All Shook Up (18 page)

So slowly.

Sweat began to roll from his hairline, and if the feel of his balls was any criterion, he suspected they might be turning blue. But, dammit, he would make this last for her.

Dru had no desire for it to last; she was teetering on the ragged edge as it was. So close—dear God, she was so very close—but not…quite…there. She
tilted her hips up, inhaling sharply when all that hard heat stretching up inside her sank a little deeper, drove her a little closer to the precipice.

“Oh,
please
,” she whispered. “A little faster. Please? Um!” His erection touched a place deep inside her that gave her an intimation of the ultimate sensations to come, but then it was gone, slowly sliding away. “A little harder, J.D.?”

He continued those long, slow, measured strokes.

Dru’s hackles rose. Was he teasing her? Showing her how a city boy could turn a country girl inside out if he set his mind to it? She looked up into his face.

And saw that this was no tease.

The muscles in his arms and shoulders were locked and stood out in stark relief. His face, his neck, his chest, were drenched in sweat, and he looked as if he hurt somewhere way down deep at its most elemental level. His dark eyebrows were furrowed over his nose, his pupils were dilated as he stared blindly straight ahead, and his lips were drawn back from his clenched teeth in lockjawed tension.

She reached up and cupped his face in her hands. The muscles beneath her palms were like granite. “J.D.?”

It took a moment for her voice to sink in; then he looked down at her. His eyes suddenly focused and he started to lower his head to kiss her. Her hands tightened fractionally to hold him off long enough to ensure his attention. “Harder?” she murmured. She raised her head to press a soft kiss against his lower lip, then lowered it back onto the spread. “Please, John David, love me harder. I’m so close and—”

A growl reverberated deep in his chest as all the restraint he’d demonstrated up until now disappeared. His mouth slammed down on hers in a feverish kiss, and his hips began to pick up speed, pounding into her with emphatic, rapid-fire thrusts.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed when he lifted his mouth off hers. His arms bent and his chest came down on hers, then his hands slid under her bottom and tilted her hips to a new angle. Every inward thrust he made hit against that sweet spot high up inside her, and she felt the coil of an approaching climax wind tighter and tighter yet. “Oh, my—J.D.? Oh, God, oh, God,
John David
!” His name emerged as a scream and her fingernails sank into his back as she suddenly exploded into a million and one particles, concentric bands of sensation clenching, clenching, clenching, clamping hard around the hard heat that forged a place for itself deep inside her.

“Oh, Jesus.” J.D.’s voice was a low, hoarse rasp. “Oh, Jesus, I’m coming, Drucilla; I’m—” Pulling back, he slammed deep one last time, then groaned, a long, harsh, satisfied sound that wrapped itself around her heart. For several long moments, all his muscles froze solid.

Then he collapsed atop her.

She should have felt flattened—he was a big man and not exactly light as a feather. Instead, she gloried in his weight as it bore her down into the quilt. Sweat bonded them together everywhere they touched, and Dru wrapped her arms around his neck and stroked his hair, his neck, his shoulders.

I love you.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
God, I do. I love you, John David Carver.

She longed to say the words aloud, but didn’t dare. The memory of his saying that doing it with a good girl led to nothing but trouble was still too fresh in her mind. She needed to play it cool, or he’d probably kick her out of bed so fast it’d make her head swim.

She tightened her hold on him and listened with satisfaction to the sound of contentment he made. So, fine, then. She would simply keep her
I love you
to herself for the time being.

But no one on earth could stop her from thinking it.

J
.D. stretched out on top of Dru’s round, soft body and tried not to think. Since he felt as though all his brain cells had ended up in the reservoir tip of his condom, that wasn’t all that tough to do, at first. But once his heart quit thundering in his ears and he’d caught his breath, it was difficult not to make a host of unwelcome comparisons.

Never before, following even the hottest bout of sex, had he felt anything remotely close to the way he felt right now. Not merely this low, warm hum of sexual satisfaction, but…peaceful, too.

It was an odd word to use in conjunction with himself. And “cosmically fulfilled” would hardly be his first choice to describe his usual postcoital condition, but the truth of the matter was, that was how he felt. Or like some big old alley cat who’d just scored himself a nice, warm hearth and three squares a day. All he knew
for certain was that sex with Drucilla felt a lot more like making love than his usual let’s-screw-and-then-I-gotta-hit-the-road routine.

And it scared the bejesus out of him.

Because he’d satisfied all that rampant sexual curiosity he’d been harboring about her and had finally slaked a major case of lust—and that should have been the end of it.

Instead, he felt like starting all over again. He wanted to rebuild her arousal kiss by kiss, touch by touch, until he heard her breath catch in her throat and her voice beg for satisfaction. Until he felt her writhe beneath him and clamp down around him as she came.

Burying his face in her hair, he shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. When Dru murmured and tightened her arms around him, he eased his hands out from under her butt and wrapped her in his arms to hold her in return. Feelings he didn’t want to examine too closely swamped him, making him edgier than that alley cat defending a hard-fought-for scrap of food from all comers.

