by Toni Blake
As if on cue, she pushed through the door and he silently offered the can of beer he'd been unsure she'd drink. Taking a seat next to him, she accepted it without reaction—as unpredictable as always, his Miss Chardonnay.
He stared out over the dark waters that usually brought him so much peace, listening as she popped the top and took a sip. "Drink your beer and then I'll take you back up the bayou."
He felt those blue eyes piercing him, but didn't turn to look at her. "I need to talk to you."
Something in his stomach pinched, yet still he stared straight ahead into the swallowing night. "So talk."
"It's about what you said back at my room. That you couldn't help me anymore."
He blinked, tried not to feel her nearness. Tried to push away the wanting that seemed to pluck at every pore of his skin. "What about it?"
"I'm desperate, Jake. You know that."
Her gentle sigh wafted over him, but he cut her off at the knees. "We've had this conversation before. If you've got anything new to say, get to it."
She stayed silent for a long moment, before speaking softly. "I don't have anything new. And maybe that's the point. Tina's still out there somewhere and I have to find her. But I know I can't do it alone. You're my only friend here. And you're also my only hope. Maybe Tina's only hope, too."
Finally, he turned his gaze on her, only in order to drive his words home, since they must not have sunk in back at her room. "What makes you think I have any more chance of findin' her than you do? I've already looked under every rock I know and no sign of her. What makes you think havin' my help makes the slightest difference at all?"
'For all I know, maybe it doesn't. But.. . you're all I have here. And I know you didn't want to help me in the first place and that I really have no right to ask, but I'm asking. I'm asking you not to desert me."
/ can't do it.
Tell her that. Say the goddamn words.
But something prevented him from it. He'd made the mistake of looking into those earnest blue eyes and his chest had tightened, his stomach shriveled.
"I happen to think we make a decent team," she went on. Yet when he narrowed his eyes in doubt, she added, "Although I'll do whatever you say if you keep helping me. I promise."
"You've promised before, chère. Tonight, for instance, you said you'd stay put, no? But then there you are, back in a slinky dress, puttin' yourself in harm's way. What reason do I have to take you at your word?"
She bit her lip, then took a page from his book—staring out into the black bayou. "Because I'm at rock bottom," she said frankly. "Without you, I truly don't have a clue what to do next." She turned to look at him again. "But I think you know me well enough by now to know I will do something. And I don't want to be stupid about it."
He tilted his head. 'Too late for that."
"Then I don't want to keep being stupid about it."
He withdrew his gaze once more. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. The rock was the knowledge that she would eventually do something dumb enough to get herself hurt if he left her to her own devices—the same reason he'd agreed to help in the beginning. The hard place was behind his zipper, and he didn't know how the hell he was gonna keep dealing with that.
"What do you say, Jake? Give me one more chance?"
He still wanted to refuse, but he didn't have it in him. Face it, son, you was born to help folks, his mother had told him not too long ago. Stephanie. Shondra. That stupid, mangy dog. Jesus, what did they think he was, some kind of superhero? But no, not even close. Superheroes got the job done. He just tried to—and it didn't usually work. Becky could attest to that.
Finishing his beer, he calmly crushed the can in his fist and lowered it to the porch. Finally, he took a deep breath and focused on her again. "Let's get somethin' straight here. I keep lookin' for your sister, I do it on my own— there's no 'team' about it. Got it?" He didn't give her a chance to answer. "I do this on one condition and it's that you do nothin' independent of me, understand? I find out you did and that's it, I'm done, you're on your own. You give me the pictures of your sister and you're not involved in this anymore, other than hearin' what I find. Is that perfectly one hundred percent clear?"
She looked contrite, but far from beaten, as she firmly replied, "Yeah, it's clear."
"Good."
"Any other concerns?" she asked with a slightly sarcastic bite to her voice.
"Yeah," he said. "What about the other part?" She blinked. "Other part?"
He pulled in his breath, crossed his arms over his chest, and peered out over the water. "The part about me not bein' able to keep my hands off you."
The admission, though one he thought pretty obvious, hung between them for a long moment. Long enough that he grew restless, uncomfortable. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a roll of mints, popping one in his mouth.
Finally, her voice came soft, almost drowned out by the sounds of insects, but not so low that he didn't absorb each and every word. "Believe it or not, Jake, I don't want you to keep your hands off me. I... definitely want them on me."
"Could a fooled me, chère."
She glanced down at her beer can, fiddled with the ring on top. "I know. I'm sorry. I... can't explain."
He'd stopped trying not to look at her. "I wish you'd try."
Slowly, she raised her blue gaze, looking nervous and sad. Then she blinked and turned away. "I just have this thing about... not liking to lose control." She drew in a sharp breath and met his eyes once more. "And you make me lose control."
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 completely and let me have all of you?" His voice was a dark whisper just before he lowered a soft, 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.
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 of 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 gentl
e 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 '11 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. 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 from 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, I always stay ... in control. 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 memory before it quite 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. 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 some-thin'." Again, she shook her head, but he pressed her. "Tell me, Stephanie. What's this 'nothin" in your mind?"
She swallowed fretfully, uncomfortable at 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.
T 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, "don't you think this 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... I guess maybe never wanting 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 / 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, logicall
y, 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 13
As Jake scooped her into his arms, she bit her hp 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 old record player in a little suitcase like container, where a stack of 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."
