by RG Alexander
“Most of the time,” she whispered, feeling shaky. Needy. “Why?”
He pulled a folded pocketknife out of the still open drawer. “Because I’m not as thoughtless as you think I am. I wouldn’t want you angry when I cut it off of you.”
“Oh.” She squeezed her thighs together, unable to take her eyes off the glint of silver in his hand. “Oh.”
“I knew you’d like that. There are a lot of things I haven’t got a clue about it seems, but I do know what you like.” He sat down on the bed beside her and slid the closed steel case up her leg and under her skirt. “Let me give you another example.”
She gasped when he pressed the cool metal hard against her clit. She could feel it through the lace of her thong. Her hips rose helplessly.
“I know what a bad girl you can be, Caroline. I know that if I wanted to, I could make you come like this. And you’d trust me because you know I only want your pleasure.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you trust me?”
“Yes, Jefferson. I trust you.”
He withdrew his hand and flicked open the knife’s blade. “Good.”
She watched the knife glide over the top of her dress until it reached one hard nipple. He skimmed the flat of the slender blade across it and she moaned.
“I should have gotten you in these handcuffs days ago,” he rasped, his gaze riveted to her breast. “It might have spoiled the wedding, but it would have saved me a week of sleepless nights.”
He gripped her flimsy silk halter-top with one hand and used the knife to cut through the fabric. The top slid down her skin like water, revealing her bare breasts.
Jefferson leaned over her and took one in his mouth, sucking hard and scraping her nipple with his teeth. She arched her back, silently begging for more. He lifted his mouth and pulled the silk away from her body, using the knife to easily shred through it. He didn’t stop until it was lying useless on either side of her body and all she had on was a pair of thong panties.
“No stockings? I love your stockings, Caroline.”
She licked her dry lips again. “It’s too humid for stockings.”
He shook his head. “I was really looking forward to taking them off.”
She had to restrain herself from promising to wear them next time. She couldn’t let herself think about a next time. Nothing but this moment. “I’m still wearing underwear.”
“Are you?” Two flicks and he was dragging the lace away, leaving her completely exposed.
He closed the knife again but continued to caress her body with it. Her thighs, her stomach, between her legs again. She spread them in invitation and he smiled.
“Always pushing, wildcat. I love that.”
Jefferson stood up and dropped the pocketknife back into the drawer. “But there’s something I love more.”
He took off his pants and crawled up onto the bed between her legs. “Something I’ve missed.”
His lips skimmed along her inner thighs and she moaned, her body responding to his lightest touch. Yes, Jefferson. Please. I’ve missed this too.
“You can’t just show a man everything he’s ever wanted and then take it away when he’s barely had a sample.” He opened his mouth over her clit and sucked, his tongue flicking playfully, making her squirm. “Mmmm. This. Your taste is always on my tongue, Caroline. But a taste is never enough.”
He spread the lips of her sex with his fingers and studied her through his dark lashes. “You can’t hide from how much you want me. How excited you are. You can try not to come. You can make a list of reasons you shouldn’t. But I won’t stop until I hear you screaming my name. And maybe not even then.”
Caroline cried out when he lowered his head, stretching her with his fingers and tongue, groaning at her taste and pressing deeper. Deep. Take everything. Make me scream.
She lifted her legs onto his back, squeezing his head with her thighs as her hips pumped against his mouth greedily. “Jefferson,” she moaned. “Don’t stop. God, that’s so good.”
She wanted to touch him. Wanted to pull him up her body and kiss him until he couldn’t doubt the way she felt about him. Wanted to roll over and ride his mouth so he could get deeper.
Her climax was coming too fast. She didn’t want him to stop. She never wanted him to stop. “Oh God, Jefferson!”
He growled when she came against his mouth, spreading her thighs wide with his hands and plunging his tongue into her sex again and again, hungry for every drop.
When he lifted his head his eyes were icy green and wild. “More.”
Time lost all meaning. The world fell away until the only thing left was his mouth. Her pleasure. She was crying, tossing her head on the pillow when the third climax hit her and he finally climbed up her body to kiss her lips.
“I’ll never get enough,” he whispered, slipping his hard shaft inside her while she came.
He hissed, his whole body tensing. “Oh Jesus, Caroline. I didn’t…I just need to…God, baby you feel so good on my cock. Hot and wet. I’ll stop. I swear I’ll stop.”
She wrapped her legs around him and he sank deeper, a shudder shaking his big frame. He wasn’t wearing a condom. “Don’t stop yet.”
He knew she was on the pill but he’d never given into temptation before. Not with anyone, she’d discovered during one of their late night talks. The daredevil cowboy was more responsible than he’d admit. But it felt so good Caroline almost wanted to cry. “Not yet,” she repeated. “Please.”
“Sweet Caroline,” he groaned. “Sweet, fuck I just need to…”
His strokes were deep and slow, his breath coming out in rough bursts of raw need. Her legs tightened.
“More,” she urged desperately, tightening her legs around him. “Deeper. Don’t stop.”
