by Reina Torres
How he’d lasted so long without her, he just didn’t know.
“Hope.”
The corners of her mouth turned up a little. “What’s that?”
Until she asked the question he hadn’t known that he’d spoken aloud. “I was asking myself how I managed being away from you. I kept my mind focused on training. On missions. Building a connection with the other Deltas. It was my job to keep them alive and that’s how I kept my focus.
“But when it was at night and I was alone with my thoughts. You were always there.”
“Jack…” she touched the side of his face with her fingertips and it felt like electricity tracing over his skin.
“What kept me ready and alive was the thought that someday down the line I might get a chance to make things up to you. And the hope that you’d forgive me. Hope.”
He let the words fall between them, waiting to see what she might say.
Jackson held out his hand and readied himself to wait. He’d just said a lot more than he’d intended to say and wasn’t sure how she’d take it.
She took his hand and smiled at him with her eyes soft and glistening with loving tears.
“Come on, Jack. Let’s go to bed.”
Chapter 13
Morning rolled around and Hi`ilani had never loved a Monday so much. She woke up to Jackson’s mouth on her neck, his hand smoothing over her hip and down her thigh. Half-awake she rolled onto her back, opening her thighs as she saw colors of dawn painting the ceiling with a wide-diffuse wash of light.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and his hand trailed up the inside of her thigh. Just as his fingertip began to trace her slick folds, her hips bucked up and Jackson’s finger slipped deep inside of her.
He groaned in her ear and she clung tighter to him.
“Jack-”
He covered her mouth with his for a moment and when he drew back he smiled at her. “Train showed up this morning. We’ve got a full house.”
She was struggling to follow his words as he slid his finger out and when he slid back in, there were two.
“So, we’re going to have to be quiet.”
Hi`ilani’s fingers dug into his shoulders as his fingers continued to slide in and out of her body. She blinked, trying to clear her head, but it didn’t seem to matter. Everything was focused on the feeling of his fingers and the weight of him against her leg.
“Can you do that, baby?” He bit his lip and she licked her own wanting to taste him. “Can you keep quiet?”
The look in her eyes flared with challenge. “I would think you’d want me to scream. Don’t you want your friends to know?”
She knew he wasn’t like that. What they had between them had always been that.
But still, she liked to wave the red flag in front of him, because Jackson always loved a challenge.
He sat back on his knees, withdrawing his fingers entirely from her.
She knew he could read her expression, she wasn’t making any pretense. Hi`ilani had no problem communicating her displeasure with him taking his hand away.
Shaking his head at her, he moved over to the side of the bed to grab a condom out of the nightstand, he pushed himself back up onto his knees.
Hi`ilani glared at him and shook her head. “Don’t bother opening that.”
He held up the packet and smiled down at her. “This?”
She folded her arms over her chest and she saw his eyes lower to look at her. Folding her arms had lifted the hem of the shirt that she was sleeping in.
Hi`ilani knew what he was looking at. The fan circling high above their heads was enough to rush cool air over her and her skin tingled with the chill where his fingers had spread her slick heat on her skin.
Heat. That was in his gaze when his eyes met hers again.
Oh he wanted her just as much as she wanted him, but she was going to make him work for it.
Raising the packet to his mouth, he opened it in one long pull.
Her eyes followed his hands as he pulled the condom from the wrapper and her fingers itched to snatch it from him and roll it down over his length.
When the temptation became almost too much, she pressed both hands flat against her belly. The touch shook her. And images rose up in her head. A baby, swelling under her hands.
The flash of a gold band on his left hand.
And yes, oh yes, his hard cock bare and inside of her.
He said something, but she’d missed it while her head had been elsewhere.
“Hmm?”
His grin was knowing. His eyes glinting with mischief.
And before she could understand what he was about he moved to the side and turned her over on the bed.
Pushing up on her hand, she turned to look at him and what she saw turned the anger welling up inside of her to desire.
He moved behind her, nudging her feet apart with his knees.
Jackson set his hands on her hips and pulled her closer until her sex was pressed tight against his thickness.
A gasp passed from her lips.
Her head dropped down as she struggled to catch her breath.
She felt his hands smooth over her backside, molding to her body, leaving tingling heat in their wake.
Pressing back against him, she felt his fingers dig into the fullness of her and the deep curl of his hips as he slid his cock along her heat.
Jackson sucked in a breath and pressed against her tighter. “Tell me,” his words were a demand, but she could hear a plea in his tone, “tell me you want this. That you want me inside you.”
“Yes.” She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t play. She wanted him and didn’t want to wait a moment longer. “I want you, Jack. Now.”
Something inside of him broke. That last layer of protection around his heart disintegrated as she lowered herself down, pillowing her head on her arms.
She was in his hands, her body open to his, her need plain for him to see… the scent of her made him rock hard.
He needed her. More than just sex or the heady rush of an orgasm.
He needed her in his life, his bed, and mostly his heart.
And he wanted to give her the world.
And children.
