“So much I started calling my left hand Ellie.” His breath came in short, soft pants.
She wrapped her fingers around him and stroked lightly, her gaze fixed on his bobbing Adam’s apple. “But you’re right handed.”
“I didn’t want to get you mixed up in my head… Ellie, please,” he groaned.
It was payback time. Time to collect on sleepless nights when his deep voice played in her head and the restless days she ticked off in her head, waiting to see him, wanting to be with him, needing to touch him. Ellie bent and pressed a tender, chaste kiss to his stomach.
Jack groaned, nearly jerking from her grasp. She tightened her hold on him, parted her lips, and drew him deep into her mouth. Her hand slid under his hips. Arousal rippled against her tongue. His fingers clenched in her hair. Jack’s hips jerked, surging up to meet her once before he caught himself. He released his hold abruptly, pounding the bed with his fist. “Fuh…Ellie, stop….”
She didn’t stop. Instead, she shifted to straddle the straining muscle of his thigh. Her hips moved in circles, shamelessly riding the hard ridge of muscle as she drew him deep into her throat.
“El…Ellie….”
He panted her name, subsiding into a helpless chant as she increased the pace. Jack snapped, surging off the bed and pushing her back until her bottom rested on his thighs. They gaped at one another, breathless and panting. The look in his eyes was nearly feral. It made her heart flutter. He visibly shuddered as his hands came to rest at her waist. A rush of pure feminine pleasure swept through her body.
“Not now… Not like that,” he whispered. He cradled her bottom in his broad palms and fell back, dragging her up with him. “I need….”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. She needed the same thing—Jack buried deep inside of her, held close enough to bridge the distance that would eventually separate them. She caught his mouth in a lingering kiss then pulled back, rising up to straddle his narrow hips.
The damp folds of her sex brushed the tip of him. A strangled groan rose from Jack’s throat. Ellie smiled and let her knees slide apart, lowering herself onto him. His entire body convulsed.
“Ellie, wait!” His hands flew to her waist, his long fingers nearly touching as he gripped her tightly. His arms quivered with restraint as he lifted her up again.
“Wha—”
The lean, flat muscles in his stomach bunched as he sat up. His nose bumped hers and his breath fanned her damp lips. “You know, right?” he whispered, desperation creeping into his voice. “You know I love you too, don’t you?”
She couldn’t have reined in her smile if she wanted to. Ellie stared into those bottomless mocha eyes and gave him a slight nod. “I may have been tipped off.”
The tension seeped from his body. A wide, wicked grin creased his face, turning that delicious dimple loose. Jack fell back against the pillows. His hands trailed down her thighs as he beamed up at her. “Picked that up from the morning line?”
“Sometimes I pick a winner all on my own.” Ellie wrapped her fingers around his stiff shaft, and Jack’s body tensed again. “Come on, Morning Glory,” she whispered, “let’s run.”
Jack groaned. He gripped her hips to steady her as slowly rose then impaled herself on him. A grimace twisted his lips. “Gonna be a short race.”
Ellie settled herself into the saddle of his hips then slowly began to ride. “Then you’d better run, Rudolph. Run fast and hard.”
Spurred by her words, Jack rose to meet the frantic pace she set. Pleasure thundered through her, driven by the sight of his white teeth sinking into his full bottom lip and the pounding of her own heart. She planted her hands on either side of him, changing the angle just enough to stroke her most sensitive parts. Her breasts swayed with each powerful thrust. He grasped her ass, pulling the rounded mounds apart and pressing her down onto him deeper, harder, faster.
Release coiled low in her belly, poised to strike. Jack’s eyes opened wide with panic. A primal shudder rocked his body. Ellie tightened her muscles, riding him with full-out abandon as he spilled into her, each pulsating thrust carrying her closer to the edge.
“El…El…Ellie,” he chanted breathlessly, urging her on.
Her name tumbling from his lips was all it took. Ellie threw her head back, arching her back in victory as she stretched for the finish. His name bounced off the walls, crashing over them both as wave after wave of pleasure dragged her under.
