by A. S. Green
“Nice,” he says, so I think that’s my answer.
He sucks my top lip into his mouth, then the bottom, and when he ducks his head and closes his mouth over my nipple, it’s an out-of-body experience. “Yes.”
He flicks with his tongue, and my fists grip his thick hair, holding him to me. His hot mouth moves over my body, exploring, kissing, licking, nipping. I’m burning with desire for him, aching, wanting.
His hand caresses my breasts. My nipples are so hard they could cut diamonds, and when he grazes one with his thumb, it sends a shock wave of nerves charging straight for my core.
I reach between us and stroke him. His skin is silky. Soft and delicate sliding over hard and savage. The rest of his body is molten hot. There’s a sheen of perspiration coating both of our bodies.
My breath is coming in frantic pants, and he curses as I get him teetering on the edge of climax. He pulls my hand away, stretching both my arms up over my head as he rolls on top of me.
The tip of his thick shaft is nestled in my wetness. It would only take an exhale of breath for him to be inside me, and we both realize it at the same time. Did we mean to get to this point so fast?
Our eyes lock and widen as he holds himself in an agonized paralysis. His eyes burn with loosely held restraint.
“God, Natalie.” His voice sounds tortured, and he squeezes his eyes shut.
“I want this. I’ve needed this. For so long. Please, Jax.”
He still won’t look at me. “I wish we could go back. I wish it could be the same. I want…”
“Jax, I’ve missed you. So much.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jackson
My eyes pop open at her words, and for some reason I have a jolt of surprise that she’s still right there. Under me. I don’t know how she could be anywhere else. Wishful thinking? If only I could get some space between us, but I can’t. I won’t. Not again.
She capitalizes on her advantage, wrapping one of those long legs around my hip. I am right there. Fingers clenched in her wild red hair, cock poised at her entrance. I can feel the wet heat of her at my tip. Every bit of me needs to thrust, to enter her and split her wide open. I want to go so deep she feels me in her throat.
Her blue eyes have gone dark and intense. They beg me to go slow. To make love to her.
Fuck! Those eyes of hers. I can’t look. I swear they can see right into my soul, so I close my own again. It’s too much. Too close. What am I doing?
Grabbing her leg, I flip her onto her belly and yank up on her hips so she’s on her knees, head to the pillows.
“Jax!” she cries again, but this time in surprise.
Now I’m on my knees between her legs. Her long hair slides across her back, falling forward over her shoulder. My fingers dig into her hips as I pull them back to meet mine. I go balls deep, right up to the root.
We both cry out, and I suck in a sharp breath as she stretches to accommodate me. The pressure, it’s too much. It’s too much and still not enough. It’s sublime, and I want more. So much more.
A groan escapes her lips as I slowly pull out until only the tip remains. She whimpers at the loss of me, but I don’t let the torture last long. With a grunt, I plunge back in with such force that she cries out again and presses her ass back against me.
She reaches between her legs and works her clit as I slam into her over and over again. The sound of our bodies slapping together turns me on all the more, and the pressure inside me is intense.
Was it like this before? My mind is too gone to remember. I’m trembling, practically seizing as I fill her and she grinds down.
What we’re doing—it isn’t slow. It isn’t tender. It isn’t what she wanted from me at all. It’s frantic and desperate and completely insane, but when her walls convulse and her fingers curl into the sheets, I know she’s not complaining. Mine, I think. My Natalie.
Her body clamps down around me as she comes for the second time tonight, and it will not stop. God, it won’t stop. Wave after wave.
I remember this. I’ve never felt a girl come like she does. She could never fake it. I hold her tight against me, as her walls continue to pulse and my own orgasm builds to the point that my legs start to shake. Then I let out a long, animalistic growl as my own wave of pleasure comes pounding in to meet its shore.
When she cries out my name again, it’s both a relief and a fucking catastrophe.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Natalie
A second later, we both collapse flat, Jax on my back, panting and gasping for air.
Neither of us seems to have sufficient oxygen or functioning brain cells to assess what’s happened, because a full minute passes before I say, “You didn’t use a condom.”
There’s a beat or two of silence before he pushes up on his hands and rolls off me. I turn onto my side. His forehead furrows. “Shit. I’m sorry. That was inexcusable.”
“Have you been tested?”
“A while ago, and trust me, there hasn’t been any need since. Still, I’m sorry; that was out of control. You’re on the pill, right?”
“No,” I say, feeling the magnitude of what just happened. “I’m not.”
He blinks. “Who’s not on the pill, Natalie?”
“Um…me.”
He closes his eyes and turns his head toward the ceiling. “Fuck.”
“It’ll be all right,” I whisper, partly because it really should be fine. Also, I don’t have the strength or ability to deal with any other possibility right now.
Jax doesn’t say anything. He swings his legs off the side of the bed and walks out of the room.
I push up on one elbow and hold the sheet over my chest as I stare at the door. He didn’t just walk out on me, did he? I’m in his room. Where does he think he’s going to go? And naked, for cripes’ sake.
