Chapter 8

8

JACK

I have to fasten her seatbelt for her because she's got the shakes. I can't help smiling over that. She's trembling and excited, her pupils blown wide, because she's never felt this before. I love it, love that I'm the man who's taken her this far. It doesn't matter how many guys she's slept with. I know this night is different.

At a stoplight, she twists in her seat, reaches for me. I don't need much encouragement to take her mouth again. She tastes like the seaside and grape popsicles and everything I've ever wanted. I can't help the groan I release into her open mouth or the way my tongue sweeps in to stroke hers. Someone behind us honks because we haven't moved after the light is green. I don't even bother to flip them off.

I'm not sure how I get her to the elevator after leaving my car with valet. She seems to be hanging on the brass handrail, body slumped in the corner of the private elevator to my penthouse. I step in toward her, crowd her. I wrap my hands around her sides, pick her up, lift her to lean on the brass bar. I brace one hand on the wall beside her head, kiss her cheek teasingly. She's expecting me to really go for it, just pound her right here in an elevator.

"I've waited four days. I can wait another three minutes," I say, "but if you need to take the edge off, there's enough time for me to make you come."

She shakes her head, more frustration than refusal. She drapes her arms over my shoulders and tips her forehead until her face is buried in my collarbone. Something in my chest twists. I rest my chin on top of her head. This silence feels unfamiliar—intimate, tender almost.

The elevator doors open. I ease her down off the rail, tuck her under my arm, her body pressed to my side, her head on my chest. Once we're inside, she doesn't even pause to gape at the grandeur of my penthouse with its floor to ceiling city view.

The scent of her arousal hits me. I'm not sure if I'll survive this without going insane. Because some kind of affection scalds me like I drank boiling water, and it burns down my throat and into my chest. It feels like I'm being burned alive and the only way to survive is to have another taste of the drug.

I pick her up in one swift movement and carry her down the hall to the master bedroom. My enormous bed is on a platform, and I plan to see her spread out across it wearing nothing but the flush on her skin.

Possessiveness puts me on edge. It's just one night. She's already announced that I'm just a stupid thing she wants to do. To live like she's young and wild for once. I can't think too deeply about why it makes my throat hurt to think of her being so sad, so alone that this was all she had to hope for. One night with a man like me. That she'd settle for anything, for the counterfeit of a deep connection, for a few hours of pleasure when she deserves so much more. I wish a lot of ridiculous things in the seconds it takes to lower her onto my bed.

I wish I could make her forget everything ugly that's happened to her.

I want to set her free.

I wish I could be man who gets to see her as she really is. No dampener on her power. No worry or fear to restrain her.

When I set my mouth on hers, our lips fuse, our tongues tangle and she looks up at me when I set her on the bed, licks her bee stung lips. I touch her face, trail my fingers down her neck, her chest and down to her belly. I ease her t-shirt up a few inches and find the gateway to paradise. Serena leans back on her elbows and reaches out for me. I shake my head at her, and my eyes and hands go to her mound instinctively. Unzipping her pants, I'm hit by the scent of her, a sweet, briny richness that makes me want to bury my face between her soft thighs forever.

I indulge without saying a word. I am intent when she lifts her hips so I can slide her jeans off. I leave her in a scrap of silky pink and lace. I nuzzle her panties, nearly drunk on the smell of her. Serena reaches down and threads her fingers into my hair.

I open my eyes and look at her face, see that her teeth are chattering. She squirms, twists her fingers in my hair just enough to hurt. I groan against her panties She arches up off the bed and grinds into my face, out of control.

In a flash I have her panties off, parting her slit, licking into her. She is so wet, so tight. I groan again, let her feel the rumble of my voice against her sex. She cries out, her thighs wrapping around my head. I drink in the musky sweet scent of her core and another shock of possession bolts straight to the marrow of my bones.

This isn't the misguided one-and-done screw I expected. Tasting her, learning the dip and curve of her hips does nothing to satisfy me. This is making it worse.

Serena reaches for me, a graceful motion. She rolls to her feet and reaches up, frames my face with her hands. Her fevered eyes search my face, standing before me in only her t-shirt, her cheeks flushed.

"Are you okay? What's wrong?" she asks me. She holds my face, looks right in my eyes and it feels like I'm being held there by a laser beam instead of her gaze.

I try to back up, to get away from her hands, her gaze, the curves of her body and that silken skin. I feel exposed.

I should tell her that I can't do this. That I'm teetering on the edge of obsession here and the urge to bury myself in her tight, sweet slit is making blood pound in my ears. I should be grateful I stopped when I did, before I felt her come apart from my touch.

