She smiled, but it faltered.
“Hey.” He cupped her cheek. “I know the timing isn’t the best, but this… feels right. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that.”
“The click.”
“The click,” he agreed. He’d been more or less hooked from the moment he laid eyes on her.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she protested. “Or be something you regret.”
“I’m pretty adept at getting in trouble all by myself. But luckily I’m also pretty damn adept at what I do, so they put up with me. And Jillian… I could never regret this. Never regret you.”
Jesse leaned in slowly, giving her time to back away if she really didn’t want this. When she didn’t, he took her mouth with a patience he didn’t usually possess. He wanted her to know that this wasn’t just a fast, meaningless coupling between two people who were hot for each other. Difficult as it was for him to believe, it felt like so much more.
He tasted her mouth, nipped her generous bottom lip, lightly sucked her tongue. Once she was back with the program, he worked his way down the side of her neck, opening his mouth over the tender area where it connected with her shoulder. She tilted her head, pulling the thick curtain of her hair aside to grant him easier access. When he used his teeth, her nails dug into his flesh.
The slight sting inflamed him.
He wanted her. He wanted to claim her, to possess her in a way that he’d never quite experienced before and that he was pretty sure wasn’t politically correct. But he just didn’t give a damn.
The soft sweater she wore – slightly damp from the mist – clung to curves that made Jesse praise whatever higher power designed the female anatomy. Running his hands along her ribcage, he slowly lifted the fabric, pulling his mouth away from hers long enough to yank the sweater over her head.
He tossed it aside, unconcerned as to where it landed, and stared unabashedly at her very pretty breasts.
Curious, he hooked his finger in the elastic waistband of her stretchy pants, and lowered them an inch.
“I’ve been told,” he murmured “that when women wear matching undergarments, it means they plan to have sex.”
Jillian’s cheeks colored a little. “Sometimes.”
“This time?”
“I didn’t plan to, no. I expected you to be more angry than amorous. But in the interest of returning the favor of straightforwardness, I may have worn them on a… contingency basis.”
He nodded. “A more cynical man might think that you’d planned to seduce me into telling you what you wanted to know.”
“A more cynical man would be an asshole. And wrong.”
Jesse accepted the ire in her tone. “I can be an asshole, Jillian. Fair warning.”
She shook her head. “I honest to God don’t understand why I like that about you.”
“Because I don’t bullshit. Or coddle you unnecessarily.”
“Maybe. Maybe that’s exactly it.” Jillian hesitated and then reached up, undid the center clasp of her bra herself.
She ran her hand up her torso, flushing slightly as she cupped her own breast. The noise Jesse made in response sounded more like an animal than a man.
It caused him to hesitate. Given her history, he didn’t know if she had any difficulties with physical intimacy. He didn’t want to trigger some sort of post-traumatic stress. “I want you to tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
“I appreciate your sensitivity,” she told him “but when I said I don’t want to be coddled, it goes for this, too. Treat me like a woman, Jesse, not a hothouse flower. The same woman you pushed against the wall and kissed breathless before. I promise I won’t break.”
Watching her, Jesse pulled the gun from the back of his waistband and placed it on the table. Then he leaned forward, pushing her against the bench so that he could take her into his mouth. Her back arched, one hand threading into his hair to bring him closer. He explored her breasts with his lips and tongue, her fingers tightening slightly when he did something that she particularly liked. The slight discomfort coupled with the pleasure of finally being able to touch her caused his erection to pulse almost painfully against his jeans.
“God, that feels so good,” she murmured.
“Hang on. It’s about to feel a whole lot better.” He sat up, ran his hand down her leg, over her high-heeled boot. “Some day, when we have more time and more room, I want you to wear these for me.” He glanced up. “And nothing else.”
Her lips turned up in a sexy smile with the slightest trace of shyness around the edges. It was an irresistible combination.
He unzipped one boot and then the other, cursing the narrow confines of the galley when he bumped his elbow on the table, but he finally managed to get her tight, stretchy pants down her legs. She was left wearing a pair of silky red underwear that put him in mind of a Christmas treat just waiting to be unwrapped.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he murmured.
“Is that a candy cane in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”
“Sweetheart,” Jesse corrected “that’s the North Pole.”
When she laughed, Jesse grinned. You had to love a woman who appreciated a truly awful pun.
Hooking his thumbs under the elastic, Jesse slowly began to pull. When she was totally bared, all fair skin and fiery gold hair, with the long, toned legs of a runner, Jesse thought that in that moment he was probably the most fortunate man on earth.
Then he frowned, touching the fading bruise on her knee.
He glanced up. “It makes me sick, thinking of what could have happened.”
She reached up, laid her fingers against his lips. “Don’t. I don’t want to think about that. Not tonight.”
Understanding, Jesse nodded. This time was for them. The close quarters of the cabin, the almost infinitesimal rocking of the boat combined to create an insular world, one from which he’d try to keep reality from intruding. At least for a little while.
Jesse pressed his lips to her knee before stretching her leg back out, admiring the shapely length of them.
