by Miranda Lee
With a mad mixture of pain and pleasure, he soon discovered.
There was nothing ice princess about her now. She’d become one hot babe, half closing her eyes and running her hands over her naked curves in a way which made Jack struggle to stay silent and still on that bed.
Lisa could hardly believe she was doing what she was doing. Yet she thrilled to her own boldness. Thrilled at the way Jack was looking at her. As if she was the sexiest thing on the planet.
Lisa felt more than sexy. She felt wild. And wanton.
By the time she rejoined him on the bed and kissed his mouth once more, her hands had developed a mind of their own. And an independent agenda. They weren’t shy at all. Or concerned by their own lack of experience. They seemed to know exactly what to do and where to go.
Maybe Jack was right. Maybe all those sex scenes she’d read in his books had been imprinted on her memory, the well-described techniques waiting to be recalled at this precise moment.
Her left hand cupped the nape of his neck whilst her right hand roved over his body, unerring in its sense of direction, faultless in its instinctive knowledge of just what he would like. It skimmed down his chest towards his stomach, just brushing the tip of his erection before moving over to caress his hip. Very slowly, it travelled down his outer thigh before drifting across between his legs then moving upwards.
His loud groan startled her, her mouth lifting from his.
‘Don’t stop,’ he ground out.
She loved the wild look in his eyes, and the gravelly note in his voice.
She didn’t stop, her hand turning over to trail her fingernails lightly over his groin. Her hand reached then encircled the base of his erection. She kissed it, then her lips instinctively parted. Surprisingly, the feel of Jack in her mouth didn’t repulse her at all. She thrilled to the unexpected discovery that sheliked it. Liked making love to him this way.
Because that was what it was. Making love. Giving him pleasure. She could hear his pleasure in the sounds he was making.
Her mouth moved up and down in a slow, sensual rhythm, her hands loving him at the same time. She did not stop when he cried out her name. Or when his hands wound into her hair. She knew he liked this. Hal always did.
I have to stop her, Jack agonised even as his will to do so was disintegrating.
His body was rushing towards a climax. She would hate that, he worried. And so would he.
Because she would think afterwards that he’d turned her into his whore. Yet that was so far from the truth it wasn’t funny. She was the woman he loved. He could finally admit it. He loved her. This wasn’t just lust. This was far deeper than that.
Lust would let her go all the way. Lust wouldn’t care what she felt like afterwards.
His hands were a bit brutal as he yanked her up off him. But there was no time to waste. He rolled her over in a flash and surged into her, groaning as his tortured flesh became enclosed within her deliciously excited body.
He could not possibly last, his body like an active volcano which had been rumbling for far too long. He managed one stroke of his pained flesh inside her. Then two. And then an unexpected three. Maybe, if he concentrated on something else, he could get to five.
Her coming undid him totally, and he just let go, his orgasmic cry both loud and primal, his mind uncaring then of nothing but his own physical release.
Jack did not come back to awareness for quite some time, and when he did Lisa was pushing at his shoulders. More than pushing. She was hitting him.
‘Get off me,’ she cried. ‘Get off!’
Bewildered by her sudden attack on him, Jack stayed right where he was, grabbing her flailing hands and trying to work out why she was reacting like this.
‘Stop it, Lisa,’ he said, spreading her arms wide and holding her still against the bed.
‘But you didn’t use anything,’ she threw up at him, her face twisted with distress. ‘You just went ahead and did it when you knew I wasn’t capable of stopping you.’
Aah, so that was the problem. His not using protection.
‘It wasme who couldn’t stop, Lisa,’ he confessed. ‘I was too turned on by what you were doing. I’m sorry. Truly, I am. But I was thinking of you.’
‘Thinking of me? How you can say that!’
‘I didn’t think you’d want me to come in your mouth.’
‘Oh, God,’ she cried, her eyes squeezing shut as her still flushed face turned away from him.
‘I promise you’re not in danger of catching anything from me,’ he said, upset by her upset. ‘You have my word that that is the first time I’ve ever practised unsafe sex in my life.’
Her expression was pained when she opened her eyes and turned them back to look up at him. ‘I could catch a baby.’
Jack withdrew from her abruptly and sat back on his heels, poleaxed. A baby!
‘But you said the other night that you were protected from falling pregnant.’
‘Not protected, Jack.Safe. But only the other night. It wasn’t the right time in my cycle for me to conceive. Time has moved on nearly three days since then. I could fall pregnant.’
Jack tried not to panic. Panicking never achieved anything.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Would a bath help?’
Her look—then her laugh—was quite scathing.
