Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  I groaned. “You are the most direct woman I’ve ever met. No. I haven’t.”

  “And it’s a little rough,” she said. “Maybe. Because you’re not sure how it’ll go.”

  “Yeh. It is.” Saying it felt naked. Exposed. Much too vulnerable. This wasn’t who I was in bed. I was careful, and I was attentive. I wasn’t tentative. “Feels like the rules have changed. I hate that. I want my old rules back.”

  She traced her hand down my scar, her fingers gentle, and said, “I know. Me, too. Because I want to kiss you everywhere, and I don’t know if that’s all right. I need some rules myself, I think.”

  I was going to burst into flames. The blanket had fallen off from around her shoulders, and she didn’t seem to have noticed. I said, “Could be the rules are just to be honest. Could be it’s a first for you, too. First time, hardest time. I usually say, ‘First time, worst time,’ but this isn’t that. This could just be us feeling our way, doing our best. Making sure it’s a good time.”

  She swallowed again, and her eyes were bright, the tears rising too easily, the way they had earlier, at the café, after she’d told me she felt sorry for me. When she’d thought she’d gone too far, and she wasn’t sure how to get herself back.

  The rules hadn’t changed that much, then. It was about taking care of her. Making her feel beautiful, and desired, and sure I could take her wherever she wanted to go, so she could relax and let me do it. Making her grab the sheets and call out loud, and know she could fall as hard as she needed to, because I’d be there to catch her. No change at all.

  I took off my specs, leaning around her to put them on the table, and then I was doing just that. Touching her face, tracing the perfect lines of cheekbones and jaw, kissing her soft lips, and not trying to go anywhere else, not yet. I had my hand cradling her head and my other one around her waist, and there was nothing at all wrong with the way her slim body was yielding under mine. And when I pushed her gently down onto her back? She went.

  Surely there’s no feeling in the world like coming down over a woman, having her hold your shoulder to pull you in closer, hearing the hitch in her breath and watching her eyelids flutter shut. Feeling her start to believe that she can trust you, because you’ll be here as long as it takes, and you won’t take anything she doesn’t want to give. When I got that message, I kissed a slow path across her mouth to her ear, touched each of those sparkling studs with my tongue, and told her, “I’ve been wanting to do this for so many days now. You’ve got the prettiest ears. The prettiest neck.” I worked my way down to that, still going slowly, and when I set my mouth to her, she moaned and held me closer. That was a “yes,” then.

  “I need to . . . kiss you,” she said, and her hands had gone under my T-shirt, were stroking up my sides, around to my back.

  “You’re not too convincing,” I said, when I’d stopped being quite so busy sucking at the place on her neck that she liked best. “Because I’d say you want me to kiss you some more first.”

  “For a . . . while.” She was tugging my shirt up my chest, and I thought for a second about the thick web of scar tissue, then forgot to think about it, because she’d levered herself off the bed and was kissing me, taking a nipple into her mouth and sucking on it, and if I wasn’t careful, I wasn’t going to be able to make this last long enough.

  “Shit,” I said, and she didn’t answer, just kept going, and kept pulling my shirt up. “Karen. Stop. Shit.”

  She sat back fast, and her eyes flew open. “What? Bad? Sorry. I don’t . . .” She started rolling off the bed, and I put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Wait,” I said. “I don’t want you to go. That’s the last thing I want. No, that wasn’t bad. That was bloody brilliant. I don’t have a condom, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” She hovered halfway between sitting and lying down. Still feeling too vulnerable, I could tell. “Oh. Well, we could . . . uh . . . take a rain check, I guess. This is probably stupid anyway. I’m not really . . .”

  The tenderness was right there. “Or,” I said, “we could call it an exploratory session. See how good we could make each other feel. Or you could go. No worries.”

  Did I want to say that last bit? Not a hope. I wanted to hold her here. I wanted to lie over her, take her wrists in my hands, take her body over, push her all the way up the mountain and over the edge, and see how loud I could get her. But that wasn’t how first times worked.