The thought staggered him, twisted something deep inside him at the thought of her rocking their babies to sleep, the sight of her feeding them from her breast.
Hi`ilani had become everything to him. Friend, lover, and hopefully soon, wife and later a mother.
“Jack?” She rocked back against him and her voice had the edge of a sob. “Jack, please. I need-”
He had his hand on her lower back, his palm flattened over the long graceful line of her spine, and his other hand wrapped around the base of his cock.
It took the space of a heartbeat to notch the tip of his cock between her folds, and then with a heavy indrawn breath he pulled himself up and thrust deep inside of her.
Later he might remember that he’d groaned loud enough to wake the dead, but at the moment he had no idea. He saw stars, pinpricks of light at the edges of his vision as she enveloped him tightly inside of her.
“So tight,” he panted and wrapped his hands around the curve of her hips to hold her steady as he thrust into her again.
Every stroke pulled and tugged at him.
The only sounds that he could hear beyond the rush of blood through his ears was the gasping breaths from her lips and the slick slap of sounds as he bottomed out again and again.
“More.”
She’d whispered the words, but it replayed again in his head like a siren.
He finished his next thrust and bent over her, pressing his chest to her back until he was able to nip his teeth at her shoulder.
She moved restlessly under him and he loved the way she looked with her lips parted and her body pressing back against him.
“You want more?”
“Don’t play, Jack. You know I do.”
“I’m not playing. I’m going to love you more, just hold on.”
Jackson saw the dawning realization in her eyes as he wrapped his fingers around the thick fall of her hair. She smiled a second before he leaned back and tugged.
Hi`ilani rose up on her hands with a throaty laugh and her back bowed as he kept a tight hold on her hair.
“You’re going to like this,” he promised her with the rough scratch of his voice. “If you want me to stop-”
“I want,” she squeezed tightly around him and released her own breath in a sigh, “I want it all.”
And then the time for talking was over.
He felt her open her knees a hint wider, felt the tight hug of her body on his erection, and as he drove her to the brink of her orgasm and then far, far over the precipice, he found himself tumbling right along with her.
He was almost asleep beside her when someone knocked on the door.
Pushing himself up on an elbow he glared at the wooden door as if it might make the person go away. “What?”
The not-so-whispery-whispers that made it through the door said that both of his housemates were outside. “Sorry to… interrupt your rest, but Hi`ilani has a couple of messages on her phone. One of them from HPD and-”
Jackson opened the door wide enough to look out without the two seeing that he was naked or catching a glimpse of the room at all. “Thanks, Train.”
He took the phone from his friend’s hand and saw the knowing smile on the other man’s face. “I don’t get to come inside and see her with my own eyes?”
He heard Hi`ilani’s furious gasp from her place behind him.
“Don’t you dare-”
“We’ll be out in a few minutes after she checks her messages, okay?”
Train shrugged at the question and gave his friend a wink too. “No rush,” he laughed, “we’ll wait.”
He shut the door and set the lock even though it wouldn’t actually be a deterrent if one of the men had to get into the room. All of them were perfectly capable of getting through almost any door, but only a few of them liked doing it with tools. Most of them just leveled a door with a good kick.
He put the phone in her hand while he searched the floor for his pants and left her to check her messages.
“The first one is from Detective Wong,” she said aloud before her message service connected. She put the phone on speaker and set the phone down.
“This is Detective Wong. I wanted to call you with an update. The man we have in custody gave us some interesting information. After the shooting, his boss cut him loose, but he gave us the address for the man’s headquarters. We went there to serve a warrant, but the office was empty. The house that was connected to them was empty as well. From everything we can find the other shooter and their boss have left the islands.
“We believe that they fled to avoid prosecution. We’re still processing the two locations, hoping to find some fingerprints or other evidence to learn their identities, but so far the names we have for both of the men came up with nothing.
“No birth certificates, valid licenses. I want to caution you that all of this information is what we have at the moment. If you have any questions, you know how to get a hold of me, but I want to let you know that as of this moment the official position of the HPD is that you’re not in any immediate danger.”
“Not in any immediate danger.” Hi`ilani repeated the words to herself as if she was speaking a foreign language and was trying to sound it out and trying to decipher its meaning. “Not in any immediate danger.”
Jackson pulled a t-shirt over his head and walked around to her side of the bed.
Pulling her up onto her feet, he wrapped his arms around her. “Thank God.”
She sighed and relaxed into his arms.
When she leaned back, she looked up at him. “Suddenly,” she smiled, “I’m starving.”
“Then let’s feed you.” He was leaning in for a kiss when she put her hands in the center of his chest and held him back.
“Let’s feed your guys too. I’m afraid to tell them they came back early for nothing without a good meal in their stomachs.”
He couldn’t help the smile on his lips. “I think you’re going to get along great with them if you keep trying to feed them.”
Sitting in the back corner of L & L’s Hawaiian Barbeque, Hi`ilani was having a hard time actually eating her lunch. She’d been listening to the men talking about their adventures on leave and enjoying every minute of it.
