She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Put that way…”
When had he got so close? She shivered as she felt the radiant warmth of his body heat. She couldn’t tell if he was wearing cologne or after shave, only that he smelled spicy warm and delicious.
Jesse didn’t know who kissed who, this time, only that they came together with a soft sound which might have been a mutual moan of pleasure. Aran’s hands tangled in her hair, then held her head as he drove his tongue into her mouth.
Jesse realized she had pushed her hands under his jacket only when she felt pliant warmth under her fingers, and soft shirting. His muscle played under her hands as he plundered her mouth.
He tasted the way he smelled.
His mouth released hers only after she had no breath left and she had to prop herself against him. Her legs were shaky.
Aran didn’t let her go. His lips brushed her cheekbones, as he stroked her back. “For eight days, I’ve thought of little else but coming back here and doing this…” He slid a hand beneath her teeshirt and rested his hand against her flesh. “Soft. Always softer than I think it will be.” He kissed her again.
Jesse tried to remember all the reasons she shouldn’t be doing this and couldn’t think of a damn thing. Then she couldn’t think at all. She stopped trying to control anything and just opened herself up to the delight of being wanted and being held and being touched.
Aran lifted his head and studied her. “You can say stop, Jesse.” His voice was hoarse. “Say stop, if you want to. But say it now, because I plan to…” He swallowed. “It has been a very long eight days,” he finished, his voice dropping even lower. The heat in his eyes made Jesse shiver.
Yet he didn’t move, even though she could feel him throbbing against her. His control was formidable. Admirable. He wouldn’t try to convince her physically, the way other men might have. He just held her loosely, so she could step out of his arms if she wanted to.
Jesse swallowed. “I didn’t write a single word of the story, while you were gone.”
Aran pushed her hair over her shoulder. Tucked it behind her ear.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she finished and reached up to kiss him.
Aran wrapped his arms around her and picked her up off her feet and carried her backward. This time, when her thighs connected with the table, he bore her back, so she was laid upon it.
Aran kissed her—a hard, brief touch. Then he stripped her jeans with three quick movements, taking her panties with them and pulling her socks from her feet at the same time.
He spread her knees, his gaze upon her pussy. The front of his trousers was as congested as his jeans had been. He unfastened the belt and pulled it away, then lowered the fly. His hand shook.
His gaze met hers, as he lifted her knees. “First, I have to…”
He didn’t have to finish. She knew exactly what he meant. She clawed at the table as his cock pressed up against her sopping cleft, then rammed into her. His fingers dug into her thighs and he groaned. “So good…”
Jesse could hardly draw a proper breath. The feel of him inside her was better than she had imagined it might be. Her entire body seemed to gather around him, and the shivers rippled outward from that junction. Her clit throbbed.
“More,” she said, her voice rough. “Harder.”
Aran withdrew and rammed back into her, as hard as she had wanted. “God, I’m…” His jaw worked. He shook his head and began to thrust in deep, heavy movements, making the table creak.
Jesse’s hearing shut down, as the waves of pleasure built. She closed her eyes, her breath shortening to little pants.
Aran groaned and came in little thrusts, his pelvis hard up against her. He gave a shuddering sigh, one hand propping him upon the table.
Jesse swallowed. Every nerve ending in her body was fizzing and splitting like live wires in water. She couldn’t control her breathing. Her pussy clamped around him in convulsive waves.
Aran lifted himself off his hand. “Now I can do this properly.” He got a hand under her shoulder. “Come here.”
He lifted her upper body, even though he was still inside her. The pure muscle needed to do that didn’t seem to tax him. He stripped her teeshirt from her and gave a soft sound of pleasure. “Do you have any idea how much it teases a man, once he’s figured out you’re not wearing a bra?”
She could barely make sense of the question and certainly didn’t have the capacity to answer him…but she didn’t need to, for Aran dipped his head and drew her nipple into his mouth, scattering all further thoughts to the four winds. She cried out, her head rolling back, as he feasted on her breasts, stroking them with his tongue, scraping them with his teeth, and drawing out the other nipple with his fingers.
Jesse writhed on the table, barely coherent. Her climax was building, made even better because he was still inside her.
Then he lowered her back to the table and claimed one breast with his hand. The other trailed over her quivering belly and slipped between her flesh to stroke her clit.
Jesse cried out, the pleasure almost too intense. “Oh dear god…!” she choked out.
“Come for me, Jesse,” Aran coaxed, his stroking sending shooting spasms of excitement through her. “Let me feel it. Make me come just from you coming.”
Her breath hitched and hitched again, then she came with a deep scream that tore at her throat and her eyes. Everything in her body clamped down, except her clit, which pulsed in waves of endless pleasure that seemed to last for a year.
When she could see properly once more, she found that Aran was watching her, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
She wanted to kiss that corner. More.
“Better?” he asked her.
Jesse sighed. An absurd urge to giggle struck her, but she held it back.
Aran withdrew from her then scooped her up from the table. She realized with a jolt that he was still fully dressed, while she was naked.
“Bedroom,” Aran said urgently.
She pointed.
