“My mom. All us kids have them. Spooky eyes. I used to get called that at school. We all did.”
He smiled so fully it transferred to her and she smiled too. It chased her fear about getting naked with him away.
“I think they’re beautiful. I think you’re beautiful.”
He put his hands to the hem of her shirt and dragged it up till she lifted her arms and he drew it over her head. As if that was some kind of special feat, it earned her an openmouthed kiss that took her breath away. He worked on her pants button and the zipper and then his hands were inside her cargoes and spread over her butt, bringing her body into contact with his.
His skin was hot and she sizzled with the connection, with the press of his erection. It was a cold shock when he stepped away to drop her pants. That left her standing in her best underwear, grateful for the investment in something that was cute as well as functional.
He climbed into the middle of his big bed and patted the space beside him. “We have all night, we have the whole of Sunday, come spend it with me.”
Was she out of her mind for hesitating? The most incredible specimen of a man was laid out before her, offering himself up for her consumption. After all her talk about wanting wild hot sex, that he knew she needed this first time to be gentle and slow almost made her sob. She knelt on the bed and crawled to him, going lip to lip before she lowered herself into his arms.
There was that silken heat again; it made her moan. It made Jack tighten his grip on her. These bedroom kisses were different from the picnic kisses, from the chair in the kitchen kisses, and the backed-up-against-a-restaurant-wall kisses. They weren’t about learning, nothing teasing, or shocking; they were about possession, they were about destruction.
“Your mouth. I can’t get enough of your mouth,” he said, demonstrating that.
She liked her mouth the way Jack used it. She liked her body the way he alternatively swept his hands across it and gripped, stroked and held. She liked his body, its lean hardness, its economical construction, that he was bigger than her, coarser, but that her smaller hands moving on his skin had an effect on him.
She made him wince once when she pressed on his side, and once when she bumped his brow. Bang, bang. Two strikes and you’re out. “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing.” He tapped his lips with a finger. “Come back here.”
To more kisses that wiped out her higher intelligence and switched on her carnal autopilot. She flicked her bra halfway across the room, she wriggled out of her underpants and lost them off the side of the bed. When they crashed together again there were no fabric barriers.
Now his hands traveled over skin unseen before, over the rise of her breasts and the peaks of her nipples, over the globes of her butt and between her legs.
“Fuck, you’re hot, sweetheart.”
“You’re not too bad yourself.”
He laughed. Apart from that odd moment in the market and the near tragedy on the stairs, he’d smiled and laughed a lot since he decided they were finished with the questions.
A smile on Jack Haley’s face, not the one used on the side of buses and billboards, not the one in his dinkus that was more of a knowing smirk, made him look almost boyish; the tank-driving, firefighting, comic-book-writing soldier still in him was adorable.
He rubbed a thumb over the slightly raised scar on her hip. “What happened here?”
“Tequila.” That earned her a sweep of his tongue there. “Memory loss.” That got his lips hot on her skin. “And a belief I was good at climbing fences.” That made him laugh then lick up her body, nips of his teeth and swirls of his tongue till he took her mouth.
“Please make me come, Jack.”
“Over and over,” he said, rolling them so he balanced on top of her. She nearly passed out at the way he looked strong enough to take on the world, at the way he looked at her, eyes dark and intense, inside the bruising which was already losing color.
“Let me have you,” he said, with a kiss targeted at her throat, with a hand kneading her breast. “Let me make you feel good.”
She offered herself up with a groan of agreement, with her back arched and her hands reaching, not to stop him but to urge him on. But the urge was in both of them, tidal, magnetic, clicking them together, slicking them closer. He used his mouth to touch her places that unlocked her muscles and laid waste to her bones and drilled a hole in her head, letting in such light and wonder she was scared to open her eyes.
With his fingers inside her, he made her ache and tremble and rock her hips. With his mouth, he made her gasp and lose her mind. But it was all so quick she came down to a surge of disappointment.
“Jack.”
“Just getting warmed up.”
“I’m so hot I think I boiled over.” She felt flushed top to toe.
He dropped his head to her stomach. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Don’t you dare.”