by Sey, Susan
It wasn’t the house. It was never the house. It was him.
She let herself tumble.
Chapter 24
JAX SLID HIS arms around her. Just wrapped her up until there wasn’t anything between them anymore, not even air. His body went liquid with heat and need, and that hungry place inside him sighed with satisfaction then howled for more.
How could she have thought he was done with her? How could she not have known?
She arched into him then, made some noise, something hot and inviting that he felt against his lips and deep inside all at the same time. She opened her mouth under his and he fell into her on a dizzy rush. Into the warmth and generosity and welcome that he’d always loved in her and absolutely adored in her kiss. He filled his hands with the sweet curve of her bottom and hiked her up. Her legs came around him and he somehow managed to make it to the bedroom without collapsing from the sheer, crushing weight of his desire. For a second there, he’d seriously contemplated the couch. Or the floor.
Love blew through him like a wind, strong and settling. Addy was a gift, and he’d be damned if he’d treat her like anything less. He seized the reins of his desire and laid her on his comforter — an inches-thick, hot chocolate colored indulgence — with all the gentleness he could muster from his big, clumsy hands. She sank into it with a laugh, her curls framing her face like a halo.
“Addy,” he said. His heart gave a funny bump as he stretched himself alongside her. The press of her body, the heat and the scent of her, rose to him, surrounded him like a dream. “Addy.” He ran his palm down the ladder of her rib cage, treated himself to the indent of her waist, the ripe curve of her hip. Slowly, slowly, he brought his hand down to her thigh, let it rest there, gloried in the intimacy of it. He was allowed, he thought. She was giving him this. Giving him herself. She loved him — or she would, he’d see to that — and that was nothing short of a miracle.
“You’re so...” He shook his head, unable to find the words.
“What?” she asked, her lips curved just for him. Her eyes warmed with welcome.
“Beautiful,” he said finally. He slid his palm up over the bump of her hip bone, across the soft curve of her belly. He nudged his fingers under the hem of that pretty purple sweater, and her skin under it was smooth as rain. “You are so...damn...beautiful.”
Her eyes closed as his fingers crept upward, climbed slowly, deliberately. That well of tenderness she always opened inside him overflowed, and for once he simply let it. Because there was no longer any need to disguise it, to dial it back or make it look like simple desire. His heart was in his fingers, and he wanted her to feel it. To know it.
“It’s like Christmas morning,” he murmured and cupped the softness of her breast. “Touching you. Being allowed. Every single time. It never gets old.”
She bowed into his touch, arching off the bed with a soft noise. Pushed the plump curve of her breast into his hand. Need roared through him, twining with the tenderness and going up in an inferno unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.
It was madness, and he fell into it. Happily.
Addy was lost. Her world had shattered and dissolved, narrowed down to the fact of her breast in Jax’s palm, to those clever fingers on the tight bud of her nipple. Liquid fire raced down her thighs, curling her toes, arching her back, lifted her up to him on a wave of brilliant, blinding need. A need that built with every thud of her heart, with every pull of his fingers, every drag of his lips until it was more madness than desire. Until it was a slicing imperative that defined her, created her, consumed her. She glowed with it, like a star or a planet. And Jax was the sun, pulling her in endless ellipses through a black velvet sky.
She threw a leg over his hip, trying to get closer. He growled impatiently in his throat, then there was a dizzying swirl as he unmoored himself from her side. He shifted over her, caged her between his knees, and stripped her sweater away. He loomed above her, gazing down at what he’d uncovered, his eyes hot and avid. Then he lowered his mouth — warm, wet, thrilling — to her skin, and she stopped breathing. She stopped even wanting to. His teeth dragged lightly at one nipple, and want slid straight to her core.
The blast of pleasure was shocking and so sharp that her eyes flew open. She stared uncomprehending at her own hands, saw them lying open and stunned on the comforter at either side of her head. Just lying there, she realized dumbly. Doing nothing. The realization of her selfishness swept over her like a cold lake wind. She was so wrapped up in the staggering pleasure he was giving her that she hadn’t thought about his pleasure at all. She wasn’t even touching him, for heaven’s sake! She was just lying there, limp and passive, exactly the way Diego had always said she did, letting somebody else do all the work.
Her throat went hot and tight and she blinked against a rush of shamed tears.
Well, screw that. Screw him. Diego was dead. She, on the other hand, was very much alive, and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. No, she was going to make Jax as happy as he was making her.
Her brain was busily charting the wonderland Jax had made of her body, but with some effort she took control of her hands again. She reached up, tunneled her fingers slowly into the thick warmth of his hair. It slid against her skin like raw silk, rough and warm and expensive. How had she lived within arm’s length of Jax these four years, she thought wonderingly, and never touched him like this? How had she denied herself the visceral pleasure of his hair? It drifted from her fingers and she followed it into the dark warmth of his collar. His shirt had come untucked at some point. Unbuttoned, too. It hung open on either side of their bodies. Had she done that? Had he? She had no idea. She didn’t care. She was just glad for the access to all that skin, to that fascinating play of muscle and bone she’d seen a million times but had never thought to touch.
