by Linda Kage
When he lifted his eyebrows, clarity sparked in Tess’s eyes. “Oh. But, how did you two meet?”
“I went to Sean’s apartment when I was released from the hospital. It was the only place I could think to go.”
“Sure.” Tess stroked his arm in sympathy. “That makes sense. You’d want to say goodbye.”
Realizing he hadn’t yet shared any of his Sean story with her except through his letter, he gulped. “Well, when I got there, Aubrey was also there, and we sort of…”
“Connected,” she guessed softly.
“Yeah. Neither of us as has left since. So, we just sort of became roommates. He’s not like any person I thought I’d ever like, but he grows on you.”
With a knowing smile, she bumped her shoulder into his. “You like him.”
He shook his head but couldn’t hide his grin. “Don’t tell him that. He’ll want to hug or some kind of male bonding shit I’m not into.”
Her laugh was outright musical as it filled the evening air. Jonah covered her hand with his as they approached his truck. He unlocked and opened her door, holding her hand and helping her up until she was safely inside.
On the short drive, she told him about her classes and how many finals she had to take the next week. “And the week after that, Bailey and I will go home for summer break. But we decided to rent an apartment off campus next semester. I think I’ve had about as much dorm life as I can handle.”
Jonah glanced over, panic squeezing his lungs, as he pulled into his building’s parking lot. “So, you’ll be gone all summer?” He should rejoice that at least she was returning to Granton again in the fall. But thinking he might not see her for another few months was agony. These last few months had been bad enough.
Her gaze met his across the quiet cab. “Unless we find an apartment sooner,” she said, hope lining her eyes.
He reached for her, and she leaned toward him willingly. As they kissed over the center console, he was a split second from crawling into the passenger seat to join her. But she broke away to say, “I’ll make sure it’s sooner.”
“Good.” Grinning, Jonah hurried from the truck and hobbled around with his cane to open her door, but she was already climbing out.
They met by the front bumper, and she took his hand again. He liked holding her hand. Her fingers were small and delicate and made him feel like her protector. He was freshly amazed by how much shorter than him she was.
Without talking, he led her up to his and Aubrey’s apartment. Once inside, he pointed toward the kitchen, motioned down the hall to give her the mini tour, and then turned to study the couch across the living room. “And that’s where I’m bunking.”
Tess’s brow wrinkled with worry as she studied the short couch and then turned to eye his large, tall frame. “There aren’t two bedrooms?”
He shook his head. “No. But that’s okay. This is better than I thought I’d end up with when I left the hospital.”
Nodding slowly, she looked down to pick at her chipped fingernail polish. “And you never planned on coming back to me. Did you?”
He gulped, knowing they’d have to discuss this eventually. But he wasn’t ready to leap right into it, first thing.
Grasping her hand, he lifted her fingers to touch the fading red polish, the same color they’d been when he’d last seen her. “Haven’t you repainted them since…”
She watched him run his thumb over each nail. “No. I tend to only paint them when I’m—”
“Happy?” he guessed. She didn’t answer, but when she glanced at him, she really didn’t have to. Her expression told him he was right. Bringing her telling fingers to his mouth, he kissed them desperately and then squeezed his eyes closed.
“I messed up.” The confession tore its way from his soul. “I don’t…I don’t know.” He glanced up through his eyelashes with a wince. “I’m still not…I mean, I’m better. Heaps better—emotionally—than where I was in February, but…it’s still a work in progress. And I’m not anywhere near the kind of man who deserves you.”
Her gaze clouded to a cool indifference. “So you said in your letter.”
“And I know it wasn’t my place to decide for you what kind of person you want in your life, but I also wanted—no, I needed to prove to myself that I could be apart from you without—” He shook his head, took a breath, and looked deep into her eyes. “I was in such a dark place when you walked into my hospital room that night. I was confused, hurt, angry. A total mess. And you saved me, saved me from losing myself to my own demons. You were like this angel, the only bright spot in my world. I latched onto you with both hands. So, I wanted to make sure that what I felt for you was—” he licked his lips and glanced away “—true. I didn’t want this to just be a dependency for me. I wanted—”
When he looked at her, her blue eyes glittered with a restless anxiety. “You wanted what?”
“I want this to be real.” He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed her fingers, his eyes begging for something that he couldn’t voice with words. “I don’t want you to be a crutch for me to lean on in my darkest hours. I want to be in a relationship where I give as much as I’ve already received. Hell, I want to give you more than I’ve ever gotten from you, but I know that’s not possible because you’ve given me…everything.”
“But you have given me things, Jonah. You—”
“I mean, more than just making you feel needed,” he bit out. If only he could do for her half the shit she’d done for him.
“Listen to me.” Her voice was as stern as it was soft. He had no idea how she managed it, but it was the kind of thing only Tess could accomplish. Casing his face between her hands, she smiled at him as if she cherished him.
“You have given me so much. More than you’ll ever know.”
He wanted her words to be true. But he just couldn’t hope.
She must’ve seen the distrust in his gaze because she insisted, “You have. I told you about my stupid gene, right?”
