Complicated Creatures: Part One

by Alexi Lawless

  Sam picked up the glass. “You take the lead,” she said, knocking a mouthful back. The singe was welcome. “You’re right. There’s no reason for me to be involved on this, especially with the other clients we have right now,” she agreed. “This will be a cakewalk for the guys. They’re ready, and with Michaelson and Henri on board, more’s the better.”

  “You want the folder?” Carey asked, holding it out.

  Sam shook her head.

  They drank in silence for a while.

  “Thinking of joining me for Thanksgiving?”

  She looked up from her reverie, surprised at the turn in conversation.

  “No. Jack asked me to join his family. Willa asked me to come to the shelter. I haven’t decided what I’m doing yet,” she admitted.

  “Mom keeps asking after you. She wants you to consider coming home this year. If not for Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas?” Carey pressed. “Do you some good to be back at the ranch.”

  “You just want help with the baling,” Sam mocked, though her voice sounded strained and tired, even to her. She closed her eyes again.

  “That too,” Carey chuckled. “It’s no fun working the steers without you.”

  “You should take Willa,” she suggested.

  “I might. She’s got so much stuff going on with the shelter. I keep offering to help, but she says she’s got it covered.”

  “Willa says that, but she still wants your help,” Sam told him.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I do.”

  “So when you say you’re okay, you really mean you’re not?” Carey inferred.

  “No,” Sam answered, opening her eyes again. She looked out at the night sky. She couldn’t see any stars. “When I say I’m okay, I mean stop asking.”

  *

  November—That night

  The Whitney, Chicago

  J A C K

  Jack felt fingers sifting through his hair. He shifted, the book he’d been reading slipping off his stomach to land on the floor. The warmth of the fireplace lit his skin. He smiled as he breathed in Samantha’s scent, still half-asleep.

  “You’re crashed out on the couch, darlin’,” she murmured, fingernails scratching his scalp gently. He loved when she did that. Jack stretched, his arm curling around her waist as he tucked his face into her thigh. “Come on up to bed.”

  “Tesoro,” he mumbled, trying to pull her closer. “I was dreaming,” he murmured, feeling her shift and slide next to him on the sofa. His arm looped around her bare leg, pulling her knee up over his hip.

  “Don’t you want to sleep in that big, comfortable bed of yours?” she asked, kissing his brow. He felt her smile against his forehead, her fingers continuing to thread through his hair.

  “We were in Positano. The water was so blue. We jumped off a cliff…” he trailed off sleepily.

  “So we plunged to our deaths?” she chuckled. “Nice dream.”

  “No,” Jack mumbled. “I tried to hold you when we landed, but you slipped away as we were rising up.” He nuzzled her. “You’re always slipping away, tesoro…”

  Samantha slid a hand under his arm, thumb rubbing his spine. Jack purred his pleasure. “Why would I want to be away from you, Jack?” she whispered.

  He felt himself harden, couldn’t resist the pleasure of pressing against her.

  “Because you love me,” Jack replied, pulling the side of her panties down, kissing her in earnest now. “And you won’t admit it,” he whispered against her mouth.

  Samantha shifted closer as he touched her.

  “…and if I love you—” her breath caught as he curled a finger into her, touching that perfect spot. “Why would I leave…?” she breathed. “Mmm, that’s good,” she told him, hips shifting closer. Jack luxuriated in her gentle panted breaths, feeling her clench around his movements, the humid heat of her body intoxicating.

  “Let me have you, Samantha,” he whispered, fully awake now, urging her higher, tighter against him.

  “God, Jack…” she groaned. She took him into her hands in kind, thick and heavy, and Jack pushed forward, the firm pressure of her fingers so indescribably good.

  He took her mouth in erotic, drawn-out kisses, biting her lip and then lapping the hurt as she gripped him, rubbing him against where she needed him most. Jack couldn’t think, couldn’t speak; the urgency to be inside of her blanked his mind as she fitted him to herself. The feeling was so delicious that Jack closed his eyes as he pushed into her, capturing her sounds in his mouth as he rooted deeper into the hot, wet constriction of her body.

