Jade was all composure again, calm and cool while questions burst, one after the other, in his head. Her hand squeezed his thigh and moved back to the gearshift.
They drove on.
Nearly an hour later, they pulled up to a familiar house. The “neutral ground” where he and Jade had had their meeting with Jaxon. Compared to his family’s main house where his parents lived, this place was modest. Two stories and white, a fountain in the middle of the circular driveway and a big front yard scented with fruit trees.
A light burned in welcome over the front door. The faint glow from behind the closed windows told of a gentler light source inside the house. But overall, the place looked empty. Desolate even.
He hadn’t noticed this the first time he was here.
Jade turned off the car. “If we’d been dating in college, I’d have invited you over here at least once.”
But they hadn’t been dating in college.
What they’d been doing was flirting around a friendship, then ended up in bed one shocking afternoon.
“And tonight?” Carter opened the car door and climbed out. “Why did you bring me here?”
A motion-sensor-activated light came on in the driveway and all the way around the perimeter of the house.
She paused with a hand on the hood of the car. Slender and deep-golden fingers against the luxe silver of the car. The shape of her gorgeous body glowed in the artificial lights above them. A soft sound. Jade clearing her throat.
“I wish I knew,” she said, staring at the house.
Her voice was soft, a little lost, and that revelation of her delicate heart pulled Carter closer with the urge to protect. It was instinctive for him, but with her, more than any another woman outside his family, it swept him away in a tide of action, not just the feeling.
Carter slipped around to the other side of the car and touched her cheek. She was warm. So warm. Her soft skin was like silk under the light brush of the back of his hand. She shivered. And it wasn’t because she was nervous.
“Jade. I wish to hell I could change what happened between us before.”
Her lips parted but no words came out, just the brush of her sweet breath against his mouth as she looked up at him. Vulnerability swam in her eyes. And it was almost, almost like the first—and only—time.
In a rush, he felt swept back to that bright afternoon in his dorm room when she’d walked in, tears sparkling on her cheeks like rain.
“What do you need?” He asked the question and moved even closer, crowding her slender body with the massive bulk of his, lending her his strength. “What can I give you to make some of this pain go away.”
A low sob vibrated her throat and she abruptly shoved forward, a quick and forceful motion that mashed their lips together and clanked their teeth. She was throwing herself at him and leaving it all to Carter to sort out everything else. Somehow he knew he’d never get another chance like this one. Not simply her vulnerability, but her being open to letting him fix something, anything for her.
“It’s all right, Jade.” He calmed her with a hand around the back of her neck. He kissed her mouth, light gentle touches.
“No!” She abruptly turned her head away from him. “I don’t want that.” Jade bit his ear, her breath rough and urgent. “Make it hurt.”
She clutched at him desperately, hands clawing at him through his sports coat to roughen the caresses and make them more about hurt than comfort. But he’d never hurt her. Not even when she was asking to do it in this way.
Maybe later on they’d explore the option of a mask, rope, something to spank away her fear. But not now.
He forced his gentleness on her. Kissed her mouth, the line of her neck. Her fingers still clawed at him. Under his silk shirt and blazer, the beginnings of scratches burned. But he kissed her sweetly in return.
God, she was soft. Her neck scented with a faintly bitter perfume. The pulse beating madly in her throat.
“Carter, please...” Fingernails dug into the back of his neck and she pushed her hips roughly into his hardness.
It would be so easy to take her like this. Rough and hard against the side of her car. Make her scream in the way she obviously wanted and then tell him to go to hell in the morning, or just after she came.
But no.
Carter’s body thrummed with need. His sex was hard and throbbing in his slacks, rampant with mindless desire.
This time with Jade should be slow. It should be good for her. But his body was ravening and eager to have her, and her desperate panting, the curl and press of her woman’s body, her sex, against him, wasn’t making it any easier.
But there were benefits to being a grown man instead of an overeager boy.
He sank his teeth into her throat. She moaned his name again and moved desperately against him, yanking at her dress and trying to climb him at the same time.
God in heaven!
Growling, Carter grabbed her hands and shoved her toward the car. Her back hit the door with a gentle thud and she cried out, desperate and needy. And so damn gorgeous.
No, he wasn’t a kid, but he wasn’t a saint either.
He took her mouth. Gave her the rough kiss she wanted. Licked and sucked her tongue and bit her lips until she was a moaning and quivering mess in his arms. Her hips thudded back and forth into the car. She was desperate to have him, to have relief and he was desperate to give her what she needed.
“Love, let me!” He yanked up her dress all the way and shoved aside the thin string of her underwear.
Damn. She was soaking wet.
“Carter!” She sobbed out his name and ground herself against his palm. “More. Please!”
Part of him was very aware of how close the neighbors were. Aware that only a few thin trees shielded the driveway from the street. The car was silver and all anybody had to do was look outside their house to see them. But he didn’t give a damn. His woman wanted, and he was damn well going to give it to her.
“Jade, baby.” Panting almost as much as she was, he grabbed her knee and hooked it over his hip, baring her soft woman’s flesh to his fingers.
