by Nicole Helm
So he got up in her face, gratified when she stepped back. And then again. He kept going until he had her backed against the door. Still she looked at him with nothing more than icy disapproval. He leaned his face into hers until their noses were practically touching. “I hated that fake fucking kiss.”
She didn’t back down, but that cool disapproval went hot and angry, and something inside him roared in triumph.
“Well, I hate the way your ex stares at me as though I’m some fungus growing on you. I hate the way you walked around all day like a zombie when they should be the ones marinating in their own awfulness. I hate the fact that your mother thanked me.” Something changed in her posture then. A slump, a ragged breath. “She… Why, Jack? What the hell was she thanking me for?”
She looked very close to miserable with it, and he didn’t understand that reaction, but what did he understand today? “I don’t know,” he answered, something like gentleness blanketing all those jagged edges.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said, shaking her head, and he thought maybe she was attempting fierce and failing.
He reached out and traced his finger over a strand of messy hair. “Now, that isn’t true.” Because he couldn’t stand her misery, and it was the antidote to the anger swirling inside him. He wanted to soothe that lost note out of her voice over and over again.
“I’m not your salvation, Jack,” she said, and this time, she was all fierce, her dark eyes blazing in the moonlight.
“No,” he returned, still tracing the path of that one strand of hair with his index finger. “Nothing is.” Was that what he’d been waiting for? Salvation? Everything to click into perfect place? He felt like he’d been waiting for something, and anytime one little, jagged piece found its match, another million shards turned on him, making him just as miserable as he’d always been. And no, Rose was no salvation, but she seemed to know exactly how to dull the edges of those shattered pieces of himself.
He pressed his finger to where the strands of her hair ended just below her shoulder, on a cluster of cheerful, yellow flowers. Then he traced the modest collar of the dress, everything in him tightening hard with want.
He wanted Rose. He wanted underneath all those ways she protected herself. He wanted to hear her sigh his name. He wanted to know, more desperately than he had this entire time, what it would feel like to be deep inside her. Joined. Naked.
Just them.
Even as she let out a shuddery, shaky exhale he could feel down to his soul, she straightened her shoulders. She hardened the softness that existed deep inside her whether she wanted to admit it or not. “You want to fuck your way to feeling better, that’s fine, but you better know that’s all this is.”
He pressed his forehead to hers and laughed, which he knew was not the answer she wanted. But it was funny. Funny that she could soothe those sharp things and poke at his temper all at the same time. Because he’d be damned if Rose ever, ever thought he was using her just to make himself feel better.
“You should know me better by now,” he said.
“You don’t know me better, because in case you’ve forgotten, everything about this is fake. Made up. You’re all riled up because your brother’s an asshole, and yeah, it’d feel pretty good to stick your dick in something besides that woman, and I bet it’ll feel pretty good period. For both of us. But I’m not throwing myself into that if you’re going to pretend there’s anything really happening here.”
He lifted his head from hers, but he used his body to crowd her more, until she was plastered against her door and he was only a whisper from being pressed to her. “It’s not all fake. The kiss in the parking lot wasn’t fake, and the kiss today wasn’t all fake. Our fake date was the realest thing that’s happened to me in two years.” He pressed his palm to the door right next to her ear. “A quick fuck isn’t ever going to be all this is.”
She lifted her chin, and he didn’t think she had a clue the way fear shimmered in her eyes like starlight. Not fear of him exactly. She wasn’t fighting or bolting, and it’d be more than easy to do both.
No, she was afraid of this—the thing that beat between them. So afraid that she had to pretend it didn’t exist. And maybe he’d be afraid too, but he’d watched his friend die and been blown apart by a grenade, and he’d be damned if he’d waste that kind of fear on something that felt good.
“Don’t kid yourself, Jack,” she said, more whisper than slap.
“Don’t lie to yourself, Rose.” He leaned in, but he didn’t kiss her. He swept his thumb over her cheekbones and watched her eyes flutter shut as her lips parted. He soaked in that moment of painful anticipation, remembering her taste, the feel of Rose melting against him—in surprise, in anger, in hope.
And still he didn’t kiss her, because he was not conceding this point. No matter what it cost him. He needed her hope. He needed her…real. Rose.
“I’ll kiss you when you tell me the truth,” he whispered, so close to her he wasn’t sure he could live up to that threat if she didn’t give in.
Her eyes flew open, and she quickly turned her expression of surprise into a sneer. “Ha!” she returned defiantly.
“You’re not quite the closed book you think you are. And the fact of the matter is, actions speak louder than words. You feel something for me, Rose. You’ve helped me, and you can fake a lot for my family, but my family hasn’t been here very long.”
She pressed forward, a seductive slide of friction, and he very nearly had to close his eyes to fight off the pounding desire to give in.
She had to give him what he wanted first. She had to.
She tried to kiss him, but he pressed his palm to her chest, gently pushing her back into the door, before he slid his hand up to her throat. Bare and soft, her pulse hammered against his fingers as he brushed his thumb on the underside of her jaw.
