“Mind if I tag along? I could use a stretch after my flight.”
Jess didn’t understand how he could look so cool and collected and in control when she was melting by slow, hot degrees.
“We’ll be right back,” she told Kayla, and headed out the door, feeling happier and more vital than she had since the night Ty had kissed her and left her wanting more.
“Take your time.” Kayla’s voice floated out after them, sounding annoyingly pleased and far too amused.
“I TAKE IT no one knew I was coming back today?”
The dog sniffed happily at the grass along the shoulder as they walked down the blacktop road.
“I didn’t figure it was anyone’s business but mine.”
Ty liked being her private business. He liked the way her eyes had lit up when she’d seen him walk in the door. He’d had hopes. When they’d talked or texted or exchanged e-mails, there’d been a quality in her voice or her tone that suggested she was ready to open herself up to this. That she was ready for them. But until he’d seen her face, he hadn’t been counting on anything. Now he was counting on a lot.
She looked good. While he loved the wholesome look of her without makeup, he liked it that she’d made a special effort to look nice for him.
“I thought this day would never come,” he confessed, and reached for her hand.
Warmth spread through his chest when she eagerly entwined her fingers with his. “I’d started to think it wouldn’t.”
Better and better. “I’m sorry it took me so long. Everywhere I turned, I ran into red lights that slowed me down. But it’s all good now. My deck’s cleared.”
“For how long?”
“Two weeks, at least. Longer if you want it to be.”
He’d hoped he’d see that pleased look in her eyes, but until it was a certainty, he’d been holding his breath. It made his next move so easy.
He stopped and pulled her toward him. “No cars ahead of us. No cars behind.”
“My powers of deductive reasoning lead me to conclude that we must be alone, then.”
He loved this carefree, playful side, too. Apparently, absence not only made the heart grow fonder, it also made it grow braver. “Reason to celebrate.”
She looped her arms around his neck. “What’d you have in mind?”
“The same thing that’s been on my mind since the last time I saw you.”
“Then why are you wasting so much time talking about it?”
He laughed and pulled her snugly against him, letting her feel exactly what she did to him. “Oh, what a difference three weeks and a handful of suggestive text messages can make.”
She laughed, too. “There you go. Talking again.”
“There you go. Reminding me.”
“Ty. Shut up and kiss me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter 13
MIDNIGHT HAD BEEN LONELY FOR so long. Midnight had become an hour Jess dreaded and that she spent awake and alone too many nights.
That she wasn’t alone tonight felt like a small miracle. She didn’t want to remember how lost she had been. She wanted only to think about the touch of this man’s hands, alternately rough and gentle and oh so skilled. She wanted to be swallowed up in the solid, hot bulk of his body. The feel of him deep inside her. The suction of his mouth on her breast as she came with an involuntary convulsion of muscle and a gasp of wonder.
When she could take a breath that wasn’t a shudder, she lightly bit his shoulder, steeping herself in the maleness of him, his strength, the way his mouth cruised over her body and brought life where life had been gone for so, so long.
“You OK?”
She stretched in contentment and framed his face in her hands. “You really have to ask?”
He’d brought her there twice tonight. Eased her up the first time and taken her over. Then he’d turned on the lights and taken her fast and hard and desperately.
Now, in the aftermath, his heart slammed hard and true against her breasts. She loved the vital maleness of him. The heat and the scent of his skin, the bulk of muscle pressing her into the mattress as he rose up on his elbows and scattered kisses along her throat.
“You’re so beautiful.”
She needed that. He must know she needed that. She’d been shy when the first moment came. She’d led him to her bedroom and turned off the lights. Undressed in the dark. Met him on the bed where she’d never lain with a man, trembling, vulnerable, and more alive than she ever remembered feeling.
It had been so long. So long since the press of flesh on flesh had electrified her. So long since she’d lain beside a man whose caresses and low groans told her that yes, she was enough, and yes, she excited him, and yes, this was what magic felt like.
There had never been any question where this night would end. She’d wanted him in her bed since the moment he’d left her—probably even before that, if she were being honest. She’d wanted him so badly that it should have frightened her. It might have, if the deep, aching need hadn’t outdistanced any thought of caution and consequences.
There’d be time enough to sort it all out. Tonight… tonight she wanted to indulge.
She caressed his shoulders, explored the play of muscle over bone, and wondered how she had lived without this.
“Too heavy?” he murmured against her jaw.
“Too confined. I want to touch you. All of you.”
He groaned low and deep and with effort rolled off her and onto his back. Spread-eagle. Totally male. Utterly remarkable.
“Be gentle with me.”
She pressed up on an elbow and grinned down at him. “I’ll try to restrain myself.”
“So you know… I need a little recovery time.”
She kissed the center of his chest. “Not a problem. All you have to do is lie there.”
“I can do that.”
She didn’t want thoughts of J.R. in this bed. Not fair to him. Not fair to Ty. But the differences were too huge to ignore. With J.R., it had been all about the intensity. With Ty, it was that and more. It was fun. There was laughter. She liked the laughter. She liked the heat. So she ignored the scars—the ones on his back and the one she’d discovered on his shoulder—because she didn’t want more reminders of war in this bed tonight, either.
She took her time, then, took her pleasure exploring and engaging her power over him with each light finger stroke, with the press of her lips against flesh that was tender and sensitive and so responsive.
“You’re killing me.” His hands knotted in her hair, gently tugged.
She smiled against that sensitive spot where groin met thigh, fascinated by the thrum of his pulse beneath her lips, the depth of his ragged breaths, the fact that her brazen exploration delivered the sweetest kind of torment.
“And oh, what’s this?” He swelled in her hand as she surrounded him. “Not so much recovery time, after all?”
He laughed. “Remember… you started this.”
She rose to her knees and straddled him, slowly guided him home. “I did. Now I’m going to finish it.”
And then she moved. Taking him in. Taking him deep, until his hips rose to meet hers, and his hands