  “Jack,” she gasped into his ear. “It’s good. God, it’s so, so good…” she shuddered, gripping his back.

  “You’re mine, tesoro,” he whispered, stroking deeper into her. He impaled her body with tight, disciplined strokes, his pants and sex words mingling with her sighs and moans as she tried to control the inevitable drop toward mindlessness, where sensation and connection reigned. Jack lifted his head, watching her head fall back, the sinews of her neck in harsh relief as she struggled to stave off the climax, her body mastered with a restraint he couldn’t quite coax her out of.

  But Jack didn’t want to shove past Samantha’s extraordinary self-control. He didn’t want to conquer her through the sheer force of his will and determination to win her over. He doubted that’d work anyway. Nothing would happen with Samantha that she didn’t allow. And Jack adored that about her, even if it drove him crazy in equal measure.

  “Tell me, baby,” he murmured on a delicious withdraw and push. “Tell me how much you want this. Tell me how you want me,” he urged, shifting so she was beneath him, pinned and penetrated, world awash in heat and vivid pleasure.

  “I need this… I need you…please…” she gritted out, eyes clenched.

  Jack swiveled his hips, momentarily setting a punishing pace, pushing them both toward the rise before he slowed, shifting down to a sizzling grind that had her groaning. He held deep, pulsing against the stretch and the rub, tripping their senses, igniting nerve endings and sharpening the arousal. Sam writhed under him, calling his name as she tried to push even closer, her hands gripping his shoulders.

  “Say it,” he insisted on a low drag and a deep return. “Tell me again.”

  “The way you feel, Jack…” she shuddered. “The way you move… Make me forget, you make me forget…”

  Jack leaned in to take her mouth as he stroked deep into the soft hot heat of her, listening to her cries, watching her heartbeat pulsing at her slender neck. He rocked, ground, circled, and withdrew, surging back with maddening alterations to their tempo, adjusting the friction as each counteraction wore down her self-restraint. When he sensed her edging the brink, he bit her ear, tonguing the sting.

  “Give yourself to me,” he commanded, need making his voice raw. “Give it to me. I want you, tesoro, I want you to…”

  Samantha’s movement stuttered as she fought, then released, coming in long, voluptuous spasms, crying out to him, her nails indenting the skin on his shoulders and back. Jack reveled in the win—sucking in her breaths as if he could taste the endorphins, relishing her loss of control, enjoying the way she surrendered the vigilance she wore like armor. He rode out the jolts and ripples, pulling her leg up to his shoulder as he chased his pleasure, tasting her cries while he buried himself again and again, over and over until all he couldn’t withstand the tidal wave of pleasure cascading over him, the voltage of their shared electricity amazing him as his climax curved and manipulated his spine. Jack moved in and out of her until he’d milked the moment for everything it was worth.

  “Jack?” Samantha murmured after long minutes, the silken skin on the inside of her thighs rubbing him as she shifted.

  He lifted his face from her neck to look at her, his heart still thudding from their sex, his senses saturated.

  Her expression was uncharacteristically vulnerable and a little dazed, eyes backlit with the flicker of something raw. She threaded her fingers thro
ugh the hair at his temples.

  “You’re closer than anyone’s been in a long time,” she admitted, her voice a little hoarse from their love making.

  Jack absorbed that morsel, shifting to adjust their bodies sideways. His hands scooped at her bottom to keep them knit together. He’d live inside her if he could.

  As Samantha watched him, her gaze seemed to intensify, as if she were trying to communicate more, giving him another piece to her puzzle.

  “I’m in love with you,” Jack confessed, looking into her eyes. He knew he was lobbing what could become a hand grenade into the aftermath, but it seemed as obvious to him as it must be to her.

  Samantha drew back infinitesimally. Slowly, so slowly she gifted him with a small, sweet smile, as if she were savoring and memorizing the moment. She seemed almost shy, a look so foreign to her that Jack was disarmed by it.

  “Is this the first time you’ve ever said that?” she asked, her voice soft, nearly a whisper.

  “It’s the first time I’ve ever felt it or said it,” he admitted, kissing her. “I don’t know what the hell I was doing before, but this is completely different.” He kissed her again, breathing her in. “Senza di te la mia vita non ha senso,”14 he whispered.

