by Cherry Adair
“Good. Tell me about your architect. How’s he doing?”
“Still in the hospital in a coma. They think he suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen. God, Jack. I was so freaking pissed at him for being late, then his arrogance—I think my temper’s to blame for what happened to him.”
She pressed a hand across her mouth, her eyes dark with concern. She dropped her hand and bit her lower lip. “I tried doing the Heimlich on him, but it didn’t work. Nothing I did worked. How the hell can a restaurant not have anyone trained to do something so basic?”
Jack got up and went to her. He wrapped her in his arms, saying softly against her hair, “Clearly, you did everything you could. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Yes, I can.” She stepped out of his arms and started pacing. “Because it is my fault,” she said bitterly, pressing two fingers to each temple.
The nervous pacing was something new. He’d noticed it when he’d first arrived, too. “Don’t you see what’s happening?” Jack said evenly, going back to the chair he’d vacated. Apparently she needed a lot of pacing room. “Every time something happens, you start connecting dots that don’t exist. This was clearly an accident, honey. Chances are, if you hadn’t done what you did, your architect would be dead now instead of in a coma.”
She did a U-turn and headed back his way. He took a nanosecond to admire the flashing length of her silky, tanned legs in that short white skirt and the sexy FM heels, before he looked back at her face. Her eyes flashed; she knew he’d been sidetracked.
“What about you falling into a pit of snakes right in the middle of an argument?” she demanded pugnaciously. “Was that also just one of those things? Because I have to tell you, Jack, I’m sick of those things constantly happening around me. This is why …”
“Why you were afraid when you got pregnant?”
“Yes. I’m a jinx. I’m Typhoid Mary. I’m the freaking Hindenburg. I’m the iceberg that sank the Titanic!”
Jack’s lips twitched. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. One moment I’m happy and relaxed; the next my head is spinning, and I’m spewing frigging pea soup!”
He snagged her around the waist as she passed, pulling her into his lap. Wrapping his arms around her, he rested his chin on the top of her head. “I love pea soup.”
“Don’t come running to me complaining when I kill you, Jack.”
“I’ll stick by you and haunt you for the rest of my days.”
“I’m not joking. This jinx thing scares me to death. My temper scares me even more.”
“Well, you don’t scare me to death. We’ll figure this out together, okay?”
“Okay.” She turned in his arms and cupped his face in both hands. “Why do we fight, Jackson?”
He inhaled the heady citrus fragrance of her skin. “Because it’s so much fun to make up?”
“Hmm. Kiss me. Let’s see.”
He took his time, tracing her lower lip with his thumb, and she sucked it into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth, her eyes wicked above his hand. Jack closed his eyes as Sara’s slick tongue slid around his finger. The sensation lodged in his groin.
Removing his thumb from her mouth, he replaced it with an open-mouthed kiss. He loved kissing her, loved her taste and the texture of the inside of her mouth. He loved the way her eyes fluttered shut, and how she put everything into the mating of their tongues. He cupped the back of her head, his fingers tangling in the sun-streaked strands that felt like silk against the roughness of his fingers. God, he’d missed her.
He nibbled lightly at her lower lip until she shuddered and her arms tightened around his neck. Breathing in her sigh, Jack slanted his mouth across hers, deepening the kiss, feeling his heart rock back into the empty place.
His pleasure rose like a tide, and he wanted to pull up her short skirt and take her there, on her office chair, in front of the window.
He chased her tongue, reaching deeper, kissing harder. The pleasure was intense, almost painfully so. Drunk with loving her, he wanted to inhale her essence, to lie with her on a field of new grass.
Unless the world ended before then.
Reluctantly Jack lifted his head. Sara murmured a soft protest, taking several seconds to open glazed eyes.
“Hey, I wasn’t done with you yet,” she protested, sounding a little slurred, as though she’d had a few too many appletinis.
He gave her a quick kiss because he couldn’t not. “Keep that up, woman, and that little skirt you’re wearing is going to be a belt.” He gave her a nudge, and she slid off his lap. Slowly.
