That Thing Called Love

by Susan Andersen

  It startled a laugh out of her. “Ooh. Let’s test that theory.” She reached for the proud jut of his penis.

  “Let’s not.” He intercepted her hand. “Let’s get you back up to speed.” He used her own fingers to track a reverse path up from her thighs. She tried stretching them out as they neared her erogenous zones but once again he detoured past them.

  She huffed out a breath. “What’s the point of this if we don’t get to touch the good stuff?” But she knew. Because this sexual dodge-’em had the walls of her sex clasping at emptiness. Emptiness she wanted, needed, had to have filled.

  “I want you ready,” he whispered. “Ready to take me when I fuck you hard. When I go deeper than any man’s ever gone before.” He caught an earlobe between his teeth and expelled a breath. It was a hot rush shoving cold chills down her spine. “When I turn rough.”

  Oh, God, there was that voice again. That dirty talk, promising her things she’d never experienced. But she could not let him reduce her to sounding like a Victorian virgin again. Bringing her free hand up, she toyed with her nipple. Pinched it between her fingers. Tugged on it.

  Jake’s Adam’s apple took a slow slide up his throat as he watched.

  “Then let’s go,” she said with a calmness, even an edge of amusement, that made her proud, and she met his gaze when it snapped back to stare into her eyes. “This is your lucky day, Bradshaw. Because I’m ready now.”

  I hope, she thought as heat flared in his eyes and he rolled on top of her.

  “You sure?” he asked softly. Gripping his penis, he stroked its head up and down the furrow of her sex.

  Okay, she hadn’t been entirely ready until she felt the head of his erection bump her clitoris. Then she didn’t have a doubt. “I am.” She was a little nervous, however—she couldn’t deny it. Because she’d made it sound as if she were way more experienced than was true, and she wasn’t sure if she was prepared to have him slam that big boy into her.

  But she’d underestimated Jake. He kissed her the way he had earlier—with that you’re-worth-all-the-time-it-takes gentleness—and eased his way into her body inch by inch, until he filled her like she’d never been filled before. Then he slowly withdrew, dragging tender tissues in his wake until only the head of his penis remained in her. He slipped back in with equal care.

  It only took a minute or two of the tortuously slow slide method before Jenny felt as if she were about to come unglued. She drew her knees back toward her chest, and then back even further, dying for that hard, deep, rough he’d promised her, but unable to ask.

  She didn’t need to. Jake had been hanging on with everything he had, watching her for that moment when she was finally ready. Seeing it, knowing this was the real deal and not just bravado this time, he gave a grunt of approval—hell, of thanks—and hooked the insides of his elbows behind her knees. He planted his hands next to her shoulders, tipping her thighs back against her breasts and her hips up off the mattress.

  And caution became a thing of the past. He pulled back fast, then pistoned his hips to drive in hard and fast until body slapped body. Pulled back, slammed in.

  “Jake?” Jenny’s nails dug into his back. “Omigawd—Jake?”

  She was so wet and hot and responsive. His name on her lips an ever-escalating question, she alternated between gripping him to her as tightly as she could and clawing his back.

  “That’s it, baby, that’s it,” he grated in her ear. He didn’t even hear himself, the words just poured out of him without any real consciousness. “Come for me, Jenny. God, I want to feel you come all over me.” He knew she was close, knew it, and changed his angle fractionally, then thrust with hard, emphatic strokes.

  She made a feral noise deep in her throat and there! Thank you, Jesus, there. Her wet silken sheath contracted hard on his cock, then clamped down again and again, rippling up and down its length, clasping then loosening its milking grasp only to immediately clasp him once again.

  She was so good-girl tight and bad-girl relentless, and the top of his head threatened to blow off as his own orgasm roared up his cock like a ninja on crack. With a final thrust, he held himself deep and gritted out her name as he came in scalding pulsation after scalding pulsation.

  They seemed to go on forever before he finally realized he was finished and collapsed atop her as if someone had just shot his legs out from under him.

