“Oh, baby, you’re going to get a show,” Jason said in a low voice that made her belly tighten in anticipation. “But it has nothing to do with my clothes and everything to do with what’s underneath.”
She could have answered. Maybe. Or maybe not because she could barely breathe. Jason crawled up onto the bed as though he were stalking her. Her wild beast and here he was stalking her right there in his bedroom. Skye sucked in a quick breath of anticipation and almost whimpered when he put his hands on the insides of her thighs. She was wearing a pair of baggy capris. The soft jersey material was gray and the elastic waistband was meant to be comfortable and not fashionable.
At the moment it became easy access because it only took Jason a few seconds to pull those capris right down Skye’s legs and toss them to the floor. She still had her panties on, but she could feel how damp they were and knew that she wasn’t going to argue when Jason decided to take them off.
But for right now he didn’t reach for that waistband. He was too busy licking and kissing his tongue all over the insides of her thighs. He nuzzled the apex of her thighs just below her mound. He was blowing a warm stream of air against the damp fabric of her panties and it was driving her absolutely wild.
Without another thought Skye was the one squirming to get out of her T-shirt and throw it aside. And she did not regret her decision one bit when Jason’s lips moved from just below her navel to the tops of her creamy white breasts.
“You are so beautiful, Skye. So. Beautiful.”
His words soothed something ragged inside her mind. Skye was a redhead. Her hair had changed color a bit as she aged, but she still had the pale complexion and a smattering of freckles across her body. Jason seemed to be thoroughly enjoying each and every one. He nuzzled and licked her skin even as she tried to get as much of a feel for his as she could.
Moving her hands across his back, she felt the bump of each rib and the strength of the corded muscle beneath his satiny dark skin. The man was made like a beast. He felt like one. And that turned her on completely.
It was so good! It was exactly what she wanted and more. Skye undulated against him, begging silently for Jason to make her his woman. That was what she wanted. The press of his body into hers and the feeling of instant completion that she instinctively knew would follow.
Jason moved his kisses back down to her belly. Hooking his fingers into her waistband, he tugged her panties down her legs. Skye reached up behind her back and unfastened her bra strap. The thing unsnapped with a bit of a thwapping noise and then Skye’s breasts were free.
Skye spread her legs to accommodate her lover’s brawny body. The feel of his skin rubbing against her was intoxicating. She loved the sensation of his hot skin against hers. He slid right up against the junction of her thighs and she felt his body nudge hers. As his lips closed around her right nipple, he pushed himself deep into her core and the two of them became one for the first time.
Skye gasped with delight. The suction on her nipple mingled with the friction between her legs and within only moments she felt as though she were climbing to the stars. She settled her fingers on Jason’s shoulders and dug her nails into the skin. The feel of the muscle flexing beneath her touch was exciting. This man was more masculine than a million others she had known in her life. Jason was all man and all hers and right now she wanted to be his with just as much passion.
He began to move faster. She heard him groan and then he pulled his mouth away from teasing her breast and kissed her deeply on the lips just as the two of them spiraled toward orgasm together. The peak was right in front of her. Skye felt her body perched on the ledge and knew that she was about to go over. The exhilarating sensation made her pant and cry out. She called Jason’s name and begged him for more even as she was struggling to push her lips against his for more kisses.
“That’s it, baby,” Jason whispered. “Come with me.”
And then the two of them fell. The glorious feeling seemed to last for an eternity. Skye lost track of time as she whimpered and begged and called out Jason’s name. She wrapped her legs around his body and pulled him even deeper as he strained against her and held her as close as he could.
“I love you,” Jason whispered in Skye’s ear. “Baby, I love you so much. I love you.”
Her heart filled with the words and she could not help but give them back. “I love you too! I want to be with you forever, Jason King. Forever. Be mine. I want to share my life with you!”
Maybe the words could have been exchanged only because of the intensity of that moment, but as the fulfillment reached its pinnacle and Skye felt herself begin to float back to the ground, she knew that it wasn’t true for her. She loved this man. She would always love him. This was what she wanted and she did not care what she had to do to make it work.
“I meant what I said,” Jason whispered in the dark as time seemed to stretch and Skye forgot that she had to get up and go home eventually. “I did and I hope you did too.”
“I did mean it,” Skye assured him. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I love you.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that rest of the life part,” Jason murmured.
He rolled away from her body and settled alongside her. He kept her close though, and his lips continued to lightly graze her forehead even as his fingers brushed against her back in tiny soothing circles. Skye had never felt so loved or so cherished before in her life.
But this was a moment to be honest and Skye knew this was important. “What have you been thinking?” She bit her lip. “Because I’ve been doing some thinking too.”
“I want the land,” Jason told Skye softly. “The house, I mean. I want to make that my home.”
“Oh!” Skye realized that she hadn’t even considered that possibility. But it was rather intriguing now that he’d mentioned it. Although the two of them were going to be pretty broke for a while if she decided to pursue what she was thinking. “I want to freelance write,” Skye told him suddenly. “But I want to put together my own e-magazine that has articles that people in Dallas really care about. I want to start small, but eventually I want to go bigger. I want to get advertisers and make it a real online newspaper. One with integrity.”
