by Eve Gaddy
She didn’t fight him. Didn’t resist. Instead, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him in return. His tongue entered into her mouth, sure and steady, stroking, taunting. Her heart rate sped up as he pulled her closer, as his hands fell to her hips and pressed her tightly against him.
She dug her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck and kissed him for all she was worth.
They stumbled to the couch. Her legs bumped against it then she sank down into the deep, over-stuffed cushions. Jack followed her, lying heavily on top of her with his thighs between her parted legs. He brushed her hair aside and kissed her neck, wet openmouthed kisses that made her breasts throb and tingle, her blood heat.
Murmuring against her neck, he said, “I haven’t had a woman get me this hot, this quick in—” He laughed. “I can’t remember when.” Easing away from her, he watched her face as he slipped a hand under her shirt, dipped his fingers inside her bra to flick them against her nipples. Then he pushed up her bra, cupping and stroking her breast.
It felt wonderful. She didn’t want to stop. For once she wouldn’t think about the consequences. She tightened her legs around him and thrust her pelvis up, feeling him hard and tempting in the cradle of her thighs. He groaned and pressed against her, then he kissed her again, his tongue driving inside in a clear rhythm of desire.
He rolled on his side but before she could protest, his hand reached down and cupped her between her legs, stroked her there. She wanted so badly to feel his fingers dance along her naked skin. He must have wanted that, too, because she felt him unbutton then unzip her pants.
“Ava.” He pushed his hand beneath the waist-band of her panties, and she felt his finger slide over her slick, wet heat. She gasped as he slid it inside her and withdrew it, then did it again. “I want to make love to you.”
“I want you, too.” His thumb stroked her as his finger probed, she tensed, ached, her muscles tightened as he drove her higher.
Their breathing was labored. They stared at each other. She wondered what he was waiting for. Why he didn’t make love to her there, or take her into his bedroom.
“I want you so badly,” he said. “And I really, really don’t want to ask you this.”
“Ask me what?”
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SHE STARED AT HIM, lips parted. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No.” He shook his head and groaned out a laugh. Then he rolled off her and helped her to sit beside him, taking her hands between his. “Hell, no. But I don’t want you to regret this. It’s too important to me. You’re too important to me.”
She looked at him for a long, silent moment. “I’m no good at relationships, Jack. I have a failed marriage and…and there are other things. If you’re looking for happily ever after, I’m not the woman to give it to you.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just know that you’re the first woman since Cynthia died who’s…been this important to me.”
“Jack, are you saying you haven’t been with anyone since your wife died?”
He smiled a little at that. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. There have been women. Not a lot, but enough for me to realize that what I feel for you is nothing like what I felt for them.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you I’m falling in love with you?”
She turned her head and said in a choked voice, “Don’t. You can’t.”
“Sorry. It’s too late, I already have.”
She looked at him then. Man, she had some gorgeous eyes. “I’m not the woman you should fall in love with.”
He put his arm around her, pulled her closer and kissed her jaw. Moved upward and kissed her mouth, at the corner. “Too late,” he said again and covered her mouth with his.
For a moment, she resisted. Then her body softened, leaned in to him and her mouth answered his. “This is a mistake,” she said, pulling away.
“If that’s what you really think, then why are you here?”
“Because I’m tired of fighting it.”
“Fighting what, Ava?”
She sighed, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I’m tired of fighting what I feel for you. Tired of fighting what I want.”
“What do you want, Ava?”
Solemn as could be, she looked at him. “Take me to bed, Jack.”
He didn’t make her ask twice. Swinging her up in his arms, he headed for his bedroom.
ALONG THE WAY she lost her shoes and had started on the buttons of her shirt before he carried her into the bedroom, kicked the door shut, then set her on her feet and backed her up against the door.
“I wanted to take this slow,” he said hoarsely. “But I don’t think I can.”
“I don’t want slow. I want fast and hot and soon.” She attacked his buttons, pushed his shirt off his shoulders and spread her hands over his wide, tanned chest. “Mmm,” she said, and kissed him there.
A laugh rumbled in his chest. “I know what you mean. What is it about you that makes me want to eat you right up?” He wrestled with the rest of her buttons, dragged her shirt off and tossed it over his shoulder, then popped her bra clasp, ripped it off and threw it down as well.
She laid her head back against the door and closed her eyes as he cupped her bare breasts in his work-roughened hands. “That feels…so good.” She opened her eyes and watched him. “I’ve been thinking about this, almost since I met you.”
“Me, too. I think about you all the time.” He bent his head and licked her nipple, then drew it slowly into his mouth and sucked. She speared her hands through his hair and held him closer. “All the time,” he murmured, swirling his tongue over her nipple.
He raised his head, kissed her mouth as he lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around him, feeling his arousal through their layers of clothes. How much better would it feel when they were both naked?
