by Amy Olle
With every thrust, tremors rippled through her thighs and groin. The exquisite tension built until the luscious slide of sensation between her legs crested with pure, explosive pleasure. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and clung to him while the waves crashed over her.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered into the side of her neck. Then, shoving deep and holding there, he roared out her name and came.
They remained joined while their labored breathing slowed, until finally Jack lifted his head and peered down into her face.
Satiated and powerless, an unguarded smile teased its way to her lips.
“Thank you.” He dropped a soft kiss on her forehead. “But next time, we do it for real.”
Chapter Five
She sputtered, “Wh-what do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong. That was amazing. You are amazing.” He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, over the spot where her clavicle had been broken. “But that wasn’t real sex.”
He left her body, and she shuddered at the sensation of loss. Rolling off her, he pushed up off the bed.
She thrashed to a sitting position. “You thought that wasn’t real sex?”
He disappeared into the bathroom a moment and then reemerged to collect his underwear from the floor at the end of the bed.
The long shaft of his manhood still plump, he tugged his boxer briefs over his hips. “That was porn sex. It looked great, it felt fucking fantastic, but it’s not real sex.”
He’d stunned her to speechlessness. She hadn’t been speechless since she was a troubled teenager craving attention.
“I-I-I don’t understand you.” With the plaintive ring in her voice, she even sounded like that troubled teenager.
His gaze clamped on her face, he moved to the edge of the bed and wrapped his hand around her ankle.
“Real sex is out of control.” His thumb traced circles around her anklebone. “It’s losing your mind and forgetting about everything that doesn’t serve the purpose of getting you off.” Lifting her leg, he sat on the bed. “It’s total surrender. To me.” He kissed the bottom of her foot. Then his hand on her knee gently eased her legs apart. “To your body.” He kissed the soft skin on the inside of her thigh. “To us.”
Positioning himself between her thighs, his glittering gaze found hers over the soft swell of her stomach. “I want to have real sex with you, Haven. The porn sex only convinced me of that. I want more. I want all of you.”
She swallowed audibly. “But, I-I-I told you, I can’t give you… all of me.”
“I don’t want your forever, sweetheart. I want your body, and I want it without conditions or qualifiers.”
Protests jammed in her throat.
“I only want your pleasure.” He dipped his head and took a tiny taste of her.
With his slow lick, a dizzying rush sloped through her. She dropped back against the pillows, opening her legs wide to accommodate his broad shoulders.
His hands slipped beneath her bottom and he lifted her. Her sensitive flesh quivered while his hot mouth tasted her with the most delicious nibbles and nudges.
Sensation flooded her and her hips began to move. He gripped her waist and his tongue coaxed a throaty moan from her. His hands moved to the inside of her thighs, where his fingers forged a path along her soft skin upwards to her center. The slide of one finger stroking inside her sent her pulse pounding at a painful gallop.
Somehow, his mouth, his touch, managed to be both gentle and possessive at once.
Her moans turned greedy and she turned her head into the pillow to muffle them while her hips rocked against him, chasing the height of ecstasy his mouth pledged.
Her world narrowed to the feel of him between her legs. The soft scrape of his stubble against her skin. The slow lick of his tongue. Her hot, wet heat.
With her orgasm, her thoughts fragmented, scattering to the far corners of her mind.
All thoughts, that was, except one.
He didn’t want real sex, whatever the hell that was.
He wanted her soul.
The mix of Haven and firelight worked to cast a spell over him. He’d never felt so relaxed, so peaceful.
So horny after sex.
The hours melted into one another, night into day and back to night, and his need for her never lessened. His want of her never slackened, but only grew sharper and more frenzied.
He straddled her legs and his hands glided over her bare back, rubbing the muscles.
Her soft groan brimmed with sweet agony and his cock jumped at the sound.
He loved her sounds. The sultry mews and husky moans. With each new squeak and sigh he coaxed from her, he wanted more. More of her body, and of her ravenous hunger. He wanted to touch every part of her. Know everything about her.
“How do you know Emily?”
Lulled by his kneading touch, she took a moment to answer. “We were college roommates.”
He loved her voice. Throaty, with a seductive rasp.
“What college did you go to?”
“Arizona.”
Using the heels of his palms, he kneaded the large muscles of her back. “What did you study?”
“Business and law.”
“Uh-oh. You didn’t tell me you’re a smart girl. I don’t think this is going to work out between us after all.”
“I dropped out before I got either degree. That’s kind of my thing. I can’t commit to seeing anything through to the end.”
He kissed her shoulder. “You’re pretty good at seeing climax through to the end.”
Her husky laugh grabbed him by the balls.
“I think Emily was the only girl at that university who was nice to me.”
His hands massaged the upper swells of her luscious, perfectly round ass. “The others were jealous.”
A derisive snort escaped her. “No. I was trailer park trash. Totally beneath them.”
Not liking her depiction, a frown pulled at his features. She misunderstood his silence.
“Don’t worry. I left the trailer park years ago.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
He worked her muscles in silence for a time.
