by J. Bengtsson
Breaking our kiss, Jake traveled down my neck, that tongue of his tracing wet lines across my skin and making me shiver. All the while he moved in me, growing harder and more intense with each passing minute. I dropped my head back as Jake’s tongue formed snail trails along my sensitive neck. Wrapping my arms tighter around Jake’s neck, I bucked into him, panting as I encouraged his participation. But Jake was making me wait, and in turn, taking away the very last remnant of my self-control. With my body in a heightened state of desire, I swept my fingers through his hair.
Jake said nothing as he clamped his lips against the side of my neck and began pumping, thrusting steadily in and out, supporting me. As he controlled my movements with his powerful grip on my backside, I felt myself rapidly heating toward the boiling point, and my thoughts became clouded, my consciousness submerging in a rising sea of liquid passion. My legs clamped tighter around him, and suddenly Jake’s hips bucked hard against me, and I felt him release in long, jetting bursts deep inside me. The sensation triggered my own climax, and my head jerked forward, bumping against the limo window as my entire body clenched with a powerful shudder, legs locked, nails violently raking Jake’s neck and shoulders. I made no sound other than a tiny, choking gasp, and time seemed to stop. When I, at last, managed to draw another breath, I realized I had scratched Jake's skin hard enough to draw blood; and he looked at me with mild surprise before devouring my lips with a deep, long kiss.
Giddy from our lovemaking session in the limo, I skipped my way down the hallway to our honeymoon suite. Jake trailed behind, refusing to partake in such childish antics, yet there was no doubt he found my mood infectious. The wide smile on his face was proof positive.
I stopped at the door to our room. “You’re planning to carry me over the threshold, right?”
“I feel like there’s been a whole lot more carrying today than in the average wedding.”
“Well, you know, if your limo hadn’t gotten stuck and my heel hadn’t snapped off, you could have cut the carrying in half.”
“Although I feel it’s important to add that the limo never would have gotten stuck had you been able to wait the five minutes it would have taken to get to the hotel and order room service.”
“True, but if I hadn’t demanded fast food, then we wouldn’t have been eating it in the backseat of the limo, and…well… you know what happened after that.”
He nodded, smiling. “You win.”
Scooping me into his arms, Jake carried me into our room and dumped me unceremoniously onto the bed. His face was flushed with the effort as he collapsed beside me.
“I wasn’t too heavy, was I?”
“No. God no,” he said, through ragged breaths.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all the fries.”
“If you recall, I did try to help you out with those, but you actually bared your teeth at me.”
“I was smiling.”
“No. You made a snarling noise, too.”
“Fine. So I was territorial. Everyone knows there’s no ‘we’ in ‘fries.’”
Jake rolled his eyes then sat up on the bed to look around. “This is nice.”
I sat up too. Damn. The dark distressed-wood four-poster bed was draped in white cloth, and the high-ceilinged room was decorated in homey yellows and browns. A huge spa tub sat off to the side. Too bad we were only spending the one night here before jetting off to Cabo in the morning.
“You know what I want to do right now?”
“What?”
I stopped myself, realizing how stupid a request it would be. “Never mind. You’ll think it’s stupid.”
“I’m usually down for pretty much any ridiculous thing you ask for.”
I dipped my head to the side and smiled slyly. “Okay, you asked for it.”
I stood up on the bed and started jumping in my wedding gown. I’d watched it once in a movie, and thought it was the cutest, most romantic thing I’d ever seen. Of course, I was sixteen at the time, so maybe some of its charm was due to my youthful fantasies.
“Oh, god,” Jake said, not budging. “I take it all back. This I won’t do.”
“Come on, babe, you know you want to.” Holding my dress up as high as possible, I joyfully kicked my feet up behind me.
“No. I really don’t want to.”
“But you will because you love me, right?”
“No.” He laughed. “I married you. I think I’ve proven my love.”
