by Anna Craig
The stress of running the pack with Jackson, and without Trevor to lean on as well as subtly guide as had been her habit for the last many years, was getting to her enough that she needed the cooling dunk to clear her thoughts.
Okay, fine. She needed to cool her overheated skin as well as her near constant temptation to throw every damn caution she had to the winds and fling herself upon Jackson and the seductive promise she saw in his eyes every time she looked at him. Ever since he'd touched her the other night in the kitchen, she hadn't been able to shake the underlying buzz of his presence. She'd been in a near constant state of arousal. It was messing with her ability to keep her usually calm and collected self in front of the always watching eyes of the pack.
Shaking her head to clear the water from her ears, she swam the few strokes it took to reach the edge of the recessed little alcove where the water met with smooth, cool rock. There was a perfect spot back there to sit, the water just reaching the edge of the rock so her legs could dangle down into the pool, but she could be seated and lean back against the relatively smooth edge of the grotto. About twenty feet long and maybe ten or so feet high, the grotto behind the waterfall was more like the indented curve of the side of the mountain, with the stream simply falling over it into the pretty, sheeting waterfall. But it still felt private. Like a cool little sanctuary where she could regain her composure and have a moment to herself. Leaning back against the rock, letting her legs stay buoyed by the gentle lapping of the pool, Tamsin sighed as she closed her eyes and relaxed.
"Hello, my gorgeous little mermaid."
Jackson's scent hit Tamsin at the same moment as his voice. Eyes flying open, startling where she sat, she straightened up with a small gasp as she looked right into Jackson's eyes. He was in the pool with her, just having ducked under the little waterfall himself. Smoothly, he swam to her and rested his arms on the rock to either side of her thighs. Despite the light, cool spray of the waterfall, Tamsin's entire body immediately heated.
"Tamsin." His voice was low, so low it seemed to rumble into her, echoing through a long with a very light rumble of the waterfall splashing into the pool behind them. "I didn't expect to find you here. My private swimming hole."
"Your private swimming hole?" Tamsin struggled to maintain her aloofness. She laughed, catching the ragged note in it. "Not everything is your private toy to play with, Jackson. Despite what you apparently believe."
"Oh, really?" His voice was silky smooth. Sure. Knowing. He leaned a little closer. Close enough that his breath tickled at her stomach, which was above the water, making her tremble. "You're not my toy? To stroke," and he smoothed his fingers down one of her thighs.
Control slipping away, Tamsin gasped. His fingers danced on her slippery flesh, just barely skimming over her with the pads of his fingertips.
“To kiss,” he went on, and very carefully tipped his head a little farther forward. Keeping his brilliant green eyes on hers, he flicked out his tongue to just barely touch her bellybutton. That ridiculously small touch exploded throughout Tamsin like a miniature lightning bolt. She couldn't control another gasp. Her pulse sped up as Jackson chuckled against her skin.
“To bring great pleasure to as I touch every inch of your body,” he finished, voice so low it could barely be heard above the light reverberations of the waterfall where it pattered into the pool. “Please,” and now his voice was a groan. “Please let me me do that.”
She couldn't answer. He was only touching her one thigh, and her bellybutton, such a silly part of the body, and yet she was already nearly speechless with wild, hot desire.
"Tell me you don't want this, Tamsin," he said between little darts of his tongue circling her bellybutton. His lips gently kissing her belly. "Tell me you can't stop thinking about me, just the way I can't stop thinking about you. Tell me you don't want to try just once. To find out how incredible it will be between us."
To her surprise, Tamsin heard a ragged tone in Jackson's voice as well.
"Just say the word, Tamsin," and now his tongue swirled little pattern on her skin, this time eliciting a small moan from her before he pulled back to continue, "and I'll stop."
Thoughts already spinning into nonsense, Tamsin was already shaking her head. "I don't want you to stop," she murmured, reaching her hands down to lightly clasp the back of his head. "Just this once. I can't stop thinking about you either. I need to know how this will feel."