“Jesse,” she whispered after a few moments of him staring.
“Mmmm?”
“I’m naked.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She looked at him with exasperation. “Yet you remain fully dressed.”
“I’m enjoying that contrast right now. Kind of a little master/slave fantasy. Or maybe a kinky Santa with his apprentice elf.”
She laughed. “You’re such a man.”
“And thank God for it.”
Jillian’s laugh turned to a gasp when he braced one foot against the floor and lowered himself, kissing her between her legs. The gasp became a groan of pleasure that ended on his name and didn’t hurt his ego one bit. But this wasn’t about him. He wanted to please her not because it was some sort of proof of his sexual prowess. He simply wanted to make her feel good.
Really, really good.
To that end he slid first one finger and then another inside her, stroking her as he used his lips and tongue to push her closer and closer to the edge. One of her knees bumped the table, so Jesse draped both of her legs over his shoulders, holding her thighs in place. She squirmed, her breath coming in short pants.
“Oh God, Jesse. I can’t.”
She could. She would. Jesse pinned her left leg to the bench with his shoulder so that he could slide his fingers into her again. He curved the middle one, causing her to buck against him. Then he strategically used the stubble on his chin.
The orgasm seemed almost violent in its intensity, her inner muscles pulsing against his fingers as a hoarse cry ripped from her throat. He wouldn’t at all be surprised to find a few strands of his hair clutched between her fingers.
Jesse continued through the aftershocks, until the hands that had been pulling him closer began to push him away. Untangling himself from her legs, he admired her skin, all flushed and dewy over limbs that had gone boneless. He smiled when she finally l
ifted her eyelids to half-mast.
“Hi.”
She made a small sound.
“Everything okay?”
“I think I’m dead.”
The smile turned into a grin.
“I hope you don’t mind if people send flowers here,” she told him. “I don’t have the energy for a proper burial.”
“That’s a shame. And here I was just getting started.”
She feebly lifted a hand. “Go ahead. I won’t hold the necrophilia against you.”
“As generous as that offer is, I prefer my partners to be responsive.” He leaned down, pressed a kiss to her stomach and made her shiver. “Looks like there might be some life left in you after all.”
Jillian struggled to sit up, and Jesse helped haul her upright. Her hair was tousled, her eyes slightly dazed, and Jesse felt pretty damn good, considering. When she looked at his mouth with hesitation before leaning in and tasting him, tasting herself, Jesse decided that he could probably feel a whole lot better.
“As exciting as the whole oral sex on the ridiculously narrow bench thing has been, maybe we could move to the berth for part two of the night’s proceedings. Assuming you’re still up for it, that is.”
“A berth is a bed, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m up for it. I think I re-bruised my knee on the table.”
“Let me see.” Ignoring the urgency of his body for another moment, Jesse examined her legs. He frowned when he saw a darkish mark on her inner thigh. “I think I might have bruised your leg with my shoulder, actually.”
“Totally worth it,” she assured him.
Jesse’s lips twitched. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to inflate my ego.”
“I’ll deal with that regret at a time when my body isn’t shaking little pom-poms and cheering your name.”
Laughing, Jesse stood, offered her his hand. When she took it he pulled her flush against him. Looking into her eyes, he ran his hands down her slender back, cupped her magnificent ass. And then lifted her so that her legs wrapped around his waist.
“Don’t fall,” Jillian said when the boat swayed slightly beneath them.
“I have excellent sea legs,” he assured her and proved it by walking unerringly to the stateroom. When his shins touched the berth he dumped her backward onto it, following her down. The control he’d exhibited up to this point began to slip at the feel of her pinned beneath him, her long legs hugging his. He kissed her with the urgency he’d been holding at bay.
She responded as hungrily as she had before he’d brought her to satisfaction, the small noises of desire she made driving him crazy. Jillian pulled at his shirt, and Jesse leaned back long enough to rip it off over his head, toss it aside. She began fumbling with the button fly of his jeans, causing him to groan.
He grabbed her hands. “Let me,” he said. “If you touch me too much I’m afraid this will all be over before it begins.”
Jesse rolled to his side, opened his fly and shoved the jeans down his legs. Since he’d pulled them on after his shower, he wasn’t wearing boxers. His erection sprang free.
He grabbed a condom from the little drawer built into the berth, covering himself with an eye toward speed rather than finesse. He felt like a randy teen. Gathering Jillian beneath him again, he plunged.
Her sharp cry brought his head up. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
He didn’t. Probably couldn’t at this point, so it was a relief that she didn’t ask it of him. Lights flickered behind his eyes as the heat and the slickness and the rhythm caused pressure to begin gathering at the base of his spine far before he was ready. Jesse tried thinking of something that would slow it down, but Jillian slid her nails down his back, teased her fingers along the crack of his ass and drove him crazy. Mindless with the desire to claim, to possess, Jesse hooked his hands under her legs and shoved them back so that he could take her harder.