Moaning, she threw her head back and licked her lips. Absolutely gorgeous.
“Hold on to something, baby. Just hold on.”
Jade reached back, her arms stretched out on both sides of her to grip the top of the car, fingers slipping against the gleaming silver paint. A moan wailed from her lips when he filled her abruptly with two fingers.
“Carter... Oh!” Her hands slipped and squeaked against the roof of the car and she panted and moaned and threw her head back and forth across the roof. The moonlight fell over her like silver raindrops and her damp mouth whispered his name, begged him for more. His sex throbbing fiercely in his pants, Carter gave her the satisfaction of his fingers, three now, buried as deep as he could get into her quivering center.
He thumbed the pearl of her pleasure then fell on her breasts through the dress. Her nipples were hard and thick enough to poke through two layers of cloth. He wet the dress with his tongue and sucked the nipples one after the other into his mouth, loving her deep and firm and hard and fast with his fingers. The weight of their bodies bumped into the car, making a rhythmic thumping motion. The perfect counter to her gasping breaths.
“Oh...” Her breath hitched. “Carter! I lo—” She wailed out, a high, loud sound just before he clamped his mouth over hers and swallowed the noise with a deep kiss.
The kiss grabbed a hold of him in every way. Taking him deeper into the sensation of loving her. And it transformed. Under the autumn moon, it wasn’t simply two bodies striving against each other in satisfaction but Carter and Jade, hungry for each other, and finding a brief but still explosive release.
Her body clenched hard around his fingers and she ripped her mouth away from his, panting desperately.
“Cart
er, oh...” She flailed limply against the roof of the car, gasping in the aftermath of her orgasm.
Reluctantly, Carter pulled his fingers from her humid center. The pulse beat thundered in him and the desire to have her right there in the driveway the way a man needed to claim his woman nearly overcame him. But he clamped a hand down on himself.
“Key,” he rasped. “Where is the key to the door?”
She jerked her head toward her purse still sitting in the center console of her car. Jade was limp and gorgeous and satisfied and so damn beautiful. Carter needed to get her inside the house now before he embarrassed himself.
He slung her over his shoulder and she grunted with surprise, let out a startled chirp of laughter. But things were long past funny for him. He grabbed her purse, desperately searching for the key as he took her in a fireman’s carry toward the door.
“Carter, put me down.” As he searched for the key, she was starting to stir again, wriggling on his shoulder and agitating the scent of her sex beneath the thin dress. “You don’t have to carry me like some...some prize you won.”
Didn’t he though?
Her meaty butt jiggled near his face as he carried her toward the house. He gave in to an impulse and slapped it.
Jade yelped, then groaned lowly. The smell of her sex grew even richer.
She was trying to kill him. That was the only explanation.
The sound of keys jingling nearly made him moan out a prayer of thanks then and there.
There!
He grabbed the keys and jabbed them in the lock, wrenched open the door.
A bed. They needed a bed right the hell now.
The thunder of arousal raged, rendering him nearly beyond thought. He sure as hell couldn’t talk.
“In there,” she moaned, all her resistance to what he was doing suddenly gone. She pointed but he couldn’t see, could barely think.
He slammed the door shut and stalked to one of the downstairs rooms he vaguely remembered from the single meeting they’d had there.
Thank Christ!
The bed was big and elegantly made up, like it was waiting just for them. Those sheets were about to get messed up good. With a grunt, he threw her on the bed.
“Oh!” She gasped and her body bounced once in the center of the firm mattress. Before the bed even settled, she pulled her dress off. Then the remnants of her torn panties. The bra he’d only felt under his mouth.
Carter stopped. Because, heavens above, she was beautiful still. But instead of the coltishness of youth, her sleek body was yielding in more places, her breasts bigger, her stomach softer, her hips a lush curve. Her thighs sprawled open on the bed, and it was all he could do not to just jump on top of her and see where they both ended up from there.
Rational. He was rational, dammit. He wasn’t this guy who’d rip a woman’s clothes off and shove into her just to get at his own satisfaction first.
Breathe, Carter. Just breathe.
Yeah, but he made sure to breathe while taking off his clothes.
Sports coat. Button-down shirt. Shoes, belt, slacks, underwear, socks. He wasn’t so far gone that he forgot to take off his socks. Or grab a condom from his wallet. Carter rolled on the latex.
“Carter...” She begged so beautifully for him.
And he almost convinced himself it was her desperation that sent him immediately on top of her, mouth opening to the kiss she already lifted her head to give him.
Naked together. At last. Perfect. Nothing better. Not even when they’d done this before.
He panted into her shoulder. “Jade!” The breath gusted desperately through him. “Baby, can I just... I can’t wait.”
And just like that, she opened her thighs and invited him in. Deep. Deeper.
Wet. Hot. Perfection.
Carter groaned out her name in the burning line of her throat. And immediately began moving inside her. Snapping his hips, the beast in him intent on obliterating its raging need.
But no. No. He was better than this. He wasn’t a twenty-year-old kid anymore. He’d learned something over the years he—
Damn... He groaned and gripped her harder.
