Blackbirds & Bourbon (15 page)

“Nine years. Nine goddamn years. Fuck, every time I see you. Smell you. Do you know what your smell does to me, Persephone?” With a growl, he tosses the shirt behind him.

“No.” I trail my fingers up his stomach, slowly. His skin feels like warmed satin, pulled tight over all that steely strength. “What do I smell like, Jack?”

“Like the first rain, the one that brings the flowers out. Like
life
. That’s how you smell, all sunshine and lilies and spring. But you’re fucking killing me.”

“I’d never hurt you.”

He closes his eyes. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“What are you scared of?”

“It’s nothing, princess. Except maybe once, just fucking
once
, I want the goddamn fairy tale to end the way humans think they do.”

“A happily ever after? For us?” Something flutters inside me, beating its wings fast and hard. It feels like hope, but that way madness lies. Best to focus on what I know I can have in this moment because the future is something scary and likely to eat us both whole.

When I pull off my shirt and shrug out of my bra, he sways like someone cold-cocked him.

“Stop,” he breathes. “I want to do the rest.”

Those frosty eyes stay locked on my body. Jack’s warm palm skims over my midriff, then the curve of my waist, one finger flicking open the button of my jeans, before moving up to trace my tattoo. My stomach tightens, and chills dance over my skin as he explores. “It’s so gorgeous—what the hell made you decide to do it? You almost passed out the first time you watched Jett tat someone up.”

“Rochie didn’t tell you?”

Jack cocks his head, his fingertips continuing their path to where the branches of the tree brush the underside of my breast. My nipples darken and peak. His heated gaze slides over the hard points, before dragging back to my face. “Rochka? What does she have to do with your ink?”

“I lost a bet with her. So she made me get a tat. With your name in it. Your real name.”

His eyes narrow. Without a word, he pushes back off the bed, then yanks my hips right to the edge of the mattress. Stripping my jeans from me, Jack kneels between my legs, bending over to examine the tat closer. The ink on his own shoulders ripples as he moves and I bite back a moan, trying to be patient while he looks his fill. He leans so close his lips almost brush my skin as he finds and presses a fingertip to each letter of his name hidden in the tangled roots of the tree over my hip.

Finally he raises his head, his expression utterly perplexed.

“I have no idea why she’d do that.” Jack frowns, but I don’t give a damn about Rochie and her fairy bullshit right now. I don’t even bring up what she said about us getting it on before Yule. Feeling his breath against my skin has me squirming, my mind blanking out as a soft whimper escapes my lips.

His frown fades and a slow grin takes its place. One that turns the flames licking inside me to a roaring fire. He teases the black lace edge of my panties with a fingertip. I’m wearing the
Charmed
ones Carly bought me last Christmas. His eyes crinkle. “I was kinda expecting pink. But this works.”

“Take them off, Jack.”

He gives me a wicked grin and a wink. “As you wish.”

Oh yeah, this man knows exactly how to get to me.

Placing a hot, open-mouthed kiss on my bare stomach, Jack tugs the panties down. His eyes are locked on mine as those roughened fingers slide over my hips and down my thighs. Throwing my panties behind him, he dips his head, letting that sandpaper jaw lightly graze my inner thigh. My ass comes off the bed, but he forces me back down with one hand. “Wait for it.”

“No. I’ve waited long enough.”

“Fine.” In one swift movement, he slides those hard, corded arms under my thighs and yanks me to his mouth, driving his tongue deep inside me. My head falls back and my arms fly apart as I scream, fingers scrabbling at the sheets, needing something to hold onto because it feels like he just threw me off of another cliff, only this time I keep falling and falling.

Pleasure closes over my head, drowning me in liquid ecstasy as Jack tortures me with his mouth. He’s so good at this, like oral is an art form and he’s Da Vinci, Van Gogh and Dali all wrapped into one. His tongue slides out of me to tease my clit, circling round and round until I’m breathless. Then back inside my pussy again, making me clench tight. My toes curl into the warm muscles of his back, my hips rocking helplessly, begging for more. And I know exactly what
more
I need.

I slide my fingers into his hair, tugging hard. He makes a disapproving noise deep in his throat, the vibrations nearly sending me over right then and there, but I hold back because this is important.

“Not yet, Jack. Please. I want you inside me when I come.”

He lifts his head, and the sight of him between my legs, that perfect mouth slick from pleasuring me… There is the sound of tearing fabric as my fingers rip one of the sheets half off the bed. 

Before I can blink, he’s standing at the foot of the bed, kicking off his boots, peeling off his jeans. I know what Jack looks like naked. The image has been burned into my brain all these years, haunting my dreams and fantasies, but he’s all that I remembered and a bag of chips.

The party size.

Muscles ripple with every movement of that lithe body, making my throat dry.

He straightens, obviously enjoying my eyes on him, my half-open mouth as I stare. Good thing he’s already taken off my panties or they would’ve spontaneously combusted. Those wide shoulders roll with power even as he casually kicks his jeans across the floor. Tattoos curl and twist down his carved arms like blackened smoke, seeming to float above his skin in the half-light of the lantern.

Holy fucking horned one,
gimme
. I lick my lips. Jack groans, stroking himself once before kneeling on the bed and sliding over me. My legs wrap around the hard planes of his waist, my fingers running up his forearms and higher. I look right into his eyes. “No more teasing, Jack. We’ve been doing foreplay for like a decade now. Let’s do this.”

Laughing softly, he leans his forehead against mine. My breath catches as the underside of his cock slides over my pussy lips, bumping gently over my clit in a way that has my nails scoring his skin.  “I could hurt you. It’s been so long…”

“Believe me, the only thing that’s going to hurt is you dragging this out.”