"For the record," she says, her bright eyes never leaving mine, "I don't just want someone to make me forget for a while. I want you . It's a hell of a problem for me, a complication I didn't ask for in the middle of all this mess, but I'm drawn to you. You're all I think about."

She strokes her thumb over my cheekbone once, twice. All my reasons burn away in the heat of her touch. Maybe she kisses me, or maybe I kiss her. She's in my arms, my tongue breaching her lips, her bare legs wrapping around my hips. My shoulders hit the mattress as she unbuttons my shirt. Serena practically glows when she looks down at me from her spot astride my stomach. Parting the fabric, she sets her palms on my chest.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it feels like I was zapped with the paddles that doctors use to restart the human heart. My eyes drop shut as I try to contain the intensity of this feeling but flashes of purple and silver spark behind my lids. My fingers close around her wrists, pinning her hands to my chest. When I open my eyes, she's there, her forehead against mine, eyes blinking fast. She felt it too, whatever charge passed between us. I move just a little, tilt my head and lock my lips with hers.

We breathe together, joined that way, lips clinging to one another, the closeness stirring something in my chest. I'm holding her palms flat to my chest, lips pressed to hers, and we are motionless, sealed together in a way that feels powerful and fragile at the same time. I release her wrists to wrap my arms around her, hold her there on top of me as I deepen the kiss. A steamy, slow kiss that puts me back on solid ground.

This is going to be so good, or it's going to be the death of me. I roll her onto her back, press her down into the mattress with my body. She nips at my lips, sexy as hell, and before I can decide about position, pacing, or even find a condom in my bedside table, something overtakes me.

I've ripped her panties away, barely had time to unzip my own pants. I drive my throbbing hard cock into her dripping pussy. She lets me take her raw and real and so slick and hot that I'm losing my control. The incredible wet heat of her is like a fist wrapped around my cock, the cling of her softness to my length. She feels so tight it's like a velvety flame closes around me.

I thrust deeper, a rhythm that comes from us both. She doesn't object to being taken raw, without warning. Her legs wrap around my hips, urging me on. She grabs my ass, tugging me closer until I am into the hilt. I stay still a moment once I stuff her, slickness coating me. I can barely get a breath from the clench of her sex around me.

I want to stay in this pulsating, breathless moment between heartbeats when I'm joined with Serena. She tilts her hips to grind against me, rolls her hips as if she's trying to stir my dick inside her tight little passage. I groan out loud, curse, want her to do it again but also want to pound her, to withdraw and push back inside her, feel that heat envelop me again. She surges upward, her mouth on mine.

"Please, Jack," she says on my lips before she opens for my tongue. I pull out suddenly, then plunge back in with a fierce thrust, the impact scooting her up the mattress. I see her head go back, her hand grab at the sheets to hold on. Her body goes stiff, she whispers, "more."

"Greedy girl," I growl at her, nip her neck. I withdraw with painstaking slowness, tormenting her with the drag of my cock on her sensitive flesh.

I lift her hips and hold her, guide my cock into her, angle my pelvis and go so deep that I almost black out. She grabs for my face, the way her eyes fly open to look at me, it's my undoing. As much as I want to wait until I've made her come, see the small oh of her lips, the arch of her back as she takes all of me in, the way my name comes from her in the sharpest, most desperate voice I've ever heard from her—all of it undoes me.

My hot spurts fill her until I feel it spill out onto her thighs while I thrust in and out. I come like I've had lightning strike my spine, with a roar and a shudder, the first hot lash of my seed shoots deep in her pussy and she convulses around me. The strength of her inner muscles milks me until I'm spent, all the while her shriek of completion tapers off into a keening, the nails of the hand she has on my ass score my skin. Her slick body tremors around my shaft. I kiss her lips again, softer this time. Our legs are still tangled together, her hand on my ass flexing as if to stop me from escaping.

"Serena," I say, "That was incredible."

"It doesn't usually happen for me," she admits, shellshocked.

"You've never—" I stop myself. This is going to go to my head, I can tell.

"I don't want to feed your ego," she says with a laugh.

We go all night. There's no other way to describe it. I was worried about being obsessed with her. It's too late for that. I'm not sure I stop fucking her for more than an hour all night. We don't sleep. We taste each other, joined together again and again.

At five in the morning, I lay there with Serena draped across my chest, both of us exhausted and breathless. My hand cups her head, her cheek against my heart. She may be asleep, I think, and reach over to grab the sheet. I pull it over her, over us both. She nestles into my chest with a small sigh.

