by Amy Andrews
Conscious she was still right up on tippy toes he slid a leg back, locking it straight as his pelvis dropped into alignment with hers. He angled his hips until the head of his cock settled into the heat between her legs.
“I want this,” he said, their gazes locking, his hips flexing as he slid himself through the slickness of her folds. “I want to look into your eyes when I come.”
“Yes,” she gasped, biting on her lip as he deliberately rubbed himself over the hard little pearl between her legs that was begging to be touched.
One hand still clamped hard on her thigh, he placed his bent forearm against the tiles near her head, his hand tangling in her hair as he notched himself inside her entrance.
“God,” he panted, pressing his forehead against hers. “You’re so hot.”
She shut her eyes. “Please, Jarrod,” she muttered, squirming against him. “I can’t … I need …”
Yeah. He knew what she needed.
And with one slow, smooth flex of his hips he gave it to her, pushing inside all her tight heat, sliding her up the tiles an extra inch, lifting her foot clean off the floor.
She cried out, her hands clutching his shoulders for purchase.
“How’s that?” he grunted.
“God, yes,” she gasped.
Jarrod eased out and she whimpered, pulling him closer, his forehead coming to rest on his arm as he slowly thrust back in again, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.
“Fuck, Selena,” he groaned, lifting his head to look straight into her eyes, “you feel good.”
And he wanted more. All of her.
He couldn’t get enough.
He withdrew and thrust in again, loving the way her eyes widened and her head rocked. “You look amazing,” he said.
And she did, her wet hair slicked back, droplets of water running from her hairline down her face to her lips, making them glossy and utterly kissable.
“I could look at you like this all day.”
Then he kissed her again, their slippery mouths gliding over each other, twisting and hunting, feeding hungrily, tongues dipping in and out, swallowing each other’s moans as he rocked into her, finding a rhythm that built and built until they were both breathing hard.
He pulled out of the kiss, wanting to watch her breasts bounce with every thrust and her head rock against the tiles. Wanting to watch her come. Knowing they were both close. Wanting the cataclysm, but also never wanting this to end.
“God Selena, you’re going to make me come,” he panted, their gazes locking as she squeezed up and down the length of his cock with every buck of his hips.
“Close,” she panted, two high spots of colour in her cheeks, her biceps starting to tremble now as they held onto his shoulders. “So close.”
“I know,” he said, adjusting the angle of his thrust as he went deeper and harder, his heart beating like a train as he pushed his own climax back.
“Oh, rightthere, rightthere, rightthere,” she moaned gripping his shoulders harder. “Do that again.”
Jarrod did it again and again, all his muscles straining as he held himself back to drive her closer to the edge.
She let out a long, low moan, as her internal muscles gripped his cock in a velvet fist, her head flung back against the tiles. “Yes,” she gasped, her eyes widening, looking right into his. “God, Jarrod, yes.”
And it was in that moment Jarrod knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life making Selena look like this. Being the one in her bed and her life.
The one on her mind.
No other woman had ever made him feel the way she did. No other woman had come close.
Because he loved her.
Always had. Always would.
Hot streaks of pleasure sizzled through nerve endings in the base of his cock and up his spine as everything he’d been holding back rushed out and the world spiralled around him.
* * *
Selena woke several hours later to voices in the hallway. She was disorientated for a moment, until a heavy arm at her waist registered and she realised she was in Jarrod’s bed. She glanced at the luminous numbers of the alarm clock on his bedside table. Nine o’clock.
She strained her ears as the voices moved past the door and she realised it was Ethan and Marcus. She couldn’t hear what they were saying—they were gone too quickly—but she lay listening to their faint murmurings coming from the direction of the kitchen as she snuggled into the solid warmth of Jarrod’s big body. Her skin was cool now from the ceiling fan lazily circling overhead, except where her body came into contact with his—he was like a furnace.
They’d moved straight from the shower to his bed, still wet and bedraggled. They hadn’t spoken, he’d just thrown his arm over her and pulled her in tight like they were now and they’d both fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep.
She’d had precious little sleep these last few days and Jarrod would have had even less. Add to that the fatigue his body must be feeling from the mental and physical exertion of fighting a massive bushfire, plus a round of vigorous shower sex, and she’d be surprised if he didn’t sleep for a week.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting when she’d arrived at his house earlier—she’d just known she had to be here for him when he got home. When he’d hugged her on the stairs, he’d reached right inside her chest and cradled her heart.
It hadn’t been a physical moment. It had been an emotional one. Packed with hundreds of memories and thousands of feelings. Ending up in bed with him had not been in her plan. But it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to join him in the shower. Soap him up. Massage his tired muscles. The man was a goddamn hero, he deserved a bit of pampering.
And she’d wanted to do that for him.
Like that night in his car, maybe the sex had been inevitable. She really hadn’t stepped into the shower with seduction on her mind. She really had gotten in to wash his back, massage his aching muscles, to help him relax.