A few seconds later, the door reopens. Jax enters without making eye contact. There’s an angry, jagged scar running six inches down his thigh. It wasn’t there when we first met, and I hadn’t noticed it before. It twists and flexes as he moves. I don’t think I want to hear the story behind it, but I can’t help but be impressed by the man he’s become.
If I thought I fell hard for him six years ago, the last few days haven’t been any softer. As much as I miss the man I knew, this man… God, this man…
“Sorry about…” He sounds strangely embarrassed, and I’m not sure what he’s apologizing for. The scar? Did he catch me looking? I glance up at his face and realize he’s talking about the sex we just had.
“You’re apologizing?” I ask, incredulous. “You’re right. Very poor performance. Try to do better next time.”
“I was too rough.” There’s a wet washcloth in his hand. That must be why he left.
“Okay, now you’re just fishing for compliments.” He cleans me, then tosses the cloth onto the floor. I relax a little, knowing he’s not pissed. I relax even more when he climbs under the covers and tucks me into his side.
“I wasn’t careful,” he says. “That was all on me.”
The inherently male scent of him floods my senses as I lazily skim my nose along his collarbone. “It’ll be okay. And it wasn’t all you. I think I participated fairly well.”
I feel his chest expand, and I’m pretty sure he’s smiling.
“Amazing as ever, Natalie.”
His words give me comfort, and I let myself slip, oh so quietly, toward the edge of heady satisfaction. Six years. Six years of regret, but God, this was worth the wait. My palm rests on Jax’s abs, and I tap my finger in rhythm with the pulse just below the surface.
After a stretch of silence, he clears his throat. “So, what have you been doing since the last time we were together?”
I lift my head to look at him, then let it fall back against his warm chest. “You pretty much saw it.”
“That can’t be it.” He stops talking for a bit, and I listen to his heart beating before he adds, “Were you ever married?”
I mak
e a scoffing sound. “No.”
“Dated anyone serious?”
I look up at him again. He’s staring at the ceiling as if he’s compelled to ask but can’t engage with my answers.
“Do you remember Bruce from our road trip? The one who bought a Mers T-shirt at every stop?”
He ducks his chin to look me in the eye. “Guy who was still wearing braces?”
“Well, yeah. Back then.” I draw a lazy circle on Jax’s chest, trying to waken him to a more friendly tone. “I dated him for a year and a half.”
“That’s a long time,” he says, and his body tightens in response. “What happened?”
I shrug. “You can grow up with someone, see each other every day for twenty-some years, and then he whip-nae-naes on a dance floor, and you realize you don’t really know him at all.”
Jax chokes on a laugh and forces out, “That’s a shame,” then falls back into his somber expression.
“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t really mean it. Bruce is a good friend, but that’s all he had the potential to be. After Jax, no one ever measured up.
“What about you?” I ask, outlining the strange gray frog tattoo on his chest.
He tips his chin and looks into my eyes. “After you left, the tour wasn’t the same. I thought about going home early, but I felt like I needed to see it through to the last stop. We’d come so far.”
We’d come so far. He means us. “So did you?”
“I would have, but Gram died.”
I push up on one elbow. “Gram? Jax, I’m so sorry.”
He swallows hard, like it still hurts after all this time. “Once she was gone, I didn’t know what to do. Then I saw this navy recruitment poster. It sounded good; I enlisted on a whim just a couple hours after her funeral.”
I smile, remembering that it was his lack of impulse control that set him hitchhiking to a concert, bringing us together in the first place.
“I became a SEAL because…” He doesn’t finish that sentence, and I don’t push it.
I lower myself back down, resting my cheek against his chest. I have a question, and I don’t want to see his face when I ask it. “I know I made you mad, but why didn’t you ever call me?”
His body tenses, like he’s trying to sit up. “I did.”
I lift my head to look at him. “You did?”
“I was pissed, Natalie. Confused, shocked, sad, angry. It took me a couple days, but I called you. I called you a lot. Sometimes I didn’t think my calls were going through, but twice I heard your voice on the other side. But as soon as you heard me say your name, you hung up on me. Why?”
I close my eyes and groan. Little Bear and its shitty cellular service. “I didn’t know you called, Jax. The line must have gone dead.” I take a breath, and it shatters in my throat. “You thought I abandoned you? We fantasized about all the kids we were going to have—even named them—and you thought I threw it all away?”
“And you thought the same of me.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say, except for all the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens.
After a while I ask, “What did you do after that?”
He threads his fingers through my hair, catching on some curls that have tangled. “I got my orders. Shipped out. Did what SEALS do.”
“Crazy shit, I bet.” It sounds exciting. Jesus, I was impressed with him being a bouncer back when we first met. It sounded so tough. Now he’s done something important, honorable, and truly impressive. God, he’s really lived. “I bet you jumped out of airplanes, didn’t you. Hey”—something suddenly occurs to me—“I thought you hated to fly.”
There’s a teasing tone in my voice, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to scramble back after them. The flash of pain on Jax’s face gives me a sudden rush of realization about cause and effect. Something happened to him. Something bad.
“Is that when you got the tattoo?” I ask, hurrying us into less dangerous territory.
