by Devney Perry
His lips followed their trail backward toward my mouth. His smooth jaw was hot and hard against my cheek, and even without his normal stubble, it left a burn.
“Dear? Honey?”
“Dad calls Mom dear. He calls me honey.”
Jackson growled, taking his lips away from my face and ducking down to attach them at my collarbone.
I sagged into the back of the couch, completely dazed that he found all these new spots to make me melt.
“Princess?” he murmured against my neck.
My head lulled to the side. “That’s for little girls with pigtails.”
“Boo?”
“Absolutely not,” I breathed. “Keep going.” My hands went to the back of his head, his short hair soft against my palms as I pulled him closer.
His tongue came out, licking as his lips peppered kisses across my neck. “Doll?”
“Uh-uh.”
Another peppered kiss. “Cookie?”
I shook my head, inching my butt across the couch to get closer.
Straddle him. Now was the time for straddling.
My fingers left his chest and came to my skirt. I gathered the hem in my fists, dragging it up my thighs.
To my surprise, Jackson’s hands came down to help. His calloused fingers skimmed the sensitive skin of my legs, sending my heart into overdrive. The minute my knees were no longer constricted by the hem, I spread them apart.
In my haste, I pulled too hard and a small ripping noise came from the slit now bunched by my rear. That didn’t stop me. This was my most expensive dress, but I’d have Mom mend it later.
My hands shoved at Jackson’s brawny shoulders, sending him back into the couch, as I climbed onto his lap.
The second my core settled against the rough denim of his jeans, I let out a soft moan. His erection was sizeable beneath his zipper, beneath me, and it made my mouth go dry again. I was dizzy and hot and the tension coiling in my center was making me squirm.
It. Was. Incredible.
Riding Jackson’s lap was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. A couple of times, I’d experimented with things down below. After some girlfriends in college had tried to explain what an orgasm felt like, I’d gotten curious and touched myself in the shower.
But my fingers hadn’t built me up like this. Having Jackson’s mouth on my neck, his hardness rubbing against my lace panties, was so erotic I was trembling.
“Fuck, Willa,” he said into my neck before pulling back. His hands came to my face, pushing away the locks of hair that had escaped the clip in the back. “You’re perfect.”
I smiled, then leaned in and kissed him softly.
It didn’t stay sweet for long. Jackson’s fingers dug into my hair, angling my head the way he wanted so his tongue could explore every corner of my mouth.
The throbbing between my legs escalated and I ground my center into him, stretching my dress even further. The sound of splitting seams echoed in my room.
Jackson’s hands left my hair, wandering down my shoulders to my breasts. He cupped them both and rolled his thumbs over my nipples, peaking them even through my clothes.
This seemed way beyond a simple make-out session, but I was definitely not complaining. A rush of nervous excitement sent my hopes soaring into the stars as one of his hands drifted lower, disappearing beneath my skirt.
“Do you want me to stop?” he panted against my lips. “Just say the word.”
“No.” I wrapped my arms behind his neck. “Touch me.”
The minute his fingers touched the soaking wet center of my panties, my sex clenched. My shoulders shivered and my eyes rolled into the back of my head.
Jackson’s fingers were a thousand times better than my own.
“More?” he whispered.
I nodded and one of his fingers slipped beneath the lace of my panties. It stroked through my folds twice before finding my clit.
“Jackson,” I gasped as he circled my bud. My hips slid deeper into his hand, needing more pressure.
The hand he had on my breast dropped to my skirt. His fingertips tickled my thighs as he slid it up toward my panties. With a rough tug, he yanked them to the side, making room for both of his hands.
I was so primed, he didn’t meet any resistance as he slipped a finger inside, curling it to stroke my inner walls. With his other hand, he swapped out a finger for the pad of his thumb to work my clit.
He was drowning me in ecstasy.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” he whispered against my neck as his finger plunged in and out. His lips came to the soft spot beneath my ear, kissing it just as he added another finger. The stretch of them both was unbelievable.
If his fingers felt this way, having him inside me would be otherworldly. Judging by the bulge on his lap, he was big. Would he even fit?
That particular worry fell away as Jackson picked up the pace of his thumb. There wasn’t much space between us, but somehow, his strong arms and unbelievably capable hands fit right where they needed to be.
As the tension built higher, I let my hips rock back and forth as I held on to his shoulders for balance.
“That’s it, babe. Fuck my fingers.” His hoarse whisper made my core clench. “You like my dirty mouth, don’t you? Just wait until I use it instead of my fingers to make you come.”
“Yes,” I moaned, long and loud.
Jackson’s mouth latched onto my neck, sucking hard like he was trying to draw out my taste. The friction of his fingers and his hot, wet lips sent me spiraling higher until I was strung so tight, all I could do was snap.
My body shook as I came, my core squeezing Jackson’s fingers in hard pulses. My body jerked out of my control and white spots burst behind my eyelids. Pulse after pulse, the shocks ran through every muscle until I was limp and draped over Jackson’s chest.
When the aftershocks of my orgasm subsided, Jackson gently removed his fingers from my panties, righting them back into place. As the fabric settled over my sensitive clit, a ripple of shivers ran down my spine.
