Loving Jessie

by Dallas Schulze

  Jessie drew a shaky breath and gave him what he wanted, relaxing the tense muscles in her thighs. “I’m sorry, Matt. I don’t mean to be so—”

  “Hush.” His mouth took hers in a hard, almost bruising kiss, forcing her head back against the pillow, his tongue plunging into her mouth with an avid hunger that was at odds with the gentle pressure of his hand between her legs. His fingers played over her lightly, separating soft, damp folds and stroking her tender flesh with a sure knowledge that brought her breath from her on a sob. He lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyes holding hers as his hand moved on her.

  Sensation spread outward from his touch, rioting through her system, setting every nerve ending on fire. It was too much. She wanted to pull away but his eyes held her as surely as his touch. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop the rocket-fast climb.

  “Matt?” Her voice quivered on the edge of fear.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” he crooned, pressing quick kisses over her flushed face. “Just let go.”

  The pressure was too great. If she let go, she would fly apart. She surged upward, half struggling against him, against the pleasure swelling like the tide inside her. Murmuring soft reassurance, Matt threw his leg over hers, pinning her to the bed as his hand moved on her, gently ruthless, driving her toward a goal she could only half imagine. And then his thumb slid up along her soft, slick folds. Seeking. Finding. Stroking. Stroking.

  Jessie’s fingernails scrabbled against the sheet, her body arching as the orgasm slammed into her like a fist, driving the air from her lungs in a high, thin cry of ecstasy. He’d said he couldn’t promise fireworks, but that was what he gave her—flashing swirls of dazzling white light that played along her body. She stayed poised on the very tip of the peak for a long, breathless moment, alive with sensation, caught up in pleasure as dark as night, as bright and shining as the sun.

  Matt saw her eyes go blind, felt her slender body quiver and tremble in his arms, and fought to hold on to the control that had always come so easily and now seemed so elusive. He’d never had so much trouble controlling his own needs, never felt this driving need to take, to claim, to make a woman his own.

  He watched her, keeping his hand on her, easing her down from the peak with slow, gentle touches. He waited until she sagged back against the bed, her breathing ragged, her eyes still unfocused, dazed. Blood rushing in his veins, he leaned over her, taking her trembling mouth in a long, drugging kiss, tasting her pleasure, swallowing her soft moan when his hand moved on her with sudden purpose.

  “More,” he whispered against her mouth. “Give me more.”

  If she’d had the breath, Jessie would have told him that she had nothing left to give, but he was already proving her wrong, his skillful, clever fingers taking her up again, making her whimper with new fires, new needs.

  He waited until she was arching into his touch, those big dark eyes nearly blind with need. Only then did he allow himself to move, quivering like a stallion as he mounted her, his hips sliding into the cradle of her thighs. The feel of her damp, swollen flesh nearly shattered his shockingly fragile control. He wanted to plunge into her, wanted to sheath his aching hardness in the warmth of her and find the sweet oblivion of release.

  Jessie stilled at the first brush of his erection against her. For the first time since he’d carried her to the bed, she felt fear nip at the shimmering edge of arousal. This was Matt, she reminded herself, and she trusted him, but the man lying so intimately between her legs looked suddenly unfamiliar. Arousal tightened the skin over his cheekbones, turned his eyes a searing blue, made him almost a stranger.

  Keeping his weight braced on his arms, his eyes locked on hers, Matt brought his hips forward.

  She’d wondered if there would be pain, and there was, a tight, pulling sensation as her tender flesh resisted his slow, inexorable invasion. But beyond the discomfort was a shocked awareness of the intimacy of the moment, this first time sharing her body with a man. The pain was minor compared to the incredible sensation of feeling him inside her. She drew in quick, panting little breaths, her hands lifting, fingers wrapping around the rock-hard muscles of his arms, clinging to him as her body reluctantly accepted his possession.

  The feel of her soft flesh slowly yielding to him had Matt shuddering. She was tight and wet, clasping him in the most intimate of embraces. The pleasure of it was so intense, it was almost painful. He fought the urge to thrust hard and deep, to bury his aching flesh in her hot depths. He knew he was hurting her; he could read it in her eyes, feel it in the way her fingers dug into his arms, but she didn’t ask him to stop, didn’t try to pull away.