But there’d been no way she’d been going to ignore his very obvious physical need.
Or her own.
And here they were. Again. The third time they’d gotten physical since they’d renewed their acquaintance just over a month ago.
* * *
Making it harder and harder to pull away. Harder to get in that Channel Four vehicle in a couple of days, after all the follow-up interviews, and head back to the fracking story. Making her want …
What?
To stay? Offer Jarrod some kind of half relationship. What had he said? Dropping in for a booty call every now and then between chasing her career around the countryside?
He deserved to be in a proper relationship. To be happy. In fact she couldn’t believe that some local girl hadn’t snapped him up years ago. The women in Jumbuck Springs never used to be so slow.
She wondered what his ex-fiancée, the nurse, was like. Lovely, Grandy had said. And that’s what Jarrod needed. Someone who was lovely.
So why had he broken off their engagement?
As much as it hurt deep inside her chest to think of him happily settled with someone else, it also hurt to think of him alone.
With no-one.
Jarrod deserved to be loved. To have someone commit to him fully. To walk down an aisle with him and have children with him.
All the things she couldn’t give him because it would bugger up her career trajectory. So why had he walked away from that when he’d had it in his grasp?
“I can hear you thinking,” a low, rumbly voice said from behind her, lips brushing her nape, a hand sliding up to cup a breast.
Selena shut her eyes as the sensation travelled all the way down, squirming between her legs. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I’m not sorry,” he murmured and she could hear the smile in his voice as his hand squeezed.
She smiled too as her hand caressed his arm. It was nice lying in the dark with him, lazily touching.
“You stopped filming,” he sa
id, long minutes later.
Selena’s eyes fluttered open. “What?”
“At Gilligan’s Road. When Marcus was …” His voice faded but Selena didn’t need him to remind her. “I looked over and John wasn’t filming any more. Did you ask him to stop?”
She shrugged as she stroked the thick hair on his forearm. “It was a moment of profound personal grief. It was too … private. I could hardly bear to watch it. But … I couldn’t look away either.”
“Yeah.” His thumb brushed over where the slope of her chest met the swell of her breast. “But still, plenty of other media people wouldn’t have thought twice about invading a moment of profound personal grief.”
Selena nodded. That was true. A lot of journos she knew would have been right up in Marcus’s face with their cameras, probably sticking it inside the vehicle too if they could have gotten away with it. “I’m not just another media person.”
He kissed her neck and gave her breast another squeeze. “No, you’re not,” he said, his voice all low and husky, his lips vibrating at the spot where neck met shoulder. “But thank you anyway.”
Selena shut her eyes, basking in his approval, melting under the slow stroke of his hands drawing lazy circles on her breasts and belly until she was practically purring.
Right in this moment she never wanted to be anywhere else.
“Why did you break off your engagement?”
His hands stopped their deliciously maddening patterns abruptly and she almost mewed her disappointment.
Way to go, Selena.
Not that she blamed him. She had no idea why the question had slipped out. She was pretty sure there’d been absolutely no conscious control. It must have still been floating around there from her earlier thoughts.
It wasn’t any of her business. And not an area of conversation she really wanted to get into.
He tensed behind her and for a moment she thought Jarrod was going to avoid the question. Or worse, lie. He slid his hand from her breast back to her stomach.
“Because I didn’t love her enough.”
Enough? What the hell did that mean? Were there degrees of love? “Enough?”
“I thought I did. She was kind and sweet and generous and we got on really well. We laughed and we enjoyed all the same things and the sex was great—”
Fuckity fuck. Of course it was. Why had she asked?
“We were friends for a few years before anything serious developed. I loved how she looked and what she wore and I loved talking with her and being with her and having fun with her. And then …”
Selena waited for him to continue. Dying to know, even though it was tearing her heart out. She must be some kind of masochist. Maybe when she got home she’d go out to one of those clubs in the city and let someone tie her up and whip her. It couldn’t feel any worse than this. Hearing how much Jarrod had loved another woman.
But still he didn’t go on and she couldn’t bear it. She rolled onto her back, settling her head against the pillow as she looked into his warm green eyes. “And then?”
“I saw you doing a Valentine’s Day special on the television, talking about true love to a couple who were ninety and had been together for seventy-four years and I just knew I didn’t feel like that about her. That being able to list off a dozen things I loved about her was not the same thing as being in love with her.”
Selena remembered that report. She’d never much paid into all the commercial hearts and flowers crap that was Valentine’s Day but still, it rocked relentlessly around and the nostalgia she felt for Jarrod every year was as real fifteen years down the track as it had been that first Valentine’s Day without him.
“That I didn’t love her like I’d loved you.” He traced a finger from her forehead down her nose and over her lips to her chin. “Like I still love you.”
Selena’s breath hitched as her heart just about beat right out of her chest. She was as breathless as she had been the first time he’d told her. He loved her. He still loved her. Hearing those three words from Jarrod hadn’t lost their impact.