  Jenny’s breath exploded out of her, but she wrapped her arms around him to hold him to her when he made a halfhearted attempt to lift himself off her. Thank God, because all he could do was lie there like a wounded moose and breathe heavily into her neck, knowing that what they’d just shared was different than anything he’d ever had with anyone else.

  Better. It was more than simple fucking.

  His heart pounded with something other than just exertion. Because, if he was feeling what he thought he was feeling...well, he couldn’t be, that was all. Hell, he didn’t believe in it.

  And yet—God.

  The way he felt.

  It had to be the sex. The sex had him feeling—

  And if it isn’t? a voice he wished would shut the hell up whispered in his brain. He buried his face in Jenny’s hair. But, oh, crap. What if this was love?

  No. It couldn’t be. Because, well—look how great that had worked out for him in the past. Yet it sort of felt like it was.

  Damn, fuck, hell.

  He was in way too deep—and sinking fast.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I’M SO SCREWED, TASH.” JENNY watched her friend chop up ingredients for her Monday pizzas. Bella T’s didn’t open for another forty-five minutes, and Tasha’s helper Tiffany wasn’t due for another fifteen.

  Tasha glanced up to give her a little half smile. “So you’ve been saying.”

  A bark of laughter escaped her. “No. In more ways than that. I think I’ve gone and fallen in love with him.”

  Her friend raised a shoulder to brush back a curl that had escaped the mass piled atop her head. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  “Um, yeah. It’d be a disaster.” Then she brightened. “Maybe it’s just the sex, though. It very well could be, you know—it was really good sex.” She smiled reminiscently. “I mean, Real-ly. Good. Sex.”

  “Sure, rub it in when it’s been an age since I’ve gotten any, and you won’t even share the details.” Tasha used the flat edge of her chef’s knife to scrape green peppers into a stainless steel container, then looked up to pin Jenny in place with a level look. “But you don’t really believe it was just the sex.”

  Maybe it was the fact that Tasha hadn’t phrased it as a question that prompted Jenny’s “Hell, yes, I do. I’ve never had sex like that, and it’s turned my brain to mush. Probably I just have a killer crush that I only want to label love.”

  Tasha continued to meet her gaze steadily and Jenny squirmed.

  Held her silence.

  Then folded like a cheap suitcase.

  “Okay, fine. Maybe I think it’s love.”

  “And I repeat, that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Tasha said.

  “Are you kidding me? It’s the dumbest thing ever. If Jake even suspects how emotionally invested I’m becoming, he’ll run so fast I won’t see him through the cloud of burned rubber he leaves behind.”

  Maybe it was the reference to burning, but Tasha’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, crap, the ovens! I forgot to fire ’em up.” She fished an armful of wood out of the box built into her brick pizza ovens, but paused to give Jenny a serious look. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re underestimating him?” She turned back to arrange the wood in the first oven.

  “I would so like to believe that’s true,” she said fervently. “But I’ve never met anyone as clueless as he is about his own capacity for love.”

 
Tasha craned her head around, elevating an eyebrow at Jenny over her shoulder. “So, which is it? Does he have a large capacity for love? Or will he hear the word and run like hell from yours?”

  “Both, Tash—it’s not a contradiction. I’ve watched him with Austin, and it’s clear he loves that kid like crazy. But I think there’s a part of him that’s still afraid to own it.”

  “How about when it comes to you?”

  “Well, I know he likes the sex. But I have no idea if it goes any deeper than that. No. That’s not true—he flat-out said he doesn’t believe in love. Yet there are times I think—” She shook her head. “Oh, hell, who am I fooling? It’s hard to tell what he’s feeling.”

  “And you’re afraid to ask?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “Which makes me the world’s biggest coward, I suppose.”