  “I could be your . . . first time.” Her voice was breathy, not like Karen at all. “So you wouldn’t have that hanging over your head.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted, either. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, except that I was pretty sure one time wasn’t going to be enough. The rain was pelting hard, and a gust of wind came into the tent and swirled. I sat up, pulled my shirt over my head, and said, “I’m closing the tent flap. Cozier, eh. Maybe you want to pull the duvet back and climb in.”

  And have time to think, I thought. Not for me. I knew what I thought. I wanted to be inside her. I needed to give her a chance to look at every one of my scars and missing pieces, though, and decide if they repelled her.

  It took me a while, like it always did, and it wasn’t anything like the picture I wanted to present. Hopping to the door on one crutch, and balancing on one foot as I unfastened the tapes holding the tent flaps back and zipped the opening closed. What daylight there still was went with it, and when I turned around again, it was to see Karen in the glow of a single candle. She had pulled back the bedclothes, and was sitting up against them and starting to pull up her shirt.

  I could have told her to leave it on for me, but I didn’t. I was enjoying the view just fine. I stood there on my one foot and watched as she showed me that, first, she still had that line of four sparklers down her belly, and second, that she’d come over here without a bra. She had the shirt over her head and was easing the sleeve over her bandaged arm when she said, “So you know. This is me.”

  Arms over her head, golden light flickering over honey-colored skin and small, taut pink nipples, the tender undersides of her breasts, the outline of triceps showing on the backs of her arms. “Yeh,” I said. “I do see that. So far, I’m loving it. I’ll keep letting you know, though, shall I?”

  “I’m pretty athletic,” she said.

  I had to laugh. “Yes, you are. Wait a second, and I’ll let you know what I think of that, too.”

  She took off the PJ pants, then. She was naked under there, and bloody hell. That was nice. She looked nervous. I didn’t feel that way. I got my own shorts off in as much of a hurry as a man on one leg can do it, and left them where they fell.

  I was still hopping when I headed back over there. I still had one leg when I came down over her again, when I stroked a slow hand all the way up her side and captured a breast, when I dipped my mouth down to taste, heard her draw in a sharp breath, and felt her hips rise under me.

  I had one leg, and I didn’t care.

  I had one leg and too many scars, but I could still make a woman sing.

  Karen

  Have you ever wanted somebody so much it physically hurts? So much that when they come into the room, you freeze up, and you can’t even talk? Jax had one hand on the tender flesh on the underside of my upper arm. He didn’t just have his hand there. He was stroking me there with his thumb. I hadn’t realized that was an erogenous zone. I was finding out now. His mouth was on my breast, too, and he had One. Patient. Talented. Mouth.

  When I was nine, rubbing the insides of my forearms over the edge of the blankets in the bed I shared with my big sister, I’d thought, That feels so good. Why? And hadn’t been able to put a name to it. Not tickling. Better than tickling. Stimulating and pleasurable, without that edge of panic you got when somebody tickled you. It had just felt good, and I’d wanted to keep doing it. When I was sixteen and a boy had run his hand up my side, then played with my breasts for the first time, touching and feeling his way around, I’d held my breath and thought, Nothing can feel this good.
Like my forearms on the bed times a hundred.

  Nothing I’d done in the team-sport arena had felt as good as that, to be honest, for quite a while afterwards, because the men of my acquaintance had been more about the freeway than the scenic route, if you catch my drift. Straight shot to the objective, veering onto the onramp as fast as they possibly could, hurtling down the road with their foot smashing the accelerator. And somewhere along the way, I’d lost that—that breath-holding, knee-weakening, luxurious wonder that being touched could give you this kind of pure pleasure, so you wanted to drag your forearms across the edge of your school desk just to feel it some more. Like you wanted it never, ever to end.

  It had been a while, but I still remembered. I was getting reminded now. I wanted to touch Jax, and I couldn’t quite manage to do it enough, maybe because he was still holding my arm, and maybe because I was a little overwhelmed. That thing I’d thought, what? A few days ago, about how men didn’t kiss for long enough, or touch you well enough? I wasn’t thinking it anymore.

