Home To You (17 page)

“You’re sure? I don’t want to hurt you.” His thumb slid over her, and her body gripped his finger like a fist. “So responsive.”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans while he slid another finger into her. “Take the shirt off. I want to see you.”

Jax ripped the condom wrapper with his teeth, tossed it on the floor, popped the buttons on his jeans, and pushed them down below his knees.

Kendall stood in front of him naked, watching him roll down the condom. “Climb up here, sweetheart, straddle me, and let’s christen this couch.”

“But . . .”

“I don’t want to hurt you. This way, you’re in total control. You can take me any way you want. You can make yourself come any way you want.” He slid down the seat a little more and helped her, until she was kneeling over him. “Have you ever made love like this?”

“No.”

“Just hold on to my shoulders and lower yourself on me. I have a feeling you’re going to love it.”

“But what about you?”

“I love being with you, in you.”

He watched as her body joined with his—it was so hot. He clenched his teeth, held his breath, and prayed for control. The look of ecstasy that crossed her face almost sent him over. She took him in slowly, going deeper with each movement, experimenting with the angle of her body. He knew the second she found her G-spot. Her eyes shot open and glowed in the dim light, she made that sound deep in her throat that made him crazy, and her nails dug into his shoulders.

He gripped her hips, helping her, following her lead, lifting her on the retreat, until she took all of him. Her hand pressed against her stomach as she rocked forward, pressing her pelvis into his, and then she went wild in his arms.

As she rode him, eyes closed, back arched, her hair flowing around her in midnight waves, one hand went to her breast and the other around his neck, drawing him closer.

He sucked her breast into his mouth. He was so afraid he’d finish before she did, he took emergency precautions, sucking in time with the swirl of his thumb over the taut, swollen flesh where they were joined.

“Jack,” Kendall’s eyes met his, and he watched her soar.

He took over, keeping her rhythm and drawing out her climax, thrusting, lifting, grinding. And when she came again, he followed her over.

She lay, boneless, draped over his shoulder like a rag doll. “Wow. I didn’t know . . . I mean, that was so . . .”

It seemed as if the only muscles he could move were his lips, so he smiled against her breast. “That was all you, sweetheart.” He’d never forget the look on her face when she took charge of her own pleasure. “So beautiful.”

“I guess all those squats I did in the gym actually were good for something.”

He kicked off his pants, stood, and carried her back to bed.

*

Jax brought in an armful of wood and threw it in the copper holder. “There’s probably two feet of snow out there, and it’s still falling.”

He leaned against the wall and watched Kendall working in the kitchen. Just watching Kendall move was quickly becoming his second-favorite pastime. The first was making her scream.

Kendall reached for something on a high shelf and her ass cheeks peeked out from under his shirt, and he nearly groaned. He’d tried to talk her into cooking naked, but she didn’t fall for it. She said frying bacon could be hazardous. “The good news is, the roof isn’t leaking.”

“Dad will be happy.”

“Not when he finds out about us, he won’t.” He’d seen Teddy unhappy, disappointed, and even angry. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Teddy after he found out he and Kendall had been occupying the same cabin.

She shot him an over-the-shoulder smile. “How do you know? I think my parents are going to love you.”

“If I were your father, I’d break both my legs.” Lord knew, if he ever had a daughter who looked like Kendall, he’d follow her around with a shotgun.

“Daddy’s just a big, old teddy bear.”

Wow, she really didn’t have a clue. The Teddy he knew was so far from a Teddy bear, it was laughable. Not that he wasn’t a great guy; Jax loved him like a father, but, shit, he’d heard about what Slater had gone through
when he started seeing Rocki, and Rocki wasn’t even Teddy’s baby girl.

“You have nothing to worry about when it comes to Daddy. It’s my mother who can be scary. She looks like the world’s sweetest woman—and she usually is—but she has a way of breaking people. She’s a master of psychological torture and guilt.”

“Good to know.” Or should he say thanks for the reminder? He’d been on the wrong side of Grace a time or two, and Kendall was right about the psychological warfare and well-targeted bombing strikes using the oldest weapon out there: guilt.

Kendall jumped when he came up behind her and kissed her neck. “That’s not going to help me get breakfast on the table.”

“I’m good with Wheaties if there’s something else you’d rather do than cook.”

