The House At the End of the Street

by Jennie Jones

  Looked like she was meant to be a spinster after all.

  ‘It’s late, Gem,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Mmm,’ she admitted. ‘Not tired though.’

  His hand swept up her back. He kneaded her spine with his thumb and she shivered.

  ‘I’m not tired, either.’

  A hush seemed to follow the music. They rocked to the sound of the guitar and the crackle of the fire. Gem pressed her mouth against his shirt, against his chest, moulding her lips and kissing it without making a sound.

  He squeezed her waist ever so slightly, bringing her still closer to him. He whispered something against the side of her head but she didn’t hear the words, just a muffled sound, soft and dangerous. She closed her eyes, seduced by the warmth between them.

  ‘What did you say?’ she asked him, her voice barely inaudible.

  He murmured, a sound of desperate need, and spoke against her ear: ‘I want you.’

  Her body arched against him as a thrill rumbled through her with such force, she couldn’t control it. One time, she told herself. Give yourself one time with him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He tightened his hold, his body tensing, his muscles rigid. She felt the thirst of desire in him; it exploded from him. He took her head in his hands and raised her face to his with hard, hungry energy. His mouth ground on hers, his kiss deep from the moment his tongue parted her lips.

  Gem swayed, mentally and physically, trying—no—wanting to match the power she felt from him. She grabbed at his back, holding on to his shirt but needing his skin.

  He groaned against her mouth then gathered her in his arms and swung her around. He turned them so her back was to the hearth. Her feet landed on the woollen rug in front of the fire. Flames heated her bottom and her spine.

  ‘Here,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘I want you here.’

  One simple admission and her body burned for him to take her.

  Still holding her, he reached to his side, pulled fat cushions off the sofa and flung them to the floor. ‘I’ve dreamed of this,’ he said as he pulled her down with him until they were on their knees, his mouth resuming its exploration of hers. ‘Christ, this should be slow!’ His voice was hard with desire. Every stiffened muscle pushed against her. His hand curved over her bottom.

  She wanted him on top of her, needed him inside her. She raised her hands and gripped the short hair at the back of his neck. ‘It’s the same for me,’ she said. ‘I want you the same way.’

  His eyes burned with passion, scorching through her clothes. He wrenched at her jumper, pulling it up and over her head. He unhooked her bra, and when his strong hands cupped her breasts, her body responded, chiming with pleasure.

  ‘You’re perfect. You are perfect,’ he told her as his mouth hit hers again and his tongue searched and prodded. Gem arched for him, allowing him to roam her body.

  ‘I’m going to find that tattoo if it’s last thing I do,’ he murmured.

  A chuckle escaped Gem’s lips. ‘You have to go south.’

  He ground out a laugh that was more a groan. ‘I want east and west too.’

  The flames from the fire stroked her shoulder blades and licked her spine. Every part of her body throbbed: the fullness of her breasts, the roundness of her bottom, the tenderness between her thighs. He kissed along her jawline, up to her ear, sliding his mouth to her throat. He trailed kissed down to the rise of her breasts, and at last, pulled her nipple into his mouth.

  She clung to his shoulders, weakening at his intimate kisses.

  ‘Must be further south,’ he said as he took hold of the elasticated waistband of her skirt and pushed it down, off her hips, to her knees.

  ‘Aren’t you going to take off your clothes?’ she asked, her heart beating fast.

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘That’s not fair …’

  ‘What? This?’ He nipped her hipbone with his teeth. ‘Or this?’ His hands cupped her bottom as he trailed kisses across her stomach and nipped her other hipbone. He plied her body with hot, open kisses.

  ‘Oh, Josh, you’re killing me.’

  ‘Close,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve got to be close.’

  Gem trembled as he searched with his mouth. Her skin heated, her heart swelled, the pressure inside her built until she nearly exploded.