  “No.” Tasha abandoned the fire building and came over to the counter. Her stormy-sky-colored eyes were dead serious as they met Jenny’s across the narrow space dividing them. “You are nobody’s coward,” she said fiercely. “Your parents—the two people who should have put you first—put you dead last instead, and I know that left scars. So if you want be to cautious, you be cautious.” She nudged the fingertips Jenny had pressed hard against the countertop. “Do you have any idea what you’re gonna do?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “Say nothing, I suppose. Let Jake believe I’m content with a strictly sexual relationship.”

  Tasha’s brows furrowed. “Do you think that’s wise when you feel so much more?”

  A harsh laugh escaped Jenny. “Wise?” She shrugged. “Probably not. But I do think it’s realistic.” She held her friend’s gaze. “God, Tash. The ugly truth is, I’m going to lose both Jake and Austin come the end of the school year. And it’s gonna happen whether I’m having head-banging sex or not. So I might as well grab the gusto while I can.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then...it ends. I’m not fooling myself otherwise. But at least, when it does?” She shrugged again. “Well, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I went into this with my eyes wide open. And I didn’t miss out on the lovemaking of my lifetime because I was too damn chicken to take a chance.”

  * * *

  JAKE TRACKED JENNY DOWN to her office at the inn later that afternoon. He’d spent some time with Austin yesterday, had heard all about the overnighter at his teammate’s house the night before. But Jenny had been nowhere around—and the memory of how they’d spent the night had been too fresh in his mind to inquire into her whereabouts. He feared that if he so much as spoke her name, his son would somehow know what they’d been doing while he was eating birthday cake.

  As he looked through the open door now, he saw her sitting at her desk, deep into one of several spreadsheets scattered across its wooden surface. He was transfixed for a moment, awash in a sensory overload of remembered sensations from their time together—the softness of her skin, the sweet slickness of her mouth against his, the throaty sounds she made as her pleasure built—and all he could do was stare. She wore her usual almost-but-not-quite sheer girly top—this one in a shimmery olive-green—and the overhead lights cast a sheen across her hair like a path of moonlight across midnight waters.

  Jesus, Bradshaw. You’re waxing poetic now? He tapped briskly on the doorjamb.

  And smiled when, in a clear attempt to save her place, she stabbed her finger down and reluctantly dragged her attention away from the spot to look up.

  “Hey,” he said. “You got a minute?”

  For a moment her face lit up and his heart did the jungle drum thing.

  Then, even though she still smiled at him, the wattage somehow dialed back. Became...less. Vaguely impersonal.

  “Sure,” she said, grabbing a piece of notepaper off her desk and aligning its edge under a line of data on the report. “What can I do for you?”

  Oh, the temptation, given the images that flashed through his head. He sternly shelved it. “It’s more what I can do for you and Austin—or what I’d like to do, anyhow. It’s gorgeous out today, and I checked the baseball calendar and saw that there’s no game or practice scheduled for this evening. Could I talk you two into going on a picnic with me?”

  “Really?” The wattage of her smile sparked upward several notches. “That sounds like a fabulous idea! One of us should call Austin. He didn’t have plans when I saw him at the cottage after school, but you know how fast that can change.”

  He fished his cell out of his pocket and propped a shoulder against the jamb. “I’ll do it right now.”

  When Austin answered, the noises in the background put him squarely in Bella T’s game room. Jake laid out his proposal, and the teen greeted it with gratifying enthusiasm.

  “Great,” Jake said and knew he likely wore a shit-eating grin the size of Texas. “I’ll be by to get you and Jenny at—what?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Four-thirty?”

  “Make it five,” she said, indicating the spreadsheets on her desk.

  “Jenny says five. Right. See you then.” Shoving his phone back in his hip pocket, he looked at her. “We’re on.”

  “Excellent. Do you want me to ask the kitchen to prepare us a basket?”

  “No.” Tempting as the offer was. “This’s my show—I’ll take care of dinner.”