“I don’t eat food out of cardboard boxes, and someone ate all the leftover pizza.”

He slid his finger round and round her navel, because he knew it drove her wild. “I had to keep up my strength. And you should be happy I ate the leftover salad too. You were right—it was good.” He nipped her ear. “Can I do anything to help?”

She groaned and wiggled her bottom against his fly. “Leave me to make breakfast.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He was eyeing the counter and wondering how she felt about kitchen sex. “Tired of me already?”

“No, it’s just that you’re too distracting.”

“You think I’m distracting? You’re the one strolling around in nothing but my shirt. Who’s distracting who here?” When he spun her around, she looked entirely
too pleased to know she was driving him crazy. He loved that little hitch in her breath right before he kissed her.

Jax took her face in his hands and kissed her, softly, slowly, and thoroughly. Memorizing the feel of her cheeks against his palms, the sounds she made in the back of her throat, the taste of her. There was something about her that drew him in—an overarching sweetness that brought him to his knees. All it took was one kiss, and he was lost. One kiss, and he knew if he slid his lips down her neck, he’d feel her pulse race against his lips. One kiss, and she’d melt against him. One kiss, and she was his for the taking.

When he raised his mouth, her eyes were dark and unfocused. “Damn, but you’re addictive.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for another kiss.

“Kendall?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sweetheart, something’s burning.”

Her eyes opened so wide, it was almost comical—that is, until she pushed him away. The scent of burnt butter filled the space between them. “Get out!” She grabbed the pan with a pot holder and headed toward the sink. “See? I told you you’re too distracting. Get out.”

“Where do you want me to go? We’re in the middle of a nor’easter.”

“I didn’t mean
go
out. I meant get out of the kitchen. Go . . . go build something.”

“Fine.” He went back to the bedroom and grabbed another T-shirt, put on his work boots, and went to figure out what to do with the first bedroom. The ceiling wasn’t going to replace itself.

K
endall shoved the kitchen window open to let in air. She couldn’t believe she’d let Jack distract her enough to burn the butter.

While Jack might be fine with a bowl of Wheaties, she wasn’t. She stifled a shiver.

Kendall had awakened in an empty bed last night, starving—unfortunately, before she could get anything to eat, Jack had distracted her—again. She hadn’t eaten a thing since their early dinner, and Lord knew she’d burned enough calories. She wasn’t sure how many, but she imagined that sex with Jack would burn quite a few.

When it came to sex, Jack was a man who demanded participation—something she really appreciated. Especially last night.

Kendall had never made love like that. She’d never been in charge of her own pleasure or her partner’s. Even though she had no idea what she was doing, Jack hadn’t made her feel like she was lacking. He just led her through the steps of a new dance until she found her own rhythm and let her take over, never trying to direct her. Letting her discover the secrets and pleasures of control. He never made her feel foolish or embarrassed.
Just the opposite: he supported her and gave her the time to experiment, and when she figured it out, she’d never felt so free, so uninhibited, so powerful. It took a while, but Kendall had slowly taken all Jack had to give, and when they were so close she didn’t know where she stopped and he began, she looked into his eyes and saw everything—the wonder, the fear, the excitement, the need, the lust, the sense of connection. She saw every feeling she felt for him reflected back at her. She didn’t know what to label what it was between them, but she knew it was strong, it was freeing, it was fun, and it was something she wanted to keep close to her heart forever.

Kendall went back to cooking, and after a few minutes, she heard the high-pitched squeal of a saw. She concentrated on turning the bacon and sausage while she put together her favorite breakfast comfort food: almond French toast. Twenty minutes later, she had breakfast on the table and called out, “Jack, food’s on.”

He came out of the spare bedroom, brushing off a layer of sawdust that stuck to his arms and chest. He was dressed in his work jeans, boots, and an old T-shirt that was practically see-through, and he blinked at the food on the table. “Sweetheart, it’s not as if I don’t appreciate you cooking like this—I mean, it’s great—but I don’t want you to feel as if you have to.”

“Oh, I don’t. I just like cooking, and it helps me think.”

He waited until she took a seat and then joined her. “Should I be worried?”

She thought he’d meant it as a joke, but when she went to pass him the almond-sliver-covered French toast, she saw he was honestly worried about something. “Why would you think that?”