‘You don’t know as much about a woman’s body as you think, do you? No, a bath will not help. What will be, will be.’
Jack grimaced. Damn, but he wished he’d stopped and put on a condom. But of course, he’d been way past stopping. Way past doing anything but coming.
‘I still want to have a shower,’ Lisa went on unhappily. ‘I feel…yucky.’
Jack sighed as he withdrew. What a disaster!
She looked steadfastly away from his eyes as she scrambled out from under him and half ran to the bathroom, where she slammed the door after her, making him wince.
Jack climbed off the bed himself and pulled on his shorts.
A baby. Good lord.
He was sitting on the side of the bed, still cursing himself, when the bathroom door finally reopened and Lisa came back out, wrapped in a towel and looking very pale.
‘So when is your next period actually due?’ he asked straight away, trying to assess the risk.
‘Sixteen days,’ she said precisely. ‘I have a twenty-eight-day cycle. Ovulation usually occurs twelve to fourteen days before a period starts.’
‘So the odds of your falling pregnant aren’t that high.’
‘Too high for me,’ she said dispiritedly as she started picking up her clothes.
When he tried to help her, she snatched her bra out of his hands and glowered up at him. ‘I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?’
‘Lisa, don’t be like this.’
‘Don’t be like what?’ she snapped. ‘You promised you would never hurt me. But you have, in the worst possible way. I don’t want to have your baby, Jack. But if a baby does come out of this, then I’ll have to.’
‘You don’thave to, Lisa. Not these days.’
‘I knew you’d say that,’ she threw at him with derision in her face.
‘All I meant was that it’s your choice, Lisa. It’s your body.’
‘But it would beyour baby too, Jack,’ she pointed out fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t be killing just my child. I’d be killing yours.’
Her arguments stunned Jack. Because he’d never looked at abortion like that before.
But she was right. The bottom line was that a life would be taken, a life he’d created. To terminate without any medical reasons for doing so was nothing short of murder.
‘I would never ask you to do that, Lisa,’ he told her sincerely. ‘I’ve seen too many babies and children heartlessly killed to join that brigade. If you’re pregnant, I will stand by you and the baby. I love you, woman, don’t you know that?’
Lisa’s whole body ceased to function for a few seconds. Her heart and her mind. They just shut down. But a burst of an
ger jump-started them again.
‘Don’t you dare say that to me! You don’t know what love is, Jack Cassidy. Love would have protected me. Love would not have done what you did today.’
‘That’s not fair, Lisa. We were both responsible for what happened just now. You could have stopped me, but you didn’t. You wanted me as much as I wanted you.’
‘That’s because you’ve done what I asked you not to do. You’ve turned me into some mindless, sex-mad fool who can’t even think straight half the time!’ Tears suddenly flooded her eyes. Her head dropped into the clothes she was holding as her shoulders began to shake.
Her inconsolable weeping tore Jack apart. Love sure could make a man feel rotten, he conceded. But it also made him stronger, and more determined.
‘Hush,’ he said as he came forward and folded her against him. ‘You’re getting yourself into a right state. And there’s no need to. Not yet, anyway. From what you’ve said, the odds of your falling pregnant are not that high.’
‘But what if I am?’ she wailed against his chest. ‘What will I tell Cory? And my mother? And everyone else?’
‘You’ll tell them the truth. That you’ve fallen in love and you’re going to have a baby.’
Lisa wrenched out of his arms and glowered up at him. ‘I have not fallen in love. You spelt it out for me on Saturday night, Jack. I’ve fallen in lust, the same as you.’
‘I won’t argue with you now,’ he said, though he didn’t look all that pleased.
‘I have no intention of arguing with you at all,’ she shot back. ‘I know what I know, and you won’t convince me otherwise. Now I’m going to get dressed. And then I’m going home.’
‘Wouldn’t it be a better idea if I took you somewhere nice for lunch? Once you calm down, we can talk more rationally.’
‘I’m perfectly rational.Now. Which is why I’m going home.Before you start doing something to make me go crazy again.’
‘All right. If that’s what you really want.’
‘That’s what I really want,’ she lied.
‘I’ll ring you tonight. See how you are.’
‘Please don’t.’
His eyes blazed like molten steel. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lisa. Call it what you will what’s between us, but it’s too powerful to ignore. Baby or not, I have to see you again. And if I’m not mistaken, the same applies to you.’
Lisa knew he was right. But be damned if she was going to be so easy in future.
‘Cory’s going to his grandmother’s place again next weekend,’ she said stiffly. ‘I can see you then.’
‘But that’s days away!’
‘If you love me, like you claim to, you’ll be happy to wait.’
‘I’m not a waiting kind of man.’
