by Dana Nussio
“I tried to tell you last night.” She cleared her throat. “I mean earlier this morning.”
She paused, as if asking whether or not he needed her to spell it out, and then nodded. “I got to know you better, and you’re kind. Really kind. You probably have no idea how appealing that quality is, especially to someone like me.”
He did know. That was the worst part. He also recognized how indebted she might feel to him because he had been nice to her and her son. That wasn’t a good reason to jump in bed with a guy, no matter how wonderful the idea sounded to him.
“And you’re strong,” she continued, as if not recognizing his internal battle. “Without the need to prove it to anyone.”
Jamie could explain that one away, too, but he was losing his determination to do that. Sure, he hoped he was different from her monster ex in nearly every way, but so what? Didn’t Sarah deserve to be with someone better than that? And why shouldn’t it be him? Because of who he was and what he knew. The thought stole into his thoughts, uninvited, but he tucked it away to think about...later.
Now his only thoughts could be of Sarah, who somehow seemed closer to him, though he was sure he hadn’t moved from his spot near the kitchen, nor she from her place near the front door. Close enough that he could almost hear her ragged breathing and the rhythm of her heartbeat. Or maybe those sounds were his.
“You don’t have to say more.” In fact, he wished she wouldn’t. The man she’d described was heroic, and this one was talking himself out of any honorable tendencies as fast as his mind could spin.
“But I need to say it,” she said. “When you told me about your brother, well, I thought that there was finally someone who might understand me. Whose scars were as deep as mine.”
He nodded. As survivors, they’d connected over both their pain and their resilience.
Though he thought he already knew the answer, Jamie still had one more question to ask her.
“Have you, you know, ever been with...anyone since...”
She saved him from having to finish his awkward question by shaking her head. “I never let anyone get that close.”
She didn’t speak the rest of her words aloud, but he could still hear them in the weighted silence. Until now. Until him. The honor and the responsibility of being the second man she would allow in her bed filled his throat with emotion, but it also gripped his chest like a vise.
“When I met you, I was afraid of everything. Even my shadow,” she continued, when he didn’t answer. “You helped me to see that I don’t have to be afraid.”
She stepped in front of the window and gestured widely. “I didn’t look over my shoulder once to see if anyone was following me on the walk here.”
He had to chuckle at her attempt to lighten the conversation. “Not even once?”
“Well, maybe once,” she said with a smile.
When she straightened and turned to fully face him, the light from the window behind her outlining her hair, but casting shadows on her face, Jamie squared his shoulders, as well.
“There’s one more thing. You may not believe me after I kept so much from you, but I...trust you.”
He swallowed. Her trust. It was the thing he’d been trying to earn all along. Sarah, whose hope had been battered and bruised, who’d believed in no one but herself, who’d been running and hiding for years, was putting her trust...in him.
She lowered her gaze to the floor and fiddled with her locket, as if she expected him to turn her away. Didn’t she realize that he could never have walked away from her? That even with everything he knew now, he still couldn’t?
Because she clearly didn’t know that, he crossed the room to her in three long strides and covered the hand on her necklace with his.
She tilted her head to look up at him, her tentative expression so different from the determined woman who’d walked clear across town to tell him she was ready to be with him.
“I trust you, too.”
No matter how much he meant those words, they were a test, as well. If Sarah had looked away then, he would have known that she wasn’t ready and would have insisted that she return home and focus on keeping her house of cards standing. But she didn’t look away. She met his gaze steadily, and then she smiled. Had he ever been happier to lose an argument?
Jamie barely took time to breathe before lowering his head and claiming her mouth in a kiss that was more about unleashed longing than finesse. He needed to proceed with cautious steps that honored her gift and her belief in him. Sarah was blown glass, after all, precious and perfect. She deserved to be handled with care. But how could he hold back when everything about her intoxicated him and made him want to forgo sobriety for good?
For several seconds, he held himself as still as he could, his lips sinking in the exquisite softness of hers, his hand curling around her fingers. Sarah didn’t move, either, as if she, too, wished to honor the time-stamped moment when everything between them had changed.
From somewhere outside the secluded world that cradled them, he recognized that he’d kissed her first this time. But that only seemed right, since this would be a morning of firsts. Releasing her hand, he gathered her close and glided his lips back and forth over hers. Her fingers slid up his arms to clasp behind his neck, and he smiled against her mouth.
He’d been privileged to have Sarah in his arms twice before, but this time meant so much more. A molehill compared to Mount Rainier. Each touch reflected a decision. A choice to no longer hide from the magnetic pull that had drawn them together from that first day. And she’d chosen him.
He couldn’t get enough of her taste, her scent. Her. She was kissing him back, too, with a desperation that stole his breath and nearly made him forget his plan to take his time in seducing her. Had this confident, sensual woman been there all along, hidden behind five locks and as many layers of secrets? Had she been waiting for someone to free her?