He shrugged and filled his plate. “It just occurred to me that we haven’t really talked about stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Relationship stuff.” Jack had filled his plate, but he wasn’t attacking the food, and that alone was unusual.

Kendall watched him roll his sausage to the side of his plate, trying to avoid the syrup.

“Do you want another plate?”

“Huh?”

“You have a thing about your syrup getting on your bacon and sausage.”

“I don’t have a thing.”

She raised an eyebrow and hid a smile. “You totally have a thing.”

“How did you know that?”

“I noticed it when I made pancakes that first morning. It’s kind of cute.”

“I’m not cute.”

“I never said you were. I said the fact you don’t like your breakfast meat to touch the syrup is cute.
Cute
like
quirky
, not puppies-and-kittens cute.”

He didn’t seem at all appeased. Actually, he looked a little nervous.

“What kind of relationship stuff do you want to talk about?”

For someone who brought it up himself, he didn’t look like he wanted to talk about it at all. No, he looked more like a kid who was forced to do something he found very distasteful, like eat vegetables. “I haven’t been in many relationships, but I’ve heard enough contemporaries complain about the relationship talk. Although it sounded as if most of the talks were initiated by women.”

“You haven’t had many relationships?”

He took a bite of his French toast and shook his head before his eyes shot open. He probably didn’t notice the slivered almonds in his haste to protect his bacon and sausage from the offending syrup. “This is . . .”

“Way better than Wheaties?”

He nodded and took another bite.

“Why?”

He looked up, confused. He finished chewing, swallowed, and took a sip of coffee. “Why what? Why is it better than Wheaties?”

“No. Why haven’t you had many relationships? I mean, you’re in your thirties, right?”

“I just haven’t had time. I graduated from high school early, started college as a sophomore, and was in a five-year BA/MBA program, but I got out in three and a half. I’ve been working since just before I turned twenty.”

“What are you, some kind of genius or something?”

He shrugged, “I never paid much attention to labels. It was just easier to blow through college—I was younger than everyone else, and I couldn’t drink—at least not legally. And with my . . . my family, I couldn’t afford to get into any trouble. Besides, I had responsibilities.”

“Still, you’ve been out of school for a while.”

“That’s true. And until the accident, I’ve been working crazy hours. No time for relationships.”

“Weren’t you lonely?”

He shrugged again. “I was too busy to think much about it. Besides, it was no different from my life in school. I took an insane amount of credits to get out as soon as I could. I wanted to be settled so that when my sister graduated from high school, she could come live with me. Our family is a bit of a nightmare.”

“A lot of families are. So, did your sister move in with you?”

“No, she’s kind of a free spirit. She wanted to study music, so she ended up following her own dream and going away to school.”

“That must have been hard for you. But, then, I don’t know of many older brothers who would really want their little sister living with them and cramping their style.”

“Not much of a style to cramp. If anything, it would be the other way around. My sister is forever telling me to get a life. Now, it seems, I have no choice. I guess when you come close to losing your life, you realize time is not something you should waste, even if you can’t really account for it.”

“It’s a little after eight in the morning.”

“That’s not what I was getting at.”

“I know.” She didn’t really know what to say. For some reason, she felt like a consolation prize. Lose your ability to add and get a girl. She took a bite of her French toast and then ran a piece of sausage through her syrup before she ate it. When she looked back at Jack, he was watching her and cringing a little. “It’s good.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree. Years of eating cafeteria food makes you either not care if the food-service worker piles everything on, not bothering to separate it, or it makes you care. A lot.”

“I take it you’re the latter.”

He nodded.

“Okay, I get why you’re weirded out about syrup on your breakfast meat, but I still don’t understand why you’re initiating the relationship talk when you look as if it’s the last thing you want to do.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d do the honors. You’re the one with all the relationship experience, not to mention a master’s degree in the damn things.”

She laughed at that. “Being able to see the problems in other people’s relationships and psyches in no way makes me an expert on my own relationships—obviously. You know enough about my disaster of a past relationship to glean that. What makes you think I’m in a hurry to figure out or put a label on whatever it is we’re doing here?”

“Maybe I was hoping you’d want to.”

“Jack, it’s not that I have an aversion to it; I just don’t know what to call this. I don’t know how much this attraction has to do with our close proximity. I mean, if you put two straight people of the opposite sex on a deserted island, don’t you think they’d eventually get together?”