He nods once, his eyes never leaving my face as he positions himself.

When Jack pushes inside me, slow and hard, joining our bodies together, the pleasure is blinding. I close my eyes because I can't bear it, my palms cupping the bunched muscles of his arms as he sinks deep. My mouth opens on a gasp and my head falls back. Something soft and cool brushes my face, again and again. I force my eyes open and let out a shaky laugh.

“You're making it snow.” I stare at the flakes drifting down, dusting his dark hair. Light and cold, they kiss my skin. I can feel the cold, but it can’t touch the heat of him inside me. Thick and pulsing. I think if he moves one more inch, I'm gonna come. “What is it about me that brings out your inner Elsa?”

His lips twitch even as his eyes darken, like a winter storm forming behind foggy glass. “You appeal to my magic as much as you appeal to me. I think it's trying to show off.” We both contemplate a flake that catches on the edge of my nipple. “I can't seem to control it.”

“I don't want controlled from you. Not tonight.”

“You sure about that?” His gaze never leaves that sparkling bit of ice against my skin.

“God, yes.”

His head lowers and his hips shift, making me gasp and dig my nails into his skin as he sinks deeper.

“Fuck,” I manage to whimper, right before his warm mouth brushes that hardened bit of flesh, sending such a tingling burst of ecstasy through my body I have to bite my lips to keep from screaming.

Then he’s sucking my nipple and moving his hips at the same time, and now I can’t scream, because it’s too much. Much too much and not nearly enough. My heels slam into the hard curves of his ass as I arch, forcing him deeper.

Jacks stops and lifts his head, watching me with narrowed eyes, his lips parted, still hovering above my breast. I can feel each hot exhalation. I want his mouth back doing what it was, but I want his cock more. I can’t believe I’ve lived without this for almost ten fucking years.

My first time with Jack was gentle. And so damn good. I never understood when other girls complained about their first time because mine was…breathtaking. Well, except for the whole afterwards thing, but during, he was stellar. Just very, very careful.

I don’t want careful any more.

I want dirty, I want hard, I want to be
fucked
.

He must read my face, because Jack’s jaw does that sexy flexing thing. Then he does something with his hips that makes me see stars.

“Do that again,” I gasp.

“Say please,” he demands in such a hard voice that it makes me blink, even as a powerful surge of desire slams into me.

“Fucking
please
.”

He does it again, slower this time, grinding and swirling inside me until sweat breaks out along my spine and I’m writhing under him, half mindless with need. “More.”

When I look up, Jack is staring at where our bodies are joined together. I know he’s watching his cock move in and out of me. The thought has me clenching so tightly Jack groans, his head falling back, the deep muscles in his chest rippling as his throat works and his hands fist the sheets on either side of my hips. With a gasp, he yanks himself out of me.

Before I even know what’s happening I’m in the air again, being flipped onto my stomach. He presses a hand into the small of my back, forcing me flat down against the mattress. There is a beat of silence, one where I can feel his eyes on my naked body, raking me from head to heels, hot and scorching, like a brand. Then he swears, more violently than I’ve ever heard him before. Jack’s lean hips are cupping my ass a second later, his fingers tangling in my hair as he yanks my head back.

“I can’t do this slow and gentle,” he murmurs in my ear. I can feel the fat tip of him pressing at me again and I know he’s asking permission one last time. Permission to let loose and give me what he’s afraid to believe I want. I lift my hips to erase his doubt and reach up to flatten my hands against the headboard.

“Then do it hard and fast.
Fuck
.
Me
.”

With a groan, he does exactly that, slamming inside me, lifting me half off the bed, that hard heavy body covering mine, owning me as I scream his name.

Over and over again he takes me, his thrusts so powerful I can feel the headboard cracking apart under my palms. But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if the whole world disintegrates around us as long as he keeps doing what he’s doing.

His relentless rhythm keeps pushing my hips down into the cheap, too-hard mattress. The off-again, on-again pressure working my clit and dragging the hard points of my nipples against the rough sheets, all while his cock stretches me wide.

I have absolutely no control, no ability to do anything except let Jack fuck me. And it feels so damn good I can’t hold back for long.

When I come, I throw my hands over my head and scream into the mattress. Pulling at my own hair as the pleasure rips through me, tightening every muscle in my body to the breaking point before exploding in the most intense orgasm of my life. I writhe in the tangled and ripped sheets, my skin slick with sweat, Jack’s taut body pinning me down, heavy and unmoving as he waits for me to catch my breath, his chest pressed into my back.

But he doesn’t wait long.

“You’re mine, Seph.” Jack whispers in my ear seconds later, making me tremble violently, his voice combined with the aftershocks still racking my body taking me right to the edge of another orgasm. Then he lifts my hips and forces his thick cock through my still-pulsing muscles until I’m over that edge and falling once again.

I feel him come with me this time, his hoarse cry against my skin, the heat of his release stealing what’s left of my air. The hard shudder of his body makes my lips curve with satisfaction even as my eyes close and I melt beneath him.

“I know, Jack. I know.”

I lose track of how many times he takes me after that. Not nine years’ worth, but a damn good start. We fall asleep with him still inside me sometime in the late morning, both of us spent and too tired to pull what’s left of the covers over ourselves. Jack doesn’t get cold and his heat is all I need to fall into a deep—and for the first time in weeks—dreamless sleep.

Hours later, I come awake in a panic, the spot beside me empty but still warm. The light is not right, golden and almost harsh. Late afternoon already? Yule is nearly over. And despite the inquiry looming, I don’t care. There’s only one thing on my mind.

Jack.

He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, his back to me. “I’m still here, princess. I’m not going anywhere.” My racing heartbeat settles at his words, snuggling back into my chest like a contented cat.