The Cora Carmack Box Set

by Cora Carmack

  It was the gentle stroke of Jackson’s fingers along my ribs from just below my bra to my waist and back again. It was soothing and maddening, and I was hyperaware of everywhere that our bodies touched. The rise and fall of his chest beneath me was like the rise and fall of ocean waves, and my feelings for him were just as tumultuous. I’d given up trying to decide what was the right thing to do in this situation or what I thought was best. The truth was . . . I didn’t want to think. And when we were touching like this, I didn’t have to. I could just feel.

  While his hand was stroking down to my waist, I shifted and turned onto my side. I laid my head against his upper body, pulled one arm up to my chest, and casually tucked the other around his waist. When I’d turned, his hand had shifted from my side to my stomach, dragging my shirt up on accident.

  I held my breath, hoping that he would stay exactly where he was, that he wouldn’t pull his hand away. The second stretched on until I was wound so tight from anticipation that I thought I might explode. Then his tentative touch turned sure and his hand pressed closer to my stomach, half his hand touching bare skin.

  We both knew the other was awake, but we lay still as if we weren’t. It was like a game to see how close we could get to the line without crossing it. The hand that I had so casually wrapped around his waist slipped underneath the back of his shirt, pressing into the same skin that I had dragged my fingernails across a few hours ago. I didn’t push further, not yet. And neither did he. But I lay there, my heart beating wildly, staring out at the empty train tracks and absorbing the warmth from where our bodies aligned. Still cradled between his legs, my hip was even with the juncture of his thighs but not quite touching. After a few minutes of stillness, I slowly edged my way closer to him. Our bodies pressed more intimately together, and my head rested higher on his chest so that my lips were nearly at his neck.

  His head moved, his cheek pressed against my forehead. I could feel him looking down at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. If we didn’t look at each other, neither of us had to think. I didn’t have to think of how I could screw this up, and neither of us had to think about whatever it was that made him keep pushing me away. We didn’t have to do anything more than touch. His touch was all I needed to erase the rest of the world.

  I could still feel his eyes on me, and I willed him to turn away. After a few more long moments, I felt him exhale, and I seemed to sink further into him. He turned his face more so that the edge of his lips touched my forehead, and the hand on my waist began the same slow stroking motion that he’d started on my side, but this time his hand slipped completely beneath my shirt.

  That was where it started. Those soft touches. Each one pulled us a little closer. Each one gradually smudged that imaginary line between us.

  And soon, the pull between us wouldn’t just erase that line. It would obliterate it.

  19

  When our train came, we didn’t talk about what was happening between us. I slipped Hunt’s coat all the way on, we gathered our things and boarded. On the train, I sat next to him, he lifted the armrest, and we wordlessly fell back into each other’s arms.

  We did the same on the next train that took us from Brig, Switzerland, to Milan, Italy. I assumed that was our final stop, but when we boarded one last train to Firenze, in Florence, I was glad for one more chance to touch him. Because I wasn’t sure this weird peace would last once we emerged back into the real world.

  But despite my intentions to savor our closeness, fatigue caught up to me and I was asleep within ten minutes of the train taking off. I didn’t stir again until we were pulling into the station a little over an hour and a half later.

  Hunt’s fingers were combing through my hair and he said, “We’re here.”

  I yawned and pushed myself up off his chest. His eyelids were heavy, and I knew he probably hadn’t slept at all. His face was normally all angles and hard edges, but sleepy, he looked younger, less intimidating.

  He yawned, and I laughed because he was just so damn cute.

  “I thought we’d start by just walking around the city. Maybe go see the statue of David. Eat some gelato.”

  I caught his yawn and said, “Sounds good, but . . .”

  I trailed off, unwilling to admit how exhausted I was. Thankfully he did it for me.

  “But sleep first?”

  “Oh, please God, yes.”

  He laughed and agreed.

  We stumbled from the train station, little better than zombies. A hostel was out of the question. It was almost impossible to sleep during the day at those because you shared a room with so many people, so we stopped at the first decent hotel we found a few blocks south of the station. I didn’t even have the energy to read the name. It was too long. It started with a B and ended with hotel, and that was all that mattered.

  I leaned my head into Hunt’s back as he spoke to the concierge, and then handed over my credit card.

  I didn’t think about much at all until we arrived at our room, and found a giant king bed in the middle of it.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think to ask for two beds,” Hunt said. “I’ll go back down.”

  “No, don’t. That bed looks amazing, and I’m going to collapse if I don’t get into it right now.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I kicked off my shoes and collapsed onto the bed still fully clothed.

  “Oh God, I have never been happier than I am in this moment.”

  I heard Hunt’s faint laughter, and then I was out.

  I woke later as Hunt pulled back the covers and maneuvered me beneath them. A certain familiarity crept through my bones, like this had happened before. I peeled my eyes open, and found Hunt. He must have showered because his face was still slightly damp, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants that hung low on his hips. His abs could have rivaled all of Tuscany for the most gorgeous rolling hills I had ever seen.

  He pulled the covers up to my neck, and then stepped away from the bed. He settled onto the burgundy sofa situated across the room on the opposite wall.