She collapsed onto his chest. Ellie pressed tiny kisses to his sun-kissed skin. The curling hair on his chest tickled her nose. She rubbed it against his breastbone. His heart beat a tattoo against her lips.
“Sorry…I’m sorry.”
She chuckled and nuzzled the crook of his neck. “Don’t be.”
The harsh rattle of their breathing filled the room. His fingers circled the small of her back. “Ellie?” he called to her softly.
“Yes, Morning Glory?” she whispered.
His laugh wrapped around her heart and squeezed hard. “I’ll do better in the second heat, I promise. I hear it’s a claiming race.”
“A claiming race?”
Jack trailed one finger along her jaw, urging her to look up. “Yeah, and I’m claiming you. You’re mine and I’m yours.” He drew a deep breath and released it in a rush of words. “I don’t care how many miles there are between us. We can beat the odds, El…. I love you and you love me. We can beat the odds.”
Ellie tipped her head to gaze at him. Jack didn’t flinch or dodge her searching stare. Instead, he clamped his arms around her, holding her to him in an unbreakable embrace. She nestled into his neck again. Long shot or not, she knew the stakes were far too high to give him a pass now. Her fingertips feathered his stubborn jaw and she sighed.
“Easy money, Rudolph. Easy money.”
Declaration of Dependence
Ellie raised her heels and plowed her toes into the scorching sand, sighing with pleasure when she found the cool, damp granules hidden beneath the solar-heated top layer. She wet her lips and lay back, bracing her weight on her elbows. Vapor trails crisscrossed the cloudless blue sky. The gentle waves of Lake Michigan lapped the shoreline. To her right, the John Hancock Center cast a long shadow across Lake Shore Drive. To her left, taunting jeers and encouraging cheers were lobbed over the volleyball nets stretched along the beach.
She lowered her lashes and sneaked a quick peek at the man stretched out beside her. Golden. Glistening. Gorgeous. Everything about Jack, from the faint sheen of sweat-soaked sunscreen filming his tawny skin to the buttered corn-colored hair trailing from waistband of his board shorts, screamed hot fun in the summertime.
A shriek of childish delight smothered her appreciative sigh. A tiny blonde in a pink and purple two-piece streaked past with plastic pail and shovel in hand. Heavy footsteps pounded the sand, and within seconds a frazzled-looking man in a worn-thin Fighting Illini T-shirt caught up to the little girl at water’s edge.
Ellie smiled and cut her eyes toward the man beside her. Would their babies be golden like him, or dark like her? Tall? Short? Would they inherit his dimple? Just the thought of a little boy or girl flashing that dimple at her made her heart kick into overdrive. She could see it all so clearly. Too clearly. It wasn’t hard to envision Jack stooping to sweep the little blonde off her feet. He was good at sweeping women off their feet. He sure as hell knocked hers out from under her.
Six months. They met just over six months ago in a packed airport terminal shut in by a Christmas Eve snowstorm. Their relationship should have been impossible. At the time, he lived in Oklahoma City and she was toiling away in Little Rock, Arkansas of all places. But countless nights spent talking on the phone bridged the distance. Jack’s pure persistence got them over the hurdle of her move to Louisville. Her own tenacity kept them hanging in there while he uprooted his life and replanted himself in Chicago.
Sure, there were still hundreds of miles between them, but somehow those miles seemed more manageable. They’d
made it through the moves, the lonely nights, distance, and doubts. Their sickeningly phone-dependent relationship even survived the two weeks of near radio-silence brought on by a round of required training he underwent at Quantico.
What did they do there, anyway? Teach forensic accountants how to forcibly subdue unwieldy spreadsheets? A scowl tugged at her mouth. Forcing her lips into a smile, she tossed off her lingering resentment with a brisk shake of her head. Two weeks were a drop in the bucket. Sure, they felt interminable at the time, but that was all behind them. Now, Jack was here, in her hometown, settled and seemingly happy.
