“Chilled already, Kori?” JT asked, his brows knit with concern.
“Just a little. The heat from the coffee is wearing off, I guess.”
“I could keep you warm.”
Her head swiveled slowly toward the rear seat; she met his eyes and quirked a brow. “Uh-huh.”
His gaze didn’t flicker. “Not like that. I mean we should pool our body heat to keep warm, that’s all.”
The disbelieving eyebrow relaxed a fraction but stayed high enough to vouch for her suspicions. “This isn’t Alaska, JT, and we’re not going to freeze to death out here. I’ll be fine right where I am.” Despite her brave words, another violent shiver rippled up her back and quaked her shoulders.
“Stubborn woman,” he growled. “You can get away with disregarding yourself some of the time but not when I’m right here to put a stop to it. Now get your ass back here!”
She looked down and quietly considered her pale, nearly numb hands, then with surprising abruptness climbed between the front bucket seats and plopped down in the narrow wedge of seat next to him.
JT was not one to issue orders and was rather startled by her quiet acquiescence. Maybe a touch of Neanderthal is what she needs to hear every once in a while. I’ll have to remember that. He turned a bit and raised his arm so she could rest against his chest. Kori closed her eyes and settled her neck into the hollow of his shoulder, suppressing another shudder as she nestled into his warmth.
JT laid his cheek on the top her head, pulling in the scent that was as familiar as a favorite memory and so uniquely Kori. He turned his head just a bit, needing to feel some soft part of her under his lips; the brief kiss in the middle of the mall had nearly broken him. His desires were under control once again, but the need to touch her always strummed just below the surface and for now, the silkiness of her hair would have to do.
His warm breath stirred across her scalp. A chill coursed up her back and this time Kori was helpless to stop the tremble that followed. Her arms dimpled with a rash of gooseflesh.
JT smiled into her hair, enjoying the closeness and the obvious effects it had on her, try as she did to hide them. He slid his hand over her thigh to cover her cold fingers as they fidgeted in her lap. “Don’t get anxious, Kori. I said this was just for warmth and I meant it.”
And I did mean it. No, not ‘did.’ DO. Present tense, Blackwood. JT planted a square kick on the lovesick, horny little devil who was surfacing far too often recently. You’d better STILL mean it, JT, or until she’s yours alone she may not trust you anymore. Another voice piped in that if the trust was lost she may not ever be his, but he gave that one a swift boot as well.
Her fingers continued to twist under JT’s comparably warmer palm. “What would I have to be nervous about? I trust you as much as I trust myself, JT. I’m just trying to get some feeling back into my fingers. They’re so cold they went numb.”
“Here,” JT said, taking his hand from over hers and wedging it in the tight space where their thighs ran alongside one other. “Tuck your hands down here, under your legs.”
Kori turned her head a bit, cracking open her eyes and raising a brow at him.
“This is not some bondage thing to have you at my whim. It’s warmer there.”
She slid one hand between the back of the seat and her thigh, leaving the other in her lap.
“Christ, woman! I thought you said you trusted me.” As much as you trust yourself, you said. And maybe therein lies the problem.
“I do,” she said quietly.
“Then here,” he grumbled, taking her remaining hand and snugging it into the thin crack where their legs met. “I’ll keep my hand right here, completely visible and aboveboard.” He placed his hand in his lap. Kori let her eyes drift closed again and they sat in silence for a long moment.
Without warning, she pulled out both of her hands to rest on her thighs and gave a small shudder.
“Something wrong, love?”
“My hands are still frozen, the seat fabric’s like ice, and now I’ve got cold patches on my legs where my fingers were. I wish I’d thought to bring some gloves.”
He credited her for sounding resigned and matter-of-fact when she could easily have been whiny or even grumpy. “Well, minus that, there’s really only one other thing I can think of to do, Kori.” Before she could ask what that might be, JT plucked up the hand nearest the seat back and began to knead her fingers gently, his callused fingertips rasping lightly over her skin.
