by Violet Duke
Propped up on his hands, his fists clenching and unclenching in the sheets as currents of lust rolled off him in waves, he dragged in a huge lungful of air and tried his best to slow down his heart rate. “That was the hottest damned thing I’ve ever heard a woman say to me.”
Leila promptly reached for the pillow to bury her bright red face.
Not happening. He grabbed the offensive barrier and tossed it to the ground. “Don’t hide yourself from me, baby. Promise me that you’ll never stop telling me the stuff you fantasize about. Ever. I want to hear all of it, you hear me?”
Instead of giving him the promise he so desperately wanted to hear, she pursed her lips tight, and Jackson had the awful thought that he might’ve somehow turned her off dirty talk for good.
But then she exhaled a long breath and asked hesitantly, “Instead…instead of your teeth, could you rip my panties off with your hand right before you slide into me?”
Thank God.
And good lord.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen in a minute or two anyway,” he admitted, feeling his chest crack open a little when he saw her eyes light up—in an adorable contrast to the hungry, shaky gasp and whimper that followed soon after.
She was just so unbelievably responsive.
Needing a condom on right freaking now, he managed to tear himself away from her long enough to grab one from his nightstand. And of course, Leila, in all her innocently seductive glory, propped up onto her elbows to watch him roll the condom on.
He had her on her back again before he was even through.
“I can’t wait, sweetheart. Not this first time. Maybe not even the second. I just want you too much. But I promise, the third time tonight will be slow…er.” He silently promised a fortune in offerings to whatever deity ruled the bedroom so that he could make good on that. Because honestly, he was pretty sure he’d need to take her at least a dozen times before he could even hope to have semi-calm sex with the woman.
Gripping his thick length at the base, he slid the flushed crest against her wet heat, through her panties, just like she asked. And holy shit was it a mind-messing turn-on. He decided he was going to start asking her about her fantasies regularly. This was too damn hot not to be a part of their regular sexual routine. Already, Leila looked seconds from orgasm, simply because he was fulfilling a fantasy, which was good because her last little moan shoved him past his limit.
Now cross-eyed with lust, he ripped her panties away as she requested, and pushed into her as slow as he could manage, one sanity-stealing inch at a time.
He wanted to ask her if she was doing okay, but not a single, useful coherent thought could be formed in his mind at the moment, not when an all-consuming, savage need began coursing through him before he was even fully inside of her. Luckily, he had the sexy, unbidden sounds escaping her to use as his guide.
When he was finally as deep as he could go, he held still for a bit to give her a chance to adjust to his size, grinding his teeth through the torment of hearing her small, quick gasps that were an accompanying beat to the tiny pulses he could feel grip his shaft like a decadent little vise.
Within seconds, he was nearly at the end of his rope when he felt her start to rock against him. Heaven help him. So swiftly it made his own head spin, he bent down and latched his mouth onto her nipple as he began to fill her to the hilt with slow, deep strokes. His thrusts were gentle at first, until the whispered pleas slipping past her lips quickly unraveled him.
“Jackson.”
The sound of his name on her lips eventually broke him, drove him past his limits. Soon, he felt scorching-hot pleasure pound through his bloodstream as he began taking her hard and fast. Growling low in his throat, he increased the force of his strokes even more when she began coming apart at the seams, splintering and pulsing against his hard shaft, his name still on her lips.
He was powerless to stop the lust from taking over. Pumping his hips one final time, in a rough, deep thrust, he plunged deep and felt his orgasm start to rocket through his system.
Primal satisfaction surged down his spine in a rush when he felt her start to come again, tightening and shuddering all around him, milking him, stealing his last remnant of control.
Chest heaving, emotions detonating all over the place, he buried his face in her neck and followed her over the edge moments later.
Christ, how could he ever have thought that sex was all he could offer Leila? This, what they’d just experienced, was more than sex. It was elemental, vital.
So damned sweet.
It was an unending hunger he didn’t think he’d ever be able to slake. Hell, just touching her made lust pool deep in his belly, kept him perpetually hard for the woman.
He pulled her into his arms tighter, suddenly feeling the desire to never let her go. He felt it then. For the first time ever. That feeling he’d been hiding from for most of his life.
The one emotion that was dangerous for a Grayhurst to feel.
He wanted to say the three words to her—in a rough, reverent vow pouring straight out of his heart—over and over again in bed, and a thousand times throughout the day.
But he kept it inside.
He had to…at least until he knew for sure he could keep her.
Chapter 29
It took them two weeks, but they finally finished christening every feasible area of the house. With sex. For the life of her, Leila couldn’t remember whose idea it was to begin with, but they’d risen to each challenge with gusto. Tonight, perhaps a little more than usual. Her whole body was aching with sexual goodness. So much so that she was still awake well after midnight.
“I think I pulled a muscle.”
Leila grinned into the dark bedroom over the gruff non-complaint, feeling a warm flush radiate from deep in her chest when she felt Jackson snuggle up behind her even more. Once settled against her just so, he began running a wandering hand up and down her sides as he pressed soft, aimless kisses on her shoulder, and flexed his fingers into her hips a few times, as if he just couldn’t help himself.