Jack must have been thinking the same thing because he swung her around and strode toward the bed. They tumbled onto it and she reached for his zipper, struggling to slide it down as he fumbled with hers. He stripped her jeans and panties off, then stopped to look at her, intense appreciation in his gaze. Then he rolled aside and shoved his own jeans down his legs.
He opened his nightstand drawer and pulled out a thin Mylar packet, tossing it on the tabletop. For a man who said he hadn’t been with many women since his wife died, he kept those suckers mighty handy.
“I bought them the other day,” he said, as if reading her mind. “The day we were shot at, on my way home.”
“You planned this. Tonight. You planned to get me into bed, didn’t you?”
“No.” He kissed her, skillful, deep, amazingly slow, until she relaxed.
What did it matter? She was here with him now and that was exactly where she wanted to be.
Finally, he broke the kiss and murmured, “I hoped. Which is entirely different from planning.”
“Entirely,” she said, laughing, and pulled him into her arms and kissed him.
He palmed her, slid a finger inside her. She was damp, aching, and she wanted him inside her now. She grasped his erection and stroked, gently at first, then harder.
“It’s been a long time for me,” he said huskily.
“For me, too.”
He rolled aside, grabbing the packet and opening it, then sheathed himself before returning to her. “Now,” she said, opening her arms.
He came inside her in one smooth stroke, withdrew, then drove back in. She moaned as he thrust gently and withdrew, then did it again, and again, each time harder, stronger, deeper. Her muscles tightened and her orgasm burst like a star, furiously intense.
He muttered something, maybe her name. He kissed her, then raised his head and pushed inside her one more time, filling her, surrounding her. His muscles clenched, he groaned harshly and spent himself within her.
She almost passed out but the heavy weight was w
elcome. It took her a minute to realize Jack was crushing her into the mattress, but she didn’t say anything. It felt good. So good. A feeling she’d almost forgotten.
“I don’t want to move,” she said.
“I don’t either.” He groaned and rolled off her. “But I know I was suffocating you.” He wrapped his arm around her and snuggled with her, spoon fashion. “Can we stay like this forever?”
Ava laughed. “I don’t think so. What about your son?”
“What son?”
“Funny, funny. What about food? We’d starve to death if we never left the bed.”
“You have a point. Okay, we can have a break for food. But we can only eat it in bed.”
“That might work. Except I hate crumbs in bed.”
Cracking open his eyes, he raised himself up on his elbow to look at her.
“What?”
“I was just thinking how beautiful you are. And how good you look, naked in my bed.”
She smiled, pleased by the compliment. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”
He kissed her neck, gave her a love bite and soothed it with his tongue. “Next time we’ll take it slow.”
She didn’t, as she had in the past, say something evasive, then get up and leave. No, she wanted to pretend, if just for a minute, that everything would work out and she could have a lasting relationship with Jack.
So, she turned her head and kissed him, long and lovingly. “Slow would be good. But fast was good, too. Very good.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AVA LEFT VERY EARLY the next morning, long before Jack expected Cole to be home. Before she left, they’d decided to eat at her place that night and she’d told Jack to bring Cole if he didn’t have other plans. Then Jack had kissed her senseless and let her go.
As she left, she glanced at Mark’s house, feeling a familiar twinge of guilt that she couldn’t do what her brothers wanted her to do and reconcile with their mother. Maybe Jack was right and if she at least saw her mother she might find some peace in that relationship.
Right now, though, she wanted to be with Jack and enjoy him and try not to think about any problems. She should have run the minute he’d told her he was falling in love with her. But she hadn’t. What did that say about her?
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he just thought he loved her, when in reality it was just the sex he needed. But she knew that wasn’t true. She’d been very aware that the sex meant more to each of them than just a way of scratching an itch. That it was far more than a one-night stand.
She’d gone and done exactly what she’d sworn not to do. She’d fallen in love with Jack.
THEY SPENT THE WEEKEND together, some of it with Cole, some alone. She’d been a little afraid that Cole might resent her, that he might view her as trying to usurp his mother’s place, but he seemed fine with his father dating her. And he was a great kid. The more time she spent around him the more she realized that regardless of his concerns about raising his son, Jack was a good father. And he tried harder than anyone she’d ever seen.
Certainly more than her own father ever had. She couldn’t remember so much as a kind word from him, much less a genuine show of love.
It was Sunday afternoon and raining and Jack and Cole were playing a video game. Shouting, groaning, laughing as one won a point over the other. They looked so much alike, she thought.
Jack looked up and smiled at her before Cole’s shout of triumph warned him he’d given away his advantage.
“I’ll get you for that,” he warned his son. “I have a secret weapon.”
“Ha! Last time you said that I scored the most points I ever had.”
“That was a different game. This is football. I know football.”
She tried to picture her father playing a game, any sort of game, with one of his sons. She couldn’t. He’d never thrown a ball with them, never played a board game. Never read to them. Never attended a school function, as far as she knew.
