And soon enough he was naked and she was still staring, and he took matters into his own hands. He pulled the knot of her dress undone in two quick tugs, and then he bent a little to help her kick off her boots. She got rid of her bra herself and then Jesse hooked his fingers into her panties and tugged them down and off, and then it was done. She was as naked as he was.
For a minute, he just looked at her. And she couldn’t stop staring at him.
And she thought maybe neither one of them could believe this was really happening.
But then Jesse made a very low, very male noise. He reached over and pulled her into his arms, sweeping her up like some kind of romantic heroine to hold her against the wall of his chest. She tipped her head back and met that gaze of his, so dark, so rich. So focused on her it made her tremble. And burst into a wet, hot heat.
He still didn’t kiss her. She could feel his heart like thunder in his chest, and maybe that was why she could breathe again. And smile at him as he took her through the door and into the bedroom.
She still had so many things to say to him, but it felt sacred in her room, hushed and reverent. It was an elegant sweep of a room, from the high four poster bed to the paneled wardrobe on the far wall, and Jesse laid her down in the middle of the mattress and then climbed up beside her, stretching out the sculpted heat of his perfect body along the length of her side.
Just the way she’d dreamed he had back in that motel room, when she’d been wearing all those layers, and he’d done nothing more than touch her tank top strap.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“So I was right,” Michaela said, not sure if she was smiling at him or if it was simply that she felt like some kind of beacon, burning too hot and too bright from within, making them both shine. “You only make sweet, soulful, tender love after all.”
Jesse grinned in a way that was entirely too male to be sweet, and then he reached over and wrapped his hand around her neck, tugging her to him.
“Not quite,” he said, and then he set his mouth to hers and all hell broke loose.
*
She tasted like light. She tasted like sex and sugar and he was a goner.
Jesse knew if he’d dared kiss her like this—or at all—while they’d still been out there in Grey’s, his uncle would have doused them with a pitcher of water. Or called the fire department.
Even here, stretched out on a bed with a locked door behind them and all the privacy in the world, it was almost too much.
Her mouth was carnal perfection, made to drive him wild with need and wonder, and he couldn’t get enough. He didn’t think he ever would.
They rolled on the bed, kissing each other as if their lives depended on it. Hands sank in hair. Fingers dug into each other’s backs, sides, butts. Michaela on top, a feast and a joy, writhing against him. Michaela beneath him, cradling him, holding him in the place he most wanted to stay and then slowly driving him to the point of insanity with each little rock of her hips. And his world.
And this time, she was his. This time, he wasn’t going to stop.
This time, there was no one in the room but the two of them.
He rose above her then, moving from her lush mouth to take stock of her, fully naked beneath him. At last. He treated her sweet neck like a prayer, her perfect breasts like a blessing, and then he lost himself for a while in the thrust of her tight nipples, the hollow between her breasts, the warm shadow beneath each one.
When she was moaning beneath him, he moved on, trailing fire and longing over that belly of hers he’d first felt with his ice cold palm. Today there was nothing the least bit cold about him, or her, and he exulted in that. The wild heat. The exquisite fire. The shallow indentation of her navel and then beneath, where she was molten hot and ready for him.
He kissed her at the top of one thigh, then moved closer to the heart of her need, moving near that turgid center but never quite making it. Again and again, until she made a sound of sheer, feminine frustration that made him grin.
“You’re torturing me!” she accused him, with a fist in his hair as punctuation.
“This is as good a time as any to go over a few ground rules, I think,” he told her, and it was a fight to keep his voice that lazy, as if none of this was affecting him.
She called him a name and he laughed.
“What rules?” Michaela demanded, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, splayed out there before him, her hazel eyes wild and half-gold with desire, her cheeks flushed red. Her dark hair was a tangle around her and she was trembling still, her lovely thighs and those magnificent breasts too lovely to bear, and she was perfect.
Utterly perfect.
“I don’t believe in open relationships,” Jesse told her, very seriously. “I believe in hard boundaries and kept promises. I believe in so many ties to each other you can’t breathe, and then a few more. I believe in deep, dark, messy, irrational love that lasts forever, works itself out in bed, and never, ever invites anybody else to the party. Or I don’t see the point.”
He saw the way she flushed, the way the awareness in her gaze turned to something else. Something he recognized. Something it was too soon to say out loud, too soon to think. But he knew she could see the same thing all over his face, and who cared if it had only been a week.
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as if she was thinking it over, when he could see she was hiding a smile. “That sounds very immature.”
“It is,” he agreed. “It definitely is.”
