Watching her dancing with Levi was absolute torture, plain and simple. It had made an instinct well up in him to protect her, although he knew that was silly. Levi was one of his good friends and he knew, intellectually, that he posed no threat to Tessa. Still, his base instincts were not clued into his intellectual thought process, apparently. It also gave him a powerful urge to claim her as his possession, his territory.
He realized the idiocy of the jealousy he had felt because he had been watching her dance with Levi while he himself had been on the dance floor with another woman in his arms. The fact that he had been roped into being there with that woman and that she was the absolute last person he’d wanted to be dancing with notwithstanding—hell, the fact that he still didn’t even know that woman’s name—the truth was that he had been jealous of Tessa dancing with another man at the exact moment that he had been dancing with another woman.
Ridiculous.
That didn’t change the facts though. His emotions were running high and he felt as if they were about to boil over. He could feel the tension in the pit of his stomach. He usually only felt this kind of adrenaline buildup when he was about to go battle a fire. Hell, maybe that was actually a good analogy. His jealousy was like a metaphorical fire. The trick was that he needed to actually put it out or—just like the real thing—it would consume him.
Jealousy aside, he still did have his wits about him enough to realize that he didn’t want to say something to her that he would regret. Words can hurt, and sometimes words were something a person—or a relationship—could not come back from. He didn’t want to say anything to Tessa that would be impossible to come back from in the heat of anger—especially an anger he’d realized even in the midst of was unjustified. She had done absolutely nothing wrong.
He recognized that he needed to take a moment to cool off before engaging with her. He began to walk up the stairs towards his bedroom as he loosened his tie, not looking back at her. He knew that if he looked at her, it would all be over. He would not be able to keep himself from engaging, whether it was by touching her or talking to her, and he wasn’t in a frame of mind to be able to do either one of those things rationally at the moment.
“Where are you going?” He heard Tessa’s tight voice behind him.
“Shower,” was his clipped reply.
His stride didn’t stop until he reached his bathroom. He turned on the water in the shower, setting the temperature to as high as he could stand it. He then peeled off the layers of his formal clothing, dropping them onto the floor and not caring about the disarray or the condition of the clothes. He just needed to get his body underneath that steaming stream of water and let the physical sensation bring his head back down to earth. He instinctively knew that it was exactly what he needed to come back to himself. Even the simple act of breathing the steam the water had already generated as he’d undressed was beginning to calm him just a bit.
Jake climbed underneath the red-hot spray, letting the sting of the water penetrate his skin, breathing the steamy air deep into his lungs, and attempting to let it clear his mind.
Jake ducked his head under the stream coming from the showerhead, letting it drench his head and body. He did his best to lose himself in the pounding rhythm of the water hitting the ceramic floor and the pulsing needles where it landed on his skin.
He became so lost in the sound and sensation of the shower, in fact, that it was a complete surprise to him when he heard Tessa’s voice, less than an inch from his ear as she hissed, “Wow, you really like it hot, don’t you?”
Then, without giving him time to turn around, she pressed herself against his back. He felt the soft pillows of her breasts against the hard, rippling muscles of his back and felt the beads of her hard nipples as they slipped along his wet skin. She snaked her arms around his waist, sliding her hand down to grasp his engorged erection in her slick palm.
Every ounce of anger and jealousy dissolved and was replaced with desire and arousal. Tessa was magic like that. With her, he had absolutely no control. He saw her body, heard her voice, or felt her touch and sprang to life. Every single time, without fail.
He pressed his palms up against the tile walls of the shower as her hand moved faster and faster up and down his shaft. Her other hand ran up his chest. She spread her fingers out and held him tightly as she pumped him hard. He could feel himself growing larger and larger in her firm grip.
Then suddenly, she was in front of him, lowering to her knees in one fluid motion. He moaned in anticipation of her sweet lips on his shaft.
He dropped his gaze to her mouth as she encircled the tip of his sex with her lips and he felt her tongue swirling around it. Moaning again, this time from pleasure, he placed one hand on the back of her head to guide her and the other he pressed firmly back against the tile. He was definitely going to need some help maintaining his balance. This was one of the best feelings he had ever experienced. He was almost dizzy with desire.
His eyes closed as his head fell back from the sheer power of ecstasy that was coursing through his veins, but immediately he realized that he didn’t want to miss even one moment of watching her head move up and down along his manhood. He looked back down on her and was mesmerized by the combination of erotic sights. He couldn’t decide what was sexier—her plump, red lips wrapped around his massive erection as it glided in and out of her mouth, her slick wet body that was kneeling on the shower floor in front of him, or her big blue eyes as she stared directly into his as she sucked him.
All of them equally, he decided. Or all of them together. She was such a total package of sexiness that he simply couldn’t separate the elements of it out into parts.
Jake grabbed her hair even more desperately, a guttural moan ripping from him as a spasm of pleasure rocked through him. He was on the edge of coming, and he didn’t want to do that right now. He wanted to be inside her. The instinct that had taken hold of him earlier, the one that drove him to claim her, to possess her, hadn’t faded. It was still going strong. In fact, it was pumping through his veins like hot lava, spurring him on to take action.
