What was he saying? I was so dizzy I hardly knew. My head lolled to one side. He took my mouth in a kiss so intense it would have made me lose my footing if he hadn’t held me up.
It was slow, hot, and deep. His fingers swirled in small, lazy circles between my legs. I trembled and shook, making desperate sounds in my throat.
“I love your sweet little noises, too,” said Jackson, a hitch in his voice. “Bianca. You’re so sweet.”
I didn’t feel sweet. I felt ravenous, a ferocious little animal who wanted to tear him to shreds with my sharp, tiny teeth. I was so hungry for him my stomach ached.
He turned us to the wall. I flattened my hands over the wet tiles. He spread his hands around my waist, measuring the span. Then he surprised me by kneeling behind me and biting my ass.
“God.” He groaned, stroking my bottom, nipping it, grabbing big handfuls of it like he couldn’t get enough. He put his hand between my legs and cupped me, slowly rubbing me as I ground myself against his palm and moaned. My eyes slid shut with pleasure. I leaned my forearms against the wall and dropped my head, canting my behind out because I loved what he was doing so much.
“You’re the sexiest fucking woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
His voice had a harder edge now. A desperate edge, like he was unraveling. Then he stood and tilted my head back with his fingers clenched in my hair and kissed me.
I reached behind me and grasped his erection. He moaned into my mouth.
“Like this,” I said, panting, stroking his length. I went up on my toes, guiding him where I wanted him, to that aching place between my legs. “Hurry.”
When he slid inside, he dropped his head and bit me on the long muscle between my shoulder and my neck. He shuddered. His low groan went all the way through me.
We stayed like that, unmoving, breathing raggedly, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I flexed my hips. He jerked, driving deep into me, and I yelped in surprise.
“Sorry,” he rasped.
My laugh echoed off the walls. “You’re forgiven. Do it again.”
Gripping my hips, he started a slow rhythm. I clung to the wall. He slid his hand along the back of my thigh and lifted my leg, setting my foot on the tile seat to my right. It changed the angle of everything, deepening it, forcing a low moan from my chest.
He reached around and slid his fingers between my legs. I moaned again, louder.
“She likes that,” he said, softly laughing, reaching up with his other hand to caress my breasts.
No, I didn’t like it. I loved it. I was obsessed by it. I never knew dirty, wet shower sex would turn out to be something I adored more than chocolate croissants fresh out of the oven, dripping in butter.
“I don’t want this to stop,” I gasped, headed toward that bright white peak too fast. “Jax. Don’t ever stop.”
“It won’t stop,” he said roughly into my ear. “I promise. Now quit holding back.”
How did he know? I was beginning to think the man could read my mind. I leaned against him, reached around his neck with one hand, and pulled his head down. We kissed. He tested my lower lip with his teeth, explored my mouth with his tongue, took his time enjoying me. Time spun out and slowed until all the clocks stopped ticking and it was just the two of us, the water, our soft, shared moans and ragged breaths.
When I opened my eyes, he was staring down at me, a drop of water clinging to the tip of his nose, a look of adoration on his face.
Something in the center of my chest unlocked and broke free.
My orgasm slammed into me like a comet into earth. I stiffened and cried out, safe in the circle of his arms, gazing into his eyes as it happened. The bathroom echoed with the sounds of my undoing.
“You’ve ruined me for anyone else,” he whispered hoarsely, beginning to lose himself. “Bianca. I’m ruined.”
I convulsed around him, too overcome with emotion to speak.
He braced his arm against the wall to hold us up. He trembled, spasmed, made a sound like he was deeply in pain. “Fuck,” he groaned, and withdrew from my body. Then he kissed me like his life depended on it as he spilled himself onto my skin.
By the time we came back to our senses, the water had started to turn cold.
Jax reached out and turned off the spray. He wrapped his arms around me and hid his face in my neck, hugging me hard, his chest heaving.
He said my name, but I shushed him. “Not yet. Let’s not talk about it yet,” I whispered.