Tucking her shirt into her waistband, she gave him a sloe-eyed look. “You’re a hard man, Jackson Slater.”
“That too.” He ran both fingers through his hair, then spun the chair to follow her progress across the room. Snapping open her briefcase, she removed several sheets of paper.
“Sara,” Jack said cautiously, feeling like a complete moron. “You saw those snakes, right?”
She turned to face him, resting her butt on the table, her hands braced behind her. “Why?” Clearly his expression telegraphed his thoughts. “Yes, I saw them. Hundreds of skinny black snakes. I also saw the bites all over you. Why?” she repeated.
“There’s not a mark on me now.”
“None?” When he shook his head, she said flatly, “Like me after Sarulu chased me. Another hallucination.”
Jack pushed out of the chair and shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “My job takes me to some of the most inhospitable, dangerous places in the world. Nothing I’ve seen or done in any of those places has fazed me. There are two things in this world that scare the shit out of me. Know what they are?”
She shook her head.
“Losing you, and snakes. Two things, that’s it. I lost you once, and I’m still not sure that I survived that. But this snake thing …”
“Do you think your feeling about snakes is something like a self-fulfilling prophecy? That you hallucinated that pit of snakes because you subconsciously expected to come across them in a cave?”
“Maybe. Hell, I don’t know. The bites felt and looked real enough, even if they healed fast.”
She walked toward him, her luscious, tanned legs exposed by her short skirt. But it wasn’t her legs Jack focused on this time; it was the soft compassion in her velvety brown eyes. Eyes he could drown in.
“Then I hallucinated them too. I was never particularly afraid of snakes before being chased by an improbably large one,” she said softly, standing right in front of him. She cupped his cheek in her cool, soft hand and stroked her fingers gently over his skin.
“I practically grew up with Harry.” She combed her fingers through the hair over his ear, her nails gently scoring his scalp. “So being almost sexually assaulted by Sarulu was a shocker because it wasn’t exactly on my greatest fears list. Now I can barely stand the sight of my favorite Christian Louboutin python stilettos.” Her trailing fingers curled around the base of his skull.
“Here’s the interesting thing,” he told her. “Practically every culture on the planet has some sort of snake myth. The beginning of Omnivatics and Aequitas: Ophidian. Venezuela, Africa, and Australia all have tales about a rainbow-colored snake; Sarulu? Hopi Indians, East Indians—hell, Greek cosmological myths, Egyptian myths—they all have these freaking snake-related stories. And you wanna know what I think? I think every single one of those damned snakes was an Omnivatic, hiding in plain sight.”
“Jack?” she murmured, her soft mouth an inch from his.
His breath tangled in his lungs as she brushed her mouth against his ear. “What?”
“Remember where you took me as a surprise three years ago?”
“Yeah. What does the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi have to do—”
And there they were, in a candlelit ice room, tucked into an insulated sleeping bag spread over reindeer hides.
Bare-ass naked.
Chapter Sixteen
No snakes two hundred m
iles north of the Arctic Circle,” Sara assured him. “Not at this time of year, anyway.” Beneath the sleeping bag, she slid her bare leg across the smooth skin of Jack’s naked hip. His fingers tightened in her hair, and she sighed low in her throat at the feel of his hot skin against hers.
“The perfect place,” he murmured, touching his mouth to the pulse at her temple.
Anywhere she was with him was perfect. But Sara didn’t articulate that. “Oh, my God.” She laughed, burrowing into his warm arms as goose bumps pebbled her shoulders and arms. A single candle on a nearby clear ledge flickered with her movement. “It’s freezing.”
The ice walls glowed an eerie pale blue around them as if they were in the center of a very large ice cube. Which basically they were. The entire hotel was carved from tons of ice and snow. Jack had brought her here on their one-month anniversary. The icy room had been bathed in flickering candlelight, the air perfumed by hundreds of deep red roses. He’d loved her then. …
“I forgot how freaking bitterly cold it was—is.” Her breath hung in front of her lips, each word a little puff of condensation in the frigid air. She snuggled her cheek against the warmth of his chest and heard the steady beat of his heart.
