by Lauren Dane
He shook his head, amused and delighted. He should have known it would be a matter of days before it was as if there’d never been time apart.
There was a bright, beautiful love within her. She brought it into every place she went. Into the lives of each person she was around. It made him want to bask in her.
So he did. One brow cocked her way, he tipped his chin to answer her question about underwear. “I want you totally bare.”
She hooked her fingers at the sides of her tiny underpants and whipped them from her body.
“Beautiful.” And she was. Strong and soft all at once. Smart and serious. Ridiculous and whimsical. Protective. Fierce. A total marshmallow. All contradictions that mixed up to make her perfect.
She blushed with a smile edged with a shyness that wasn’t in any way calculated.
“You too.”
He’d taken his tie off long ago, but the jingle of his belt buckle caught her attention as he undid his pants and pulled his cock free.
One-armed, he hauled her up to the vanity counter in the area outside the bathroom. “Perfect height,” he muttered as he traced his fingers through her pussy, already hot and slick.
Jessi grabbed his cock, scooting closer to the edge to touch, to drag the head against her clit and down, circling back up. He had to clench his jaw to keep his control.
“This condom business needs to end as soon as possible,” he muttered.
“I want you in my mouth,” she said.
“I’ll be there soon enough. Right now I want inside your pussy. But you can pout if you like.”
She did, but this time there was amusement there too. “Fuck me then!”
He flicked his gaze to her face as he rolled the condom onto his dick. “I think we need to remember who gives the orders around here.”
Her moan and then the way she caught her bottom lip between her teeth made it a lot more difficult to hold on to his control.
“There we go.” He drew a palm over her head to her neck where he shifted to collar her throat as he thrust into her body slowly but surely. “Trust me to give you what you need,” Adam told her.
She managed to nod twice but she went a little blurry when he traced a fingertip over her clit as he set a pace that kept them both dancing on the edge.
Her nails dug into his side, urging him on. He wanted that. Wanted her to mark him too.
“Harder,” he nearly snarled as he pulled her even closer.
Jessi was so flushed, so prettily pink and fuckdrunk that she took a bit to register what he’d said. Confusion led him down to that sweet, sexy O she’d been making with her lips. Drove him to possess it for a hard kiss.
Pressing himself into her nails on his right side he repeated, “Harder.”
She dug in until it stung, then with an annoyed sound, she pulled his shirt free, a few buttons popping off.
“I can fix that,” she said before she dug her nails back in, this time against his bare skin.
Jesus. The power she held. She couldn’t possibly know how much. And yet, he understood she’d never use it against him. Even after he’d left, she had never done anything but love him.
Her inner walls squeezed and fluttered as he brought her closer to climax with that fingertip on her clit.
That humbled him. The way she loved him and Mick had kept him from drifting too far down the rabbit hole of pleasured abandon he’d launched himself into after they’d all broken up.
Control had been a hard-won thing. But he’d had to lose it before he truly found it.
Control over this beautiful creature was the most glittering, enticing thing he’d every imagined. Everything he’d done and felt up until that moment had been a dress rehearsal.
“Very soon I’m going to take you from behind right here. I’m going to have you bound, and I’ll be in charge of everything, even your balance,” he growled into her mouth as he kissed her.
“Yes,” she sighed and he stole the sound, taking it into himself like air. “So close.” The words a plea.
He pressed that fingertip over her a little harder, enough that she clamped around his dick as orgasm rode her. The legs wrapped around his thighs shifted, her calves hooked up over his ass, urging him closer, deeper, harder.
He muttered a curse as he came so hard his teeth hurt.
Downstairs the door opened and Mick called out a greeting.
That made Jessi laugh as she kissed Adam’s forehead.
CHAPTER
Eleven
A few nights later, Mick got ready to go to his sister-in-law’s birthday dinner, and Jessi tried not to show how nervous she was for him. Mick didn’t need the weight of her worry on top of whatever he was struggling with.
“I’m sorry. I should have insisted they invite you both,” Mick said to her.
“It’s a birthday dinner for someone I don’t even know. Of course you shouldn’t have. Unless you need allies there. Do you?”
Adam sighed and she turned his way. He gave her the be quiet look.
“What? Am I supposed to pretend that’s not an issue? I thought we all promised to stop that.”
Mick snickered. “It’s okay, Jess.” He smiled down at her before he stole a long, drugging kiss that left her dreamy. “John and I have come a long way over the years. He’s in my corner. I’m not going to hide you and Adam. But it probably won’t come up. It’s not the time.”
It wasn’t. Which was why she thought it best for her and Adam not to be at the dinner. Things were tense enough when it came to Mick’s family, the last thing Jessi wanted was to ruin his sister-in-law’s birthday dinner.
She gave a last, critical look at Mick’s shirt. She needed to make him some nice, tailored shirts. Maybe for his birthday.
He tried not to smile but he couldn’t help it. His grin brought one of hers in answer. “Next time you lose buttons or have a tear, bring it to me and I’ll fix it.” She smoothed a hand down the front, needing to reassure them both.
