There was a knock on the bathroom door.
“I’m not putting on that gay underwear again!”
A pause. “Who said anything about wearing anything?” It was said very softly and with great…intent. Jack stared at the door handle. No, he wasn’t. It was a trick. He watched the handle turn.
She stood there before him, naked as sin, and stepping forward, snapped the towel away from him.
For the first time in a year, Jack really smiled. His arms came around her, his hands skimming the satin smoothness of her back, her buttocks, coming around to cup the soft mounds of her breasts. Her pink nipples perked at his light touch, her instant response sending a jolt of heat through him. He pulled her against him, and twining his fingers through her hair, tilted her face up to his. Her blue eyes were shining, her cheeks glowing, and her dark pink mouth was parted and waiting.
He lowered his mouth, grazing his lips over hers. “You do seduction very well, Linds.”
“I've never tried to seduce anyone.”
He pulled back slightly. “How’s that?”
His mouth out of reach, she moved to his neck, biting hard enough to drive a small groan from him. She smiled in triumph. “I don’t consider it trying if there’s no doubt of success.”
He pressed his full hardness against her lower belly, and she pressed back, her hand sneaking between them to rub her thumb over his engorged tip. He took her wrist, but he didn’t stop her, couldn’t stop her. “Jesus, Linds, you’re going to have to slow down, or it’s going to be game over for me.”
“Okay,” she agreed, and her thumb fell away. Jack risked drawing breath again, to have it cut off when she gripped his length, giving him a long, slow stroke. This time he did pull her hand away and tossed her up onto the bathroom counter.
He bound her wrists behind her back with one hand, then pulled her up solidly against him with the other. His erection slid up along her inner thigh, stopping shy of her opening. “You,” he said, “are not playing fair.”
She slung her legs around him and dug her heels into the back of his thighs. “I know. But you and I have some unfinished business from Agharta, don't we?” She worked her tongue and teeth on his neck, until twisting, he crushed his mouth against hers.
“My turn first,” he murmured.
He ran his tongue over her lips, parting them and slipping in, playing his tongue over hers, pulling out to lick and pluck at her lips and then plunge back inside. Not stopping with his mouth, keeping her arms behind her back with the one hand, Jack let his other one drift to her breasts, at first rolling them sensually beneath his palm, then unexpectedly switching to sharp tugs that sucked the breath from Lindsay, and she could only resume air flow in short, hard pants.
And still he tantalized her mouth, gentle play there counterpoint to the harder workings of his hand. Wetness seeped between her legs. She arched her back, her lower torso rotating, tilting towards him to bring his erection against her softness, seeking connection.
He shifted in another direction.
“Please, Jack. Let me have you.”
His kiss deepened and hardened again, except now his mouth moved, sliding over her cheeks and down her neck, and his hand dropped away from her breast, crept over her lower belly and then a finger ran slowly, lightly up her wet crease.
Her entire body jumped, then settled into excited quivers. His finger stroked again and again, tickling her clit, teasing her opening. Her fingers wrapped around the edges of the countertop, her toes curled, her muscles tightened. Her quivers revved into shudders, and in moments she was only aware of the strong band of Jack’s arm around her middle and the orgasm growing within her.
Then her body broke loose, arching against his caress and sending bottles, brushes and scented candles crashing down from the countertop. Lindsay writhed against Jack, her climax running through her like a live wire, her body at once trying to ease away from his relentless manipulations while opening for more. Hoarse cries broke from her, siphoning off some of the unbearable tension that wracked her body. And still it coursed within her.
His eyes blazing, he shoved a finger inside her. Her muscles clamped around it and her cries broke into a long scream of release.
She sank against him, her forehead on his shoulder. “I’ve never orgasmed like that before. Well, except for the last time with you. Didn’t even know I was built for this.”
He didn’t answer. She twisted her head, to face the column of his neck. She could see his pulse beat like it was about to burst out of him. She glided her hand to the left side of his chest. She pulled away to look him in the eye.“Why is your heart beating so fast? I’m the one that just went and lost it.”
Jack stared at her bright eyes and kiss-swollen mouth. “Don’t you know how incredibly sexy it is to see you lose it? To be the one to do it?”
She frowned. He spun her around so that her feet were pressed up against the steamed mirror. He pulled her knees apart, exposing her pink, swollen sex.
“Then, find out for yourself.”
And he did it to her all over again. And before he stopped, she had left footprints all over the mirror and her screams were ringing in both of their ears.
This time when she slumped against Jack, she murmured, “Jack, I don’t think I can move.”
He settled her back against his chest, and crossing his arms in front of her, firmly cupped her breasts. “That’s too bad, Lindsay,” he said, his amber eyes glinting as she sprawled in front of the mirror. “because, as you said, you and I still have unfinished business.” To conclude his point, he pressed his erection against her buttocks.
She smiled weakly, thoughtfully and then fully.
“My turn.”
With a kick and spread of her long legs, she turned to face him, and lifting her hips, she melded her wetness tight against the hard head of his penis. Every cell in his body throbbed to enter, yet he held back.