"Ah, fuck, yeah," he groaned. “You have no idea how damned long I've waited to hear you say that.” Without another word, he bent his head back to her sweet flesh, lips tickling at her stomach as he trailed a line of fiery kisses from one hip to the other.
Tamsin's head rolled back, meeting the rock behind her with a harder thump than she'd planned. Oddly, the brief knock of pain only intensified the fire spiraling out from where Jackson's lips touched her, blazing through her limbs. She gently fisted one hand in the short hairs on his scalp, hearing his slight grunt as she gave a little tug. With purpose and wonder, she slid her other hand hand the side of his face, along his corded neck, onto his wet shoulder.
For just one more moment, as Jackson's lips and tongue tickled their way across her hip and then slowly upward toward her breasts, Tamsin let reason boom through her mind. You can't do this. Not with Jackson.
Then she made a thoroughly conscious decision to abandon all rational thought and lose herself to pure sensation with him.
"More," she whispered, her voice rough with long-denied need. "More."
With another small chuckle that vibrated against her skin, Jackson breathed, "As milady wishes." Pressing both hands onto the softness of her upper thighs, pushing them closed together while pushing down on them to support himself, Jackson lifted his body up out of the water and leaned forward. He let his lips trail wet heat beneath first one of her breasts, then the other.
Tamsin kept her head nestled back against the rock, one hand still on the back of Jackson's head and the other pressed hard against the rock beside her to support herself as his mouth slowly tasted its way across one breast.
Oh, yes. "Like that," she half whispered, half growled. "Just like that."
Jackson's tongue traced a wide circle around her nipple, which was so hard it almost hurt. Then he gently flicked it over the bud, creating a white-hot storm of feeling that sizzled across her entire body. His hands tightly gripped her thighs, creating an alternating sensation of heated contact and deep pressure that held her tightly against the slick, wet rock of the grotto.
Teeth nipped at her tight bud, drawing out another gasp along with a blast of heat. She jerked her head forward, opening her eyes to find him looking right at her from where he still kissed her nipple. Jackson carefully moved his hands up her thighs, one at a time, until they rested right by the bend of her hips. He tucked his thumbs down into the crease between her legs as his mouth moved to her other breast.
Tamsin's gasp caught in her throat as his thumbs began circling downward. Achingly close to the slick folds of herself that were wet not only from the water. She tried to push her legs apart so he could more easily reach her there, but his grip on her tightened.
“Now, now, my gorgeous mermaid.” His eyes, which she noted had darkened to a deeper pine-green, crinkled the slightest bit as a satisfied little smile tugged up one lip. “Let me have my way with you for just this moment. Let me touch you just like this”—and he pushed his thumbs even closer to her now throbbing clit—“until I hear you begging me for more again.”
A flare of Tamsin's dander went up. “I—don't beg,” she managed to say, which was ridiculous since she had in fact already begged him not to stop.
It was the principle of the matter. Or something like that. Something...oh, fuck. He was touching her.
“Really? We'll see about that,” he murmured in a languorous, speculative tone. The intensity behind his gaze, however, belied any casualness he might be pretending.
“Whatever you think you're—oh!” Tamsin's voi
ce sharply cut off as his thumbs reached the heavy, full little nub demanding to be stroked. Her gaze went half-lidded as her mouth dropped open into a pant. He stroked her clit with first one thumb, then the other. All the while he held her legs pressed tightly together, which only intensified the darts of sensation zinging out of her.
Oh, god. She was about to come. Right now, in this hidden little grotto, with the gentle pit-pat sound of the waterfall sliding into the pool, with gorgeous bad boy Jackson Rule holding her tight, keeping her gaze trapped on his with a relentless, mind-destroying excitement. Jackson, whose face and body had occupied virtually all her thoughts for the past several weeks.
Jackson, who was the only man she wanted touching her. Ever.