  I said, “Jax,” and he hummed and kept going.

  I had one arm loose, so I grabbed his head. Then I forgot about things for a while, because he took that as an invitation to come back and kiss my neck some more, and I shuddered and did some more serious moaning. I did have to get my hands on him, though, and do some exploring of my own. His back was long and lean, and had the kind of shifting planes of muscle under his skin that let you know you were touching a man. If I’d been any doubt of that when he’d taken his clothes off. Let’s just say that he hadn’t needed the slice of bread to fill anything out, and that he was hard as iron all over.

  I thought, What are you doing? He’s going to think you’ve got nothing to give, if you just lie here and whimper. I said, “Jax. I need to . . . kiss you, too.”

  “Mm,” he said, and sent a hand over my breast again as he sucked an earlobe into his mouth, then sent his tongue on an exploratory journey like what he wanted most of all tonight was to kiss the hell out of my ear. “Think I need to do this a little more first. You’ve got this line, you see.” His hand drifted down my rib cage, over the four holes above and below my navel. “Been wanting to see where this goes since the first time I saw it. Time to find out. I’m going to eat you so slow. I’m going to hold you down so tight while I do it.”

  Oh. My. God. “Having a guy go down on you, uh . . . first,” I tried to say as his mouth followed his hand, and I held onto his shoulders and tried to keep myself thinking straight, “doesn’t happen.”

  “Shh,” he said. “I’m concentrating.” And he was. He kissed his slow way down between my breasts, then over my belly, swirled his tongue around each jewel-studded hole, then a couple tantalizing inches farther down, making my skin heat up some more, skipped the pertinent area altogether, slid his hands up my inner thighs, pressed them gently apart, and just . . . looked.

  See, that’s hardly awkward at all.

  He did go slow. Boy, could the man go slow. The rain was beating on the canvas roof, like camping only so much better, the candle was flickering in its holder, and I was lying on a white bed with a man holding the backs of my thighs, letting him eat me up by excruciatingly slow degrees. When I started humming, he smiled against me, and I felt it. And when he had his fingers in there and was banging me good, and I started yelping some? He put a little more effort into it. I tightened up, and he said, “Oh, yeh.” The first thing he’d said to me in what felt like an hour.

  I said, “Jax.” That was about the limit of my verbal abilities. “Oh, please. Please. Keep doing that. Please. Don’t stop.”

  Not my most articulate moment ever, but he wasn’t complaining. He didn’t bother to answer at all, and he didn’t stop.

  I was making too much noise. He was going to think he was hurting me, and pretty soon, somebody was going to call the cops. I didn’t care.

  I didn’t know how he was at preventing explosions, but the man sure knew how to cause one. I was going up in smoke. I was going up in flames. I was quite possibly going to die.

  Holy shit.

  Jax

  She didn’t stop making noise for a good wee while.

  She’d been loud, and then she’d been louder, and I’d loved it. There were a few feelings better than holding a woman open with your palms on the insides of her thighs and making her come so hard, her entire upper body rose from the mattress and her arms were flung out to either side, but there weren’t many. They mostly involved being inside her while she was doing it, when she was squeezing you so tight that your eyes rolled back in your head, but never mind. Nothing wrong with having something to look forward to.

  When her head made it back down onto the mattress, I played with her a little more, because those aftershocks could be delicious, and she shuddered and moaned and whimpered some more, so it was working. And when she was just shivering, her arms up over her head, her breath still coming hard, I climbed up the bed over her, dropping a kiss over her heart along the way, because I’d swear I could see it beating, and kissed her mouth, taking it deep, because I could. She’d be tasting herself, and I wanted her to. One more surrender.

  “Jax,” she said when I moved over to kiss her cheek again, because she loved having her face kissed, “you are really, really good at that.”

  I had to laugh. And, yeh, I was also dying for it. If I’d had a condom, I’d have been inside her five minutes ago, and it wouldn’t have been gentle anymore, because I’d have lost some control. I knew that, and I also knew that I couldn’t lose that control. “Good to know,” I said. “Any time, eh.”