“I’m a professional,” Jack assured her, tightening his arms around her, enveloping her in the furnace heat of his body as he pulled her the last millimeter against him. Stroking a large hand down her back, he dropped a lingering kiss on top of her head.
“As much as I want to be here with you, we have to resolve our problems back at the hacienda. You know—damn, it’s freezing!”
“Trust me, vacker, flicka, I know just how to keep you hot.”
Oh, yes, he certainly did. And clearly he wasn’t going to take her back until … later. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, loving the springiness and crispness of it under the pads of her fingertips, then buried her cold nose in the prickly hair. God, he smelled good. Inhaling the musky, all-male fragrance of his skin made her feel hot and sizzling all over. “Brr. I barely noticed how cold it was when we were here last time.”
They’d been so in love, so totally focused on each other, that Sara had noticed very little around them when they were together. It was only when she was back at home, alone, that the fear and uncertainties set in.
She pushed the thought away. Right here, right now, there was neither fear nor uncertainty. Just Jack.
“You won’t notice this time either, min kära,” he assured her in an intentionally terrible accent. He was actually an accomplished mimic and really good with languages, but it wasn’t his facility for verbal communicating Sara needed right then. He twirled an imaginary mustache when she lifted her gaze to his face. Hunger burned in his eyes.
Her heart ached. Running her fingers through his hair, she savored the feel of the heavy, satiny strands. Foolishly, her eyes stung with intense emotion.
Her nipples were hard and peaked, happily nestled in his chest hair. Gently she shifted her upper body so that both she and Jack were teased by the hard little points and gentle friction. “Are you a Swede now?”
She loved the little lines beside his eyes as he smiled wickedly. “When in Lapland …”
She tugged his head closer, brushing her nose against his, Eskimo-style. “Lap?”
He grinned, sliding his hand up her thigh to settle on the flare of her hip “Quite so. Come into my lair, älskling.” With a combination of magic and strength, he tugged her body deep inside the large sleeping bag, where it was dim and marginally warmer.
Heat unfurled in Sara’s belly as Jack trailed his mouth over her closed lids while his hand slid across her hip and slowly up her midriff. His calloused fingers abraded her skin as he savored the silky texture of her breast. She shuddered with pleasure as the sensation traveled through her body like sheet lightning.
His tongue traced the line of her lashes, gentle as a butterfly wing, at the same time he took her nipple between his fingers, rolling the hard nub until her back arched with need. Moisture pooled between her legs, and it took every vestige of willpower she could muster not to impale herself on him right that second. Her breathing was becoming more ragged, and they were barely moving.
His erection, hard and silken, brushed her wet heat. With her knee over his hip, she was open to him anytime he wanted to take her. But Jack loved the anticipation of slow and deliberate. She loved the throbbing, breathless anticipation of leisurely lovemaking, too—if she could manage to outwait him. She could smell the heat of her own arousal combined with the scent of her lotion, the sharp tang of lemon and the spicy sweetness of ginger, heady in the warm, cocooned darkness.
“Feel what you do to me, Sara-mine,” he murmured against the unsteady pulse at her temple. His penis moved against her, seeking, searching. Waiting. “The smell of your skin makes me so horny I can’t think straight, do you know that? This—God, I’ve missed this. I want to wait, draw out this sweet torture. But I want to fuck you till neither of us can walk. Then I want to start all over again.”
“Yes. To both,” Sara murmured languidly. “Any and all of the above. In any order you like. You—hmmm, right there—don’t even have to give me a heads-up. Surprise me.”
The hard muscles of his belly contracted as she lazily trailed her fingertips down his side. She loved touching him. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. His skin there was blazing hot and incredibly smooth. She knew that when her hand trailed lower, the silk would turn rough with crisp hair. He shuddered in reaction as her finger glided into the crease between his torso and his leg.
“Slow torture it is.”
