“I trust you to find me a good place, if you don’t want to stay here.” She slid her hand back into his and tugged him along, deeper into the bayou and the shade of heavy cypress trees.
Once they got to where they couldn’t see the road, Drea surprised him by backing him up against the heavy bark of one of those trees. And then she half climbed him as she kissed him, the fierceness of the action taking his breath away.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and used the other to slide under her ass, allowing her to press against him, grind against him in a way that promised to get them both off. And holy hell, he was all for it.
Now this was a homecoming. And in broad daylight? Drea was definitely the woman for him.
“Please, Jem,” she murmured against his mouth.
“As much as I want you, I’m not exposing you here. But I will take care of you.” He turned the tables on her, putting her back against the tree, letting her balance herself on him as his hand went down her jeans and underwear to stroke between her legs.
She gasped as his fingers found the spot that made her eyes roll in the back of her head—because Jem had already done that to her many times—and he used the pads of two fingers to give her just the right pressure.
Her cries got caught in the hot stickiness of the afternoon. Her hips rocked to his rhythm and she came against his hand, her face buried against his neck.
“I’d say you’re more of a deviant than I am,” he murmured against her ear, when her breathing had calmed.
“You’re just figuring that out now?” she murmured back, her lips curving in a small contented smile against his cheek. They were both sweaty and sticky and, fuck, there was no one he wanted to be sweaty and sticky with more …
Or more often.
Chapter Twenty-five
Finally, as dusk began to settle around them, Jem ushered Drea back to the car and drove the rest of the distance to his old house. The sex and the sweetness had taken the edge off, although his gut still tightened when he turned the corner.
And then he stopped the car dead, right in the middle of the drive. He got out of the car and rubbed his eyes. Turned in a circle.
He was definitely not in Kansas … but he was also definitely not looking at his childhood memories. No, the piece of shit he’d seen just last year had somehow completely transformed from a broken-down, dull wood with sad, broken windows to a pretty deep brown-painted facade. “What the fuck?” he asked of no one in particular, and looked over to see Drea, glancing between the house and him, looking unsurprised.
And rather pleased with herself.
“Was this Key?” he asked her.
“He wasn’t sure if you’d be upset.”
“That he took away the bad? When the fuck did he do all this?” But that was rhetorical, because Jem knew. Key had disappeared during those six months last year when they were all deciding if they could really do this S8 thing. So when Key disappeared whenever the team had any kind of break, that meant he’d been here. Tearing down. Restoring.
“He said the foundation wasn’t the problem—good bones,” she explained. “Did it ever look like this before?”
“Hell no. The pictures I’d seen showed it looking basically the same from the time my great-grandpa lived here. And it went downhill from there.” He was still standing fifteen feet from the old place like he was scared this was all an illusion. But then the operative in him took over, and he walked up to the garage and then up to the porch, checking perimeters while keeping Drea close.
“He said to give you this.” She handed him a piece of paper, folded. It was an alarm code. When they stepped inside, he wasn’t surprised to see high-tech equipment. He checked the cameras as he locked them back inside.
All the furnishings were brand-new. The floors were redone, a dark color that made the place glow. New couches, new rugs and new chairs. A new table in the kitchen and also in the dining area. New appliances, new paint. There was even a new smell.
Jem breathed it all in as Drea stood by his side. “I don’t even know what to do with myself,” he admitted. He was almost scared to touch anything, but he finally put his hand on the brand-new kitchen table. It was solid and smooth under his palm.
“It’s so pretty in here.”
“You definitely help in that department.” His words made her glow, and he made a promise to himself that he would always do that for her. He walked over to her and put his arms around her, drawing her close for a hug. “Are you okay, babe? I keep trying to get you out of trouble and we seem to end up in more of it.”
“I’m much better now. We’re all going to be fine,” she said as though she could force the universe to make it true. And hell, from her mouth …
“I think I’ll check out the upstairs.”
“I’m going to freshen up and then I’ll join you, okay?”
She was definitely giving him space on purpose. He probably needed it anyway. And so when she went to find a powder room, he climbed the stairs, which no longer creaked on the way up, no matter how hard he tried. Key had homed in on the smallest details.
For some reason, this made Jem’s heart ache.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he stood there, not sure if he actually wanted to wait for Drea. But he forced himself forward, first into the room that had been his parents’.
Key had turned it into a den. There were two couches and a large-screen TV on the wall. Tons of bookshelves were filled with books and DVDs. It was light and happy.
The next room was the one Key had stayed in. It was still a bedroom, but there was a double bed instead of a twin, freshly painted walls and more bookshelves and a TV. Completely different.
He stood at the door of Key’s room and looked across the hall at the closed door. He forced himself over there and touched the doorknob, but he found he couldn’t force himself to go any farther.
Not physically, anyway.
In the hottest of the summer days, in the place he called both home and hell, Jem grew up walking the thin line that separated crazy from sane. Most days he was pretty sure which side he belonged on, leaving the rest of the world to slowly agree.