Remorse tangled with need and she arched into him. She’d touch him now. She’d touch him until they both forgot how long it had taken her to wake up, to see him. To need him. Because she did need him. She needed him now like she’d never needed anything — anybody — in her life. It ate at her like hunger, like thirst. Touching him had become utterly necessary to her very survival.
She tunneled both hands into the invitation of that open shirt, moaned at the hot pleasure of his skin under her palms. She lifted her mouth to his throat, breathed him in and set herself to the delicious task of learning him. Of tasting him. Knowing him. She wanted the size and shape of him burned on her fingertips, the scent of him branded on her brain. She wanted to recognize him in the dark.
She found the fastening of his khakis and desire shuddered through her. It made her fingers fast and clumsy as she tore at the button, worked the zipper. He hissed and jerked himself up suddenly, away from her hands, and the rush of air on her super-heated skin chilled her to the bone.
“Sorry.” She squeezed her eyes shut and let her hands fall away from him as a familiar humiliation ripped through her. She should’ve just stayed still. “I’m…sorry.”
“What the hell for?”
She opened her eyes and found him braced a careful foot above her on his hands and knees, his face a mask of agonized…pleasure? “I thought you didn’t want me to—” She had to swallow down a half-formed lump of rejection. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Why would you think that?”
“You jumped back like I’d burned you. I thought—”
“You thought what?”
She shrugged miserably and turned her face away. He took her jaw in his hand and turned her face back to his.
“Don’t do that, Addy,” he said softly. “Don’t bring him into bed with us.”
“But you wouldn’t let me touch you.” Her voice was small, unhappy, and a complete surprise to her. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She trusted Jax in a way she’d never trusted Diego but that didn’t mean she would happily hand over a loaded gun and invite him to take aim.
“Christ’s sake, Addison. I needed a sec
ond.” He sat back on his heels and gazed down at her, his mouth a self-deprecating twist. Moonlight spilled across those wide, heavy shoulders, threw the bumps and ridges of his abdomen into fascinating relief. Her eyes fell to the erection jutting up from the vee of his unfastened pants. A ripple of pure lust shot across her skin and she shuddered. His laugh was low and ragged. “Yeah, you see my problem.”
He planted his hands on either side of her head and lowered himself slowly, agonizingly, until that erection was pressed right into the madness at her center. “You feel too good, Addison. I’ve never felt anything as good as your hands on my body.”
Desire punched through her, and she lifted herself into him with a mewl of pure need.
His mouth was next to her ear, his voice dark and rich. “You can touch me any time, any place, anywhere.”
“Now.” She had to close her eyes against the pulsing, radiant want inside her. “I want to touch you now.”
He laughed, and his teeth found the shell of her ear. “Well, any time except now. I’ve been waiting for this, for you, for too long, Addy. I’m too close. You can touch me next time.” His teeth tightened the slightest bit, rode the merciless edge between pleasure and pain. “I promise.”
A hot wash of need slid over her, but she dredged up her last ounce of reason. “Jax, please, it’s not fair. I want to give you something, too.”
“Fine.” He laced his fingers through hers, drew his lips down the cord of her neck. “You know what I want?”
She didn’t care what it was; she’d give it to him. “What?”
One big hand slid under her bottom and lifted her into him, into the heat and flash and demand that roared between them. “I want to hear that noise you make when I do this.” He stroked himself against her, and lust speared through her so viciously that she whimpered. He smiled against her skin.
“Yeah,” he murmured, “that’s the one. But there’s this other one, too. The one you make when I put my mouth right—” He slid his lips, hot and wet and open, to the sensitive skin just under her jaw, pulled hard enough to mark her. She gasped and flung her head to the side, but not to object. Lord, no. Just to give him more room. “—yeah, right there.”
He gave her his weight then, his body big and hard and hot against hers, his hips kneading into her with a rhythm that promised and commanded and demanded. “What I want — all I want — is for you to want me.” Her bra was bunched beneath her breast, offering it up to him, plump and eager. He plucked the nipple with quick, devastating fingers, then soothed it with his tongue. “Do you, Addy? Do you want me?”
“Yes.” She sobbed it out, the breath sawing from her lungs, a sharp need clawing under her skin. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. There was nothing else, only him. “Jax, please.”
Then his hands were dragging at her pants and she was lifting her hips and kicking desperately free of them. His bedspread was slippery under her naked skin, foreign and exciting. She watched, dazed and dizzy, as he tossed off his boots, got rid of his own pants, and dealt with the condom he magically — God bless his practical soul — conjured up.
Then he was between her knees again, his hands both commanding and gentle as he spread her legs, positioned himself between them and slid into her.
“Oh,” she said on a gasp. It was all she could manage. Because this — this was ridiculous. This was stretched and challenged and filled and Jax. “Oh my—”
He braced his hands on either side of her head, just outside her own. They were lying there again, her hands, limp and shocked and helpless. He stared down into her eyes, his face hard and fierce, and he said, “This is what I want, Addy.” He stroked into her and her eyes drifted closed. It was...good lord, it was delicious. He moved inside her like a dream, steady and determined and utterly assured. She lifted a foot from where it rested on the mattress. She thought about trying to wrap it around his waist, to hold on, but then he dropped to his elbows, spread his knees and started moving for real.