Coarse sand filtered through her toes when she pulled them free. The tiny grains tickled her skin, like the sweet, soft kisses he showered her with the night before. It had been another endless eight-week stretch since he last visited her in Louisville. The anticipation of their reunion had only been heightened by the construction delay-laden trip from O’Hare to Jack’s West Loop loft apartment. The door barely closed before they were tearing into each other like a South Beach Diet survivor turned loose in a bakery.
Ellie stretched and wriggled a little, trying to carve out a comfy spot on her towel. The scorching sand seared the soles of her feet, but the memory of his hot, hungry kisses made her shiver. A flush burned her cheeks and prickled her chest. Beads of sweat tingled along her hairline.
He turned her into a nympho, a pervert, a freaky-freak. Jack was the one who insisted they get out of bed and do something. She did her best to change his mind. He took full advantage of her suggestion then proceeded to haul her out of bed anyway. After weeks apart, was it wrong to want as much of him as she could get? No. At least, not to her way of thinking. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced he was the freak.
She shot her best death-ray glare in his direction, but it didn’t work. It’s hard to be intimidating when you’re trying not to choke on your own tongue. Jack’s eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even, and graceful fingers splayed over his stomach. He lay there flat on his back, stretched long, lean, and lovely, outstripping the length of his beach towel by over a foot. His hair curled above his ears, damp and darkened by sweat. The bastard actually glistened. If any of those sparkly vampires were around, they’d have to shield their eyes from the wonder of Jack.
Disgusted by her own weakness and determined to set aside her lustful thoughts, she swiped her forehead with the back of her hand and turned to watch the volleyball match. Three young men wandered away from the courts, jostling and nudging each other while they tromped across the sunbaked sand. The warm breeze caught bits and pieces of the insults they traded, and Ellie smirked.
As they approached, one of the guys looked up and caught her staring. A smug smile twitched his lips, and his steps slowed. His gaze traveled over the bright red bathing suit she’d bought just weeks before. His friends slowed too, following his lead until the three stared at her with disconcerting intensity. Ellie quickly averted her gaze, focusing with fierce concentration on the red enameled tips of her toes.
“Tell them I have a gun,” Jack murmured.
Her head whipped in his direction. “What?”
His eyes remained closed, his face relaxed and impassive as he groped for the canvas bag between them. A second later he extracted his wallet, exhaled a put-upon sigh, and heaved himself up onto his elbows. Ellie rolled her eyes when he flipped open the slim leather case and showed his FBI credentials to the guys lingering nearby.
A sharp edge serrated his faint drawl. “I have a gun, and I know how to use it.” He tossed the wallet into the bag and nodded to the boys. “Nothin’ to see here. Move along.”
Her fan club muttered amongst themselves as they cut between two blankets stretched over the sand, heading for the tunnel that ran under the Outer Drive.
Ellie snorted after he flopped onto his back once more. “Well, your day is now complete. You got to flash someone.”
A cocky smile lit his face. “Elfie, if I actually flashed someone it would be a helluva lot more impressive than simply showing my ID.”
She snorted, but deep down inside she had to admit he was right. Still, while there may not be a woman alive who would mind being flashed by her Very Special Agent, Jack Rudolph, she doubted the guys who checked her out would be as enthusiastic.
He shielded his eyes with one hand and fixed her with a fierce scowl. “You should put your shirt back on. You’re gonna turn into a lobster.”
She glanced down at her lily-white legs and stifled a sigh. “I’m coated in twelve layers of SPF seventy-billion.”
“Still, you should cover up some,” he insisted.
A frown puckered her brow as she ran her hand over the ruched midriff of her new bathing suit. When she tried it on in the store, she thought it kind of had that forties-movie-star look, with its halter neckline and gently gathered material. “You don’t like my suit?”
Jack rolled onto his side, propped his head on his hand, and subjected the garment in question to a frank perusal that made the once-over the volleyball guys had given her look like a friendly howdy-do. “Too sexy.”
“It’s a one-piece,” she objected.
“El, I’m pretty sure there’s legislation in the works to make that bathing suit illegal in forty-eight states.”
Ellie sucked in a sharp breath and it rattled around in her chest, pinging her insides like a sandstorm. She wanted to blame the sun for the heat in her cheeks, but they both knew it was all him. And her. Them. Together. At least, for a few days….
