“I don’t want to have sex with you,” she announced. “If we’re going to do this, it has to be in a clinic.” She huffed, gazing out at the water before turning her determined face back to him. “And I’m not even sure if you being the father is a good idea. What if we ruin our friendship over this? Your friendship is...” she paused and looked down for a moment. He saw the muscles in her jaw clench and waited. When she looked up at him, he was startled by the fierceness there. “Your friendship is about the most important thing in my life, Jayce. I won’t do anything to jeopardize it.”
He eased back, contemplating how to respond. It was a monumental effort to get his pounding heart to slow down. And his body to stop responding sexually to everything she said. Unfortunately, everything she said, every look she pointed his way was hot. Beautiful and hot. Damn, he loved a strong woman! She might appear shy, but Jessa wasn’t a woman to mess with! She had a stubborn streak that was…beautiful!
“Okay, so talk to me, Jessa. How do you think that we are going to mess up our friendship?”
“First of all, I’m not good at sex. I know this and…well, suffice it to say sex sucks!”
Jayce was too stunned to react. Not good at sex? How could someone not be good at sex? It was…awesome! Although, it had been a long time since he’d experienced sex, but he remembered loving it!
“What is so bad about sex?” he asked, needing to know.
She shrugged, leaning back against the chair. “I just…don’t like sex. I’ve never really enjoyed sex. It’s fine. Snuggling afterwards is nice. But the actual sex act, it’s a bit boring, don’t you think?”
He stared at her for a long moment, then threw back his head, laughing. When he recovered, he looked at her with a shake of his head. “Okay, so you haven’t enjoyed sex before. That’s something I’ll take care of. What are your other objections to sex?”
Her mouth fell open and his mind instantly contemplated her lips. That full lower lip was quite possibly the sexiest part of her, he decided.
“Um…Jayce, not that I don’t appreciate your…uh…manly attributes, and I admire your confidence. But please, just…sex isn’t all that important to me. Which is one of the reasons why I want to just skip the whole sex part and go to a clinic.”
He laughed softly. “Jessa, relax and let me take care of your enjoyment of sex. Okay? Can you trust me?”
She gulped and he was fairly sure that she was going to turn him down.
“How about sex only when I’m able to get pregnant?” she offered.
He pretended to think about that for a moment, wondering if he should tell her that he’d been thinking about the various ways to make love to her since the first moment she’d brought up the idea of getting pregnant.
“How about if you let me show you how great sex can be, then you decide if you only want to have sex once or twice a month?”
She shifted in her chair, obviously uncomfortable.
Before she answered, he offered, “Jessa, once you get pregnant, you’re probably not going to want sex,” he explained, although that hadn’t been the case between Charlotte and Oz. He hoped that it wouldn’t be the case for Jessa either. Not that he was hoping for long term, or anything. He just…he wanted a bit longer with her.
Damn, even that was a revelation. He’d never considered long term before. But this was Jessa. Everything about her was different.
“You have a point. But since I’m not a huge fan of sex, I doubt I’ll miss it after I am pregnant.” He watched her eyes and something flashed in their chocolate depths. Something he didn’t fully understand, but he would figure out eventually. “So, your suggestion of having sex more often before I can’t have sex isn’t a good argument.”
“Okay, then how about this,” he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. It was getting dark as the sun set behind the mountains, but the dim light only made their conversation more intimate. “How about if we just kiss? I can demonstrate my skill at kissing while you decide on the other matters.”
He saw the hope in her eyes, could tell she was excited by the idea. After last night, he was too! He’d enjoyed holding her in his arms, feeling the way she pressed against him when he held her. Besides, last night’s kiss hadn’t been all that innocent.
Then her eyes dimmed and he clenched his glass of tea. “No. No kissing,” she said firmly. “It might be better to live in ignorance of great sex than to experience it and know that you will never have it again,” she told him.
“What about if we just continue on with our relationship after you get pregnant?’ he offered, liking that idea more by the minute.
She laughed softly. “I thought the whole point was to get pregnant and then go back to being friends.”
“Friends with benefits,” he corrected.
“Right. But after I get pregnant, we’d go back to just being friends.”
No, that wasn’t going to work with him, but he didn’t want to scare her off. Reminding himself of all of the men she’d dated, and rejected, during their friendship, he reminded himself to just move slowly.
“Okay, how about this? You said that you enjoy the snuggling part of sex. How about if we extend our friendship from our evening conversations to more?”
Those beautiful brown eyes narrowed with his offer. “What would be ‘more’?” she asked cautiously. But he could see the interest in her eyes.
“Dinner together,” he offered. When she looked at him warily, he added the condition, “Just when we’re interested in having dinner with another person. If you prefer to be alone for dinner, just say so.”
She tilted her head. “Dinner occasionally would be nice,” she agreed.
“And perhaps watching a movie together after dinner. Or talking. Or playing chess or poker or…”
“You have that group of people coming through your house lately.”
