“You do it,” she said. “And I’ll watch.”
The tiny scrap of lace slid easily down her legs. He tossed it to the side. At the sight of the neatly trimmed triangle of curls beneath those sexy panties, all the blood rushed out of his head and straight down to his groin. Once more he buried his nose in her hair and took a long deep draught of her intoxicating scent. Logical thought abandoned him. All he could think about was sex and the aching in his balls. He needed her. Now. Hard. Fast.
Ally bit her bottom lip, caught by surprise as he slid inside her. His hands were everywhere, cupping her breasts, tickling along her ribs, reaching between them to stroke the most sensitive spot between her legs. He was tall and heavy but his weight felt good as he pinned her to the blanket. Jack began to move, slowly at first then building in speed and intensity until her breath came hard and fast.
Nothing existed outside of her body, Jack, and the soft wool of the blanket beneath her bare bottom. His jagged breathing and muttered curses set her blood to boiling. A bead of sweat dripped from his temple and dropped between her breasts then rolled down to tickle along her chest and belly. She pulled her hands along the smooth columns of muscle on either side of his spine. There was so much power and strength in his body held under tight control. Damp tendrils of hair clung to his neck and face. She lowered her hands further to grip the rounded buttocks and squeezed. He moaned and buried his face in her neck, his breath hot against her skin.
Jolts of pleasure spiked through her legs. He felt good…so good. Her breasts ached and swelled against his chest; the nipples tingled, antagonized by the friction of their skin. She rocked against him, rose to meet him, and fought to pull away all at the same time…aching…straining. His fingers slid up her sides and tangled in her hair as he ravaged her mouth with his tongue.
Primitive instinct overtook her reason. Nothing mattered anymore but the need to mate with this man. She struggled beneath him in an attempt to get closer, to draw him inside her. She wanted more...needed more. As if he read her mind, he slipped a hand between them and began to stroke her with the perfect combination of pressure and speed. The forgotten bottle of wine spilled onto the blanket and into the grass next to the overturned plate of cheese.
“Raise your knees up, baby.” When she lifted her legs, he hooked an elbow behind one of her knees and pulled it up toward her ear, opening and exposing her for his pleasure. He slid deeper still then began a fast unsettling rhythm. Her nails dug into his back until his breath hissed from the pleasure of the pain. Every stroke forced the air from her lungs in a hiss. Any delusions of self-control disappeared as he moved her body with his, orchestrating her movements with skill and dexterity.
“I can’t take any more.” She arched into him, pressing her breasts flat against his chest. “Please, Jack!”
“I want all of you, Ally. Every damn inch.” Even as she writhed, he stayed inside her, always inside her. Even his labored breathing excited her. “Do you like this, baby? Are you going to come for me?”
As his teeth nipped along her shoulder, she shuddered and did her best to comply. She hovered on the precipice between the ultimate bliss and complete surrender. This was what she had been searching for. How could she have gone a lifetime and never known this kind of pleasure existed? She shuddered again. It was going to happen. She was going to come. Jack Jameson was going to rock her world.
Thoughts tumbled over each other. Jack pried open a door that had long been locked, but her mind slammed it shut again. Her body shut down. No, no, no, she thought, in a panic. Not when she was so close to losing herself. She closed her eyes and tried to regain the feeling, but fear replaced desire. She just couldn’t allow herself to let go. As if he sensed the shift within her, Jack stopped and stroked the side of her face with a finger.
“Look at me, Ally.” His deep voice cut through her confusion. She opened her eyes and found him looking back at her. She started to close her eyes again, embarrassed. “No, don’t look away. I’ve got you. Stay with me.”
His eyes were fathomless pools of liquid chocolate, deep and warm and hypnotic. The rhythm of his hips altered but remained relentless. Their breathing synchronized. Every nerve ending in her body sang with pleasure.
“Jack?” His name slipped from her lips with uncertainty, but she kept her eyes trained on his.
