Jackson’s anger rose. “You want it all out in the open? Fine, but don’t blame me if it’s more than what you wanted to hear.” He lifted his hand and cupped the back of her head. When she tried to pull away, he held her firmly with a fist full of her soft blonde curls. His whisper was for her ears alone. “Fear isn’t what has my cock rock hard right now. Fear isn’t what rode me the other night, either, baby. I wanted to take you to the floor and fuck you. First I wanted to see you come again so I would have gotten on top of you and watched your pretty blue eyes dilate and your face flush with heat. But then I would have wanted to see your sexy ass. I would’ve flipped you over and fucked you from behind, maybe spanked you a few times for being so goddamn contrary. After we recovered a bit, I would have taken you to the shower and fucked you there too. I want my cock inside of you. Your mouth, your cunt, your ass. I want my come filling you. I left because I wanted you too much.”
Her mouth dropped open and her face turned beet red.
Was she afraid of him now? Shit. This wasn’t at all how things were supposed to go. “I’d never—” He never got to finish what he was about to say because the flight attendant came over the intercom and announced they could exit the plane. Their alone time had just disappeared.
Baggage claim and the cab ride seemed to take forever. When they arrived at the hotel, there wasn’t any privacy to be had there, either. They checked in for the convention and retrieved their room keys. By the time they had a few minutes alone in the elevator, they’d arrived at their floor, and Grace scurried off to her suite, leaving him to wonder how things had gone from bad to worse.
He went to his own room, slid the keycard through the slot and pushed the door open. After tossing his suitcase on the bed, he looked around at the opulent room. A foyer led to a large living room. Off to his left was a little half-bath. The dark furniture, offset by bright carpeting and curtains, looked classy and comfortable. The big plasma flat screen was a nice touch. A mirrored wet-bar, cool. He made his way into the bedroom and noticed more mirrors, walls of them, in fact. Jackson stared at the bed and imagined making love to Grace on the luxurious linens. He groaned. He went around a corner and found the bathroom. Damn thing was fit for a king. The centerpiece was a deep Roman tub surrounded in black marble. Christ, he really wanted Grace in that tub. His cell phone rang, interrupting the X-rated movie playing in his head. He checked the caller ID, hoping it was Grace. His mom. Oh, yeah, he really wanted to talk to her. She’d see right through him, know something was wrong and want to help. It rang again. For a moment he thought of avoiding her. She’d only worry, though. Didn’t matter that he was thirty-two.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, dear. Did your trip go okay?”
Just dandy if you consider alienating the one woman he was beginning to suspect he loved. “It was great.”
“No problems checking in?”
“No, I’m good. How’s Dad?”
“Apparently fine, considering he went golfing with your brother and hasn’t been back all day.”
He heard the disgust in his mother’s voice. She wanted to coddle his dad now that he was beginning to slow down, but no one coddled Edgar Hill. The man thought he was indestructible. “Scott will see to it that Dad doesn’t overdo.” His brother, younger than him by two years, had always been able to get around their dad somehow. He was a little too good at manipulating people, which was probably what made him a really great sales rep.
“Enough about your stubborn father. How are you? You sound down. Is everything okay?”
And there it was, mother’s intuition. He’d never been able to escape it, though he’d tried aplenty. “I think I may have wrecked things with Grace.” He walked back into the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed.
“That girl you told me about the last time you were here visiting?”
He’d broken down and told his mother everything about Grace Vaughn. How beautiful she was when she smiled, how crazy she made him when she said something ornery to goad him. His mother had started to hear wedding bells, though, so he’d played it off.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“She went with you to the convention, right?”
What was his mother up to now? “Uh, right.”
“You two will be there for three days?”
Jackson sat up. “We come back on Thursday. Why the twenty questions?”
“Well, seems to me you shouldn’t be wasting time with me. Get off the phone and ask her to dinner.”
“She pretty much hates my guts. I’m the last person she wants to break bread with, trust me.”
His mother made a frustrated sound. “No she doesn’t. She’s just playing hard to get.”
He laughed. “Women don’t do that anymore.”
“Some things may have changed over the years, but they haven’t changed that much. Ask her to dinner. If she refuses, ask her again. And remember to be a gentleman about it, Jackson.”
He chuckled as he stood. “Always.”
&
nbsp; “Don’t be smart,” she warned. “You aren’t too old for me to box your ears.”
They said their goodbyes, and Jackson went to the hotel phone and dialed Grace’s room. She answered on the second ring.