  “Jack…”

  He could feel her mind zigzagging even as she traced the column of his throat gently, playing with the hollow there, touching his pulse.

  She took a breath. “I’m not—”

  “Don’t,” Jack interrupted, putting a finger to her mouth to stop her. “Don’t respond. I know you. I know you’ll go there when you’re good and ready and not a minute before. I didn’t tell you to pressure you into a response. I told you because I need you to know. I want you to know me.” He drew his finger down the side of her face.

  Samantha nodded after a moment before kissing his throat, breathing against him as they remained in each other’s arms, not speaking for a long time. Jack was aware of the atmospheric shift and he wondered what she’d do with the knowledge—but he also didn’t care. He was hers, he realized. Hers to possess and consume.

  “One day, you’re going to trust me,” he told her, tracing the line from her shoulder to her arm.

  She looked into his eyes, startled. “I do trust you, Jack—”

  “No, tesoro,” he whispered, touching the blade of her cheekbone. “You don’t. Not yet. But one day you will,” he replied, confident.

  Samantha dropped her eyes to his chest as she ran her fingers across his clavicle. She chuckled suddenly.

  “What?” he asked.

  She shook her head, a bemused smile on her face.

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  “It’s silly. Just a memory.”

  “Then definitely tell me,” Jack responded.

  “I was never a fan of patience. Too bull-headed, I guess. I’d get so pissed off, I could kick something.” Samantha admitted. “My granddaddy used to tell me patience was just a form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”

  Jack grinned, “I’d agree to that.”

  “And then he’d tell me sleep on it, pray on it, and when I was old enough, if neither of those worked, I could drink on it,” she laughed, her eyes twinkling. “I miss that old coot.”

  Jack laughed with her, smiling at the way nostalgia softened her face. He couldn’t resist nipping her lip. “I asked you to Thanksgiving dinner with my family last week. Will you join us?” he asked, pulling back.

  Her mouth curved into a lazy smile. “Do I have to cook?”

  Jack shook his head. “My parents are insane in the kitchen. I always told them if politics and the law doesn’t work out, they should start their own restaurant. Jaime and I are just the lowly sous chefs.”

  “They sound like quite the pair.”

  “They are,” he laughed. “I think you’ll get a kick out of them. I know they’ll get a kick out of you.”

  “Can I bring the wine then?”

  “Of course. They’d love that. Particularly if it’s a Barolo.”

  Samantha smiled, absently drawing figure eights on his arm. Jack tugged on a lock of her silky dark hair, drawing her attention back toward him.

  “So that’s a yes?”

  She stopped, looking at him while the firelight danced across her skin. “I’m beginning to suspect you could talk me into just about anything,” she admitted.

  Jack smiled. “In that case, vieni qui e baciami.”15

  Chapter 20

  November—Thanksgiving Day

  Oak Park, Illinois

  S A M A N T H A

  “You remember when Ry and I got cast as turkeys in grade school? And you and Mom made our tail feathers so big, we couldn’t get into the truck’s cab? Had to ride in the flatbed,” Carey chuckled into the phone.

  Sam laughed at the memory, recalling the way Ry and Carey rolled around the truck bed on the way to the school, hooting and hollering. “If anyone was gonna get cast as turkeys, it was gonna be you two,” she laughed softly. “Your mom and I just wanted to make sure you experienced it in its full glory.”

  “Depends on how you define ‘glory,’ I suppose. My butt was so heavy with feathers, I couldn’t keep my balance. Didn’t I fall off the stage at one point?” he drawled, his Texas twang definitely stronger after a couple days home.

  “Bear, honey, I can’t help you got two left feet.”

  Sam glanced up as she heard Jaime laughing next to his mother at the kitchen counter. Sam had been in the kitchen pass-through to the dining room picking out another bottle of wine when Carey had called.

  “How’re your parents?” she asked as she watched the Roman clan from the dining room.

  “Good. They miss you.”

  Sam ran her finger along the wine rack, swallowing back a lump in her throat. It had been years since she’d gone home, much less for Thanksgiving. “You know what I miss?” she started, clearing her throat a little. “Your mama’s Granny Smith apple pie. You been helping her cook?”

