The waiting was over. They were alone and as far as she knew no one would be coming to find them.
Their time was now. Their moment had arrived.
Jax had come for her. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.
And it would be one hell of a claiming.
* * * *
They hadn’t even bothered going inside. The dipping sun provided a beautiful romantic setting as it slipped behind the mountains, almost out of sight.
Clothes were stripped, nearly ripped, away. Shoes were kicked to the side and tumbled down the hill.
Jax dragged her body against his and framed her face with his hands, smothering her lips with a kiss he’d waited years to take. “You’re so damn beautiful.” He stroked the texture, indulging in the sweetest of kisses, the kind of kisses that ruined a man on one hand and made him a better fellow on the other.
Entwining their fingers, he pushed away from her, aware of his cock stretching for her, the hardness between his legs pounding with his excitement, that pent-up lust demanding that he make her his. Questions. There were so many questions. Had he risked her safety by turning her away when he should’ve taken her so very long ago?
He swallowed as he studied her, ate up the sight of her. Sore from the bruises marring his flesh, but agonized by the ones deeply embedded in her skin, he caressed her face, smoothing his fingers over the discoloration in her skin.
“You make me crazy,” he said, breathing heavily as he attempted to grab some semblance of control. He brought her closer, held her tighter. “But I can’t do this. Not now. Not tonight.”
What the hell was he saying? How had he come this far only to push her away? He was dying inside, needing so much from her but longing to give her the space and time she needed in order to heal.
“Jax, don’t.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “I want you.” She kissed a trail up his cheek and to his ear. “I know you want me, too.” She pulled back and looked at him.
Apprehension wasn’t in her expression. Only lust and longing filled those lovely bedroom eyes.
He stilled then. The man living inside him was dying to get a hold of her, yearning for that first stroke, that first hard thrust, but there was more than the lust-filled evening to consider here. Brianna had been abused and he still didn’t know all the particulars. Had the abuse run deep? Had it been surface wounds or were there scars that would remain with her forever more?
She wrapped her hand around his cock and pulled him into her tightly drawn fist, pumping up and down, sliding her palm around him before twisting his shaft gently. Now her burning gaze was purely sexual. Carnal heat resonated from her skin.
“Brianna, I can’t take you. Not like this. Not here.” But God help him, he needed her to agree. If she didn’t at least pause and give him time to come to his senses, if he even possessed them.
“Why not?” She nipped at his lips. “Give me one good reason.”
And there it was. The request for reason.
“You know why,” he rasped, grabbing hold of his last bit of nearly shot control. He grabbed her arm and pulled her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles and deciding he could at least give her some pleasure if he took the lead.
“I don’t.”
Understanding how carefully he needed to phrase his words, he said, “Oh, but I think you do, lover. I think my reputation more or less speaks for itself.”
A wicked smile slipped across her lips. “You’re a Dom.”
“Damn straight.”
“And you’re toying with me?”
“No, sweet baby, I’m not toying with you.” He brushed her bangs away from her face. “But I will teach you. You will know how to harness and control that lust so it will never get the best of you again.” As if he could teach her a damn thing at the moment. Right then, all he wanted was to lay down his rules, throw her down and love her.
“And you want to do that now?”
“Now works for me,” he said, acknowledging the sound of vehicles rumbling through the pastures behind the cabin. His brothers had wasted no time in finding them. “Get dressed.” He pulled up his jeans. “Let me see if I can’t get rid of them.”
He was stone, just rigid as hell, and it hurt like the devil when he zipped up his pounding erection. Still, he managed to tuck his cock inside his jeans. He then picked up her clothes and tried not to gawk too long at the bruises on her thighs. That wasn’t the problem anyway. It was those three damp curls sticking to her pussy now wet with her excitement. And her excitement was even more evident in her full voluptuous breasts, those pert nipples that he would see clamped because that’s all he’d thought about since seeing her at her eighteenth birthday party, stripped down to a thong and a wet T-shirt, planning to strut around her pool and make him and every other man there drool.
A smile tugged at his lips as the memory stuck with him. He moistened his lips with hers, driving into her mouth with a passionate kiss before he forced himself to pull away.