Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  As I spread her on the bed beneath me, I felt more in command of us than I had the night before, or maybe I just wanted to feel that way for her. That I would make love to her this time, and for her, it would be everything she wanted, as it had been for me.

  Both my kiss and my touch grew more demanding, but when she started to move against me, I eased back until I was sitting on my knees between her legs.

  I stared down at her. “You’re greedy this morning, too, I think.”

  The fire rose in her ebony orbs. “I’m greedy for you always.”

  I didn’t cover her and plunge myself in even though she would have let me and it was excruciating torture not to. I planted my arms on either side of her, holding my body from hers as my mouth slowly roamed her flesh in the way that had driven her crazy in the darkness.

  She would let me kiss her, touch her, any way I wanted to. No girl had ever lay so wanting and generous beneath me before, and I wondered why they didn’t, because a night with Lena had shown that a woman’s body fully pleasured was a thing beyond any pleasure a man could know.

  Her fingers fluttered in my hair as I moved lower, across the smooth line of her hips to her mound. I ran my tongue along her juicy lips, lightly flicked her bud, and lifted my face again.

  Her hands tightened in my waves, urging me back to her hot spot as she shivered in want. We’d made love the night before enough times that I could control the pulsing eagerness of my cock, enough that I could push this further, to other things that teased my mind that I hadn’t been able to do with her before this.

  I turned her on the bed and ran my hands up the back of her legs before I started a slow trek upward with my lips. Toes to arch to calf to behind the knee. As my fingers spread wide on her butt cheeks, my tongue ran along her thigh and roamed the crease at the top of her leg.

  I lifted my face, pausing to study her, my gaze drinking in the sight of her most intimate spots and how they looked teasing me this way. I flattened my tongue against her there and her hips inched up off the bed. I ran it from her bud to where my fingers rested at the base of her spine above her hole.

  She let out a ragged moan, emboldening me enough so that I touched her first, teasing with a finger there and then, feeling her body squirm with need, brought my mouth there.

  After I slipped a finger into her cunt, stroking her as I teased her elsewhere with pushes of my tongue, her legs opened even wider, followed by heavy panting. The signs of her body told me she was about to come and my dick went rock hard in anticipation. I moved my mouth to her wetness as my fingers replaced where my tongue had been and she began to grind into my face.

  “Oh, Jack, don’t stop,” she whispered brokenly.

  I licked and sucked more eagerly, knowing how the quaking of her body felt in my flesh when she stoked me this way.

  I was drinking in every drop of her pleasure I could get, my hips flexing to rub my cock into the mattress. I was about to move to bury myself inside her when she called out, “Oh, yes, yes, yes…” and I sank my tongue deep within her.

  She was spellbinding in this, unleashed and ravenously taking as her body let loose.

  When she was done, she pulled away and turned onto her back, arms and legs opening, beckoning me. “Fuck me hard, Jack, this second.”

  It was the first time I’d ever heard a girl say that word, and, spoken on her husky voice, it ran through my shivering flesh in seductive supplication.

  I wanted to—God help me, I would have given anything to—but before she finished her climax, I came against the bed.

  I was euphoric and humiliated at once.

  She was panting, waiting and staring expectantly at me, but if I moved, she’d see the wet spot on the sheet.

  Several moments passed, with me frozen there like a fool. Then she eased up on her elbows and looked down at me.

  “Make love to me,” she said.

  Fuck.

  Grimacing, I eased onto my side next to her, hardly able to meet her gaze. “I can’t. Not right now, anyway.”

  Her eyes widened, then flashed with understanding. As she beat back a smile, I was pretty sure I was halfway to dying.

  Her expression softened, lessening some of my inner agony. She dropped a kiss on my lips and put her palm on my burning cheek.

  “Oh, Jack, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, it’s an enormous compliment. I adore you even more now and I want you more than ever.”

  She turned into me, encircling my hips with her arms and took my passion-drained cock in her mouth. That I’d just come made it even more sensitive in the knowing glides of her lips. She swallowed me deep, sucked me hard, and got me erect in a record time I was sure would never happened again.

  Later, after I was done fucking her hard as she had asked me to, she brought my head to rest on her breasts as she slowly caressed me. Her lips touched my hair, and she whispered, “Jackson Parker is a naughty boy this morning. I’ve corrupted you, I think.”

  I looked up at her, relieved she was smiling.

  I grinned. “Jackson Parker is a happy man today. And you, Lena Mansur, are not leaving this bed until I’m ready to.”

  She didn’t argue.

  She only laughed.

  After that, there was nothing I would ever be embarrassed of with Lena. I followed her eagerly, recklessly, in every act and want of her, and indulged every—what I feared—deviant thought in my head.