“Yeah.” He nodded and rolled his eyes. “But you’ve never said anything stupid to me, or acted—”
“No, actually, I have. But aside from that, for some strange reason, I can be more me around you than I can around anyone else, maybe even Bailey.” Kissing him softly, she took a moment to simply hold her mouth against his. When a consuming need rose inside him, he took her bottom lip between his teeth and pulled her into a deeper kiss.
It was so easy to get lost in her. He would never be able to touch her enough, or kiss her enough, or love her enough. When she pulled away with a breathless laugh, he leaned into her and inhaled her hair, relishing every breath he got to spend with her, because he wasn’t sure how long they’d have together.
“I am so awkward and clumsy and a complete dunce around any guy I find remotely attractive. That’s why the whole girlfriend word popped out of my mouth when I first met you. I had it all planned to say we had a class together or were passing acquaintances, that we were just friends, and that’s why I was coming to visit you. But then I saw this drop dead gorgeous stranger in the room, and everything in here,” she tapped the side of her head, “went to mush.”
A sudden thought struck him. He might have known she’d never had degenerate plans when she’d come to visit him, but he’d always assumed she’d at least known who he was. But she’d just used the word stranger.
“Why did you go into my hospital room that day?”
She flushed hard. “Bailey and I had volunteered to work as candy stripers one evening a week. I was supposed to make sure you ate.” When she bit her lip and sent him a shy look as if bracing herself for his anger, he merely shook his head.
“So, you were assigned to me? You had no idea who I was at all?”
“None whatsoever. All I knew was that you hadn’t eaten all day, you had amnesia, and no family or friends had visited you. I felt so bad for you. I just…I wanted to make things better somehow. And then, after you threw your tray against the door—”
“I was standing right outside the doorway with Bailey, getting my instructions for the evening. No one was willing to help me get you another tray, so that’s when I went to get you the tacos, and I decided to take off my striper apron to act like a friend…so you wouldn’t feel so alone.”
He chuckled and hugged her close. “Well, I’ll be damned. You really are too sweet to be true.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not hardly. Are you forgetting the whole stupid-gene thing? I outright lied to you and told you I was your girlfriend. But once I got to talking to you, the real Tess was actually able to come out.” With a laugh, she buried her face to kiss his heartbeat before pulling back to grin up at him. “I was so afraid I’d have to settle for some guy someday that I wasn’t attracted to in the least, because those tend to be the only guys I can talk to. But then you came along, or rather I came along to you. And you…saved me from that fate. Now I can even talk to Logan occasionally.”
“And hug him too,” Jonah reminded, still remembering how he’d thought Logan was with Tess. Unable to get the image of them embracing out of his head, he blurted, “God, I was such an idiot that day. I came to see you in the hopes of making my fake girlfriend into my real girlfriend.”
Her mouth fell open. “Oh…wow. Really?”
He leaned his forehead into hers. “Would it…I mean, if I hadn’t run off in a jealous pout, do you think it would’ve worked? If I had approached you and explained everything I had in my letter, do you think you would’ve taken me back that day?”
Cupping his face, she looked up at him, her blue eyes glittering with emotion. “Yes,” she whispered. “Definitely.”
“Will you take me today?”
Her breath caught as her eyes glittered with joy. “Definitely,” she repeated.
He kissed her, sweeping her up off her feet and into his arms. As his mouth fed from hers, he carried her toward the couch. But after the first uneven, faltering stop, she broke off from his mouth, gasping. “Your leg! Oh, put me down before—”
He kissed her again, cutting off her argument, and carried her the rest of the way to the cushions. The tendons in his leg pulled, but it was good kind of stretching pain.
“You’re too tiny to hurt me,” he assured her.
With a self-derisive laugh, she shook her head. “I have always been short, but never tiny.”
He kissed her again. It seemed to be the best way to hush her because he didn’t like how she thought of her perfect figure. She was flawless and soft, and—“Tiny,” he insisted. “Trust me, no one but you could fit on this couch with me.”
He lowered himself, bringing her down with him and settling her into his lap. When her soft, rounded backside landed on his arousal, he groaned, clenching his teeth.
“What is—” She wiggled her bottom with a thoughtful crinkle in her eyebrows, until her face cleared. “Oh.” Instantly blushing, she tried to crawl off him, but he caught her hip and swung them both around until she had her back to the cushions, her head resting on an armrest and his hips slotted perfectly between her thighs, where he was once again pressing the throbbing part of himself against the warm, soft, intimate part of her.
“Oh,” she breathed again, her eyes wide with wonder. “We never quite did this at the hospital. I only ever felt you with my…” Realizing what she was going to say, she trailed off, blushing too hard to finish the sentiment.
Jonah chuckled and kissed her nose. “Mmm,” he said. “That’s my fondest memory of that place. But here, we don’t have to worry about anyone interrupting us.”
Her eyes twinkled with mischief as her fingers trailed down his shirt. Then she paused and cut a worried glance toward the front door. “Unless your roommate—”
“He’s been out until after midnight every night this month, practicing for the play they’re putting on next week. He’s been pulling double duty. Not only does he have a major acting role, but he’s helping build the set.”
