She strained to see him in the darkness, but it was as if a heavy, opaque fabric had been draped over her eyes. Nausea swelled in her belly.
“I don’t know if you’d recognize your own dog or not. I can’t recognize anything. It’s so dark,” she muttered. The misery and fear rising in her seemed to pause and recoil when John palmed the side of her head and rubbed the back of her skull soothingly.
“Just close your eyes, then,” he murmured, his warm breath brushing across her left temple. “There’s a whole world in the darkness, and it can be a wonderful place. Do you want me to show you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, the kisses he rained on her temple and along her hairline capturing her entire attention. He placed his warm mouth over the opening of her ear, the resulting suction from his kiss causing a shudder of pleasure to go through her. She touched his waist and looped her arms around him. “Show me, John. Please.”
She felt him move and heard the sound of him jerking up his jeans and underwear in a hurried, cursory fashion. He opened his hand at her lower back and brought her flush against him. With his other hand, he cradled her jaw and lifted it.
His mouth covering her own made the fearful shadows lurking in her awareness scatter like a horde of shooed flies.
She moaned into his mouth. Something inside her recognized the taste of sex and power and virility. She kissed him back without thought, abandoning herself to instinct and lust, for there was forgetfulness there . . .
And safety.
He didn’t only kiss her forcefully, but also with finesse and subtlety, shaping her mouth to his, using some of the most sensitive, erogenous zones in the human body to caress and coax and fuse. Her clit pinched in arousal. This wasn’t just as kiss; it was sex, pure and simple. Bodies pressing, rubbing, yearning; tastes mingling, lips molding, tongues dueling; Jennifer losing the battle for control . . . and winning gloriously. She would have ravished him herself if he wasn’t so clearly the ravisher. As it was, she became dizzy beneath his dominance of her senses.
He broke their kiss and leaned down over her, pressing the side of his face next to her head so that she heard his slightly escalated breath in her ear.
“Where the hell did you learn to kiss like that?” he rasped.
“Where’d you?” she whispered as her hands moved over his chest, undoing buttons, seeking out skin.
His ragged laugh was cut off short when she pressed her face into the opening of his shirt. She moaned at the sensation of warm skin and springy hair against her lips and nose. She’d grown to despise a Hollywood-style shaved chest. Jennifer wanted a man who passed a mirror like he would a stretch of blank wall, not one who took more time getting ready to go out on a date than she did.
John palmed her buttocks, molding her flesh to hands, his stance striking her, not as content necessarily, as she explored his chest with her mouth, but rather alert. Interested.
She found a nipple and licked at it delicately, enjoying the way it stiffened beneath the tip of her tongue. She paused, detailing the tiny bumps. He grunted softly and used his hold on her ass to draw her closer. She shifted her face against hard muscle. Liking the feel of the crisp hair on his chest so much, she bit a few strands beneath her teeth and pulled. She jumped when he gave her a taut, firm swat on her bottom.
Arousal spiked through her. Jennifer just stood there, suddenly feeling like a chastised schoolgirl instead of a successful, experienced woman. His low chuckle in the darkness struck her as delicious . . . and slightly dangerous.
He backed out of their embrace.
“It’s okay,” he murmured quietly when she gave a small cry of protest. He kept her hand in his, the contact reassuring her in the darkness. She felt the vibrations of him moving through his hold.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Spreading my coat on the softer ground under the sink hole. Come here.”
He guided her down to the ground. She heard the sound of his boots crunching in the loose soil. She reached out her hands to find him and realized he’d knelt on his knees next to her.
“Lie back.”
Jennifer did as he instructed, realizing he’d spread his coat lengthwise. Big man, big coat. When she lay down, she was cushioned from head to thigh. He began to untie her boots. She sat up and tried to help him, but he grabbed her wrist, halting her.
“Lie back,” he repeated. “I’m looking forward to undressing you.”
She reclined slowly. She didn’t like his distance from her. She didn’t like staring into the black void. Anxiety began to grip at her throat again.
“Close your eyes,” he said as he removed a boot.
Jennifer clamped her eyes shut. How had he known panic was rising in her again? Did he hear an alteration in her breath? Feel it in her muscles? She studied the bursts of light behind her eyelids and listened to the unpleasant sound of her thumping heart in her ears.
She felt a give in the coat beneath her and realized John had braced himself over her, one hand near her right cheek.
“Ohhh,” she mumbled shakily when he spread a hand at the juncture of her thighs and began to rub her pussy straight through her jeans. At first, it seemed like a ridiculous thing to do—why didn’t he at least unbutton her fly and stimulate her skin to skin?—but it didn’t take her long to realize he knew exactly what he was doing. It felt good. She moaned and ground her pussy against his hand.
“When I was sixteen I had a girlfriend who wouldn’t let me unfasten one button on her blouse, let alone get her naked,” she heard him say, his voice about a foot above her face. “She told me she was saving herself for marriage, and that we could make out, but that would be the extent of things. Her definition of ‘making out’ was pretty interesting. She had no problem with letting me make her come as long as she was fully clothed, though, and was kind enough to return the favor. My father thought I’d turned over a new leaf of independence my sixteenth summer because I took to doing all my wash. In reality, I was just trying to clean the gallons of come out of my jeans.”