“If it’s wrong to get hard while watching you mend shit, I’m the wrongest dude who ever wronged.” Mick winked and then kissed her forehead. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”
“I might be at my parents’ house,” Jessi said before tiptoeing up to grab another kiss.
“I’d much rather be there,” Mick said as he frowned slightly.
“They’d much rather you be there too. Have a good time. Let your family love you in their own way. But. If they hurt you, they’ll have me to contend with.” Jessi meant that with all her heart.
“You know where we are if you need us,” Adam said as he came to stand with Jessi, his arm around her shoulder.
“If you’re done and we’re still at my mom and dad’s, it’s not like you can’t show up late.” In fact, her mother would love it.
“The dinner is at John and Kate’s place, but I may be in dire need of your mom’s snickerdoodles after tonight.”
“I’ll bring you home some just in case you don’t make it by.” Jessi hugged Mick, trying to pour all her love and calm into the embrace.
He hugged Adam and then headed out while she watched from the front window.
Adam spoke, startling her. “I hate them.”
She nodded.
“You’re not going to admonish me to try to love them?”
“If I did it’d be about you, not them. But I’m not. Because they deserve to be disliked.” She’d tried for years upon years to understand them. To find a way to get them to see what they were doing to Mick.
It hadn’t worked.
And then, after years of cold, severe condescension, it had exploded and she’d been…
Jessi shook her head to stop that train of thought.
“I sort of feel bad for them now.” Adam pulled her close, wrapping her in his arms, so she snuggled against him, taking comfort. “I’d hate my life if you didn’t like me.”
“Everyone thinks I’m nice. But I’m not.”
He laughed. “Shut up. You’re totally nice. It
doesn’t mean you don’t have a temper or that you aren’t protective. You have a spectacular temper and are ferocious in defense of those you love.”
Okay, well, that was a pretty good save.
“I’d love to be grr, scary like you.” She tried to scowl, but it apparently didn’t work very well because he snickered. Then she thought about the woman at the door and he nodded, approvingly.
“There you go. Clearly you’re thinking of something very unpleasant.”
Hmpf. If he only knew.
“This is making me horny. We need to go now or we’ll never leave.”
“Adam, everything makes you horny. It’s like your superpower.”
His grin went dirty at the edges. She sighed happily at the way he looked at her.
“I can’t get enough of you. But that doesn’t seem to scare you.”
She heard the vulnerability there, the wonder. “The only thing about you that scares me is you walking away. That you want me all the time? That’s not scary at all.”
“The things I want to do to you…” He nearly snarled.
“Are all pretty damned fun so far as I’ve experienced.”
“I want to rut. I want to mark you. Bruise your skin. Bite you. I want to see rope marks in your flesh. I want my come all over your tits. Your face. I want to debauch you. You should be afraid.”
But she wasn’t.
Her heart pounded in her ears as her body heated, her pussy slick and ready for any and all of those things.
“I’m not afraid of what you want to do to me. I’m not going to break. I want everything. Dirty, filthy parts as well as the way you put gas in my car without my even asking you to.”
Jessi didn’t want him holding back.
Which may have been a wee bit hypocritical because she hadn’t told him or Mick about the stuff with Mick’s dad, and she’d promised her mother.
He knew there was something wrong and caught her chin to give her a look. “What?”
“It’s not any of the sex stuff. Just something I remembered.”
“One of your most charming attributes is that you’re a shitty liar.” He took her hand and pulled her to the living room couch. Keeping her close.
“I’m not lying!”
“Neither of us is a lawyer, love. Stop hopping around the subject and just tell me. You can say anything to me. You know that.”
“It’s not about you.” And probably she should tell them both at the same time. But that sounded overwhelming. They’d both have feelings about it. If she told them separately they’d be upset. If she told them together they’d be upset too.
“All right. Who is it about? You know I’m not letting up now so you might as well just tell me.”
“It has to be when we’re all three together.” That would stave the inevitable off for a while longer. “Don’t look at me like that. Mick will be upset if I tell you first, and it’ll be hard enough to share, I don’t want to do it twice.”
“You see, now I’m angry. Not at you, though I have to say I’m annoyed you haven’t told us this whatever it is yet.”
That scared her. And then anger hit that she’d been scared.
She shoved off his lap and began to pace. “You don’t get to do that.”
Adam looked her over carefully, one palm up. “I know what I’m mad about. But not what you’re mad about. Want to share?”
She wrung her hands a few times. She’d never really hesitated in telling them how she felt before. But things were different now. It’d left her a little shell-shocked, she supposed.
“What are you mad about then?” She turned the question back onto him.
“If it concerns both Mick and me, it’s probably something more than a few days old. And whatever it is, it’s got you all worked up and jumpy. It takes a lot to get you so shaken up. I don’t like seeing you freaked-out and jittery. I’m angry someone has done something to you that’s created this. I’m angry at myself for not protecting you from whatever it was. Hell, maybe it’s me. But you said it wasn’t. So I don’t get to do what, angel?” He stood, approaching her slowly. “It tears me up to see you upset. Let me fix it.”