She chased the thought of her inevitable departure away with a brisk shake of her head. Plastering a saucy smile on her face, she raised her eyebrows. “Only forty-eight?”
He shrugged. “I figure anything goes in California and Hawaii.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment,” she warned.
“You should.” Jack reached over and tugged lightly on one of the folds stretched across her ribcage. “If I’d seen this before we left my apartment, I wouldn’t be sweating off ten pounds right now.”
“No?”
A sly smile curved his lips. That little divot in his cheek flirted with her, winking, then hiding, then winking again. “Well, maybe I’d just be working it off another way.”
“You like it?” To counteract the magnetic pull of his gaze, she forced a smirk. “Why’d you bring your ID to the beach, anyway? You think the guy with the gelato cart might be laundering money for the mob?”
Jack merely raised his eyebrows, pinning her with a silent stare. His espresso-shot gaze smoldered, and she started to melt like a Popsicle. “Tell me about tonight,” he prompted.
Lost in sticky, sweet thoughts of sugary goodness, she blinked at his sudden change of topic. “Huh?”
A few grains of sand stuck to the damp skin of his calf. His abs bunched as he bent to brush them away. “Tonight. Your family. Cookout?”
His gentle reminders did little to steer her thoughts back on track. She was too distracted by the pale scar marring his otherwise perfect bicep. The untanned strip of skin matched a similar mark just above his collarbone, a shade south of the pulse throbbing beneath his jaw. Scars left behind by real, honest-to-evilness bullets. As always, Ellie could not resist the urge to kiss that tiny, vulnerable spot. She rolled onto her side and lowered her lips to his neck. Jack tilted his head to grant her better access, now accustomed to this quirk. He somehow understood her need to soothe his tender flesh.
“El?” he croaked when she pulled back.
“Hmm?”
“Your family?”
“What about them?”
He huffed and flipped onto his back, covering his beautiful brown eyes with his hand. “Give me the run-down again.”
Ellie didn’t want to talk about her family. She didn’t want to go to the cookout at her parents’ house tonight. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her family—she loved them. It was just…she wasn’t ready to share Jack. Their time together was too short, this relationship was too important, and
the distance made it too tenuous.
Her past relationships were anything but winners. The last time she introduced a man to her family, it proved to be a giant mistake. She’d met Daniel the day after she moved to Indianapolis. They dated the whole time she lived there and after she was transferred to Little Rock. The month before her little sister’s wedding, she brought him back to Chicago for a couples’ bridal shower. Five days after the shower he dumped her, saying he couldn’t see a future for them. Just three months later, he married a girl he’d been dating for less than half that time. It took her mother and grandmother much longer to relinquish their stranglehold on hope.
Now, she was taking Jack home, and she wasn’t exactly sure how she’d been rooked into the cookout thing. Sure, it was Fourth of July weekend, but she was scared her mother and grandmother’s not so gentle panning for marriage prospects would drive Jack to declare his independence. Everyone knew hot, sweet, single guys over thirty were as rare as unicorns and as skittish as deer. She was reluctant to subject Jack to her father’s silent frowns. He wouldn’t know they weren’t anything personal. Just a daddy’s desire to hang onto his little girl.
In truth, the only thing compelling her to make the trek to the near suburbs was the fact that her little sister would be there with her husband and their new baby. Ellie itched to get her hands on her newborn nephew. The kid better damn well be worth the risk. Her fingers curled and her nails bit into her palms. She avoided Jack’s steady gaze. “You’ve heard it all,” she protested weakly.
Jack sighed. “Is he a big guy?”
“Who?”
“Your dad.”
A laugh bubbled from her lips. “My dad?”
“Yes.” Jack shifted onto his side again. “Is your father a big man?” he asked with exaggerated patience.
Her incredulous snort should have been enough to clue him in, but just in case she waved a hand at the length of her beach towel. “Do I look like I’m the spawn of a big man?”
“Ellie….”
Unforgettable Heroes Boxed Set Page 111