Jax picked up and placed Pickett in the high bed against the pillows piled up against the headboard. He had imagined her here so many times, all peach and gold, against the sensual excess of pillows. Triumph, hot and bright, throbbed through him, merging with the insistence of his arousal.
Yes. This was right. All the excellent reasons for resisting the attraction vanished as if they had never existed.
He wanted her. He wanted all of her. He would have her.
Her eyes, almost indigo with arousal, flared as she read his intent.
His skin gleamed in the lamplight. He leaned across her, his weight supported on one arm, muscles bunched. The brown forearm next to her hip was lightly covered with straight, silky black hair. She wanted to sleek her hand across it, as you would a cat, and feel the ripples of sinew and muscle flex beneath.
“You are so beautiful.”
Heat flared in his fog-colored eyes, but one corner of his mouth kicked up, slightly. “I was supposed to say that.”
“And so big.”
“You know I won’t hurt you, don’t you? I won’t do anything to you that you don’t want.” His touch was as light as sunshine as he stroked her breast, her belly, and finally rested on the golden curls that covered her mound. “I know how to be careful.”
“You are a dangerous man.”
“But not to you,” he acknowledged, stroking both hands back up her torso, cupping her breasts, kneading them with firm strokes. “Never to you.” He bent his head to take the nipple into his mouth.
He suckled strongly, continuing to knead the underside.
The sudden surge of pleasure that radiated from his mouth across her body to the juncture of her thighs brought Pickett arching off the bed, digging her fingers into his shoulders to keep the contact.
“Oh. You like that?” He lavished her other breast with the same attention until Pickett could hear funny little sounds coming through her throat. Sounds that cried of the exquisite sense of swelling fullness deep, deep in a place that paradoxically longed to be filled
“Tell me what else you like, Pickett.” Jax nibbled kisses across her ribcage, down the roundness of her belly. “Tell me.”
“I like that.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“What I did before wasn’t … this. If that was sex, this isn’t. If you know what I mean.”
Jax sat back on his heels and contemplated the woman stretched before him on the mounded pillows. Her lips were swollen and scarlet from his kisses. Her round breasts with their large golden-brown aureoles, now coral-tipped, heaved with arousal. Her eyes were the deep blue of the ocean at thirty-five feet.
Jax had always been a generous lover. He liked sex too much not to enjoy his partner’s participation as well as his own. That’s what he meant when he’d asked the question. But just like Pickett could, she managed with one sentence to make him reevaluate all his plans.
She was, as he suspected, deeply sensually aware, and easy to arouse. They could just go on and she would be satisfied, he’d see to it. But for him that wouldn’t be enough.
When they were done he wanted her to know what she liked.
He wanted her to know that what she liked was him. His imprint on every inch of her body. No matter who came after him she was always going to define her experience by his lovemaking.
The thought of anyone else seeing her like this, touching her the way he was, annoyed him. He dismissed the idea before it could distract him. They weren’t here now. He was. For now she was his.
“Does it matter so much, what I like?” That wary look was creeping back, shadowing her brow. “Am I doing things wrong?”
He had been looking at her, thinking, too long. She never stopped thinking, and damn if she wasn’t making him do it too.
“No, sweetheart, you’re not doing anything wrong, and it does matter what you like. I want to please you.” That was the palest possible interpretation of what he wanted but didn’t know the words to tell her. “I want to make it wonderful for you and I want to learn you, so that the next time we make love, it will be ten times better.”
Pickett tilted her golden head. “We’re going to do this again?”
“Oh yeah.”
She sat up and began shoving pillows right and left, pushing them aside and to the floor. On all fours, the delicious, pale globes of her bottom in the air, she tugged back the covers. Then she lay back down and with a smile as old as Eve held out her arms. “Come here.”
He rose over her, caging her with arms like tree limbs, white teeth gleaming through a feral smile.
“Oh, lady. You are so going to find out what you like.”
And she did.
Sex with Jax was nothing like she’d thought it would be. It was hotter, and raunchier. He pushed her past every inhibition, allowed no reluctance. When she would have pushed his head away as he nosed the curls between her legs, he held her thighs open wider. “We have to find out if you like this enough to do it again.” She did. When she felt the hot slide of his tongue enter her, she almost screamed.
And that was another thing. He demanded she squirm, and make noise.
“Scream,” he said. “I love the sounds you make. Let me hear you. Let me know.”
And maybe that was what she liked best. The way he relished every proof of her response. He liked the slick slide of sweaty bodies and the slurping sound that happened when they stuck together. Still joined, he effortlessly held her to him with one arm while he turned them over and piled pillows against the headboard with the other. He showed her how to rock in rhythm with him. He inhaled deeply. “Smell that,” he said, his voice more a vibration she could feel from the seat of their connection than a sound. “That’s us, together.”
She wasn’t experienced enough to know how to stay on the edge. He had rolled them over and pulled her legs around his hips so that he could better control her motions and give her time to savor their joining, but as soon as he spoke he felt her inner muscles clench, and shudders overtake her.
At the screaming edge himself, he supported her with hands spread across her shoulder blades as she gave in to wave after wave of ecstasy. Then he pulled her limp form against his chest and came and came and came.
