She’d blocked out her mother’s certain disapproval, and the odd looks Dixie had given her that day when she’d confessed she didn’t want to become involved, and she’d gone for it.
It felt wildly good not to overthink it, not to think about anything but the pleasure of it all.
“Em?” Jax’s husky whisper cut into the dark.
Some of that pleasure she was high on rippled along her arms in the way of goose bumps. “Shhh!” was her automatic response until she realized she was as noisy as he was.
She saw his dark head in the peeling doorway of his ramshackle guesthouse and made a beeline with his large shadow as her beacon.
He let the door shut behind him and loped down the path to greet her, holding out his hand. “Sorry,” he muttered on a smile. “This might take some getting used to.”
“Tell me about it. I’m about as covert as a bulldozer. I think I’ve crunched through every pile of leaves possible here in Forest Hawthorne.” She curled her fingers into his, loving the way their skin connected.
He pulled her up tight against his back and gave the door a hard nudge with his shoulder to dislodge it. It creaked open, slamming against the wall with a heavy thud.
“Shh! The way we’re going, we might as well post a sign outside the door that reads Jax and Emmaline Are Doin’ It. Do Not Disturb,” she chided.
Jax’s chuckle rippled from his lips slow and deep. He pulled her close, his powerful chest pressing to hers. “Sorry. I’ve never hidden from a whole town before.”
She batted her eyes at him, something she was getting very good at. “Now you’re just bein’ facetious. It’s not the whole town. Just parts of it.” Most of it. The big mouths of it.
Jax traced her lips with his fingertip. “It is so. You said you didn’t want people in town talking about you any more than they already did. You didn’t say one or two people in town. Just people.”
“Are you splittin’ hairs with me at a time like this?” Now, when I have on the tiniest powder-blue confection ever created out of a polyester blend and a matching thong to boot?
“I like the trench coat. Very discreet.”
Right. Check. The trench coat had been a cliché, stupid idea. “Pathetically obvious. I never wear trench coats. I was going for mysterious and sexy.”
He shrugged his shoulders and grinned when he ran the tip of his finger along the curve of her cleavage, stopping at the top of her silky negligee. “I like cliché and obvious. I think it’s sexy and mysterious. What’s this?” He tugged at the notebook.
“An idea book. I thought once we were done...well, I thought we could look this over and you could show me what you like and don’t like. You know, for the house?”
“With you dressed like that, and me dying to see what’s under that coat, the last thing I was thinking about were colors for my house,” he teased.
Em forgot what she was wearing when she glanced over his shoulder. Her breath lodged in her throat. As promised, Jax had blown up the air mattress. It lay against the wall patched with old barn wood, just beside a stack of dusty pictures. He’d thrown some plaid flannel sheets across its surface along with a couple of blankets with tattered holes in them.
He’d also brought along a bottle of wine and candles. So many candles. The flames danced with the rush of the wind seeping through the double windows on each side of the guesthouse.
How beautiful.
But wait. She wasn’t supposed to be feeling gooey on the inside because he’d made a romantic gesture. That was reserved for a relationship. She had to stick to the rules. “I told you no romance...no wine, no candles.”
Jax gave the door his toe, closing it. He walked her backward, keeping his hands at her waist until her calves touched the back of the air mattress. “Who says this is for you, sexy lady?” He grinned.
Jax chest-bumped her in playful challenge when she didn’t answer. “Well?”
She shivered, suddenly relaxing into him. “Who else could it be for?”
Cupping her face, he pulled her upward so she had to stand on tiptoe to keep her balance in heels. “For me. The booze is for me, but I’ll share if you ask nice and keep being so pretty. I only brought one glass, though. I thought this party was BYOB. And the candles are just some supermarket candles with names like Party In A Pear and Green Apple Meadows. It’s not like they’re the really expensive ones. But I figure, seeing as there’s no electricity out here, and it’s as dark in this guesthouse as my thoughts were about you, we might need some light.”
Disappointment reared its head. Apparently, Knight In Shining Hawthorne was off the clock.
That was a grossly unfair assessment. She’d made the rules; now she had to play by them. “Do green apples grow in meadows?” she joked, wondering why she wasn’t experiencing even a shred of unease. There was no hesitation when she straightened her spine and let her breasts graze his chest. None. Because it felt damn good. So good.
She looked right up at him like she’d been to this rodeo before. Like she had a T-shirt that said she had.
His eyebrow rose just as his arms snaked fully around her waist, pulling her tighter. “I think the real question is, do pears have parties?”
The flickers of light from the candles bounced off his thick hair, creating chocolate highlights she’d spent many a daydream sighing over. The angles and planes of his face were somehow sharper and even more defined with the soft glow. “You don’t suppose your brothers or Maizy might wonder why the guesthouse looks like it’s on fire, do you?”
Jax grazed his nose along the exposed length of her neck, making her nipples bead tight. He pulled away long enough to grab the bottle of wine and a single glass. Plopping down on the air mattress, he patted the space next to him. “Fear not, fair maiden Emmaline. Got that covered. When I’m working on a project, the beginning stages of it are always the hardest for me. I need to work things out on paper. So I requested seclusion and quiet. We have a Hawthorne family rule about space and respecting it. Because I freelance at home often, they’ve all learned to give me the time I need.”