Chapter Ten
Aran lowered her to the coverlet and stripped his clothes with hurried movements, revealing a body that was as powerful as she had suspected from her far-distant glimpses of him in the lonely cove on Cape Naturaliste. He climbed onto the bed, kissed her and drew her up against him. “Now, where was I…?”
He played with her, explored and drew from her reactions she hadn’t thought herself capable of. That included climaxing with him, merely from the stroking of his cock inside her. As she shuddered and moaned, Aran held her, his own body quivering, then kissed her gently. “Your expression is…odd,” he said.
“I…it’s just…I don’t usually come, like this.” She could feel her cheeks heating.
Aran lifted a brow. “You will in future.” Then he turned her onto her belly and straddled her. He stroked her back and shoulders while she tried to encompass exactly what his comment meant.
He moved back down her body, making her squirm and sigh, until his fingers slipped between her buttocks and into her pussy, stroking and delving.
She moaned, her eyes closing.
Aran lifted her onto her knees, and she fully expected him to slide back into her, but he didn’t, not at first. He kept teasing and stroking, hard and fast, or soft and slow. Or he would slide down to stroke her clit and make her hips jerk and Jesse to give a shuddering gasp.
When his cock did finally push into her, Jesse pressed backwards, more than ready. His hand claimed one buttock as he thrust. He pressed his thumb against her ass, and the muscle and nerves there gave out a pang of pleasure.
Shockingly, Jesse climaxed, shuddering and gripping the bedcover in a hard fist.
“I’ll have you come a second time before I’m finished here,” Aran promised her. His hand slid under her hip and nudged her clit, which pulsed in response. She did come a second time, her throat straining and her heart galloping. Aran gripped her hips and slammed into her, his breath working
hard as he built to his own climax, one that made him groan deeply.
Then he lowered her onto her side with him wrapped around her back, and they lay together, breathing hard. The heat between them was enormous.
Outside the window, she heard the grind and crunch of the weekly garbage trunk collecting garbage from the rows of trashcans lined up along the street. It was Wednesday and it was still only mid-morning.
Wow.
“Such a romantic sound,” Aran murmured, as the garbage men yelled at each other and clanged the empty cans.
Jesse giggled and clamped down on it so only a small sound escaped her. “The recycle truck is even louder,” she warned. She had got used to the weekly din.
They listened for only a few second more, then Aran shook his head—she could tell he had by the movement of his body against her back. He eased himself away from her and got to his knees. “Come here.” He hauled her up against him. “Let’s go somewhere much quieter.” He put his arm around her.
Alarmed, Jesse grasped his shoulders. “Like this? From here?”
“Relax, Jesse.” His gaze met hers. “I know what I’m doing.”
She felt him…she didn’t know what to call it. Flex? Kick upward? Jerk?
As her astonishment built that someone could time jump from their knees, and dared to jump buck naked, to boot, the black nothingness of time swiped across her…
…and was gone.
And she was still on her knees, on softness that felt cool.
Aran held her as he always did, watching her to see that she had her bearings before letting her go.
Only he didn’t let her go, this time. The hand he had around her back smoothed itself against her flesh. He spread his fingers, so that the tips brushed against her ass, making her quiver.
And all the while he watched her with his black gaze, the heat building in his eyes.
“Where the hell are we?” she whispered, all the volume she could manage at the moment, because her heart was galloping—and not all from the unexpected jump.
“My bedroom, in the Cotswold,” he breathed. “That’s genuine goose down under your knees.” He kissed her, stealing the little breath she had and making her heart work even harder.
They stayed on the bed until the dappled light coming through the lace curtain painted extended filigree shadows on the old floorboards beside the bed, then slid up onto the bed itself, shading them in mottled light.
The air in the room wasn’t perfectly warm, for the house was old and the chill of December slipped through cracks. Jesse barely minded the touch of cool fingers upon her heated skin, until she grew still with her head upon Aran’s shoulder.
He drew up the eiderdown over both of them and kissed her temple. The silence built.
And in that silence, Jesse could feel the questions building in her gut and her heart.
What was this they were doing? Was it just sex? Just venting a post-travelling high?
Guilt tried to chide her for giving into impulse, to obeying her gut instead of good sense. She shoved it away. The deed was done. Now she could actually think properly, she should see what damage she could undo.
But it was far too comfortable, lying this way. She’d never found a man’s shoulder so accommodating before.
Aran lifted a lock of her hair and twirled it in his fingers. “I like your hair longer, like you have it now,” he told her. “All the curl is coming in on the ends.”
“Another inch or two and it will be full ringlets,” she admitted. “That’s why I kept it short, most of the time.”
The peace descended once more. Running water chuckled softly, the sound faint through the window. She could smell green growing things.
Now was the time to speak, she realized. But she didn’t want this peace to end just yet.
Aran stirred. Cleared his throat.
She knew that throat clearing from other times. Other men. The clearing of the throat was followed by the confession.