“Tell me the truth, Rose,” he said, never looking away from that dark, desperate gaze.
He could feel her shuddering under his loose grip, against his body. Her breathing was a ragged thing, as if he was already touching her everywhere like he wanted to.
But this had to be… Well, it had to mean something. He’d analyze the whys of that when he wasn’t so hard that it hurt.
“Okay, fine,” she said, still that defiant tilt to her chin. “Not everything going on here is fake, but it damn well should be.”
“Close enough,” he muttered before crashing his mouth down onto hers.
* * *
Rose had never romanticized a thing, a man, or a kiss in her damn life—other than Jack’s mouth devouring hers, his body pressing her against the rough, aging wood of her house, her refuge. This place no one but them knew about. She’d invited him here, twice now, and he was changing it. Changing her. Rearranging all the pieces inside her chest that she’d resolutely kept separate. He was stitching them together with light and hope, and she couldn’t let it happen.
This wasn’t like either of their previous kisses. Though he’d initiated both, though they’d both been ridiculously potent, there had been a weakness in them—a sense of being lost, of searching to be found.
This wasn’t that. Jack wasn’t the least bit lost as his tongue swept into her mouth, as he pressed the hard length of his erection against her, his hand still on her throat. He was in charge, a soldier on a mission, and the mission was to have her melted from the inside out.
The ache inside her was so deep, spread so wide, she didn’t even care. She relished his mission, would give it to him freely over and over again, if only he found a way to unwind all the pressure building.
The cool evening air whispered against her legs, and it was only then she realized Jack was pulling up her skirt. While one hand corralled that fabric, the other hand slid down her neck and over one breast, his fingers finding the outline of her tightened nipple.
He splayed his hand ac
ross her abdomen, the skirt of the dress hanging over his arm as his finger slipped beneath her underwear.
He gritted out a curse as he traced her intimate folds. She was a raw, throbbing nerve, and his touch was the only thing that soothed it. The more he explored her with his rough, blunt fingers, the more she forgot all the things she’d tried to convince herself.
It was fake.
It was once.
Nothing more.
“More,” he said in that commanding military voice, the one that shivered through her. As though she could trust him to take care of anything and everything. With his fingers moving inside her, finding all the slick parts of her desperate for him, she couldn’t think to fight it all off. Her release was just out of reach, and somehow that was best. She didn’t deserve anything from him.
She shut her eyes against that thought, swallowing down all this crazy emotion. Sex wasn’t about feelings. It was about getting off. Period.
And she wanted to get off on more than just his fingers. She fumbled with the button of his jeans and then the zipper, reveling in the loud exhale of his breath against her neck as she found him. Hard. Thick. Hot even through the thin cotton of his boxers. She wanted all of that, for them to be chasing that edge together. She pushed at his pants, and he nudged down her panties until they fell onto the porch floor.
His hand slid down her leg, then hooked under her knee, bringing it up and around him, her underwear falling off in the process. Then his hand slid down her other leg, and she hesitated, hooking her arms around his neck. “Jack, I don’t think this position is possible.”
He hefted her up without any extra fanfare, and her legs hooked around his waist, her arms holding on to his neck.
“Anything is possible for a former Navy SEAL,” he said, that beautiful smile lighting up his face and her heart and…
No. She couldn’t feel that. So she adjusted her weight, rubbing herself against him until he groaned. She couldn’t seem to stop chanting his name. She couldn’t seem to remember that a world around them existed. It was only him.
“Jack. You. You.” She wanted him so desperately, she couldn’t even find a way to make it happen. They needed to stop. They needed… She didn’t know. She could only say yes. She could only beg.
He slid deep inside her in a slick, perfect glide. They groaned in tandem, and he simply held her there, joined.
She let her head fall back and hit the hard wood of the door he had her half pressed against. He held her up and she wanted to stay there, right there forever, on the brink of the orgasm trying to wash over her.
“I’m doing this all wrong,” he muttered.
She laughed, her arms holding on for dear life, her body eager to move against this perfect invasion.
“Laughing doesn’t help my ego, Rose.”
“Everything feels pretty right to me, Jack.” Which was too close to a truth she wasn’t capable of accepting. This. Him. Right.
“Do you have something to lie on in there?” he asked, his voice a rough, delicious scrape.
“There’s a bed.”
He stepped away from the door, hefting all her weight in what shouldn’t have been an incredible show of strength. She held on to him, and somehow she was weightless and easy in his arms, with him still lodged inside her.
“Open the door,” he ordered.
She let one of her arms unwind from his neck and reached over to turn the knob. “Jack, you can’t carry me. Your le—”
“Like hell I can’t,” he growled, shouldering the door open. “And I’ll lecture you about the unlocked door later.”
Every step moved her against him in a way that had her panting from unfulfilled pleasure.
“Where?” he demanded, that soldier on a mission tone back and wonderful. Perfect.
