by Candis Terry
When their eyes met, she arched up to meet his thrust. And when her breaths came quicker—a little harsher—he knew she was close. He braced himself with one arm and, with the pad of his thumb, found the button within her slick folds. A few light swirls and teasing strokes had her inner muscles clenching around him. Pulling him in tighter.
“Oh. God.” A lusty moan slipped past her lips. She pinched her nipples between her thumb and finger. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t—”
Her words died out on a long moan.
The vibration and visceral tug of her core muscles started down deep, radiated along his shaft, and squeezed him tight. His balls tightened. The intensity of his pleasure curled inside his gut and swept across his flesh. Her orgasm gripped him hard. Milked him. Stripped him of thought and left him raw and exposed. He let go with a final push and a deep groan that was ripped from his soul.
As he pulsed into her, he knew he’d never experienced such complete surrender.
She curled her arms around him and sighed with contentment against his cheek.
“My, God,” he panted. “All these years we’ve just been running up and down these stairs without giving them a second thought. I am so building a two-story house.”
Chapter 14
After several more lovemaking sessions that extended from the kitchen, where they’d gone looking for a snack and ended up feasting on each other, to the bathroom, where they’d gone to wash off the pancake syrup and ended up playing scrub-a-dub-dub, they finally collapsed in her small bed. To keep from falling off, they had to lie close to each other, which initiated another passionate, unhurried mating. Not that she minded.
Sometime during the middle of the night, Abby woke to the bed’s shaking. Since Texas was hardly the earthquake capital of the world, she pushed aside panic and opened her eyes.
Fully awake, she became aware of harsh breathing and moist heat rising from Jackson, who now lay curled up on his side, facing away from her. It didn’t take a genius to recognize he was in the grip of a nightmare.
She touched his shoulder. Gently brushed her fingers down the muscled length of his arm. “Jackson?” she whispered so as not to startle him. While he trembled beneath her touch she continued to stroke his arm and call to him in a low, soothing tone.
He came awake with a gasp. Bolted upright in the bed and threw off the sheet. In the faint moonlight that big, strong, hard-muscled, naked body dropped to a crouch. Face buried in his hands he sucked in deep, ragged breaths.
She didn’t stop to question, just surrendered to the need to comfort. Slipping the covers from her legs, she slid from bed, hunkered down beside him, and eased her hand to his back. “Jackson? It’s okay.” She gave him a reassuring caress. “You’re okay.”
“Damn it.”
“Sssh. It’s okay,” she repeated.
Several seconds passed with him breathing harshly and her soothing him. Finally, he took a deep breath and moved his hands away from his face. For a moment he just looked at her, almost as if he was trying to figure out who she was. Then he stood and pulled her into his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
“Don’t be.” She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “PTSD?”
He nodded against her shoulder.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“And give you another reason to run like hell?” He leaned back. Brows pulled tight over those blue eyes, he looked down at her. “I don’t think so.”
She lifted her hand to smooth that deep furrow in his forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”
An almost imperceptible nod tilted his chin. “God, I need a shower to shake this off.” Then Mr. Charming was back with a devilish grin. “Care to join me?”
She kissed him. “Are you trying to divert my attention away from the real problem?”
“Definitely.” He lowered his head and fed her a hot, needy kiss. “But also because I really need you right now.”
“Sex doesn’t resolve everything, Jackson.”
“Ninety-nine and a half percent of the time it does.”
She smoothed her hands over his strong back muscles. “I want to be more than that for you.”
“You’ve always been more than that for me, Abby. But right now, I just need to . . . lose myself in you.” He let go a heavy sigh. “Is that okay?”
She wanted him—heart, soul, demons, baggage, past, present, future—whatever made up the man in her arms. “It’s always okay.”
While the cicadas did their thing outside, and Liberty and Miss Kitty romped like a pair of wild things downstairs, Abby walked into the bedroom and handed Jackson a glass of Chivas neat.
“For medicinal purposes,” she said.
“You should have been a nurse.” He smiled up at her, patted the bed beside him, then took a drink. When she slid in next to him, he curled his arm around her and drew her close. “Maybe I should buy you one of those cute little outfits.”
“I thought we already logged in enough hours playing doctor when we were kids.”
He sipped the whiskey and smiled. “If you’re wearing white stockings—the lace-edged ones that only go up to your thighs—I’m never too old.”
Though she chuckled at his comment, she knew it—like their lovemaking in the shower just now—was just a diversion from the real matter. So while he lay propped up with pillows and his back against the headboard, she snuggled down and laid her cheek against his warm chest. While he sipped the whiskey in silence she listened to his heartbeat, which periodically seemed to skip.
She waited for him to step through the door she’d opened and tell her about the nightmare that had twisted him inside out.
For the longest time she listened to the night sounds outside. To the pup and kitten downstairs bumping into things as they played. To the fragility in the silence of the events that brought Jackson so much pain.
When he drained the drink, he set the empty glass on the nightstand. “Thank you,” he said, with a kiss to the top of her head.
She nodded against his chest.