She watched him pour the white liquid into the glass and bring it to his lips while she settled beside him. “So you think they really believe you’re out here in the cold guesthouse, working on a project instead of inside in your warm office?” Did it matter if they believed why Jax was in the guesthouse?
Maybe a little. It shouldn’t, but it did. A little.
Evolution from prissy spinster to bed-hopper takes time, Emmaline.
“I don’t have an office yet. It’s just a room full of boxes and a cold cement floor. That’s where you and all those ideas you have come in.”
“I see,” she said, smiling up at him, forgetting her concerns again. “Maybe you’re not so bad at this after all.”
Jax’s fingers wound around a long strand of her hair as he offered her the glass—which she took without hesitation. “So, covert ops covered?”
She sipped at the wine and paused. Alcohol always loosened her up, but she wasn’t worried about loosening up at all.
No. She was more fascinated by the idea her lips would touch the rim of the glass Jax’s lips had just touched. It was a small thing, really, but intimate—sensual.
“I should be sick with nerves right now.” Why wasn’t she worried a man was going to see her naked—the only other man to see her naked aside from Clifton? Especially one she knew would have a body that belonged on the cover of a magazine.
Why wasn’t she worried he would inevitably see the stretch marks lining her belly and hips because she’d gained fifty pounds when she was pregnant with Gareth?
Why wasn’t she worried Jax would cringe at the sight of the dimpled pockmarks on the outside of her thighs or the way her left breast sagged to the right? Why? And why was she telling him she wasn’t worried about not b
eing worried about it?
“Because?”
Her fingers curled into the soft knit of the sweater at his waist and tugged him closer, gazing at him over the rim of the glass. “Because this is uncharted territory for me. I’ve never sailed this sea. I should be a nervous wreck.”
He pulled back, the muscles lining his jaw twitching. “Not once?”
“No. Have you?”
Jax opened his mouth to answer, but Em planted a hand on his lips. “No. Don’t answer. No personal information.”
He nibbled at her fingers, making her toes curl. “Then I won’t tell you I have sailed this sea, but the itinerary was a little different.”
“So you’ve had a lot of cruise directors?”
Once more, he opened his mouth to speak, and she stopped him, disgusted that even at a time like this, her naturally curious nature wouldn’t shut up. “Scratch that.”
Jax nodded, but his eyes were amused. “Right. No sharing. Which means I won’t tell you how many times I’ve done it.”
“Have you done this a lot?”
“I can’t tell you. You said I couldn’t.”
“Well, in the interest of diseases...”
“I assure you, I’m disease free. I’ve been celibate for six years, and I’m physician approved.”
Her ears pricked. Jax said it like he’d taken on some kind of celibacy challenge. Celibate for six years...she mentally did the math. That was as long as Maizy’d been alive. Maybe he’d been too busy mourning his wife? Maybe she’d died and she was so phenomenal it had taken him this long to get over her?
Should she be flattered she was the one he was breaking that vow for?
He slid his hand under her butt and moved her closer, taking the wineglass from her hand and setting it on the floor. “The celibacy wasn’t intentional. I just had other things to do that were more important.”
Insert pin in bubble. As always, she was overthinking her importance in this. “I haven’t been celibate for six years,” she blurted. Gah. Again, she was oversharing.
“That’s because you only just got divorced.”
“Clifton’s been gone awhile now. It just wasn’t official until a few months ago.”
“So you’ve had some time on your own.”
“I have. I like it.” She did like it. Mostly.
His eyes said he didn’t like her answer, but his response was as light as his fingertips on her bare thigh. “And you’ve been busy enjoying your freedom?”
She placed her palm over his, sharing his hand’s easy glide over her skin. “I wouldn’t use the word freedom. Clifton didn’t keep me chained up. There are just things you don’t end up doing because you’re a couple. You compromise on everything from the color of your bathroom towels to where to hang a picture. I like not having to consult.”
“You needed a consultation to hang a picture?” he asked, parting the hem of her mysteriously sexy trench coat.
She shook her head. “I don’t mean we had to call a press conference every time I did something. I just mean you have to include your partner in all decisions big or small. I like makin’ my own decisions. I like going to bed when I want to. I like watching whatever strikes my fancy on TV.” I like having total control over the TV remote, too. I like snuggling with my body pillow instead of a real body. I like having one less egg to fry.
That sounds suspiciously like a song, Em.
His chuckle was carefree, but his eyes were clouded. “You make marriage sound like a prison camp.”
“That’s not what I mean at all. You were married...you know exactly what I mean.” Hint. Hint. Weren’t you married, Jax? Huh? Huh? Bet your wife didn’t leave you because she wanted to.
Ugh. She should have just winked and nudged him in the shoulder for all her subtlety.
Jax didn’t confirm or deny. Instead, he said, “If there’s something you want to ask me, Em, just ask.”
No! “Sorry. I was born with an extranosy gene. And I’m new at this. Brand-new.”
