Wildest Dreams

by Blake, Toni

  His chest began to sizzle. He hadn’t seen that coming. Maybe he should have, yet it still struck him hard—and good. His muscles tensed with heat as he went stiff in his pants. But then again . . . “Not completely, though. You always manage to stop, no?”

  She looked emotionally spent. “I try to let go with you, Jake, but . . . no man has ever made me feel like you do.”

  “Which is?”

  Her lips trembled slightly, yet she didn’t break their gaze. “Wild. Like I don’t even know myself. Because I want to do everything with you.”

  Jake leaned closer, without planning it, and lifted one hand to her cheek. “Tell me what you want to do with me, beb.”

  “Things I . . . don’t even know about.” She shook her head lightly. “Just . . . everything. Everything.”

  He moved still nearer, bending over her. “Think you’ll ever be able to let go? Ever let me have all of you?” His voice was a dark whisper just before he lowered a slow kiss to her lips.

  Stephanie gave in to the moment without thought or decision. She couldn’t resist Jake’s kisses. From the first one he’d swept across her lips to this deep, tender meeting of tongues, she was lost to him when his mouth covered hers. Heavenly sensations reverberated through her entire body until the kiss finally ended and she murmured, “God, I hope so.”

  “Mmm, me too, chère.” A small grin softened his strong features when she least expected such tenderness.

  She returned the gentle smile, repeating the same words she’d already spoken a few minutes ago. “What do you say, Jake? Give me another chance?”

  He pulled in his breath, his eyes going darker with want as his gaze settled on her mouth. His answer came in the form of another kiss, his tongue warmly seeking hers. He felt impossibly good—his hands gently cupping her cheeks, his mouth seeming to drink of her, the warmth where their bodies touched. Risking her life in the dark swamp had been worth it, for this.

  His kisses grew shorter, but still tender, and as always, he tasted of mint and masculinity. She loved the very bigness of his body, the hardness of his muscles as she ran her hands over his broad shoulders.

  Though when he laid her down on the glider, pain arced through her. “Ow! My back.”

  “Mmm, from your spill in the pirogue. You’ll have a couple nasty bruises come mornin’.” He reached behind him for the vinyl cushion he’d been leaning against, sliding it beneath her. “Better?”

  She relaxed, testing it. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He lowered a gentle kiss to her forehead before bringing his mouth back to hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting him closer, wanting to feel the weight of his body.

  When one hand covered her breast, she sighed with pleasure and instinctively arched deeper into his palm. His low growl fueled her, and as for any trepidation, it was—blessedly—nowhere in sight. There was only him, and her, and this dark, private place that seemed a world away from anything bad. His thumb gently stroked her nipple through her top and bra.

  “These are so pretty, beb,” he murmured, his breath warm at her ear. Shifting to his side next to her, he bent to lower a delicate kiss to the curve of feminine flesh exposed by her top. “I loved kissin’ ’em earlier, loved how hard your pretty nipple felt on my tongue.”

  She whimpered, turned on by his erotic talk, and also because her nipples weren’t the only things that were hard—his erection pressed like a column of stone against her thigh.

  When his hand slid from her breast to the denim between her legs, she sucked in her breath, moving involuntarily against his touch. “And down here—mmm, I wanted to taste you down here, too, chère.”

  She shivered in his arms, despite the heat, then rolled to face him, wanting to feel his hardness where she yearned for it most. But when his hand eased onto her bottom, he pulled back, chuckling. “Your jeans are all wet back here. Why didn’t you tell me? Want me to find somethin’ for you to change into?”

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. “No big deal.”

  He reached for the button in front, deftly undoing it before sliding her zipper down. “Why don’t you just let me take ’em off you,” he whispered.

  Let him take your jeans off and God knows what you’ll do.

  Lose control? Definitely.

  Get that horrible shriveling, shrinking feeling that always seemed to strike at the most critical moment? Probably. In fact, the first hints of it were stealing into her already, replacing passion with a tinge of prickly nervousness.