But they weren’t seventeen anymore. “Jarrod,” she whispered. “I—”
“Shh,” he said, his fingers playing across her mouth again. “Just listen for a moment, okay? I love you, Selena. It’s only ever been you for me. And I know, believe me, I know how crazy that sounds. But you’re under my skin. You’re … inside my bones, my cells, my DNA. You’re in every good memory I have, Selena. God,” he muttered, his fingers brushing some hair off her forehead, “this last month has been hell without you, and when I saw you running towards me today, I thought my chest was going to bust open.”
Selena knew how he felt. But that had been relief. Right?
“It’s okay,” he said, “you can stop looking so panicked. I know you don’t feel the same way about me anymore, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t feel the way I feel to make you comfortable or to make me look less crazy.”
“I … don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Yeah?” He smiled. “You sure look like you do.”
“It’s just—” What? Too big. Too much. Too damn close?
“Yeah,” he nodded, as if he could read her mind. “But are you seriously going to lie there and tell me you don’t feel anything for me? That I’m just some walk down memory lane for you? Because I’m calling bullshit on that. I saw your face today, when you were running towards me. That wasn’t your pleased to see me face, Selena. Or your, relieved that I was okay face. It was more than that. You forget how well I know you.”
Selena stilled. What had she given away today? There’d sure as hell been a whole bunch of emotions rattling around inside her as she’d made that dash to his side. None of them she’d wanted to examine too closely at the time. But she didn’t have that luxury here and now. Jarrod wasn’t going to let her shy away from any of it.
And maybe she should stop trying.
She wasn’t seventeen. She wasn’t running scared any more. She was a successful career woman. And Grandy was right. Jarrod was still in her system. He always would be.
Because she loved him. She’d never stopped loving him.
“Of course I have feelings for you, Jarrod.”
He smiled, his finger trekking from her mouth along the line of her jaw. “You do?”
Selena nodded. “I love you.”
His finger stopped, his green eyes boring into hers. “You do?”
“Yes,” she whispered, giving in to it. Giving in to the truth of it. “I don’t know that it solves anything but—”
His mouth cut her off. His lips covering hers in a long, lingering kiss, his fingers gliding into her hair, his thumb caressing her cheek.
It was so pure and sweet, tears scalded the backs of her eyes. If only their situation was as simple as the physical pull she felt for him.
That she knew what to do with.
He broke off the kiss, his gaze roaming over her face. “I’ve missed kissing you. Being with you.”
Selena nodded. “Me too.” For fifteen years she’d been lying to herself about just how much. Kidding herself that sex was physical—mechanical—and therefore pretty much the same from one man to the next. It took fifteen years, and making love to Jarrod again, to see that there was a whole lot more to sex.
That it could touch you on a far more profound level if you were with the right person.
“I don’t want to lose this again, Selena.”
“This?”
“Us.”
God help her, she didn’t either. But she was torn between wanting him—wanting an us with him—and the goal she’d been working towards ever since she’d left Jumbuck Springs.
Both were all or nothing kinda gigs, and Selena didn’t want to be half-assed about either of them. She didn’t see how she could have her cake and eat it too.
And she didn’t want to look back in twenty years and have regrets like her mother had. She didn’t want to die wondering what she’d missed out on. At the age of f
ifteen she’d stumbled across her mother’s diaries hidden in the back of Grandy’s closet and finally understood why her grandmother had been such an advocate for Selena following her dream.
She’d known how unhappy and depressed her daughter had become and didn’t want the same for her granddaughter.
Sure, her mother had loved her—it was evident in her writing—but she’d been miserable all alone out on an isolated property with just a baby for company and a man she’d loved but had felt smothered by.
“Neither do I but it’s … complicated and—”
His finger pressed against her lips. “You don’t think we could make it work? We’re smart people, we must be able to figure something out. I’m over being without you, Selena.”
A tiny little hope flared to life inside her chest. The conviction in his voice, on his face, was compelling. Maybe they could make it work? She travelled a lot. But she had days off. So did he. She was occasionally within a few hundred kilometres of Jumbuck Springs. Brisbane—her apartment—was only two hundred kilometres away. They could figure it out.
People managed worse relationship hurdles. They just had to commit.
“Would you come and live in the city with me? Get a job at a city station?”
Surprise flickered in his eyes and there was a brief moment of hesitation. “Are you in Brisbane much?”
“Usually once a week. Sometimes more.”
“But sometimes less … right?”
“Yes,” Selena conceded. “But I’m there a lot more than I ever am in the vicinity of Jumbuck Springs.”
“So … you want me to move on the off chance I’ll see you maybe once a week?”
Selena searched his face. He didn’t look annoyed but he sure sounded it. “Yes. Or did you mean that I had to make all the sacrifices when you said we could figure it out?”
“No, I—” Selena’s phone rang, cutting him off. Jarrod groaned, dropping his chin to her chest. “Don’t answer it.”
