by Leigh Morgan
If you’re going to curse, young man, go for the gold. Anything less diminishes you and the impact of your statement. If you really want to do something for her, get your johnson out of your pants and take the woman to bed. You’ve been dancing around long enough. Shit or get off the goddamned pot. Now that’s how a grownup talks.
Jesse laughed. He would have blushed, but Irma’s voice in his head would call him out about that too. He’d never gotten used to Irma’s propensity for vulgarity, but he loved the old bat anyway.
Love you too, boy.
Jesse walked over to Taryn. He stood silently beside her while she tried to skip her remaining stones. She wasn’t getting the wrist action right and the most she was able to coax out of each stone was two bounces. He didn’t try to help. He didn’t rush her either. He simply stood there with her, waiting for her to finish. Moments after she did, she looked up at him. Jesse offered her his hand. She took it and pulled herself up.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now, I take the advice an old friend just gave me about pots.”
…
No one in this place made any sense to Taryn, but in that moment when Jesse offered his hand and looked at her with such banked heat in his eyes and acceptance on his face, she didn’t much care about making sense. Instead, she took solace in Jesse’s company. She’d missed him over the last ten days and it was good to have him near. She’d awakened every morning with his scent on her skin and in her bed, but that wasn’t enough. Taryn wanted much, much more.
“Where are we going?” She asked. Jesse wasn’t leading to the path that went back to his house.
“I have something I want to share with you.”
Taryn kept up with Jesse’s easy pace as he led her away from the pond, past the big house at Potter’s Woods and the small cottage that she’d been told was her Aunt Finn’s workshop. The stone path behind the cottage led toward Jesse’s property. They took that path until it split. One fork leading back to Jesse’s house, she could see it from here, one leading away from his home. Jesse took the path leading where she’d never been. Part of her was grateful. Taryn didn’t want to be anywhere near Jesse’s dojo right now. If she ran into Reed or Shannon O’Shay she wasn’t sure any of them would survive it. Tomorrow would be soon enough to face what she’d done and why she’d done it. Today she wanted to continue hiding behind her righteous indignation.
Jesse must have sensed her tension because his thumb began to rub her palm where their hands intertwined. Without thought, Taryn raised their hands and brushed the back of his hand across her cheek before kissing it and letting it fall back to her side. Jesse didn’t stop walking, but she noticed the slight catch in his gate and the swift intake of his breath when her lips touched his skin.
She’d been inextricably drawn to him from the start. Denying it was futile and a bit silly since she wanted nothing more than to be with him right now. She was so lost in the vagaries of her mind’s inner workings that she missed the first part of what he was saying. His voice was heavy with memory and rough with affection.
“I was fourteen when Reed brought me here. I couldn’t believe people like her and Finn really existed.” He laughed and the sound squeezed her heart. “I didn’t talk to her when she tried to get me out of my last foster home. Not for weeks. But she just kept coming. I didn’t believe her when she said I was going to be living with her. Then I kept waiting for her to kick me out when she realized what a loser I was.”
Jesse stopped walking. He was lost in some memory he kept to himself. He was looking past the path to what looked like an endless forest of trees on either side. Taryn didn’t want to intrude on his history, but she was curious about him and what made him tick. She sensed a depth of emotion in him that would rival the black depths of the ocean.
It didn’t scare her. It made her feel like she could, like she should, trust him with her safety and her heart, knowing he was worthy of both.
Where had that come from? Taryn tried to dismiss the thought as soon as it registered, but it was stubborn and decided to hang around longer than it was welcome.
“I didn’t belong here, with these people who had more heart than sense. They’d welcomed a mongrel into their midst without ever contemplating the ferocity of the beast’s bite, should he choose to attack.”
“Did you? Attack, I mean.”
