by Paula Cox
“So dinner?” he asked as he kissed her cheeks and ran his hands down her arms, stopping only to take her hands in his. Lena nodded slowly, and she followed him out of the room. As soon as they hit the kitchen, he settled her in one of the three abandoned chairs and kissed her again before turning his attention towards the cabinets.
“Now let’s see what we have to work with.” Jax brought a large pot to the sink and stated to fill it with water. A box of spaghetti soon followed, and as he tossed a jar of unopened sauce into the air and caught it just as quickly, he shot her a wink. “Hope you’re up for something Italian.”
Lena pressed her fingers to her chin and peered up at him. “Kind of want to see how you’ll make this work.”
“Prepare to be amazed, Lena.”
Once the water came to a rolling boil, he cracked the noodles and let the pasta fall into the pot. Stirring it a few times, he opened the jar of sauce and dropped the contents into a smaller pot. It simmered and filled the room with a comforting scent, and Lena’s stomach growled as he located a box of sugar. She watched with wide eyes as he tossed a dash into the sauce and mixed the white grains into the red paste.
“Sugar?” she asked. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Just you wait,” he promised. “I think you’re going to love it.”
He added some salt to the water and kept stirring as the pasta cooked. As soon as it was soft, he dumped the noodles into a colander and proceeded to pour most of his sauce into a large bowl. The spaghetti followed, and as the sauce coated his efforts, Jax poured the rest of his mixture over the pasta. With a quick swish of spoon and fork, he was able to dish out two hearty helpings of the most delicious looking plates, and he presented his handiwork as he ran a single hand down her back.
“Eat up, Lena. I promise you’ll like it.”
“Just like?” she asked as she started to take the fork into her hand.
“You’ll love it,” Jax purred.
He assumed the seat before her and started to eat quickly, his hunger rivaling hers. Despite some doubts, Lena could no longer resist the urge to taste. As soon as she slurped a single noodle, the specially-seasoned taste exploded across her tongue, and she kept eating as he held up and just watched her.
“Good?” Jax asked.
“Better than good,” she answered as she wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and swallowed with a smile. “Man of many talents,” she said. Jax appeared to blush, and Lena reached across the table for his hand. “Best meal I’ve had in a long time.”
She drank from the glass at her side and smiled up at him as he pushed his chair close to hers. “So they don’t feed you so good at school?” he asked.
“You don’t even know,” she started. “Toast so hard you could use it to plaster a wall. And mashed potatoes for the glue.”
“That sounds awful,” Jax said as he kissed the sauce from her lips and rested his brow to hers.
“The boys from Sigma Nu had a lot of fun with it.”
Lena smiled at the memory of Danny and Jones concealing their hardened bread and turning it in with their term papers, their protests writ large in what was supposed to be jam as they slapped one another on the back. Harmless to be sure; childish at best. But they were sweet enough when she was granted an invite to one of their many parties. Danny flirted, and she danced with him a few times. Nothing beyond that.
“Boys?” he breathed heavily. “So…so there were others?”
“Others?” she asked as she dropped her fork and took another drink.
“Thought you said you waited?”
Lena started to explain when she suddenly pulled away from him again, and her body lifted to her feet. “I did,” she said. “Maybe I went to a few parties, but that doesn’t mean that I---”
“But you still found some fun.” Jax’s eyes flashed, and he tossed his dish into the sink as he glared at her hard. “Guess I can’t blame you,” he said. “You had to want to forget, right?”
Lena started to answer when she fully understood the weight of his implication. “Is… do you think that I would just spread my legs for anyone?” she spat. “Like I had to keep getting more and more to get away from his touch?” Jax started to reach for her again, but Lena shied away from his fingers and waved her hands in the air. “You know what he did to me,” she said. “So sorry that I tried to have a few nights where I didn’t have to cry myself to sleep.”
She started for the front door when he grabbed her arm. “How did you manage that?” he asked. “You said that you---”
She slapped his face hard and watched him fall away as she clenched her fists to her sides. “I told you that I only wanted you. And didn’t I run with you today?” When he had no answer, she stomped her foot to the floor and glowered into his eyes. “Just picked up and left,” she continued. “And there was only you… before… before…” Her body writhed at the memory of Eric’s hands, and when he tried to hold her again she pushed him back and shook her head. “But I see you now,” she said. “You can’t stand the idea that I so much as smiled when I wasn’t with you.”
Lena stared to run, not knowing where she was or how she would ever find her way out when Jax seized her legs and eased her body to the floor. She squirmed and struggled under his touch, but he held her fast against the floor and pressed his lips to her brow.
“That’s not it, Lena,” he said. “Not that at all.”
Kissing her hard, he pulled her up into his arms, but Lena stayed tense and kept struggling as he eased her body against the wall and curled his hand under her chin.