  ‘Found it,’ he said, tone low and ragged. He licked the skin on her hip bone where she’d put her mark. The tiny diamond tattoo. Not visible to anyone except Gem, and the few men she’d allowed to …

  ‘Oh.’ She arched further as his mouth tortured her.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘You’re the same as in my dreams.’ He lifted from her, the firelight throwing flickering shadows over his head and deepening the tan on his face and his throat. His eyes sparkled with mischief and his smile promised more.

  He scooped her off the floor, then lay her back down on the cushions.

  She lay, tense, expectant, hovering between the acute agony of need and the sight of him as he stripped. He pulled his T-shirt up over his flat stomach, his sculpted chest—divine—and his wide shoulders. Gem took quick breaths, soaking in the magic of the story on his arm. The ink darkened in the firelight, like blueberries at midnight. She swallowed as he lowered the zipper on his jeans and pulled them down to reveal lean hips—oh, boy—he wasn’t wearing underwear.

  He stretched over her, supporting his body with one hand at her side, using the other to drag his jeans further down solid thighs, kicking them off his feet. He put a hand either side of her shoulders and lowered himself to kiss her, his mouth warm, wide and open. He nudged her thighs with his knee and positioned himself between her legs. Her thigh muscles quivered as his taut legs brushed against them. She put her hands on him. His skin was warm, the compact muscle and sinew beneath, hot.

  He dropped down to rest his forehead on hers. ‘Need a condom,’ he said, his breath ragged.

  ‘No time.’

  ‘Need one.’

  ‘I’m protected—birth control.’

  ‘Gem—I should—’

  ‘Take me, Josh.’

  He groaned and lowered his hips and slipped inside her. Her body accepted him, arched to him. His face was all she could focus on; all she could see. His jaw firmed, his eyes dark, pinpointing her, echoing the intensity that must be in hers.

  She’d never been so thirsty, so starved, so in need. His face was beside hers, the rasp of his jawline on her throat. Her mouth caught hold of him anywhere it could. She snatched tastes of him, his skin salty, his mouth ripe and firm like fruit. His body was iron hard, and the motion between them was unstoppable.

  ‘Gem!’

  Together. Together. The way they should always be.

  She cried out, taking the way he gasped her name as permission to let herself go so he could follow her. Within seconds, he reached the same crest. They rode it together, soaring with pleasure so long denied.

  Then he kissed her as the shuddering between them settled. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked between kisses.

  She nodded, her hands sliding over his back. She pressed her fingertips into the bones of his spine. ‘Perfect,’ she told him, kissing his face as he kissed her throat. ‘You’re better than my dream.’

  He laughed. ‘It was fast,’ he said, lifting his face and looking into her eyes.

  ‘It was perfect.’

  He nodded, smiling. ‘Yes, it was.’ He kissed the tip of her nose, then slid his mouth to hers. His hunger was softer now.

  She ran her fingertip down his back, over the bumps of his spine. He trembled, a calm ripple on a wall of muscle. He kissed her mouth, tenderly.

  ‘I hope to God it was a woman who inked that tattoo and not a man,’ he whispered. ‘It’s really at bikini line level, isn’t it?’

  She giggled.

  He squeezed her. ‘Tease. Do you still have it?’

  ‘What?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘The plastic diamond I gave you at some birthday party for
Mrs Tam.’

  She shivered.

  ‘Cold now?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, but slipped from her slowly, tantalising her yet again. He dragged two throw rugs from the sofa and draped one over her.

  ‘You remember,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  She tucked the blanket under her arms, settling her head on a cushion. He lay the other blanket over his hips and legs. She ran a fingertip along the dip between his pec muscles and down the soft trail of dark hair on his abdomen as he lay beside her. He kept one arm around her, his hand on her shoulder, and cushioned the back of his head with his other hand.

  ‘Sorry …’ she said. ‘I thought it was only my memory.’

  ‘I’d never seen any kid so happy at such a silly bit of birthday party swag.’