He took a slow, deep breath and quietly expelled it.
Okay, Carver, get a grip,
he instructed himself firmly.
It’s the situation that’s making you feel this way. It’s just the situation.

For the first time since his brief stay with Edwina, he’d been given a piece of something to call his own—not to mention a place that was beginning to feel a bit like home, and people who at least gave lip service to treating him like family. Of course, he knew that feelings of belonging were unreliable at best and emotional security was a myth. His life had gone through
some dramatic changes in the past few weeks. Add to that the fact that he’d never gotten it on with a woman like Drucilla before, and you had a righteous set of extenuating circumstances. Maybe she wasn’t the goody-goody he’d originally thought, but she was still a good girl.

She sure didn’t cling and scream and use her nails on you like a good girl—and you’ve got the welts on your hide to prove it.

He shoved the thought aside. Fine, forget about her being a good girl, then—he’d never gotten it on with a
mother
, at least not one who’d displayed anything close to Dru’s caliber of parenting. She was a good mother, exceptional, really, and maybe because he’d never known what it was to have a mother like her to fiercely protect his interests when he was a kid, he had a reverence for the breed.

J.D. breathed easier.
That’s
what made this seem different. He’d just never made lo—had
sex
with such a caring mother before. Some of the women he’d met in bars had had kids, of course, but they’d always seemed to have a lot less interest in what those kids were doing than in satisfying their own needs.

Or maybe more than anything else, this connection he felt with Dru had to do with her calling him John David. Nobody called him by his given name, and there’d just been something so…intimate about it. It had really gotten to him.

That was likely the reason he’d felt so tender toward Dru when they were making lo—fuc…having sex—all right, dammit, making love! He was man enough to admit it had felt like they’d made love.

But it wasn’t like he was
in
love, or anything. That wasn’t an emotion he believed in, at least not for himself.

Dru wheezed for air under him and J.D. pushed up on his forearms and looked down at her guiltily. “I’m sorry. Can you breathe?”

She sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “I can now. You’re not exactly a lightweight, are you?”

He started to push back, but she looped her arms around his neck and held him in place.

“I didn’t mean you should go,” she said softly. “I like feeling your weight—as long as I can grab a breath every now and then.” One of the sweetest smiles he’d ever seen crossed her face. “It’s solid and nice,” she said with the closest thing to shyness J.D. had ever seen from her.

His heart contracted. If he were a good man, he’d ease out of this relationship before she started putting too much stock in it. He wasn’t a long-term-relationship kind of guy and never would be, and it was unfair to allow her to think that he was. The kindest thing he could probably do would be to give her a kiss, say, “Thanks, it’s been fun,” and then take a giant step back.

But he was neither a good man nor a kind one, and he didn’t
want
to do that. At least not yet. She looked so pretty lying there beneath him with her rumpled hair and her swollen lips, with those siren breasts and that little waist, and he felt himself growing hard again inside her. He lowered his head to kiss her.

This time it was a friendly, lazy tussle of warm-skinned body rubbing warm-skinned body as they scrapped for position. Dru took him by surprise by
rolling them over, then pushing up to sit astride him. “Queen of the mountain,” she declared, and laughed, thumping her chest in triumph. Then she raised her hips and slowly lowered them again, and the smile slid away. He about went crazy seeing the heavy-eyed sensuality that took its place.

He did go nuts when she started in with that
Please, John David
stuff again. Hands gripping the lush swell of her hips, he rolled her back under him and thrust hard, fast, and furiously to another teeth-clenching climax. And when they were both limp with spent satisfaction, he pulled her into his arms and held her tight until exhaustion claimed him.

He awoke before she did in the morning. It was just after dawn and he’d had too few hours of sleep, but once he was awake, he was awake for good. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, and fingers of light edged around the shade covering his window. Raising his head off the pillow, he looked down at Dru nestled against his chest.

She looked soft and sweet and completely untouched by the sort of ugliness that had marred much of his life. In an unaccustomed fit of chivalry, he knew he had to come clean with her about his inability to sustain any kind of relationship. She was a decent woman and she deserved to know the truth so she could make an informed decision as to where she saw this thing going.

A cynical laugh got caught in his throat. Nowhere, that’s where she’d see it go. Once she understood the kind of guy he was and the sort of relationships that
were his norm, she’d be gone so fast he probably wouldn’t see her for the dust.

The idea bothered him more than he liked to admit. But he assured himself that the ache in his gut was simply a knee-jerk reaction to being denied something—even if the person denying it to him was himself. Giving the situation a long, hard, realistic look, he decided the important thing was preserving some sort of manageable relationship—because even after things inevitably ended between them, they’d still have to work together.

So there was no sense in stringing it out until things got to the point where it was impossible to do even that.

J.D. was no longer in bed when Dru awakened. She stretched beneath the sheet with a soft groan that became more heartfelt as twinges in unaccustomed places made their presence known. Then she smiled, because, truly, what a fine time she’d had getting in this condition. Continuing to stretch, she rolled over.