He glances down at his chest. “We all got the same one. SEALS are called frogmen. That’s the SEAL motto below it.”
“I have a tattoo,” I say.
“You do?”
I bend my knee and show him the arch of my foot. It’s just three tiny, interlocking hearts with the words “Family Is Forever” in fancy script. “That’s our motto. My mom has the same one. We got them together a few years ago.”
Jax doesn’t respond directly, only stares at my foot like he’s trying to make sense of it. His lack of enthusiastic response makes me feel kind of small. Getting a matching tattoo with my mom seemed so momentous and moving at the time, but it’s obviously insignificant to whatever he has been through.
Before I can say anything, his knuckles brush against my cheek, then his thumb strokes lazily over my shoulder. I’m turned toward him with one leg drawn up over his thigh. We’re quiet for a long time. He closes his eyes. After a while, I think he may have fallen asleep. But then he speaks.
“Did you ever think about me? Like, you were doing something else, and I popped into your head?”
“I already admitted that,” I say while tracing the skeletal frog tattoo with my index finger. “I never stopped thinking about you.”
“It was easy,” he says, exhaling. “Between us.”
I make a pedestal for my head with my fist, balancing it on Jax’s chest. “It’s easy to fall in love with a man in a leather jacket.” I’m teasing, but it’s also true.
His body tenses. A beat or two of silence passes between us. The back of my neck prickles when I realize what I’ve said.
I can’t tell if he’s freaked. He shouldn’t be freaked. He said it first, even though it was years ago.
He keeps his eyes on the ceiling. “Being with you…that summer…it’s the only time I can remember everything going right for me.”
He sounds serious, but I want to call bullshit. “But you have your business,” I remind him. “In just three years, you’ve made it a huge success.”
“It’s business. Sometimes I wish I could turn back time.” It’s like he’s not talking to me. “Make it all go away.”
“What do you want to go away, Jax?”
He turns and stares at me for a long second. “Nothing.”
I stroke my fingers against the stubble on his jaw. “It might help to talk about it.”
“It’s nothing.” He hesitates, and his throat works before he says, “So tomorrow…”
“Yeah.” We haven’t looked for a flight home for me yet. Traveling alone, it should be easy to find an open seat, but I’m fully prepared to have to wait at the airport all day. I can’t believe I’m at this point again. Leaving him. What’ll he say? “Be sure to write”? “Let’s keep in touch”? “Send me a Christmas card”?
“You can drop me at the airport whenever you need to leave. I’ll figure it out from there.”
“Okay,” he says, and I think I hear a note of sadness. Good. I don’t want to be alone in that.
“What will you do when you get back to New York?”
He exhales, and there’s a flicker of change in his face, something flat and somber. It makes me think I’m seeing yet another version of him. Hello, New York Jax. “I have a security detail the first day, then a stack of applications to go through for a spot that opened up.”
A spot that opened up? My mouth moves faster than my brain. “I can help with that.”
“What?” His head jerks.
“The job. Let me fill that spot.”
He stares at me for another second, then he chuckles deep in his chest. “Natalie, it’s not a horrible idea. If you had some proper training, you could be a valuable asset, but—”
“I’ve already been a valuable asset.”
“True.” The corners of his mouth tighten. “You’ve been amazingly reliable…good instincts.”
“Exactly. So take me.”
“Yes, but Natalie—” He rolls his lips inward and breathes out through his nose. “I don’t want to give you
the wrong idea.”
“About what?”
“Whatever you’re picturing between you and me…” He indicates our bodies, the bed, and I can feel the ugliness of rejection trickling in. “Don’t get me wrong. The last couple days have been great. Clearing up all the shit from our past, that’s lifted a huge weight, and you know that tonight…tonight was amazing, but it has to be a one-off.”
I feel my face fall, and he reaches out to cup my cheek. “I didn’t mean for that to sound cruel, but I’m a different man than I was before. I have a different life than the one you and I talked about. If you came with me, you’d be one of my employees. I can’t be sleeping with an employee.”
“But you’re okay breaking your rule on the road?” I ask. “Because I’ve been working with you for days.”
“You’re not a true employee right now. You’re an independent contractor, which technically means JSI is your client. If you want to sleep with your client, that’s your business, and I’m glad you did. I’m grateful that you did. But I could get sued for sleeping with an employee.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I grab a pillow and slap him with it.
He pulls it away and throws it to the end of the bed. “Seriously?”
“That’s your argument? That’s the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard.” I make a scoffing sound in the back of my throat. “As if I’m going to sue you.”
“It’s a matter of appearances and formality. I have other employees to consider.”
“So we just turn off the switch? Hot for each other today, pass in the hallways tomorrow?”
“You’re the one who suggested going back with me. It wouldn’t be easy, but that’s how it would have to be.” He stares into my eyes. I see the doubt, and it fills my chest with feminine pride. He doesn’t want to say goodbye to me, either. He’s considering taking me on so he has an excuse to keep me around.
I move my fingers against his tattoo, and he tucks his chin to watch.
“I can’t go back to Little Bear, Jax. I’m trapped there. I need more options than that.”