She hummed her approval, tilting her face as he trailed more kisses across her eyelids, brushing his lips across her cheek, then nibbled lightly on her nose, making her smile. Back across her cheek. Her need climbed another notch as he swirled his tongue in the shell of her ear. The sensation shimmied all the way down to her toes. His lips drifted down until he lazily traced her smile, his mouth soft and pliant against hers.
I love you, Jack. But she didn’t say it, just met his wet, slick tongue with her own. He tasted dark and seductive, and so familiar and dear that her chest hurt. The kiss was delicious, hot enough to make her heart gallop, and tender enough to make her eyes sting.
Rolling her onto her back, Jack slid his large hands up the insides of her arms, drawing her hands above her head as he settled into the cradle of her thighs. “This is …”
“Yes,” she breathed against his warm skin. Bombarded by intense physical desire and tangled emotions, Sara had to remain perfectly still for a moment, listening to their syncopated breathing as she teetered on the razor-sharp edge of an orgasm before they’d done much more than kiss.
Jack dropped his forehead to hers. “You are so damn beautiful,” he whispered. “And you smell—you smell like heaven. Horny woman drenched in flowers. I’m drunk with wanting you.”
Maybe I should tell him, she thought. Maybe I should try one more time. But what if he didn’t feel the same? What if it was just passion, the relief from danger translated into a need for physical release? Better not to break this spell, she decided; better to seize the moment and accept that that was all it was—a moment. And oh, what a moment.
The small swell passed, and she restlessly moved her smooth legs against the roughness of his. He shifted his hips just enough to anchor her legs with one of his. Her fingers flexed in his hold in a wordless plea.
“Give me a minute,” he said thickly, then brushed his lips down her throat and bit the side of her neck.
“Ow!”
It wasn’t a gentle nip; Sara felt the sharp edge of his teeth on the tense cords of her throat. The fine tremors became a shudder that shook her whole body. He kissed the sting, succulent, wet kisses.
He trailed kisses along her collarbone as he shaped her breast with his fingers, and down the inner swell of her breast. He licked her skin to cool it, then heated her flesh with more sharp, hot nibbles. He found her nipple, brushed it with his t
humb, then pinched the hard nub between his fingers. “Too tender for gentle,” he murmured against her throat. “I remember.”
His open mouth moved across the plump swell and he took her nipple into the wet heat of his mouth, his teeth gently clamping down until Sara whimpered with need. He sucked hard, and her back arched, her fingers fisting in his hair, holding his head in place.
She moaned in protest when he moved on, his mouth starting a familiar journey south. He paid attention to her midriff, counting her ribs with flicks of his tongue. Down her belly, taking tiny nips and soothing her sensitized skin with small kisses meant to calm; they incited her even more, though. Maybe they weren’t meant to calm, at that.
A thrill of excitement ran through her veins as Jack kissed his way down her body. Her abs fluttered as he dipped his tongue into the indentation of her navel, and her hands came down to grip his broad shoulders.
She hissed in a breath when he touched his mouth to her mound. “God …” he breathed hoarsely against the damp curls. She shuddered as his fingers dipped into her silky wet heat. He slid two fingers deep inside her, manipulating the tight bud until Sara arched against him.
Please, please, please, she chanted in her head as his fingers worked her body into a mindless symphony of sensation. He pushed her higher, higher, and still it wasn’t enough. She wanted more than his fingers inside her. Damn it, she wanted him inside her now.
And just when she thought she’d go mad wanting him, he put his mouth on her. Air tangled in her chest. A pulse throbbed a jungle beat in her ears. The universe around them bled into soft focus, leaving Jack’s mouth in sharp relief and everything else a hazy blur. Jack. Jack. Jack.
Her entire body throbbed and pulsed. Her goose bumps had goose bumps. Everything inside her turned to churning, seething, molten liquid.
His breath harsh, he returned his fingers to her slick heat, bringing her close, so close—
“Let go,” he whispered. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
Sara didn’t have a choice. The climax crashed over her with such force everything went dark. Her body bucked as she came hard and fast, her body arching against his mouth. He anchored her hips, his fingers digging into the cheeks of her ass.