She grabbed the battery-powered lamp she kept on the little table by the door, though she nearly dropped it when he adjusted her weight and slid deeper. “I-In the back,” she managed, clicking on the lamp and wrapping her arms back around his neck.
Jack did limp as he carried her the entire way into the one inhabitable room in the house, but he never lessened his grip. Nor did he stride with enough movement to give her everything.
Damn it, she wanted everything.
Just sex everything. Not him everything.
He made it to the bed and laid her down on the mattress, and she groaned in distress when he slid out of her.
“Scoot back.”
She wanted to tell him she didn’t take orders anywhere, let alone the bedroom, but she wanted to take his orders if that would get him back inside her faster. So she put the lamp down on the floor next to the bed, then scooted back, spread out, and he crawled between her legs, hovering over her.
“Take off your shirt,” she said.
“Take off your dress,” he returned.
They both stripped off their clothes in a flurry, and oh naked Jack was something truly special. Something that deserved more than a weak, battery-operated camping light.
She opened her mouth to say something about doing this in the daylight, but her heart shied away from ideas like another time, another place. There was only now, there was only him, between her legs, gazing at her like she was made of some precious thing.
You are nothing precious, Rose Rogers, and if he knew anything about you, he’d know that.
“I need you inside me,” she said, to fight off the urge to cry or tell him, confess all her sins, and make him run away. But then she’d be unfulfilled, and she was selfish. Wasn’t that what everyone always told her? She was selfish, so she’d use Jack for her own ends, and he’d never know all the terrible things she’d done.
“First,” he murmured, his finger brushing down between her breasts. “Tell me.”
She swallowed, looking down at the column of the tattoo between her breasts that he was tracing, as gently and fascinated as he’d touched her below.
“It’s the poker hand that won me the bar,” she replied in a shaky voice she didn’t recognize.
He cocked his head, something like a frown gracing his perfect face. “Why here?”
“Because that bar is my everything—my heart, my soul.” My power. My freedom. Words she barely managed to keep inside. Speaking them aloud would lead to too many questions and too many terrible answers.
He made a considering sound but that was it before he was over her again, kissing her so fervently, she could only give in to it, move with him, meet every slow, far-too-meaningful thrust.
He scraped his rough palm up her hip and over her abdomen to cup one breast. He thumbed her nipple until she was moving her hips, urging him faster, deeper.
This was taking too long, allowing too many cracks in her heart to fill up with lies. Lies like sex could ever be more than something he was getting out of his system because he was sad. Something she was getting out of hers because she was desperate.
“Hurry,” she whispered, digging her nails into his shoulders, and then she used a word she’d never in her life used during sex. “Please.”
It spurred him on, harder, faster, deeper, until the wave of pleasure crested through her, wave after pulsing wave of light and joy and release.
He held her close, wrapping her up in his arms, against his chest, pushing deep one last time as he whispered her name and fell over his own edge.
Her name. As though it were something beautiful. Perfect. Precious.
And she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, she could never, ever let it happen again.
Chapter 17
Jack woke before dawn. Rose was naked next to him, though curled away from him in a tight ball. She was sleeping soundly and somewhat loudly. She wasn’t snoring exactly, but she sure did make a lot of sleeping noises for such a tiny thing.
He had to leave. Not only did he have chores to do, but his parents were
also sleeping at his friends’ house, and sneaking away last night had been irresponsible and unfair.
He watched Rose’s chest rise and fall. Years ago, irresponsible and unfair would have been the worst things he thought he could be. In the wake of Rose, they seemed necessary and right.
She was like nothing in his life had ever been. She was vibrant. Dynamic. She seemed so absolutely certain of who she was and where she belonged in the world—and considering how little he had of that right now, she felt like a miracle.
He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay here in this private world of theirs for as long as he possibly could.
Would it really be that wrong? Would it really be so awful to do something for himself? To enjoy Rose and life and live for himself?
Maybe not at some other time, but his family was visiting him, and they deserved his time and attention, so he had to get back. Which meant he had to wake Rose up and have her drive him back to the ranch.
He was not a stupid man. Waking her up would complicate that feeling inside him, that truth that he knew—but wasn’t so sure she did—that this was real, that what he felt was real. That they were at the beginning of something. A seed planted.
Rose wasn’t ready for that kind of acknowledgment.
He wanted to be strong and certain and steady enough to wait her out, to take the time to prove it was all true, but there was something dark and ugly whispering from a part of him he kept locked down.
All those black thoughts and questions he’d had lying in his hospital bed, reeling from the death of his friend, from his injuries, from the knowledge his brother had slept with and impregnated his fiancée.
He’d always thought of himself as good. Moral. Hardworking and right. Instead, he’d lain in that hospital bed thinking that he’d been wrong. That there had to be something fundamentally wrong with him for all that to rain down on his head.
In his world, if you did everything right, you were supposed to be rewarded. If you were punished, there had to be some reason.
