by Nicole Helm
“She’s not.” Leah looked beyond him because his intense glare was doing things it should not be doing to parts that had no business being involved in this conversation.
“Then tell me.” He crossed to her, eyes intent on hers so she couldn’t keep looking away. Her heart raced all over again. His expression was so serious, so...frowny, not at all sexually charged and yet things south of the border didn’t seem to pick up on that.
He put his hand at the center of her chest. His palm right over where the scar, faded and white, all but pulsed beneath the fabric of her shirt and the warmth of his hand. “Tell me what I don’t know.”
“I have a scar.” She closed her eyes because it felt as though she was opening Pandora’s box. Even if she didn’t tell him everything, which she wasn’t going to, it felt like letting out evil spirits that would ruin her. But the words tumbled out, the truth. The little sliver of possibility that could change everything.
And she wasn’t even all that upset about it, because his hand was on her and he was looking at her and it was all very...guhhh.
His brows drew together. “Does that have to do with the surgery you were talking about? The defect? It’s all connected, isn’t it?”
She nodded despite the initial instinct to deny, to lie. She couldn’t force those words out. The truth felt like an entity or inevitability she couldn’t fight. And his hand was undermining any effort for self-preservation. His hand felt like salvation.
Oh, she was such an idiot when it came to him.
“That means...if you’re covering up... The defect, the surgery... That means it was your heart.”
She nodded again because, well, an argument would be pointless now. There weren’t a whole lot of scars she could have in this particular spot that could be chalked up to a defect.
So, he was putting it all together, she couldn’t deny it, and everything would fall apart. And for what? This idiotic chance to have her family back that wasn’t going remotely the way she’d wanted.
“Why would you hide that?”
“Why do you think?” she snapped, not at all pleasantly. But it was an unfair snap because she certainly wasn’t angry at him; she was pissed at herself.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“I’ve spent my whole life being...poked and prodded and fussed over. Worried over. ‘Don’t do that, Leah. It’s too strenuous.’ Well, I wanted a life without that, so I built one where it didn’t matter.” Because she was feeling defiant along with her anger, she fixed him with a glare. “And it doesn’t fucking matter.”
“You said you were better. The surgery fixed that.”
“It did and I am, but that doesn’t stop people from perceiving me as weak because of it.”
Finally, finally, his hand left her chest, because that was really getting distracting, but instead of staying away or giving her space, he stepped in. Crowding her. She wanted to hate his apparent new habit.
But instead what she really wanted was the body-pressing, brain-killing kiss from this afternoon.
Wrong, wrong, wr—
His hands cupped her face—God knew why. He wasn’t reacting at all like she’d thought he would in the few times she’d allowed herself to consider this. The truth.
Well, part of the truth. Heart surgery and heart transplants were two different things, but she wasn’t about to concede the whole thing. Let him think she’d had her heart fixed, not replaced.
“I’m not sure I could ever think you were weak, Leah.”
Oh, oh, hell, that was smooth. But she needed to put a stop to this. To him and them and something. Because thinking was a thing she wasn’t doing and she needed to.
“Look.” She put her hands over his in an attempt to remove them, but he wouldn’t budge and in the end her hands just rested there, on his wrists.
Maybe he didn’t have all the details, but he wasn’t looking at her as if she might break. He wasn’t demanding to know the details of her health. He wasn’t saying she needed someone looking after her otherwise she’d make bad decisions and ruin herself. He was just looking at her. Right in the eye. As if he was searching for something on her face.
“I’ve never done anything wrong when I feel this way.” His voice was quiet, soft, but she recognized an undercurrent there. She’d felt that undercurrent. A confused kind of desperation to make sense of things.
She felt it now.
“Maybe I’ve had too much to drink on occasion when I’m particularly pathetic. But I don’t seek out bad things when I feel like no one sees me or whatever this is. I pour myself into work. Into what I can control.”
“I...”
“Your way...I want to do it your way. Because that sounds like it would feel...good. I would like to feel good. What about you?”
“Yes.” Oh, she hadn’t really meant to say that. What she’d meant to say was “Maybe you should go home.” Or “How about a drink?” Or “Go to bed, Jacob.”
Instead, his mouth was fused to hers, her arms around him and her back pressed to the wall. And she didn’t want to stop it, or pull back, or to find her senses, or to be interrupted.
No, this time she wanted everything, and if there was a way to get it, well, why the hell not?
* * *
IT WAS STRANGE, but everything seemed to right itself with Leah’s mouth on his, her hands hitching up the back of his sweater.
He stepped back to remove the bulky garment.
“Are you stopping— Oh.”
Jacob grinned, pulling the sweater over his head and dropping it on the floor. It was impossible to not feel like grinning when she was watching him unbutton the shirt underneath with avid interest. When he could see the peaks of her nipples against the fabric of her shirt. “Not stopping.” He dropped the button-down shirt, then nodded at her. “Your turn.”
She hesitated and he belatedly remembered what had even brought them to this point. Her and her high collared shirts. Her scar. Her surgery.
