The Top Gun's Return

avid exploration of his eyes, and a silence that seemed to last forever. Then…

'God, Jess…it's been so long since I've seen…since I've seen you…like this.' The raw emotion in his voice stunned her, speaking of so many long, empty years…of unfathomable longing and unspeakable suffering.

Only clenched teeth held back her instinctive cry of compassion. She reached for him, but he said thickly, 'No… let me look at you…' and held her away at arm's length. Her hands had to be content to ride his as they traveled slowly, wonderingly over her body. 'I remembered you…like this, but I didn't…' He shook his head like someone in a daze. His gaze clung, mesmerized, to the sight of his fingertips tracing the outline of her breasts. 'Didn't really think you could be this beautiful. Thought…I had to be imagining you, that I'd been away from you so long, my mind had created some impossible ideal…'

Overwhelmed, she tried to laugh and failed miserably. 'Oh, Tris…I'm not-'

'Shh…' His hands gently turned her. She stood with her head bowed, eyes closed, trembling…exposed… vulnerable…while his hands glided over her hips…buttocks…pelvic ridges, like a potter's hands shaping clay. When he kissed the nerve-rich spot above the base of her spine, she gasped, and her muscles contracted violently. Her knees buckled and she clutched at his forearms for support. Every part of her body had begun to swell and ache. In the protected, feminine places, she felt heat and throbbing pressure already building…building, pushing against the limits of her self-control. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her like this… Had anyone ever touched her like this?

She felt his mouth, his breath, his beard-roughed skin caress her buttocks, the small of her back, while his hands slid around her hips and his fingers wove their way into the thicket of hair between her thighs. 'I'm going to fall,' she whispered, but didn't think he heard her. She began to whimper softly.

He turned her again, his mouth dragging kisses across her belly, then lower…and lower still. His mouth was hot…humid…and so was she, and his tongue slipped into her, found her throbbing place and began to move rhythmically with the beat. Her body jerked and she gripped his shoulders, breathing in ragged sobs while his hands, cupping her buttocks, held her firm against the relentless stroking of his mouth and tongue.

She must have cried out…she may have screamed. If so, she didn't hear it. Her mind had left her body, but her body no longer belonged to her…it was only a clenching, quaking, sobbing, trembling mindless bundle of sensation, and he…Tristan…controlled it all. He played her body like an instrument, spinning out the sensations, holding on to the throbbings, making the quaking go on and on, refusing to let it die. Until she thought she surely would.

When she came to herself again she was lying on the bed, cuddled in Tristan's arms with her face buried against his chest, and he was murmuring wordless reassurances into her sweat-damp hair. Her body ached, her breasts felt tight, and her feet tingled with pins and needles. Her cheeks burned. She couldn't bring herself to pull her face out of its warm, protective nest; she wanted to crawl into it and never come out. How, she wondered, would she ever look him in the eye?

But, the voice of reason inside her head asked, why should you feel embarrassed? I don't know why, but I do. But he's your husband! Yes, and for some reason that only makes it worse.

'Well,' said Tristan, and his voice was a throaty growl, full of masculine smugness, 'we know everything still works.'

Jessie's self-consciousness vanished in a heartbeat. She rolled back onto the pillow of his arm, made little murmuring, settling sounds in her throat, then said in a parody of a Southern woman's honeyed primness, 'No, suh, I do not believe that is true.' Surprised, he raised his head to look at her, and she smiled demurely at him from under her lashes. 'I do believe there is one area that has not been thoroughly tested…'

'Is that a fact?' His smile grew slowly, making the commas at the corners of his mouth emerge little by little, like shy children.

'Yes, suh, it surely is.' Already thirsting for the taste of his mouth, she couldn't take her eyes from it, and when he lowered it at last to hers, she closed her eyes with a happy sigh and drank him in as if she would never have enough. The kiss was leisurely and deep, and she was quickly intoxicated.

'You sure you're ready to have me inside you?' he murmured into her mouth.