  She’d been twelve and Josh eighteen. They’d been eating cake and Josh had picked up one of the big plastic diamonds scattered on the table and thrown it at her. ‘Here—catch,’ he’d said. ‘A gem for a Gem.’ She’d treasured it because it had come from him.

  ‘Look.’ He lifted his right arm from beneath her. ‘You didn’t see it before, did you?’

  ‘What?’ she asked, twisting so she could look at the tattooed story on his arm.

  ‘Look at the compass,’ he told her. ‘Beneath it.’

  Gem scanned the images, not understanding much of it except that it spoke of a seafaring existence, then she hauled in a breath as she clapped eyes on …

  ‘A diamond.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s my gem. I got it for you: my Gem.’

  ‘Oh, Josh, you remembered me! You did love me.’

  He laughed gruffly. ‘Hell, Gem, I’ve always loved you.’ He paused and studied her intently. ‘You know that. Don’t you?’

  Yes, she knew it. He’d loved the kid following him around. He’d loved the teenager who’d scared the life out of him with her adventurous sporting endeavours, always coming to her side to congratulate her on a win or pick her up if she fell. He’d probably also loved the seventeen year old he’d kissed and left. Perhaps that’s why he’d left. What man or woman ought to tie themselves together forever at such a young age, when adventure and an exciting future beckoned?

  ‘I never thought I’d be with you like this, Josh. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s all I’ve dreamed about for over ten years.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘It was your father, you know. He was the reason I left without telling you where I was going. Without telling you goodbye.’

  Gem stilled. A cold draught swept up her spine.

  Josh tucked her in his arm. ‘I let him get to me.’ He said it as though he were remembering some joke or youthful prank he deeply regretted, not as though he’d just informed the woman who’d loved him deeply all her life that her father had somehow caused the breaking of their bond. He put a hand behind his head again and smiled at her; a smile of regret, shrugging at the world. ‘He found out about our kiss.’

  She raised herself to lean on an elbow. ‘How? Mum wouldn’t have told him—’

  ‘I don’t think she did. When I left the shop, out through the back way, I was furious with myself for what I’d nearly done to you, humiliated by having been caught and so damned frustrated by not having made love to you that I didn’t see him at first.’

  ‘My father was there?’

  ‘It wasn’t until later, that night, when I’d calmed down and was mentally drumming up my apology to you that I remembered.’

  The hairs at the back of Gem’s neck spiked.

  ‘There were a few people around in the back alley. Something going on at Kookaburra’s and a delivery at the grocery store. He was standing beside the window at the back of the shop storeroom.’

  ‘Oh, God—he was watching us?’

  Josh nodded. ‘Must have been.’

  Loathing crawled through her whole body, tensing her limbs.

  Josh squeezed her shoulder with his hand. ‘Creepy bastard.’

  Gem straightened, the blanket dropping to her waist as she covered her eyes with her hands.

  ‘The next day he came out to the art and craft centre. We had a few words.

  ‘He told me if I touched you again—if I went within two metres of you—he’d have me up for sexual harassment and rape.’

  ‘No!’ Gem moved until she was kneeling. ‘I was seventeen. Legally allowed to have sex, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I know, Gem.’

  ‘I wanted it to happen, Josh. I didn’t think you were pushing me into it.’

  ‘I know that too.’ His eyes narrowed before he spoke again. ‘I was a grown man. Six years older than you—it shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it happen.’

  ‘But it was us! Surely you know now that it was something that was always going to happen.’

  ‘You should have had the experience with someone your own age.’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone else.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Come back here.’ He tugged her, but she resisted. ‘Gem—I left because I didn’t want to hurt people: you, your mother, my mother. Even if I’d been able to prove innocence of any charge he threw at me, we’d all have gone through the legal processes of doing that. I wasn’t going to let that happen.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You were too young. And look what happened, anyway—’ He lifted his hand from her shoulder then rested it again. ‘You went to Paris. You became an artist. That wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed.’

  ‘Paris wouldn’t have mattered to me.’

  ‘Gem, if we’d made love that day, you might have had a child and then you’d have been tied to town forever.’