  I said, “What are you doing?”

  “Ssh. Just go back to sleep.”

  “No, I’m not letting you sleep on the couch, not after the night we’ve had. If you’re too afraid to sleep in the same bed as me, we’ll go downstairs and get a different room.”

  I pushed back the covers and started crawling out of bed. He was off the couch and in front of me before my feet even settled on the floor.

  “Don’t, Kelsey. Just go back to sleep.”

  I set my lips in a firm line and scooted over, leaving space for him to climb in.

  “You’re not going to let this go?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “The couch is actually pretty comfortable. And it’s not a good idea to—”

  Tired of the same old argument, I grabbed his hand and tugged hard. He toppled on the bed next to me, and I said, “No more excuses.”

  My patience had been brushed away by every smoothing stroke of his hand across my waist last night. It disappeared like sand in the wind bit by bit until all that was left was the longing underneath.

  Still gripping his hand, I laid back and turned on my side, facing away from him. I tugged on his hand until he lay behind me, and then I let his hand drop onto my stomach.

  I wasn’t going back to how we were before. I was sick of the will he–won’t he. I just wanted to be close to him. The consequences be damned.

  His body was stiff behind me at first, and he was holding his arm so that it made as little contact with me as possible. I snuggled back into him, and he froze.

  “Jackson . . .”

  I let his name hang in the air, and after a few moments he relaxed. His arm curled around my waist, and the movement of his chest grew to match my own as we fell into sleep.

  I woke again in the afternoon, and sunlight was pouring through the window, stronger than a jack and coke, hold the coke. I ro
lled over to get away from the light, and abruptly met the wall that was Hunt. He lay on his back, completely dead to the world. I’d only ever seen him sleep on that first train ride to Prague, and then it had only been a few seconds before he woke up.

  In sleep, I got to study him in a way I hadn’t been able to so far. He had a small scar that ran through his right eyebrow, and another on his chin. His nose wasn’t quite as straight as I thought it was, but had a slight bump at the bridge. I wondered if he’d broken it before.

  His chest I’d seen several times, but that didn’t make it any less mesmerizing now. It too had several scars, one toward his shoulder that was small and thin, and I guessed was from a surgery. Another on his side was more jagged, and spanned the length of several ribs.

  When I’d soaked in as much of him as I could without turning him over or removing those pajama pants that framed his hips so deliciously, I decided to try to catch another hour or so of sleep. Gently, I laid a hand across his abdomen. When he didn’t wake, I laid my head across his chest.

  I’d barely released a satisfied sigh when I was flipped over onto my back, and my shoulders were pinned to the mattress. I cried out in shock, and then in pain at the force Hunt exerted on my shoulders. He was strong and all of his weight was bearing down on me, bending my shoulders back in a way they definitely weren’t meant to. His eyes were wild and dark and unseeing. His breath came in heavy, shaky pants, each one punctuated by a little more pressure on my shoulders.

  “Hunt,” I said, but he didn’t react. I bent my arms at the elbow, and managed to grasp at his forearms. “Jackson. It’s Kelsey. Wake up.” I whimpered, desperate to make the pain stop. Louder, I said, “Jackson, please wake up. You’re hurting me.”

  I don’t know if it was time or my words or something else that snapped him out of it, but he released me, and a look of horror dropped down over his previously blank expression.

  Even though it was over, his breathing was still harsh and uneven, and it was several long seconds before he said anything.

  “Oh God. I’m so sorry, princess. I’m sorry.”

  His expression crumbled, ruins hidden in his eyes, and he started crawling backward to get off of me.

  My hands shot out, and I gripped his arms.

  “Don’t. Don’t do that.” I repeated the words he said to me in that café bathroom.

  “Kelsey . . .”

  I tugged on his arms, but they were immovable stone columns. I said, “Come back to me.” I tugged again, and this time the stone gave way. His hip hit the bed beside mine, but his chest draped across mine. He dropped his face into the hollow between my neck and shoulder, and his hands went to my shoulders, his touch now soft and soothing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Ssh.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held on to him as tightly as I could. I didn’t know what plagued him, but I could guess, and all my guesses put my problems to shame.

  “I never wanted to hurt you,” he whispered.

  This was why he’d pushed me away. He’d thought I couldn’t handle this or wouldn’t want to. But the truth was . . . I’d grown up in the kind of world where people hurt you on purpose. To prove a point or to play a game. I’d take Jackson’s kind of hurt any day.

  “Hey,” I said, pulling his face up until his eyes met mine. “You haven’t hurt me. I’m fine.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t know, Kelsey. There’s this thing . . .”

  “We’ve all got things like that, Jackson. I don’t care.”

  I grasped his jaw and pulled his lips closer to mine.

  Millimeters away from my mouth, he jerked back. “You should care. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He rolled over onto his back next to me and ran his hand across his face. I shifted onto my side, and laid my head on his chest.

  He said, “Kelsey . . .”

  I closed my eyes, settling into him. “You’re going to have to pry me off because I’m not going anywhere. And I can be pretty damn stubborn.”

  He paused, and then breathed in an impression of a laugh. After a few seconds, breathing became breathing again and the laughter disappeared, but his arms settled around me. And that was enough.