He’d learned early that teachers and nurses and policemen didn’t have the power they were supposed to, at least not where his family was concerned. Generations of Jem’s past had lived in the small Bayou Parish, surrounded by poverty, alcohol, desperation, plus a deep need to keep all authority out of their business that bordered on psychotic. They succeeded with the same fear that kept generations of their children in that same small parish, bruised and unable to ever leave.
By the time he was eight, Jem knew he was already damaged, maybe beyond repair. But he wasn’t willing to sit around and drink himself to death. The situation had been complicated by his brother, Key, who was five years younger and looked around at his family as though he’d landed in a pile of Martians. No matter how badly Jem had wanted to leave, no matter how many opportunities he’d had, all it took was one look at his younger brother’s face to know he could not leave him here.
But the military … That had been an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. He’d even gotten his father’s signature attesting to the fact that he was seventeen and had parental permission to enlist, and he had his escape thanks to the Army. But leaving his twelve-year-old brother behind, now, that was something he’d never be able to shake.
I’m doing it for you, Key, he’d kept telling himself over and over on the bus that had taken him to Basic, unable to push the scenes from his final night at home from his mind.
He’d heard his father’s heavy footsteps heading toward his brother’s room. It had taken Jem all of three seconds to get himself out of bed and put himself in the path of the drunken man wielding his belt. Jem had never given a shit about pain. Hell, he barely felt it most of the time, and the other times he actually kind of liked it. Just another testament to the crazy.
“Come on, old man—take me instead.”
His father’s
brows had risen and although his stride was slightly stumbling he was still a big man. At that point, Jem had been tall and lean and lanky and he had evade-and-escape down pat. But even evading and escaping that night had meant Key would get the belt.
So when his father had cornered him, pushed him back into the tiny, hot bedroom and grabbed the back of his neck with one hand like he was some kind of rodent, for the first time Jem had fought back. He wasn’t sure why at that moment he chosen to do so. He was angry, sure, but there was nothing new about this dance.
“I’ll fucking kill you if you touch him,” Jem had said, his hands around his father’s throat. At that point, he’d known he couldn’t kill the man. But he’d come close enough to scare the shit out of him.
“I tell you what, boy,” his father had slurred with the anger pulsing from his eyes. “You get the fuck on outta here and never come back.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it, but if I ever hear that you’ve hurt Key, I’ll come back and finish it. I promise that.”
Something happened that night—his father actually believed him. And the next morning, Jem had gotten into the old man’s Jeep in the passenger’s side and let his father drive him to the recruiter’s office in New Orleans.
Key had seen him leaving. Looked as though he knew exactly what was happening, and Jem almost turned back. Almost. But the threat of jail and staying with his family pushed so heavily on his soul that he hadn’t. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t celebrate and regret that decision.
But he’d learned that he couldn’t ever let anyone depend on him.
Never.
*
Drea was definitely trying to give Jem some time to adjust to all this. To her, this house was cozy and perfect. But to Jem, this was the site of many childhood evils, and that she understood all too well.
Finally, she went up the stairs because it seemed too quiet. She’d have expected him to come down by now, or to have at least called her up.
She found him in the hallway. He was on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, looking very much like the little boy she could only imagine lived through unspeakable horrors.
Two doors were open. At a quick glance she could see they’d gotten the same treatment as the rest—new floors, fresh paint, plus a new bed and covers. It looked happy. It felt good in this place. Maybe Key had literally washed all the bad memories away.
But that one door … it remained closed, like he didn’t want any part of it. “Have you been inside your room yet?”
He shook his head. Looked up at her and said, “I can’t.”
She crouched down next to him, spoke softly. “We can stay downstairs.”
He looked up at her, his eyes slightly unfocused. “Yeah.” And then … “I’ll protect you, Drea. I fucking swear it. Like I protected Key. I had to leave him to do it. Sounds crazy, I know. But trust me.”
“I do,” she said simply.
His eyes remained with that faraway look in them. “Favor?”
“Anything.”
“Open that door. Just open it a crack, look in and tell me what you see.”
She stood and did as he asked, making sure to block his view. “There’s a double bed with the blue comforter. A tan rug. Blue walls. It’s bright in here and all redone.”
“Radiator?” he asked, sounding surprised that she hadn’t mentioned one. “Under the window.”
She peered in farther. “There’s a dresser under the window.”
“Look behind it.”
She went into the room and she did. Pulled it out and saw a perfectly blank wall behind the small dresser. “Nothing.”
She went to turn around, but he was already behind her, staring at the wall. It was at that moment, with the look on his face, the way he was rubbing his wrists …
“They chained you to the radiator.”
It didn’t require an answer, but he nodded anyway. He knelt and touched the wall with a bare palm. “He remembered. I thought he was too young to remember that.”
It was then she noted that there was a small, portable heater in the corner. Slim and too small to hurt anyone.