“Fuck, Tamsin,” he groaned. “You're trembling all over.” He swirled his thumbs faster and leaned down to suck again on her nipples, moving from one to the other and back again.
“I—” she gasped out, clenching her thighs together as she abruptly teetered on the edge of an intense orgasm.
“Hell, yeah.” His breath grazed the sensitive skin of her nipple as the hand she held to the back of his head pressed hard against it. “Come for me, Tamsin. Let me feel you explode beneath me.”
With a wrenching cry, Tamsin obeyed him. The throb centered in her clit burst into a deep dazzle of feeling that surged over her, shifting her tremble into a full-blown, gasping shudder as she drove her hips into the caress of his thumbs. One hand still pushed hard onto the rock shelf, the other hand now clutching Jackson's neck and shoulder with a grip that probably hurt him. Small white stars streaked across her vision in time with her cries, in time with his rhythmic strokes.
“Yes,” he growled around her breast, nipping hard at it with his teeth. “Just like that.”
Tamsin rolled through several descending crests as her climax ebbed, her hips and soft, uncontrollable moans still keeping time with them. When it finally slowed to a stop, Jackson lifted his head from her breast so he could see her face. She'd closed her eyes. Softly, he demanded, “Look at me, Tam.”
Tamsin dragged open her eyes to look at Jackson. His expression made her catch her breath. A look of such wonder was on his face that it caught her, pulling them together for a long moment she waited only by the sounds of her breathing and the continual slide of the waterfall into the pool.
Gently, Jackson loosened his grip on her thighs let his body slide back down into the water, although he never broke eye contact with her. Permit gentle hands, he nudged apart her legs and nestled in between them, now propping his forearms on the rock and leaning forward to blow small, hot breath of her her still faintly throbbing clipped. Tamsin inhaled hard, and now Jackson smiled.
"I want to hear that again, my beautiful Tamsin." With that, he lowered his face all the way between her thighs and gently lapped her plump folds. Tamsin's gasp ricocheted around the tiny grotto, and her hands convulsively clenched on the bear, wet rock another side of her.
"I've been wondering what you taste like," he said with a soft growl.
Tamsin tried to reply to that, but whatever inarticulate words she might've managed to get out or swallowed by another gasping cry as his tongue licked its way up and then back down percent her. Long and steady and ceaseless, Jackson likes to her folds, reaching with one hand and spread them wider so we could gently circle the tip of her ultra-sensitive client. The sensation was so intense she almost couldn't handle it, pulling back just slightly from him. He raised his head to say, "Oh, no you don't. Slide your sweet little ass closer to me. I intend to feast on you."
Completely stunned into submission, Tamsin obeyed him. Scooting her rear easily across the slick rock, she found Jackson's lips and mouth. He immediately lowered his head to do just as he'd said, once again lapping at her with gentle strokes. Up and down, back and forth. He moved his head along with the strokes of his broad tongue, using the fingers of his hand also play with her shamelessly eager entrance.
"That's it," he crooned against her flesh as her breathing started to hitch once more. As the sensation of his lips vibrated against her when he spoke, she moaned again. "Is that so," he murmured.
Tamsin shivered against him, nodding even though he couldn't see her. He started to make a very small humming sound, causing his lips to flutter against her even as his tongue continued to stroke with regular and increasing rhythm. Up and down, back and forth. Insistent yet gentle.
Tamsin felt the white heat spiking again, being pulled out of her with every touch his lips and tongue. She arched against him, inviting more. He kept the rhythm steady while inserting a finger inside her. Then he gently began to swirl it around inside her super-heated core.
Tamsin's mind officially stopped thinking then. She was aware of nothing but the fact that Jackson was touching her, that he was about to make her come again, her entire world was made up of his wild scents, a simple touch, the sounds of the water lapping against the edges of the grotto from his motions against her, and the sudden, very sure knowledge that she was exactly what she was supposed to be right now.