“It was your brilliant idea to have sex on the exercise equipment,” she reminded him. And this time, she felt something else entirely flex against her backside.
“That was the last unchartered sex territory in the loft,” he defended. “You have to admit, it was fun, what with all the benches and the bars.”
Ohhh, the hanging bar. That had been fun. At first. Too bad she’d never really been one of those chin-up and pull-up girls with the strong upper body strength. She hissed in a breath in remembrance of why exactly they stopped playing on that bar. “We’re just lucky you caught me before I lost my grip. That could’ve turned out badly.”
Two words: penile fracture.
They both winced at the conjured visual.
Leila thought about the final piece of exercise equipment they’d finally deemed the only safe apparatus in the room not long after. “Are you saying we won’t be revisiting that position on the exercise bike ever again?” That’d be a crying shame if that were the case.
He gave her a look that said she was crazy. “It’s a pulled muscle. Let’s not overreact and do anything drastic.”
A content little chuckle bubbled out of her as a strong arm wrapped around her middle and squeezed her tight.
Jackson grazed a smiling kiss across her cheek. “You sound happy.”
“I am,” she agreed, leaning into him fully. Perpetual happiness seemed a state of being for her lately, never more so than when she was in Jackson’s arms.
His quietly pleased male grunt sounded in her ear just before he captured her earlobe between his teeth.
Her skin immediately shivered in erotic awareness. When he began trailing hot, lingering kisses along her neck moments later, just like that, her nipples went from its usual perma-hard-around-Jackson state to almost painfully aroused.
Like a sexual psychic, Jackson grazed a thumb over her tight nipples, one by one, to ease the a
che. But of course his other hand offset the relief by sliding lower to graze the sensitive skin on the insides of her thighs, proving, yet again, that where her body was concerned, Jackson was the real-deal orgasm whisperer. Pretty much every ultra-responsive erogenous zone on her body, he seemed to have a secret custom map so that he could get her revving from zero to sixty in seconds.
Valiantly holding onto her fleeting sense of responsible-girlfriend-duty, she rolled onto her back and breathed out a broken, “Wait, wait. Don’t you have a conference call at three in the morning? You need to sleep.”
While he looked to be seriously thinking about her question, his fingers were busy sliding between her legs, quickly making her forget what she’d asked altogether. By the time he had three thick fingers inside her, he managed to obliterate all working thoughts from her brain completely.
“Well, then I guess you’re going to have to do that thing you do to make me come so hard I black out,” he answered with a matter-of-fact smile before sucking her nipple into his mouth. Slowly, lazily, each teasing swipe of his tongue was a startling contrast to the hard, sensory-overload rhythm his fingers were setting between her legs. Angled perfectly to incite her past her inhibitions, he pumped his fingers in and out of her…in that one hidden spot that could always—
“Jackson.” She gripped his shoulders and arched into him, feeling his arousal thick against her belly as she succeeded in just barely fending off a mini-orgasm. She wanted more this time. Snagging a heated kiss, she ran her nerve-wracked, trembling hands across his chest. “Can we…” Her breathing splintered when he curled his fingers inside of her again. Full sentences were beyond her capabilities now. “No condom,” she finally managed to utter in a gasping sigh against his lips.
He froze and then gave a mighty, masculine shudder that shook his entire frame and hardened his length even more. “Are you sure, honey?”
Fitting herself against him by way of answer, she wrapped her legs around his waist and ran her wet heat against his rigid shaft.
But instead of taking her hard and fast like she expected, he cupped her face gently and just stared at her for a long, affectionate moment.
That quiet intensity she loved about him? She discovered it was about ten times more potent in the bedroom. He didn’t just touch, he savored. He didn’t just look, he admired. He could communicate with her body via a single glance, expand her heart to double its size with a few softly murmured words.
Just like he was doing now.
Finally, when her heart was in knots and her body was all but begging for his, he slid into her without the barrier of a condom separating them for the first time ever.
Holy hell.
Sex with Jackson was always hot, always intense. But this…this was more intimate than anything they’d ever done. It was as if a thousand nerve endings she never knew existed were now sizzling to life, all at once. Every inch he slid in sent sparks of electricity lancing through her, slowly but surely seizing control of her body from the inside out.
As each deep, heavy thrust aimed to spear her with pleasure so profound she was sure it would untether her somehow, Leila was mindless to do more than slide her palms over the ripped contours of Jackson’s back so she could anchor herself in some way.
A low growl rumbled out of his chest in response to her touch, and his hips began powering forward suddenly with a complete lack of restraint. Harsh, feral sounds tore out of his throat like a man stripped of control, shortly before he reached down to pin her legs back against the bed, leaving her wide open to him, in a new angle that threatened to send her spinning toward a shattering climax.
But he stopped before she could get there.
Mercilessly pulling out to wrap his lips around the pulsing knot of pure sexual heat at her core, he sucked on her for several mind-blowing heartbeats as she writhed and fought for sanity.
