by Claire Adams
I nodded. “This included. Just your favorite breakfast.”
“This is first place. Full breakfast will take it every time. Second place would have to go to bagels, cream cheese, and salmon.”
“Fish in the morning?” I laughed.
Juliana’s mouth curled into a radiant smile. “The fact that salmon is a fish is a technicality.”
“I guess.”
“What’s yours?” she asked.
“First place, same as yours. This. Second place is Cheerios.”
“Cheerios?” she giggled, eyeing me quickly before she took another delicate bite of bacon. “Who would’ve thought that the big, tough SEAL would eat Cheerios?”
I puffed out my chest, raising an eyebrow and jokingly asked, “Big, huh?”
Juliana’s melodic laugh drifted to my ears, and I was sure that this was the best damn breakfast I’d ever had. “You know it.”
“Tell me more,” I joked.
That was how it went for the next couple of days. I treated her gently, with kid gloves to a certain extent. I tended to the wounds on her wrists and ankles, told her whatever she wanted to know, listened to whatever she wanted to say. I wasn’t embarrassed that I was waiting on her hand and foot. Tugger agreed that I should take time off until Juliana went back to work.
Being alone with her like this was my own personal slice of heaven. Sure, it would’ve been marginally better if I wasn’t also nursing her back to health in the meantime, but she was model patient. She put up with me slathering her with ointment and changing her bandages as often as I thought necessary.
We talked, we laughed, we joked, and every now and then she cried. The only thing we hadn’t done was fucked. Or made love. Whatever I was supposed to think of it as now.
On Friday afternoon, we were in the kitchen assembling sandwiches for lunch. Juliana was standing next to me, her nose scrunching up adorably as she watched me smear mustard on the bread.
“I think you’re the only person more uncomfortable in the kitchen than I am,” she said.
I caught her hand and spun her around once, then pulled her close to my chest and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I’ll take that as a compliment. It means we’re cut from the same cloth.”
Juliana melted slightly into me, then grabbed my face between her hands and kissed the shit out of me. I groaned, taking control of the kiss. I slid my hand to the nape of her neck and held her close, stroking her tongue with mine like I’d been starved for her, which I had been.
I’d been sleeping next to her and holding her, brushing soft kisses to her sweet lips and slapping her butt lightly when she passed me. I was teetering on the fucking edge, but I couldn’t jump and I knew it. As pent-up as I was, she’d been through something awful and traumatic, and I wasn’t going to push her.
I broke the kiss, squeezed my fingers on her hips and stepped away. “We shouldn’t. You’re still in a delicate state.”
She raised her brows. “Hey, Pacey, the 1920’s called, and they want their mindset back. I’m most certainly not delicate.”
“You’ve been to hell and back, love.” She still hadn’t called me out on it, and I was still waiting for the right time to tell her that I loved her, but I saw the way her eyes softened each time I said it. That first day, it had slipped past, as traumatized as she’d been, but she noticed it now. “We shouldn’t rush into it.”
She gave me a long look, brow furrowed as her hazel eyes searched mine. Blue was winning out today. God, I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out why her eyes looked the way they did at different times.
“Rush into it?” she asked. “What if I want to rush?”
“Then it’s a good thing you’ve got me,” I told her. “I have epic self-control.”
Juliana raised her brow in a challenge, and I found out exactly what that challenge was a few hours later when I entered my bedroom. I’d been working out in the garage, where I had a punching bag and a pull-up bar, but I got to my bedroom only to find her waiting in one of my dress shirts.
She started unbuttoning the shirt as soon as I walked in, quickly revealing that she wasn’t wearing anything else. I practically growled when I realized she was just about naked.
How the fuck was I supposed to resist this?
Chapter 36
Juliana
Pacey was being the most amazingly compassionate, attentive, and caring man on the face of the planet and I loved it. Loved him for it, but it had been days, and he hadn’t touched me. Well, not really anyway.
He called me love and took care of me like no one ever had, but being in such close quarters and even falling asleep in his arms; it had become torture. He thought I didn’t know that he woke up hard and fell asleep the same way, but I did.
Mostly since I was more turned on than he was, apparently because he hadn’t made a move. So I did. While he was working out, I’d gotten naked, donned one of his shirts, and was waiting by the foot of the bed when he finished up.
From the hungry look in his eyes as he paused in the doorway, bracing himself on the frame, I wasn’t the only one who was desperate around here. Just that look got me wet and swollen, more than ready for him. I idly wondered if he’d be able to make me come with just a look, because it sure felt like it. Especially after all these days of being pent-up with him in every way except that one.
What I needed was him inside me, and I intended on getting him there, despite any noble notions he was clinging to about my delicate state. What bullshit. I wasn’t delicate. I was horny.
I felt fine. The ointment he was religiously applying had made it feel like I wasn’t ever injured, and while emotionally I was fragile, being with him made me feel better than I’d felt since before being kidnapped.
I loved being in his house, being with him. It was becoming easier to imagine never leaving here. While Pacey wasn’t pushing the issue, he’d made his feelings plenty clear. He wanted me here, and I found myself wanting to stay.