He shakily brought his hands to her face. “Lindsay, I need…I want…”
“I know.” She rested his penis in her hand. “Watch.” She pressed her labia against his head until it crossed the muscled rim of her opening. He felt those muscles squeeze around his head. She relaxed and flexed again. He gripped her hips. She slid down another wet inch and his cock twitched. She paused and he waited, his eyes locked to where they connected. Then in a long slow glide he saw his penis disappear inside of her, and what he could no longer see he felt—the warm, moist, giving wrap of Linds. His Linds.
Their turn.
His grip on her hips tightened. He wouldn’t last long, no more than a few strokes. He lifted his gaze to her hair and eyes, and began to move inside her. He’d never done this before with her but he had a memory for it. Down in the hellhole he’d created a memory of this and now, now, it was real.
He was right. He didn’t last long and as he broke inside her, he realized it had finally happened. Something he dreamed of doing since he was a kid in an elevator. He'd made love to Linds.
* * *
They slumped to the floor, their bodies lying tangled on the cool bathroom tile. Jack had slipped from her onto his side, his arm slung across her breasts and over her waist. The two of them were wedged in the doorframe, and given any other circumstance, Lindsay would have felt uncomfortable.
Except she wasn’t. She’d had great sex with the man she loved. And yes, she loved Jack. She’d admitted that to herself in front of her bedroom mirror, readying herself with perfume and lotions while Jack was in the shower. Fixing him meant loving him. The thought scared her more than dangling five stories in the air ever could. But, like the time in the tunnels, she committed to it.
He shifted beside her and propped himself up to look at her face, his hand skimming along her sides and over her hair. His touch was so tender and intimate and—reverential, a teary lump caught in her throat. Keep it light, Lindsay ordered herself.
“I think I’ve got bruises on my butt,” She smiled. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”<
br />
“And I’m thinking that my jaw might never be right from where you head-butted me.”
She twisted to face him. “Head-butted? How could I have—?” She thought back to her wildness in front of the mirror. “Oh. Sorry.”
He gave her a swift, hard kiss. “I’m not complaining, either.” He slanted her a look, “Though I wouldn’t mind if you threw a few scraps of food my way.”
“Right. What was I thinking of? I got the order mixed up. Dinner, then sex.”
She sat upright, and Jack, still on his side, snagged his arm around her waist. Hauling her close, he gave her belly a series of nibbles that made her feel absolutely delicious. “No. You got the order right. Sex, then dinner,” His amber eyes, warm and alive, connected with hers. “Then sex for dessert.” He went back to sampling tummy appetizers.
“Okay, okay.” Lindsay laughed. “Stop before I lose track.” She ruffled his hair, then sobered. She wanted to say so much, ask so much, that she had to actually bite her tongue to hold it all back. “Do you still like Chinese?”
He grinned. “Sure. So long as I still get your share of the ginger beef in exchange for the spring rolls.”
He’d remembered. “You’re on.”
As if by mutual consent, they both kept the mood playful as they dressed (Jack in a beach towel) and ate takeout together on the couch. They couldn’t seem to resist touching each other, their hands sneaking underneath each other’s clothing or gliding along exposed skin. There came a point when Jack was tweaking Lindsay’s various body parts with chopsticks and Leo proved to be a poor defense. They fell together on the couch with Jack on top. His grin faded, his hands went slow through her hair and he gazed down at her.
“Something I got to tell you, Linds.”
This was it. She wished she’d never pushed the whole Tasha business. She had him right here, right now. She didn’t want his wife or lover or whoever she was destroying the fragile thing between her and Jack.
He lifted himself off her and sat up, setting her legs across his lap. There was an edge of need, of resolve in him that had her sitting up herself, shifting so she rested sideways against the back cushions.
He lifted himself off her and sat up, setting her legs across his lap. There was an edge of need, of resolve in him that had her sitting up herself, shifting so she rested sideways against the back cushions. “I wanted to tell you about Tasha the morning after—well, the morning after. I knew you’d find out about Tasha in Agharta and I wanted you to hear it from me first. But you brought Reggie, and then Janice showed up. I don’t want to lose my chance again.
His hand hooked around her upper leg in casual intimacy, and it felt as nice as when he’d done it by the fire in Sumptown.
“I’ve already told you how once the Moles caught me, I was tortured, drugged, dehumanized till they cut me off from everything that I knew. The goal was to break my mind, Linds, then to put it back together the way they wanted it, except I found a way to beat them. And that’s where Tasha comes in.
“I couldn’t hold onto everything they were stripping away from me. It was impossible. So I held fast to Tasha. I figured if I could just remember her and our times together, if I could focus on what our future would be like when I got out, then I could preserve the most important part of myself. So that’s what I did. I kept her alive in my mind. I held her face, her hair, her body in my thoughts. I concentrated on trying to remember her voice and her laugh. I concentrated so hard that at times I swear I could hear her. I really believed—as naive as it sounds—that so long as I got out of those damn tunnels everything would be all right.”
His hand tightened on the flesh above her knee.
“So what happened?”
“When I found my way back to her, I—I didn’t recognize her. She knew who I was, but I couldn’t believe it was her. She had to show me pictures of us together before I could accept it. The thing is, she had dark hair and these big brown eyes. She was beautiful in her own way, but she hadn’t been what had kept me sane.”