JT’s fingertips circled their way down to her palm and back up again, his touch firm yet somehow still tender. JT’s smile dimpled wider as he felt her sag into his chest. That’s it, sweetheart. Just relax and lean into me. God, I love having you here, feeling you against me and listening to you breathe…
She let out a soft cry and winced as his strong fingers worked one of her knuckles. JT eased the pressure but continued to rub. His brow was troubled as the smile slid away.
“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“I’m alright,” she said softly. “The cold’s just settling into these weary old bones.”
JT answered with a small chuckle then shifted his hold on her hand and tugged her arm slowly upward, ready to stop at her first sign of reluctance. Her arm remained limp and trusting; he drew it higher until her fingers, held loosely in his, were almost touching his lips. She was motionless, leaning into his body, her breathing slow and even. If not for their circumstances, he’d have thought she drifted off to sleep.
He wondered what she was thinking. Hoping she wasn’t blocking him, he reached out his unpracticed awareness to gently brush her mind. He encountered the warmth of her emotions but no concrete thoughts.
JT pursed his lips and breathed softly over the curving knuckles mere millimeters away. Her eyes flew open and, though he couldn’t see her expression, he knew he’d just shot a spark through her serenity; he felt it arc acutely through his own being.
He exhaled over the chilled skin again; a tiny sound escaped her throat before her breathing stilled altogether.
“Shh, sweetheart,” he soothed. “It’s alright. I only want to warm your cold hands.” Forget how it’s heating up both of you in the process, you randy old sot, and concentrate on the task at hand. Or rather, in hand. His murmured words brought his lips into contact with her skin and he felt another jolt flash from her into himself. It wasn’t the result he’d been trying for but her reaction pleased him nonetheless and a tiny smile played the corners of his mouth.
The ache from their earlier kiss returned and he let it, tired of hiding and quashing his desires. I won’t pursue a thing, but I won’t stop it either. Whatever happens, happens.
JT moved her knuckles slowly over his lips, exhaling another heated breath. Her hand started to tremble and she inhaled with a sharp gasp as her breathing resumed a little more rapidly than it had been just a moment earlier.
It’s not fair what he does to me. He seduces without doing anything at all. Christ, all the man has to do is breathe near me and I’m pudding.
JT heard this thought clearly; she’d done nothing to block it. His smile widened as thoughts of varying ways to keep them entertained while they were waiting for the tow danced through his head. He let his lips drift across her fingers as he breathed softly over the skin. Kori shivered and he knew that this time it wasn’t from the cold.
Despite his earlier decision to the contrary, JT couldn’t resist the temptation to taunt her and dragged her fingertips over his lips again. She didn’t make a sound, didn’t even move, but her desire cried out louder than a scream.
“I think you’re heating up nicely now, Kori,” he murmured against her warming skin.
She squirmed deeper into the seat and her free hand splayed out shaky fingers over her leg. She still hadn’t uttered a sound.
And, for some reason that JT didn’t want to probe too deeply, Kori had yet to even try blocking him from her mind; he was mainlining her and the commotion in her head was dizzying.
Emotions bounced like superballs; her thoughts were a fragmented mess. Why?… God, I should just… Trust… my very soul… so damn right… so much fire… so much tenderness… JT’s eyes closed, hoping to quell his own reaction to her thoughts. He drew in a shaky breath.
Kori’s hand crept sideways onto JT’s leg and curved around the bunched muscle of his thigh.
Christ, Kori! His breath was still quaking and he knew he was losing the battle for restraint. JT’s mouth lingered on the curve of her fingers, his lips slanting a slow path to catch one fingertip and circle it with the tip of his tongue.
With a soft exclamation, her grasp tightened on his thigh and her head fell back onto his shoulder.
His mind became hazy with desire. JT wasn’t sure whether it came from within himself or if Kori was feeding it to him through their connection, and he didn’t really care. He craved her. He turned away from taunting her fingertips and dropped his face closer, intending to still tantalize with the lightest of touches to her lips.
As his mouth brushed hers, any ideas of teasing disintegrated. Gone. I’m gone and I don’t ever want to come back.