  She shut her eyes. Why does this have to keep happening?

  “Uh-oh,” Jake said. And only then did she realize she’d gone completely still.

  She raised her gaze, her lips trembling, not from passion now but embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”

  He smoothed his fingers back through her hair, his eyes earnest. “It’s okay.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  He shifted to lay his head next to hers on the thick cushion, bringing their faces incredibly close. “What is it that makes you stop exactly?” His voice remained as gentle as the still water beyond. “What are you feelin’ right now?”

  She thought for a long moment and summed it up in one word. “Just . . . nervous.”

  “Nervous how?”

  She closed her eyes, unable to keep looking into his and summon an answer at the same time. And as for that answer, she’d never truly examined the emotion before now—she’d always been too busy running, trying to escape the situation. “I guess maybe I’m worried . . . it’ll hurt.”

  “Hurt?”

  “The sex. The penetration.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why do you think that, beb? Is it always like this?”

  She shook her head against the vinyl. “Not with other men. But . . . this is different. When I’m with other guys, they don’t make me feel . . . you know . . . wild for sex. But you do, and somehow I worry that if I’m not careful . . . that if I’m not fully in charge of the situation . . .”

  “What?”

  She shook her head and pushed back an unpleasant, not-quite-related memory before it completely made it to the surface of her mind.

  But he must’ve seen it flit through her eyes. “What are you thinkin’ about? Tell me.”

  She shook her head again. “Nothing, really. It’s not about this. Just something that happened a long time ago, but I don’t like thinking about it, so it’s . . . nothing.”

  He lifted his palm to her cheek. “Sounds like somethin’.” Again, she shook her head, but he pressed her. “Tell me, Stephanie. What’s this ‘nothin” in your mind?”

  She swallowed fretfully, uncomfortable dredging up the recollection.

  “Please,” he added.

  That was the part that got to her. When Jake went all tender, he was impossible to resist.

  “Once,” she began softly, somehow thinking that if she spoke quietly the memory might not seem so real, “I drove home from college a day earlier than my parents were expecting me. I came bouncing into the house in a great mood—it was Christmastime, end of the quarter. It was nine or ten o’clock at night and Tina wasn’t home—spending the night with a girlfriend.

  “I walked in, about to shout hello, when I heard my mom and dad arguing.” Her throat seized a bit, threatening to close up, but she pushed on. “So I stayed quiet, and I listened, and what I heard was . . .”

  “What?”

  “My mom was . . . crying . . . and telling him she didn’t want to, because it hurt . . . and he was . . . making her anyway.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Jake breathed, his eyes gone starkly sad.

  She girded herself, just as she had that night so long ago. “So I walked back to the front door, and I made a lot of noise like I was just coming in, and I yelled out, ‘I’m home!’ Anything to stop it,
you know?”

  He nodded softly.

  “A minute later, they were both in the kitchen listening to me explain how I got out of classes early, and my mother was getting out cookies and milk . . . and it was over.” She took a deep breath. “But I’ve always had to wonder, ever since, how often it happened that way.” Sighing, she shook her head. “So you see why I don’t think about it. I just can’t.” She leaned her head back to look at the stars, seeking out the crescent moon as a distraction. “I don’t know why that passed through my mind right now—it just does sometimes, but I kind of . . . block out the thoughts.” She feared she sounded a little manic.

  When she lowered her gaze back to Jake, he spoke gently. “Chère,” he began, pushing her hair out of her eyes with warm, gentle fingertips, “I know you said it wasn’t about this, me and you, but . . . don’t you think it probably has somethin’ to do with why you’re afraid to have sex? The kind of sex that makes you lose control?”