And waited.
“The nightmares aren’t as bad as they used to be,” he finally said, his words vibrating against her ear. “But there are certain times when they come back with as much force as ever.”
She sat up, changing their positions so that she was now the one holding him. “Tell me.”
“It was around this time of year . . .” He glided his fingertips down her arm. “When Jared was killed.”
“Oh.” Her chest cramped and stole her breath. “God. I’m so sorry.”
“I was there that day,” he admitted in a strangled whisper. “When the Taliban launched an attack. And I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop my brother from taking fire. I couldn’t stop him from dying.”
“Oh, Jackson.” The idea that he’d seen his brother die was unfathomable. If Jared’s death set a fire in her blood, she couldn’t imagine how Jackson must have felt that day. Or how he felt now.
“A tactical vest protects you from front to back,” he said. “But not side to side. Not when your arms are raised, and you’re engaged in a full-on battle. The bullet caught him in the armpit. The damage was . . . unsurvivable.”
“I’m so sorry.” Her words sounded weak, but the sincerity behind them was strong.
“Reno blamed himself. Jesse blamed himself. But I was there. And I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.”
“Oh, baby.” She caressed the side of his face. “You can’t blame yourself. Jared wouldn’t want that. Your brother was a hero. All of you are.”
Eyes dark with sorrow, he ran a hand through his hair. “None of us joined the Marines to be heroes. We all joined to fight for our country. To kick the asses of those who brought down those planes and those towers. To protect our loved ones from it ever happening again. Some gave all. And the rest of us came home to battle the nightmares of what happens
over there to good men and women who only want to do what’s right. Who fight with honor against an enemy who doesn’t even wear a recognizable uniform.”
He paused. Closed his eyes and flinched, as if he were seeing the ugliness of that war—that day—all over again.
“I did the counseling, but I refused the medication,” he admitted. “They told me the nightmares may never go away. Most of the time I think I have a handle on them, but once in a while they sneak up on me when I’m not looking and . . . Izzy’s seen the results. I scare her.”
“You don’t scare her, Jackson. She loves you so much. She’s little right now. Someday she’ll understand. And when she does, she’ll be so proud.”
“I don’t want her to understand. I want to protect her from being forced to understand. But she’s sharp. Nothing gets past her.” He pulled air into his lungs. “A couple nights ago, I had an overnight. And I had a nightmare. She woke me up. And even though she was scared and had tears in her eyes, do you know what she did?”
“What?”
Moisture floated in his eyes, and a grim smile pulled at his mouth. “She put her little hands on my cheeks and she told me she’d protect me.”
“She’s an amazing little girl.”
“She is. But how effed up is it that a three-year-old has to deal with her father’s demons? I battle with that all the time, Abby. Sometimes . . . I wonder if she’d be better off without me.”
Abby drew back. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I don’t mean that.” His lips flattened, and his brows pulled together tight. “I mean if I had walked away. Prayed Fiona would find a nice man who’d be a good father to Izzy. A father who didn’t have a million pounds of baggage strapped to his back.”
“Stop that. Your daughter loves you, Jackson. There is no such thing as a perfect life. Would we like there to be? Of course. We would like our children to never know heartache and misery. But a life like that doesn’t exist. So you give them all the love you can. You keep trying to do all the right things. And you pray, Jackson. You pray really hard that life will hand you a bouquet of roses instead of the thorns. That’s all you can do.”
While he studied her face as though trying to believe what she’d said, she drew in a measured breath. Bit her bottom lip to keep from crying.
She’d always had love, respect, and admiration for the U.S. military and coalition forces. She’d never understood their kind of bravery and probably never would. But as she held this man in her arms, she knew she’d do whatever she had to do to protect him. To make him happy. To keep him happy. And to make it clear that her love was unconditional.
“With all my heart and soul, I love you, Jackson. But the next time you start talking nonsense like that—about not being good enough or about walking away I will—”
Suddenly she was beneath him—his big, strong body covered hers like a ceiling of concrete.
He grinned down at her like they hadn’t just had a soul-baring conversation. “I love it when you go all fierce and assertive on me.”
She tried not to laugh. “I mean it. I will . . .” Ah, God, it was hard to think with him sucking on her neck like that and her nipples going all wild and crazy.
“You’ll what?” He chuckled. Obviously preferring levity over gravity. “I’m a big bad-ass Marine slash fireman, sugar. What are you going to do to me?”
Somehow—and she had to believe it was only because he’d allowed it—she rolled him to his back and straddled his hips with her thighs. She intertwined their fingers and slid his hands up above his head.
Laughter danced in his eyes as he smiled up at her.
Then his face turned serious.
Slowly, he unlaced their fingers and lifted his hands to her face. His eyes met hers as his thumb swept a slow caress across her bottom lip. And then his smile was back.
“I love you, Abby.”
They were only four little words.
Four little words that sent her heart soaring.
Four little words she’d waited so long to hear.
And all she could think was . . . wow.