He didn’t like how...distant it all made him feel. As if he was standing shirtless in front of a stranger. But she said he knew her, so he was going to believe he did. Because he needed to. He needed to believe he wasn’t a totally self-absorbed asshole.
Before he could suggest losing her sweatpants instead, she tugged the shirt up and over her head, revealing a long torso of fair skin, interrupted by a white scar between her bare breasts.
He wanted to press his hand to it. Travel the length of the whitish line from top to bottom. He wanted to ask a million questions, but she was stiff, tense, and it was a secret she’d painstakingly kept for five years. So doing any of those things was off the table. He had to pretend as if it wasn’t there, because that was what she wanted.
Something weird and uncomfortably heavy settled in his chest. That disconnect between being labeled selfish and careless and yet always feeling as though he was doing what someone else wanted.
Before he could work on pushing those thoughts away himself, Leah eradicated the small distance between them and put her hand to his belt.
“Now pants,” she said firmly.
“Be my guest.”
She didn’t lower her gaze as she undid his belt, but kept it steady on his face. He groaned when she unzipped his pants because she took her sweet time lowering the zipper, giving a little tug, so the jeans lowered from hip to leg to floor. He stepped out of them, toward her, pushing her back up against the wall.
He liked her there, with nowhere to go, feeling as if he had some kind of power or control even though this was completely beyond both.
He kissed her, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth. She shuddered a breath against his mouth, any of the tension that had been in her shoulders completely gone.
He wouldn’t think about what it said about him, but there was some secret
thrill in making Leah, practical, kick-ass Leah, all breathy and pliant.
She pressed her hands down his back, drawing her short nails lightly against the skin, dipping into his boxers until she cupped his ass. And then she squeezed. Hard.
He laughed and then she did, too.
“Sorry. You have no idea how long and how badly I’ve wanted to do that.”
“Tell me. In great detail.”
“You know, we have a job with a lot of bending over and scooting into small places and...well, your butt is in my face a lot.”
“Yeah, well, so is Henry’s. Don’t tell me you’re fantasizing about his ass, too.”
“Oh, ew.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” she said, squeezing his butt again, although not nearly as hard. “I am not, and never will be, your girl. I am my own person.”
“Leah.” He slid his fingers under the waistband of her sweats, tracing her waist around to her back, her ass, palming the curve as he inched the sweatpants and her underwear down. He went with them, kissing thigh, knee, calf as he lowered the sweatpants to the floor. And then looked up at her. “I am very aware of that fact.”
She didn’t say anything to that, just watched heavy-lidded as he kissed his way back up. Ankle. Kneecap. Hip. Belly button. And then, because regardless of her scar because he couldn’t ignore them, he kissed each breast, then eased his tongue around each nipple, repeating both gestures until her head fell back against the wall with a thunk.
“We might want to move this to the bed.”
“Yeah, yes, let’s do that.”
He chuckled to himself, then stopped abruptly halfway there, realization dawning on him like a bucket of cold water. “Oh, shit, do you have condoms?”
“What? You were the one...” She shook her head, scrambling out of his grasp. “Hold on. I think so.” She stalked to the bathroom, apparently completely at ease with being naked.
“You think so?” He settled onto her bed as she rummaged around in her bathroom.
“It’s been a while.”
“How much of a while?” He lounged on her bed, comfortable. Happy. That oppressive weight was gone. Whatever madness it was, he was damn well going to enjoy it.
She returned to view, a condom—thank the good Lord—in hand. “Do you want to talk about the last guy I had sex with or do you want to be the last guy I had sex with?”
“Option B please.” He tossed the pillows and blankets she’d stacked between them last night at the end of the bed. “Goodbye Walls of Jericho.”
“You and that movie,” she grumbled. She held the packet under the weak light of an old lamp.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking the expiration date.”
“That long, huh?”
“It can be longer.” She fixed him with a glare that made him laugh, because for all the ways this was new, uncharted territory, she was still Leah, and he was still him.
“Get over here.”
“Let me make a second thing perfectly clear. I do not take orders.”
Jacob grinned. “What if I took that as a sexual challenge?”
She pressed her lips together but her mouth quirked upward. “You can try. But I tend to be rather contrary.”
“Okay. Then stay over there. Way over there. And don’t you dare come near me.” He pushed his boxers off, folding his arms behind his head.
“You are awfully full of yourself, McKnight.” She held the condom up between two fingers. “I bet I could have you on your knees in five seconds.”
“Undoubtedly. My knees would prefer the bed, though.”
She walked over, no bones about making it slow. But he liked watching her. The way she moved, the way she tried not to smile. The round slope of her hips and the little birthmark on her thigh.
The only difficulty was keeping his eyes off her breasts so she never got the impression he was staring at her scar. He had a feeling that would end this pretty darn quick, and he wasn’t doing anything to jeopardize this chance.