  Deviant—I only worried about that until the end of our second day.

  ~~~

  Sunday morning came, again with Lena slipping from me and the bed to watch the sunrise before I claimed her, needing her to love me again.

  She seemed to want to do the ritual of the dawn by herself. I didn’t ask why. I just let her, and waited in bed until the light through the drapes told me it was officially morning and she was mine again.

  We didn’t leave her hotel room until our third day. It was a Monday. Like before, we made a careful trek to the lobby via the service elevator, which seemed a little lame to me because a blind man could have read our body language.

  There was no way to hide we were lovers or in love.

  As we walked down the street, she pointed. “Is that OK for you? I want food. I’m starving.”

  I shrugged because it didn’t matter to me where we ate, though I was surprised that she’d picked such a busy spot crowded with people. It didn’t bother me; she was now my girl in my mind, and I wanted nothing more than to show her off as we grabbed something to eat.

  We sat at a table at a patio café near the beach two doors down from the Biltmore Hotel.

  “Everything sounds so good, but I don’t know what any of it is,” she said, eyes locked on the menu.

  I looked over the top of mine, smiling at her. Mexican. She’d picked Mexican again.

  “If you don’t eat Mexican food, why did you pick here?”

  She lifted her chin. “It isn’t that I don’t. It’s that I haven’t. I love being surprised by things.”

  Her eyes changed then, making that comment about me.

  I was about to kiss her when the waitress joined us.

  “Order for me, Jack,” Lena announced cheerfully.

  She was in a good mood, so much lighter inside herself than when we’d first met, and it felt good to believe it was because of me.

  Still, the waitress was watching and waiting.

  “Do you like spicy food?” I asked, scanning the menu.

  “I will if you order it for me.”

  Shoot. No help there. I settled on something in between: a salad with carne asada. Lena ordered us wine to have with lunch.

  “Where do you live? I want to see your house,” Lena said in a demanding way.

  I leaned back in my chair, shaking my head. “Why?”

  She smiled. “I want to know everything about you. I want to see where you were raised. Where you live. I want a picture in my memory for always.”


  I didn’t like how that sounded—for always—like our time together was soon to come to an end.

  My mood plummeted. “Not today.”

  “Please, for me, Jackson.”

  Jackson—in that tone of voice she used that could get anything she wanted from me.

  “Not today,” I repeated, settling my napkin on my lap.

  She pouted. “Why?”

  Gloria would be home, but I wasn’t about to tell Lena that.

  “Because I want to go back to the room with you. In fact, I’m kind of sorry we left there.”

  Her cheeks pinked prettily, assuring me going back to the room was on the schedule soon, though she shook her head.

  “No. We’re not going back unless you promise to take me to your house.”

  Annoyed, I ran a hand through my hair.

  “Why are you being so stubborn?” she asked impatiently.

  Stubborn? I was anything but that. I just didn’t want to run into Gloria and have her kill the best damn time I’d ever had with a girl before it had to end. But I didn’t want to explain, and a part of me was annoyed that Lena didn’t realize this on her own or spare me this discussion.

  I let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. My house. But not today.”

  Her dazzling smile unfurled on her lips. “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Gloria played bridge on Tuesdays and would be out. Hopefully, we’d miss her and nothing would ruin my last day with Lena.

  She was going home to New York on Wednesday.

  I didn’t want to think of that.

  Not yet.

  For a girl who claimed she didn’t eat, she devoured her plate, chomping happily through every bite because she’d gotten her way. Yes, she was obvious at times herself. But I didn’t care. Giving her her way, having it be tomorrow, assured I would get to spend her last day here with her.

  Lena tossed down her napkin, started to stand, and then froze. “This isn’t a trick, you promising to take me tomorrow, to get me to do what you want me to do? Go back to the room, spend another night with you”—she grinned wickedly—“and another morning.”

  I tossed some bills into the check holder. “No. How could you accuse me of doing that to you? I’m pretty sure I’m incapable of being duplicitous with you.”

  A knowing look passed through her gaze, too quickly for me to be bothered with.

  I rose from my chair and held out my hand to her. “You’ve gotten your way. Can we go now?”

  She glided up from her chair. “Yes. We can leave. But not back to the room yet. I think you’ve just been duplicitous with me for the first time. For that, you have to take me shopping. I want to bring home something special and pretty from here. Something that will make me think of you always.”

  The stores near the Biltmore were high-end. She searched for two hours for just the perfect memento: a sterling silver box, hand-painted with a beach scene of sand, ocean, and shells. When she lifted the lid, it chimed Elvis’s “Love me Tender.”

  She slanted me a look from beneath half-lowered lids, lips parted slightly, then murmured, “I want this.”

  The price was ridiculous. We were in the touristy part of the city. But she wanted it and what Lena wanted, Lena got. At least from me.

  It pretty much cleaned me out, but later in bed as I arched up and sank deeply into her, she whispered, “Love me tender, Jack,” and I never thought again about the cost of her frivolous silver box.

  Twelve

  The next day I took her to my house. I didn’t relax until I pulled into the driveway and saw Gloria’s car wasn’t there.

  We stood on the pavement for a moment while Lena studied the single-story Spanish structure I’d been born in. “You’ve only ever lived here?”