He shuddered again, and paused long enough to push her legs back until her knees were pressing against her shoulders and she was unable to move. Then he rose up onto his knees, his back bowed over her, and then he was there. Deeper.
“Yes. Yes. Please. More.” She was begging now, trembling as her body rushed toward another climax. Higher than the ones that came before. “I need it. Please, you feel so good. Don’t stop.”
“Caroline,” he rasped, his thrusts coming harder than before. “I don’t want to stop. I don’t fucking ever want to stop. Let me feel you come for me. Give it to me.”
“I’m coming. Don’t stop.”
“Come baby.”
She screamed, the headboard shaking and handcuffs rattling over her head as her climax crashed into her and set her on fire. She heard him moan like he was in pain, felt her body tighten around him as if to hold him there when he pulled out of her and rolled onto his back.
His hand reached out to cup her sex as wave after wave of her release washed over her. She wasn’t sure it was ever going to stop.
He’d left.
“Jefferson,” she whispered, shivering.
“I’m here, Caroline. I’ll take care of you.”
His lips were gentling her. Kissing her hip. Her stomach. “I’m here,” he repeated. “I’m not going anywhere.”
When the shaking stopped, he left her long enough to get a washcloth and a towel, caressing her with soothing strokes before patting her dry and then wiping his stomach where he’d spent himself instead of coming inside her.
He reached up to unhook one handcuff so she could lower her arms, but as soon as they were down, he closed it over her wrist again.
“Hey,” she muttered, sleepily. “Why I am still in lockup?”
“Because I don’t want you disappearing again.” He pulled her into his arms. “Why did you, by the way?”
Danger. She wasn’t in the best mental state to have this conversation. All she wanted was to fall asleep in his arms. “It’s complicated.”
He sighed against her temple. “It really isn’t. We want each other. You like me. Your dad likes me. My sister loves you. We both like cheesecake. What’s complicated?”
Chee
secake? “All of those things are true. And it’s still complicated.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to have a fight.”
“I won’t fight tonight, I promise. Tell me your reasons and we’ll sleep on it.”
“You promise?”
His arms tightened. “You said you trusted me.”
She bit her lip. “Okay, you asked for it. You have a business and a family here. You’ll be an uncle soon. You have a life here, but my life—my father is in California. I can’t leave, and I know myself well enough to know I couldn’t be happy anywhere else, no matter how much I…no matter how tempting it was. Long distance relationships don’t work.”
“What else?” Jefferson asked softly. Carefully.
“When I’m sixty you’ll still be in your forties.” He snorted at that but she whacked him lightly on the chest with her bound hands, needing him to listen now that she’d started. “Now it’s funny, but when my back goes out or I need help walking to the bathroom and you’re still ready to race dirt bikes and raise hell, neither one of us will be laughing.”
And if you left me I’d be devastated.
“Is that it?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Those are pretty compelling arguments, in my opinion. The distances between us aren’t imaginary, Jefferson. I’m trying to be smart. Trying to protect us both. But if you want more reasons, I have another. If we kept going the way we have been and it didn’t work out between us, we’d be hurting more than each other with the fallout.”
“Trudy.” His voice was devoid of emotion.
“You’re father wasn’t exactly emotionally available, and Jennifer…well, I don’t have to say anything more about your mother. You’re all the family Trudy has.”
Jefferson was quiet for a long time. And then he kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Caroline.”
“Thank you?” Why wasn’t he arguing?
“I promised we wouldn’t fight about it tonight. That I’d listen. I heard every word. Thank you for answering my question.”
She frowned against his chest, disappointed and unaccountably angry. She should be relieved that he understood. Should be thankful that he wasn’t going to make this harder. “Jefferson?”
“Yes, Caroline?”
“Can you take the handcuffs off now?”
The hand on her arm slid down to her wrist. “That depends. Do you promise to go to sleep and stay here until morning?”
She would stay, but she wasn’t sure she would sleep. “Yes.”
He released the catch on the cuffs and tossed them on the floor, turning off the light and pulling her back into his arms. “Goodnight, Caroline.”
It didn’t feel very good. Not anymore.
We both like cheesecake, she muttered silently. That was about as far from an admission of love as a man could get. It wasn’t even an admission of desperate, ravenous lust. It was a damn dessert preference.
His amused voice found her in the darkness. “I can actually see smoke coming out of your ears. Do I need to get the handcuffs again?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sleeping.”
He laughed. “You better be.”
She would go to sleep, she thought with renewed determination. And when she woke up she would get in the rental car and leave this tiny, sweaty town and him and never look back.
She started to make a new list in her head even as she cuddled closer to his warm body.
Must not be related to dear friend.
Must not think it’s cute to stare at me when I sleep.
Must not be able to read my mind, have eyes that are too green or sexy dimples when he smiles.
Must not be a cowboy from Texas.
Must love me.
She thought about John and Trudy. The way he looked at her as he’d said his vows. The way he always looked at her.
She mentally deleted every item from her new list but the last one. It was really the only one that mattered.
Chapter Eleven
“So, that’s everything.”
Jefferson looked out over the pond, his coffee cold and forgotten in his hand as he finished speaking.
