Loving Jackson (Wishing Well, Texas Book 10)

by Melanie Shawn

  I shifted my knee, bringing my lower body in line with hers. The engorged head of my cock pressed against the wet heat of her sex and twitched in anticipation of the paradise that awaited me. I moved a hand between our bodies and gripped my rock-hard shaft, after I pushed my balls—which were tucked so tightly up against my body I was surprised I hadn’t already popped off—down in hopes to prolong the experience.

  With the restraint of a saint, I ran my tip along Josie’s wet slit. When my finger had been inside of her, her inner walls had gripped my digit like a finger trap. I knew just how fucking tight she was, and that only made me harder and larger as all the blood in my body filled my erection to a near-painful point.

  Her thighs spread wider, her breaths got shorter and shorter, and her seam pulsed like her body was actively trying to pull me inside of her. “Please.” Her demand was laced with desperation. “I want to feel you. I need you.”

  Hearing her words caused an explosion of tingles to erupt in my southern region. My nostrils flared as I slowly pushed my swollen tip inside of her. Inch by excruciatingly pleasurable inch, her body clamped onto me with a fist-like grip as I stretched her out.

  Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead and the back of my neck. Every muscle and fiber in my body was infused with blissful pleasure. It wasn’t just the actual physical sensation either. It was the knowledge of how special this moment was. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve the gift of trust that she’d given me, but damn if I wasn’t going to honor, enjoy, and maximize the experience for her.

  The sting of her nails scratching my back only added to the incredible sensations flowing through me like white water rapids. By the time I filled her to the brim, my release was so close, if she moved even one muscle, this would be over. I stilled, hoping to get myself under some modicum of control.

  “You feel so good, so big and hard,” she rasped.

  When I felt her hips tilt, I knew that the time I needed to back away from the edge of the orgasm cliff had run out. Hoping that we’d be able to jump off it together, I gripped her hip with one hand and rested on my forearm for leverage.

  I started to move, pulling out and pushing inside of her, letting my lips brush against her outer ear, as I whispered dirty things to her each time I thrust into her.

  “You’re so tight.”

  Thrust.

  “I love being inside of you.”

  Thrust.

  “I want you to take me. All of me.”

  Thrust.

  “You tasted so good, so sweet when I was licking your come off your nipple.”

  Thrust.

  “I’m going to make you come so hard.”

  Thrust.

  “Every time you sit down tomorrow, or take a step, your body’s going to remind you of this. Of me being inside of you.”

  Thrust.

  “I’m going to make you sore, and it’s gonna feel so good you’re gonna want to fuck me again.”

  That last declaration did the trick. Her legs began to tremble, and her stomach contracted as her inner walls clamped down around me.

  “Fuck,” I gritted out as I drove into her hard, one last time.

  I shut my eyes tight as my climax crashed into me with the velocity of a hundred-foot wave breaking onto the shore. It filled me with a pleasure I’d never felt before. It was all-consuming and I was happily drowning in it.

  It went on and on, and when I finally got my head back above water, I opened my eyes and found Josie’s heavy-lidded eyes staring up at me.

  “You’re so…beautiful,” she said in awe.

  First cute, and then beautiful? Those weren’t words that I’d ever been described with, and I wondered if Josie saw something in me that no one else did.

  “I think that’s supposed to be my line.” I brushed the hair off of her face.

  “No,” she grinned. “I mean when you were…you know…coming.”

  That was also a new compliment for me. “It’s nice to know I have good O-face.”

  She chuckled and the vibration of it caused my dick to twitch with one final spurt of release.

  This woman yielded an unprecedented sexual power over me. I’d almost come from her just staring at me, and she could tease an aftershock from me. And it wasn’t just uncharted physical waters I was trying to navigate. I would say that the emotional terrain was equally, if not more, terrifying. I knew I should be scared. The right thing to do was to nip whatever this was in the bud before I got any more lost at sea.

  But, as I looked into Josie’s eyes, fear was the last emotion I was feeling. If anything, it was the opposite. I wanted to cement this relationship. I wanted to lock her down and make her mine officially.

  In the back of my mind, I knew how crazy that was. Nothing could come from this. Long distance relationships didn’t work, and besides, she deserved better than a guy who travelled for work months, even years, at a time.

  She deserved someone to share her life with. To build a future and family with. And since I knew I couldn’t be that man, the right thing to do was to walk away now. I should go back to my room. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stay here tonight. If I did, I feared I might do something stupid like declare my undying love for her.

  I started to push up but her arms held me firmly in place.

  “I like how you feel on top of me,” she whispered.

  That was all it took for my resolve to crumble like a house of cards in a tornado. I gripped her hip tighter as I nuzzled my face into the side of her neck.

  “Can we…um…” her voice trailed off.

  My dick began throbbing back to life at her unspoken request. “Can we what?”

  “You said that I’d be so sore I’d want you to,” she swallowed hard. “fuck me again. I don’t know if I’m sore but even if I’m not can we stil—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence because I rose up and covered her mouth with my own. As soon as our lips touched, I knew that I wouldn’t be going anywhere. At least not tonight. I was a man of my word, and I’d told her I was going to make her sore, and that’s exactly what I planned on doing.