Maybe he’d veiled it as a bad thing to deal with crappy feelings, but right now it felt more like a chance. A starting point. A maybe. And he damn well was going to grab that with both hands. Figuratively. And a little literally as he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her onto the bed, leveraging himself over her in a pretty smooth move, if he did say so himself.
She pressed her palm to his cheek, rubbed. “FYI, I liked your beard. Bring it back, please.”
“Well, I can’t summon it this minute, but if you have patience, your wish is my command.”
Her hand covered his dick, stroking lightly. “Just how patient do I have to be?”
Holy hell. He had to clear his throat to speak. “Well, let’s find out.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LEAH COULDN’T BELIEVE that she was doing this. Or that it was easy. Or...anything. But she was giddy with that disbelief. Giddy with the freedom to do whatever the hell she wanted. It was an old giddiness, one she’d spent a lot of time eradicating from her life.
With her hand on Jacob’s length, it was hard to care. No, not hard. Impossible. She wanted this with every last breath. She wasn’t big on feeling desperate, but this kind of desperation was so mixed up with longing and desire, she couldn’t even dislike it.
He didn’t look at her scar. He didn’t get weirded out by it or feel the need to mention it or ask her if she was up for anything. He’d just...taken the news and moved on.
There was seriously nothing sexier than that.
So, she squeezed, causing Jacob to hiss out a breath. Yeah, this wasn’t desperation; it was power. And she was going to take all the power she could get.
She stroked and watched him as he watched her hand. Oh, man, that was hot. Then his hand grazed across her belly and lower, cupping her, sliding a finger inside.
She stopped watching, because she couldn’t keep her eyes open as he slid his finger in and out, drawing her desire to a sharper and sharper point. Until she couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed the condom she’d dropped on the mattress and tore it open.
This might be stupid, but she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t do fear anymore. So she held his gaze as she rolled the condom on, as she guided him to her entrance. Her hands were steady even if her breathing was a little ragged. With one arm, he leveraged himself, the other gripping her hip as he slowly slid inside.
It had been a while. A long while since she’d felt this. The intimate connection of body to body. And of course, this was a man she knew, better than just about any man in the world, and that made it different. More important or something.
He kissed her collarbone, her jaw, nuzzled into her neck before withdrawing and slowly thrusting again.
Leah arched to meet it, linking her arms around his neck. He’d already brought her close with his hand, so this wouldn’t take long for her. Part of her wanted to hurry, but her body couldn’t get that message to her brain or to Jacob, because she accepted each languid thrust, each aching pull of wanting more.
It wasn’t until the tempo of everything picked up that he pushed deeper, harder, and she was so close she dug her fingertips into his shoulders, trying to take some of the power, set some of the pace.
He didn’t fight her. Instead, they found some common ground. Some equal frequency. His hand, rough palm, long fingers slid up her torso, a heavy caress, pressured as he palmed her breast.
It was a possessive gesture, something she wouldn’t have considered in her list of sexy, take-me-over-the-edge attributes, but apparently Jacob broke a lot of the molds she’d set for herself because the orgasm washed over her as she arched to meet it, him.
He pressed his forehead to her shoulder, each movement inside of her becoming more frenetic, u
ntil he let out a low groan and pushed deep one last time.
It wasn’t her experience to hold on after the deed was done, but she couldn’t unwind her arms from his neck, and his one hand around her waist didn’t loosen. They lay there, basking in the last dregs of the orgasm, until he kissed her, eyes wide-open, watching her.
Which did something weird to her heart. Weird and not at all welcome, because now that the ill-advised sex was over, the consequences would have to be dealt with.
Stupid consequences.
“So.” He cleared his throat, rolling onto his side. “Merry Christmas.”
The laugh bubbled up so unexpectedly, she had to cover her mouth to keep it from being too loud. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that when you’re naked. It seems really wrong.”
He grinned, then kissed her again, this time just a quick peck. “Hold on—I’ll think of something more appropriate to say.” He pushed off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom for a few seconds.
Leah took a deep breath, staring at the ceiling, the uncomfortable thought that she could get used to all of this making her stomach cramp.
Nothing to get used to, Idiot McGee.
She shook her head and got out of bed, finding her underwear and sweats and pulling them on quickly. Jacob stepped out of the bathroom as she picked her shirt off the floor.
So now she’d seen him naked. And Jacob naked rivaled every fantasy she’d ever allowed herself to have, which wasn’t many. Still, he was all taut muscle and he even had the tiniest hint of those ridiculous hip dip things that, yes, very much made a girl go dumb because she was ready to drop her pants all over again.
Instead, she held her shirt to her chest, covering up her scar. The scar he hadn’t touched, hadn’t stared at or considered. He’d made it feel as if it was nothing.
Which made her emotional because that was all she’d ever wanted.
“So, um, that was fun.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “That’s one word for it.” He sauntered, seemingly not at all self-conscious, to where his duffel bag sat in a corner. Before they’d actually done everything, she hadn’t felt at all weird being naked in front of him. Hard to feel insecure when the guy was all but a cartoon character with a tongue hanging out, but now...