“That’s right. Breathe through it. Don’t fight it. Feel me inside you.”
She could feel him – every smooth, hard inch of him – as he stroked into her. A sudden sense of power and euphoria surged through her as she saw the expression of pleasure on his face, pleasure that she gave him with her body. Her legs stiffened and jerked. Lightning bolts of ecstasy streaked from her groin to her toes as she burst into orgasm.
It was so much more than she’d ever dreamed. Emotions tumbled over each other as she stared into Jack’s eyes. A connection stretched between them, hot and sizzling like a live wire. With a shudder, he came inside her. He was so freaking beautiful with his breath hissing through full trembling lips, nostrils flared, and his body heaving against hers. She wrapped her legs tight around his hips until they both collapsed in exhaustion.
Sometime later, when they had both stopped trembling, he pulled out of her, took off the condom and tossed it into the bag of trash. Even though the air was still hot, a cooler breeze swept over his sweat soaked chest and raised gooseflesh on his arms. Unfamiliar emotions surged through him. The connection between them had been more than physical. So much more. It had been deep, powerful, emotional – and he had no idea how to deal with it. His theories of cheap and meaningless sex flew out the window. One time and he was hooked on her like an addict.
“What’s the matter?” Her voice, smooth and soft with satisfaction, floated through the quagmire of his thoughts.
“Nothing. It’s all good.” He kept his face turned away. The tinny sound of his voice was foreign, like it came from far away, too forced to be natural. Part of him wanted to hold her, to murmur in her hair, and bask in the moment of intimacy, but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. It was all so new to him. He made a move toward her, but she sat up and started to put on her clothes as if ready to leave.
“Do you think it’s going to rain?” she asked. “I left one of the windows open at my house.” The words were cool and impersonal, as if she was making small talk with a stranger.
The nonchalance of her voice cut him. Hadn’t she felt the connection between them? She didn’t act like it. It struck him that their roles had somehow reversed, that Ally had become him in this situation. This was exactly how he had treated the others, with casual indifference after an intimate act, throwing up an emotional wall to keep anyone from getting too close. Except it had been more than casual to him. It had been more. And he wanted it to be more for her as well.
Insecurity wasn’t his style. He should be the one dressing with haste, eager to move on, not her. After all, he had promised her pleasure without commitment, sex without love, and he had delivered. He always delivered, so why should it bother him so much this time? The answer stared him in the face with gaunt, vacant eyes. It was the emptiness. He was sick and tired of the emptiness.
Ally blew out a deep sigh, still basking in the endorphins of release. It was as if a valve had been opened, releasing all the pent up pressure she’d been holding back for so long. She risked a glance at Jack, to see if he’d felt it, too – the connection between them. The handsome face gave nothing away, but his usual half smile had disappeared. A little of her euphoria slipped away. Was he disappointed? It was by far the best sex she’d ever had, made even more spectacular by his insistence that she lock her gaze with his. Those deep dark eyes had tugged at her emotions and it had taken everything she had to shut down her feelings before they took her over. He would hate that…hate her…if she fell for him like all the rest. If he knew that he’d gotten to her, he would never respect her.
“I suppose we need to get back,” she said. With concerted effort, she force
d her features to mirror his expression of indifference. She reached for her blouse, but Jack saw her intent and snatched it up before she could get to it. He held it up over his head like a third grader at recess playing keep away. She made a feeble grab for the blouse, but he was much too tall. “Come on. It’s late and I need to get home. I have to work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said. His eyes glittered like black onyx, almost as if he was angry with her. He seemed oblivious to his own nakedness and unconcerned about hers. Despite the heat, she snatched the blanket from the ground and wrapped it around her shoulders.
You got what you wanted. No strings. No guilt, she told herself. Don’t be a baby about this. She spun around in a circle, looking for her panties. They were nowhere to be found.