Sweat rolled off his forehead, dripped down his face as their bodies slid slickly together. He looked down to see Jillian biting her lip, her head tilted back against the pillow, the pale line of her neck exposed. It looked like she was close.
He leaned down, said something very raunchy in her ear as he ground his pelvis against hers.
She shattered.
Turned on beyond anything he’d ever experienced, Jesse continued until the pressure at the base of his spine became too great. Holding Jillian’s hips in place, he thrust one last time.
His release temporarily blinded him. Jesse felt like he’d come apart at the seams.
When he finally managed to make his eyes work again, he realized that they were in danger of falling off the end of the bed. Somehow, they’d managed to turn sideways.
Jesse rolled, bringing Jillian with him so that she lay limply against his sweaty chest. He thought perhaps they were glued together.
He raised a hand, laid it against the back of her head.
“I only thought I was dead before,” she told him after several moments. “This time I really am.”
“We’ll have a double burial at sea.”
“My God,” she said, sounding stunned. “That was… I don’t know what that was.”
“Really great sex.”
“I don’t think I can move my limbs.”
“Probably a good thing we waited,” he agreed. “If we’d done this that day in your entryway, they would have found our corpses standing there, mummified against the wall.”
She snorted. “I probably shouldn’t find that image so amusing, considering.”
“I have a fairly macabre sense of humor sometimes,” he admitted. “It tends to come with the job.”
At the mention of his job, Jillian went silent.
“Hey.” He tilted his head so that he could see her face. “No regrets, remember?”
“I was just thinking about how strange life is. Of all the men I possibly could have gotten involved with, I never would have believed it would be a cop.”
“Agent, technically.”
“Federal cop.” She leaned up onto her elbow. “So you’re like a regular cop on steroids.”
He smiled at her teasing tone. “If you’re gonna go, go big.”
“I’m not going to touch that innuendo with a ten foot pole.”
“You already did. Without the pole.”
Shaking her head, she leaned down to kiss him. “That… thing you said? I liked that.”
“I sensed that you did. You’ve got a dirty mind, Jillian Montgomery, and an angel’s face. If you were to tell me that you love to fish, I might have to declare you the perfect woman.”
She smiled, leaning in to kiss him again, but Jesse stopped her when he heard another noise outside.
“What’s wr –”
Jesse pressed his finger firmly against her lips. Meeting her eyes, he shook his head. “Wait here,” he whispered.
She nodded, her eyes widening in distress. “Please be careful.”
Jesse rolled off the bed, snatching his jeans from the floor and pulling them on even as he hustled toward the table to retrieve his gun. He cursed himself for leaving it there to begin with, but that was something to worry about later. Palming it, he once again eased toward the door.
Jesse listened for a repeat of the noise he’d heard previously, but all he heard was the soft lap of water. Then it happened again. It sounded like a moan, barely audible.
With one final glance toward the stateroom to make sure Jillian had stayed put, Jesse eased open the door and crouching, moved onto the deck. Taking cover as best he could, Jesse maneuvered into a position where he was relatively protected.
No one shot at him when he lifted his head in order to be able to see the dock.
It was empty. Jesse frowned, wondering if maybe he’d mistaken the groaning of the dock itself, or one of the boats, for a human sound. But he didn’t think so.
Rising up a little more, Jesse scanne
d the area. The sky was grey and close, but at least it was no longer raining. The drying sweat on his skin caused him to shiver, and Jesse wished briefly that he’d taken the time to don his shirt. A car pulled into a nearby parking space, the gleam of headlights illuminating part of the dock. Shielding his eyes so that the glare didn’t ruin his night vision – not the best anyway, considering he wasn’t wearing his glasses – Jesse used the unexpected gift of light to examine the dock more closely. There appeared to be a dark substance forming a thin trail on the planks.
Jesse rose to his feet, peering more closely.
What he saw ripped a string of vicious curses from his throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JILLIAN stared at her stained hands, not really seeing them. All she could see was that man, that poor man, blood gushing out of the horrible wound in his neck.
Her fault. It all seemed to be her fault. Or connected to her, anyway. To her brother.
But none of it made any sense.
Jillian listened to the hushed air of the hospital’s chapel, fruitlessly hoping to hear an answer. First that man Losevsky was killed, and Jillian’s business card found among his effects. Then Detective Gannon died – and though she still didn’t have all the details regarding what happened, she knew that it somehow tied to her and Katie’s Christmas decorations, of all things. And now this other man had been attacked and was barely clinging to life. Jillian didn’t know who had attacked him or why, but she’d gotten the distinct impression that Jesse suspected it was also connected.
And those were just the incidents she knew of. Being out of the loop as she was, she realized there could be more.
But while it seemed logical to lay those crimes at the feet of the organization with which her brother had associated, it still defied understanding as to what that had to do with her.
But it did. It obviously did have something to do with her. The dolls, the drugs, the poor squirrel – there was no way to overlook the fact that someone was messing with her. Someone wanted to draw her in to their sick little games.
But she still couldn’t figure out why.
“Jillian.”
Jillian looked up to see Katie standing beside the pew.
The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set Page 23