Carefully pushing in another finger, swirling them together and then scissoring them apart in larger circles, keeping time with her wordless encouragement and stuttering breaths, Jackson sent her over the edge. In a sudden blast of razor-sharp joy, Tamsin exploded against him again into a screaming climax, her body half lifting from the rock she reached forward with her hands to shamelessly shove his face against her and ride out every incredible spasm that turned into a sweetly mindless, screaming bliss.
It had barely faded away before Jackson again began to stroke her quivering, hot center with his tongue, almost instantly shoving her over the edge to another orgasm the gripped her so hard she couldn't even make a noise. She simply spasmed along with it, her hands clutching his head so tightly she thought she might be leaving marks.
As the sharper spasms of this one faded away, Tamsin realized she'd held her breath during it. Gasping in, she relaxed back against the rock, chest heaving as if she just been running down prey in the forest. Jackson gently kept licking her, as if he wanted to take every drop and keep it on his tongue. Her hand loosened from his head to gently stroke him, then almost bonelessly fall to her sides.
Slowly, Jackson pulled himself out of the water with only a few small splashing noises. She felt him move up over her body until he could lay atop her. His long, wet body covered hers, sinking onto her softness as he nuzzled into her neck, kissed her mouth that tasted like her own wild spices. She felt his heartbeat against hers. Gently, he held her face between his hands as he kissed her into an even deeper oblivion.
More long, drifting moments passed before he finally pulled back from her. Tamsin managed to flutter open her eyes to look at him. Jackson's eyes were dark, stormy green with what she knew was sheer desire. She felt a smile of pure anticipation spreading across her face as he looked at her with the expression of a man simultaneously worshipful yet also about to issue an order.
Every molecule of her being roared back to aroused excitement as she waited for his command. The sheer relief of not having to be in charge, not having to tell someone else what to do, letting herself be controlled, was so immense she was shocked.
And at the same time, so incredibly ready and willing to let herself fall into it.
"Now," he said, his voice rough with his need. "Now, I want you on all fours. Do it, Tamsin. Right now."
~~~
Jackson felt two things as he pulled back. One, purely male terror that she would either slap him again or, worse, laugh his face at his arrogance.
And two, a wild, unstoppable need to possess her that was so strong it blotted out any other thoughts in his head.
Her usually violet-blue eyes had deepened to the darkest blue found in the ocean. Her gorgeous lips, beestung from his ministrations, her face shining still with little droplets from the spray of the waterfall and her own beautiful exertions as she came not once, not twice, but three times for him.
Three times.
Jackson might be known as a ladies man who had more tricks and tools at his disposal than any other werewolf in the pack. But at this very moment, he felt more deliriously excited and satisfied that he'd pleased Tamsin than had ever in his life felt with any other woman.
He waited, motionless, for her response.
Finally, her voice still unsteady from her heaving breath, Tamsin simply said, "As you wish."
The combination of both seduction and sheer need in her tone as she twisted beneath him to get up on all fours caused Jackson to truly growl as he reached down and seized her hips in his hands to steady her beneath him. She reached her hands out to clutch onto the edge of the rock shelf as she nestled her behind toward him. Soft, round, and his to hold onto. Turning her head to the side, Tamsin watched him with nothing but shaking acquiescence and desire on her face.
Roaring in satisfaction, his cock so incredibly hard it actually hurt, Jackson slipped one hand in front of her thigh to open the sweet wetness of her pussy to him. Mouth slightly open, tongue slipping out to the corner of it, Tamsin urged him on with a small nod and moan. He needed no further affirmation. With a hard stroke, he plunged himself into her beautiful, hot depths.
Crying out as he filled her, Tamsin slammed herself back against him, meeting him. The shaking, wondering gentleness with which he'd tasted her earlier was gone. Now all he felt was the deep, primal urge to claim this woman as his own. An urge matched in her eyes and her every movement.
Her long, dark hair, tangled and wet around her face, framed an expression that told him she felt as wildly out of control as needed. As he pulled back out almost all the way, she cried out a protesting "No!"