“Are we good here, Popsicle?” The look of puzzlement on his face brought a quick stab of guilt to her gut, along with relief that some emotional distance had been forced between them. “You aren’t going to get weird on me, are you?”
“I can’t find my panties.” They were La Perla, her favorite pair, and expensive. She spun in a circle, squinting in the dying daylight. After a few minutes she gave up. The man was a panty magician. She found her skirt and yanked it on under cover of the blanket. “So what happens now? We just walk away now? Like nothing happened?”
“Is that what you want?” A muscle twitched in his cheek, but his face remained impassive. She knew what she didn’t want; she didn’t want this night to be over and she didn’t want him to think she was a pathetic groupie like all the rest.
“Sure…I guess…Yes.” Was that a flicker of hurt in his eyes or did she imagine it? With a shrug she went back to putting on her skirt, amused at her own stupidity. That was a ridiculous idea fueled by naïve girlish fantasies. Jack had an ego the size of Texas. Of course he wasn’t hurt. She was just another notch in his bedpost. “I don’t think I’m capable of having feelings for anyone right now. I mean, it’s only been a few weeks since Brian. And you are so not my type. I’d be an idiot to fall for you just because we had some great sex.” The words were hollow, meaningless, but she said them anyway to fill up the empty space between them and because that’s what he wanted to hear. “This was just what I needed. A little cheap and meaningless sex to take the edge off and set my head straight. And we both got what we wanted, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The hard edge to his voice caught her off guard.
“I mean, we both know the last thing you want is another girl hanging on your jock. And the last thing I want is a relationship with someone like you.” The verbal diarrhea just kept pouring out of her mouth and she seemed powerless to stop it.
“Someone like me?” He threw the blouse at her. It hit her in the chest and slid to the ground. “God, you are the most frustrating woman I have ever met!”
“I don’t understand. Are you mad at me?” She dropped the blanket, shoved her arms into the blouse, and began to button up the front. “Why are you mad?”
Jack strode over to the crumpled heap of his clothing. He yanked on his jeans and t-shirt with short angry jerks, muttering to himself about mules and crazy women. When she was dressed again, she attempted to run her fingers through the snarls in her hair and risked a glance at him. He threw the food and empty wine bottle into a sack, stashed the cooler behind a tree, and shoved the blanket into the saddle bag of the motorcycle. By the scowl on his face, he was pissed – really pissed. He hopped on the motorcycle and started it up, revving the motor to the red line. Birds exploded from the trees. The angry sound split the silence and rumbled over the lake like thunder. After a few seconds, he shut the motorcycle off and dismounted. He crossed the distance between them in two paces, chest heaving. With trembling hands, he ruffled his hair and scrubbed at his face. She’d never seen him so angry before. He took another step toward her. Confused, she backed away. When at last he spoke, his voice shook with emotion.
“Just so you know… as a general rule I don’t do this.” He shoved his hands through his hair again.
“What do you mean?” She shrank back another step.
“This!” With his right hand, he drew a circle in the air between them. “I don’t do this. Whatever just happened between us…I don’t want that.” She stared at him, feeling foolish but unsure how to remedy the situation. “You made me feel something that I don’t want to feel.”Ally wanted to believe him. Jack the Ripper didn’t say things like that unless he meant it. But she had her own walls to break down, and her heart wouldn’t allow her to believe it. She could do nothing but stare back at him, wordless as a garden statue. After a minute, he shrugged, got back on the bike, and started it up.
“Get on the bike, Ally,” he said his tone cold and harsh.
“No. Not until you explain this to me.” By this time she was close to tears and too stubborn to admit that she might have been wrong about him. He had gone to a lot of trouble to set up this night and it had been perfect until she had messed everything up. Contrite and humiliated, all she wanted was to get as far away from him as she could. They were miles from the city and it was well past midnight. She would have to go back with him. The idea of sitting behind him on the motorcycle – pressed against him after the intimacy they had shared – knowing that she had insulted him was too much.