He gave her an almost desperate look, his grip on her leg now hard. “My mind got twisted up with the time we were in the tunnels together, with how we’d been friends so many years before. The name, Tasha, stuck with me, but the woman I made it out for had blue eyes and blonde hair, loved Chinese takeout and was scared of heights.”
His eyes stayed locked on hers, and she could see he was trying to gauge her reaction. She didn’t know what to think or how to feel. She felt happy, vindicated, frustrated, confused. All churned in a volatile brew out of which she extracted one question. “This real Tasha, were you were married to her?”
He bowed his head and seemed to notice for the first time what he was doing to her leg. He let go, his fingers smoothing the redness there. “Yes. When I went down after Reggie we’d been married three months. When I made it back two years later, she was with another man. In fairness to her, she’d thought I was dead, though I wasn’t even out of hospital before she was handing me divorce papers.”
Lindsay’s heart constricted. Hadn’t he told her he would only marry for love?
“She felt bad. By then, it didn’t matter. She’d moved on. We’d both moved on. Both in love with different people, only mine was imaginary.”
“I wasn’t imaginary, Jack,” she said softly.
“You weren’t. But the woman in my mind wasn’t you, Linds. She was a mix of memories and fantasies of which you were only a part. The Tasha I’d created was my soul mate, and as crazy as it sounds, I loved her with everything that I had. We’d explored the undergrounds of countless cities together. Shared every interest. Every desire. She was the best of you and my wife and maybe a dozen other people, all wrapped up into an ideal.”
He was telling her the truth, opening up as she’d wanted him to. Talking was good for Jack. Tension was evaporating from him, his speech was less wooden and harsh with each word as he remembered Tasha. The memory of her was healing him, fixing him.
And killing her. How could she compete with perfection? She lifted her legs off his lap, curled them underneath her. It was too much to know that it wasn’t really her he was thinking about when he touched her. He watched her withdrawal and he bent forward into the space she’d occupied, his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging empty.
“I have a confession, Linds.”
Stop, Jack. Please.
“I once loved you.”
Once.
Jack gave her an apologetic smile. “When I first came back to New York five years ago, I looked you up. I was still in love with you. I figured if I saw you, maybe it wouldn’t be too late for us to have something together. I phoned your place, but you weren’t home. I talked to Seline. She told me you were away on your honeymoon. That kind of ended that.”
Yes, it had.
“I met Tasha a few months later. She was pretty. A Russian girl with the cutest accent. And she’d been down in the Moscow underground. Organized raves in abandoned catacombs and the like. I figured since you were taken, I wasn’t going to find anyone better, so I let myself fall in love.
“It was never the same as what I once felt for you, Linds. Never as strong. Not until the woman in my mind did I ever love anyone as much as I’d loved you.
He paused, waiting for her to speak. He wanted her to accept what he’d said. To understand that with her, he was reliving the Tasha of his imagination. She, the warm, living person, was a substitute for an imaginary savior.
“I know this isn’t fair,” he said quietly.
No, it wasn’t. And even more unfair was that he still expected her to fix him. To be that angel which had lent him the strength to struggle free of the abyss. But how could she be someone that had never existed in the first place? How could he ever love her back when she was a shadow of the mythical Tasha? He wanted forgiveness, understanding, acceptance. And after all he’d risked for her, she knew she needed to give it to him.
“Do you hate me?” he asked.
She bit her lip,
hard. “How could I?”
“Because I told you the truth. An ugly one. An unjust one. You deserve better.”
“I don’t hate you, Jack.”
“You want me to leave?” He pressed his fists into the cushions, ready to push off.
“You can’t go. Your clothes are still in the wash.”
He halted. “That the only thing keeping me here, Linds? Wet clothes?”
She looked away. “I don’t hate you, Jack.”
“So you said.”
“I don’t. I….”
“It’s okay, Linds. I dumped a whole lot on you. Things I’ve been holding onto for a year. I don’t expect you to have an answer right now.”
“An answer? To what?”
He stared at her. “What do you mean? My whole story was one big question.”
“I don’t understand.”
He swept his arm about her place. “Linds, you’ve got everything, and I can’t bring anything to it. I don’t have a job, I’m broke, my place is a dump, I’m half-crazy, I’ve got more connections below ground than above…the only thing I can give you is the hope of finding Seline.”
Hope. He had no idea. No idea how that hope had taken away her fear and desperation, had created new hopes. He had no idea what a gift that was. Yet, for him, hope had turned traitor. Had raised him to the surface and then deserted him. And given him nothing else. Denied, he still sought to give it to others.
He kept on. “And there’s still hope, Linds. If we can get Tocat’s smuggler on side with us, we can get back to the place where I escaped, and I know The Pits better than any person alive. The Moles are dangerous as hell, but they’re not omniscient. We could pull this off. We really could, Linds.”
She had to stop him. “I know that, Jack. What I don’t know is your question.”
Sunlight broke through the windows onto Jack’s muscled back, pale and hunched. He flinched and darted a look behind him.
“Still not used to the light?” she said softly.
Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) Page 22