The next thing I know, she's pinching my nipple, kissing my chest. My arms go around her and I slide her down my torso a little. Her legs spread. We both gasp when we feel the head of my cock kiss the damp lips of her sex. She raises up, knees on either side of me, and I guide her down my thick shaft. She tilts her hips forward and opens for me. She slides down my length until we're joined completely. Her hand goes to her belly, slides down slowly.

She meets my eyes with wonder. "I can feel you," she says. "I'm so full I couldn't take another inch—" she breaks off when I pump into her, grinding her against my pelvic bone. I see the spike of pleasure roll through her. I reach between us to touch her clit.

"I can't believe this," she sobs, and my mouth is on hers again because I can't stop kissing her while she comes.

I try to stop, thinking a little break would be good for us. She rolls away from me, seems to get comfortable on a pillow and then sits up to check the time. I hear her groan when she looks at the clock. It's six in the morning, but we haven't slept.

"We'll be exhausted," she says. "We should sleep."

"Come here," I say, and open my arms.

Serena hesitates for a second before she stretches out beside me with my arm around her. She nudges my cheek with the tip of her nose so she can burrow in and rest her head on my shoulder.

I can feel her heart thump steady against my side, and I feel it in my rib cage. When I shut my eyes, every cell in my body seems to focus on that spot, to absorb the warmth of her, the way her breath stirs against my skin while her heartbeat may as well be an entire percussion section set up in my master bedroom for the way it seems to reverberate through my entire body.

I hug her closer to me, my arm tightening in what feels like a protective embrace. I have never held a woman after sex, never let them sleep over either. I take a woman to a hotel or go to her place. I don't invite lovers into my home. Part of the reason for that is the intense security and privacy my business demands. The rest of the reason is probably something to do with trust and a screwed-up childhood. Only a handful of people know where I live.

It's like I've had a small stroke or something, a case of terribly impaired judgement. I am breaking a sweat lying here holding Serena in my arms. I'm not sure if it's the strangeness of sharing a bed or if it's some kind of Edgar Allen Poe shit about her heartbeat. She's too close, and it's making me hot and I need to turn on the goddam air conditioning in this place.

I sit up and put my feet on the floor. A hand, small and insistent, presses to my spine.

"Hey," she says. "You okay there, Jack?"

Her voice is sleepy but sounds full of concern. I look over my shoulder at her and let out a breath I had been holding.

"I'm not really tired."

"You are, too," she says with a sleepy smile. "You've absolutely screwed my brains out all night. It feels like I've been wrung out and couldn't move if I wanted to—and you did most of the work."

"You helped," I say, my voice going soft at the edges. I turn from the edge of the bed and prop my elbow, lean my head on my hand.

"I'd do it again," she says, blushing a little shyly. There was a wicked glint in her eyes though, playful and full of mischief. "I really liked being your undoing. Is that weird?"

"Absolutely. You'll be a dominatrix in no time. I've already ordered you a riding crop," I say, teasing her. She turns beet red up to her hairline, like she thinks I'm serious. I lean in and kiss her.

The restless edginess I felt, that need to flee the bed and collect my thoughts, is soothed by her. Serena lifts her arm and drapes it over my shoulder while we go on kissing. I feel the tension relax from my shoulders, my jaw, everywhere she touches me. Like the warmth of her small hands have some magic to bring me back to myself. I hug her. It feels perfect.

"Did you freak out?" she murmurs sleepily.

"No. Why'd you think that?"

"I don't know, maybe because your hands shook when you kissed me the first time, and you looked right in my eyes when you came. It felt so real—I thought this would be my wild oats, you know? The thing where you do something crazy to remember how it feels to be young?"

"I'm old now?" I ask wryly.

"I mean, I thought I wouldn't feel anything other than maybe panic and regret, like I didn't expect to do any soul-gazing when we were—" she breaks off as if she's too shy now to say the words.

"Did it bother you that I looked you in the face while I fucked you?" I say, challenging her, using the word that I know will make her pull away from me. Making it graphic, dirty. A small part of me regrets it, but the rest of me is crowing in excitement because she didn't regret this and felt something deeper. It shouldn't matter. In fact, it should send me running for the hills but for some reason it doesn't.

She shakes her head ruefully, "No, I really liked it. When you drilled your eyes into mine, I could see you holding back and waiting for me. Once I realized that, it made me plug right in to what we were doing even more. You hit every spot inside me that feels like it's put there for pleasure, and I lost my mind. I went from being totally present in my body for maybe the first time ever to having every thought obliterated. It didn't feel like—like anything that ever passed for pleasure before."

For the first time in my life, I'm speechless and totally fucked.

And not in the good way.