Oh sweet mercy. Her thighs stretched wide to accommodate him and she hooked her elbows around his biceps just to brace herself. She felt her own hair against her stunned palms and twisted her fingers into the craziness of her curls. That small pain, that small familiarity was such an inadequate anchor against the colors starting to pop behind her eyelids, the shattering beginning to gather and swirl inside her. Her palms tingled and the arches of her feet went twitchy, curling and flexing spasmodically. What was he doing to her?
“Give it to me, Addison.” He turned his head into the space between her shoulder and her face, his breath hot and sweet against her cheek. “Give it to me now.”
“Jax,” she whispered. It was all she could manage. Just his name. Because in that moment, he was all she knew. In that moment, he was everything. Her universe, her reality, her body and soul. He was the pounding of her pulse, he was the gravity that held her to the earth and the sun that pulled her away from it.
Everything inside her went brilliant and breakable and impossibly tight. And then everything shattered and she said it again. Cried it. Wept it. Howled it.
“Jax!”
He made a noise, something she could barely perceive let alone comprehend, but it was ragged, raw, and utterly gratified. He reared back, gripped her hips with both hands and lifted her into him. He took her with a fierce, unforgiving rhythm, simply seized her and wrung from her shattering body every last thing he wanted. And when he came it was with a roar that Addy felt in every one of her quivering cells. Delight poured through her that had nothing to do with the satisfaction still ripping through her body.
She’d done this to him. Wanting her had undone him.
There had probably been finer moments in her life, but at the moment she couldn’t come up with a single one.
Chapter 25
WIND KNIFED BRUTALLY down the dark alley behind Main Street where Matty crouched but he didn’t care. He welcomed it. Rage still pulsed in his head, hatred gnawed at his ribs, failure twisted in his gut. Sweat slid icily down his back, the slimy left-overs of his furious bike ride down the hill — get away, get away, get away — but his fingers were numb as he tried once again to flick to life the lighter in his hand. It had been his dad’s once, this lighter. Or so they told him, like that was supposed to mean something to him. Why would it, though? It wasn’t like Matty had ever met the guy.
And since you couldn’t miss what you’d never had, Joe’s absence hadn’t ever really bothered Matty. Not until lately, anyway. Because if his dad were still alive, maybe his mom wouldn’t be such a head case. If she hadn’t lost both her son and her husband, maybe she wouldn’t be so damn obsessed with shoving Matty into Diego’s art-legend shoes.
The wind backed off for a minute and the scent of turpentine and oil paints rose to his nose. He wore the smell like some sick perfume these days — eau de disappointment — and his stomach roiled. He tried again with the lighter. The papers in his other hand — a tight roll of thick-ass, expensive drawing paper — shook and he clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. Worked that stupid little wheel until he thought his thumb would bleed.
“Come on, you bastard, light.” How was he supposed to burn this shit — this sub-standard, mother-crushing shit that was all he seemed capable of drawing — if he couldn’t even work a goddamn lighter?
Pain bloomed, bright and shocking, on his scalp and he was suddenly jerked to his feet. The lighter clattered to the pavement and his papers scattered as he scrabbled at the fist in his hair that had yanked him away from the wall and into the watery moonlight. Recognition and relief crashed over him in equal parts when he realized it was only Peter. The guy didn’t look a thing like the smooth-talking, shaved-headed business man who’d pretended to eat Bianca’s art project with them earlier that night, though, and his relief faded warily.
“Hey, Matty,” Peter said, his tone as easy as always. But his face was hard in the thin light. Dangerous. “What’s a nice kid like you doing in my back alley so late?”
“The carriage house wasn’t enough for you?” Peter said evenly, as if he could read Matty’s mind. “You’re after lighting up my Dumpster this time?”
Matty glanced toward the mouth of the alley, wondered if he was fast enough to make a break for it. Peter smiled coldly and renewed his grip on Matty’s hair. Gave him a light shake.
“Matty, Matty, Matty. What would mommy say?”
“Screw you.” Matty ducked and twisted underneath Peter’s arm, freeing himself. He lost a few hairs but the pain was nothing compared to the nuclear flash of rage inside his head. “Screw her, too.” He bent to snatch up the lighter at his feet, to claw together the scattered papers. Peter bent, too, snagged one of the sheets and angled it toward the moonlight. Lifted a brow. “You came all the way down to my Dumpster to burn superheroes?”
“Yeah, sure.” Matty lifted his chin, gave him that whatever, dude look that drove his mother bonkers. “Everybody needs a hobby, right?”
Peter gave that the moment of skeptical silence it deserved, then stuffed the paper in his pocket. He turned toward the back entrance of his bar, jerked his head at Matty. “Step into my office, son.”
Matty backed up a step and Peter bared his teeth in a kid-eating grin. “You don’t want to run, buddy. I used to put guys twice your size on the turf every day.” He had, actually. Matty had seen the framed newspaper articles — along with the entire trophy case dedicated to Peter — at the high school.