Jesse looked at her, an unreadable expression on his face, his navy eyes bright with emotion. “No. I didn’t attack. But I was a real shit for a good year and a half. I don’t think I so much as smiled for most of that time. I certainly didn’t talk. Not unless I was asked a direct question that I couldn’t answer with a nod or a shrug.” Jesse reached for a leaf, pulling it from the branch, rolling it up in his fingers. He didn’t seem to enjoy talking about himself as a teen, which made her wonder why he was insisting on doing so now.
“Ignoring them became impossible. Reed and Finn have this way of teasing one another that would make a stone crack a smile. Reed has a quiet way of collecting what Finn calls ‘strays’ that managed to melt the wall of ice I’d built around me. They were funny and kind and patient. I wasn’t used to any of that. Their easy camaraderie scared me. I didn’t fit in. Not then. Hell, I didn’t fit anywhere then. Much less with good people who were trying to make life better for me, and the few elderly clients they had back then. They couldn’t afford me then. That was two years before Jordon. They took me anyway.” He threw the leaf on the ground, his eyes soft as he turned them on her. “I’m still here.”
Her chest began to swell and her throat got thick. Taryn didn’t like what the kindness in his eyes was doing to her. She wanted him, needed him, if she was honest, but she didn’t need to carry the weight of his experience with Reed into her future, no matter what that held. She wasn’t a teenager. She was an independent woman who already had a mother and a life.
“Is this where you tell me that if I just give these crazy people a chance I will grow to love them? That if I just open my heart all will be right in the universe.” Taryn’s voice was sharper than she intended.
“This is where I tell you these crazy people saved me. They’re my family. If you open up just a little they could be your family too.”
“I’ve got a family.”
“I know you do. No one’s trying to diminish that. There’s nothing wrong with finding more people to love you, Taryn. Life doesn’t have to be either, or. You can belong here. Everyone here will accept you. All you have to do is be open enough to let them.”
Taryn could tell Jesse meant every word he said. She also knew there was more starkness in his life, before he came here, that he wouldn’t be sharing with her yet. Maybe he’d never share it. That made her angry and curiously filled her with a need she didn’t understand. She didn’t need autobiographies from any of the other men she wanted to take to bed. She certainly didn’t need to make nice with their extended families. She felt manipulated, even though she didn’t believe Jesse would stoop to manipulation even if he thought it would work. She wanted him. She didn’t want any family strings tied to that prize.
“The only one I want to let inside me is you.”
Something in Jesse’s eyes flashed. Did she imagine his disappointment before the window to his soul slammed shut? She wasn’t sure, but it felt like he suddenly found her lacking. She lost something in that moment and that just added to her feelings of self-recrimination. Since she wasn’t into long-term self-flagellation, that feeling didn’t set well with her at all. Taryn dug in her heels when Jesse turned and began walking again, pulling her along with him.
“Look, I’ve had a hell of week and a half and I’m leaving for Wiltshire tomorrow. I don’t want to think about your family or mine right now. I don’t want to throw another kick or punch or contemplate that I hit someone for the first time in my life and immediately after I wanted to throw up.” She yanked her hand from his and put her hands on less ample hips than she’d had ten days ago. She was also gaining volume, whi
ch she couldn’t seem to tone down no matter how hard she tried.
“What I do want, is your company. I want to see you naked. I want to push you down and ride you like there is no tomorrow. What I don’t want and won’t tolerate is your disappointment or your judgment. I want to come again and again until I can’t anymore and then I want you to hold me, kiss my forehead and tell me everything is going to be alright, even if the world is ending.”
She swallowed hard, chest heaving with the effort not to fall apart. “And if you don’t take me somewhere I can be naked and scream, so help me, I’ll drop trow right here and fuck you where you stand.”
Jesse opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again before slamming it shut as she swore. Both of his eyebrows shot up with her first tirade and his eyes got wider. Taryn wasn’t sure if that was a reaction to her profanity or her obvious intent to do exactly what she’d said. It didn’t much matter as long he found them a bed in the next sixty seconds.