“Get on the goddamn bike. Now.” A cloud passed over the moon and left them in darkness. He turned the motorcycle around and came up beside her. “I’m not going to say it again.”
It was a long cold ride back to the city. When he dropped her at the entrance to the parking garage, she hesitated before dismounting the motorcycle. “I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. Apologies came hard for her, but she swallowed her pride and did it anyway. “I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t know why I said all those things.”
“Forget it,” he said. “It was just sex, Ally. No big deal.” His cold casual dismissal made her heart sink. She watched him ride off into the darkness until he turned the corner and disappeared.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A week later, Ally still felt the sting of Jack’s parting words so strongly that she could barely concentrate on her work. It was just sex, Ally. No big deal. Maybe it was no big deal to him, but it was to her. He was the second man she’d ever had sex with and she’d certainly never had sex like that. Sex with Brian had always been quick, routine, and impersonal, like some dreaded task that had to be completed. By comparison, her tryst with Jack had stirred up emotions that she didn’t want to feel. She had expected to walk away afterward and feel nothing but physical satisfaction. Instead, he had inspired a hunger for him that grew more ravenous with every passing day.
Stay with me, Ally…I’ve got you.
The echo of his words brought gooseflesh to her arms and a dampness between her thighs that a dozen cold showers and two hours on the treadmill couldn’t shake. He had her alright; one sexual encounter with him had driven her from schoolgirl crush straight into a full-blown obsession. Even in the middle of a meeting with Alessandro Reyes and the other board members, her mind couldn’t stop its endless contemplations of Jack; Jack with his shirt off, Jack’s lazy smile, Jack’s brown eyes as he made love to her. The memory of him brought heat to her cheeks despite the air conditioned office and made her hands tremble so badly that she could hardly sign her name to the proposals.
“Are you feeling okay, Miss Taylor? Do you need a moment?” Alessandro, sleek-haired and immaculate as always, interrupted the meeting, his slight Latin accent unable to hide his irritation. “You seem distracted.”
One of the most intense men in the business world, Alessandro Reyes had no patience for distraction. He demanded one hundred and ten percent from all of his employees, even more from her because she was a woman. His gold eyes rested on her with a laser focus that made her squirm in her chair.
“I’m fine,” she said, embarrassed by the attention. “I’m just a little lightheaded. I didn’t have time for lunch today.”
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br /> Alessandro swept an impersonal gaze from her head to her feet, his gaze disapproving. “Why don’t you take these proposals to the print shop and have Penny get you a bagel or something. Take a few minutes to regroup. I need your head in the game, Ms. Taylor.”
Suitably chastised, Ally fled to the ladies room where she splashed cold water on her wrists and applied fresh lipstick. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glowed with unnatural brightness. She looked like a dog in heat. This is ridiculous. Now Jack was affecting her work and not in a good way. She needed to talk to him, to explain or at least get some kind of resolution, but her pride and fear of embarrassment stopped her. What if she went to Felony and some new girl waited in the Seat of Shame? Of course, there was a new girl; she’d be foolish to expect otherwise. That’s what Jack did – he devoured women like a vampire, sucking the self-respect right out of them, to leave behind their desiccated and broken carcasses. Why should she be the exception? He had seemed different with her though. He had been tender and passionate and romantic, three things she hadn’t expected from a man with his reputation.
Speculation was a waste of time that she didn’t have. The only way to get answers for her questions was to ask Jack, a proposition that made her palms sweat. With a shrug of resignation, she took one last look into the mirror and gathered up the proposals, preparing to make the journey downstairs to the print shop.
Penny stopped her in the hallway before she made it to the elevator and spoke in a confidential whisper. “Miss Taylor, I’m afraid there’s been an incident while you were in the meeting. You have a visitor.”
“A visitor?” Ally’s heart leaped into her throat. Was it Jack? It was late afternoon, too late for another lunch surprise. Her hands began to shake again with anticipation. “Who is it?”
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