  Chapter 18

  Josie

  “Darling, the comfort zone is the greatest scapegoat of existence. To stay there is an insult to the gift of being alive.”

  ~ Josephine Grace Clarke

  Today was a big day. I should’ve been exhausted since I’d only gotten two hours of sleep the night before, but I wasn’t. If anything, I was too amped up. I couldn’t sit still. My nerves were all over the place, wreaking havoc on my ability to concentrate. I blamed the day ahead for my current state of unrest and not the night before. If I were being honest, it was probably both.

  In the early hours of the morning, we’d flown into O’Hare just as the sun was rising, got our rental car, and we were now on Highway 90 heading to Harper’s Crossing, a suburb of Chicago. Today, we were going to two different towns and had multiple interviews to conduct. Then tonight, we were having dinner with Jackson’s cousin.

  My interview subjects were people that Mia had met through a reality show she’d worked on a few years ago called Fairytale Love. These interviews were what Mia had said were going to be the “heart of the show”. I knew that I needed to get them right. I had to capture the magic that she’d witnessed when she’d met these people.

  The first interview was with Colonel James Hunter, a WWII vet who had married his childhood sweetheart. The two were married for over sixty years before she passed away. Mia had met him at the wedding of two of the contestants on Fairytale Love, Becca and Brian. Mia said that meeting Colonel Hunter was basically like meeting real-life Noah from The Notebook. That movie was our go-to Friday and Saturday night activity in college. We must’ve watched it over a hundred times.

  The second interview was with a couple that she’d met while filming Fairytale Love in Whisper Lake. They were the parents of the makeup artist for the show, Jessa. John and Bonnie Myers were apparently hashtag relationshi
p goals. Mia said that seeing the two of them together had given her hope that real love existed.

  And then there was the dinner tonight. Jackson’s cousin Austin Stone happened to live in Whisper Lake, so we were going to be having dinner at his house. That had sounded great to me before I’d spent the night with Jackson. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  I was doing my best to concentrate on my notes for the first interview of the day since we’d be arriving in Harper’s Crossing in about fifteen minutes, but I was finding it a lot more difficult than it should be.

  All I could think about was the night before. It felt like a dream. When I’d woken up to find myself alone in bed, my first thought was that it had been just that—a wild sex dream. But when I saw that there was a cup of green tea and a protein bar sitting on my nightstand with a note saying that Jackson would meet me in the lobby, I knew that he’d been there.

  And when I’d reached for the tea and felt all the places in my body that were sore, just as he’d promised, I was certain that the night’s activities had not been just my imagination.

  Keeping my head cast down, I scrolled through my iPad, going over my questions. Before I knew it, though, I cut my eyes to the side and snuck a peek at Jackson, who was driving. His attention was focused on the road in front of him and my eyes drifted to his neck, the neck that I’d kissed and licked. My cheeks heated as vivid memories of the night before started playing in my mind, and I shot my gaze back down to my iPad.

  I couldn’t believe that it had happened between us. I’d never imagined that I’d be so unprofessional and bold. Still, as bad as it was that we’d crossed that line the night before, I honestly couldn’t say that I regretted it, which was the most surprising thing of all.

  I’d never expected that sex could be that…intimate. I realized, even as I had the thought, that it sounded ridiculous. But being with Jackson was the closest I’d ever felt to someone, and not just physically—although the physical part had been amazing. It was as if our souls were as connected as our bodies had been, and that was saying something.

  It was so different than my first time with Gio. It felt like Jackson hadn’t just read my body, he’d read my mind. He did everything right, it was perfect. The way he looked at me, the things he said to me, the way he touched me. Maybe it was because I was older, or maybe it was just because Jackson was that good.

  “You’re really good,” Jackson commented out of the blue.

  Or maybe it wasn’t out of the blue. Had I said he was good out loud? I must have.

  My cheeks heated as I looked up at him, hoping that I’d misheard him. “What?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone as natural as you are.”

  I could tell from his tone that he’d meant that as a compliment but for some reason it felt like an impersonal thing to say about something so…personal. “Um…thanks.”

  “I really mean it. You’re real. Authentic. The way you connect with people, you really care, and it shows. I’ve never worked with anyone who puts people so at ease during interviews.”

  “Oh, interviews.” I was relieved that was what he was talking about. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, interviews.” His eyes sliced to me before looking back at the road. “What did you think I was talking about?”

  “Nothing.” I looked back down at my iPad and stared at the words on the screen, but I wasn’t reading any of them. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I prayed that he would just drop it.

  “Did you think I was talking about last night?” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Um…” Before I had to figure out how to answer that my phone rang. When I looked at the screen, I saw my grandmother’s face and wanted to kiss it for saving me. I hit answer. “Hello.”

  “Darling, you look flushed. Did you forget to put on your sunscreen? You know what I’ve told you about the sun with your fair complexion. You know we porcelain skinned princesses must take extra precautions to avoid wrinkles.” She whispered the word as if speaking it out loud would cause them to appear like Candyman.