  Her wide mouth curved in a smile, even though her eyes were still closed, and her hands were drifting over my upper arms, over to my shoulders, down my back, like she wanted to touch me, too. The rain was so loud around us, you were practically wrapped in the storm, and things were exactly that way inside my body, too.

  I thought I knew how she’d felt. I needed to come as badly as a man possibly could who hadn’t had sex for too many long, lonely, painful months, and who suddenly had exactly the right beautiful, naked woman stretched out beneath him, but I didn’t just need to do it. I needed it good, and I needed it to last. Quick and dirty wasn’t enough for me, not tonight, and Karen wasn’t a patient woman.

  I thought about how to say it, then thought, Nah, mate. You’ll put her straight off, if you start giving instructions right off the bat. She doesn’t have much confidence right now. She trusted you. Trust her to get you there, too. You can work on the “how” of it next time, give her all the lessons you want to.

  You’ll notice the one thing I wasn’t thinking about, at least not explicitly. My scars. My leg. How I felt about her touching all of that, about looking at it up close.

  Which was when the candle went out.

  Karen said, “Oh!” And then, “Well, that was unexpected.” She got her hand on my face—actually, on my nose—laughed a little, a lovely soft sound, and said, “Maybe a sign. Want to roll over on your back and let me feel my way? I’ve got so much work to do, and I need to get started pretty desperately.”

  Yes, my heart may have thudded a few extra times at that. I said, “I need light. I want to watch.” I did, but that wasn’t all. I needed to see. The look on her face when she reached the broken parts of me. I needed to know. That was why I rolled off her, felt around for the box of matches and lit one, then followed it over to the lantern on the other side of the bed and lit that, since my candle was burnt down.

  I was on my knees when the light flared up and I closed the lantern, and still on them when I turned around to look at Karen. She was sitting up, then scrambling to her own knees to face me, not thinking about covering herself, the skin of her chest and neck still rosy from the strength of that orgasm, her whiskey eyes warm and not quite sleepy. As I watched, she smiled at me with all the slow, sweet happiness in the world and said, “My turn. And you’re so beautiful. I need to kiss you so much.” She wrapped her arms around me, pressed closer, and did it. She wasn�
��t shy, either. Her hand was on my arse, then stroking up to the base of my tailbone, and her other one was at the back of my neck.

  Kissing her like that, looking at her in the lamplight, was like standing in front of a statue and seeing two lovers kissing in stone, their passion and their tenderness caught forever by the brilliance of the artist. Like when you looked at something like that in the midst of a bare room in the echoing space of some museum, and you thought, I want that. That was the way she was holding me now. Sinking down with me, her hands on either side of my face, then smoothing back my hair. She moved so she had a leg over me, propped herself on her elbows, kissed the center of my forehead, where my most visible scar began, and said, “If you don’t want me to touch something, if it hurts, or if you just don’t want it, tell me so.”

  I said, “All right.” It was the only thing I could manage.

  She smiled, and I felt it. She kissed her way gently down that scar, then over to the other one, as her other hand stroked over my shoulder, my arm, and she said, between butterfly touches of her lips, “The first time I saw you, I thought you were so beautiful, I was scared to look. I thought you’d see how I felt.”

  Something in my chest was twisting tight. I swallowed and closed my eyes, and I think she saw it, because she was kissing me there, first one eyelid, then the other. “And now I get to look all I want,” she said, when her mouth had moved to my ear, was lingering there. “I get to touch you, and kiss you, and make you glad I’m here.”

  “I’m already . . .” I had to clear my throat. “Glad you’re here.”

  “Mm.” She’d regained all the confidence she’d lacked when she came in here, I thought fuzzily. Maybe I’d done that. Then I forgot to think, because she was tracing the web of scars on my chest with fingers and lips, and I was winding up tighter. Touching sensitive scar tissue didn’t always feel good, but this did, because it was light, and it was . . . loving. Like she wanted to be there.