The two pink spots on her cheeks brightened. “So…”
“So,” he repeated, his soul soaring with thoughts of all the fun they could have by themselves. “The only thing hampering us is this small-ass couch.” He began to kiss his way down her throat. “Someday, I swear, I’m going to get you on a real bed that’s at least a full size and—”
He cut himself off with a groan as her wandering little hand found him through his jeans.
“Damn.” He panted, leaning his forehead against her shoulder.
“As I recall, you liked this. Right?” When she gripped him through denim, he made a strangled sound of assent from the base of his throat. She chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”
While her fingers examined him through his clothes, he toyed with a piece of her hair, smelling it and then winding it around his fingers, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing because it felt so good.
It’d been too long.
She glanced up at him coyly through the veil of her thick eyelashes. “You won’t believe how much I wanted to slide my hand under the hospital sheet that night.”
He couldn’t breathe. He literally—
Jonah looked into her eyes and sucked in air. “You just had to tell me that, didn’t you?”
“Can I…can I do it now?”
When he saw temptation and desire on her face, it dragged him under.
“Anything,” he said. “You can do anything you want, baby.”
She bit her lip, and he lost it. Groaning when she flicked open the top button of his jeans, he closed his eyes, or maybe his lids naturally forced themselves closed because it was just too much to handle with all his senses firing this radically. But his hearing seemed to grow more acute with his vision out of the way, because the lazy rasp of his zipper had to be the most erotic sound he’d ever heard.
His juices flowed, and by the time her fingers touched the bare skin of his abdomen, he jumped from the overwhelming intensity of the contact.
“Jesus. I’m not—” He was going to freaking embarrass himself if he didn’t cool it down. “You feel too good.”
She grinned. “I bet this will feel better, though.” As her warm, soft palm wrapped around his rigid column, his mind turned to liquid. Her touch was so shy and hesitant, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was the first time she’d ever felt anyone there. But, damn.
“Oh, Christ,” he breathed. He watched her wide, amazed eyes as her fingers slowly slid their way down. When she paused and bit her lip, he blew out a strained breath. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t—”
“I do want to.” She kissed him, and a split second later, her warm fingers slid back up. He jumped in her hand. She jumped too, as if startled, but then she smiled up at him, her face glowing with womanly accomplishment.
He sank his fingers into her hair and cupped her head, soothing her. “You okay?”
She nodded and looked down at him, though she could barely see the crown of his junk from the opening of his pants. “Wow,” she whispered.
Fuck. He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But he did anyway, easing his hand down so he could cover hers and guide her, showing her how to apply just the right amount of pressure and then move. When she got the hang of it, he let her go at her own pace and closed his eyes, concentrating on nothing but each warm, amazing glide of her palm.
“What does it feel like?” she asked, the awe in her voice making him open his lashes.
Jonah swallowed, trying to think of the right words to describe everything that was going on inside him. But the only word he could come up with was good. It felt good. Really good.
“Why don’t I just show you?” he suggested as he found the waistband of her jeans and slipped open the top button.
Her eyes widened. “Jonah?”
He met her gaze. “Can I touch you there too?”
She gulped. “Okay.”
“Are you sure?” He hesitated, squinting as he studied her. “
If I’m going too fast—”
“No! I mean, yes, I’m sure. And no, you’re not going too fast.”
“Okay. We’ll just…we’ll go one step at a time, though.”
He eased open her pants, and they both lifted up so he could slide the cloth down her legs. She sent him a shy yet excited grin. He wanted to bring her to so much pleasure in that moment, he almost couldn’t control his own libido. Gently squeezing the hand she still had around his penis, he pried her away, saying, “We’ll get back to that later. I want to concentrate on you for a while.”
Tess nodded, absolute trust glimmering in her eyes. In fact, feeling the weight of that trust almost stopped him in his tracks. But he could see the anticipation as well. She wanted to know what this felt like. She was eager and curious.
He couldn’t let her down.
Grasping the waistband of her panties, he eased them away from her. Their gazes met and locked. She bit her lip and pulled in a breath as if to say, Here were go. He couldn’t seem to look away as he removed her underwear and distractedly dropped them over the side of the couch.
“You are so beautiful,” he said. He lowered his gaze to take in the scarlet curls between her legs.
Her fingers clenched at her sides. “You have no idea how much effort it’s taking not to cover myself right now.”
He caught both her wrists and pinned her hands to her sides. “Don’t even think about it. You’re so amazing right now, Tess. I can’t even…” He looked up and met her gaze, but that only turned him on even more. “It’s taking everything I have to keep from…Oh, screw it.”
He leaned down and kissed her. There.
Her hips arched off the couch as she yelped in surprise. But the move only made her push deeper against his mouth. “Jonah! What’re you…oh…you shouldn’t…it…God.”
He let go of her hands to catch her waist and ease her back down. Then he licked her again.
She lurched under him once more and grabbed handfuls of his hair. “Omigod, omigod. That’s…wow. Wow.”
He almost came.