  “I’m sorry it’s hurting you,” he said, his voice low and taut. “But I’m glad that this first time is mine.”

  And then he was seated in her to the hilt, her body clasping his like a hot, wet glove. His breathing ragged, he let his head drop, his big frame tense with the effort of hammering his fragmented control into place.

  When he didn’t move, Jessie drew a slow breath. The initial discomfort was easing, leaving behind the amazing sensation of having him inside her, hard and firm, filling an emptiness that was more than physical, an emptiness she was only just now aware had existed.

  And there was more to come. Anticipation began to edge out fear, and still he didn’t move. She shifted experimentally, tightening muscles that felt new to her, arching her hips to take him deeper. The effect on Matt was startling. His whole body tensed, hands clenching into fists against the sheets.

  “Don’t,” he ordered hoarsely. “Jessie. Don’t. Move.”

  Looking up at him in the soft golden spill of lamplight, she saw his eyes, electric blue and wild with need. Need for her, she realized, feeling a quick flutter of feminine power. Her power. She’d put that look in his eyes. Fascinated, she arched her hips again, rocking ever so gently against him.

  “You mean like this?” she whispered.

  “God, Jessie. Don’t. I can’t—” His voice broke on an almost tortured moan as she slid her hands down his damp back, fingers curling into the taut muscles of his buttocks.

  “Yes, you can,” she murmured, feeling him tremble against her, nearly drunk on the power of his need. She brought her knees up, cradling his hips as she raised her head from the pillow and trailed quick, stinging little kisses along his collarbone before moving lower, finding the flat disc of his nipple with her teeth.

  Matt groaned, a harsh sound of surrender wrenched from his throat. His back arched, and Jessie felt the slow, dragging pull of his withdrawal. The pain was gone, leaving behind slippery friction and burning pleasure. Her head fell back against the pillow, her eyes wide brown pools as she stared up at him, her breath coming in quick, shallow pants.

  “Next time,” he said, his voice guttural. “Next time I’ll make it last all night, but I can’t this time. I’ve wanted you for so long. So long.”

  He drove himself into her in one quick, hard stroke that had her body arching into his, her breath leaving her on a cry of stunned pleasure. He hesitated, eyes searching her face. Whatever he saw there must have reassured him because he smiled, a dark hungry smile that made things tighten low in Jessie’s stomach. And then he was moving on her, within her, setting up a hard driving rhythm that didn’t so much ask for a response as demand it, pulling her into the burning heat of his need.

  It was like falling into the sun. Shining gold fire ran over her, through her. She burned with the power of it. She moved with him, taking him as he was taking her, demanding as much as she was giving.

  The climb was fast and hard, too intense to last long. Matt saw her eyes cloud over, heard the breath sobbing from her, and knew she was a heartbeat away from going over the edge. His own climax was clawing at him, but he waited. He needed to see it take her. A moment more. Almost. There. Just there.

  Jessie arched beneath him, head back, eyes blind, her breath exploding outward in a thin scream. Delicate inner muscles contracted around him, relaxed, contracted
again, dragging him into the maelstrom with her. He groaned as his hips jerked convulsively, his body shuddering with the jetting force of his own completion. It went on and on, draining him completely.

  Matt sprawled over her, dizzy with the force of his climax. He’d lost his virginity when he was fifteen, and in the nearly quarter century since then, he’d had perhaps a bit more than his fair share of sexual experience. If asked, he would have admitted that there wasn’t much he hadn’t tried, and he’d enjoyed most of it. But he had never experienced anything like this, never felt so completely emptied, body, heart and soul.

  Jessie was warm and soft beneath him. Every breath brought the mingled scents of shampoo and soap and sex, and he realized, with something that was half surprise, half anger, that he wanted her again. Aftershocks from the most incredible climax of his life were still running through him, but he was already thinking about the next time.