“All right. That’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I sighed, feigning disappointment. “This was just a childhood dream of mine, but no biggie.”
I really didn’t care one way or another. I just liked giving him a hard time for fun. “But whatever, Jake. You do you.”
He watched me jump, an amused smile on his face.
“Are you coming, or what?” I finally asked.
“Yeah. I’m coming,” he said, with zero enthusiasm as he dragged his butt off the bed. Jake climbed up and stood there as I bobbed up and down. I grabbed his hands and forced him to jump with me. The way our heads bobbed up and down and the bed creaked below, we both started laughing. Soon we were in full-blown hysterics and completely out of breath. Jake and I collapsed in a heap, panting like we’d run a marathon.
After catching my breath, I rolled over, propped myself up on one elbow, and planted a big, smoochy kiss on him. “You’re already an awesome husband.”
“Why, because I do what you want?”
“No, because you do what I want just to make me happy.”
He smiled, grabbed my cheeks, and squished my lips together to give me a kiss. “I do like you happy.”
“Yes, you do.” I had no doubt my eyes were shining with the love they felt. He was just so damn amazing. “I love you so much, Jake McKallister. It actually hurts sometimes.”
He wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and drew me in, locking our mouths in a lingering kiss. When he finally broke away, he said, “I hurt for you all the time.”
8
Jake: Honeymoon
Walking with purpose, I rounded the aged barn with the metal shingles, sliding my hand along the rough wooden surface. It seemed so harmless, so old and worn, but it wasn’t. There was nothing innocent about this place or the land it stood on. My heart rate began to rise and my breathing shallowed. I wasn’t alone. I knew they were following me, and I wanted to scream at them to back off. What did they think I was here for in the first place?
I glanced down at my list, but it wasn’t like I really needed it. Each tiny detail had been etched in my brain like a twisted poem. Still I clutched the worn paper in my hand, more for comfort than anything else. “#6 Due South. A single boulder in the meadow with five marks carved in the base of the stone.”
I could see it, that boulder… it was there in my dreams… always that same damn boulder. “Five marks carved in the base of the stone.” I hated knowing these things. They were his secrets, not mine.
“Jake, wake up.”
I opened my eyes slowly, disoriented, as the boulder disappeared from my vision. Casey, my beautiful new wife, was sitting beside me wearing my t-shirt and gently rousing me by patting her hand on my stomach. Over the past two years, we’d devised the least invasive wake-up call. When I was deep in a dream, an abrupt awakening could affect me for hours. But allowing me to wallow in a nightmare was no better a solution. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and actually looked down at my clutched hands, searching for the list, though it wasn’t there.
Casey placed her hands over mine. “You okay?”
“What was I doing?”
“You were breathing really heavy. I got scared, so I woke you up.”
“It’s okay. I was just having a nightmare.”
“Who was following you?”
“What?”
“You kept telling someone to back off.”
Running my hands through my hair, I wondered how much I should tell Casey about this dream. We had a deal: every time my nightmare was bad
enough that she needed to wake me, I had to share one detail with her. Although my first instinct was always to lie to her, I’d made a concerted effort not to.
“Ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” she asked, her skin erupting in goosebumps. There were times she seemed so innocent. Was that how a person reacted who’d never seen the dark side of life? I’d been so young when my world imploded that I didn’t remember what it was like before I was jaded.
“It’s a dream,” I said, trying to justify my answer. “You asked.”
“What did they want, these ghosts?”
The answer to that question had haunted me for years, and even though I knew the answer to it, I would never admit it to her. Against all odds, I’d built a life for myself, one that included this amazing woman beside me. I wouldn’t allow them to take that from me, no matter how selfish it might seem.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying hard to sound unfazed. “You woke me up before I could ask them.”
She smiled even though she didn’t seem at all happy with my response. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. Can we please stop talking about ghosts? They’re such a turn off.”