“Wow,” a soft female voice finally responded. “Sounds to me like you are well and truly fucked.”
He turned his head, glaring at the exhibitionist beekeeper as she pushed back her tangled hair and sipped her coffee. “Thanks. I mean it, Glory. I can see why Trudy left you in charge. Your communication skills are awe inspiring.”
She grimaced. “So they all tell me. Can we blame the hour? No one should be up this early after that kind of party. And if they are, they shouldn’t be forced to think.”
Jefferson hadn’t slept. He hadn’t wanted to take the chance he might wake up to find Caroline gone. And he could not stop thinking about what she’d said. The distances between them…
He’d gotten up before sunrise and walked over to John and Trudy’s house, only to find Glory leading an exodus of luggage-toting women, with a very tired and undeniably angry Manly herding them to his car.
Trudy and John had left last night for their honeymoon and Diego was nowhere to be found.
He’d had to talk to someone. Glory had offered him coffee and everything had come pouring out, from Caroline’s first visit to La Grange to their conversation last night. “Hell.”
Glory uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “Okay listen. Personally? I’m a mess and you know it, and I know you know it so I feel like a hypocrite giving you advice on love.” She shrugged. “But I see where she’s coming from. I kind of admire her for being so honest. Not everyone can admit when they’re afraid.”
“She didn’t give me a chance to prove her wrong or even discuss it. She decided for both of us.”
Glory nodded. “She’s an independent woman who, I’m guessing, has experience with disappointment. And I’m also guessing, you being a man and all, that you haven’t told her how you feel about her. Women are superior in many ways, Jefferson, but despite popular theory, psychic powers don’t automatically come with every vagina. You have to actually say the words.”
Jefferson laughed in spite of himself. Glory looked like an innocent woodland nymph but what came out of her mouth had more salt than sparkle.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t right. He’d said it in a million ways but never once out loud. “So I should tell her.”
“Yes.” Glory pointed her finger at him. “Only if you follow up the words with action. Action that is not sexual. That can only happen at the end.” When he frowned at her she shrugged again. “You asked. First you tell her how you feel. Then you show her that her worries are groundless. Then you can make sweet kinky love to her from here to eternity. From what you’ve described, you two have no problems in that area.”
But the worries weren’t entirely groundless. One of them was ridiculous, one could be easily resolved, but the last?
He looked out over the pond, watching the mockingbirds chasing after each other from tree to tree. He knew those birds. Knew every inch of this land, every person in town. He could predict what the weather would be like tomorrow, he knew his patch of sky so well.
It wasn’t long before he started to smile.
He stood and looked down at Glory, still sipping her coffee. She raised her pale eyebrows. “Did you figure it out?”
“I did. I need to make a few calls.”
She waved him toward the sliding glass doors. “Be my guest, it isn’t my phone.”
“Thank you, Glory.”
“That’s what you pay me for. That and my bee collection. Hey, if this works out for you, maybe you can give me advice on what to do with two seriously possessive Peeping Toms.”
Jefferson was halfway in the door when he heard her, and he leaned back out again with a grin. “That’s easy, Glory. Everyone seems to know it but you. All you have to do is let them in.”
***
Caroline got out of her car and grabbed her purse, walking swiftly through the parking garage. She noticed
a camera pointed at her car and glared at it for reminding her that she didn’t have anything scandalous to catch on film.
Not for weeks now.
She’d woken up alone in Jefferson’s bed and known she had to leave before she changed her mind. She was halfway to Austin before the tears started falling. The plane touched down in Los Angeles before they stopped.
Trudy would be flying home from her honeymoon today. Caroline decided to call her tomorrow. She wanted to let her know she was still here for her and the baby even though her brother had broken her heart by not coming after her.
Maybe she wouldn’t mention that part.
She rounded the corner for the elevator and saw her neighbor Robin holding a well-bundled Voodoo in her arms. Caroline forced a smile. “Is he wearing a puppy Snuggie?”
Robin nodded. “He seems to like it. Every time I take it off he starts barking and chewing up the coffee table. Literally. My coffee table is now firewood. My little devil has sharp teeth. Were you visiting your dad again?”
“I was.” Caroline came closer and gave Voodoo a scratch. “We’ve been getting a lot of good work done on the book. It’s almost done.”
They’d started talking about her aunt, and Caroline was surprised at how healing it had been for both of them. They’d both realized they’d taken on too much responsibility for her death. Caroline had pushed herself to live hard to make up for the loss, and David had stopped enjoying his success, stopped doing what he loved, because his sister hadn’t been able to enjoy it.
She wished they’d talked about it years ago, but at least they finally had. It was time to let go of the past.
The elevator doors opened and Caroline took a step backwards in shock. “Jefferson?”
Her neighbor looked between them and then stepped into the elevator. “Don’t mind me.”
Jefferson smiled and held open the door for her, staring her down until she came inside.
She turned her back on him.
Robin cuddled her dog and glanced around the elevator uncomfortably before looking over her shoulder. “So, your name is Jefferson.”
“It is.” His voice. Damn him. She’d missed his stupid, sexy voice.
