His cock pulsed painfully. His heart pulsed painfully.
Her ankles were slender, he was easily able to encircle her ankles with his hands. “You have such beautiful feet,” he whispered, raising his eyes to hers.
They were silver in this light, rimmed by a darker blue. “Thank you,” she whispered back.
He leaned forward, running his hands from her ankles up the outside of her thighs, over her hips, nuzzling her soft little belly.
He leaned forward a little, his shoulders forcing her knees apart.
“Lie down, honey,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “This will take a while.”
That brought a smile to her lips. She ran a hand over his hair, then slowly lay down, one arm covering her eyes.
Fine. She didn’t need to see. She only had to feel.
She was so heart-stoppingly beautiful naked, hips sharply outlined, belly concave, legs dangling over the edge of the bed, completely open to him.
Jack rarely went down. He didn’t have any objections to it, but he wasn’t wild for it, either.
Right now, though, his head was filled with the thought of kissing her there—right where his cock would go, but later. A gentle movement of his hands, and she opened her thighs wider, and Jack simply couldn’t tear his eyes from her. Pale pink, perfect flesh surrounded by a soft thatch of red-gold hair.
To give her a sense of intimacy, he hadn’t turned on the light; but he had excellent night vision. He could see everything, perfectly. The long, pearly, silky slide of her thighs, gently rounded hips, small firm breasts.
He parted her with his thumbs, like unfurling a flower. He’d done this before, but it felt like the first time. It had never been Caroline whose legs he held apart, whose delicate flesh he caressed, warm and wet.
He kissed her, exactly as he would her mouth. She tasted like the sea, spicy and warm. She was panting lightly, the sound loud in the quiet room, a little moan with each pass of his tongue. Jack closed his eyes a moment and concentrated on her—on the moisture welling out of her, on the way her thighs shook slightly, on the way her stomach muscles clenched when he entered her with his tongue.
“Jack,” she murmured, drawing in a sharp breath when he licked her more deeply. He angled for a deeper taste of her and felt the walls of her little cunt move, a sharp contraction.
Oh, yes.
Silky soft, wet. Tasting of the sea, smelling like roses and sex. He lapped and licked and completely lost all sense of himself, kneeling before her, like a supplicant kneeling before his goddess.
When she came, it was with strong little tugs of her cunt against his tongue, the most amazing feeling.
“Jack.” There was need there in her voice.
Caroline needing something…he was programmed to respond. Though part of him wanted to spend the next ten thousand years kneeling by the bed, loving her with his mouth, the rest of him needed to be in her.
A second later, he’d entered her in one long stroke, both of them moaning with relief. He bent to kiss her, and the rest of her moans were lost in his mouth.
The strokes were long, deep, lazy, the entire world reduced to the woman under him and to where they were joined.
There were no thoughts possible in this enchanted land of Caroline—just sensations. The warmth and softness of her, the wet welcome he could feel along every inch of his cock, her arms and legs holding him tightly.
Strong as he was, he could never break her hold on him.
For the first time in his life, Jack lost all sense of himself. He felt like he’d entered her skin, her head, pulling out exactly what she wanted. When she came, he prolonged it, changing the angle of his thrusts, until her head fell back over his arm and her arms and legs fell back on the bed.
That was when he took his own pleasure, hard and fast. She was wet and soft enough to take him fully and—oh my God—when he came, he exploded with his entire body, from his toes to the top of his head.
He collapsed on her, wrung out, a completely different man, Caroline filling his head. She’d been violated today, but he’d make it better, and from this moment on, nothing would ever touch her.
He nuzzled against her ear, head lying on her hair, the scent of roses rising sharply in his nostrils.
“After the security system goes up, we’ll do some decorating together. Paint the kitchen and the bedroom. And we can paint the dining room yellow again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You won’t recognize the house when we’re done.” His voice was slurred with sleepiness and the aftereffects of sex.
He kissed her temple and went out like a light.
Caroline lay on her back, muscles lax with pleasure, inner muscles still so hypersensitive from the powerful orgasm that she couldn’t move her thighs without feeling a jolt of pleasure-pain.
Her body was sending a huge packet of powerful messages of joy to her head, but it was like feeling something happening far away. Her face was numb with shock. Jack tried to move her into his arms, but she turned herself into a deadweight, as if fast-asleep, and could feel his decision to let her be, to let her have her rest. He pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and settled down himself, so close she could feel his heat, but without touching her, asleep in an instant.
If he touched her again, she didn’t know what she would do. Run maybe. Scream. Her jaw muscles tightened.
The meal and the wine lay curdled in her roiling stomach. She had to swallow heavily against the bile rising up her throat.
Her instinct told her to get up out of bed and run—but run where?
Her head ached as she stared dry-eyed up at the dark ceiling, wondering whether some answers lay up there in the shadows, knowing there were no answers at all. Knowing that either she was insane or Jack had been lying to her all along.
Somehow the huge man lying next to her, who’d made love to her for hours, who had been inside her body, who’d given her such mind-blowing pleasure, somehow he wasn’t who he said he was.
It would be wonderful to forget what he’d said. She’d found herself a magnificent lover, sexy as hell, who’d done nothing but help her since he’d arrived. Courteous, gorgeous, fantastic in bed, focused completely on her.
Rich, too, unless Jenna had played a trick on her.
Total dreamboat, Jenna would have said in high school.
But his words ran round and round in her head, in an endless refrain, mocking her. Words that shifted the ground beneath her feet and made her doubt her own senses. Words that made no sense at all coming out of his mouth. Out of the mouth of a man she’d met for the first time four days ago.
We can paint the dining room yellow again, he’d said. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
Yes, of course she’d like that. A nice canary yellow instead of puke green. Who wouldn’t?
It was very thoughtful of him to think of it.
Except, of course, the last time the dining room had been painted yellow was over six years ago.
Sixteen
When Sanders walked into First Page, a very bad day suddenly turned worse.
Very few customers had showed up all morning and those few were, she suspected, dying from the cold instead of dying for a good read. By eleven o’clock she’d racked up a grand total of $27.15 in sales, her second-worst day. The worst had been Friday, with a grand sales total of zero.
Still, maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that the weather was still so bad people would rather reread their old books than drop by First Page. She found it hard to pay attention to the few people who actually ventured inside the shop. They’d talk, and she’d suddenly zone out, then have to scurry to apologize when it was clear she hadn’t been listening. So, all in all, it was a good thing she was mostly alone with her thoughts.
Except for the fact that she was alone with her thoughts.