I yanked her down onto the bed and rolled over her. Although still appearing troubled, she didn’t protest when I removed her t-shirt or when I began running circles around her nipples with my tongue, but her worried mind was not yet ready to concede; her body wasn’t giving in to my touch. Casey wasn’t convinced. She wanted more from me, but we both knew that wasn’t happening. So the question was, would she allow me to change the subject through distraction, as I was doing now, or would she shut me down entirely? It had gone both ways in the past, and recently she’d been getting harder to redirect.
Teasing a trail down her stomach, my fingers and tongue worked in unison until, slowly but surely, Casey’s body relaxed under my caress. Once I moved between her thighs, all was forgotten. At least for her.
The ultra-exclusive resort where we were spending our honeymoon sat on a secluded stretch of pristine coastline and offered sweeping ocean views as well as luxury amenities. Casey and I had some excursions planned later in the week, but the first few days were spent entirely in the villa. There was no need to go elsewhere. We had everything we could possibly want and more. The private pool and spa aside, we were steps away from the sandy beach where we sat multiple times a day watching the waves roll in. It was relaxation at its finest, and we were taking full advantage of our time together – like now, lounging on inflatable mattresses in our pool with a drink in hand and the ocean as our scenic backdrop.
“Ooh, hon, you’re starting to burn.”
“No. It’s called a tan. I think you forget that I have a superior skin tone, which doesn’t require the application of suntan lotion every twenty minutes, unlike some people I know.”
“Oh, okay,” Casey said, feigning indifference despite the fact that my insolence drove her insane. “Suit yourself, but don’t come crying to me tonight when you’re the shade of a solo cup.”
“When have I ever come crying to you?” I asked, all bravado, no bite.
“True. You’re more of a whiner.”
“I prefer brooding.”
“Brooding suggests a level of cool that you just seem to lack,” Casey teased.
“Excuse me. I’m pretty sure if you looked up the meaning of the word brooding in the dictionary, they’d skip the definition altogether and just place a picture of me there.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, pulling her sunglasses off to look at me. “What word would be next to my picture?”
“Hmm… that’s a tough one. Let me think,” I said, pretending to waffle on the answer before blurting out, “Loquacious.”
“That’s a big word, sweetie. Good for you.”
“I know. The only reason I know what it means is because when I was writing my vows, I looked up synonyms for talkative, and just like that, I had a new word.”
She laughed, but it died off more quickly than expected. I glanced over. Her eyes were closed, but she wore a frown on her face. Shit, did I offend her? Using my hands as paddles, I splashed my way over to her and grabbed her mattress to pull us together.
Taking her hand, I said, “Hey, I was just kidding. I love that you’re loquacious.”
“No, it’s not that.” She hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”
Figuring it had something to do with my dream from earlier, I steeled myself for her question.
“Do you think I should quit my job?”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told me she wanted to quit math… if you could even do such a thing. I attempted to sit up on my inflatable, but miscalculated and tumbled into the water.
“I’m not sure how to interpret that answer,” she said, after I’d resurfaced and shaken out my sodden hair. I pulled her mattress into the shallow end and stood next to her.
“That’s because I didn’t give one. I didn’t know you were considering it.”
“I love my job, and when you were still in LA, it was great, but now that you’re gone all the time, I don’t like missing you. I go home to an empty house, and I wish I were with you. Sometimes I wonder why I’m even doing it, you know. It’s not like we need the money. But then, I also feel this need to get some use out of my degree. I just don’t know what to do.”
“That’s not a question I can answer for you, Casey. I don’t want you to resent me later if I give you the wrong advice.”
“But if you had a choice, would you prefer I be with you?”
“You’re my wife. Of course I’d prefer that, but I don’t require it.”
“Wow, look at you, all politically correct.”
Swinging her mattress toward me, I bent down and kissed her. “I know, I’m dying a little inside right now. I want to tell you to drop everything and come with me, but if I make that decision for you, I have a feeling it’ll come back and bite me in the ass. So my answer is, whatever you want, honey.”