I was afraid what might come out of my mouth if he asked me how I was feeling.
We dried off and dressed in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes. We knew words would be too much, yet not enough. Something had changed between us in the shower. Something profound had taken root.
“You need food,” Jackson said, looking pointedly at my abdomen after another alarmingly loud rumble. My stomach sounded like it was occupied by a large, carnivorous beast, roaming around and kicking over furniture.
“Food! Yes!” I said with the volume of a person shouting across a highway to her friend stranded on the other side.
Jackson looked at me askance.
He stood in the bathroom doorway, watching me wind my damp hair into a big, messy bun. I’d pulled on a white cashmere sweater he’d bought for me and a pair of lovely charcoal-gray slacks he must’ve had custom made because they fit perfectly in both the waist and hips, a statistical impossibility.
“And maybe a stiff drink,” he added drily, examining my expression.
Stiff. Lord, don’t talk to me about stiff! I met his gaze in the mirror and forced myself to sound like a sane person. “So did you talk to your parents?”
One side of his mouth quirked. “I did.”
He let it hang there, torturing me. “And?”
A smile bloomed over his face. It was like watching the sun rise over mountains. “And they love you,” he murmured, holding my gaze.
Love.
Green beans, there was that word again.
It had been popping up in my head and on his lips for the past hour like weeds through cracks in the sidewalk. I had to remind myself that this was a business deal. He was here for his inheritance, I was here for my mama. It wouldn’t do to get ahead of myself and start attaching deeper meaning to things on account of hot shower sex.
Hot, emotional, vulnerable, soul-searing, life-changing shower sex.
“Uh-oh,” said Jackson. “I smell smoke. You’re thinking again.”
“Ha ha. Can we please go get some food before I eat that bar of soap?”
He pushed away from the doorway and wrapped his arms around me, resting his chin on top of my head. “Yep. But you have to promise if this little breakdown you’re having gets any worse, you’ll talk to me, so I won’t have to hold you down and tickle it out of you.”
I gave him scary crazy-lady eyes. “You will not tickle me. Ever. Understood?”
He tilted his head and whispered in my ear, “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s not in the contract.” Then he dug his fingers into my ribs.
I screamed and tried to twist away, but he was too strong. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me clear off my feet so we were nose to nose, my arms pinned to my side, my feet kicking uselessly around his shins.
“It isn’t fair that you’re so giant,” I groused. “And freakishly strong.”
“I’m not that strong, but thank you.”
“Honey, you’re holding up my entire weight like I’m a loaf of bread. One of the airy kinds, like sourdough.”
He chuckled and kissed the tip of my nose. “Honey?” he drawled.
He lowered his lashes, smug as all get-out. I wondered with irritation why those kind of thick, silky, black eyelashes were always wasted on boys who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to have them.
I sniffed like a snooty aristocrat. “It was a slip of the tongue. I’m getting lightheaded from lack of food. I could faint at any moment.”
He pressed a soft kiss to my lips and chuckled
again. “I see. You’re still in fibbing mode. All right, I’ll let it go until”—he checked his watch, which meant he was now holding me up with one arm—“noon. Deal?”
I muttered, “Showoff.”
He laughed and set me on my feet. “After breakfast,” he said, leading me by my hand from the room, “you have your choice of horseback riding, bowling, tennis, fishing, boating, or touring the botanical gardens or rickhouse.”
“Rickhouse?”
He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. “It’s where we house all the ricks, obviously.”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”
The rest of the day was a fairy tale, and I was Cinderella.
We ate breakfast in a sun-filled room Jackson called the “solar,” serenaded by songbirds flitting in dozens of large cages hung at various heights around the room. The hovering servants seemed friendlier today, even daring to smile pleasantly at us when they brought our food and cleared out plates. Even more surprising, Jackson smiled back.
