or not, line or not, it was exactly what she needed to hear.
She dropped her dress and the bra and felt the warm breeze, the starlight, Jack’s gaze across her pale skin. Her nipples hardened in a painful cold rush.
“Oh, Mia,” he groaned, sitting up, folding her in his arms, his hands cupping her breasts, his eyes aglow. He kissed the trembling skin under her collarbone and worked, in some sort of bizarre migratory pattern, south.
Her skin blazed, every part of her thrumming with pleasure so bright and hot it almost hurt. His mouth was wet against her and all she could think was, This is Jack. Jack’s mouth on my breast. His hand in my hair. His breath against my skin.
His arms cupped her hips, his fingertips curving around her to find the damp crease that wept at his touch. She arched and he tipped them over, picking her up and shifting her into the center of the chaise. She felt a moan ripple out of her, turned on by all that blatant strength.
He leaned over her, huge and manly. His hands cupped her breasts, pushing them together, and he pressed hot, openmouthed kisses against them.
“I used to dream about you like this,” he said and chuckled against her nipple. “A lot, actually.”
She arched her back so her nipples brushed his lips. He licked and nipped at them with the sharp edge of his teeth. She groaned, rolling into him, seeking every pleasure center she could find, every point of friction between her body and his.
“Couldn’t have been any more than I thought of you like this,” she whispered.
“You’re kidding,” he said, stopping.
She shook her head. There was nothing more she could say.
I’ve loved you my whole life, she thought.
“Jack.” She sighed. “Please—”
His eyes burned in the darkness, and for a moment she thought he realized her inexperience. But then he blinked and his hands gathered her close.
And suddenly everything changed. The banked fires blazed out of control, the hum in her blood turned into a roar. The gentle press of Jack’s lips turned firm, hard. His lips didn’t kiss, they sucked, and his teeth bit. Mia groaned, pushing and pulling him closer to her.
He yanked at her dress, pulling it off her legs. His fingers found the edge of one of the ridiculous thongs her sister bought for her every birthday and he traced its edge as far as it would go and then back again.
“So naughty,” he breathed in her ear. “I had no idea.”
Shocks and sparks exploded between her legs, behind her eyes.
He shrugged off his jacket and she helped get rid of his shirt, tossing it away—a white flag against a black night. His belt clanked in the quiet and his pants rustled to the ground and she didn’t even get a chance to look at him before he was back on the chaise with her. All that hot warm skin against hers. The hair on his legs was thrilling, and she ran her feet up the sides of his shins, opening her thighs so he could slip between them.
Bitterness and regret, along with a desperation she didn’t know she felt, slipped into her head.
One night, she thought, growing out of control and emotional. One night.
Suddenly she was frantic to somehow start and end it all, eager to have this moment over and done with. So she could turn it over and over in her mind back on the ranch.
Memories of Jack were always easier to deal with than reality.
That tension low in her belly, aching between her legs, began to demand release and his fingers slid over her and then, slowly, so, so slowly into her.
She sobbed with pleasure. With pain. With nostalgia and love and years of disappointment.
“Mia?”
“More,” she said.
More so she couldn’t think. Just feel. More so she couldn’t hate him and love him all over again.
He was saying something, but she didn’t want to talk. Talking put space between them, allowed thoughts to grow, gave her too much room to think and agonize. To look into his eyes and see the boy who’d married her and walked away.
She reached between them, cupped her hands around the hard length of him. He throbbed in her palm and he hissed hard through his teeth. She lifted her lips, scooted her legs wide.
“I don’t have—”
“Shut up, Jack,” she whispered.
“No. Mia, I don’t have a condom.”
She blinked and blinked again. He didn’t know.
“I’ve been on the pill since I was sixteen,” she said. Once boys started looking at her funny, and those breasts she hated made their appearance known, Mom had taken no chances, and dragged Mia to the doctor.
“Really?” he asked.
She didn’t bother answering, she just guided him home.
They both cried out, shaking against each other. She hadn’t realized how big he was, how he would fill her to the point of pain. She took a deep breath, controlling the sting and burn of his flesh splitting hers.
“Mia?” Again that question, the half knowledge that she wasn’t a virgin, but not by much, was back in his eyes.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him so close there was no air between them. He pressed his head to her shoulder, his breath shuddering over her breasts.
“You’re killing me. Honestly, honey, we should talk or—”
She squeezed him, using every internal muscle she knew how to control, and he groaned, wrapping his arms around her. His hips, beginning to push against her, slide back and push again. He rearranged her a little, lifting her slightly so when he pulled away she saw stars and that tension in her belly filled her chest. Her head.
“Oh!” She sighed, her breath broken, her body taking flight.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he groaned. “But I can’t stop. I can’t—”
“Don’t!” she cried, scared he would when she needed him so badly to keep going. “Don’t stop. Don’t…I—”
He lifted his head, his face blocking out the world, and she had no choice but to stare deep into his eyes, right at the boy she loved.
“I’ve got you,” he breathed, and she exploded into the night.
“WHAT THE HELL,” Jack muttered, evaluating himself in the mirror over the sink in the small bathroom off the patio. He looked punch-drunk. His hair all over the place, his lips swollen, his eyes glowing and…happy?
“You,” he told his reflection, “are a lucky son of a bitch.”
Mia. Good God, sweet Mia.
He