Jackson woke spooned with Abby’s fine naked behind nestled up against his morning erection. Anyone in their right mind would figure he was drained dry, but he’d waited so long to have her—especially in this new and fully recognized relationship, he didn’t figure he’d dry up for decades.
Of course, he’d never imagined that he’d wake up in a dinky double bed with a kitten perched on his head or when he reached to tickle his fingers across Abby’s stomach that he’d get a handful of puppy fur.
At that moment, his cell phone went off, and he grabbed it off the nightstand. Checked the number to make sure it wasn’t the Volunteer Fire Department.
Nope.
Mom.
Luckily, it was a text so she wouldn’t detect the “Yes, I stayed up all night making love to my new girlfriend” gravel to his voice.
The new girlfriend—and didn’t that just send his heart into a handspring—rolled over and stretched her smooth leg over his. Her warm hand snuck across his chest, and her fingers twirled lazy circles across his skin. He texted his mother back, then tossed the cell on the nightstand. He turned toward Abby, pulling her in so that his erection settled into that soft space between her thighs.
“I like your hat,” she said, lifting her hand away from his chest to tease the kitten paw that now dangled over his forehead and batted at her finger.
He slid his hand around her waist, clasped her naked behind in his palm, and gave it a gentle squeeze. The puppy groaned and stretched. “And I like your furry butt.”
She laughed. “Guess we need a bigger bed if we’re going to have all this company.”
“Or they could stay downstairs,” he said. “I like the close sleeping quarters.”
He kissed her slow and sweet, and they didn’t come up for air until the puppy began to whine. Abby pulled the little fluff ball into her arms.
“Guess Liberty needs to piddle,” she said, nuzzling the pup and cooing as if it were a baby. Which for some reason totally flipped his heart.
“Thwarted by a potty run,” he said.
She laughed. “Stay here, and I’ll be right back.”
“Can’t.” He kissed her nose. “We’ve got a date.”
“We do?”
“Yeah, I was going to take you to Bud’s Diner for some cinnamon-banana flapjacks, but I just got a text and we’ve been summoned to the ranch.”
Her delicate brows pulled together. “We? Or you?”
“We.”
“How does your mom know there’s even a we?”
He lifted his head. “Are you kidding? By now, the entire town knows there’s a we.”
“Oh.” She stroked Liberty’s head between the ears. “Are you okay with that?”
“Sugar, we’ve been a we for over twenty years. It just took some of us this long to figure it out.” He gave her tush a little pat. “On second thought get that pup outside, then come back quick so I can say a proper good morning before we go before the rest of the damn family.”
“Okay.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the forehead that would barely hold him over until she crawled back between the sheets with him. When she slipped out of bed and sauntered from the room wearing nothing but a smile, he tucked his arms behind his head and called himself a lucky man.
“You ready for this?”
In the early-afternoon sunshine, Abby looked up at him, bright-eyed and looking like a Western princess, in her pretty pink sundress and cowboy boots as they stood outside his mother’s house.
“Are you?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“I asked you first.”
“I think I’ve actually been ready since I was five.”
“Then let’s get in the house before that damned amorous goat shows up.” He took her hand in his and led her toward the veranda.
“I like Miss Giddy,” she said.
“Well, it’s a
good thing, because she sure doesn’t take no for an answer.”
He opened his mother’s front door and kept hold of Abby’s hand as they stepped inside. She might have been ready for this since she was five, but it was still new to him, and for some reason, all that bundled up into a wad of nerves in the pit of his stomach. Not that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be with her, he did. He’d pretty much always wanted to be with her. But there was still the doubt that—especially after witnessing his breakdown last night after the nightmare—she’d find him lacking.
He’d never had it all before, and he was nervous about what all this meant for their friendship. How it would change. If it would change. He was nervous that she’d realized she’d made him up in her head. Nervous she’d succumb to the reality that he’d merely been a figment of an imagination he could never live up to.
He snapped his attention back into focus as they moved toward the mounting noise level in the living room his mother had recently given new life with sand and poppy paint and a hodgepodge of antiques from her stash in the barn loft. The moment he and Abby stepped inside the room, conversation stopped. All heads turned their way.
“Hey, everyone,” Jackson said. “Look who’s here. With me.” He looked at Abby, smiled, and held up their joined hands. “Guess what this means.”
“You finally got a clue?” Jesse responded.
“Yep.”
Next to him, Reno grinned like a proud older brother. “It’s about damn time.”
Jackson looked at Abby, who was all smiles, and said, “He’s got a point.”
A volley of laughter, and congratulations, and because it was the Wilder family who, for the most part, were wildly expressive, a round of hugs ensued.
His mother crossed the room and took his face in her hands. “You’re such a smart boy, sugarplum. I’m so glad you finally figured things out.” She gave each of them a hug. “You take good care of each other.”
“We will.”
After the initial surprise had waned—thank god—Izzy ran across the room and held up her arms. Jackson reached before he realized she wanted Abby to hold her. With Abby chatting and smiling to his baby girl, the two of them took off toward Fiona on the opposite side of the room. And though Fiona gave him a smile, he felt uneasy.