He seemed like a different man than he was yesterday. Lighter. Less burdened by ghosts. His parents seemed different, too, though they didn’t hover. They greeted us warmly when we came down to eat, made light conversation, and then took their leave with a promise to see us for dinner.
I got the feeling they were leaving us alone together and not avoiding us, which are two very different things.
Jackson gave me a tour of the estate on a golf cart emblazoned with a giant B on the front, rear, and roof, which I found hilarious. As if anyone could mistake who it belonged to. The botanical gardens were a marvel of engineering, designed by an anal-retentive botanist with a fetish for nude statuary and hedge mazes. Had I been there alone, I would’ve been hopelessly lost in five minutes.
We drove by the stables at top speed. Jackson pointed them out with a jerk of his thumb. I was glad I hadn’t taken him up on his offer to go riding, because there were obviously still a few of his ghosts lurking in the tack room, waiting to shriek and rattle their chains.
Lakes. Trees. A beautiful white church topped by a steeple. Acres upon acres of wooded pathways and hidden putting greens and spectacular sweeping vistas dotted with wildlife. More than once we had to swerve to avoid a startled jackrabbit or white-tailed deer. Moonstar Ranch was a placed steeped in magic, and my feeling of being immersed in a fairy tale grew as the day wore on.
All the while my engagement ring flashed and winked on my finger, sending prisms of light in starburst patterns everywhere like a promise of good things to come.
We talked, laughed, held hands shyly, smiled at each other with our eyes. In the rickhouse—a massive concrete rectangle where the family stored their private reserve—Jackson kissed me in a cool, shadowed corner behind a soaring wall of bourbon barrels stacked twenty high on metal racks. We ate a picnic lunch under the shade of an enormous willow tree on a hill overlooking a sparkling lake. We made plans to have dinner with his parents. I wanted to make them Mama’s famous jambalaya with a blackberry-and-bourbon cobbler for dessert.
When we went back to Jackson’s room to change for dinner, my cell phone was ringing. I’d left it on the dresser, too distracted from what had happened between us in the shower to remember to bring it along.
“Hello?” I swatted away Jackson’s attempt to pinch my ass with a laugh.
“Bianca,” said Eeny. Her voice caught on a sob.
The words fell down on me like bricks thrown from the top of a building.
So sorry.
She’s gone.
There was nothing we could do.
I tried to inhale but couldn’t. I tried to speak, but a gasp of anguish was all I could muster. My body went hot, then freezing cold. I began to violently shake.
“Bianca?” Jackson’s voice rang sharp with concern as he looked at my face. “What is it?”
I dropped the phone and sank to my knees on the floor. “Mama,” I rasped, choking on the word. “She’s dead.”
From that moment on, so was I.
The fairy tale was over.
THIRTY-FIVE
JACKSON
I’ve suffered through my share of painful moments. Before now, I thought I knew all pain’s ugly faces, all the ways it can cripple and scar.
But with one phone call I discovered that there’s no worse pain in the world than watching someone you love suffer and being powerless to make the suffering stop.
I kissed her and held her and rocked her, I promised I’d do everything I could to help. Words. All of them useless. None of them changed a thing or broke through the new encasing of ice swiftly crystallizing around her. From the moment Bianca took that phone call, she went cold. All the life was sucked out of her. All the fire was extinguished. What was left was a shell-shocked husk.
She didn’t even cry, which somehow made everything worse.
“I need to get back as soon as possible,” she said hollowly, sitting on the floor with her back against the side of the bed. I crouched beside her, holding her clammy, limp hand, fighting a terrible slipping feeling inside me, like a landslide in my chest.
“Of course. The plane can be ready within the hour. I’ll make sure the bags get packed.”
She closed her eyes. She didn’t speak again until we got back to New Orleans, except to say good-bye to my parents, who were as distraught as I was when they heard the news. We left Moonstar Ranch the same way we came, by limo and private jet, but everything had changed.
I could tell by the way Bianca stared with flat eyes at the ring on her finger that what had happened between us was “before.” This was “after,” the new reality in which her mother was dead, taking Bianca’s reason for us to be together to the grave with her.
