With the townspeople far behind, she and Jack had some time to just be for a while.
He hadn’t been kidding about being hot. The moment she’d taken off her jacket and sweater, she’d started shivering. Even the cover over her hadn’t helped much. But a few seconds next to Jack, and she felt almost overheated.
Touching him was more than an idea, but a necessity. She had to connect again, even though she’d been telling herself throughout their journey to let him go. The sex had been phenomenal, but Jack was a bit of an arrogant jerk. Yet everything inside her called to him.
Now she took as much pleasure in sharing her energy with him as he no doubt felt from receiving it. He moaned under her touch and shifted on the ground. She wondered if he felt a tenth of the desire raging through her blood.
The craving to know more about Jack begged, and she asked him to share, knowing he’d probably regret it later. But by then it would be too late, and she’d have already siphoned off the bad energy making him such a bear to deal with.
“What do you want to know?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
“Why don’t you like me?” She noted he kept his hands locked behind his head, which gave her that much more room to work. What an incredible chest. The man had muscles on top of muscles, and she wanted to do a lot more than touch.
“I like you well enough,” he muttered. “Fuck. I like you a lot right now.” He shifted under her again, and she knew he battled the same desire she did. The knowledge relieved her worry that her extreme attraction might be one-sided.
“Then why are you so mean to me?” Heather wasn’t used to men acting so brusque around her. Most of them wanted to please her, to do anything to get her attention. She had the famous Stallbridge looks—blonde hair, green eyes, and good bone structure. But Jack didn’t seem to like wanting her. “Are you mad you’re here?”
“Yes and no.”
He moaned when her hand lowered to his amazing stomach. Such tightly packed muscle. She wanted to bite his belly, to see if she could.
“I don’t understand.” She drew away the anger festering inside him, the same energy that swelled whenever his thought patterns seemed to shift in a certain direction. Not for the first time did she wish she’d inherited her grandmother’s ability to read minds.
“I didn’t want to look for you. Owen’s a pain in the ass, but he needed the help.” He sighed with pleasure when she slid her hand under his shirt and stroked his bare flesh. His belly, his pecs, his shoulders. The man was like a heater, and he felt so wonderful under her hand.
“But when I saw you, I couldn’t say no,” he continued. “He gave me a picture, and something clicked.” He sounded baffled.
Since she felt the same upon first seeing him, she understood his confusion.
“I looked at the thing, like, twenty times a day. You’re hot, but damn, woman, it’s like I can’t stop myself from staring at you. I don’t know more than what Owen and you have told me about yourself. Except seeing you, kissing you… I feel like we’ve met before, like I’ve always known you. You know?”
She nodded and realized he couldn’t see her. “I do. You feel familiar too.” And you make me so wet. The notion a stranger could get to her like that worried her. “Tell me about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?” He arched into her touch and growled when her palm ran over his chest, grazing his tight nipples. “Fuck. Do that again.”
She turned the featherlight caress into a deeper massage, stealing his pain as she eased his tired muscles.
“Tell me anything. How did you get into the PWP? Were you always psychic? Have you ever been married? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you like your job?” Do you want me, or would any woman do? Is the Source making you attracted to me, or is it something else?
“Honey, you keep touching me like that, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
He sounded loopy, the way her most wounded patients often responded. The energy holding Jack down was powerful. Psychic wounds that ran deep.
“Fine. PWP… I was sixteen when I realized I could do things others couldn’t. I was stronger, faster, had better reflexes and senses. I would have joined the Marine Corps except the government came to me first. I was in college at the time. I don’t know how they knew, but they sensed I was different. Some of the men in my family tend to be like me.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She traced the muscles in his shoulders and biceps, getting a thrill at holding all that power under her hand.
“I served in the CIA, did some badass ops, to be honest. But I needed more. I became a black-ops wunderkind. Then Admiral London found me. He’s a great guy.” Jack sighed and lifted a hand from behind his head. He reached under the top cover and fiddled with his jeans. “Keep touching me. Here.” He dragged her hand lower, to the gap at his pants.
She knew what he wanted, and she had every intention of giving it to him. The Source, the danger, Chronicles, none of it mattered right now but getting closer to Jack.
“I will. Put your hand behind your neck again. Let me ease you.” Healing often put her patients in a suggestible state. The deeper the wounds, the easier they were to control when she worked on them. Jack did as she asked without protest, his low moan arousing in the extreme.
She ran her hand down the front of his groin, scratching lightly at the curls surrounding his shaft.
He hissed and bucked up, and she pushed his pelvis down again.
“Oh yeah. More.” He tilted his hips up. “Take me out. I’m aching, baby.”
“Tell me, Jack. Share yourself with me. Why do I bother you? Why are you so hurt all the time?”
“I can do things. Things other people can’t.”
His breathing became labored as she grazed his cock and continued to tease, massaging the base of his shaft and the taut muscle of his groin still trapped by his jeans.
“They changed me, gave me drugs to enhance my abilities. I became stronger and better, but the side effects were hard. And then I left the PWP. Without the drugs to maintain my changes, I get overly aggressive. I have to work out to keep myself in control. That or fuck,” he growled. “I want to fuck you, so bad. You don’t know. And it’s worse, because…”
She stopped touching him, needing to know more.
“No, don’t stop,” he gasped.
“Because why?” she urged and unbuttoned his jeans fully. He tilted his hips up without her having to ask, and she pushed his jeans down, freeing his heavy erection. She continued to push his pants down to his knees, enthralled that he’d gone commando. “Spread your legs as much as you can.”
He groaned but pushed his knees apart, and she sat up so she could use both hands to cup him. His balls were hard yet soft, and so hot. Like his cock, thick and plump and full.
“Yes. Oh fuck. Yeah. Kiss me there. Put your lips around me. You don’t know how many times I’ve dreamed this.” He moaned her name and pushed up into her hands.
She nudged the shifting sleeping bag off them and slowly stroked him, learning his feel as she slid her hands up and down his long, fat shaft. Rubbing his balls and grazing his thighs, she continued to fondle him, loving how he followed her lead. His submission was so unlike the Jack she knew, the man who took charge of everything.
“You want my mouth on you?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he hissed.
“Tell me what hurts. Why are you so angry, Jack?” she asked again, soothing his frayed anger with a psychic blanket of comfort, of safety.
“Melissa,” he said on a curse and pumped in time with her hands. “Bitch was my partner. A person I trusted. And she set me up. Her lover invaded my mind, made me think things that weren’t true. She nearly killed me.” He groaned. “Damn it. Jump on. Suck me. Make me come. I’m hurting, and I’m so close…”