TWENTY-ONE
Jax lay with Pickett tucked beside him, her head on his shoulder, one leg thrown across his legs. His fingers idly stroked her upper arm lying across his chest. Under the rose-petal skin, he could trace the well-defined shape of biceps and triceps, but with only a little more pressure he could feel the bone, hardly larger than the bones of Tyler’s arms. She was so vivid, so maximally present; he rarely thought about how little she was, until he measured her with his hands. Then her delicacy made something catch in his chest and made him want to surround her, putting his arms, his body between her and everything.
The secret she’d revealed at the burger place came back to him. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Pickett chuckled, and slid her legs against his. “I’m a whole lot better than okay.”
“No, I meant what you told Tyler about celiac disease. Is it more dangerous than you told him?”
“I’m healthy, and as long as I watch my diet, I’m likely to stay that way.” A clinical chill crept into her voice. “There is a slightly increased risk of cancer, but it’s slight. Why?”
“But is it dangerous?” She hadn’t really answered his question, and she was smart enough to know what he meant.
“You sound like Tyler.”
Jax shook her shoulder gently to let her know he was serious.
“If I didn’t watch my diet, it would be devastating.”
Devastating. Strong word. Jax’s belly tightened, but he resumed his slow stroking of her arm.
“But I do,” Pickett went on, “and I will for the rest of my life, and since my diet is so good, I’m probably healthier than most people.”
“So why didn’t you tell me that you h
ad celiac disease?”
Under his stroking hand he felt her shoulder muscles tighten.
After a long pause, she said, “It’s hard to talk about.”
“Why? And don’t tell me I sound like Tyler,” he forestalled her. “I’m serious. And I’m going to keep asking until you talk to me.”
“You are like a dog with a bone!” Pickett pulled away and rolled to the edge of the bed.
Uh-uh, she was not going to do her sliding-away thing. He snaked an arm and pulled her back, deftly turning her and tucking her against him. “Yep, I am.”
Her soft body was still and stiff against him, but she didn’t fight to get away. He hated the loss of the warm contentment, and thought briefly of loving her and stroking her until she was warm and pliant in his arms again. It would be easy. She was so responsive to his every touch, and there were ways he wanted to touch her, places to kiss, that he hadn’t even started on. He felt himself stir, which was amazing considering what they had done a short time ago.
But somehow that wasn’t good enough. He wanted more from her, more than her body, exciting as that was. It irritated him a little that she didn’t want him to know something this important. She didn’t go for shallow relationships. Hell, he might, but she didn’t. What did she think was going on here?
He wasn’t going to give it up. Pickett could feel the strength of the arms that gently caged her. With no hint of roughness, he had grabbed her and tucked her back against him so efficiently, so quickly, she was almost disoriented for a moment. The potent demonstration made her aware on a previously unacknowledged level of what his training and strength meant. It was a little scary to realize he could have hurt her with the same efficiency. But he hadn’t. Hurt her. At all. One second she was rolling over to get out of the bed, and the next she was tucked back against him exactly as before.
If she protested, even slightly, he would let her go. She let her head relax against the solid wall of his shoulder instead, knowing that it was a kind of acquiescence.
He fingered her hair. Traced the shell of her ear with one fingertip.
“You said ‘potentially devastating.’ This is not a mild case of the flu we’re talking about here. Didn’t you know something like that would be important to me?” His voice rumbled against her cheek. His words said barely contained patience, but the finger that traced patterns on her neck, her shoulder, down her arm said something else. She’d figured he’d lose interest in her once he knew. “How long have you had it?”
Pickett took a deep breath. She didn’t know what to make of his sudden curiosity, but she could tell him the facts. “It’s genetic. In some people it shows up in early childhood. Looking back, I think I started having symptoms when I was twelve or thirteen, but I wasn’t diagnosed until a couple of years ago.”
Jax was silent, slowly stroking her shoulder, down her waist and across her hip, then back up again. “What else?” he asked, at last. “What made you not want to tell me?”
“I don’t know.” She wasn’t going to tell him she’d imagined he would be disgusted if he knew. She started to move toward the edge of the bed again.
“No sliding away. You do that a lot. Are you ashamed of having a disease?”
Ashamed? No, it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. Pickett started to shake her head, then stopped, stunned at the accuracy of his insight.
She was ashamed, not of having celiac disease, but of how she had been before. Fat, unattractive, an underachiever, depressed, a weakling, and all the character defects she had assigned herself—lazy, undisciplined, passive, helpless, hopeless. She had felt so ashamed of herself for years. Compassion for her younger self made her eyes well up.
“You know what? I was ashamed. I was fat and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Everybody thought I didn’t have enough willpower or self-respect to stick to a diet. And after a while that’s what I thought too. When I was lethargic, I thought I was lazy. I had colds and sore throats and bellyaches so often, my sisters thought I was goldbricking.”
“The celiac disease was causing all that?”
“In effect, I was starving. I ate nutritious food but my body couldn’t absorb it.”
