting off the snow and making the world seem ghost-lit and mysterious, but she didn’t think so. It was him. Jesse. It was this insanity between them that had only gotten worse the more time they’d spent in each other’s company, no matter how many increasingly desperate voicemail messages she’d left for Terrence. It was the fact she’d never felt anything like this before. It was the simple truth that she felt more for this man she hardly knew and had barely touched than she did for the man she was supposed to marry. And once she admitted that, once she accepted it, once she let it creep inside of her and take root, there was no pretending otherwise.

  It had taken this odd, accidental vacation from her life with a man who knew nothing about her to understand how many things were wrong. With her. With the life she’d been living on autopilot for the past few years. With the decisions she’d made and the reasons she’d made them.

  Michaela wasn’t about to make any declarations on no sleep and too much forced proximity, to a relative stranger, no less. She wasn’t s
ure she’d ever see Jesse Grey again, if they ever made it through this storm and back to Seattle, and she wasn’t sure it mattered. But there was no way she could marry Terrence if she could feel like this about someone else. There was no possible way.

  It didn’t matter what they’d agreed. She didn’t want to “scratch an itch” with Jesse the way she knew Terrence had with any number of other women over the past two years. This wasn’t an itch. There was absolutely nothing casual about the set to Jesse’s beautiful mouth or the rush of molten heat inside of her that made her stomach clench tight, and it didn’t matter if it was only sex. If it was only physical.

  Michaela hadn’t believed she could feel this way. That anyone could outside the pages of her books.

  And now that she knew better, she wasn’t going to settle.

  She refused to settle. Amos might not put her first. Terrence certainly didn’t. But Michaela could. And from now on, she would. She promised herself she would, in a thick, hot rush of a vow she could feel all the way down to her toes.

  But all of that was a problem for a later time. Conversations to have, a wedding to cancel, a whole life to change. Right now she was standing on the doorstep of a motel room in the middle of Montana with the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in real life, who was looking at her as if she was the edible one. As if he’d like to put his hands on her again, and not stop until he’d slaked his hunger, like some kind of animal.

  And she was supposed to be this rational, reasonable human—she’d prided herself on that and built a life around not feeling things so deeply or dramatically—but all she wanted was to jump on him and figure out what that wildness felt like, no matter what it cost her. No matter what it took.

  No matter if it meant that she was an animal, too.

  “Go inside,” Jesse said again, even rougher, coming to a humming, electrically charged stop in front of her. “Pack up your stuff. The moon is up and the roads are clear. We should be in Seattle by noon at the latest if we get moving now.”

  “Okay,” she said, but she didn’t move.

  He searched her face and he saw. He knew. She could see that he did.

  “Goddamn it, Michaela.”

  But she wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was listening to the exultant kick of her heart. To the soaring fear that had kicked her out of a dead sleep when she hadn’t known where he was. To the part of her that only he’d ever woken up.

  And she was wide awake now. More awake than she’d ever been.

  Michaela reached up and slid her palm over his still-unshaven jaw, touching him at last, and it was everything. It was hot and his jaw beneath her hand felt as perfect as it looked, and his eyes went dark and hot in an instant, even as his hand shot up to hold hers there, against his cheek.

  A dare, maybe. Or a warning. But he didn’t let her go.

  Then there was nothing but his breath and hers, and the cloud that made in the frigid air that Michaela was aware of, yet barely felt. There was nothing but the beat of her heart and that thick, hard pulse she could see keeping pace in his throat. That searing hot, unmistakably male gleam in the dark gaze he kept locked to hers. His skin against hers again. Perfect. Too much and not enough.

  There was nothing but the two of them. There was nothing but this.

  So she tilted herself forward, straight up on her toes, took her life in her hands, and kissed him.

  Chapter Eight

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  His lips were cold and firm against hers. And for a split second, his free hand wrapped around her upper arm, and Michaela almost thought he would set her away from him—

  But then Jesse angled his head, opened his mouth, and took over.

  And everything inside of Michaela exploded. Bright, white light and blistering heat. Jesse shifted, moving her back into the room without breaking the kiss, then kicked the door shut behind him. Closing them in.

  She couldn’t touch him enough. Her hands on that rough jaw of his, then her fingers deep in his unruly, dark blonde hair. She arched into him as he tasted her, deep and possessive, a dark, wild thrill.

  He made a low noise that had no translation and yet she understood him perfectly. He shrugged his coat off, letting it drop to the floor and leaving him in the same vintage t-shirt she’d admired back in Marietta. Then his hands were on her shirt, stripping it from her, tearing his mouth from hers to pull it up and over her head. She raised her arms obediently, unable to breathe, unable to think as he peeled the long-sleeved t-shirt up the length of her arms, turned it inside out and then threw it aside.