And he tasted her then, because he could. He licked his way through her heat, humming at the way she bucked and the sharp, high gasp she let out. And then he looked up at her again, and could feel the edginess in his own smile.
“No sharing,” he said. “And let’s be clear, Michaela. When the time comes, I’m not getting married in a courthouse. It’s not going to be about taxes. I want you in a dress like a cake, neck deep in flowers, and a cattle brand or a big ass ring, your choice, to make sure there’s no doubt about your status. Wedding comas and a football team of bridesmaids. I want to make it so hard for you to walk away from me you come to me on your knees if you have to.”
“Be still my beating heart,” she whispered, her voice a broken thing, as her hips moved restlessly beneath him. “And what do I get if I subject myself to this conservative, conventional nightmare?”
He grinned, watching her catch her breath at that, feeling her shiver and yearn where he held her beneath him.
“Me,” he said gruffly. “You get me.”
“That sounds like an excellent trade,” she whispered.
And Jesse bent his head and took her in his mouth.
She didn’t speak a coherent word for some time. First he sucked the hard little center of her need deep into his mouth, riding her out as she shattered around him, crying out her pleasure to the elegant old walls around them. Then he started all over again, learning every inch of her sweet folds, taking his time, tasting her as he built the fire anew.
When she was moaning out his name again, right there on the edge, he pulled away and made his way up the length of her body, tasting her excitement as he went.
And then, at last, he settled himself between her legs, nudging up against her delicious softness.
Michaela wrapped her arms around his neck and she draped her legs over his hips, and time stopped for a while as they paused there for a breath, stretched out together on the edge of everything he’d ever wanted. And then he pushed in gently, testing the fit of her and the slick, addictive heat, before he thrust in deep.
They both groaned.
And then the fire took over.
Jesse tried to set a slow pace, but she fit him too well. She arched into him, meeting each thrust, rocking against him and making him feel wild and out of control. She dug her nails into his back and pressed her open mouth to his neck, and then sobbed out words he couldn’t begin to understand against his throat.
He reached down between t
hem and found her sweet center, then pressed down hard, and felt her go stiff beneath him. Then break apart into heat and light and this time, as he threw her off the side of the planet, he went with her.
Later, much later, after getting sidetracked in the shower and then again on the thick carpet at the foot of the stately bed, Jesse stretched out in the bed with Michaela tucked up against him. She rested her chin on his chest and smiled at him.
“That’s a pretty good start,” she said.
He felt his mouth crook and understood this woman was going to keep him smiling, whether he liked it or not.
He liked it. He more than liked it.
“Start?” he asked, in mock outrage. “That was more than a start. You’re in deep, Michaela. Better start swimming.”
Her hazel eyes heated up, and he didn’t think she had any problem with that. And this was too new, he knew, to say the things he could feel simmering in the air between them. But he had no doubt that was where they were headed. He could see a whole future in her eyes. He could taste it on her skin.
He ran a hand up her lovely back and enjoyed the way she shivered. They’d spent two days in a snowstorm facing their pasts and finding their future, and maybe that expedited things. Maybe that was why he felt as if he’d always known her. Why he knew he always would.
Why he knew exactly what this was, no matter what words he used or didn’t.
Yet.
“I know how to swim,” she told him. “Don’t worry about me. But you have an obligation to fulfill.”
He didn’t try to hide his entirely too satisfied smile, then.
“Are you sure? I thought I told you about the dangers of faking, Michaela. I can tell. I can also tell when you’re not faking, which by my count comes to—”
She smacked him on the chest. “Idiot. That’s not what I meant.”
He felt his heart in his chest, ten sizes too big. He thought of those little girls who were his sisters now, whom he might have continued to ignore were it not for this woman and the impetus she’d given him to face off with his past at last. He thought of the work they each did and how easy it had been to slip into work mode that snow day in the motel. How lucky he was to have found someone who could understand, at last, that kind of focus and drive—and who had her own, in spades.
He thought about all the thousands of ways this woman had been made for him, how she fit him, and he tightened his arms around her and rolled them over, coming up above her and letting her cradle him again.
It was never going to be enough. He was never going to get enough of this woman.
“I told you in the saloon,” he said, gazing down at her. “This story is going to have a very happy ending.”
And Michaela smiled up at him, her bright eyes alight and her arms around his neck.
“I’m sure it will,” she told him. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. But first—” and she let her smile widen, let it take over the world “—you owe me that date.”
The End
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About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Megan Crane writes women’s fiction, chick lit, work-for-hire YA, and a lot of Harlequin Presents as Caitlin Crews. She also teaches creative writing classes both online at mediabistro.com and at UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally utilizes the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in York, England. She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic-book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.
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