“You’re beautiful when you come,” Jackson whispered into my hair.
His comment would have embarrassed me on most days, but now, it just made me smile. I didn’t have the energy for embarrassment. “Thanks.”
With his hands on my hips, he shifted me down his thighs and off his erection with a groan.
My eyes shot open. “What about you? Should I . . .” I swallowed. “Do you want a hand job?”
Hand job? Turns out, I had plenty of energy left to be embarrassed, and I was never saying hand job again.
“No, that was just for you.” Jackson smiled as the heat crept up my cheeks. “Come here.”
He shifted on the couch, tossing up both of his legs so he was lying down. As he moved, he shifted my legs to one side, positioning me so I was tucked down his entire length.
I was trapped between his strong body and the back of the couch, lying on his chest.
Not a bad place to be stuck.
The skirt of my dress was still bunched up my thighs, so I wiggled it down. My gaze tracked down his body, his long legs hanging well over the other armrest.
“I need a bigger couch.”
“Nah. This one works just fine.”
I giggled, snuggling deeper into his side.
“Your hair is so soft.” With the arm underneath me, he toyed with a strand.
“So is yours.” I’d thought it would be spiky, but it felt more like velvet. “I like that you keep it short.”
“Me too. I hated it when Hazel first made me buzz it off, but then I got used to it. It’s actually a bit curly when it grows out.”
“Really?” I kind of wanted to see him with curls. “Why did Hazel make you cut it?”
“Lice,” he grumbled. “My whole foster home got it one year. I used the shampoo and shit to kill them, but Hazel didn’t want to take any chances that I’d pass them on to Thea. So she made me buzz it all off. After that, I never grew it back. It’s easier this way.”
>
Lice. Just the word made my scalp itch, but I resisted the urge. “That sounds awful.”
“It was. There was this little girl who lived with us at the time. She had this long, brown hair. It had the same kind of waves as yours. No matter how many times they shampooed her, they’d still find eggs so they made her chop it all off. I’ve never seen a person cry so hard.”
As a woman who loved her hair, my heart hurt for that little girl. “Poor thing.”
“I didn’t really get it at first. I thought it was just a girl thing to get so worked up over a haircut. But later she told me that her mother was getting out of jail soon and she was worried that without her hair, her mom wouldn’t recognize her to take her home.”
And now my heart broke for the little girl. “Did her mom come back for her?”
“Yeah. She got released a few months later and took the girl home. I always wondered if her mom stayed out of trouble.”
I dropped my cheek back onto his chest. “I hope she did. For the girl’s sake.”
“Me too, babe.”
Babe. He’d called me babe earlier, right before I’d come. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.
Maybe it was actually kind of perfect.
“That one. Babe. I think I like it now.”
“Thank god.” He laughed. “I was running out of options.”
“So how’s it going with Jackson?” Mom asked before taking a bite of her salad.
“Good.” Wonderful.
It had been two weeks since Jackson and I had had our first date and I was simply floating. Things between us were just so . . . easy. We fit seamlessly into each other’s lives like there’d been an empty space all along, just waiting for the other person to fill.
Jackson would come to the camp every morning with my favorite coffee. We’d chat in the kitchen with Hazel or take a stroll together outside until I had to get back to work. Then he’d go do his thing during the day while I worked.
After I left the camp, I’d go and sit with him at the bar. I’d become a regular, just like Wayne and Ronny. I’d stay until closing, then help him close down before driving him home.
On the nights Thea was at the bar and he was free, he’d come over to my place and let me cook him dinner. Afterward, we’d spend hours making out on the couch and fooling around.
He never let it go too far, but things were definitely progressing. He’d touched every inch of my skin, testing which spots drove me wild. And I was learning exactly what it felt like to touch a man.
I blushed just thinking about the sound of his deep, throaty groan as he’d come in my hand last night. It was the most intense moment we’d shared. My hand on him. His fingers in me.
“Oh, Willa.” Mom laughed. “I can practically see your thoughts. Just be safe as you play with his naked body.”
“Mom.” I choked on my bite of lettuce. “Seriously? Can we not talk about that, um . . . stuff at dinner?” Or in front of Dad?
He was sitting across from me, shaking his head. The expression on his face was pure torture, like Mom had just shoved bamboo shards up his fingernails.
“Come on, Betty,” he grumbled.
“Sorry.” Mom held up her hands, then looked to me. “I’m just happy for you, honey. From the sounds of it, you’re having the time of your life.”
I opened my mouth to say thanks, but the look on Dad’s face stopped me. He was about as green as the cucumber he was halving.
“What?” I asked him, then looked at Mom.
“What?” Her eyes widened. “Nothing!”
“You said, ‘From the sounds of it, you’re having the time of your life,’ and then Dad practically gagged. What do you mean, the sounds of it?”
She grimaced and the fork in my hand dropped to my plate, sending lettuce flying.
They could hear Jackson and me at night? Nooooo.
I stared at Mom, hoping she’d say it wasn’t true, but she just shook her head. “We leave our windows open at night. You do too. Sound carries across the backyard.”