And every time she’d tried to apologize to Baron and Train for the SOS that had brought them back, they waved it off. And in Train’s case, he focused on something else entirely.
Flirting outrageously.
“Don’t you think it’s only fair,” he leaned his forearms on the table, “that I get a chance to woo the fair maiden before she settles for the wrong man?”
Hi`ilani laughed and felt the hand that Jackson had settled on the back of her chair grip the wooden frame a little too hard. Leaning closer to him, touching her shoulder to his chest, she set her hand on his knee. “Breathe, Jack. I’m not taking him seriously.”
Train’s smile didn’t dim in the least, nor did he seem to see the hard look in Jackson’s eyes. “That would be his mistake, beautiful.”
Jackson’s thigh tensed under her hand and while she worried that he was a few blithe comments away from strangling his friend, she had to admit she was a little turned on.
Okay, more than a little.
It was less than an hour ago that those thigh muscles had helped to make her scream into his pillow.
Baron had no problem tucking into his food. When he looked up at Jackson he sat back in his chair and grabbed a napkin, wiping a bit of gravy off of his lip. “Seriously, Ajax. Train’s just trying to get you to lose your cool. Up until now you were icy calm most of the time.” He looked across at Hi`ilani. “That was my choice for his nickname, you know. Ice-man.”
Train jumped into the conversation with both feet. “But it started a bit of an argument. Some of the guys thought it was because of the X-men, you know the guy with the wings?”
Baron smacked him on the shoulder. “The guy who could turn things to ice. The guy with the wings is called Angel.”
“Sure, whatever.” Train shrugged, leaning closer to Hi`ilani. “She’s the angel around here.” He leaned back when Jackson laid his forearm on the table top. “And the other guys thought it was because of… of…”
“Top Gun?” Hi`ilani wanted to help and reach for her soda.
“Top Gun!” Train repeated with a big grin. “Yes!” He intercepted her hand and leaned forward to kiss it. “Ow!”
Lowering her hand back down to the table, Train bent over to the side and rubbed his leg.
He glared up at Baron. “What did you do that for?”
“Saving your hide.” Baron rolled his eyes. “What do you think it would do to your reputation if Ajax killed you with a plastic knife?”
Train sighed and sat back up and looked at Hi`ilani. “But Top Gun is connected to the Navy, so that wasn’t going to work.”
“No,” she took a sip of her soda through the straw, “I guess it wouldn’t.”
“What do they call this again?” Baron pointed down at his plate.
Hi`ilani looked over at his plate. “Loco Moco.”
Train smiled. His family came from Spain way back in his family tree. Efrain Figueroa was a name that appeared every few generations in his family tree. “Crazy?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure of the origin of it exactly. But it seems more like a contraction of Local to Loco and Moco probably just rhymed with it.”
Baron stared down at his plate. “I’m getting used to all the sticky rice here in Hawaii, but you give me a burger patty, a couple of over easy eggs and gravy? I’m all about this kind of food.”
Hi`ilani was still laughing at the smile on Baron’s normally serious face when her phone rang. She started to excus
e herself to answer it, but Train waved her back into her seat.
“If you want to go outside one of us will go with you.”
Rolling her eyes she answered the phone. It didn’t make sense to drag one of them outside. Besides they were the only ones in the place at this point in the day.
“Hey, CeeCee. What’s up?”
The answer was so loud she had to lean way from the phone for a moment. When CeeCee got over her first rush of screams she lowered her tone and spoke so that the dogs didn’t hear her.
Hi`ilani listened as her agent filled her in on the pertinent details.
“Okay. I’ll check my email. Yes, I don’t think we’ll have a problem. Detective Wong says everything should be okay now… yes, yes… okay. I’ll check. Okay. Yes. Okay. Fine. Yes. Thanks, CeeCee… now go take a breath. Maybe lie down for a few minutes or so? Okay, love you too. Bye-bye.”
“Wow,” Train laughed, a full-throated laugh that had the lady behind the counter tittering behind her hand, “that woman can talk!”
“You mean,” she returned, “she can scream. CeeCee is like the battery bunny in those commercials. She just can’t stop herself.”
Jackson leaned into her side. “So… what’s the thing she called about.”
She knew her cheeks were flushed with color and she wasn’t sure exactly how to broach the subject with him. “Well, awhile back when I had a bunch of time on my hands.” She looked away from Jackson for a moment. She didn’t want to tell him that she had most of that time because they’d stopped seeing each other. “And while that was going on, CeeCee sent me to some auditions for commercials and things. I got a small part in a local film and the director made me a tape out of my scenes. CeeCee sent it out to casting agents.”
She could see Train getting more excited by the minute, but she couldn’t read Baron’s expression. And Jackson, well, she couldn’t see him and didn’t want to turn to look up at him, afraid he’d think it was something crazy.
“I don’t know if you heard of that new show that they’re going to film here starting in the summer. Honolulu P.I.”