“What were you thinking?” she finally asked.
“I was thinking how much we have in common.”
“You grew up in a trailer park?”
“I grew up in a shitty house in the shitty part of town with an ex-con for a dad.”
Rising up on her elbows, she looked at him over her shoulder. Judging the truthfulness of his words, he gathered. Then, beneath him, she rolled onto her back.
Reaching up, she brushed a lock of his hair off his forehead.
Her concern was sweet, but unnecessary. His dad had spent three years in prison before he was released and returned to their lives. Not long after that, Jack moved away to focus on his future playing hockey.
He’d escaped the taint of Daniel Nolan, and now he was nothing like his idiot, loser dad.
Jack was driven, disciplined. He’d taken a God-given talent and turned it into a lucrative career, and once he lifted the Stanley Cup above his head, he’d relish the ultimate proof that he was nothing like his piece-of-shit old man. No one could call him a loser then.
He’d have the rest of his life after hockey to work on the idiot part.
Under him, Haven gazed up at him with huge brown eyes. Naked and fully exposed to him.
His starving gaze drank up every inch of her body. He took his time, savoring the sight of her voluptuous flesh. Cataloguing every curve and dip. Her body was the most incredible he’d ever touched. Soft and feminine, lush, with ample breasts and hips. So fucking lush.
He’d grown tired of twig limbs and boy hips. Weary of floatation devices passed off as breasts. He’d been starving for something more. Someone exactly like Haven. There was nothing fake about her fleshy tits, all warm and jiggly, or the large, dusky pink areolas surrounding her nipples. Or the dark fuzz between her thighs.
The holl
ow of her neck filled with soft shadows.
His fingers went searching. “You broke your collarbone.”
“Hmm. How did you know?”
He traced the clavicle from her neck to her right shoulder. “I can see it didn’t heal evenly. What happened?”
In the firelight, her dark eyes shimmered. “I was in a car accident. The seat belt broke the bone.”
His elbows on either side of her head, he brushed a strand of her hair off her forehead. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
He dropped a kiss to the spot where the bone hadn’t fused properly.
Her fingers threaded through his hair. “It was a long time ago,” she whispered.
Lifting his head, he peered into her dark and rather delicate oval face. “You had a hard time of it, a long time ago.”
When she wriggled under him, he shifted to allow her to lift her knees. Her legs fell open around his naked hips.
His cock settled tight against her hot heat, pulling a soft groan from him. “So tell me, why don’t you do commitment?”
“Probably the same reason you don’t.” She wiggled under him.
His hand found the dip at her waist. He splayed his fingers wide and smoothed his palm up her side. “Because you’ve given, and continue to give, everything you have to your career and there’s no room in your life for anything else?”
A smile teased her wide mouth. “Okay, maybe we have different reasons.”
His thumb brushed the impossibly soft skin on the underside of her breast. “Like what?”
“Like, it’s just easier that way.”
He toyed with the hair at her temples. “What’s easier?”
She swallowed, and one shoulder lifted in a half shrug. “It’s easier not to fall in love, and if you’re not in love, it doesn’t hurt so much when they… leave.”
At the quiet vulnerability in her voice, his heart gave a little pinch.
“Sounds like a great plan,” he said. “How’s it working out for you?”
She laughed.
God, she had a great laugh.
“Right this moment, it’s working out great.”
She waggled her hips in a way that caused his hard shaft to rub tighter against her core.
Nuzzling her ear, he reached over her head and snagged a packet off the night table. Then he pushed to his knees and rolled the condom into place.
She watched him, and when her pink tongue came out to lick her bottom lip, he almost blew it, right then and there. Then she lifted her knees and showed him her heart.
Her moist curls glistened above her firm, succulent lips. His erection straining painfully, he reached for her, dipping his fingers into the pooling honey at her opening.
He forced himself to take it slow. He wanted to savor her. Linger over her decadent curves. Explore all the ways her body found pleasure. Make sure there was no room in her mind for thinking or worrying. Only feeling.
He would fuck her senseless.
If they were to have only this night plus one more together, the memories needed to last him a lifetime.
He lowered himself over her and took his time licking and tasting. He suckled the lush buds of her nipples, pebbled with her arousal. His teasing drew soft whimpers and gasps of pleasure from her, and whipped the heat and tension in him into a feverish compulsion. For more. For everything. For all of her.
His heart beat in time to the throbbing between his legs when he held her hips and pushed inside of her. A groan tore from him as her body swallowed him. He waited until her tightness could take more and then pushed further.
“Jack.” Desperation and longing filled her voice. “Please.”
He drove home.
Home.
She cried out his name and clawed at him. Her eagerness demolished his last restraint and he slid in and out of her hot heat with desperate, frenzied plunges. Her breasts bounced with his pounding thrusts, and the reckless moans in the back of her throat tightened his balls and spurred him on faster, harder.
In all his life, he’d never lived in one place long enough to grow an attachment, but gazing into her eyes while he thrust fully, finally, inside her, he found his home.