“How could you be fat if you were starving?” He sounded like he really wanted to know. “Doesn’t make sense does it? And a lot of people with celiac are too thin, but sometimes they’re not. In the early stages of celiac the symptoms are very confusing. Most people have it for years before they’re diagnosed.”
“What the hell is the matter with doctors?”
“American doctors don’t find it as often as they should. But to be fair I’m not sure I ever told a doctor everything. I didn’t know that everybody’s guts didn’t hurt after they ate. I thought it only counted if it hurt bad enough to double you over. Not just how I felt but what I felt turned into something I had to hide. I learned to suck it up and keep going.”
Pickett tried to shrug as if it meant nothing, but it didn’t mean nothing. Tears welled again as she thought of all the times she had whipped herself with hatred just to find the energy to do the simplest things. Now that she knew what it was to feel well, she saw what Herculean tasks she had performed.
“Hey, are you crying?” Jax rolled to his side to put both arms around her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you. No, that’s a lie. I did mean to push you, but I didn’t know it would hurt you.”
Pickett tried to swallow back her sobs, but the tears wouldn’t stop. “I’m not hurt,” she managed to choke out.
“The hell you’re not. Something has hurt you bad.”
“Not you.”
“Okay.” Jax whispered and pressed her face into the hollow of his neck. “Okay.”
Like many men Jax was uncomfortable with tears, his own or anyone else’s. A part of him wondered what the hell he was doing here, holding this sobbing woman. Another, a much more important part, knew that if she had to cry, he wanted her doing it here, in his arms. Where he could protect her.
Whoa! Where had that come from?
He didn’t need anyone else to complicate his life right now. His head already reeled with the complexities of figuring out how to balance the demands of a career with Tyler’s needs. So why did being here feel so right?
He had pushed past her wariness again and again, when he knew damned well he had other choices, but he had done it anyway. But dammit, he didn’t like it when she seemed to hold him away. He wanted … sex, but he’d had sex. His body stirred as he remembered the delicate greed with which she’d tasted him. It was great. And it wasn’t enough.
He stroked the damp silky curls back from her face. The sobs had been replaced by long, shuddering sighs, then silence. He had some more questions, but when he turned toward her to ask them, her hand flopped against his chest. She had fallen asleep, worn out by the weeping and all that had passed before.
He felt his lips curve in a smile. He liked that almost childlike directness and honesty with which she responded when she lost her wariness. She had approached sex the same way. He wanted her again, but he should let her sleep.
He pulled a pillow into place for her head and turned them both on their sides, her bottom tucked into his groin. His hand found a soft breast and cupped it, marveling again at how perfectly it fit his hand. Absently, he captured the silky nipple between two fingers while his other fingers stroked the underside. He’d already discovered she liked that. His mind drifted. His unruly member, already stirred by the closeness of that enticing cleft, hardened.
Had she ever done it this way? Probably not. Would she be shocked?
Soft buttocks rubbed against him, then rocked with slow experimentation.
“Are you awake?” he asked softly, not wanting to wake her if she was still asleep.
“If I’m not,” she sounded half-sleepy, half-amused, “this is a very good dream.”
“Would you like to try it this way?”
“You’d have to show me how.”
Jax had always looked fo
r experienced bedmates who knew the score and were looking for the same raunchy, no-strings-attached, no-holds-barred sex he was. Who knew Pickett’s combination of enthusiasm and innocence would be such a turn-on? Or maybe it was just the novelty of it all. Maybe once that wore off, he would be no more interested in sticking around than he ever was.
For now the simple trust and generosity with which she gave herself blew him away, and made the fumbling oddly sweet.
“Put your leg here.” He lifted her upper leg to rest it on the outside of his thigh, then slid one hand into the already dampening curls.
“Um. I like that, but I thought we were going to do it this way.”
“We are.”
“So do it.”
Until this minute, Jax hadn’t known you could feel a smile all over your body. “Patience, little one. We have to get you ready.”
“I’m ready.”
“There’s not as much stimulation for a woman in this position. You need to be very, very ready.”
Jax could almost hear the wheels turning in her active brain as she considered his reply.
“Is there enough stimulation for a man then? I can’t touch you very much.”
Jax almost groaned with the effort he was making to hold back, not to plunge himself into her warmth.
“Trust me. I am stimulated plenty.” He kissed the nape of her neck, then ran his tongue in the shallow groove there. He felt an almost ridiculous satisfaction when she shivered and pushed closer, making one of her soft sounds. “That’s it,” he encouraged. “Enjoy this just for what it is.”
“You’re enjoying it, aren’t you?”
Jax almost gave a sarcastic ‘duh,’ but he’d caught the wonder in her voice. “I mean,” she added, “you’re not just going through the steps. You really like it.”
Jax swept his hands over her in wordless reply, making evident the pleasure he derived from touching her, feeling her, pleasuring her.
The knowledge set something free in Pickett. Suddenly the sensation gathering between her legs seemed to burst over her entire body in a wave of heat, sensitizing every nerve ending. Sounds, unbidden and unchecked, spilled from her throat with every swirling touch of his magic fingers. Her hips made their own demands, pushing her mound against his hand.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 18