Languid and dizzy she murmured back into his, 'Yes, please.'

He left her to finish his undressing and she lay naked under his avid eyes and stretched like a cat, too drunk with desire to be self-conscious. Back again, naked himself now, he knelt astride her legs, rising tall above her, his angular body mysterious to her in that gentle light. She gasped when he gripped her thighs and thrust them apart, but that was his only roughness. He lowered himself into the place he'd made and entered her with exquisite care, easing into her already swollen and lubricated body slowly, and as he filled her she arched into him and exhaled with a long, replete sigh.

'That about do it?' he asked, his voice thick and broken, trying to tease, anyway.

'Oh, yes,' she whispered.

'Better be…that's 'bout all I've got…'

Breathless, she couldn't answer, except to laugh. It felt good to laugh with him inside her, and to feel him laughing, too. She felt his arms quiver with the strain of holding his weight away from her and writhed upward to nudge him with her body. 'You don't need to do that.'

'Don't want…to crush you.'

'Pshaw. I'm not exactly a fragile flower of Southern womanhood, and you're not about to crush anybody. Come here to me.' She looped her arms around his neck and, laughing, he lowered his body onto hers, then quickly rolled them both so that she was on top of him instead. 'Oh,' she moaned, 'now I'm gonna crush you.'

But when she would have risen to straddle him, he wouldn't let her. Holding her tightly around her hips, he brought his knees up between hers so that his thighs caressed her buttocks, and they were touching in every possible way. Then, as deeply seated inside her as he could be, he began to rock her, and all the while looked intently into her eyes. Without breath, he whispered, 'Jessie…love…you feel so good.'

Light-headed, sinking deeper and deeper into arousal, she wanted-needed-to close her eyes. But in a guttural rasping voice he cried out, 'No…no. Look at me, Jessie…love…look at me.'

She moaned, but obeyed…and in all too short a time felt her body spiral once more out of control and sobs burst from her throat and tears jump from her eyes. 'I can't…I…can't,' she wailed, and as her eyes refused to obey her a second longer and drifted closed at last, she felt his arms tighten and his body surge and shudder, then surge again.

Lying spent and sated on Tris's chest, Jessie tried to hold the world at bay. Like a child singing loudly with her eyes shut tight and her hands over her ears to keep from hearing what she doesn't want to hear, she closed her mind to all but loud and happy thoughts about staying right where she was forever. The world came in, anyway.

Tris was stirring purposefully beneath her. 'Hate to do this, love,' he mumbled. 'Better let me up before I fall asleep right here.'

'Sounds good to me,' she murmured, knowing even as she said it that it wouldn't make any difference.

He kissed her forehead and separated from her gently. He eased her to one side and himself to the other and sat up. 'Wish I could. But I think it's best if I sleep on the couch tonight.'

With her elbow planted and her head propped on her hand, Jessie watched the scars on his back stretch over the bumps of his spine as he leaned to reach for his pants. Her throat ached. Stubbornly she said, 'Why? You've been sleeping fine. Stay here. Hold me for a little while…'

'Sorry…' He rose and turned, thin as a wraith, his smile dark and wry. 'Nothing I'd like to do more than stay and hold you. I'd like to spend the whole damn night holding you…sleeping with you in my arms. But…' and his eyes were soft with regret as he leaned down to kiss her, 'I haven't had enough beer to calm my nightmares. So I'm gonna sleep out there…and you're gonna stay in here…and behave yourself…' The kisses he inserted into each pause grew progressively deeper and more arousing. Jessie's heart had begun to thump and her head to spin by the time he drew back with a wicked chuckle. 'That oughta do you till morning, anyway.'

She didn't agree with him, but knew it was pointless to argue. Playing along, she slapped at him, pretending outrage, then snuggled back into the pillows with a Scarlett O'Hara pout. 'Well. I feel like Ah have been serviced.'

Grinning, Tris leaned down to drop a last kiss on her forehead. 'So you have been-and very well, too.'