  Dear God. She thought about arguing, but his words made perfect sense. Or sort of perfect anyway. She was no psychologist, but . . . when had she become so dense? “I . . . I never thought about it that way before. I mean, since I hardly ever let myself think about that night.” She lowered her eyes, planting them on the front of his light gray T-shirt, studying the hard planes of his chest where the cotton lay snug against him. “Before that happened, I was a virgin. But I wanted to have sex—badly. And then I did, once, with the guy I’d been dating for a long time . . . and it hurt.”

  “Oh,” Jake said, sounding sad for her.

  Upon returning to DePaul after Christmas, she’d had that one night with Jason, when he’d tempted her past the point of no return. It had started out so good, but ended terribly. Afterward, she’d no longer been interested in sex—in fact, for a while the very idea of it had simply made her ill. And maybe it had made her think of her parents, too, stirring up the memory she’d wanted so desperately to forget. She’d been unable to explain any of this to Jason and they’d broken up by Valentine’s Day. “Since then, I’ve never let myself lose control during sex—I just couldn’t give that power up to a guy.”

  “Because of the pain?”

  “And . . . well, now that you point it out, maybe I never wanted to let a man have that kind of freedom with my body—like my dad had with my mother.”

  “Have you, uh, had much sex?”

  “Some. But I’ve always controlled the situation, never let it get too wild, always kept it very mild—boring, actually. Up to now, it’s always just been”—she shook her head, embarrassed, but still trying to be honest—“a thing that happens sometimes at the end of a date. Because I wanted to feel . . . normal. But I’ve never been with a guy since college who made me really want it again, who made me feel . . . you know.”

  His eyes widened slightly, hopefully. “Like I do?”

  She nodded, whispered. “Yeah.”

  They stayed quiet for a moment, until finally Jake lowered a tender kiss to her forehead. “I’d never hurt you, chère. I’d never let you feel any pain.”

  She looked up into his eyes. “I guess, logically, I know that. You’ve been nothing but patient, and”—a sigh of pure longing escaped her—“sexy as hell.”

  He grinned, clearly pleased.

  “It’s just . . . hard,” she said. “To let go. To trust somebody that much.”

  He nodded and said, “Then what about this? What about we don’t have sex, you and me?”

  Despite everything, disappointment barreled through her. “Huh?”

  He smiled softly at her confusion. “How about we just fool around? No sex, no pain. And there’s plenty you can do foolin’ around.”

  She blinked. “And . . . that’ll be enough?”

  “We’ll make it be enough. Trust me.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  AS JAKE SCOOPED her into his arms, she bit her lip and laced her fingers behind his neck, thrilled to her very core. That was the one saving grace of her horrible affliction—it never seemed to outlast her desire for him. Not even close.

  She looked up at his strong face, his stubbled chin, as he carried her through the door and to the bedroom. Lowering her to the bed, a massive piece of furniture she’d failed to notice the first time she’d passed through, he stood back and stripped off his T-shirt, tossing it on the floor.

  The sight of him in nothing but well-worn blue jeans nearly stole her breath. And if the bulge at his zipper was any indication, he remained delectably hard. She wondered why that excited her so much if she wasn’t going to have sex with him.

  Kicking off his shoes, he stepped toward the bed and relieved her of her wet sandals. “These may not recover,” he told her, studying one before letting it plunk to the floor.

  “I’ll live,” she replied, just watching him, absorbing him in a way she’d never quite given herself permission to do before now.

  Jake padded across the room on bare feet to an ancient record player in a little suitcaselike container, where a stack of old vinyl albums lay on the turntable—he lifted them up on the center spool, setting them to drop and play. The room’s windows were pushed open wide, admitting the same scents and sounds that had punctuated the air outside, and a ceiling fan spun above, sending down a surprisingly cool breeze. A few seconds later, though, those sounds were blotted out by the dreamy sound of Etta James singing, “At Last.”

  The utter sensuousness of the old song swept Stephanie away that much further as Jake joined her atop an old quilt. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, his hand sliding to rest on her stomach. “We’ll go as slow or as fast as you want, beb—you just let me know if I do anything wrong.”