It was the last two sentences that helped her get past her anxiety enough to speak once more.
“I’m afraid sometimes that when you get mad, you’ll get mad enough to leave. Again. It’s stupid. I know. But it just felt… for a brief moment… like a threat.”
Adam sucked in a breath at how small her voice had gotten. At the pain in the words.
Pain he’d put there.
“I’m not leaving. And I’d never use that to make you do what I wanted you to do.”
“I know. But I just had a moment.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry I’ve given you more than enough reason to doubt me. But I want you to tell me when I do things that make you feel bad. I can’t—we can’t—fix things going forward unless we’re being honest.”
“I don’t see the point in hurting anyone’s feelings. What’s done is done.”
Of course that’d be her concern. Their feelings, not hers.
“If only reality worked the way you wanted it to, eh, Jess?”
She frowned at him. “Stop poking fun.”
“I’m not poking fun. Not right at this very moment anyway. It’s not all in the past. Everything we’ve done to one another has brought us here. We can’t pretend it away.”
“All right. Point taken. I’ll tell you and Mick about the thing when it’s right.”
Adam scoffed. “You’re going to avoid telling us until you can no longer hide from it.”
She smirked. “Well, you know I have something to tell you. It’s not like you’re going to let me avoid it.”
Oh, how he loved it when she got saucy like this. When she provoked him on purpose, teasing him right straight between her thighs, where he’d rather be than anywhere else on earth.
He wanted her. Every moment of the day. Just looking at her, hearing her voice or scenting her on the sheets made him ache to possess. Claim.
But they were due at the Franklins’, and as much as he wanted to fuck Jessi silly, he never wanted to be the one to put disappointment on Addie’s face. The Franklin women were his best girls.
“You get me all worked up, and I can’t take you right now. Torture, that’s what it is. Come on. Your mother is going to start calling in less than ten minutes.”
The Franklins’ house was an anchor for Adam. A place he’d spent pretty much every free moment he could once he’d met Jessi in high school and she’d drawn him into her life and her family.
It sat on a rise as they approached up the newly paved driveway. A big front porch. Lots of trees. The tree house where he stole his first kiss from Jessi still existed. Still made him smile every time he saw it.
Lights blazed through the windows, and once they’d parked and headed toward the back door, he caught sight of activity inside.
“Full house tonight, looks like,” Jessi said.
He took her hand and she paused, turning his way with a smile. So joyous to be with her family. The Franklins were the real deal. Their kindness and easy affection weren’t manufactured.
If they told you they loved you, they meant it. It meant their door was open to you at any time. There’d always be a plate at their table for you. The kind of people who offered to take you to the airport and help move.
They gave him a family, and even when he and Jessi had broken up, he’d come to this place at least monthly.
“Is everything all right?” Jessi asked.
He wanted to be worthy of the place they’d made for him in their family. Hated the thought that if they came in together, he’d remind them of the years when Jessi had lived three hours south. Because she’d run from him and the hurt.
“In the time we were apart, they never made me feel unwelcome.”
“Of course not. They love you.”
Adam loved the surprise on her face at the very idea of her parents making him feel unwelco
me.
“What was between us—how it broke—it didn’t have anything to do with your connection to them. If you’d have harmed me or betrayed me in some way they’d have poisoned your potato salad, though.” Jessi winked.
The sound of music and laughter rose as they got to the door and then went inside.
Immediately the fantastic chaos that was the Franklin household reached out to embrace Adam and Jessi with hugs, exclamations of welcome, and the promise of food.
James Franklin pushed the ugliest pair of glasses Adam had ever seen back up his nose, a smile on his face as he headed to Jessi.
“There’s my baby.” He dwarfed her in a hug before he twirled her out and then back. “Charlie’s in the garage with your mom.”
Jessi clapped her hands at hearing her big sister’s name. She hugged her father one last time, squeezed Adam’s hand, and scampered out the door leading to the garage.
James gave Adam a hug. “Come help me bring chairs up from the basement.”
They never treated him like a guest. Adam was family, which meant they put him to work like they would any of their kids.
“You broke your glasses again, didn’t you?” Adam asked, hiding a grin.
“Lost ’em. Addie made me order two pairs this time. These are just fine, but she gets mighty annoyed when I wear them.”
Adam laughed. “You do that on purpose!”
James winked as he handed over the chairs to take up to the dining room. “Gotta keep her interested. Woman like my Addie, well, she’d get bored if you didn’t poke at her now and again.”
“Must be where Jessi gets it,” Adam muttered.
James laughed. “That’s exactly where she gets it. Now, move your butt, boy.”
Once they got back upstairs Jessi had her nephew on one hip while she handed him bits of apple and some cheese.
“Oh good. Hi, sweetheart.” Addie kissed Adam’s cheek before she indicated where she wanted the chairs.
“Hey, Adam.” Charlie came in with a platter of food.
He took it from her, accepting her one-armed hug. Jessi’s big sister had the same chilled-out demeanor as her father. A wisdom and humor that made most everyone want to be around her.