  “Nah,” Carey answered. “All she does is slap my hands and shoo me out anyhow. I’ve been awake since the ass crack of dawn with Dad, ass and elbows up in steer,” he complained. “God, I missed this,” he admitted then, sounding happy.

  “Tell them I love them,” Sam said as Jack slipped into the dining room, his hands sliding over her shoulders, kneading gently. He’d been chatting with his dad in his study when Carey had called her. She smiled reassuringly at him and held up a finger, mouthing “one minute.”

  “Tell them yourself,” Carey replied. “Seriously, Sammy. They’ll be happy to hear your voice.”

  Sam leaned back against Jack. “I know it. I’ll give them a buzz later on, okay?”

  “Okey doke, Sammy girl. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, all right?”

  “Yeah, Bear. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “You too,” Carey said, signing off.

  “Everything all right?” Jack asked, kissing her temple. His scent wafted around her, and she closed her eyes, enjoying the brief moment of intimacy.

  “Yeah. Carey just called to wish Happy Thanksgiving,” she explained.

  “Is he in Texas?”

  She nodded. “At the ranch.”

  Jack remained silent, waiting for her to say more. Sam strolled toward the built-in wine rack. “So…another bottle of vino?”

  “Will you go back?” Jack asked instead. “For Christmas, maybe?”

  Sam shrugged, noncommittal. “We’ll see. I’m not sure where I’ll be in December yet.”

  “With me,” Jack responded decisively as he reached around her for a specific bottle. “Mom’s favorite,” he confided, gesturing at the Vietti Barolo Rocche.

  Sam smiled her thanks.

  “If you’d like to be back home in Texas, I’d like to go with you, if that’s all right,” he told her, tucking a loose tendril behind her ear.

  “You know how to bale hay?” she asked.

  “I can learn,” he replied, a cocky gleam in his silver eyes.

  Jaime p
oked his head through the pass. “We sent you for more wine ages ago, Sam! You look like you know your way around a wine rack. What’s the holdup?” he chided, wagging his brows teasingly.

  Sam laughed, picking up the wine key to open the bottle. “Here you go, you impatient lush. Next you’re going to tell me you can’t cook without alcoholic inspiration,” she teased. “You guys have already gone through the two bottles I brought, and I suspect we’re now actually farther away from sitting down to dinner!” She followed him back into the kitchen, Jack close behind.

  “Un buon vino, un buon uomo, e una bella donna dura poco,”16 their mother, Lena, lilted, pulling open the oven door to check on the turkey.

  Evangelina Roman was a classic Italian beauty, with a sharp mind and a rapier wit. Jack and Jaime inherited their dark hair and quick tongues from her. She had vivid blue eyes and classic, refined features. It was easy to see where the Roman brothers got their spectacular good looks. The way she was cursing at the turkey, Sam could also see where Jack got his hot-flash temperament.

  “Uh oh, better pour more wine, immediatamente!” Jaime laughed. “It not only helps with the creative process, it has also been scientifically proven to enhance patience. Doesn’t it, Ma?”

  “If I wasn’t as patient as a saint, I would have asked where we are with the antipasti,” Lena declared, holding out her glass as Jaime poured. “Samantha, thank God for you! I understand you know how to manhandle men quite efficiently. I’ll need you to hog-tie this one later,” she declared, eyeing Jaime’s progress.

  “I suspect he may enjoy that,” Sam replied drily. “It’ll only encourage him.”

  Lena tossed her head back, laughing. “Oh, you’re a keeper,” she declared. “Jack, this one—I like her,” she told her eldest, wagging a finger in Sam’s general direction.

  “Me too. I try to show her frequently how much I like her.” Jack’s grin bordered on nefarious while Jaime smacked him upside the head.

  “What am I missing? What’s so funny?” Sandro Roman asked, carrying Maddie into the kitchen on his shoulders. Maddie was wearing a pilgrim hat and pink heart sunglasses. She was tapping her grandfather’s head with a rainbow wand, to her great amusement. Sandro patiently allowed it, accepting the glass of wine Jaime extended to him.