His name scorched past her lips when she felt the edge of his teeth graze over her, and he growled again, grabbing her hips to pump his rigid length into her in one long, hard plunge. Straight to the hilt.
She exploded.
His lips landed on hers with a groan as she came in a cataclysm of red-hot, kaleidoscopic sensations around his throbbing shaft. Teeth grit, neck corded, he let her ride out her orgasm before wrapping one arm around her waist and hooking the other under her knee. Eyes locked on hers, Jackson drove into her one final time, deeper than ever, and she felt him coming, hot and deep inside of her, a guttural rasp shredding his voice as he hurtled them both to a place a good deal past bliss, somewhere near orgasmic oblivion.
Just as he’d predicted earlier, he passed out for a minute while she attempted to catch her breath and slow down her heart rate. But as always, he forced himself awake and cherished her with kisses and scattered murmurs of affection before pulling her in close and tumbling into a deep sleep with his lips buried in her hair.
It was rare for her to be awake while he was asleep, since usually she was the one knocking out mid-sentence on him.
Every once in a while though, like tonight, he allowed himself to lose control.
And that was good. Because it allowed her the one secret activity she’d been doing the last few times he’d fallen asleep before she did.
It was the only time she could do it.
Turning to press her cheek against his chest, she checked to make sure his breathing was steady and deep before whispering, “I love you, Jackson,” hoping beyond hope that his heart could hear her words.
And one day return them back to her.
—
“Damn idiots.” Jackson put down his early-morning coffee and glared at the tall stack of printouts his assistant had given him on his way out of the office the night prior—the real reason he’d had trouble sleeping last night. Not that he would ever admit it to Leila.
The past few weeks had been some of the best of his life, but it didn’t sit well with him that Leila was starting to feel some negative effects on the professional front due to their relationship.
Online articles, blogs, and social media screenshots chronicling the public’s horrific misconceptions about her, along with other random pop-ups of what was considered “news” in the celebrity world.
Hundreds upon hundreds of mentions of Leila.
All now reducing her to “Reginald Jackson Grayhurst II’s girlfriend.”
And most with folks talking out of their asses.
Debates of whether she was good enough for him, rumors of how she’d seduced him when he was drunk in the office one day, lies upon lies from “inside sources close to the pair.”
It was the biggest pile of horse shit he’d ever laid his eyes on.
This new media storm focus was easily a hundred times bigger than the buzz that had resulted after her L. J. Hart identity had come to light…and at least a thousand times more insulting.
What had the world come to when a woman’s love life was more talked about than the amazing things she accomplished in her career?
Disgusted, Jackson picked up the most offensive one in the bunch and ripped it in half. It was a hot-or-not “article” pitting her against other billionaire girlfriends, littered with grainy photos taken, clearly without permission, of each woman doing day-to-day things. Like walking.
Utterly ridiculous.
This, on the tail end of the hundreds of sites that seemed to have popped up overnight objectifying Leila, superimposing her face on porn images, the whole nine yards.
Two freaking weeks now since their relationship was made public and she was still a trending topic. But not for the things she should be getting recognition for.
She was an exceptional field reporter. But none of these idiots posting these comments about her gave a damn. They didn’t care about how intelligent she was, how much of a role model she should be for little girls out there who wanted to break through to the top of a male-dominated profession, or the name she’d already begun making for herself in the NFL—gender a nonfactor whatsoever.
>
And don’t even get him started on the porn magazine editors who had been begging her to be the cover model for their next issue.
Throughout it all, Leila would simply shrug and say they’ll eventually get bored and move on, but he saw the slowly building hurt in her eyes, the strain in her voice when she’d talk about how her days at work now.
He’d heard about the photoshopped gif file of her giving him a blowjob bouncing around the office email pool.
It was everything she’d been worried about. Not being taken seriously in her field…magnified times ten.
Because of him.
“Jackson, it’s fine.”
He looked up from his desk, surprised to see Leila standing not six feet away, leaning against the door of the spare room he’d converted into an official home office.
Turns out, billionaires were basically expected to work 24-7. The past few weeks alone were enough to realize how much his own father had walked away from when he’d stepped down as CEO and chairman of the board to just be Jackson’s dad and a husband to Jackson’s mom.
She came around the desk to wrap her arms around him, all sunshine and strawberries.
“I hate that they’re doing this to you, sweetheart. You’ve worked so hard. This is your dream they’re taking a crap all over. All of this?” He shoved the pile of garbage into his trash can, exactly where it belonged. “It’s going to hurt your chances at becoming an NFL studio anchor. Some PR firms may think any press is good press, but the network sure as hell doesn’t. They terminate contracts all the time if they even smell a scandal. Things like these fake, photoshopped viral videos of you has no business in sports reporting, and they’ll judge you unfairly because of it.”
Her voice was tight with tension. And tired. “Maybe. Let’s just wait out the storm, Jackson.”
“I’ve got all my assistants and their assistants working around the clock on getting as much of this stupidity taken down as possible. But I want to do more. What else can I do?”