“Blah!” She pretended to vomit. “Terrible answer. You’re lucky you’re hot.”
“I know, right?”
Wincing, I stepped out of the shower and checked my sunburn in the mirror. Dammit. How was I going to hide this from Casey? After boasting of my superior skin tone, I had some explaining to do. Nursing the ache, I didn’t have a chance to cover up before she walked into the bathroom and smirked as she ran her eyes over my charred skin.
“Wow, such a beautiful tan. You were right, Jake, no lotion needed,” she said, grinning, then slapped my naked butt. “And hurry up. Gabriel will be here in a few minutes, and we don’t want him to mistake you for a lobster.”
The knock came on schedule. Gabriel was nothing if not punctual. My stomach growled at just the sound of his knuckle hitting wood. Gabriel was our personal chef, and today would be the third night he’d come to our room to whip us up a tasty meal.
“How are my favorite newlyweds?” he asked jovially, using that same line every night before serving us the dinners I’d prearranged with the resort. There would be no culinary surprises for me. The problem with personal chefs, I’d found, was they always wanted to get creative with their food selections, and I was anything but an adventurous eater. Give me the basics. I was a meat and potatoes kind of guy. The last thing I wanted was experimentation in my mouth.
Gabriel, ever the professional, abided by my wishes for dinner, but appetizers and between-course samplers were fair game in his book, and before I knew it, bite-sized nasties began showing up on my plate. I mean, was it so hard for him to grasp that not everyone enjoyed octopus tentacles sliding down their throats? Normally such behavior would rub me the wrong way, but not with Gabriel. He was too damn nice, like a friendly grandpa who spent his days doting over his grandchildren just because he could. When it came right down to it, I didn’t have the heart to offend him by not eating what he set on my plate. That’s not to say I actually ate the stuff, I just pretended to. While Casey gamely sampled his offerings, I w
as busy stuffing mine into napkins, as so many dogless children the world over had done before me.
Regrettably, my silence on the issue only encouraged Gabriel’s creativity, as he believed I was actually enjoying his creations. Each day he brought forth bolder, more Fear Factor-worthy selections for me to try. We’d only been here three days and the dinner thing was already starting to stress me out. In desperation, I’d taken to stashing paper towels in my pants pockets. Since I never knew what was coming my way, I went into every meal prepared for the worst. As for Casey, she found my efforts insanely entertaining, as if I wasn’t doing it for my very survival but for her unbridled amusement.
So it was with great apprehension on my part when Gabriel presented Casey and me with a covered platter after dinner. I pictured the severed head of some exotic beast drizzled in apricot sauce, which was sure to be a delicacy somewhere in the world. I glanced down at my measly stash of paper towels. No way would they be enough to cover whatever monstrosity lay beneath.
“So first,” Gabriel began, moisture pooling in his eyes as he fanned his face. “Oh, gosh, I told myself I wouldn’t get emotional. You just mean so much to me.”
I fidgeted with my paper towels. Oh, fuck, this was going to be bad.
“You two made this old man believe in love again.” Full-on tears were now squirting from his eye sockets.
“Ahh, Gabe,” Casey said, exiting her chair and flinging her arms over his burly shoulders. I wanted to remind them both that we’d only collectively known each other for three days, certainly not enough time to warrant sobbing. Nor was it enough time for Casey to have given him a nickname.
“And…and I…” More weeping. “I made a cake…”
Oh, thank god! Just a cake. No maggot cheese in a bread bowl or embryo eggs dipped in blood pudding.
“It’s okay,” Casey said, rubbing Gabriel’s back. “Nice easy breaths.”
Although I wasn’t a fan of sweets, I didn’t fear them either. So while Gabriel bawled, I shoved the paper napkins in my pocket and leaned back in my seat, feeling as though I’d just dodged a rather slimy bullet.