  “Wrong isn’t the right word for it.” She owed him this, at the very least. “Nothing you’ve ever done to me was wrong. It was just . . . too much for me, that’s all.”

  He leaned closer, skimming his hand upward, across one breast, to gently caress her cheek. His forearm stretched up the center of her chest. “Then you’ll tell me what’s too much, no?”

  She nodded, the spot between her thighs tingling.

  “Good,” he whispered, bending to kiss her.

  He hoped like hell it wasn’t too soon to do that again, but it was pure impulse driving him; he needed to feel her supple lips under his. They exchanged soft, sweet kisses for a few moments, and it felt almost easy to Jake—like maybe just kissing was enough, like maybe it wasn’t going to rip his guts out not to sink himself inside her sweet body the way he’d been wanting to since they’d met. He knew it wasn’t true—soon enough they’d get to the gut-ripping part—but he’d do his best not to let his torture show. Her story about her parents had pulled at his heart, and he wanted everything that happened tonight to be exactly what she needed. He wanted to take away her fears.

  When their kisses ceased, he nuzzled his nose against her silken cheek. “How’s that?”

  She smiled. “You taste good—always taste good. Minty.”

  “Mmm,” he purred, dragging the tip of his middle finger slowly down the side of her neck and onto her shoulder, then under her tank top to play with the strap of her bra.

  “Why is that?” she asked gently.

  He gave a soft chuckle. “I gave up smokin’ a few years back. Now I’m addicted to mints instead.”

  “Ah.” She tipped her head back into the pillow. “Well, as addictions go, that’s not a bad one.”

  He’d quit smoking for Becky—both her parents had smoked, and she’d hated it. He’d been sorely tempted to pick it up again after she was gone, but something had kept him from it—to this day, he didn’t know what. But this one little conversation made him glad he’d persevered.

  Stephanie’s eyes sparkled on him in the low-lit room—giving him a reason to decide it must have been fate that had kept him from replacing a burned-out bulb in one of the lamps. He watched her studying him, her eyes t
raveling down over his jaw, cheek, and lower. Seeming to realize she’d been caught exploring, she bit her lip. “You have an incredible body.”

  He liked this honest side of her. Smiling playfully, he leaned to kiss her neck. “I like yours, too, beb.” He slid his hand to her ass, reminding him her denim was soaked. “But we really gotta get you out of these jeans. If we’re not havin’ sex, no good reason to put up with a wet spot in the bed.”

  She laughed and didn’t protest, and he checked her eyes to make sure they still twinkled. Conveniently, her jeans remained unzipped from out on the porch, so he sat upright, reached for the waistband, and said, “Lift up.”

  With a little tugging—her grabbing onto white cotton bikini panties to keep them on—the jeans came down around her thighs. He pulled them the rest of the way off, shucking them on the floor, and a few seconds later, he was molding against her close, letting his hard-on rest at the crux of her thighs as he slid his arms back around her.

  “Underwear’s just as wet, chère,” he said when his hand returned to her rear. He couldn’t hide his teasing grin. “I think we should take those off, too.”

  Her widening eyes came with a chiding laugh. “No, those stay on.” She lowered her voice. “For now anyway.”

  He let another small smile unfurl. “For now,” he repeated. “I can live with that. Even if it means we’re doomed to havin’ a wet spot without the usual perks.”

  She laughed and batted playfully at his chest. “You want perks, buddy—I’ll give you perks.” And with that, she rose up onto her knees, facing him, then reached down to the hem of her sexy tank top, arms crossing, and pulled it off over her head.

  He watched in awe. Her bra was conservative white lace, just as simple as the cotton panties, but everything about her was lush and sensual, from the curves and rises of her body to the sexy look of daring on her face.

  Yet then she bit her lip and seemed to sink a little.

  He tuned in immediately. “What’s wrong?”