What Janie Wants (14 page)

“
Zade.”

“
Mmmm.”

“
Zade, please.”

More flicks against her clit, so fast she felt them like a live wire. “Louder.”

“
Zade!”

He shot to his feet and took her mouth, keeping her leg anchored high and her core exposed. His iron cock dragged across her sensitized clit. “Fuck. Need a condom.” He undulated against her again. “Just…” Another press, and his eyes squeezed shut. “Oh, damn, just hang on.”

“
Wait.” Janie dug her nails into his shoulders and hung on tight. She rubbed her hips against him as best she could, keeping the delicious friction. “Can we—”

Oh, this was a bad idea. She’d warned her kids. Told them never to go unprotected. She tightened her leg wrapped around his hip and dug her heel in his flank, rolling her cleft against him while her conscience and lust wrestled. Was she really going to do this?

Heck yes, she was. Zade didn’t sleep with just anyone. He was too conscientious. Too honest. And if she only had two nights left, she didn’t want anything between them.

“
I can’t get pregnant. I had my tubes tied years ago.” Her breaths came fast and furious, the burgeoning need to have him inside her, filling her until she couldn’t breathe driving all her instincts. “I’m clean. I had myself tested after Gerald—”

He thrust against her, nudging her at just the right angle.

Delicious sparks of pleasure shot out in all directions, and her surprised shout echoed through the room.

“
You want me bare?”

Something in his voice pried her heavy eyelids open. His expression matched his tone. Confusion. Or maybe awe.

“
We don’t have to,” she said. “I know it’s bad—”

“
Yes.” Determined. A caveman who’d found something he wanted and wasn’t giving it up for anyone. His hips gathered steam and the muscles in his abdomen flexed and released in a glorious display of flesh. “Hell, yes.” Adjusting his hips, he slicked his glans through her folds. “Want to feel you. Nothing between us.”

“
Nothing.”

“
Nothing,” he whispered and speared deep.

A broken gasp scraped free, the back of her head torqued bruisingly against the unforgiving wall. Perfect. Hard and hot. Every vein along his shaft an erotic stroke, his velvet length pistoning until she couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to.

He planted the hand at her thigh against the wall, her knee hooked over his forearm. He rasped a ragged command. “Grip my neck.”

Anything. Anything at all, if he kept the pace. Kept the rhythm that matched her frantic pulse. The pounding need between her legs.

He dipped, caught her standing leg on his other forearm, and pushed back up, bracing both hands on the wall.

Oh, dear God, he was deep. So amazingly buried inside her, the sensation stole her breath. Her back was wedged against the wall, legs splayed wide and at the mercy of his ruthless hips. Erotic and untamed.

And the sounds. She could come just from the sound of Zade’s sexy groans and heavy breaths at her ear. The slick, wet shuttle of his cock. The slap of skin against skin, and the decadent rap of his balls with each assault.

He lifted his chest and watched his shaft tunnel deep. “Look at us.”

She couldn’t. Her release was too close, and for once in her life she didn’t want the sex to end. It couldn’t. Not yet.

“
Look at us, Janie.”

His thick cock. Veins stark against pink flesh. Stretching her. Filling her in the most perfect way.

“
Who’s inside you?”

She snapped her head up.

“
Who?” he demanded. “Who’s fucking you?”

“
You.”

“
Me.” He deepened his strokes and her breath caught. “Us. Perfect. Just. Like. This.”

He pounded harder, relentless and savage. “Take it, babe. Wanna feel you milk me with nothing between us.” He rammed once, twice, three and—

“
Yes!” Her pussy clenched slow and fierce around his cock, and a deep, throbbing wave ricocheted out across her body.

Zade growled in her ear. “Fuck, Janie.” He stabbed deep. “God, yes.” His shout rang out and his cock jerked inside her, hard flexes that fired tiny shocks up her spine.

Pulse after pulse. Spasm after spasm. Delicious quakes rattling through her core and heaving feeble cries past her throat. So powerful. The bite of an unseen brand on her heart, and a memory seared in her mind. One to cling to when reality swept her under.

Her heart tripped and she tightened her arms around his neck.

No. Reality wasn’t here yet. They still had the rest of the night and another full day. This was their time. Reality couldn’t rob her of it. Not yet.

Zade rested his forehead on hers, his eyes closed and breathing heavy. His arms were still braced against the wall, the muscles bunched tight as stone. He chuckled, irony or disbelief tempering the sound of it. “Thought the whole little death thing was bullshit.” He kissed her, a slow, easy press of lips that lingered in a way more powerful than words. “I was wrong.”

He gently slid one arm out from underneath her leg and guided it around his waist. Clutching her torso tight to his, he repeated the process with the other. “You okay?”

Entirely the wrong word. Not even in the right neighborhood. Dumbfounded, maybe. Altered. Poised for a heartbreak that made her divorce look pale. None of which she could tell him. “I think I’ve worked off dinner and half of lunch.”

A slow, deep laugh rumbled through him as he carried her to the bed, his cock still buried inside her. “Is that all?” He laid them so they stretched tangled in the center of the pristine white sheets. “Oh, wait. I forgot. It was me doing the heavy lifting.”