  With an effort, he lifted his weight from her, bracing himself on his elbows. He looked down at her. Her face was flushed, her lashes a damp tangle on her cheeks. As he watched, a single tear slipped free, tracing a silvery trail across her temple before disappearing into the honey-colored softness of her hair.

  His heart contracting, he brushed quiet kisses across her face, tasting the salt tang of her tears, tasting the heat of her love-flushed cheeks, and finally settling on the swollen softness of her mouth.

  “Jessie?” Her lashes lifted slowly. She looked up at him with eyes still half-dazed by what had passed between them. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

  “No. Yes.” She swallowed and shook her head, her mouth curving in a trembling smile. “It did hurt a little at first, and then it didn’t, and it was…” She struggled to find the words, but there were no words to describe what she’d felt, what he’d given her. In the end, she settled for what was in her heart. “You made it wonderful for me.” She lifted one unsteady hand to touch his face, tracing her fingertips over the strong curve of cheek and jaw. “Thank you, Matt.”

  His smile was slow and warm. His gaze held a look she’d never seen in a man’s eyes before—an awareness, a knowledge that brought color creeping into her face. She was suddenly achingly aware that he was still a warm, heavy presence between her legs, sharply conscious of the fact that her body would never again be hers alone.

  “Trust me, sweetheart, the pleasure was all mine,” he assured her, his voice husky. Her blush deepened, and he grinned as he lowered his head to kiss her. “Always happy to do a favor for a friend,” he murmured against her mouth, startling a laugh out of her.

  Her laughter created all sorts of interesting sensations, none of them having anything to do with humor. Matt groaned, swallowing her gasp as he began to harden inside her. His smile faded, disappearing in the heat that rose in his eyes.

  “Again,” he whispered.

  Shivering, her damp hands clinging to his shoulders, Jessie gave him what he wanted.

  So this was what the morning after felt like. It was a deep, silken ache that rode her body like a heavy blanket, a tangible reminder of the night that had gone before. It was tangled sheets, and the musky scent of sweat and sex drifting on the air. It was a new awareness of her own body, a shivery knowledge that everything was different—that she was different.

  Somewhere in the distance, Jessie could hear the muffled whine of a vacuum cleaner—the housekeeping staff working in a room somewhere down the hall. She wondered what time it was. Late, probably. It had been almost dawn when they’d finally fallen asleep. She’d never thought of herself as a woman of deep passions, but Matt had shown her how little she knew herself. It had been an amazing night.

  Opening her eyes, she met her own gaze in the mirrored ceiling over the bed. The reflection chased away any lingering traces of sleep. The bed was a wreck, covers pulled loose and twisted. The plush bedspread lay on the floor somewhere, along with several pillows. The pillow under her head was crooked, half stuffed under the headboard. The bottom sheet was pulled loose on the corner nearest her head. She had a vague memory of Matt pulling the top sheet over both of them, but, sometime during the hours they’d slept, it had slithered downward and now trailed half off the bed.

  She had a sudden flash of memory of looking into the mirror and seeing Matt’s naked back, muscles rippling as he moved over her, her own hands flexed against his tanned skin. Remembering it now, she felt color come up in her cheeks.

  Her eyes shifted to Matt’s reflection, and her flush deepened even as her mouth curved in an almost feline smile. Mine. He lay sprawled on his stomach beside her, one arm thrown across her body, his hand resting just below her bare breast, fingers open and relaxed, his tan dark in contrast with her pale skin.

  He looked younger in sleep, some indefinable tension gone, lashes lying on his cheekbones in a tangle of black lace. She frowned over the scar on his shoulder. The bullet’s exit wound, larger and less tidy than the neat, puckered scar on the other side. He’d shrugged aside her questions when she’d asked about his injury, but she didn’t need a medical degree to guess that he’d come closer to death than he would ever admit.

  She shied away from the frightening thought and shifted her gaze to the long line of his back. The sheet had slipped down below his waist, baring the upper curve of his buttocks, baring a long, smooth expanse of tanned muscles. Jessie frowned at the series of thin red lines over his shoulderblades, and then her face burned as she realized they were marks from her fingernails.