  Then he yanked her against him again as if even that long without her was too much.

  This time she could feel every ridge and sculpted hollow of his perfect chest through the thin barrier of his t-shirt and the bra she still wore. And he pulled her even closer, hauling her up high against him until she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

  And then he took her mouth again, bossy and demanding, and she could feel it everywhere. She could feel him everywhere. He simply stood in the center of that dim little room with the moon pouring in from outside, held her wrapped around him, and kissed her as if he could do it forever.

  He licked in deep, setting her on fire. He kissed her as if he’d been waiting for her for years. He kissed her as if this wasn’t the first time, as if he’d spent decades learning exactly how to drive her wild, and he did it.

  Again and again, he did it.

  She could feel him, hot and hard against her molten center, and she shook as she twined herself around him. Shook and yearned and kissed him until her mouth felt swollen and her body ached and all she wanted was more.

  More.

  He tasted like the endless night on the other side of the door, infinite and addictive. He sank one of his strong, capable hands deep in her hair at the back of her head to hold her exactly where he wanted her. He smoothed the other hand down the length of her spine, pausing so briefly over the disruption of her bra that it took her a long moment to realize he’d unclasped it. But by then his hand had already gone lower, sliding beneath her pajama pants and her panties to grab a fistful of her bottom, not exactly gently.

  But deliciously. She moaned against his mouth. She couldn’t get enough.

  And still Jesse kissed her like a dying man, as if this was his final act.

  As if he intended to make it last.

  Michaela had no idea how long he held her there, in the center of the room, kissing her and kissing her, dragging his mouth against hers and making a low noise as he did it, like some kind of approving growl. She only knew it wasn’t enough and she started to tempt fate by moving her hips, in ever-so-tiny circles against him. The first time she did it, he shuddered, and his hands tightened, twin tugs of pure sensation at her scalp and at her bottom.

  The second time, he groaned against her mouth and she could feel that, taste it. Like it was another lick of his clever tongue, and it was her turn to shiver out the reaction she could feel in her breasts, her core, and all her bare skin in between.

  Then he was moving, staggering those last few feet to the great big bed and tipping them both flat.

  He caught himself on his hands as her back hit the mattress, but he let his lower half drag hard against her, so hard it made her catch her breath and buck against him. And there was something about his weight against her, something about the sweet, slick, glorious fit of him between her legs. It was like a lit match landed in a pool of gasoline, and they both ignited.

  She didn’t know if she tore his shirt off or he did, if he flung her bra aside or she did. What mattered was that skin to skin contact, that unbearable perfection, her breasts pressed hard against his pectoral muscles and nothing else in the universe but this fire of theirs, arcing higher by the second.

  They rolled. Their tongues tangled and tasted, punished and soothed. She was sprawled above him, dizzy with all his sheer, male perfection right there beneath her hands. They rolled again and it was Jesse on top, st
retched out like a fierce predator with her breasts in his hands and their stiff points almost painful against his palms.

  And still they kissed, trying this angle and that, as if there was no end. As if it was far more than lust or sex or even the sweet immolation that was wrecking Michaela from the inside out.

  As if nothing between them could possibly fit into any of the things they knew, and they could taste each other forever to prove it.

  She couldn’t keep still. She couldn’t touch him to her satisfaction, learn him well enough. She tried to trace all those fascinating ridges with her fingers, even her mouth when she found herself astride him and close at last to that sculpted abdomen of his. And she was rocking against him, the thick length of him against the seam of her sex, as if he’d be buried deep inside of her if they could only let go of each other long enough to strip off those last layers that held them apart.

  It was a frenzy. It was magic. It was wild and ferocious and beautiful, too.

  It was better than whole relationships Michaela had had with dim, shadowy other people whose names she couldn’t remember just then. But then, she wasn’t sure she could remember her own.

  He flipped them again and then he held her there, his hips pinning her to the bed and his mouth at her throat. He wasn’t particularly gentle, and that thrilled her too, as if it was evidence he was as wrecked by this thing as she was. He skated down her neck with his teeth, his lips, the scrape of his unshaved beard, and it made her shudder. Again and again.

  Jesse moved to her collarbone, learning its length before he moved lower still, bringing his head closer to where his hands waited, and then he wrapped his fingers around one breast and plumped it up. His gaze met hers, dark and far more sinful than any chocolate she could imagine, and then he sucked the nipple deep into his hot, possessive mouth.

  Michaela arched off of the bed.

  He was a devil or a god, and she didn’t know how to handle either one. She could only surrender. He licked and he sucked and then he moved to her other breast, as if he’d been starving for the taste of her, as if he was getting off on this as much as she was, and she didn’t recognize the low moans that filled the room. The throaty gasps.