She heard the bathroom door open, and a moment later J.D. walked into the bedroom. He had obviously showered and was already dressed in a fresh white T-shirt and jeans, although his feet were still bare. His cheeks and jaw had that gleam only seen on babies’ bottoms and newly shaven skin, and he’d brushed his wet hair away from his forehead.

Dru sat up, tucking the thin sheet under her arms and ignoring the room’s faint chill against her exposed back as she smiled up at him. Lord, but he was sexy. “Good morning.”

He thrust his hands in his front pockets. “Mornin’.”

His tone was agreeable enough and he even smiled at her, but there was something about his posture, a stiff wariness that caused a trickle of unease to roll down Dru’s spine.

“What?” she demanded.

“We have to talk.” He rolled his shoulders. “Look, Drucilla, it’s been…”

“
Fun
?” she suggested flatly, and upon seeing the grimace of guilt that quirked his mouth, regarded him through narrowed eyes. Had she really been that mistaken? He’d seemed so involved, so careful and sweet with her, that she’d convinced herself he must surely care about her a little, too. But she was beginning to get a bad, bad feeling that she’d been fooling herself.

“No! That is, it
was
fun, of course—it was
more
than fun.” Fists pressed to the bottom of his pockets, he hunched his shoulders up around his ears for a second as he stared down at her. “Shit. This is coming out all wrong.” He gave her a look filled with regret. “Dru, last night was really great—”

“I get it, all right?” God, she couldn’t believe she’d been such a chump. She climbed out of the bed, pulling the sheet free as she rose and wrapping it the rest of the way around her. Being naked in front of him was conceivable five minutes ago; it wasn’t an option now. “Last night was great, but it’s over. You’ve gotten what you wanted, and it’s time for me to go back to my own place and leave you to yours.” She spotted her panties on the floor and her dress draped over the dresser top, where J.D. must have picked it up off the floor and put it this morning. She scooped up the undies and headed for the dress, looking around for her sandals. “Don’t
worry. I’ll be out of your hair in seconds flat.”

Suddenly he was behind her, his arms wrapping around her to pull her back against him. She struggled to get free, but he tightened his grip and she immediately stopped. Damned if she’d engage in a wrestling match with him; this was humiliating enough as it was.

He rubbed his cheek against her temple. “I’ve never had a relationship that’s lasted more than three nights running,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t believe in fairy tales and I’m not a man for love ever after.”

It was both an apology and an explanation from a man Dru instinctively knew rarely offered either, and she twisted her head around in an attempt to see him. “Who asked you to?” she demanded, but most of her belligerence had drained away. His chest was warm against her back, his arms warm and strong as they wrapped around her waist. Some of the stiffness left her as she uncricked her neck to face front again and rest against him. “I’m not a big believer in fairy tales myself.”

“I think you believe in relationships, though. And
I
believe that someday you’ll probably find the perfect one.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“Yeah.”

“And what about you? Will you find the perfect relationship, too?”

“No,” he said flatly. “And even if I did, I’d manage to ruin it, because I wouldn’t know how to keep something like that alive. But you’ve got your aunt and uncle as an example of a marriage that works, and even I can see it’s a good one.”

“Yes, it is. But it’s their marriage. I haven’t had a relationship of my own work out.”

“But you deserve to.” An unamused laugh rumbled against her back. “You deserve someone a helluva lot better than me.”

Something twisted in her stomach. But her own tone was every bit as cynical as his when she said, “You think so? Or is this just a more tactful way of kissing me off?”

His arms tightened around her. “I don’t want to kiss you off.” He bent his knees and pressed an erection she’d been too upset to notice before against her bottom. “I’d like to make love to you until you go cross-eyed and beg for mercy. But we’ve got to work together, Dru, and I also don’t want a big mess when things between us get all screwed up…which they will sooner or later.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“Oh, yeah. Trust me on this. I’ll do something to make you hate my guts…so let’s be smart and just wind things up now before it comes to that.”

Perhaps because he always came across as impervious to criticism and confident in the extreme, it had never occurred to Dru that J.D. might not think very much of himself. But that was what she was hearing now. He thought there was a relationship somewhere out there for her, but that a lasting bond wasn’t even a possibility for him. He said she
deserved
someone better than him.

Where was what
he
deserved in all this? Why didn’t he at least deserve to go into a relationship without feeling certain it would end up in tatters because of him?

She might be fooling herself and setting herself up for a world of heartache, but she thought John David Carver had a lot more going for him than
he
seemed to think he had. He could have let her walk away, left her believing he’d used her, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d laid his ego on the line for her to accept or slice into little pieces as she wished. He might never have seen examples of a functional, loving relationship, but he had some pretty decent values of his own, particularly for someone who had grown up without a nurturing influence.

Gripping her sheet, she turned to face him, and he allowed it this time, his arms dropping away. It was too late for her to walk away—the die had been cast last night. If he hurt her in the end…well, at least she would never have to be sorry she’d lacked the guts to go after a dream; would never have to regret having given up before she’d even tried.

“Tell you what,” she said, reaching out to trail her fingers from the hollow at his throat down the clean white cotton of his T-shirt to his sternum, where she pressed her hand flat, fingers spread. “Why don’t we risk it all instead.”