  That earned him yet another bump on the Smile-O-Meter. “Ooh. This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “I’m a thoughtful kinda guy.” Who was tempted to cross to the desk and lay a big, warm kiss on that sweet mouth. Instead, he reluctantly shoved upright and stepped back into the hallway. “I better let you get back to work. See you at five.”

  She murmured an agreement and he took off.

  He arrived at her cottage to collect her and his son at five on the dot, and though he wouldn’t admit this for the world, he had spent the past fifteen minutes looking at his watch, willing the damn minutes to pass so they could get this party started. Loaded down with a cooler, a bag of groceries and a blanket, he lightly kicked a rhythm on the door to the mudroom.

  It whipped open. “Hey!” Austin reached for the grocery bag balanced atop the cooler. “This is such a dope idea!” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t tell Jenny we’re gonna take my boat.”

  “We’re going to take the boat?” Jenny said, coming into the mudroom.

  Austin grimaced. “Sorry, dude.”

  Jake grinned at his son and gave him a companionable shoulder bump. “Nothing to be sorry about. It wasn’t a deep, dark secret.” He looked at Jenny, and smiled to see her dark hair now plaited in two braids, the way she had worn it the first time he’d seen her. “We were going to surprise you with a trip to Oak Head.”

  She smiled. “Excellent! Let me just change into my deck skimmers.” She crossed the small area to the built-in cubbies and pulled out a pair of what looked to Jake like regular, if girly, tennis shoes. She toed off the shoes she had on, kicked them in an empty cubby, then wiggled her feet into the navy replacements. Bracing one up against a cubby, she leaned in, hooked a finger in the shoe’s back and unbent the slight fold her foot had put in it before reseating her heel.

  “Will you take me water-skiing after dinner?” Austin asked. “The water’s flat as a pancake.”

  His head whipped back from admiring the snug pull of Jenny’s jeans against her round butt to look at his son. You water ski? he wanted to demand, but was smart enough to swallow the question before he could remind Austin just how little he knew of his life. Instead, he said, “Isn’t it still pretty cold for that?”

  “Dude. Everyone and their brother has a wet suit.”

  “In that case—” Shit. Left to him, he’d say sure, but he had no idea what a responsible parent would say. So he took the safe route. “If it’s okay with Jenny, it’s okay by me.”

  “Way to cop out, Bradshaw,” she
said good-naturedly as she dropped her foot to the floor and straightened. She grabbed a fleece jacket off one of the hooks above the cubbies and folded it over her arm. “Make me the bad guy if I say no.” She gave Austin the hip. “Luckily for you, it’s fine by me, provided the water’s still calm after we eat.”

  “Or you could take me skiing first,” he said.

  “I suppose we could. Go put your wet suit on and grab a beach towel. And bring your stuff with you so you have dry clothing to change back into.”

  “Sa-weet.” He tromped out to the boat shed, where he donned his wet suit and collected his skis and towrope.

  Down at the dock moments later, Jake stowed the picnic gear and turned to his son, who stood by the driver’s seat pulling on his life vest. “Do you want to ski from here?”

  “That would be ridiculous!” The word might be negative, but the teen’s tone brimmed with enthusiasm, and Jake glanced at Jenny.

  “I know, right?” Her lips curled up. “It doesn’t sound like it, but in this case ‘ridiculous’ is actually an affirmative.”

  He grinned. “All right, then.” Turning back to Austin, he saw the boy was already hauling his towrope to the back of the Bayliner. Watching the teen kneel on the back cushions to connect the rope, he said to the back of his head, “Deep water or dock start?”

  “Dude. You only use deep water if there is no dock. Or if you fall.” Pushing upright, he shot them a cocky grin. “Which I don’t intend to do.”

  “Live and learn,” Jake said agreeably and caught the little foam floater attached to the boat key that Austin suddenly lobbed his way. He stared at it in his hand for an instant, then up at his son.

  “Why don’t we have Jenny drive,” he suggested. He glanced at her. “If you don’t mind, that is. That way I can spot Austin and, more importantly, get to really see him ski.” For the first time.