“Then what?” she asked.
Jax moaned into her breasts, and when his lips neared hers, he paused before he rested his head to her belly. “It’s not that I don’t want you happy.”
Lena started to run her fingers through his hair, and when their eyes met again, and she touched his cheek and held her tongue as he struggled to finish his thought.
Jax sprang to his feet and gathered her in his arms. “I just want to be the only man who makes you smile.”
He said nothing else, his hands suddenly light as he carried her back to the bed. Lena didn’t squirm or struggle as he laid her body on the bed and removed her shoes. Unveiling her feet, Jax suckled her toes, his tongue savoring the taste of her flesh as he started to kiss her heel, and Lena gripped his shoulders as she eased his eyes back to hers.
“I only want to smile with you, Jax,” she said. “But not when your voice sounds so hard.”
Jax shifted off the floor and laid at her side, his fingers stroking her cheek as he whispered into her ear. “Then please give me another chance, Lena. Let me speak more softly.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jax licked her skin, and Lena sighed under the flick of his tongue. His hands stayed light, his touch like a feather as he caressed her hair and breathed into her eyes. Gazing up at him, she couldn’t help but hunger for more, and yet the force of his stare kept her body fixed to the bed as his hand finally met the line of her parted lips.
“Is that a smile?” he asked. “I think so.”
Pressing his fingers under her blouse, he dragged his hand across her sides, the sensation of his hold causing her body to tremble. As he tickled her sensitive flesh, Lena gave him what he wanted, what she could no longer hide.
“There we go,” he laughed as he wrapped his arm around her, his free hand easing her blouse from her body until her breasts were hard and waiting under his eyes. “Tell me you’re happy,” Jax whispered as he curled his hands over her soft mounds and looked into her eyes.
“I want to be.”
Lena couldn’t stop the slight crack in her voice, and Jax settled on his side, his hands slowly searching every curve of her breasts as he sucked in a ragged groan. “I get it, Lena,” he started. “Not the way I wanted this to go down either.”
The sudden sadness in his stare pulled at her heart like an anchor trying to find rest in choppy waters, and she clung to his nec
k and gently kissed his brow. “What did you want, Jax?” she asked.
“Something…you know.”
“No,” Lena muttered as she shook her head against his chest. “You have to tell me.”
Jax gritted his teeth and almost seemed to close in on himself when the flash in his emerald eyes returned, like he was coming up for air after a long time of being denied the privilege of clean breath pouring into his aching, burning lungs. “I wanted to treat you right,” he said. “Take you out of town. Like maybe get a real room somewhere.”
Lena considered the idea, but as his face started to fall, she moved fast to gather his chin under her hand and peer into his eyes. “No tell motel,” she teased.
“Not like that, Lena,” he insisted as he shook his head and kissed her hair. “Always kind of liked the idea that you were a princess I could hide away in some tower.”
Lena tilted her head to the side and propped her body up on her elbow. “Did you now?” she asked, her eyes sparkling as she slowly peeled his shirt from his willing body. As soon as his muscles were under her eyes, her hands, Lena rested her head against his chest and sighed into his skin. “I could get down with you saving me,” she said. “From what happened. From what still might---”
Jax bolted up and gathered her body in his rippling arms. “Never again,” he promised her. “I’ll die before he touches you.”
“Please don’t say that!” she cried out as she clung to his broad back. “I don’t want you hurt. I just want…”
“Lena?” Jax tilted her face towards hers, and he beamed down at her. “You can have anything that you want,” he insisted. “All you ever had to do was ask.”
“Sort of thought you’d make the first move,” she confessed.
Twirling one of her ruffled golden locks around his finger, Jax kissed her lips and winded his hand around her neck as he whispered into her eyes. “Want me to do that now?” he asked. “Want me to really make you smile?”
Somehow she found the strength to nod in the wake of his gaze, and Jax took the cue without another word. He reverently eased her body back to the sheets and pulled her skirt from her thighs, her panties from her ass. Lena trembled under his stare, but she felt no fear as he tenderly searched the length of his legs with a tender stroke. His hands surrounded her thighs, and her body arched forward as he kneaded her waiting body and fell into her shivering sides.
“I could just get off on this,” he said. “Looking at you. Touching you.”
Lena chuckled as his hands moved up her body. She lifted her breasts for more of his hold when he stopped at her naval and swirled his finger around the small indent.
“So soft,” he moaned. “So sweet.”
For the slightest of seconds, without wanting to, Lena flashed back to her ordeal with Eric. There was nothing even close to gentle in his touch and no warmth in the man’s eyes. She had felt used during and for too many days after. But Jax was sweet. Jax was soft. Lena ran her hand down his arm and smiled again as soon as she found his fingers. “Touch me here,” she said as she parted her legs, her body opening to the promise of more of him.