“He came in here once and found me. He was so little … didn’t understand. He came and slept with me on the floor all night. I made him go back to his room before morning so they wouldn’t catch him.”
She was staring at him, watching his past unfold, one that was as horrifying as hell. As horrifying as hers had been. Avery was right—the people who were meant to find one another did. “He told me that he knows everything. That he hated being here after you left, but that you were both safer that way.”
He drew in a long, shuddered breath and took her hand. “Stay here with me tonight. He took away a lot of the bad—take me the rest of the way.”
*
Jem peeled back the comforter and then picked Drea up, an arm curled around her waist, and took her to bed. She giggled—fucking giggled—and yes, there was going to be more happiness in this room. Fucking tons of it.
He bent and pushed her T-shirt up, kissing her belly as he exposed skin. When he pushed the shirt over her breasts, he reached up to unhook the front clasp of her bra. She gave a small intake of breath, her nipples hardened in anticipation, and he put his mouth on one of them, played with the other between his thumb and forefinger.
She arched up into his mouth, his fingers, moaning. Needing him so badly, and God, that was a heady feeling. More so when she tugged at his hair to stop him, then ordered, “On your back, soldier.”
He could’ve told her that he wasn’t a soldier anymore, but hell, why ruin it? Curious to see what she’d do next, especially since she’d already tried to take him against a tree, he lay on his back.
She knelt by his hips and sucked his nipples first—one then another, with hard pulls, biting lightly, and they seemed to be attached on a direct line to his cock.
When she noted his response, she did it again and again, leaving him groaning her name, stroking her hair …
And then she kissed her way down his chest and belly. Her hand circled him as she licked the broad head of his cock, then looked back at him over her shoulder, asking wickedly, “That okay?”
Before he could answer, she slid him inside her mouth and applied enough humming suction that he nearly jumped off the bed. She was playing with his balls too.
He half dragged her on top of him, hooking her waist with his arm, tugging a leg over his shoulder, until her pussy was at the perfect angle for him to lick. And he did, a long lap that ended with a gentle but firm suckle on her clit. She stilled, as though she didn’t know what to do with that, and then she put her head down and proceeded to torture him more by kissing his length. She leaned down farther to take a ball in her mouth and he buried his face between her legs, tasting her sweetness. He could easily take up residence here, her on top of him, as they gave each other mutual pleasure. He saw no reason to ever leave this position or this bed.
Or at least the bed, because he wanted to be inside of her, a driving need that consumed his thoughts since he’d met her. He’d been able to satisfy it before, but this seemed to be a culmination of so many things, a fruition that he had to admit proved he’d come full circle.
He was with Drea again. She remembered him. And he’d come home, really and truly, both with her and inside this house. Poetic justice, granted to him by the woman he’d fallen in love with, and a brother he’d given up the rest of his childhood for.
He thrust his tongue into her and she moaned around his cock, driving him fucking wild, and he tried not to pump into her mouth. He wanted to savor this moment, to make it last forever, letting her take him as she did the same, feeling her moans thrum along his skin.
His arms locked around her waist as she began to push back against him faster—she was going to come, and there was nothing he wanted more. She was also trying to push him over the edge, and suddenly they were in some kind of race—one where they’d both be
winners.
But he would hold out for his orgasm while he pushed her to hers. He flattened his tongue hard against her clit and that was really all it took, since she’d been so close. Her body stiffened on him, her mouth stilled around his cock and then her hips thrust, wildly, erratically for a long moment, writhing with the intensity of her climax.
He didn’t stop tonguing her the entire time, which drove her crazier. She let go of him from her mouth and groaned out his name, dug her heels into the mattress on either side of him, like she didn’t know if she should try to get away or push herself closer to him again.
She opted for option two, and he gladly obliged, until she started to retaliate by stroking him. She grabbed his hips tightly, trying to stop him from moving, but fuck it, he had to be inside her. He eased her away.
“Babe, need to be in you now,” he told her, and she didn’t protest any further. Instead she pushed him down and straddled him.
“That’s fine, but I’m taking over,” she said.
“No arguments, Drea.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Worked out pretty well for you, though.” His words ended with a groan as she lowered herself onto him.
“It did,” she agreed as she put her palms against his chest as if to gain traction. “This will end well for you too.”
Yes, it would, especially when she began to rock against him, riding him with an intensity in her expression he hadn’t seen before. He wanted to capture this moment in his heart and his mind, because he’d learned that memories were so important, and often far too fragile.
Her cheeks and chest were flushed from exertion and her earlier orgasm, and her eyes glowed. Together, their moans mingled and rose above them—the mattress shifted under his weight. He lifted his hips up to drive himself all the way inside her wet heat, and holy fuck, it was good.
Better than good.
She was still so tight and yet so open to him as she moved, up and down, not taking her eyes from him.
She could probably come just from the way Jem looked at her, as if she were the most beautiful woman, like she was the only person on earth. Right now she felt as if it was really just the two of them—and they’d already done battle for each other …
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