So yes. I thought I knew Pain before. I thought I knew Loss.
But those two ruthless bitches were just getting started with me.
THIRTY-SIX
BIANCA
It was raining when we touched down in New Orleans, the sky the same ugly lead gray as my soul.
I didn’t know why I felt so numb. Shock, I suppose. In any case, I was grateful for the way all my senses were dulled, because I knew there were a thousand invisible knives of anguish hovering all around me, hungry for their moment to slash and draw blood.
They’d get their moment, of that I was sure. But for now I was safe in a cocoon of soft white noise where nothing could reach me. Not even the torment in Jackson’s eyes.
His engagement ring was a cold, heavy weight on my finger, a constant reminder of the bargain we’d made, and why.
I couldn’t think about it. I couldn’t face any more harsh realities today. All I could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep breathing.
When we arrived at Mama’s house, I could barely even do that.
“I’ve got you,” said Jackson when I stepped out of the car and almost fell. He put his arm around my waist and half dragged, half carried me up the steps and into the house. Eeny was there, her face streaked with dried tears, which got a fresh coat the minute she laid eyes on me.
“Boo!” she wailed, and crushed me into her embrace.
“It’s okay,” I whispered into her bosom. “We’re going to be okay.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, her or myself.
A young redheaded woman in pale-blue scrubs stood by the sofa, wringing her hands. “Miss Hardwick,” she murmured, moving closer. “I’m Jennifer Wright, from Home Angels Health Care. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Home Angels. I supposed they were the company Jackson hired. I struggled to focus on her voice as she continued to speak.
“I was assigned the afternoon shift. Gina, who was here in the morning, said your mother was resting comfortably when she left at noon. She had a little lunch, then went to take a nap. Then she must’ve . . .” Jennifer didn’t know how to politely say it, so she skipped ahead. “Apparently Eeny arrived just before I did, at four.”
Eeny clung to me, her tears wetting my neck. “She looked like she was slee
pin’! So peaceful, like an angel—”
She dissolved into a fresh round of weeping. Jennifer chewed on her lower lip and increased the speed of her hand wringing.
Realizing he was the only capable person in the room, Jackson went into efficiency mode. “The paramedics were called?” he asked Jennifer, sounding like he might snap her in two if she answered incorrectly.
“Yes,” she peeped, going pale. “They tried to resuscitate her. When that failed, they asked if we wanted to transfer Mrs. Hardwick to the hospital or make arrangements with a funeral home to pick up her remains here.”
Her remains. I almost fainted, but held myself up through sheer strength of will, gritting my teeth against the sob rising in the back of my throat.
Jennifer hurried on. “Eeny and I thought it would be best if Mrs. Hardwick stayed where she was until her daughter arrived. I hope that was all right?”
“Yes,” I said faintly. I pulled out of Eeny’s embrace and nodded at Jennifer, who looked frightened that she might have done something wrong. “Thank you, Jennifer.” I looked down the hallway at the closed door of Mama’s bedroom.
Noticing the direction of my gaze, Jackson gently settled his hand on my shoulder. “Do you want me to . . . ?”
“No,” I said. “I want a minute alone with her, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. Take all the time you need. I’ll call Robertson’s Funeral Home and get the arrangements started, unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather—”
“That’s fine,” I whispered, already moving away. It didn’t make a difference what company took Mama’s body. The parts of her that mattered were already gone.
Steeling my nerves, I hesitated a moment with my hand on the door before going in. The only other dead person I’d ever seen was my father, and he’d died when I was young enough to understand death but not be terrified of it. I didn’t know how I’d react to seeing Mama lying lifelessly in her bed, and I said a silent prayer I’d be able to withstand it.
The door creaked open. The room was dim, lit only with the lamp on the table beside the bed. The air was cool and still and smelled faintly of Mama’s perfume.
Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1) Page 29