She couldn’t help it. Kori’s first gut reflex was to cut the contact. She’d been in self-protection automode for so long that to allow him inside herself willingly went against all instinct. But as her mind fingered the knobs on the doors it wanted to slam, she paused. Why would I want to shut him out? This is about Trust, and I trust him with my very soul. He feels so damn right. I’m finally at home in my own skin because he’s here beside me, within me.
I’d never believed soulmates really existed. Until you.
Then her thoughts lost all cohesion as his stubbled cheek slid over hers and his warm breath caressed her face.
He caught her lips, tracing a tender outline with the tip of his tongue. Kori bit back a low whimper but wouldn’t allow him in. Somehow we’ve been granted a pocket of time where it’s just us two. I don’t care that it’s a crowded parking lot, nor that we’re in the back seat like a pair of lovesick teenagers. Please don’t deny me this little taste of you, Kori… I know you hear me…
JT relaxed his hold of her hand but instead of letting go, he drew it to her own face, mingling their fingers and guiding the tips to stroke delicately down her cheek, a lover’s caress. “Now you feel what I feel when I touch you, love,” he coaxed against her lips. Their hands slipped lower, trailing over the line of her jaw and down the silky skin of her throat. “And I can feel what you touch as well,” he murmured before gently sipping at her bottom lip. Their fingertips continued to tickle their way down, easing under the collar of her shirt and sweeping languidly along her collarbone. He sensed the last vestiges of her resolve slipping away, carried off on a sigh.
“I’m lost in you, Korina Blackwood.”
Oh, holy hell… Did I just say that out loud or merely think it? Not that it matters. I mean to marry her, and she should know.
She tensed in his arms and JT experienced a distinctive push somewhere deep inside as Kori tried to break their contact. They were too close, the connection and emotions too strong for a full ethereal eviction. He was shut out by the instantaneous walls that shielded her thoughts but her feelings still pounded through loud and clear. Hurt, indignation, guilt, fear… and a tiny cache of elation that she was trying hard to stomp on.
The stronger responses won out. She extricated her hand from his and landed it on her leg to join its mate which had abandoned his thigh and returned to her lap. She snapped her head up and away, nearly clocking him in the jaw. Her shoulder shrugged violently away from his chest and she sat up from him stiffly.
“Christ, JT,” she snorted, her voice deceptively even and low, “couldn’t you at least have waited until he was in his grave first?”
He knew that in a sense she was right. But what were the social mores for two people who’ve been hanging around in each other’s heads for almost their entire lives? He thought it best to ignore that part for the time being and focus instead on the wound he’d inflicted by jumping the gun.
“I’m so sorry, Kori. That was an utterly wretched thing for me to say right now.” He didn’t have to muster a sincere tone; her emotions were tearing at his heart. He reached to take her hand but she pulled it away.
“How could you even think like that?” He heard the catch in her voice as she struggled to hold back tears. “Acting like he’s already gone and I’m the prize you get for waiting?”
As upset as he was at causing her pain, he couldn’t quell the small surge of anger at her words. It wasn’t as if he was doing anything without her cooperation. He hoped that the walls she’d erected were working both ways and she hadn’t picked up that last thought. Their emotions were running high enough, stoked by interrupted passion, and neither of them needed to pile more fuel on the fire.
“I know my own actions have me just as guilty. I haven’t exactly been discouraging you recently,” she said in a slightly less edgy tone. “And I think maybe it’s time I changed that.”
She turned her head a bit to stare down at her intertwined fingers and sighed heavily.
“What is it that you want, Kori?” he asked softly.
She waited a long moment before answering. It pained him deeply to feel how this was tearing her in two. “I don’t know. I thought I did, but anymore…” Her head dropped further toward her chest and began a slow side-to-side nod. “I don’t know where you end and I begin, JT. I don’t know how to deal with that. Quite frankly, it scares the crap out of me.”
He knew precisely how that felt and it took every ounce of his reserve to keep from offering her comfort that she clearly didn’t want. His arms ached to wrap around her and crush her to his chest. Instead, he sat quiet and still and let her talk.