“We’re not on
Gilligan’s Island
, for goodness’ sake. Hell, if either of us wasn’t interested in the other, I would hope we would be strong enough to say thanks, but no. Or, at the very worst, one of us could have left.”

God, she felt her face flame like a Bunsen burner. “You did say no, remember?”

“I was trying to be a fuckin’ gentleman, Kendall. Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to rip your clothes off? I could barely control myself. I was afraid I’d lose it completely and take you up against the wall like a freakin’ animal.”

She swallowed hard. “Against a wall?”

He nodded. “Against the wall, in the shower, over the counter, on the table. Damn, I don’t think there’s a spot in the cabin I haven’t pictured—” He stopped speaking and looked away.

“Pictured what?”

He shook his head as if to erase the images he saw flash through his mind. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters! What the hell are you trying to say, Jack?”

“I care about you, okay? And I’ve never cared about someone the way I care for you and still wanted to . . .”

“You wanted to what? Remember, I’ve only been with one other person. Sexually, there’s no comparison—hell, on every level there’s no comparison. So you’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

“I never wanted to have a relationship outside of bed with anyone but you.”

“Really?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Really. I like you. I respect you. I want more than just sex.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Kendall, I want to make love to you.”

“That’s what I thought we’ve been doing. So we’re good there, right?”

“Oh yeah, we’re real good there.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” He stuffed his last piece of bacon into his mouth and picked up his plate. “Thanks for breakfast. It was great.” He looked at her plate. “Are you finished?”

“Hell, no.”

“Well, I’m just going to get back to work. Call me when you’re done, and I’ll help with the dishes.”

“So, that’s it? You’re just going to run away?”

He walked backward, slowly. “I’m not running away, I’m going into another room to rip the shit out of the ceiling.”

“Okay, if that helps you sleep at night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. You’re running away—not far, mind you—but away.”

She let him go. She’d watched
House of Cards
; she’d seen people have sex up against the wall. And while Kevin Spacey didn’t do it for her, Jack did, and the thought that he could be so desperate for her that he couldn’t make it to the bed had her rubbing her thighs together. So if he wanted her and she wanted him, what the hell was the problem? There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the cabin except fix the ceiling, cook, eat, and make love. And, really, it’s not as if the ceiling was going anywhere.

The door was closed, but she still heard the muffled sound of male grunting, the splintering of wood, the crunch of plaster beneath behemoth boots. The man really did have big feet.

She got up from the table and went to the bedroom, grabbed Jack’s phone, and dialed Erin. “Erin, it’s me.”

“Hi, me. How’s it going?”

“I don’t know. I just had the strangest conversation with Jack. I just don’t get it.”

“Okay, explain.”

Kendall recapped the conversation.

All Erin did was laugh. It took a while for her to stop. “Kendall, so when you were with David, how was your sex life?”

“Boring compared to what I’ve been doing with Jack.”

“And what, exactly, have you been doing with Jack?”

“Nothing boring, I assure you.”

“Different positions?”

“We’ve only been together that way for less than twenty-four hours.”

“And did he make you crazy?”

“Yes. What are you getting at, Erin?”

“Just that when guys get crazy, it tends to get a little kinkier, a little dirtier, more intense, more physical, more urgent, and sometimes the control—or lack thereof—scares them. It’s the difference between making love to you and, well, for want of a better term, fucking your brains out.”

“Erin!”

“Now, just hear me out. There’s nothing wrong with letting a loving relationship get a little crazy. Don’t you ever want to feel out of control?”

“I feel out of control every time Jack touches me—heck, even sometimes when he looks at me.”

“Oh, my.”

“Yeah, and he’s turned me into—”

“A nymphomaniac?”

“How did you know?”

“I thought the same thing when Cameron and I first got together.”

“Does it calm down?”

“God, I hope not. Of course we have Janie, so there’s no kitchen-table sex until after bedtime. But Cam is horrible; he starts teasing me as soon as he gets home. It’s like hours of foreplay. By the time Janie’s asleep, we’re so hot and bothered, we rarely make it to the bedroom for round one. Thank God Janie’s a heavy sleeper.”

“So, this is normal?”

“I don’t know about normal, but with Cam and me, it’s always been this way. But, then, maybe I’m just easy.”