“You are the one, Harlee,” he whispered, unable to stop the words that came from his heart.
* * * *
Harlee stirred and tried to pull herself from a deep sleep. Her hand touched rough, warm skin. She hesitated. No. It couldn’t be Jake. She’d dreamt this realistic dream. Nothing more. He didn’t lie beside her. Right?
Wrong. Her hand explored this dream further. Wiry chest hair. Slim hips, nice tight buns, flat stomach, and…oh yeah… No way had she dreamed that. Uh-uh. She squirmed a little and felt that sweet ache inside her, an ache only a man this well-endowed could cause. She’d never expected him to be so big, and he’d never expected her to be so tight. Surprise on both counts.
Her eyes darted around the room shrouded in shadows. She lay in Jake’s bedroom in the old farmhouse. She didn’t even remember how she’d gotten here.
Harlee wrapped her hand around him. Almost stiff again. Incredible. He grunted and shifted to his back, still snoring softly. Harlee stroked his partial erection and marveled as it hardened in his sleep. She could straddle him and lower herself down. He’d probably never wake up. Then again…
Without warning, Jake grabbed her and flipped her on her back with irritating ease. Harlee screamed and struggled to free herself. Her screaming turned to giggles as he tickled her without mercy. He discovered an especially ticklish spot under her left breast and exploited that discovery.
“Stop. Stop it! Please! I’ll do anything.” Harlee thrashed beneath him and pushed at his bare chest with her hands.
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.” She rubbed her softness across his hardness. Jake gritted his teeth and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Wanna get laid, Goldilocks?”
“Again?” She feigned shock and indignation.
“Yeah, again. So, do you?”
“Yeah.” Her voice softened to an inviting purr.
Jake nudged her legs apart with his thigh, not that she needed much nudging. She opened willingly for him.
He reared back and studied her. “You’re beautiful.” His raspy voice wrapped its sexy heat around her body.
“So are you.”
“Men aren’t beautiful.” He snorted and lowered himself back down to her, letting his hard muscles slide over her soft skin. His chest brushed her nipples, which sprang to sensitive points.
“You are. In a very masculine way, of course.”
“Of course.” His chocolate eyes opened a gate in every wall she’d erected until they came to rest at the edge of her soul. Harlee stirred underneath him and freed herself from his hypnotic gaze and concentrated on his neck.
“Don’t.” His knees spread her legs even wider.
“Don’t?”
“Don’t look away.”
“I…” Harlee met his eyes again.
He grinned and placed a large hand on the side of her jaw. “You are beautiful, and you fit me so well. Body and soul.” He planted little wet kisses on her jaw and neck. “You are incredible in and out of bed.”
“Jake…” Compliments made Harlee uncomfortable.
“I mean it, baby.”
“Jake, where did you learn to—” The words wouldn’t come to her.
“Make you wild? Make you come? Make you forget every other guy on earth?”
“Uh, yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” Harlee gasped as he adjusted his hips and rubbed his erection between her legs.
He laughed, but it had the strained sound of man holding himself in extreme control. “You do the same things to me, Harlee.”
She lifted her knees up and farther apart then rubbed her mound against his cock. “You like that?”
“Mmmmm. Yeah. Keep it up. Yeah, right there. That’s it. There. Harder.”
Harlee complied. He felt so solid, so ready. So…big. She reached between his legs and wrapped her fingers around him. He moaned and pressed harder against her. She tightened her grip.
“Oh, baby. Harlee.”
“You want me to find a place for that?” Harlee teased.
“Please. Somewhere warm and slippery.”
“Warm? Is it cold?”
“Hell, no, it’s hot. Really hot. Burning hot.” Jake moaned. “No more talking.” Jake had a condom on in record time.
Harlee cupped his balls and squeezed them carefully. She rolled them around in her hands with the utmost care. Jake’s cock inched its way inside. Harlee took her turn at moaning when Jake flexed his hips and sank into her until he’d buried himself.
His shoulders flexed and his muscles strained with the effort of holding himself above her. Harlee wrapped her arms around his neck and attached her mouth to his. Emotions swirled around her and engulfed her, overwhelmed her. His mouth moved over hers. His tongue stroked her tongue and invited it to join his in a trip to the sensual side of life.
Harlee angled her hips and took him deeper, every nerve ending charged with awareness of his skin, moist with sweat. His breathing became her breathing until their rhythms meshed. He withdrew, and she arched toward him, begging him to join with her again.
She ended the kiss and dragged air into her lungs. He slid into her, deliciously slow and deliciously tempting. Harlee wanted him rough, wild, out of control. This controlled version of him drove her over the edge. He might be in control, but hers disintegrated. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, flexed her hips, and ground them against him.
“Show me your stuff, big guy.”
He started moving, slowly at first then building speed like an engine gaining steam and getting steamier. Harlee mirrored his movements. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Her eyes sought his. His body took her to a carnal paradise, but his eyes carried her to a different paradise. A paradise she’d never visited before. A place where she was a virgin. A place she’d only visit with one special man. Jake.