I smiled at him, purring as I undid the top button of his shirt. “Have a good workout?”
“I did,” he said, carefully. “What’re you doing?”
“Seducing my boyfriend.” We hadn’t exactly talked about what we were, and the term boyfriend seemed entirely inadequate to describe what he meant to me, but it was the best I had.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you got a problem with that, Nelson?” I arched a brow, and my smile widened at his very obvious want. It was there in the way that he gripped the door frame, in his suddenly darkened eyes and the instant bulge in his gym shorts. I loved that he was as affected by me as I was by him, even though we hadn’t so much as touched each other.
“I haven’t got any fucking problem with that, but you don’t need to seduce me, love. You only need to tell me what you want.”
I sat back on his bed, watching him as I lowered myself onto my elbows. My answer was oh so simple. “You. I want you.”
“You got me,” he said, pushing off the frame and coming at me with an intensity sparking in his eyes, the likes of which had me slick before he reached the bed. Even more so when he lost his shirt halfway across the room. “What do you want, Juliana?”
He said my name reverently, the question sounding like he wanted me to answer with something a hell of a lot more than, ‘fuck me.’ So I didn’t answer that way.
I hardly ever went with my gut. I counted my words and thought about my answers, but there something in me that was uninhibited with Pacey. It was the same thing that made me trust him implicitly and drew me to him without rhyme or reason.
It was everything about him. “I want you to make love to me. I want to feel you, and I want you to stop walking on eggshells around me. I want you to take me with every ounce of passion that I see in your eyes right now, and I don’t want you to hold back.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he groaned. “You were just kidnapped, for Christ’s sake. I’m trying to take care of you; I’m tryi
ng to help you heal.”
“I know, and I appreciate that more than I can express to you, but take care of me this way. Let me take care of you,” I whispered, leaning over to catch his earlobe between my teeth, tenderly biting down on it.
His breath caught and his muscles locked. “If you want me, take me. I’m yours, Juliana. Do with me what you will.”
Pushing me back onto the bed by my shoulders, he crawled over me, propping himself up on his forearms to form a tent over me. He bent his head down, capturing my lips in the kind of kiss that I’d been waiting for since he’d brought me to this house.
It was all Pacey. A full body kiss that had me burning up under his hands, consuming me. Possessing me. Lighting every nerve ending and igniting every cell in my body. I kissed him back with all that I had, all that I was.
There is my man. Swallowing his low groan, I laced my arms around his shoulders and weaved my hands into his thick hair. I pushed up against him, mashing my body against his, my nipples hardening from the friction of the coarse hair on his chest.
A moan rumbled from Pacey’s chest, and his arms cradled me, tightened around me. I’d never felt more cherished. More protected.
Nuzzling my neck and kissing his way across my jawline, his breath fanned my cheek. “You sure you’re ready for this? I can wait, Juliana. You don’t have to rush on my account.”
Bringing my hands to his face, I raised it until I could meet his eyes. “I’m not rushing into anything. I’m ready, Pacey.”
I love you. The three little words jumped to mind again, begging to be set free, but I wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear them yet. I would have to settle for letting my body do the talking for me, to let it ask him the burning question.
I lifted my head at the same time that he lowered his, our mouths meeting for a heated kiss that promised so much more. Our tongues danced together—stroking, spearing, and loving. My fingers traced the muscles in his back, running along his spine and over the outline of his shoulders until I gripped the firm skin of his biceps.
They were rock hard under my touch, flexing as he moved his one hand into my hair and the other down my side to my hip. The kiss became deeper, more frenzied. My feet hooked into the waistband of his gym shorts and pushed down, freeing his erection.
He kicked the shorts off along with his briefs without breaking the kiss, leaving my magnificent man naked on top of me, his hips pushing mine deeper into the bed. I moaned into his mouth when he slid his cock through my folds, the tip resting against my clit.
Bursts of pleasure shot from the little nub as he pulled back, then thrust forward again. If I didn’t get him to pull back, I was going to come before I even got him inside me. While something told me he would be perfectly okay with that, I wasn’t. Not today.
Reaching between us for the remainder of the buttons, his hands caught my wrist and he put enough of his weight on his knees to shift up slightly, gripped the sides of the shirt and ripped the rest of the buttons clear off.
“Pacey!” I gasped. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know, but I have more shirts, and I wanted your skin on mine,” he answered breathily. God, he sounded so damn sexy.
Raising my shoulders, I shimmied out of the ruined shirt with his help and then his mouth was back on mine, wanting and needy as I was. Wrapping my legs around his lean hips, I rested my feet above his wonderfully toned ass and squeezed, bringing him closer to me.
He responded with a groan and a renewed fervor to his kisses, bringing a hand up to rest under my breast and his thumb stroked my sensitive nipple. I hadn’t thought of my nipples as particularly sensitive before, but with Pacey, all of my senses seemed heightened and my body as responsive as a finely-tuned sports car. I wasn’t in the habit of comparing myself to automobiles, but my ability to think was rapidly shutting down as he kissed and stroked and groaned every last thought from my mind.
Our naked bodies were perfectly aligned, and I wiggled against him, bucking my hips up to take just his tip into my heat.