Jax followed her lead and brought his fingers close to her cunt. Lena shuddered when he grazed her watering folds, pushing and pulling back only to always return again, his hand moving deeper at the end of each stroke.
“There,” she begged. “I don’t care where we are. I want you here.”
Lena pushed him close to her point of climax and peered into his eyes. “Jax…”
She flashed him a small smile, and he leaned forward to kiss her lips before making his move. Two fingers slipped inside her body, and she groaned at the moment of impact. Her eyelids fluttered, and Jax pushed deeper as her body opened around his gentle thrusts. His free hand brushed the fallen hair from her face as he reached up inside her. “Feels like you’ve wanted this all day,” he teased, and Lena blushed.
“Ever since we left the creek,” she said. “Always.”
Jax pulled out and started rubbing her flesh, her pleasure point vibrating as he massaged her tender skin. Lena reached for his wrist, wanting nothing more than to keep his hand on her pussy when a rush of blood seemed to swirl around her heart. Her veins were on fire as she started to cum around his fingers when Jax suddenly withdrew.
“What are you doing?”
He flipped to his back, and she glided onto his cock. Her body seized at the hardness burrowing its way into and around her, and she started to rock against his hips when he grabbed her hair. “I want to smile, too,” he said. “With you.”
Lena fell into his mouth and kissed him fast. As her thighs crushed into his, Lena lifted her arms over his head and simply savored the pulse of his cock, her smile growing brighter as her gripped her sides and pulled her closer to the tail end of his desire.
“Jesus Christ…”
“And it’s for you,” he whispered. “All for you.”
Biting down on her lip, Lena happily accepted the feel of his gift, his cock pushing her into the air as she dragged her nails down his taut chest and twisted her head above her shoulders. “I want you so much, Jax,” she moaned.
He started to flood her body when he pulled away from the sheets and turned her to back. Kissing her with smiling lips, Lena took his hand in hers and brought his fingers to her breasts as she turned her kiss towards his arms.
“Don’t stop touching me,” she said. “I… oh!”
Jax honored her request with a singular thrust. As they melded into one throbbing mound, Lena grabbed his face and ran her tongue across her parted lips. “No,” she said.
“No?” he asked. “Is something wrong? Doesn’t it feel good?”
“Feels so good,” she assured him. “But I need your hands, Jax. I need all of you.”
Jax took her into his arms and caressed her back as his hands drifted towards her ass. He cupped her quivering flesh and kept his hold tight as his cock locked around her pussy. Lena stretched closer to his chest and kissed his glistening pecs.
“Thank you,” she said. “More. Give me---”
“Everything, Lena.” He pulled her closer, and Lena’s skin felt as if it might shatter when he forced her voice to the ceiling. Even as he crushed into her cunt, she still relished the feel of his fingers running up and down her back. On the verge of a delicious brand of insanity, Lena took hold of his face and kissed him hard.
“It is everything,” she echoed. “You are something special.”
“Because I’m yours, Lena.”
Her body brimmed on the precipice of a climax, and the smile left her lips when he started to pull way again, his fingers dotting her hair as he kissed her cheeks and winded his free arm around her ass.
“Now?” he asked. “Do you want it to be now?”
She nodded as he filled her, and even as she longed to keep him close, Lena lacked the strength to remain in his arms. She fell back to the bed as he stayed inside her, his cock finishing with as sharp swirl. Lena lifted her heavy arms to his neck and clasped him close, her body buzzing about the bed as she managed to moan into his cheek.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I want that. This… always.”
She felt his cock softening around her as he placed his fingers to her cheeks and kissed her brow. “And I want you, Lena,” he whispered. “No more questions. No more past. Now we just move forward. Together.”
“And that…this is what you really want?” she asked.
“Any future with you in it is where I want to be.”
She curled her legs around his and sighed at the feel of him coming to rest inside her as he stroked her back and kissed her hair. “Will this really work?” she asked. “Can I have this every night?”
Jax nodded into her breasts, his lips suckling her nipples as he moved up her body and found her lips. “I’ll make it happen,” he promised. “But right now?”
Lena started to shift away when he kept her close to his chest.
“Right now I want you to dream of all the good
times we’ll have,” he said. “And we will have them, Lena.”
She nodded and felt his arms surrounding her body as he pushed her deeper into sheets. Dragging the sheets over her satisfied frame, Lena cuddled against his side. Even as Jax pulled out, his arms tightened, and she rested her head against the sound of his pounding heart.
“Is that for me, too?” she asked.
“Of course.” Jax fondled her hair and stroked her back as they came to rest together.
She just met his eyes and felt his fingers moving towards her lips. As soon as Lena spied his hand, she wrapped her lips around his finger, and she kissed him there, smiling as she suckled his flesh and sighing when he pushed away and resumed stroking her sides.