“We’re doing the dreaded talking. Isn’t that against the rules?”
“I made those rules, didn’t I?”
“You did. But if you want to, we could adjust the setting.”
She shook her head, refusing to dwell on the offer or the tone of his offer. She wasn’t reading anything into anything anymore. “Nope. If there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that I don’t want any complications in my life. Don’t take it personally.”
He smiled the Jax smile that said everything was right as rain. “Nothing personal.”
Flirty Em nudged her, reminding her she was losing the point of the entire night, and it was a drag.
She curled her chin into her shoulder and smiled at him. “So, do you want to see what’s under my long, mysteriously sexy, totally obvious trench coat?”
Jax cracked his knuckles like he was gearing up for the chore ahead of him. “Hit me.”
Eleven
Em’s fingers loosened the knot at her waist while her shoulders shrugged the coat off. She wasn’t as timid as he’d expected her to be about it, either.
At first, her eyes gleamed with purpose, as though the mission was to disrobe and disrobe as fast as she could before having the chance to think about it. But then her eyes went soft when she realized she’d taken the coat off.
And there she was.
In something powder-blue with lace. Maybe ivory lace. He didn’t know colors. He didn’t care. It was filmy and cupping her in all the right places, accentuating her breasts, making the swell of them fuller. The hem stopped at the tops of her thighs, thighs that were as soft and silky as the rest of her was bound to be.
The material clung to her waist, dipping in to the rivet of her belly button. An innie. Em had an innie he wanted to skim with his tongue. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a dark cloud of loose curls, but it was her lips he couldn’t take his eyes off.
Her lower lip trembled a little. Just a little, but it was enough to make his cock swell hard and fast with the thought of them wrapped around him. Goose bumps covered her arms and thighs.
She inhaled and Jax realized he was staring. “Do you hate it?”
His mouth was dry. So dry. So he didn’t bother to use words to answer her. He didn’t have a damn one anyway.
Instead, he slid off the edge of the air mattress and nudged her knees open.
Em parted her thighs without hesitation, inviting him between them. Jax spread them, reminding himself to take it slow whether his blood was boiling or not.
He kissed her then, slow and long, until she sighed a fluttery sort of noise in her throat and her fingers began to pull impatiently at the waist of his sweater. She pulled it up and over his head, and threw it on the floor. The cool air of the guesthouse hit his skin at the same time Em’s flesh did, hot and cold all at once.
She pulled back when his sweater was off, her eyes skimming his chest before she put her palms on his pecs, squeezing the muscle, dragging her fingers through the hair between them.
Her eyes were wide, shiny, but she met Jax’s gaze with a directness he hadn’t expected—one that kept catching him off guard. “You have a great chest.”
He slipped his hands under her ass and pulled her to him until her thighs went around his waist. “You have a great everything. Mysteriously sexy, totally obvious gets my vote.”
Em’s smile was shy for a quick moment. Her eyes flitted away then came back to meet his, bolder now.
His cock rubbed with painful pressure against his jeans when she tilted her hips up, settling into him, adjusting her body to his. Right there he wanted to devour her—right in the second where she fit him, where all their body parts just seemed to line up—to work, he wanted to tear the scrap of flimsy right off her, flatten her on the mattr
ess and be inside her.
Drive into her until they came and save the exploration for round two. But that was the caveman in him talking. The primal reaction he was having would scare her.
It scared him.
Then there was the tiny piece of material between her legs, covering the sweetest part of Em. He’d caught a quick glimpse of it, dark hair pressed against the blue of the silky triangle, and it made his mouth water.
Her fingernails scraped over his nipple, hardening it, making his pulse rage. Jax clenched his teeth, wrapping his hands around her wrists. “This—” he fingered the strap on her nightgown “—has to go. Now.”
Her lips met his for a brief kiss before she lifted her arms up, forcing her tight nipples to press against the material. Jax skimmed his hands over her hips, taking the nightgown with him.
Shy Em’s hands went to her belly, pressing her elbows into it while bold Em disappeared. She visibly sucked in her stomach, and he hated it.
“Don’t do that.” He placed his palms on the backs of her hands, nipping at her lips. He didn’t want her to hide what she perceived were her flaws. They were what made up all the parts of Em.
And he wanted to see her.
* * *
Where was confident Em now? Where had all her “whatever” attitude run off to? “I have a small roll. Okay, maybe small is a generous word. But it’s a roll.” It was a roll, and it was an ugly roll at that—one that wouldn’t go away no matter how many crunches she did. Leftover scar tissue from the removal of her appendix. After she’d had Gareth, the weight she’d gained had formed a hideous lumpy roll just beneath her incision.
Jax smoothed her hands away until they were at her sides and her ugly roll was revealed. He bent his dark head and kissed the flesh, setting off that warm, shooting vibration in her belly.
But it didn’t make her forget the roll. It was that ugly. She bracketed his head with her hands, forcing him to look up at her. “It doesn’t help that you’re fit as a fiddle, you know.” And he was. Hard, ripply-fit. “That was a catty accusation, by the way. Not just an observation.”
Something to Talk About Page 15