  I couldn’t tell what she thought of that, so I nodded.

  “So this is the kind of house a senator lives in,” she said.

  I shrugged, confused by her tone, because by Hope Ranch standards ours was a pretty humble property. We weren’t rich by any measure here no matter what people thought because of where we lived and my father’s profession.

  Georgie’s dad owned a gravel business and could buy and sell my father ten times over on his richest day.

  She whirled to face me. “I want to go in. I want to see everything.”

  “I figured I wasn’t escaping that when you climbed from the car.”

  She laughed. “Why should I? You’re positively adorable when you’re anxious—though why you are so nervous I’m not sure.”

  Because if Gloria sees us together I’m in deep shit.

  I smiled to cover my thoughts. “Let’s just get it over with and get out of here,” I said, taking her by the hand as we went to the front door.

  This time she answered me with a husky, mirth-filled purr from deep in her chest. “I take it you don’t bring girls home very often.”

  I opened the front door. “As a matter of fact, never.”

  Her brows eased upward. “Really? Why’s that?”

  Gloria.

  Again.

  “It’s complicated.”

  Her eyes started to sparkle. “I sense a mystery, and don’t you think I’m going to let you off without explaining to me.”

  Fuck. The roving hands of my stepmother were the last things I wanted to share with any girl, and especially not Lena.

  She stepped down into the living room, gliding her fingers across the tops of family photos. She paused at a round table, picking up one.

  “Is this you?”

  “Yes, with my mother.”

  She smiled into the glass. “You look like her.”

  She set it down and continued into the kitchen.

  “This house is on the beach,” she exclaimed.

  “Not precisely. We’re on the cliffs above, but the beach can be reached by some steps we had built there.”

  Gazing out, she shook her head. “Oh, Jack, if this were my house, this entire back wall would be glass. Why would anyone shut out a view like this?”

  “It’s an old house.”

  She wandered into the dining room toward the back hall.

  I stopped her with my hand. “Why don’t we go out to the yard?”

  Her eyes widened. “Your room is down there and you don’t want me to see it,” she accused gleefully.

  Fuck. “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, now I have to.”

  She twisted away from me and was down the hall to my bedroom before I could catch her. She was standing in the center, carefully taking in each inch when I joined her, and my room, unfortunately, was exactly as I had left it.

  There was a poster of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, and junk scattered across the floor. Shoes, towels, instruments, surf gear, and the books I never bothered to open. Nothing said room of a teenage guy more perfectly than this.

  I sank down on the bench of the small spinet in my room, dreading her next comment as she rummaged through my things.

  “Why didn’t you want me to see this?”

  Really? Was she joking?

  I let out an aggravated sigh. “I don’t know. I just didn’t. It’s messy. The housekeeper refuses to clean in here.”

  She choked down a laugh and picked up my Les Paul. “You play guitar?”

  I was glad she changed the subject. “Guitar, bass, drums, and piano. My mother taught music.”

  “Ah. I would have hated it if you weren’t musical, too.” She set down the instrument. “Play me something on the piano.”

  “I’m not very good, Lena.”

  “I bet you are. I want to hear something.”

  She propped her elbows down on the mahogany with her chin resting on her balled hands. With my index finger, I picked out the Elvis tune from the silver box.

  She rolled her eyes. “Delightful, but not what I want, and I won’t leave your bedroom—which you are clearly anxious for me to do—until I get what I want.”
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  I turned around on the bench. “Fine. I’ll play but then you have to promise we get out of here.”

  She nodded as I tried to figure out something to play for her. I’d stopped playing classical music when my mother passed, and I wanted to play something to impress her. Which was moronic, because I had nowhere near her musical gift.

  I stared down at the keys. Something short. Something easy. Something I wouldn’t embarrass myself too much with.

  Debussy.

  I started to play, my fingers moving haltingly at first and then I relaxed, playing by memory. It was hard to concentrate. Lena hung on every note like I was Liberace, but I wasn’t. I knew it and worse, I knew she did, too.

  I ended on the last note abruptly, and stood up.

  “Now can we get out of here?”

  She frowned at me. “Why are you irritated, Jackson? That was really quite lovely. You’d be excellent if you devoted yourself to it. The piano takes practice and discipline.”

  Crap. She stood there, immobile, like she was about to ask something else of me, so I pulled her up against me and kissed her deeply.

  Against her lips, I whispered, “I love practice, but discipline—if we don’t get away from my bedroom soon you’ll see how little discipline I really have.”

  “Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” she teased, touching and kissing along my neck.

  I stepped back. “It will be when the housekeeper barges in.”

  Giggling, she let me pull her by a hand from my room and then she stopped outside the kitchen. She stared through the French doors at the Pacific.

  “Do you surf out there?”

  “Sometimes. The waves aren’t very good at this stretch of beach, but sometimes.”

  “Can we go into the yard near the ocean? I want to see everything if it’s something about you.”

  She did have a way of saying things to get what she wanted. And before I could remind myself we were pushing our luck every minute here, we were walking across the grass toward the cliffs.

  There was enough wind to make the leaves rustle overhead and keep it cool beneath the trees.

  She pointed. “What kind of tree is that?”

  “Just eucalyptus.”