Jesse’s face was void of all expression before his eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, deflating her anger. He bowed formally, a gesture she wanted to find offensive, but couldn’t, because it was executed with such polite perfection.
“Your wish is my command, Mistress.”
Uh-Oh. What did I just get myself into?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jesse barely made it to his gazebo. His intent was to show Taryn his formal rose garden, medicinal herb garden and the trellised pergola with hanging hops and multi colored bougainvillea streaming down in riots of color. He designed his koi pond and the larger water garden pond beyond that featured a Rubenesque mermaid being pleasured by a massive Poseidon, complete with a trident. Finn commissioned that from one of her artist friends for his twenty-first birthday. Poseidon looked an awful lot like Finn’s husband, Henry, but Jesse loved the statue anyway. It had taken him more than a decade to create this tranquil garden, where he spent most of the spring and summer whenever he was home. He loved it, took great pride in it, and wanted to share it with Taryn. Five minutes ago.
Now all he wanted to do was make it to his gazebo, pull his rattan couch out into a bed, take off Taryn’s, scratch that, his gi pants, that she happened to be wearing and sink into her before he shot his load like a sixteen year old. He’d been disappointed by her unwillingness to admit Reed meant something to her. He’d been so taken back by her desire that it was all he could think of now.
“Jesse, slow down.”
He kept going. “Not yet.”
“For heaven’s sake. I’m barefoot, you idiot.”
Jesse didn’t slow down as he scooped her up in his arms. He opened the screen door to his gazebo, set her down, then went immediately to the couch and threw off the pillows. Sheets were already on the pull out. He smoothed them to have something to do with his hands while he waited for the rush in his ears to quiet. He didn’t want to turn and look at Taryn until he could do so without immediately jumping her. What the hell was the matter with him, he wondered? It must have something to do with her gym-rat attire.
When he calmed down enough to risk speaking, Jesse turned and came face to bare breast with what appeared to be a Taryn-eating-octopus-like monster.
“Ah…a little help here. This damned sports-bra is sticking to me. I can’t get it off and it’s cutting off the circulation to my brain.”
He wanted to laugh, but the sight of her full breasts bouncing up at him with their brownish pink nipples fully erect, stopped him. Taryn looked fabulously endowed fully clothed. Set free, she was utterly magnificent. Jesse bent, licking one salty-sweet tip. Taryn jerked back in surprise, arms flailing wildly, she hit him in the head. Her voice was muffled, but obviously perturbed, under layers of cotton and spandex when she spoke.
“Hey, cut that out and get me out of here. I’m having trouble breathing.”
In her haste to disrobe she’d managed to get herself well and truly stuck. He should have been flattered by her haste, and he was, but the absurdity of the moment gave him back his equilibrium, and his sense of humor. Before she managed to extricate herself he took out his cell phone and took a picture. She must have heard the distinctive click because she stilled instantly.
“That had better not be what I think it is, Jesse. I swear to God and Goddess, if you are saving this moment for posterity I’ll find your gun, I’ll shoot you and your phone.”
“That’s a lot of talk for a woman who managed to effectively tie herself up in her own underwear.” Jesse said, hitting the save button before hiding his cell in the small compartment in the table next to the couch. Then he turned, grabbed the edge of Taryn’s sport bra, and yanked. The damn thing barely budged. He yanked again, harder this time.
“Ouch. Take it easy. This torture devise is too small to begin with and it shrinks when it gets wet. Its only saving grace is that it keeps me from bouncing on the dojo floor.”
“Stop moving your arms.” He said, struggling with her and the material.
She growled, whether at him or the situation or both, he didn’t know, but he laughed as he finally managed to free her face. Taryn was able to get it the rest of the way off by herself. She threw it on the floor, huffing and puffing with exertion. Pushing her hair from her face she stood before him, scowling, breathing hard and naked from the waist up.