He came in a shattering torrent as he cried out. Tremors racked his body and he ground against her sensitive clit so that her body gripped his with the unmistakable spasms of her climax.
He stayed inside her afterwards, his mouth and hands resuming their exploration of the lush peaks and valleys of her body.
It was true that he hadn’t made a habit of picking up strange women in bars, or at weddings or any place else. The risks were too great. He wasn’t a saint, but neither was he a walking STD. He didn’t sleep around and he didn’t do commitment, but he sure as hell liked to fuck, and fucking Haven was turning out to be better, hotter, than he could’ve ever imagined.
Lost in her soft heat and carnal curves, he hadn’t once thought about the painkillers.
Having eaten all the food Jack had pilfered from the pub, hunger finally drove them from bed. They waited until the house was still and dark before they snuck downstairs and raided the kitchen.
Back in the bedroom, they lounged in bed, snacking on fresh fruit and an assortment of baked goods.
“Omigod, did you try the cookies?”
White teeth flashed in his dark face. “I’ve had them before. My brother made them.”
“Which brother? Don’t you have four of them?”
“Luke.”
“Emily’s hubby?” She sampled an oatmeal raisin cookie and moaned. “Lucky girl.”
Haven wanted to ask him about his brothers, what they were like and if he might, one day, travel less for work so that he could be closer to them, but it smacked too much of caring and she didn’t want to care about Jack.
Anything more pulling them together would be bad. Dangerous.
“I’m a terrible friend,” she said instead. “I haven’t seen Emily in years and not only do I miss her wedding, but then I disappear with one of her groomsman afterwards.”
He rubbed her bare foot. “Emily’s busy with her new husband. Believe me, girl talk is the last thing on her mind.”
If Luke possessed a fraction of what Jack brought to the bedroom, she could imagine that was true.
Later, while Jack showered, she wandered over to the French doors. A nearly full moon illuminated the breathtaking landscape and the vast, undulating waters of Lake Michigan. It reminded her of the place where she’d grown up, on the other side of this same lake that looked like a sea.
She hadn’t been home in a couple of years, which was the way she liked it. However, she did miss the smell of the freshwater sea and the crisp air near the lake. She’d tried to replace her love of the water by living near the ocean, but it wasn’t the same, and not just because of the saltwater and sharks.
Where she’d grown up, on the sunrise coast, she’d often gazed out at the majestic lake and wondered what lay beyond the horizon. When her family fell apart, that longing intensified. She’d never understood the odd way her heart longed to know what lay across the sea.
The bathroom door opened and Jack emerged on a cloud of steam, a white towel wrapped around his lean waist.
That is, she’d never understood her heart’s longing until now.
Was it possible, all along, that she’d craved this moment, on this little island, with this man?
He moved to stand behind her, pressing the length of his large body against hers. She leaned back, sinking into his solid warmth. Neither spoke for a long time, only watched the whitecaps rise and plunge toward shore under the moonlit sky.
With one fluid motion, he dragged the chaise lounge around to face the window so they could sit and watch the view. He sat, and she nestled her bottom between his powerful thighs, reclining against his broad chest.
When his arms came around her, his hand brushed the skin where her robe gaped.
She felt his arousal throb near her backside, and a luscious ri
pple of need sloped through her. Her hands moved to his thighs, pushing the towel away so she could touch his warm skin.
His hand slipped beneath her robe and covered her breast, his calloused palm rubbing over her beaded nipple. The electricity from his touch arced downward to arouse an acute aching between her legs.
She laid her head on his shoulder as his hand roamed down her body. Her knees fell apart. His mouth near her ear, his short rapid breathing fed her pleasure as his hand pushed through her curls to locate the heart of her. A moan rose in her throat with the first slow, leisurely lick of his fingers along her slit.
Caught deliciously between his hand and his body, she swiveled her hips, chasing after the delicious tingles. Helpless to his touch, she clutched his thighs and pumped her hips.
Her muscles clenched while, inexplicably, emotion clogged in the back of her throat.
“Jack.” The ragged whisper wrenched from her.
“What is it, baby?” His deep baritone shivered through her.
She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut when the orgasm crashed over her. There were no words beyond that.
Just Jack.
The only word she’d ever known. The only word she would ever speak again.
That was it.
Just… Jack.
Chapter Six
The soft ringing tugged her from deep slumber. She blinked open her eyes.
Darkness engulfed her, and for a moment, she forgot where she was—until she felt the solid body beside her.
Jack.
Another jingle disturbed the stark quiet in their room and she recognized her cell phone’s ringtone. Her heart kicked against her breastbone while she fumbled for the phone on the nightstand. She tipped the device and squinted against the harsh glare of its light.
Her heart stuttered when she read her stepmother’s name on the display screen.
Instinct screamed at her to decline the call even as her brain registered the time on the phone’s digital clock—5:22 a.m. A nauseating knot of terror wrenched her stomach.
Beside her, Jack stirred. She flipped back the covers and slipped from the bed.