“I think that’s a great idea.”
This sort of surprised Skye. “You do?”
“Yes. I do.”
“You realize this isn’t going to pay very well, maybe never, but definitely not at first.” Skye almost felt like holding her breath as she waited for him to answer.
But Jason only laughed. Then he hugged her close and sighed. “Baby, I’ve always been worried that a woman will go after me for my money. I guess I didn’t really have to worry about that with you. You seem to have forgotten that I have any.”
Skye felt the most amazing sort of freedom. Not because someone had told her that the man she wanted to spend her life with was rich, but because she could finally have the opportunity to tell the stories that really counted without worrying about having to sell her soul for the rent check.
“I want you to write the real news,” Jason told Skye. “I want to help you. And eventually my family is going to get their shit figured out and I want us to be a part of that. It’s more important that I realized. There are things going down in my family’s drama that could destroy everything that I cherish. So you’re going to write the news and I’m going to be a big boy and face it head on. How’s that?”
“Sounds like a match,” Skye joked. “I just hope your family can weather the storm when good old Carolyn gets wind of our plans to be a couple.”
“At least you know she’s going to be happy for us,” Jason told Skye. “But I wouldn’t worry too much about that woman. She made my mother mad and nobody survives that.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Skye murmured. “So I have definitely noticed.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Are we just going to pretend that Jason doesn’t have a woman spending the night up there?” O
rion addressed the question to his mother as he entered the kitchen to get a fresh bottle of beer from the oversized stainless steel refrigerator. “Because I, for one, do not relish the idea of listening to them all night long.”
Tisha backhanded Orion across the midsection. The blow was hard enough and enough of a surprise that Orion nearly spit out a mouthful of beer. “Don’t be stupid,” Tisha told her oldest son. “You boys are all grown men by now. I don’t care if he wants to hole up with three beautiful ladies. That’s his business. You leave your brother alone.”
Orion gazed at his mother and wondered what to make of her sudden and seemingly complete change of heart regarding Jason’s new future bride. Sometimes it was like Tisha had just rearranged reality for herself so that she had never had other intentions and had always been a supporter of Jason’s desire for the former Dallas Star reporter.
“What?” Tisha murmured. “You’re staring at me.”
The not-so-typical mother was atypically chopping vegetables to put into the food processor for a batch of homemade salsa. It was one of the only things she made herself anymore. The rest of her cooking came courtesy of Lupita the housekeeper and cook, although Tisha was always happy enough to claim credit for Lupita’s cooking as well.
Orion sighed and leaned back against the counter. He might as well hang out down here and try to find out something useful rather than go back up to the second floor and feel completely obsessed about his brother brazenly having his woman spend the night in their family home.
“You just changed your mind quickly about Skye Kincaid, that’s all,” Orion murmured. He cleared his throat and then took another swig of beer in hopes of covering up his discomfort.
It didn’t work. “You were always such a prude.” Tisha laughed and tossed a piece of green pepper at him. “Stop being such a monk!”
“You tried to set him up with Eleni just a few weeks ago!” Orion tried his best not to sound as though he particularly cared. “That was rude. Don’t you think?”
“Eleni knows the way things work,” Tisha snapped. “She’ll be just as happy with Edward anyway. It’s not like she cared one bit about which brother it was. I think the only question she asked was whether or not she was going to have to sign a contract to produce an heir if she married into our family.”
“Edward!” Orion nearly spit out the beer a second time. “You can’t be serious!”
Tisha turned and gave Orion such a stare that for a moment he felt as though he were ten once again and his mother had just caught him with muddy boots in her kitchen. That oily smile. There was only one woman who could look right through him because she could see all of his sins and everything he thought he had kept private for so long.
“Now, now, Orion,” Tisha said with a tsking noise. “Don’t covet thy brother’s woman.”
Orion was just about to tell her that he wasn’t because Eleni didn’t belong to Edward and that Edward did not want her when his mother made the strangest off-handed comment yet.
“After all,” Tisha muttered more to the vegetables than to Orion. “We saw how that turned out before, didn’t we?”
“Excuse me?” Orion grunted. “What are you talking about?”
But Tisha only smiled and glanced up at him from her salsa. “Coveting? It didn’t go so well for poor old Tex. He coveted the company and the land.”
“He didn’t covet the land,” Orion said irritably. He finished his beer and reached for the fridge to get another.
His mother put her hand on the fridge and pushed it closed. “I think you’ve had enough.”
“I’m thirty.” Orion glared at her but could not make her flinch back from him. Damn. Mothers were a force to be reckoned with no matter how old you were. “I can do what I want,” Orion said. But it sounded lame because she had just stopped him from doing just that.
“Sure you can. Whatever, dear.” Tisha sounded condescending enough in that moment that Orion could not help but wonder if this is how she had treated their father. Was this how she had treated Tex Johnson too? Was this what had made both men come to hate her?
“I didn’t cheat on your father, remember.” Tisha threw this out in conversation as though they had just been having a conversation about it.