Her mother had read to them. Ava had buried that memory, one of the nice ones. Lillian had read to all of them when they were small. And she’d gone to Ava’s softball games, as well as the boys’ sports events. At least, until the last year before Ava left, their mother had tried to give all of her children some of the attention their father wouldn’t. Eventually she’d quit, as if she’d dried up under the weight of her husband’s abuse. Then she’d discovered the charities, and they had consumed all of her time.
But she hadn’t always been that way. Ava let herself recall some of the good days. Days when their father hadn’t come home and made them all miserable. When their mother had played with them and sang to them and loved them. Before she’d become an empty, desperate shell of a woman. Before her husband had destroyed all her hopes and dreams with bitter words and endless accusations.
It didn’t justify what had happened later. What she’d allowed her husband to do to their children. Nothing ever would, Ava suspected. But could she take that first step to see if a reconciliation was possible? Call Mark and tell him she wanted to see their mother?
Not yet. But maybe, just maybe she would do it soon.
OVER THE NEXT couple of weeks Jack and Ava spent a lot of time together. She and Cole really liked each other and from what Cole let fall about work, she was teaching him a good bit about marine mammals. Cole had been interested in them from a young age, but Jack hadn’t thought his son would actually go into a career in that field. He was beginning to think he might now, though.
And it might have been because his own personal life was going so well, but Jack thought Cole was adapting to Aransas City better than he had dared to hope. His son wasn’t sullen or cranky anymore. Or no more so than any normal teenager. Cole had friends now, a group of guys and occasionally girls who came over and ate everything in sight and tossed around the football, watched movies and played video games. They weren’t perfect, but most of them seemed like nice kids. There were one or two Jack had met who he suspected weren’t quite as angelic as they’d have their parents believe, but Jack hoped Cole had learned his lesson and wouldn’t be drawn into doing anything stupid again.
Cole seemed to like work, as well. Especially since a stranded dolphin had come in and he’d been able to help with its rehabilitation. He’d talked of nothing else for days.
So Jack’s life was about as settled as it ever would be with a teenage son. He hoped that before long it would become even more settled, though. But first, he had to talk to his son. Alone. And since Ava wasn’t coming over for a few hours, tonight seemed like the perfect time.
“Have any plans after dinner?” he asked Cole after he got home from work.
“I have a math test tomorrow. I was gonna go study with Andy. He aces all his tests and he said he’d help me with the algebra.”
“Better him than me,” Jack said. “But can it wait for a while? I’d like to talk to you after dinner.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No. Why, have you done anything you should be in trouble for?”
Cole shrugged. “Nothing I can remember.” He paused. “But you know my memory sucks.”
Jack laughed. “Too true. It’s about me, not you.”
“Why don’t you tell me now?”
Because he was nervous. If he was this nervous talking to Cole what would he be like when it came time to talk to Ava? “All right. Let’s sit in the den.”
Cole followed him in there, saying, “What’s up, Dad? You’re being kinda weird.”
They sat on the couch and Jack fumbled for a way to begin. “You know I’ve been seeing Ava a lot over the past few weeks.” Duh, he thought, when Cole just looked at him. “You like Ava, don’t you?”
“Sure. She’s cool.”
No sense beating around the bush. “What would you think if I asked Ava to marry me?”
“No shit?” He flushed and said, “I mean, no joke?”
Jack nodded, deciding not to take issue with the language since he figured the kid had a right to be
surprised. “I’ve been thinking a lot about marrying her. But I wanted to make sure you were okay with it before I asked her.”
“You mean you wouldn’t ask her if I said no?”
Jack frowned, wondering how to phrase his answer. “I wouldn’t marry someone I didn’t think you could accept. Or someone I didn’t think would love you, too. You know you’re important to me, Cole. You’re the most important person in my life.”
“I guess. Except now she is, too, right?”
He smiled. “Yeah, she’s important. You don’t seem to have any problems with Ava, not that I’ve seen, anyway. And I know she likes you.”
“No, I like her fine. That’s not it.” He fell silent for a minute. “But marriage is kind of a big deal, isn’t it? And you haven’t known her very long. How do you know you really want to marry her and it’s not—” he spread his hands “—well, you know. Not just all about sex. I mean, Dad, your love life has been pretty lame since Mom died.”
How he kept a straight face, he would never know. Being lectured by his son on confusing lust and love was something he’d never thought he’d experience. Still, it was a valid question and deserved an honest answer. “It’s true we haven’t known each other long. And yes, marriage is a big deal. But as for knowing it’s for real, I knew with your mother almost from our first date.”
Remembering that, he smiled. It was a good memory, and one that didn’t hurt as much as it once had. “I’ve only loved two women and I made up my mind real quick with both of them.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I am, son.”
“We’ll have to be polite all the time. Women are big on that,” he said wisely. “My friends’ moms are all the time telling them to be polite. No burping or scratching and stuff like that.”
Jack laughed. “Yeah, we’d have to change a little. Not be such slobs. But she might cut us some slack since we’ve lived without a woman around for so long.”