Together they soared through time and space, up and down hills of pleasure and gorges of emotion. They climbed mountains built by their fears and insecurities then settled in safe valleys where a privileged few were allowed. Valleys where no walls divided them, no fears separated them. A place where they melded into one to become greater than they were separately.
Harlee screamed her release and heard Jake’s own hoarse shout in her ears. He filled her and completed her, spirit, body, and soul. She held on desperately to that special moment, that combining of their souls, but it slipped through her fingers, fading as if it never existed except in her dreams.
Chapter 13—Mattress Confessions
Fingers stroked Jake’s body. Her identity infiltrated his haze of sexual satisfaction. Jake rolled his spent body onto its side and opened his eyes.
Harlee. Sapphire eyes. Mussed honey-blonde hair. Movie siren body. Right now a sheet covered that body. So the lady decided to show a little modesty. Sure hadn’t seen that side of her last night. Thank God.
She’d been wild and demanding and exciting. She’d been in his bed, under him, on top of him. Everywhere he wanted her and everywhere he planned to keep her because one night wouldn’t cut it.
“What are you thinking?” She stroked his shoulder. The tender look in her eyes turned his heart to butter and his soul to divine lust.
“About all the things I’d love to do to you.”
She smiled and slid down to cuddle against his chest. “What would you like to do to me?”
“Things we’d better not talk about because I don’t think my poor body can take much more without some recovery time.”
“I’m that tough on you, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. I wasn’t this sore after playing sixty minutes of football with monster linebackers stomping on my body.”
“Did I ever tell you how sexy I find football players?”
“Maybe once or twice, but I’m game to hear it again.”
“Do you have pictures?”
“Oh, yeah, entire scrapbooks my mother made. Football was the one thing I ever did that made them proud.”
“Were you good?”
“Pretty good.” He adjusted her body to gain the maximum skin touching his per square inch.
“How good?”
“PAC-10 all-conference team, scored the winning touchdown for the Cougars in the Rose Bowl. Stuff like that.”
“Wow, I’m impressed.”
“You should be.”
She slugged his arm, and he laughed. “You must miss it. Just like I miss horses.”
Jake sobered. How did they get on such a serious subject? “Oh, yeah. I do. But football isn’t exactly something a guy can do the rest of his life.”
She ran her fingers through his chest hair and traced patterns on his chest, over and over. Was that her name she was writing? She stopped signing chest autographs and drew a path downward and rested her hand on his stomach.
They lay in companionable silence for several moments. Had he ever spent time in bed holding a woman because he enjoyed her company? He couldn’t recall. Not even with his two-month bride. Of course, they’d never stopped having sex long enough to talk. They’d either been slamming or sleeping.
“Jake?”
“Hmmmm?”
“You’re a Reynolds. Why don’t you work in the family business?”
“Besides the fact that they don’t want me?” He snorted with disdain. “I love what I’m doing, Harlee.” He draped his arm across her waist.
“How did you ever end up in construction?”
“My grandfather was the only person in my family who ever understood me. He loved to work with his hands. It relaxed him. We’d spend hours building things together. Some of the first memories I have are helping him build a stool. I still have that stool. In high school we built a pool house together. When I built things, I had to use my brains to figure out complex problems and my brawn to physically construct them.”
“Your family isn’t thrilled about your choice of careers.”
“Doesn’t take long to pick up on that, does it?”
“No, not at all. You seem so different from them.”
“I am. I don’t fit in, like I said before. After I finished punishing them for God knows what, I figured out that I needed to march to my own music. The music that played in my head, not the music they tried to plant in it. Construction is one place where I can be who I want to be, create what I want to create, be successful. When my grandfather died, he left me a small inheritance. I’d just graduated from college. I’d screwed up my knee to the point where pro football wasn’t an option. I wondered what the hell to do with myself. I took the money he left me, hired a couple buddies from my college construction classes. I bought an old building by the stadium in downtown Seattle, renovated it, sold it for a large profit, and went on to the next one and the next one.”
“I think it’s incredible that you’re out there swinging a hammer with your crew. I’m impressed.”
“Good, I like impressing you.”
She ducked her head. “Jake, surely your family respects how far you’ve come with your business.”
“No, not at all. They hate the idea that I’m in construction. Land development, now that’s a different story. My dad and Carson can relate to and appreciate that.” Jake shifted on the bed and pulled her upper body across his chest.
“I know they’re hard on you, but it shows they care.”
“Yeah, in their own screwed-up way, they do. But it doesn’t change the facts. They’d introduce me to their friends as ‘Jake, our baby, the accident.’ I grew up hearing that. I felt guilty for being alive, and I resented them for making me feel that way. Later, they changed it to ‘Jake, our youngest, the underachiever in the family’ or ‘Jake, the bad boy, our problem child.’”
“Sometimes parents say really damaging things and don’t even realize it. My mother always told me I was worthless. I’d never amount to anything. I’d be knocked up and married to some bum by the time I was fifteen. Or I’d be a whore or something.”