This was nice but… But I’m married. But I’ve got a fiancé back home. But I’m shipping out tomorrow. But I’m heading back Stateside tomorrow. But it was just this once time. But we shouldn’t do this again. But it’s against regs, right? But…but…but…
Jesse opened her mouth to head off whatever Aran was about to say, even before she realized what she was trying to do. “Stinky’s real name was Federigo Aiolfi.”
Aran hesitated. “That’s not a name I’ve heard from that time,” he said finally.
Jesse sat up. “He was…is, I suppose, as far as we’re concerned….he’s with the Barbieri family.”
Aran sat up…sort of. He put one of the big pillows against the headboard and propped himself up against it, so that he was inclined, rather than sitting. “Giorgino Barbieri.”
“That’s a name you have heard, then,” Jesse concluded.
“Small time gang, but vicious. They didn’t last beyond the First World War.”
That matched what she had read. “They controlled most of Canal Street,” she added. “Aiolfi was muscle, pure and simple.”
“That fits with the impression he leaves behind,” Aran said. His shoulders shifted. A small shrug. His gaze met hers.
Jesse shivered and pulled the eiderdown up around her once more.
“What is it you’re not saying?” Aran coaxed.
She frowned. “I kept wanting to reach for my Glock.”
“The Glock you don’t have on you anymore.”
Jesse threaded her fingers together. “For years you’ve said I should learn to survive without a gun, but I don’t think it properly sank home until Stinky came up on us the way he did, and I didn’t have so much as a parasol to hit him with.”
“Seems to me you did just fine with what you had.”
She shook her head. “I froze. Just for a moment. I couldn’t get my brain to unlock. I couldn’t think beyond the panic of not having my weapons on me.”
“You had fifteen years of Navy discipline drilled into you,” Aran pointed out. “That’s a lot of old habits you’re carrying around.”
“But I’m not in the Marines anymore,” Jesse countered. “I have to…I don’t know…unlearn all that stuff.” She made herself meet his gaze. “Teach me how you do it.”
Aran stared at her.
Through her.
He wasn’t smiling, either.
Jesse swallowed. “I guess that’s a no, then…” Her heart thudded unhappily. “Forget I asked,” she added quickly, sitting up. She glanced around the oddly shaped room with the sloping ceiling. What the hell could she wear? Her jeans were back in Arlington.
His hand rested against the back of her shoulder, hot and big. “No, I’ll teach you,” Aran said softly.
Jesse didn’t have the guts to look at him and maybe see impatience or irritation in his gaze. “It’s just…I can’t just knuckle everything out on the fly.”
His lips touched the skin where his fingers had just been. “But, you white knuckle everything. It works for you.”
“I don’t want it to.” She heard the word repeat in her mind. “Yeah, I don’t want that anymore,” she added to herself.
Aran didn’t answer.
The tension in her gut grew. “Do you have a shirt, or a sweater I can wear?” Her tone was awkward.
She felt the bed move. Aran padded over to a standalone closet, one of the antique claw-footed wooden kind. If they had been in France, it would be called an armoire. Here, it was just an ordinary wardrobe.
Jesse’s gaze drew to Aran’s ass as he opened the closet and reached inside. He withdrew a dark green satin robe and dropped it onto the bed in front of her.
“What, you have guest robes?”
“It’s mine,” Aran told her, as he reached back into the closet and pulled out a pair of jeans and the sweater she had asked for. He thrust his long legs into them. “Let me guess,” he added. “You’re starving.”
“Yes!” She picked up the robe, sorted out the arms and put it on. The scent wh
ich was uniquely Aran’s rose from the silky fabric. The sleeves hung beyond her fingertips, so she rolled them up.
“Coffee, first, though, right?” He pulled the sweater down over his jeans and looked at her.
Jesse pulled the robe in around her, as her throat contracted at the thought of fresh, hot coffee. “That would be good.” It would be more than good, but the atmosphere had shifted and changed in the last few minutes and she was wary.
Aran nodded. “Coffee and a meal. Let me see what I can scare up.”
“Can I use your bathroom?”
“Of course. It’s the other room, up here.” He gave her a brief smile and left.
Jesse let out a shuddering sigh. She had messed this up, somehow. It had to be her fault his mood had abruptly altered.
She just wasn’t used to the afterward part of sex. Who was she trying to kid? There had never been an afterward. Not for her.
And why the hell was she worrying about afterward, now? This was just hormones raging, wasn’t it?
She stepped out of the bedroom and found herself on a tiny landing, at the top of a long, steep flight of stairs with a worn carpet running down the center of them. There was only one other door on the landing, at a ninety-degree angle to the bedroom door.
Jesse moved into the bathroom. It was small but had been updated sometime in the last few years, so the fittings were new and efficient. The shower was the walk-in kind, that she suspected had replaced what had once been a bathtub with a shower head and curtain.
She showered and found the water was hot and the pressure was good. The house was a mixture of old and new. It creaked with age, but daily necessities had been modernized. The interior looked old and worn, and the view through the high window in the shower unit was timeless and classic. Slow moving water in a narrow river, with high grasses and trees, and just from the far corner of the window she could glimpse the flower-hung footbridge over the tributary.
Kiss Across Chaos Page 12