But they hadn’t and it seemed odd to Orion. “I don’t remember that being proven, Mother.”
“He wouldn’t have tried to kill me if we had been sleeping together.”
“Was he really?” Orion wondered.
Strangling by the neck. Orion had no doubt that Skye had fully believed in that moment when she picked up the golf trophy to bash Tex on the head that Tex was about to kill Tisha. But had it been a heated lovers’ quarrel? There was no way to know. It was easy to say that Tisha wasn’t sleeping with her late husband’s best friend, but all of the men were now unable to comment. Weren’t they?
“Tex is gone. He was going to kill you boys,” Tisha reminded Orion as though he needed reminding of that fact. “I saved you all.”
“That is a load of horse crap.”
Thankfully Devon walked in at that moment. A few more moments of this spinning around and around and Orion wouldn’t be able to sleep. Again.
Tisha gave Devon a dirty look. “Would you watch your mouth, please? What girl will want to marry you if you’ve got a potty mouth like that going on?”
“Who says I want to marry anyone?” Devon retorted.
Tisha did not seem to want to argue that issue with Devon at the moment. She waved her hand imperiously at her second eldest son. “Where’s Edward? I need to talk to him.”
“Edward is the one who doesn’t live here, Mother. Remember?” Devon cocked an eyebrow and then shot Orion a look over Tisha’s head. “That means you don’t get to order him around like you do us.”
“And he gets to have a life too!” Orion meant it to be a joke, but Tisha’s sharp-eyed glare turned on Orion so quickly that he actually moved a step back to keep away from her knife. What. The. Hell?
“What do you mean a life?” Tisha demanded shrilly. She was waving the paring knife around with each syllable as she yelled at them. “What are you talking about? A life? Edward doesn’t need a life. He works for the company. He lives in a shithole apartment downtown because he is too much of a reclusive snob to live here at home.”
Devon frowned at their mother. Obviously he was braver than Orion. Not a great realization for an elder brother to make. Then Devon shook his head. “Edward’s apartment is not a shithole. It’s nice. He enjoys living alone and he’s really not all that interested in our company. So why don’t you lay off? It’s not like you’ve ever taken the opportunity to try and visit him downtown. And you would die before you ask him how he’s doing or if he’s seeing anyone.”
“He’s not seeing anyone,” Tisha told them firmly.
Tisha sounded so very certain that for a moment Orion began to worry that she had hired private investigators or something. His mouth watered. He really wanted a drink. Orion reached automatically for the refrigerator. His mother pushed it shut with her foot before he could reach inside.
“Mother, what the hell?” Orion barked.
She turned and pointed the knife at his groin. “You’ve had enough! I already told you.” Then she turned back to Devon. “And what do you think you know about Edward’s love life. You’d better tell me.”
Devon swallowed. It was an odd display of nerves that was uncharacteristic of Devon. Orion felt in his gut that something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but it had nothing to do with Edward and their mother. Finally Devon affected a shrug.
“I don’t know anything,” Devon assured their mother.
Tisha made a face and waved her knife in triumph. “Ha!”
“Except he’s been getting a lot of calls from Diana again,” Devon mused. Then he glanced up at Orion. “You remember Diana, right? From college?”
“Yes. They had all of those Italian and French classes together.” Orion also recalled that Diana had broken Edwar
d’s heart. What was the woman playing at now?
“That sleazy little hussy!” Tisha shouted. Her ire was so furious that she stabbed the paring knife down on the butcher block board so hard that the knife stuck and the blade tip broke off. She struggled to yank the rest of the knife out of the block. “I won’t let her near my son! You just watch. I will take that woman and show her exactly what we do with little trollops who treat the King men with such disrespect!”
Devon was laughing. “Sleazy little hussy? Trollop? Mother nobody talks like that anymore. What are you babbling about? Diana was a nice woman. They got along well. You didn’t like her. It made their lives a living hell. End of story. Remember?”
Devon had Tisha distracted. Orion reached for the refrigerator once again. This time he got his hand all the way inside. The coolness of the interior was welcome against his heated skin. He felt stressed out beyond belief and very agitated. His whole family was going to hell and there was nothing he could do about it. Oh. And he was beginning to be worried that his youngest brother’s future wife had been the cause of the death of the only remaining witness that could tell them what had really happened to their father.
Orion’s fingers brushed the cool bottle of beer. He managed to get hold of the narrow neck. Pulling it toward the end of the shelf, he got a better grip in preparation for picking it up.
The door slammed hard. Orion yelped as his hand was smashed and the bottle dropped. It shattered on the tile kitchen floor and the barley malt scent of beer rose from the floor. Orion was so thirsty right now that he could have easily gotten on his knees and started licking up the puddle.
“What are you doing?” Orion snarled at his mother.
She pointed at the floor and then glared up at him. “You had better clean that up!”
“The hell I will!” For the first time in more than a decade Orion felt his wolf side surging to the front of his consciousness. In that moment he could have shifted into a wolf and ripped his mother’s throat out. He could have done it. He was that angry with her.
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