  We stayed locked together in bed for the rest of the day. Sometimes sleeping. Sometimes not. But no matter how we shifted or in what positions we lay, we never stopped touching for more than a few seconds.

  And each time I was shocked by the ache I felt in those moments. It uncoiled quickly, piercing and pulling and opening a hole in my chest that echoed like an empty cavern until his skin met mine again. Each time I would sigh in relief, and hold him tightly, probably too tightly for a few seconds. But he never said anything. Neither of us did. Not about his dream or the way I was clinging to him. Not about the darkness that was so clearly lurking in both of us, filling up the spaces between the skin and muscle and bone.

  We didn’t say a word, and I was reminded of those first few seconds when we’d leapt off the bridge in Prague. There had been so much noise and fear and adrenaline, but most of all there had been a permeating, inevitable, and calming silence as we fell and fell and fell.

  When we finally climbed out of bed, we spent the evening walking around Florence. We did get that gelato. And we saw the replica statue of David outside the museum, which was close enough to seeing the real thing for us.

  We had dinner on the garden terrace on the roof of our hotel, and we slept in each other’s arms again that night.

  But still . . . all we ever did was touch.

  And feel.

  20

  I was fairly certain that Hunt had meant to leave and jet off to another place the next day, but he hadn’t counted on spending the whole first day in bed. I’d thought once that Hunt was like gravity, but the real gravity was between us. Neither Hunt nor I had anticipated how much that pull would take over.

  It was irrational, but I kept feeling like we’d lose whatever this was if we left our little hotel in Florence. Sometimes, I felt like we’d lose it if we even left the bed. It was an awful thing to be terrified of waking up, of standing, of going outside.

  It was stupid, and when I wasn’t petrified, I was berating myself for it.

  I was not this girl. I was not the girl who let her whole world revolve around a man. But then again, I’d never really let my world revolve around anything else but me. Now that I had stepped out of the center, and put someone else there, it was hard to go back.

  So, he didn’t admit it, but I think he changed his plan. Instead of heading to another city, we stayed in Florence. Sometimes we ventured outside the city, like the day we took a bike tour of Tuscany. We spent an entire day, exhausted and sweaty, exploring hill towns that weren’t the typical tourist destinations. In most of the towns, we were the only tourists to be found. Hardly anyone spoke English, but they were so excited to have us.

  In one village, we toured an art studio where the artist worked with alabaster, crafting everything from statues to lamps to chess sets. I bought a pale alabaster heart pendant, and looped it onto the necklace I was already wearing.

  Outside one walled city, we found the most stunning ruins of a Roman theater. We couldn’t get very close, but we found a great view of it from the wall of the city, and I told Hunt everything I knew about Roman theaters. I told him the Roman names for all the parts of the structure like scaena frons and the cavea and vomitorium. I’m sure he didn’t care, let alone remember what I said a few minutes later, but he listened and smiled.

  We biked along the winding roads, sometimes going hours without seeing a car. We stopped and had a picnic lunch in the grass. I stared up at the sky, finding shapes in the clouds while Hunt drew in his sketchbook. Me, I think.

  When we saw a town in the distance, we went there, having no idea what it was called or where we were heading. I had the most delicious homemade pasta in someone’s actual home. We’d been looking for a restaurant, and we
re instead invited inside by Giovanni and his wife.

  And even though the day was amazing, and we could have stayed in any of those towns or kept exploring forever, we couldn’t bring ourselves to move on. We rented our bikes for a second day and rode off in a different direction, meeting new people and exploring new places, but both days we were back in Florence by nightfall. Back in our sanctuary of silence where we didn’t have to question or label or analyze anything between us.

  It was perfect.

  Except for the fact that I was wound so tight from being close to him, from touching him that at times it became difficult to sleep at all.

  He fell asleep faster and faster each night, and I stayed up longer and longer, my body aching from neglect. On the fifth night of our weeklong adventure, I couldn’t take it anymore. While he slept, strong and silent next to me, I let a hand trail down my stomach, and into the pajama shorts I’d worn to sleep that night. I was already slick and aching, and just the first touch had me pointing my toes and closing my eyes.

  I sucked in a breath and bit down on my lip to stay silent, but my body was buzzing with pent-up energy. It was the same buzz I felt coming off stage, high from the lights and the applause and the attention. Only this all came from him. From

  being near him and being unable to have him.

  I circled my fingers, my back arching with pleasure.

  I was so caught up and focused on my own touch that I didn’t realize Hunt was awake until he gripped my wrist, pulling my hand up and pressing it against the pillow above my head.

  My eyes snapped open, and my jaw dropped. I didn’t know what to say. But I knew I was turned on even more by the sight of him leaning over me, and the feel of him pinning my wrist. I whimpered, and his eyes were so dark, they shone black.

  Without saying a word, he touched the flat of my stomach, and then replaced my hand with his. The calloused pad of his middle finger pressed against me, and a galaxy sprung up behind my closed eyes as I bucked up into him. He pressed again, circling this time, and I didn’t have to be quiet now. I cried out and with my free hand, I gripped the wrist of the hand that shackled mine above my head.