Jake held her tighter. His heart bled for the poor, little blonde girl who didn’t have a home or a family. He couldn’t imagine how much that must hurt. His family did love him. He had to admit that. They showed it in strange ways, but they cared about him.
“Harlee, I pity your mother. She’ll never know what a fine young lady you grew up to be and that’s sad. She could have been proud of you and praised you for your efforts to make your life better than hers.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me.” She rested her head in the crook of his arm. “What was your childhood like?”
“I had everything money could buy. It wasn’t enough. After raising two sons and a daughter, my mother dedicated her spare time to charities rather than her family. My dad, he was chained to his work. It didn’t take me long to figure out that negative attention beat no attention at all. By the time I was a teenager, I was out of control. They didn’t have a clue how to handle me. I barely made the grades to stay on the football team. I wouldn’t have been admitted to the university if it hadn’t been for football and the huge amount of money Grandfather donated. My freshman year I met a cocktail waitress in a sleazy Spokane bar. I realized how to make them sit up and take notice of me. Big time. I married her a month later. She was thirty-two, I was nineteen. They disapproved of her, and she despised them. She pushed my mom and dad to their limits. I spent every penny I had satisfying her habit for booze and clothes. My parents cut off the cash flow. Essentially, they disowned me.”
Jake paused for a breath. He’d never told the entire sordid story to anyone. “She married my bankroll, and my parents pulled it out from under her. Things went downhill about ten minutes after that. I swear the only time we got along was in bed. She maxed out my credit cards, propositioned my buddies, and left me about two months later. Grandfather didn’t like her either, but after she left, he helped me out. He gave me money to make it through college.”
He sighed, and Harlee stroked his arm. “I guess I partied the rest of my way through college. Still not sure how I managed to graduate, but I did with a BA in construction management in honor of Grandfather. He died unexpectedly the day I graduated. He never saw me get my diploma.” No one knew how much that hurt Jake. He hid those scars deep inside.
“Oh, Jake. I’m so sorry. We do stupid things when we’re young.”
“Yeah, then we spend the rest of our lives trying to live down those mistakes.” He adjusted their bodies so he could see her face. “Your turn. What about you, Harlee? What stupid things did you do?”
“Too many to name. When I was seventeen, I ran away from my foster home. I went to L.A. to make my fortune as an actress or a model. Well, you can imagine how that turned out. I escaped to the San Juans, to Rose. The only place I knew to go. She took me in, made sure I graduated from high school. I worked for her for a few years. I trained and showed her horses, took care of them, all that. I attracted the attention of a guy on the show circuit. He offered me a job with his string of jumpers. Rose encouraged me to take it. She didn’t have the resources to match the opportunity he offered.
“He didn’t have an interest in my horsemanship, he wanted my body. I stayed about a year then moved onto another trainer with a bigger name, bigger ego, then another and another. Finally, I went to work for Conrad. He rode and trained horses for the international circuit. He was considered a front-runner for a spot on the Olympic equestrian team. I traveled all over Europe and took care of his horses for two years.”
“Why did you leave?”
Harlee stiffened. She wasn’t sure how to answer that question. She settled for a half-truth. “I didn’t want to groom horses anymore. It was a dead end.”
Jake didn’t look convinced. “So you quit without a plan for another job or anything to fall back on.”
“Yes. I…didn’t think. I wanted out.”
“Why, Harlee? I’m not stupid. You’re keeping something from me.”
“They were abusing the horses. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Pain radi
ated through her body as she recalled what she’d witnessed. Horses in pain being forced to perform, abused when they knocked down or refused a jump. Jake didn’t know the half of it. When she’d tried to prevent the abuse, they’d implicated her.
He pulled her closer, offering the comfort of his body. “I’m sorry. I know how much you love animals.”
“You can’t imagine. I was powerless to stop them. No one would believe me over Conrad. He had too many influential connections.”
Conrad had played the “jilted lover getting even” card. She’d known he would. Conrad and his high-priced attorney threatened to send her to jail if she stuck around. She took the only other option available: get out with her pride in tatters and precious freedom intact.
“I’m sorry. Harlee, I really am.” Jake gave her a comforting hug. She closed her eyes and pretended for a few brief moments that this was forever, and she’d never hurt again.
Finally, Jake sighed and stretched. He glanced at the alarm clock. “I have to meet a subcontractor at the resort. He’s catching the eight o’clock ferry.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Yeah.” His voice resonated with regret. “This guy is one of the best and an old college buddy of mine. He’s booked for months. He’s doing me a favor by working on a weekend.”
Harlee swallowed the lump in her throat. So that was it. He’d be gone, and it’d be like none of this ever happened. “I understand.”
His eyes grew soft, smoky. He cupped her chin in his hand and tipped it. “Do you?”
“Yes, I know you need to get this job finished.”
“Can I see you tonight?”
“Oh, yes. Tonight. I’d love to.”
“There’s not much on this island for entertainment. Want to invite a few people over to play cards or something?”
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? Page 17