He reached down and placed his hands under her arms, pulling her up to stand in front of him. “I don’t want to come yet,” he rasped, “I want to make love to you. All night.”
She drew back and looked into his eyes, a sexy little half smile playing on her lips. He grinned back. He recognized that wicked little gleam in her eye. He had seen it on several occasions before. Tessa was a good girl 99.9% of the time. That gleam showed up the .1% of the time that she was bad.
He grinned even wider. When Tessa decided to be a bad girl, the results were always amazing.
“That sounds nice,” she said sweetly, her voice low and seductive, “but first I want you to do something for me.”
He stepped closer to her, leaning his face down so that he was looking directly into her eyes. Their breathing intermingled, indistinguishable from each other and from the steam that billowed around them.
“Okay,” he asked her slowly, “what do you want me to do?”
She continued to look unabashedly into his eyes, the naughty gleam intensifying as she stated clearly, “I want you to fuck me.”
Jake shuddered at the erotic thrill her provocative request sent through him, but he did not hesitate to act on it. He grabbed her firmly by the waist and lifted her up and off of her feet, carrying her two short steps until her back was pressed against the tile wall of the shower. She gasped and her eyes widened. Her breathing quickened, and she bit her bottom lip.
Jake drove into her with a power he hadn’t even known he possessed. There was so much driving him as he pushed himself into her again and again—his love for her, the fierceness with which he had missed her, his uncertainty about their future, and yes, even his jealousy at seeing Levi’s arms around her, no matter how innocent that had been.
He needed her. With every cell in his body, down to every corner of his soul, he needed her. He needed to possess her, if onl
y to even the scales, because she so completely possessed him.
Yes. It was true, and he knew it. Body, mind, and soul—he was hers. He belonged to her. She owned him, down to the core of his being, and she always would.
*
Tessa loved the pure carnal pleasure of Jake driving himself into her over and over again. She loved his losing his tight grasp of control and taking her. She let herself be taken over by this erotic fantasy come to life.
Her body was filled with a tingling ache. Hot lust whipped through her. The decadent pleasure sent her soaring to a higher level of sensation than she’d even known was possible.
But there was a lot more than just the physical reactions to being with Jake that was consuming her senses. She felt the intensity of his feelings toward her and her feelings toward him. She felt the traces of poignant melancholy from all of the years they had been apart and the sweetness of the joy that coming back together had brought. She felt the urgency generated by the fact that what the future held for them was uncertain. And yet, she felt the security of certainty as well, because she was so sure of her total and unwavering devotion to him, no matter what the future would bring.
All of these feelings rocketed around inside of her, crashing into one another like bumper cars, mixing and melting and forming one giant miasma of intensity.
Suddenly, it was simply not enough to be a passive participant in their coupling, held up against the wall with very little room to maneuver. She felt the need to move, to grasp, to raise her hips in order to meet his thrusts. She needed space. Her body needed the freedom to follow her instincts, to move with him and touch him in whatever way felt right in the moment.
“Take me to bed, Jake,” she moaned, “I want to be in bed with you.”
Without even taking time to respond or shut off the water in the shower, Jake pushed aside the glass shower door and carried her with him as he stepped across the bathroom tile and then walked the remaining steps to his bed.
He put her down in the middle of the bed, not on her back as she would have predicted, but rather on her hands and knees. She felt the indentation of the bed as he climbed up behind her, placing his hands on her hips and leaning down over her. She felt the strong, hard muscles of his chest press against her back.
“I want you like this,” he explained simply, as if no other explanation were necessary—and it wasn’t. The erotic thrill that ran the length of Tessa’s body at his forceful words was unprecedented. In fact, she was surprised that she even managed to stay conscious under the weight of it.
She heard the sound of plastic tearing and realized that Jake must be slipping on a condom. She appreciated that he was levelheaded and responsible enough to remember to do that, because she was so dizzy with lust that she wasn’t sure she could even remember her middle name. Not that it really mattered—she knew they were both clean and obviously pregnancy wasn’t an issue.
Her melancholy thought was short-lived when, a few seconds later, she felt him thrust into her again, penetrating her with a passion that took her breath away. She looked down at the sheet she was kneeling on, seeing water drip and shake free from her hair as Jake pounded into her again and again. She watched the dark puddle of water spread farther and farther out on the light grey sheets and was inordinately turned on by the sight.
She loved this. She loved every part of it. She closed her eyes to just feel. Feel his rock-hard erection as it plunged again and again into her hot center. Feel his incredibly strong hands gripping her hips and waist, making her feel tiny and safe as he pulled her back against him over and over. Feel his fingers digging into her skin.
Her arms began to shake from the sheer pleasure Jake was giving her body, and she didn’t think she would be able to support herself on them much longer. When she did collapse onto her elbows, she turned her face to the side, pressing her cheek against the dark cotton of Jake sheets, wet from the water that had dripped off of her from the shower. Just one more sensation to add to her list of things that were conspiring to send her spiraling over the erotic edge.