When his oxygen-starved lungs forced him to pull back and draw in a breath, he touched his forehead to hers.
“I was dreaming about something like this...until you started pounding on my door.” He rolled his forehead back and forth against hers. “My dream didn’t come close.”
Her chuckle was so low and deep that Jamie felt it everywhere.
“If I’d known that dreams could be like this, I would have tried harder to get some sleep this morning,” she said.
“Neither of us will be getting any sleep now.”
With that, he pulled her to him again and feasted on her sweet mouth. When he brushed his tongue along the seam of her lips, she opened for him with an enthusiasm that was nearly his undoing, though they were both were still fully clothed.
“Slow down, sweetheart,” he said with a chuckle. “Have a little mercy. It’s been forever.”
“Yes, forever...getting here,” she murmured, between kisses that she traced over his jawline.
Jamie dipped his head and covered her mouth once again, sliding his hands over the smooth lines of her back. When they came to rest on her lower back, he pressed her to him to show her how much he wanted her. How long he’d waited. Instead of inching away, she lifted herself to fit more intimately against him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered against her skin, his finger lifting to twirl in a curl that had worked loose from her ponytail. When that wasn’t enough, he slid his hand to the back of her head and unlatched the clip, letting that mass of silk cascade down.
She shook her head, allowing all those waves to fall free.
“Aren’t you going to show me the rest of the house?”
He couldn’t miss the message in her words. The three of them had been there together only hours before. She’d already seen the living room, kitchen and bathroom. The rest of the house meant the bedrooms—the two guest rooms...and his.
“Absolutely. You deserve the grand tour.”
But instead of extending his hand to serve as her tour guide, he scooped her up in his arms and started down the hall. Her laughter rumbled against his chest.
“Ooh, smooth move. Did you practice that?”
“Nope. First time. So, prepare to be dropped.”
She tightened her grip around his neck and tucked her head closer against him. He didn’t know why he was trying to be smooth with her. She knew him. She was aware of his vulnerabilities and his fears. And she was here with him, anyway.
Careful to turn sideways, dip and turn at the correct times, he slid past his bedroom door into the shadowy space with only bureaus and his unmade bed visible due to the heavy blinds. He lowered her to stand next to the bed, where he’d lain so recently, wanting her and beating himself up for sending her away.
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed and then rested her hands on his forearms. As she leaned back, she pulled him with her until she lay crossways over the rumpled sheets and he was bracing himself above her.
Then she reached up and traced her fingers over the scruff on his jawline until her thumb brushed the sensitized skin of his lips.
“I trust you,” she said, repeating those words from earlier.
He swallowed. She had to have been talking about the gift of her body, which alone meant so much. She couldn’t know that her words held far more significance for him.
He didn’t repeat them as he lowered himself to her, his body fitting perfectly to her feminine curves. Convex to concave. Rolling hills to lush valleys. Then, slanting his mouth over hers, he brought their lips together again. She lifted her head off the mattress to meet him.
Trust. Neither of them had said love. It was too soon for that, and he wasn’t sure if her feelings could even make that momentous turn. But she had to know that for him, at least, those two words meant the same thing.
Chapter 18
Sarah blinked in the darkness of Jamie’s bedroom, her surroundings threatening to become claustrophobic rather than intimate. She couldn’t let her misgivings take hold. She wanted to believe she was ready to take this significant step with Jamie, just like she’d told him. But was she really?
They were both right, he about many of the steps that had brought them to this moment, and she that things between them had changed. But had she changed? Had she returned to that naive girl who could allow herself to be vulnerable, when she’d spent much of her adult life erecting steel walls around her heart and then, finally, her body?
“Are you okay?”
Jamie’s whisper came from near her ear, where he’d brushed his lips again and again. Had he noticed that her mind had drifted from this place, when she’d been convinced it was where she’d wanted to be? She’d had a child, had been pregnant twice, so why did she feel as if she was being invited behind that curtain of experience for the first time?
“Sure. I’m fine,” she lied.
She reached for his neck and guided him back to her, kissing him with the type of intensity she hoped might convince them both. He only rolled onto his side, his fingertips brushing through her hair.
“Are you sure?”
He studied her face, his eyebrow lifting as if he didn’t believe her. Instead of answering this time, she sat up and lifted the hem of her T-shirt, drawing it up and over her bra. He sat up next to her and stilled her hands.
“Would it be okay if I did that?”
She could hear the smile in his voice as he asked it. Swallowing, she lowered her hands to her sides, gripping the sheet.
He pulled the shirt the rest of the way over her head and dropped it to the floor. Then he reached toward the lamp on the bedside table.
“Would you mind?”
She shook her head and unclenched her hands as he turned the switch, throwing a soft light into the room and making everything happening inside it real.
But instead of immediately looking down at her bra, he stared into her eyes as if searching her soul. When he finally did lower his gaze, his slow, appreciative perusal felt like a caress. She reached behind her and unclasped the hooks, but it was Jamie who gently slid the straps down her arms and lowered the lacy garment to the floor.