She palmed his sweat-slicked arms and shoulders. Never for the rest of her life would she forget the feel of him. The way his muscles flexed, holding her defenseless to his carnal assault. “You’re young and able. We older folk need to be looked after in our doddering years.”

He rolled his hips. A slow, leisurely glide that spoke of deep, erotic intimacy. His eyes were intense, saying something she couldn’t quite grasp, but resonated clear to her soul. “I like looking out for you.”

And she wanted more. Damn it, it wasn’t fair. A man who made her feel alive, the first to make her chase passion instead of reason, and he lived thousands of miles away.

He eased away and his softening length slipped free. Sitting back on his heels, he ran his hand along his semi-erect shaft and rubbed their mixed essence between his fingers. The playful expression of moments before altered, morphing to a face so serious and thoughtful, her instincts pricked to attention.

“
Zade?”

He gently urged her knees apart and slicked his fingers through her sex. So many emotions passed across his face, not one of them easily identifiable. But they were deep. Almost tangible in the tense silence.

He circled her entrance. “My first time.”

Goose bumps scattered across her sweat dampened skin. “What?”

He splayed his hand atop her abdomen, the span so wide he nearly touched each hipbone. His gaze was locked on the space beneath his palm and his voice came out graveled and awed. “Never let myself come inside a woman before.”

Oh, my God.
The confession shook her. Rattled something so fundamental it threatened to free and break her all in one pass. “Zade, I didn’t know. I shouldn’t—”

“
I’m glad it was you. I wouldn’t trade it. Not for a second.” He cupped her hips and pressed a reverent kiss to the space above her belly button. “Thank you.”

He was thanking her. Acting like she’d gifted him with the priceless gift of her virginity when she’d been the one doing all the taking. She speared her fingers into his hair, the need to comfort and protect so powerful, she almost roared to the ceiling. “Zade,” she whispered instead.

Turning his head, he rested the side of his face above the space he’d kissed and stretched out between her legs, arms hugging her hips.

The urge to speak battered her, pushing to ease the tension, but nothing came. Nothing seemed worthy of his bared emotion. Of his passion and care.

She sifted her fingers through hair and settled into his peaceful presence. No, she couldn’t say anything. There weren’t words meaningful enough to convey what she felt. But she could show him. For twenty-four more hours, she could give him everything she had. She’d mend the damage losing him would do her heart when he was gone.

Her hair wasn’t auburn. For thirty minutes while Janie slept, Zade had sat in the bedside chair, studying the sunlight glinting off her hair. He’d thought it was auburn, but he was wrong. It was cinnamon, just enough chestnut mixed in with the copper and amber threads to make the unique, rich color.

God, he sounded like a girl. He propped his elbows on his knees and fisted his hair with both hands on the top of his head. Yeah, photography had given him a more than intimate knowledge of colors through the years, but he’d never hovered bedside over a woman and tried to nail her hair color. What the hell was wrong with him?

You want more and you don’t want to lose her.

A stark, clear statement straight from the universe. The kind so bold and powerful it slapped him silly and dared him not to listen.

He rubbed his sternum, willing, almost begging for more. How to broach the topic. How to admit he’d sidestepped clarifying where he lived and why. Two sizable land mines he had no idea how to navigate without blowing his heart into tiny chunks.

Beneath the tangled sheets, Janie rolled to her side facing him and pulled in a slow, sexy breath. A pillow was tucked to her side and her arm was crooked around it with her hand resting near her mouth. That hair. That wild, tangle-your-hands-in-me-and-see-what-it-gets-you cinnamon colored hair splayed out against the crisp white sheets. Naturally sexy.

Her eyelids lifted, relaxed and drowsy. “Hey.”

“
Hey.” Way to start off smart. Hit her with some college he-man language. Fuck, he was gonna blow this.

“
Your eyebrows kind of wing up at the ends when you’re angry.” Her voice was hushed, the same intimate tone she’d used with him before they’d fallen asleep last night, naked and tangled chest to toes. “They didn’t look that way before we went to sleep. Something happen with your business?”

“
What makes you say that?”

“
Because the only time I’ve seen you angry is when you’re thinking about your bad business deal.”

Or when he was thinking about how not to fuck up something else good. “I’m not angry.”

“
Wanna talk about it?”

He clasped his hands between his widened legs. He’d been direct with her so far; maybe that was the way to go. A rip-the-Band-aid approach. If it didn’t work, he could sex her into oblivion again and try something else. He opened his mouth.

Make her see.

He closed his mouth.

Make her see what you see.

His heart shook off its languid beat and stretched for action. She was visual, just like him. If she could see what he saw, surely she’d get it. Be willing to risk time together in the real world. “I want to ask you for something.”

She shifted to push herself upright.

“
No.” He shot forward and stopped her. “Don’t move.”

Her muscles uncoiled beneath his palm and she eased back to the bed. “Okay.” Her tension might have been gone, but the sun sparked off her hazel eyes and called out her wariness. “What do you want?”

He sat back down. “I want to take your picture.”

She blinked a few times. “Me?”

“
You. I want you to see through my eyes. Right where you are. Right now.”

Her gaze flitted across the bed, the length of her body, the open skylight.

“
Nothing lewd, I promise.” There had to be something to say. A nudge to get her over the hump. “I need this.”

She stared at him for long seconds.