  Good grief. She couldn’t believe she’d actually lost control to the point where she’d scratched him like a… Well, she didn’t know what it was like, but it wasn’t her. She was quiet. Reserved. Controlled. Maybe even undersexed. Not at all the sort of woman who left marks on a man’s back in a moment of passion. Not the sort of woman who ever had moments of passion, for that matter.

  Uneasy with this startling glimpse of an unfamiliar side of herself, Jessie looked away from Matt and met her own eyes in the mirror. For just a moment it was like looking at a stranger, a woman with honey-colored hair spread in a tangled halo over the pillow and wide, dark eyes that held both uncertainty and a deep, feminine knowledge that hadn’t been there before. She looked…ripe. More of that agricultural theme, she thought, and smiled a little.

  I might be pregnant. The smile disappeared under the sudden rush of awareness. Making a baby had been the main reason for marrying Matt, but she hadn’t given the possibility so much as a thought last night. Actually, she hadn’t given it much thought since the day she’d agreed to marry him. Her teeth worried her lower lip as she wondered if she should be bothered by that.

  “Looking for signs of dissipation?” Matt’s voice was slow and husky with sleep.

  Startled, Jessie turned her head to find him watching her with sleepy blue eyes. Eyes that warmed as they left her face to skim lower, making her suddenly aware that the sheet was down around her waist, baring her breasts. Blushing, she tried to tug it up, but he was quicker, catching hold of the soft linen and pushing it farther down. She tugged harder. He refused to yield. She scowled. He grinned.

  “Men who use brute strength to get their way are beneath contempt,” she informed him. It was difficult to look haughty when you were lying in bed, half-exposed and all the way naked, but Jessie gave it her best effort, looking down her short straight nose at him.

  “I’ve always believed that a wise man uses every advantage he has.” He nudged the sheet lower, his eyes dropping to her bare breasts. When he lifted his eyes to her face again, she could see a familiar heat. “All’s fair in love and war,” he murmured, leaning toward her.

  “Especially in war.” Jessie rolled toward the side of the bed, intending to slide off and make a dash for the dubious safety of the bathroom. But Matt was quicker. His arm snaked around her waist, dragging her back onto the tumbled bed. During the laughing tussle that followed, the remaining pillows landed on the floor and the last three corners of the bottom sheet were pulled loose.

  It ended
with Jessie sprawled on top of him, holding his hands pinned to the bed on either side of his head. “Give up?”

  Matt arched one dark brow. “Surrender to a weaker force? I don’t think so.”

  “Who has whom pinned and helpless?” she asked haughtily.

  He moved with a speed that left her gasping, one strong arm wrapping around her waist as he rolled, tucking her beneath him and settling between her legs. Jessie groaned, arching in shocked pleasure as he filled her with one heavy thrust.

  “I win,” he whispered against her mouth.

  Jessie was too busy moaning to argue the point.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jessie had left all the honeymoon arrangements up to Matt. It had seemed safer that way, since, as crazed as she’d been with trying to manage the wedding, any honeymoon plans she made would probably have involved a padded cell and a straitjacket.

  Matt had picked out a small hotel on the Monterey Peninsula. Nestled amid pines sculpted and twisted by the winds that blew off the ocean, the hotel was a collection of half-a-dozen buildings, none more than two stories high, all built of weathered wood and glass. The simple architecture suited the stark beauty of the setting.

  The grounds butted up against a series of windswept dunes that were in the process of being carefully restored by the park service. Boardwalks wound through the dunes, leading to a wooden gate. Once through the gate and across a narrow, two-lane road, you were just a few short yards from the ebb and curl of the Pacific. This was not the wide, sandy-beached ocean of surfers and sunbathers immortalized by the Beach Boys but a twisting, harshly beautiful place of rocks and inlets, tidal pools and crashing waves, broken up by occasional patches of white sand scattered with seaweed and driftwood.

  Deer meandered among the dunes, occasionally pausing in their browsing to watch the humans on the boardwalks, their dark eyes faintly puzzled, as if they found these bipedal creatures harmless but peculiar. On their second day there, a long walk up the rocky beach was rewarded with a pair of sea otters at play in a quiet inlet.