Jayce thought about his friends, their poker nights. “I have a group of friends come over for poker night once a month, or I go to one of their places.” Of course, going to their place meant a transcontinental flight, but he wasn’t going to add that piece of information. She might find it intimidating that some of his closest friends were powerful world leaders. Sheiks and bankers tended to terrify ordinary people. Although, Jessa could never be classified as ordinary. She was extraordinary in so many ways.
She took his explanation in stride. Once they were closer, Jayce could reveal the identity of his friends. But he’d check with them first. There were security risks involved with their traveling here or him going there for their poker nights and he wouldn’t put them in jeopardy. Especially since that might mean he’d have to go get them out of trouble. Which he’d do in a heartbeat, but right now, he didn’t want to leave Jessa. He enjoyed their nights together. Their conversations were the highlight of his day.
Jessa contemplated rejecting his offer. She was perfectly fine eating dinner alone every night. She loved their conversations, cherished her time with Jayce. But was she being greedy in wanting to share meals with him? Watch a movie with him? And would they snuggle on the couch while watching that movie?
Oh, my! The idea was incredibly tempting.
“Fine!” she agreed.
“Good!” he smiled, leaning back in his chair. “We’ll start tonight.”
Gulp! “Tonight?” she squeaked out.
“Why not?” he asked. “Do you have other plans?”
Jessa thought about the five chapters of her current plot she hadn’t written over the past two days because she had been too preoccupied with Jayce. Or the fifty e-mails that she needed to respond to that had been sitting in her inbox for the past several days. Again – because she’d been thinking about Jayce! Or just the eight hours of lost sleep?
“Nope!” she replied. “Not a thing.”
“Good. Come with me. I’ll cook tonight.”
He stood up and took her hand, leading her up the slight hill to his house.
Inside, Jessa looked around. She’d been in h
is house briefly several times, but never for a long period of time. Once she’d asked to borrow a ladder in order to change a light bulb in her foyer. She had a ladder, but her foyer was two stories high. Not only did he have a ladder high enough, but he’d brought it over to her house and changed the light bulb himself, not letting her climb that high up.
She hadn’t minded at the time. Her fear of heights had meant that she’d ignored the other six light bulbs going out over the past few weeks. But after the last one had burned out, she’d accepted that she’d needed to change them.
So yeah, she’d been in his house. But not really “in” his house. Walking up there now, admiring that huge, beautiful Victorian, she could feel her heart race. Were they really doing this? Was she going to enter into his domain and have dinner with him? It seemed like such an escalation of their relationship. But it wasn’t really. She had dinner with her friends and those meals didn’t mean anything significant other than two people spending time together, sharing a meal.
This was different. Jayce was different! First of all, he was much bigger than any of her friends. Bigger. Badder. Scarier and…more tender. His fingers held hers gently, with a confidence that no man had ever shown her.
“You okay?” he asked, pausing outside of the glass doors of his patio.
“Yeah,” she whispered, suddenly aware of how far she needed to tilt her head back to look up at him. Goodness, he was tall!
“How short are you?” he asked.
Jessa laughed. “I was just thinking about how huge you are. I’m five four,” she admitted.
“You seem taller because of your personality,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not short, Jayce. You’re abnormally tall.”
“I’m six three,” he told her and leaned down. “But I guarantee that I can make our differences work for us.”
With that, he opened the door and walked inside, pressed a few buttons on an electronic panel by the doorway and led her through to a stool. “You sit there,” he ordered. “I’ll cook. What are you in the mood for?”
Jessa looked around, noting that he’d somehow meshed updated, high end appliances with the old world style of the house. The combination added a great deal of character. “Um…I’m open to anything,” she told him. “As long as it doesn’t have broccoli in it. I hate broccoli.”
He peered at her over his shoulder. “Hate broccoli? It’s one of the best vegetables!”
She shook her head. “I don’t even cook it in my house.”
He laughed as he bent over to pull some ingredients out of his fridge. “How about garlic chicken and sweet potatoes?” he offered.
He poured her a glass of iced tea, then started cooking, talking to her the whole time. Jessa thought it would be tense, being around Jayce like this. He was such a high energy kind of man. But as he cooked and asked her questions, she found herself relaxing. She didn’t drink any of the tea, knowing that the caffeine would keep her up again tonight and she desperately needed some sleep. She was charmed when he noticed and switched out her tea for lemonade.
The food was delicious! “You’re a wonderful cook!” she exclaimed as she savored that first bite.
“You doubted me?” he teased.
“Of course I doubted you! There has to be something you don’t do well.”
“There are a lot of things that I can’t do,” he replied.
“Name one.”
He laughed. “Well, I don’t like sharks.”
Jessa rolled her eyes. “No one likes sharks.”
“For the life of me, I can’t get the hang of French,” he admitted. “Spanish, yeah. Arabic. Yep. But for some reason, I can’t get the accent on the French language.”
She stared at him across the table. “Are you kidding me? You can’t speak French?”
He shrugged. “I can speak it, but not well.”
“Uh! You’re too good to be true,” she groaned. “You are good with your hands…”
He grinned with those words, and winked cheekily at her. “Extremely good with my hands, which I’ll prove to you as soon as you’re comfortable.”