  ‘I came back because I wanted to be tied to this town.’

  ‘But you came back with experiences. It was a choice.’

  ‘Would you have stayed?’ she asked him. ‘If I’d had our child?’

  He inhaled and sighed. ‘Yes. I would have stayed for you, Gem.’

  But he would have felt tied. She shook her head.

  ‘I would have.’

  ‘You’d have hated it.’ So many differences between them. She hadn’t thought about it before now. She’d have tied him to town. ‘We’d have argued and split up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have let that happen.’

  ‘I love you, Josh,’ she told him. ‘I’ve loved you all my life.’

  He took his hand from behind his head and sat up, his eyes searching her face. ‘I …’

  He what? Loved her too? Of course he did, but not enough. The years apart had changed everything for them. This moment of making love had ended a deep yearning for each other, but it had also sealed their futures. It didn’t mean they had a future together.

  What she felt for Josh was simple, absolute love; full, pure and overflowing. Damn it. She rose, wrapping the blanket around her body, holding it in place under her arms. She’d grown up, and so had Josh, even though he’d always been a fine adult figure in her life. The best. He deserved an explanation and she deserved peace. It was agony to finally understand that he didn’t know how much he meant to her; how much she adored him and how very much she wanted to cherish him. Forever wasn’t in her realm though; not with this man.

  She turned to him and her breath caught at the sight of him, sitting on the rug with his back to the fire, his hands braced behind him, his legs bent at the knees.

  ‘What have I done?’ he asked, shaking his head, waiting for an explanation to enlighten him.

  Sorrow and joy blended inside her like paint, burnt-brown sorrow and bloodshot-red pain creating a colour nobody would want to use: scorched and charred. She closed her eyes for a second. There’s no colour in your life.

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ she said. He deserved some peace too. She opened her eyes and faced him. This was her chance to explain, and to find herself the calm she needed. ‘You were right to tell me why you left. You were right to tell me what it had done to you all these years, becaus
e it gives me some comfort to know I wasn’t hurting alone.’

  ‘Gem?’ He brought his hands from behind him, his attention all hers. ‘You were hurting?’

  She nodded. ‘I had a good reason. I’d like to tell you about it.’

  He didn’t move. The glow of the fire haloed him and Gem’s heart filled. It wasn’t a moment she’d prepared for. She gathered her thoughts, not the tumbled confused ones, but the thoughts she’d held in her heart all her life. He ought to be told just what he meant to her.

  ‘If we were to be together—and I know you can’t stay, I understand that—’ She lifted a hand to block his response, then smiled at him—the handsomest, strongest, most beautiful man she’d ever know. ‘Just know,’ she said, the smile playing on her mouth and warming her eyes, ‘that if, in the next life, we were to find ourselves together … I’d be the ice in your glass on a hot summer afternoon. I’d be the first person to laugh at your jokes.’ Her smile blossomed, even though tears threatened to push away the warmth in her eyes. ‘I’d be your smile when you needed one, your badge of honour when courage failed you.’ She swallowed and blinked, holding onto the love inside her just a little longer. ‘Josh Rutherford,’ she stated, ‘I’m so proud to love you.’

  He stared, his gaze so wretched, Gem could almost feel the pain inside him. He pressed the heel of his hands to his eyes. ‘Oh, God, Gem.’ It sounded like he’d dragged the words from the bedrock of his soul.

  She turned from him and stared out the window, the black night glaring back at her. That was all it had taken to reach the end. She ought to have done it sooner and ended the pain for both of them, before it had fired up and sparked notions of forever love and forever desire. Before she’d fallen even further in love.

  Eighteen

  Josh stood, letting the blanket fall to the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up; his heart had been stripped of its outer shell, what was the use in trying to cover his naked body?

  She didn’t look like she wanted to talk more and Josh didn’t know where to begin a conversation that would take them nowhere. A log split and popped in the hearth behind him.

  ‘Gemma,’ he said to her back.