“Fuck,” Pacey spit out. “You feel too good. I need to get a condom.”
Thankfully, he didn’t need to move very far to get one. Reaching into his nightstand, he pulled out the package, ripped it with his teeth, and sat back to roll it on. While I knew it was a practical necessity, it was still a seriously erotic sight. I wanted to help, if only to touch him.
Reaching out, I placed my hands gently over his, whispering, “Let me.”
Pacey nodded, his throat working as he watched me sheath him. As soon as I was done, he was moving into position like a bullet shot out of one of his guns.
I was definitely right; it seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d experienced the few days of abstinence as torture. I just didn’t have his patience or self-control, apparently. A giggle escaped my lips, and the corners of Pacey’s mouth turned up into a sexy smirk.
“Something funny?” His voice was husky, breathy.
It triggered a Kegel reflex, and I bit back a moan. “Nope.”
He pushed against me, and I opened for him, but then he stopped, tilting his head like a puppy with the little smile still in place. Sweat dotted his brow, and I could see that holding back was killing him as much as it was me.
“You want this inside you?” he asked, thrusting forward just enough to elicit a moan from me before stopping again.
I nodded furiously, “Please!”
“You don’t have to beg, Juliana. Just tell me what the joke is.”
“It’s not even funny,” I whispered. “I was just thinking about how you’ve had the self-control of a saint, and here I am throwing myself at you.”
“I’ll happily catch you anytime you want to throw yourself at me,” he said, punctuating his words with soft kisses and gentle thrusts. “And I’m no fucking saint.”
“You are to me,” I breathed, rocking my hips to meet his thrusts.
“Yeah?” he asked with a tight smile, reaching his hand between us. “Would a saint do this?”
Thrusting deeper, he brushed my clit with his fingers, making white light explode behind my eyes as I lost track of my thoughts and my mind splintered. I whimpered, “Yes.”
“Really? You clearly have a different definition of sainthood than I do.”
Oh. That’s what he was talking about.
Spearing my hands into his hair, I yanked him toward me, needing that mouth on mine instead of speaking. Pacey didn’t resist, smiling against my lips until I pushed my tongue past his and devoured him with hungry kisses.
All traces of humor disappeared as we lost ourselves to one another, our mouths fused together as our bodies joined as a cacophony of moans and sighs mingled in the air around us. I clung to his shoulders as he ignited the spark he’d been building inside of me and sent a white-hot rush of heat through my body as my climax hit.
Pleasure erupted like fireworks, and I was reduced to a blazing inferno, coming with a shout of his name as I shuddered and broke down around him.
His muscles were strained, brow furrowed as he upped his pace, increased his tempo in search of his own release. With breathing labored and ragged, his rhythm became choppy, and his incoherent groans all ran into one as his cock twitched and he emptied himself into me.
We collapsed into an exhausted heap afterward, limbs tangled so much that I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began. I was more satisfied than I’d ever been before. Pacey wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest.
The words were right there on the tip of my tongue again, the ones we had left unsaid, yet communicated with our bodies as much as we were able to. I couldn’t hold them back, and I didn’t want to anymore. I wasn’t even sure that Pacey was still awake, but the words wanted out, and they wanted out now.
He beat me to it, though. As in tune as we’d ever been. “I love you, Juliana.”
I didn’t skip a beat, but my heart skipped several as a feeling of intense peace settled over my body. It humbled me, crept into every
inch of me until I knew with every fiber of my being that nothing I’d ever felt with anyone else had truly been love.
“I love you too, Pacey.”
Gripping me tighter, he brought his free hand to my chin and tilted it up so that I met his eyes. They bore into mine with glowing intensity and indescribable joy. “You do?”
“I do.”
Pacey smiled down at me, caressing my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I like the sound of that.”
Chapter 37
Pacey
“It’s Sunday, babe,” I told Juliana. “We have a ritual.”
We didn’t, but I needed to talk to Tugger, and since neither Juliana nor myself had left the house since Wednesday, I’d invited him here. The Sunday Game Ritual was an excuse that I was starting to appreciate, though I’d come clean to her about it one day in the very near future. I just needed this one last time.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “Who am I to argue with ritual?”
I leaned over to kiss her, loving that I was able to do that whenever I wanted to now. We were in the kitchen making breakfast, and the domesticity of the moment wasn’t lost on me. I thought once that it would scare me to have this. It didn’t.
It rocked. I fucking loved every second of it, and if I could do it forever, I would die a very happy man indeed.
Juliana broke the kiss, pushing at my chest with a laugh as she flipped eggs in a pan. “Don’t make me mess up the only thing I can cook.”
“I’d have you for breakfast instead,” I told her, though I’d already had her for breakfast.
“You’re insatiable! A fiend!” she cried, giggling and leaning up to give me a quick kiss. She was the one deepening it when a pop from the pan drew her attention. “Crap. Those are ruined.”
I glanced at the eggs. They looked fine to me, only slightly bubbled around the edges. “Crispy eggs, then. It’ll be our new thing.”
She rolled her eyes but dished up the eggs with a bright smile. “Our first thing.”