“You’re smothering me with your thereness and he’s shutting me out and slipping away. I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this. Not sneaking and hiding and presumptions, no.” Kori turned to face him with anguish-filled eyes. “Did you ever even think of asking me, JT? Or did you simply assume that I was yours for the taking when the time came?”
The guilt that washed over his face was answer enough.
“At least you were honest when you told me that you’re selfish. I am my own, JT, and nobody else’s. Not yours, not Mark’s. Mine. I was quite content with life as it had been dealt to me before I knew you, happily popping into your head when the contentment wore thin and I needed a vacation from it all. You shouldn’t presume that just because you want something that you’ll get it.” Her eyes dropped back to the twisting fingers in her lap.
Where was she going with this? Kori’s emotions were a swirling tempest and, not knowing how to read them or what to say, he took the safest route and offered quietly, “I have not one valid excuse, love. I’d sooner die than hurt you.” When in doubt, Blackwood, always apologize, even if you don’t know quite what you did wrong. For the love of… now I even have to say I’m sorry for things I never said, thoughts that were in my head that stayed unspoken. This might be more difficult than I expected, breezing in and out of each other.
She suppressed most of a shiver, her body noticing the lack of his warmth along her back, and this time he did reach for her, laying a gentle hand on her arm. “You’re running yourself into the ground to make this a memorable last Christmas with your husband and son. Now you’re catching a chill again, and if you’re not careful that’s an an illness waiting to happen. At least let me keep you warm.”
She stayed where she was and JT felt her stubborn wariness. Mistrust? I guess she has exited my head, then. If she were still in here, she’d see there was nothing to worry about. “No more thoughts or hands or anything, I promise, Kori. From here forward, we follow your lead.”
“You promise?” she said in a voice so low he almost didn’t hear.
“I always keep my word, sweetheart.”
He sensed her uncertainty wisping away and she sagged back into his chest. She tentatively touched
the hand that remained resting lightly on her forearm. “Will you please hold me? I just… need…” Her voice faltered and she didn’t finish.
JT slid his arms down to wrap around her and folded his hands over her concave stomach. Dammit, she’s not eating again, and I didn’t even notice. That’s going to change, too. She’s gonna eat and I’m gonna pay more attention. “It’ll be alright, Kori,” he soothed into her hair for the second time of the evening. “It’ll all work out just the way it’s meant to.”
“I’m so confused, JT. I thought that with knowing what to expect, it wouldn’t hurt so much. That with you nearby, watching him get sicker wouldn’t be so bad.” She paused to sniffle, then continued in a voice thickened by withheld tears, “But I was wrong.”
“I can’t keep you from hurting, love, but I promised you a lifetime ago that I’ll always take care of you. I meant it then, and I still mean it now.” JT sensed a slight renewal of her faith through the sorrow before their connection began to fade and dim until they were merely two sad and separate people sitting together in the dark backseat of a stranded car.
****
Mark surfaced to consciousness, cursing his bladder for interrupting his respite from pain. He took several deep breaths, preparing himself for the inevitable ache that would come when he moved to get up. Habit forced him to clench his jaw to mute the groan and he slowly rolled to the side of the bed, twisting to gingerly place his swollen feet on the carpet. He slid one pudgy misshapen hand up the wall near the bed to keep from falling. Supernovas of sheer white agony obliterated his vision and he swallowed another loud sound, not wanting to disturb anyone else within earshot. More deeply-held breaths leveled them to starbursts and then to mere speckles dancing in front of his eyes, and he looked around the room. He’d had no need to hide the evidence of his pain, as the bedroom door stood open in the deepening gloom and the house was silent.
Still nobody home. Pretty much what I expected, though. I’m sure Zach’s caught up in his video game and hasn’t noticed the time. I won’t pester him to come home just yet. And Kori and JT… well, malls and Christmastime don’t make for a quick trip. They all needed a break from baby-sitting the semi-invalid, and it’s kind of nice to have some time by myself. There’s some things I need to do that are best done alone.
Dream Me Off My Feet (Sex, Love, And Rock & Roll) Page 50