‘Love is not selfish,’ she argued.
‘I just want tosee you, woman. We don’t have to have sex. Look, let me take you to lunch tomorrow. Is that too much to ask?’
‘I do my food shopping on a Wednesday,’ she said stroppily when she felt herself weakening.
‘That’s all right. I need to buy food, too. We can shop together, then we can have lunch.’
‘All the cold things will melt.’
‘In that case, we can have an early lunch, then shop afterwards.’
Lisa sighed. She might as well just say yes and be done with it. But he wasn’t going to get everything his own way.
‘All right,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘But I’m not going to Erina. I shop at Tuggerah.’
‘Tuggerah’s fine by me.’
‘And I will drive myself in my own car,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll meet you outside the library. At eleven.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘You have no idea where Tuggerah, or the library, is, do you?’
‘I can find them. I’m a big boy.’
Yes, he was just that, she thought irritably. A big boy, wanting what he wants when he wants it. And wheedling and conniving till he gets it. His saying he loved her was just another ploy. Very much like Hal, who told women he loved them all the time to get what he wanted.
‘I’m getting dressed now and going home,’ she announced for the second time as she scooped up her shoes from the floor.
‘I’ll make you some coffee before you go,’ he offered.
‘No!’ she snapped. ‘No coffee. No food. No nothing!’
Jack stood at the terrace railing, his mind ticking over as he watched her drive off.
She was running for cover again, he realised.
But that was understandable. Everything had happened very quickly between them. Too quickly for a careful girl like Lisa.
Taking risks would worry her. A possible pregnancy would worry her a lot.
Jack had finally got his head around the fact he might have made a baby today. And strangely, now that he’d calmed down himself, he wasn’t worried at all. In fact, he rather liked the idea.
Rather amazing for a man who’d thought he never wanted to bring a child into this world.
But that was before he’d met Lisa.
Falling in love with a wonderful girl like her had made him see thathe’d been running for cover since he left the army.
But he no longer felt consumed with the bitter demons which had plagued him all these years, and which had made him seek a solitary existence, never becoming emotionally involved with anyone or anything.
His emotions were certainly involved now. With this very special and very challenging lady.
His next challenge where Lisa was concerned was to make her see that it wasn’t lust binding them together, but love. He also had to make her see that he was husband material.
Oh, yes, he’d changed his mind about marriage as well.
It had been a truly amazing day!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HE WASalready there, outside the library, when she arrived, right on eleven.
Once again, Jack’s sophisticated appearance surprised her. He looked very handsome in trendy bone-coloured chinos, a cream and blue striped shirt and smart brown shoes. He was clean-shaven and smelt wonderful.
But it wasn’t what he looked like which made her eyes cling to his. It wasn’t just lust which swelled in her heart. It was love as well, Lisa had accepted overnight. Because once she’d recovered from the initial shock of possibly conceiving Jack’s baby, she found herself secretly thrilled by the idea.
Lust would have been angry at being trapped with a playboy’s unwanted child. She didn’t feel angry today. She felt weirdly happy.
The depth of her feelings made Lisa extremely nervous, and vulnerable, and needy. She wanted to kiss him. Wanted to hold his hand. Quite desperately.
Instead, she kept her distance and said stiffly, ‘You look very smart today.’
‘And you look very beautiful,’ he returned warmly.
More flattery? Lisa wondered. Or a genuine compliment?
She’d deliberately not gone to too much trouble, dressing in dark blue jeans, a simple white shirt and flat white sandals. She’d left her hair down, curled up slightly on the ends. Her make-up was minimal. The same with her jewellery. Just a gold chain around her neck and gold studs in her ears.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Show me to the best eaterie in Tuggerah.’
When he took her hand, Lisa glanced around agitatedly unless someone was watching them. Someone who might know her. But she didn’t try to pull her hand away. It felt too good nestled within his large, strong palm.
Still, if she wanted to keep their relationship a secret, she should have chosen a more private and discreet meeting place than a large shopping arcade. All she could do now was minimise the damage, taking him to a café at the other end of the shopping centre which was tucked away in a quiet corner.
Hopefully, no one would see her with Jack there. But to be on the safe side, she put her back to the open side of the café, so that passers-by wouldn’t readily notice her.
‘Got an email from my editor in London last night,’ Jack said afte
r the waitress had taken their order.
‘Problems?’ Lisa said, happy to discuss anything other than themselves.
‘She’s having kittens over my last chapter. Says Hal is getting too dark.’
‘And is he?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Hal’s always been dark. So he seduces a married woman. So what’s new? She enjoyed it. And so will the readers.’