  “I was out in the sun yesterday.” I omitted that I had lathered myself with SPF 50 hoping that Jackson would accept my explanation that my face was bright red due to overexposure and not because I thought he’d been telling me I was a natural at sex.

  “Are you with your gentleman friend?”

  “He’s not—”

  “Hello, Miss Clarke,” Jackson spoke over me.

  His deep voice had my cheeks flushing even more.

  “Oh good! I have a question for him.” My grandmother leaned toward the camera and tilted her head, like she’d be able to see him somehow. “Where are you, Jackson dear?”

  “He’s driving,” I explained.

  “Well, I’m not,” she shot back. “Let me see him.”

  Reluctantly, I turned the phone toward Jackson.

  “Oh yes, that’s a much better view,” my grandmother commented.

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

  “Oh darling, you’re beautiful, but looking at you is like looking in a mirror.”

  Fair enough.

  “So, Jackson, tell me, what turns you on?”

  “Grandmother?!” I shrieked and flipped the phone back toward me.

  She shooed me away with her hand. “It’s for research, darling. You are the one that sent the question to me.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I had sent her questions for her next show on the drive back to Savannah yesterday, and one of them had been from a woman wondering what turned men on, but never in a million years had I expected her to pose the question to Jackson.

  “Now stop being so repressed, darling, and let the handsome young man answer.”

  It was always a fun day when your grandmother calls you repressed in front of a man you’d just spent the night with, after asking him what turned him on. If it were anyone else, I would’ve disconnected the call. But, since it was my grandmother, that wasn’t an option.

  I was still thinking of a way out when the navigation system came through the speakers. “Your destination is on the left.”

  “I’m sorry but we have to go, Grandmother.”

  “Oh nonsense, this will only take a minute. If not for your rude interruption I’d already have my answer.”

  I glanced up at him and saw that his mouth was turned up in the half-grin that I was so fond of. He didn’t look nearly as stressed as I was about this whole thing as he pulled into a parking spot.

  Not sure what else to do, I turned the phone toward him as I mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh good. There you are. Now Jackson, what qualities in a woman turn you on? Or man,” my grandmother qualified. “Although I don’t get the feeling that is the way your bread is buttered, but who knows these days.”

  “Well, ma’am, that’s not an easy question to answer. It’s not as simple as listing generic qualities that I find attractive. For me, it has to do with the individual woman.”

  His eyes shifted to mine and my breath caught in my throat. I hoped that my grandmother wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t looking directly at the camera since she wasn’t wearing her glasses and I was holding the phone beside my face.

  He held my gaze as he said, “It’s the way she stumbles over her words when she’s flustered, the way her eyes widen when I say something that surprises her, it’s the way her smile makes me feel like I can conquer the world, it’s the way that her hair smells like a summer day.” I was pretty sure he was talking about me, but I truly was out of practice with flirting and foreplay, so I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. “It’s the way she makes everyone around her feel seen and special, it’s the way she takes my breath away every time I see her, it’s the way she blushes when she accidently sends the wrong text or misunderstands a conversation.”

  Yep. He was definitely talking about me. Panic rose in me that she was going to figure that out and get the wrong idea about what this was.

  I flipped the phone around, so the screen was faci
ng me. “Okay, we have to go, Grandmother.”

  “Oh my, those are very specific examples, young man.” My grandmother was fanning herself. “The woman you speak of is a very lucky lady.”

  “I think I’m the lucky one,” Jackson replied. I could still feel his stare on me.

  “I love you. I’ll talk to you later.” I quickly disconnected the call.

  As soon as I hung up the phone, I looked over at him and my heart fluttered at the tenderness in his stare. It turned out my grandmother wasn’t the only one I had to worry about getting the wrong idea because when I looked in his eyes, I saw the future. I needed to be realistic about the situation.

  Every day I read emails of women writing into the show asking my grandmother for relationship advice when it was clear that the male in the equation had no interest in a relationship. I’d felt sorry for those women and now I was turning into one.

  I needed to remind myself that no matter what this felt like, last night was just that, it was one night. Nothing more.

  Jackson was leaving the country in another week or so and even if he wasn’t, I’d overheard him telling his brother JJ that he didn’t want anything serious with anyone.

  Even someone that takes his breath away every time he sees her? the little voice in the back of my head piped up.

  Yes, little voice, even her.

  Chapter 19

  Jackson

  “Great loves are like the hiccups, darling. You never know when you’ll get them or how long they’ll last.”

  ~ Josephine Grace Clarke

  The town of Harper’s Crossing was no less charming than Firefly Island. In all my travels around the globe, I was beginning to discover that some of the greatest treasures were right here in my backyard.

  As much as I’d loved exploring the world, I was starting to think that I missed being home. And that wasn’t the only thing I’d come to realize. Before I met Josie, I’d never thought there was anything missing, but now I knew that wasn’t true. I was missing inspiration and I’d found it in her. For the first time in my life, I had a muse.