“You take my breath away,” he said, as his gaze traveled over her again.
The warmth building in private places surprised her, though he had yet to even touch.
He didn’t make her wait much longer, lifting his hand and brushing it over her exposed skin and then tracing a funnel pattern toward the peak that most craved his touch. She held herself back from pressing into his palm, but when he followed that same path with his lips and tongue, she arched into the sheer pleasure of it.
With his face close to her heart, he looked up to her and smiled.
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” he crooned, as his fingertips drew lines along her ribs and, lower, to the button of her jeans. “And that you’re real.”
As she lay back on the bed to make his work easier, it was all she could do not to push aside his hands and dispose of her clothes herself. She couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t move quickly enough toward a culmination that would ease the painful ache building inside her.
Jamie seemed to have other ideas. He took his time becoming acquainted with each bit of skin as he exposed it. Touching. Tasting. Cherishing. But still dangling the promise of release.
Soon all her clothing was piled on the floor, and he was stretched out next to her, fully clothed and still working magic with his hands. His touch was reverent as he traced the scar on her upper arm. When her frustration humiliated her by becoming an audible sound, he chuckled low in his throat.
“Patience, sweetheart.”
But he stood up from the bed then and quickly added his T-shirt and pants to the pile on the floor. His gaze flicked to hers in a moment of vulnerability before he bent and shucked his boxer briefs.
Then he stood to his full height, lowered his hands to his sides and waited. She couldn’t have predicted the perfection standing before her. Broad shoulders and chest. Narrow waist and hips. Perfect. Utterly male. And so ready to give her exactly what her body craved.
Sarah held out her hand to him and smiled when he took it, first resting his knee on the edge of the bed, then climbing on it and settling on his side next to her. She turned and followed with her curious hands the same lines that her gaze had traveled. His eyes closed, his teeth sank into the flesh of his lower lip. Finally, he gripped both her hands in one of his.
“You’re too sweet. I...just...can’t...”
Instead of finishing his labored comment, he rolled away, opened his bedside table and rustled around in the drawer. He pulled out a small box of condoms. He broke the seal on it and rolled back to her, an embarrassed look on his face.
“A recent purchase. I didn’t think I stood a chance. But I hoped.”
Her misgivings didn’t begin again until Jamie pulled a packet from the box and ripped it open with his teeth. She swallowed, the moment of truth upon her, the opportunity to retreat seeming to be hours past.
He either recognized it or may have been having second thoughts himself as he paused, watching her.
“We can stop. It can be now or later. Or never.”
He reached for her hand again, dropping kisses on each of her knuckles and then opening it against his cheek, his own hand covering it.
“The decision is yours. Always.”
An immediate lump formed in her throat. This was just Jamie being Jamie. He always thought of everyone else first, especially her. Even now, when to stop what they’d started would cause him a world of discomfort. When other men might have claimed they’d passed the point of no return.
Why Jamie? It was a question she’d asked herself not so long ago. Now she recognized that no one else could have disarmed her with his kindness, could have neutralized her defenses with his vulnerability, could
have gently scaled the walls around her heart instead of beating them down. And now he was waiting for her permission to love her, when with no more than a shift of their bodies, they would already be there.
If she hadn’t fallen in love with him already, this moment would have sent her into a freefall. But it was too late for that, she realized with a shock. For how long she’d already loved him, she couldn’t begin to know.
“Please,” she began, but he interrupted her by shaking his head.
“It’s okay. Really. Just give me a second.”
Tossing the open packet on the bedside table, he sat up on the edge of the bed and dug through the pile of clothes on the floor next to him. He handed her shirt to her over her shoulder, as though he hadn’t already seen and touched every bit of her.
“Here.” He shook it behind him when she didn’t take it.
“I’m not going to need that.”
“Well, give me a minute.” He dug through the pile again and pulled out his pants. “I’ll get out of here, so you can dress in private.”
“You’re not going to need those, either.”
He turned his head to the side. “Look, Sarah, I’m trying to be a decent guy here. What do you want—”
“You,” she answered, before his question was fully formed. She sat up on the bed behind him.
He turned around completely this time, his gaze lowering to her chest, which she hadn’t bothered to cover.
“I don’t understand.”
“You didn’t give me the chance to finish.”
“So...” His voice cracked then, so he cleared his throat and started again. “So, finish.”
“Before I was interrupted...” she paused, smiling, “I started to say please...don’t stop.”
He whirled on her so quickly that her breath came out in a whoosh as her shoulders hit the pillow again, his weight landing heavily—and intimately—on her.
“Now that’s a promise I can keep.”
He kissed her with a desperation that surprised her, thrilled her. As if he’d lost all ability to restrain himself. To be the hero he must have thought she needed him to be. Now he was just a man who couldn’t get enough of her. And that was exactly who she wanted him to be.