Just then, Jake decided to up the ante, and Tessa did not know how she was going to maintain her sanity, let alone her consciousness. He leaned down over her, pressing his chest against her back as he continued to move inside of her, and slid one of his hands up to her breasts. He began moving it from one breast to the other, tweaking her nipples and rolling them in turn between his thumb and forefinger as he continued the punishing rhythm of his thrusts.
Tessa heard a moan escape from her mouth. The sound was so desperate, so carnal, and yet so intimate. In fact, it perfectly captured the way she was feeling inside right now in the way that no words ever could.
Without breaking his rhythm, Jake moved his hand down between her legs and began to manipulate her sensitive flesh as he continued steady, hard strokes in and out of her. She began to shake everywhere. She marveled at the way that, despite the fact that they had been apart for so long, he knew every single thing about her—how she would respond, what she needed from him, how to elicit any reaction that he wanted, and how to give her the most mind-blowing pleasure she had ever known.
It was pleasure she would never have been able to imagine was possible had she not experienced it herself, pleasure she never would have believed was real if it had been described to her. She would’ve thought it was an exaggeration, a fantasy. She would never have thought that it was within the realm of possibility for her body to produce the sensations that were now tearing through her with abandon.
She knew that the only reason she was able to experience this now was Jake. With anyone else, this kind of feeling would be an unattainable ideal. She knew instinctively, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that what she was feeling right now was nothing that could ever be replicated in the future. Anything she would ever try to do with anyone else, she would ever try to attempt it with, would be nothing else but a pale imitation of the connection and intensity Jake was giving her right at this moment.
Tessa closed her eyes as her inner muscles spasmed as the waves of climax begin to crash over her. She surrendered herself to the sensation completely, letting the feelings wash through her as if she were nothing but an empty vessel that was meant for this—which, in essence, she was at that moment.
She felt Jake’s hands roaming all over her body as wave after wave of orgasm shook through her, little earthquakes of pleasure that he kept going even longer by the expert touches he administered to her flesh as she came.
Just as the waves began to calm and she was a bit more aware of her surroundings, she felt Jake’s hands tighten on her and his muscles tense against her body. He let out a guttural moan that let her know that he was beginning to ride the same crest of pleasure she was, and that knowledge sent another erotic wave shooting through her.
When every last bit of energy had been expended from her muscles, she collapsed forward on the bed, breathing hard and still trembling. Jake rolled to the side and pulled her with him, snuggling her into her absolute favorite place in the world to be—within the safe circle of his strong arms.
He stroked her still-wet hair and lovingly kissed the top of her head. She would do anything to have this moment stretch on until eternity. She wanted to stay here, just like this, forever.
She sighed. She had often heard the phrase that all good things must come to an end. Tessa just wished it weren’t true in this case.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‡
Tessa felt like she was floating on a cloud. She could hear Jake’s voice but it was coming from far away. Her body felt light and airy, like she was drifting down a lazy river.
“Wake up, beautiful.” Jake’s voice seemed closer now.
She tried to open her eyes but the suckers were heavy.
A chuckle sounded, and she was pretty sure it was coming from Jake. She felt a featherlight touch brush against her cheek as Jake’s deep voice sounded again. “That’s it. Open your eyes.”
As her eyes flutter
ed open, she was met with a smiling Jake beaming down at her. “Good morning.”
Tessa loved Jake and she loved waking up to Jake’s smiling face. The problem here was she wasn’t ready to wake up. Her eyes began closing again.
“Uh uh. I’ve got something to show you, baby.” At those words, she felt herself being lifted off the bed in Jake’s strong arms.
Tessa tucked her head in the crook of Jake’s shoulder and took in a deep breath through her nose. She loved how he smelled. Fresh, like soap and man.
Curling her body closer to him, Tessa closed her eyes as she snuggled against the solid planes of Jake’s muscular chest. She was still sleepy and she felt her body totally relax and revel in the feeling of being carried by the man she loved. She felt so treasured. So special.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Jake gently set her down. Then, kneeling before her, he picked up one of her feet and began putting it in a boot. She reached out and held on to his shoulder to steady herself when suddenly the entire scene felt like déjà vu.
Tessa gasped and covered her mouth. “It snowed!”
Jake smiled brightly as he looked up at her, winking. “You’re not quite as quick on the uptake as you used to be.”
“Shut up!” Tessa swatted his shoulder. “I was sleepy.”
He stood and pulled her into his arms, kissing her like he needed her as much as he needed his next breath. His hands roamed up and down her back. His tongue explored her mouth expertly, his lips the perfect balance between firm and soft.
Damn, the man could kiss.
When Jake pulled away from Tessa, he heard a protesting moan escape from her mouth. A satisfied grin spread across Jake’s face as he put on her the same jacket he’d put on her the first night she’d arrived. After he zipped her up, he pulled a beanie out of his pocket, stuck it on her head, kissed her on her nose, and said, “Come on, sleepy.”
He opened the door, but before she could see anything, he covered her eyes. She reached up and tried to pull his hands away. “Hey!”
Let It Snow (The Hope Falls Series) Page 22