He grabbed her hips, angled her beneath him and got to work unearthing her next orgasm and his first in what felt like years.
“Carter!” She cried out his name like she was saying it for the first time. Sobbing out each time he sought and found that perfect spot inside her.
“Oh my God!” She raked her fingernails down his back, a painful striping, and gripped his rock-hard glutes and began meeting him thrust for thrust.
He felt himself sinking deeper and deeper inside her. It was more than just the physical act of burying his sex into her welcoming heat. Emotions poured from him along with the sweat. Lust, desire, tenderness. Greed.
“Jade...you feel amazing. You smell like paradise.” He groaned and took her, took them to that place of explosion they both longed to be. The hectic slap of flesh. The desperate moans, the tight grasp of her fingers on his body, in his very heart.
It flashed over Carter then, as sudden as lightning and just as consuming, the truth about himself. About Jade.
He’d never stopped loving her. He dreamt about her every night because he’d never gotten her out of his heart. Out of his system. He may not have been making love to her like a college kid, but his feelings from that time rushed over him like a tidal wave.
Ah!
The bed shook and rocked as he howled out his orgasm and emptied himself into the condom, and she received him with a long and loud scream. The gift of her release.
It took him a long time to recover. He lay on top of her, carefully balancing his weight so he wouldn’t crush her while trying to find his breath.
A sharp pain dug into his right butt cheek.
“Off,” Jade muttered. “You’re hot.” But she contradicted her own words when she tightened her legs around his waist, squeezing him with her external and internal muscles. A groan punched its way from his throat.
“Just gimme a...oh damn...a second.” Groaning again, he rolled off her and flopped down next to her on his back.
His chest heaved. His arms burned. But he felt absolutely energized. Like he could do anything. When he’d gone with his brothers and Kingsley’s friends to the strip club, the last stop on the bachelor party express train, he’d just prepared himself to suffer through it. He never thought in a million years he’d end up in Jade’s bed. He’d never had that big of an imagination.
“This was definitely not what I planned,” he growled at the high ceiling that had, surprisingly, a fan spinning lazily above them.
“Do you think I did?” Jade rolled over on her side to look at him.
Her gorgeous mouth was reddened and plump, her body gleaming with sweat. His sex twitched. Twenty-year-old Carter would’ve already had her under him again. Or maybe have her on top this time...
“Nope,” he said in answer to her question and willed this thirty-year-old body, that was thickening and getting ready for her again despite its age, to calm the hell down.
Just as he thought to drag the sheet to cover himself, her eyes drifted down his body. They gleamed with amusement.
“Already?”
Please, yes. But he kept that behind his tongue. Kind of. Carter swallowed thickly and tried to cover it with a shrug. He took Jade’s hand and was glad when she allowed him to drag it to his thigh, inches away from the thickness of him.
“Is that so hard to believe?”
Her eyebrow arched and he wondered how anyone could manage to look haughty while naked and drenched in postsex sweat.
“They do say seeing is believing and my eyes do work, so...” She twitched her fingers from his grasp and smoothed a hand over his thigh, then an inch to the left.
“Jade...” His belly clenched powerfully and his a
bs rippled.
It would be so easy, so damn easy to continue this play until they burned the entire night away. So easy. But he was after something else now. Something more. Something for later.
“Jade...”
“Yes, Carter.” Her fingers stopped moving and her lips curved up.
“Tomorrow. Come to the wedding with me?”
Her mouth dropped open in surprise.
Chapter 10
She didn’t know why she said yes.
But the next day, she sat under the bright afternoon sun in a dress she’d bought just for the wedding, watching Carter stand by his brother as his bride walked down the flower-scattered aisle toward the preacher where they stood.
Idiotic. That was the only reason.
They’d slept together again. And, just like the first time, when she’d rolled away from his magnetic and sweating body, a revelation—or stupidity—came over her. She hadn’t learned a damn thing from the disaster of the first time she’d done this. The disaster and the hell she’d been through. At least this time, one of them had been thinking enough to use a condom.
“Oh my God, she’s so pretty!” Dee—Paxton—grabbed Jade’s hand and leaned close with a big grin. “I hope I look half as good as she does on my wedding day.”
Jade didn’t think that would be a problem. Paxton looked gorgeous on a regular day, even when she was pretending to be a regular flake and overall interfering sneak.
A song played over the strategically placed speakers on the wide back lawn overlooking Biscayne Bay. The house belonged to some guy, an investor friend of the family Jade had never heard of, and was the most lush place she’d ever been to. And she’d been to a lot of mansions... The owner and his wife were charming and welcoming though, and if Paxton hadn’t pointed them out to Jade, she wouldn’t have known they owned the house. They had made the day all about Kingsley and his gorgeous bride.
But she should’ve been off somewhere, working, not hanging out with Carter’s family and watching an ever-after she’d never be part of. Truthfully though, she’d managed to get all her work done, details with Van Tyle wrapped up and dealt with, her contacts in social media and the various interns of the PR firm working overtime to keep details of Van Tyle’s foolishness and Jaxon’s situation out of the papers and off the internet. So far so good.
Her Perfect Pleasure Page 15