Jesse lost his smile and the urge to laugh. For as long as he lived, the image of her standing before him dragging air into her lungs, hair damp and curling with her efforts, would be burned into his brain. He wanted to see her do kata like that. Better yet completely naked. He’d have his wish before long, he vowed. “Untie your pants.”
Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned, and for a split second he thought she’d turn around and leave him. He didn’t think he’d have the wherewithal to let her go. A second later, she surprised him by doing exactly what he asked. She spread her legs as if she were getting ready to wrestle instead of disrobe, then, standing like a warrior at the ready, she pulled the strings holding her gi pants in place. There was nothing shy or uncertain in her movements or her stance. She knew what she wanted. Jesse was beginning to love that about her too.
Taryn’s tongue shot out, wetting her lower lip as her fingers disappeared under her waist band. Her hips were round, but not as round as the first day they’d met.
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Ten pounds as of this morning.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Her hands stilled under the gi, holding the pants firmly in place. In that moment, he would have gladly shot himself if he’d been armed. His gaze move from her hands to her face then back to her hands. He couldn’t tell from her face if she was offended or not by his words.
Take off the gi pants, honey. Come on babe, drop trow. Remember?
First one hand moved, then the other, and suddenly he could breathe again. Cotton shifted to the right, to the left and then with a whoosh, the most delightful sound known to man, her pants pooled on the floor, covering her feet. Taryn stepped out with one foot then tossed them across the gazebo with a quick flick of the other. They landed with a thud, neither of them bothering to pay attention to exactly where.
She stood before him more like a demand than an offering, tall, regal and bold, wearing only a Mona Lisa smile and so much raw feminine power the air all but crackled around her. She was broad and full and so beautiful that he ached to hold her, but he couldn’t seem to make his feet move.
Taryn wasn’t shy with her body as a rule, she knew her flaws. She also knew they mattered far more to her than to any man who’d seen her nude. She’d never grace the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition and she didn’t care. Her body, now ten pounds lighter and more finely chiseled, was curvy and strong, made for giving and taking pleasure.
Taryn tossed her hair with a quick movement of her head. Her chin went up and her shoulders back as she took a step forward, closer to Jesse, watching as his jaw tensed. His eyes continued to survey her body, seeming to take in ever
y nuance as she moved closer and closer to him.
“We seem to have a problem.”
His gaze captured hers. “What’s that?”
“You are over dressed for this occasion.”
Jesse looked down as if only just realizing he wasn’t going to get the job done in his current hampered position. Unlike her, he had no trouble pulling his t-shirt over his head. It landed in the corner near her pants. He kicked out of his shoes with the same ease. He wasn’t wearing socks. His hands were at the metal button on his jeans and he opened it before she could stop him.
Taryn reached him before he made it any further, covering his hands with hers, stopping him without words. She’d seen him wearing nothing but a towel low on his hips. He wore his jeans the same way, low, showing the tips of his hip bones and the padding of muscle keeping them safe. The memory of him she carried to her bed every night didn’t do the man before her justice. She may not be beautiful in this cultural climate, but he certainly was, by every conceivable definition. He wasn’t thin, yet there wasn’t an extra inch of buffering fat anywhere on him. He wasn’t pumped with the mass of a power weight-lifter. He had the definition of a free climber and the breadth of a martial artist. Just above his hip he had what she’d heard her Aunt Finn refer to as the ‘karate muscle’. There were many words she could have used to describe the male perfection before her, but the one that sprang to mind was more of a sound than a word…ummmmm…
Taryn moved his hands from his zipper to his sides, where they stayed, fisting slightly before he forced them to relax. The windows of gazebo were open, letting in a cool breeze that tightened her skin and his. They were hidden in a glade of willow trees and the screens were dark, but it was almost like being outside. Taryn reveled in the blatant sensuality of it.
Her hands moved from his hips to his chest, skimming the tattoo reaching out of his jeans, moving up his ribs to the kanji on his chest. It was small and precise, right above his heart. She ran one finger over it, then her tongue. When she was done, she blew softly, making him groan.