My dinner was dangerously close to coming back up.
Up until two weeks ago, I hadn’t even known I had the ability to make some of the noises Jackson could conjure as he toyed with my body. The shy girl was a screamer. Who knew?
But those sounds were definitely not ones I wanted drifting into my parents’ bedroom at night.
I buried my face in my hands, wanting to crawl under the table and die.
I’d never been this embarrassed before. Never. Not when Jackson had forgotten about our first kiss. Not the time my junior year that I’d leaned in too close to a Bunsen burner in chemistry and accidentally singed off part of an eyebrow. Not even the time in seventh grade when I’d sneezed during the silent prayer time at church and accidentally farted loud enough for three pews to hear.
This was worse.
So. Much. Worse.
“Sorry,” I said into my hands.
“You don’t need to apologize.” Mom took one of my wrists, tugging my hand away from my face. “Now that it’s getting cooler, we’ll close our windows at night.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
“So how did the last week of camp go?” Mom asked, thankfully changing the subject.
“It was great,” I told them. “It’s always hard to say good-bye to the staff.”
“They’ll be back.” Dad gave me a reassuring smile, doing his best to move on from the awkward moments.
“I hope so.”
My camp was structured differently from a lot of others around the state. Other summer programs had limited staff on hand, typically just a director and maintenance manager. The kids were chaperoned by volunteer parents at whichever organization was sponsoring the camp.
But at mine, we employed a full-time counseling staff. They were all college kids who wanted to spend their summers in Lark Cove. They were content to live in a bunkhouse with their sleeping bags and limited space for personal belongings, right alongside the kids. It wasn’t glamorous, but they did it for the experience.
I paid them as well as possible because of how much they were giving up. They didn’t get many days off to hang out with friends. They didn’t get a lot of free time to spend on the lake. Other than the staff lounge in the main lodge, they didn’t even have their own private space.
But their energy never waned.
Somehow, every year I managed to find a group of counselors who could match my enthusiasm beat for beat. It wasn’t uncommon for counselors to return for a second year, some even three. And when they knew they weren’t going to come back because they were graduating or had other job offers, they helped me recruit a replacement.
More often than not, the outgoing counselor put the incoming recruit through a more rigorous examination than I ever could.
I’d miss the counselors who’d be moving on after this season.
“Did you hear back from the coffee hut?” Mom asked.
“Yeah.” I frowned. “They don’t have any positions open, but they said they’d keep me in mind if something changes this winter.”
And since I didn’t know of any other place looking for part-time help, I was facing another boring winter.
It wasn’t all that surprising. There wasn’t much employee turnover in any Lark Cove business. People wanted to work close to home, so they held on to their jobs with a death grip.
“All ready for school to start, Dad?”
He nodded. “Ready as ever. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks rearranging my classroom. Now that you’re not so busy at camp, you’ll have to come by and check it out.”
“I’ll be there.”
I loved going back to the school, not just because it brought back memories from my own time as a student, but also because it brought back memories of when I’d gone in as Dad’s special assistant.
Every summer, he rearranged his classroom. He’d test out the new experiments he wanted to try with his classes. He’d redecorate his bulletin boards. And I’d be his helper.
I missed those days.
As Mom, Dad and I chatted more about Dad’s plans for the first day of school, my appetite returned and I finished my plate. “Thanks, Mom. That was delicious.”
“Yes, it was.” Dad stood from the table. “Thanks for dinner, dear.” He kissed her on the forehead, collected both their plates and took them into the kitchen.
Mom smiled as she watched him walk away. “Your dad and I were going to rent a movie tonight. Will you stay and watch it with us?”
I checked the clock on the wall. I’d promised Jackson I’d come down to the bar to keep him company and it was about time to leave.
“Please?” Mom placed her hand over mine. “Your dad feels like he’s losing his baby girl. It would mean a lot if you stayed.”
“Okay.” The bar would be there tomorrow. “Just let me text Jackson.”
She smiled and cleared my plate as I took out my phone to tell Jackson I’d be down after the movie.
His reply was fast. Sounds good, babe. Don’t walk if it’s dark.
I smiled at the screen. He was always so concerned with my safety. Nothing bad ever happened in Lark Cove so it was sort of unnecessary, but I didn’t argue.
Jackson’s past explained a lot about him. He didn’t trust easily. Other than Hazel and Thea, his instinct was to keep people at arm’s length. Even me, to some degree. He was slowly letting me in, but it would take time.
My theory was that Jackson expected people to abandon him.
People had disappeared from his life, one after another. As far as I knew, he didn’t know his father. His mother was . . . well, I didn’t have nice words to say about her. The same was true for his aunt.
And I wasn’t sure how many foster siblings he’d watched come in the door and go right back out.
Jackson didn’t have a constant. He didn’t have a person dedicated to always being by his side, someone who would choose him first. He didn’t have a champion.
Until now.
Since my confession about our actual first kiss, I’d let go of all my fears and doubts. I was holding nothing back when it came to our relationship. Because maybe if I let him in completely, he’d do the same with me.
Maybe he’d trust me with his heart.