Jessa blushed and looked down at her plate, wondering where all of the food had gone. Looking up, she stared at him, “You run like a demon. You probably can bench more than I weigh.”
“How much do you…”
“Not gonna answer that,” she told him firmly, earning another chuckle.
“Can you tell me where you go when you leave town?” she asked.
“Nope,” he replied. No explanation. No apology. For some reason, she respected him even more because of that.
“How many languages do you speak?”
“Five, including English.”
“Wow!” she sighed. “I know a smattering of high school French.” She looked up at him and grinned. “Comment t’allez vous?” she quoted, one of the few things she remembered from her high school French teacher.
“Bien,” he replied smoothly, not even hesitating. “Et tu es un belle femme.”
Jessa’s female parts groaned with desire at his words. “Your accent sounds pretty darn good to me.”
He stood up, carrying the plates over to the sink. “The French people hate it when I speak the language. Apparently, I slaughter it and they just switch to English. It’s easier in Canada. The French speaking Canadians don’t care as much about the accent. They are just thrilled that a person tries.”
“I don’t travel much,” she told him.
“Why not?”
She shrugged, bringing the plates to the sink. “I guess because I don’t have anyone to travel with. I looked into traveling with a group, but I’m such an introvert that the idea of being around people for several days without any reprieve sounds like my personal version of hell.”
“Where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world?”
She laughed. “Oh, that’s an easy one. All of the capitals of Europe first of all. London, Paris, Rome…oh, and Prague! I’ve heard that’s the most beautiful cities in the world.”
“It’s pretty nice.”
“Sweden, but I don’t know which city. And Iceland. I’ve heard that Iceland is amazing. Especially the blue pond thing. That would be incredible.”
“It’s very crowded.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Unless you get there right at the beginning of the day, then it’s okay. But the lagoon quickly fills up. The mud is interesting. I doubt it does all of the things the people think it does. But then again, what do I know?”
She stared up at him, stunned by his words. “It has magical qualities?”
“According to the rumors, it can cure cancer.”
“Interesting,” she replied, tilting her head as she absorbed that information.
“Yeah, it’s an experience.”
She loaded the dishwasher after rinsing each of the plates, then stood up and looked at him. “Is there any country in the world you haven’t visited?”
“I’m sure there are one or two,” he replied, but Jessa noticed that his eyes were a bit more sultry than they had been during dinner. All of the tension that had dissipated over the past two hours while he cooked and they ate, sprang back to life.
He noticed as well, walking over to her and taking her smaller hands in his. “You’re nervous again. Why?”
She looked at him, at his broad shoulders and the scruff along his jaw that only made him look sexier than when he was smooth shaven. “I don’t know.”
“Nothing’s changed, Jessa. We’re just two friends having a conversation. Just as we would if we were down near the water’s edge.”
“Yeah. So why does it feel as if there’s something more going on?”
He laughed and moved closer. “Perhaps because I want to kiss you,” he admitted.
“You do?”
“Oh yeah. But I’m not going to.”
Huh? “Why not?”
“Because I don’t think that you’re ready to move on to being mo
re than friends. As much as I’d like to get to the friends with benefits part of our friendship, I want you to be relaxed enough around me that, when I take you into my arms, you go willingly. Without any hesitation or doubts.” He took her hands, but didn’t pull her into his arms as she hoped he would. “Do you like poker?” he asked.
Uhh…this night was taking an unexpected turn. “Sort of,” she admitted. “My roommates and I played a bit of poker in college, but nothing serious. We mostly just bet pretzels or chips.”
He laughed. “Let’s play poker. But instead of betting for money, we bet on questions.”
Jessa smiled, intrigued. “Tell me more.”
He took her hands and led her over to the table. “You sit here. I’ll sit on the other side of the table. Actually, it would be better if we played blackjack rather than poker. There’s a little more luck involved and less skill.”
“Are you saying that I’m not skilled at poker?”
He kissed the top of her head as he walked over to a cabinet and took out a deck of cards. “Don’t even try it, honey. I play poker with some pretty serious people.” He sat down across from her and started shuffling the cards. “Aces high and low,” he announced.
Jessa shifted in her chair, wishing that she knew how to play poker better. She’d love to take him down a peg or two, but maybe he was right. Perhaps she should learn to crawl before running the marathon. “Fine. Blackjack it is,” she replied.
“Excellent.” A moment later, cards were shuffled and two of them flew across the table, one landing down, the other landing up. “Do you know how to play?”
She smirked. “I have a general idea.” There was a seven showing. She peered at the down-facing card. Darn it! A two.
“Hit me,” she announced.
He chuckled, but flipped a card towards her. A nine now lay on top of the seven. “I’ll stay.”
He smiled and she looked at his cards. There was an eight facing upwards but she didn’t know what he had underneath. “I’ll hit,” he flipped a card over. He now had an eight and a three. “I’m holding.” He looked up at her. “Whatcha got?”
His Baby Deal (The Diamond Club Book 6) Page 5
