Stay with Me (41 page)

“That’s a dumb question.”

“Oh? Is it?” He smoothed his thumb over my breast, and he caught my nipple between his fingers, and I cried out at the exquisite feeling.

I gasped. “Not fair.”

“Not sure how I feel about you saying the question is dumb.” Lowering his head, he trailed kisses over the slope of my shoulder as he kept tugging at my nipple until my breasts were heavy and swollen. He nipped at the skin. “Still a dumb question?”

“Yes,” I forced out as I wiggled my other leg free. I hooked it around his hip and with both of my legs, I pulled him in as I pushed my hips up.

Air hissed out between his teeth as he sank in, straight to the hilt. The bite of him filling me was a feeling I could never forget. “Babe,” he groaned out. “I think you’re hungry for me.”

I was.

And he wasn’t moving. Nope. The guy had self-control out the wazoo. He was completely still, buried deep, and I was
completely
out of patience. I rocked my hips and we both moaned in unison.

“God, you really do want this like right now.” He kissed where my pulse pounded. “You’re ready for it.”

I felt my cheeks heat as I said, “I am.”

Jax dipped his head, running his tongue along the center of my lips until I opened for him. He kissed me deeply, still somehow aware of the cut on my lip, and then he lifted his head. “You with me?”

Remembering him saying that before, our first time, I nodded and whispered, “Yes.”

He kissed me again. “Then stay with me.”

Before I could question that, he broke the hold of my legs and pulled out. My whimper of protest was lost when he caught my hips and flipped me onto my stomach.

I froze.

My hair had flipped over my shoulder and my back was completely exposed to him, the worst part of me, and he’d seen it before, but this was different, way different. I started to push up, to turn back over, but he gripped my hips and lifted me onto my knees. His front was against my back, and the panic mixed with the thousand other emotions I was feeling.

“Stay with me, baby,” he said to the back of my neck.

“Jax—” I lost the ability to speak as he thrust into me from behind.

The feeling of him was different, fuller and tighter. I was on my knees and hands and he was rooted to me. I couldn’t breath. The feeling was intense, overwhelming, and powerful.

“You still with me?” he asked.

I was. I couldn’t believe it. But I was. I was completely with him.

He smoothed a hand over my shoulder. “Calla?”

“Yes,” I breathed out. “I’m with you.”

“Good,” he murmured.

And then he gave it to me hard.

He moved inside me deep and fast, slowing every couple of thrusts to grind against me, and in this position, from behind me, it was nothing like the other times. A different riot of sensations lit me up. My fingers dug into the comforter as my hips naturally tipped back against him.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. I didn’t know a lot about sex and every time I’d done it with him, I’d been surprised by it, but I never knew it could feel like
this
.

The rumble of approval from him radiated through me, and he circled an arm around my waist, sealing his body to mine. Then his hand was between my legs, his thumb pressing against the center of me, and it was too much and it was everything. My body shook as sharp pleasure rose so quickly I was dizzy, and I held on as he slammed into me, and my movements became frenzied as I pushed back against him.

Against my neck, he grunted, “It’s never been like this. Not with anyone else. Only you.”

My breath caught and then I was lost in those words, in how his body moved behind mine, fast and beautiful in its wildness, and soon the room was filled with sounds of our bodies crashing together and our pants and moans. The rhythm between us was lost, as was his iron control, and the tension spiraled tight, and I could feel he was close from the way he spasmed and jerked inside me.

“Never like this,” he growled into my ear.

I spun right over the edge then. My body clamped down on him, my arms, my legs, and every part of me as I kicked my head back and cried out. The pressure inside me exploded, whipping through me as he groaned with each powerful thrust. My arms gave out. My cheek hit the bed, and he followed, his weight mind-blowing, and he continued to take me as he wrapped one arm around my leg, sliding it up and hitting every part of me.

The feeling, the sound of him, of our bodies, set me off again, and this time I screamed his name, and then he pushed in deeper than before, his groan heavy and sensual in my ear as he came.

Only then did he slow down, his body seeming to glide on its own as he worked his way through his release, and the aftershocks of my own still surprising me with each sublime jolt.

I don’t know how much time passed with him still moving in a sway inside me before he eased out, rolled off me, and left to deal with the condom. I didn’t move. I was beyond capable of moving. My muscles were mush. I was where he left me when he returned to bed and I was absolutely no help as he got my body under the covers or when he rolled me onto my side, tucking my body against his.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” I murmured sleepily.

There was a pause. “I didn’t hurt you?”

“No. It was wonderful.”

He kissed the back of my shoulder. “You liked that.”

It wasn’t a question, not the way he said it, but I murmured again, “Mmm-hmm.”

Jax’s chuckle brushed the back of my neck as he pulled me back tighter against him so that there was no space between us at all. “You still with me?”

“I’m still with you.”

S
prawled across the bed on my belly, with one arm shoved under the pillow my cheek rested on and the other arm folded next to my side, I slowly came awake to feel a feather-light touch trailing over my hip and down the curve of my behind.

I shifted restlessly, blinked open my eyes, and was immediately blinded by the bright light streaming into the bedroom. Groaning, I closed my eyes and tried to snuggle down. My bones didn’t feel like they were attached to any muscles and that somehow was a pleasant sensation. So was the hint of pressure tracing idle designs over my skin.

I’d never slept on my stomach before and I honestly didn’t even remember falling asleep. I assumed it was some point after Jax had curved his arms around me and I’d taken my next breath.

My body still felt worked over in the best possible way. So much so that—

Then my eyes popped back open.

All I saw once my vision adjusted to the light was Jax’s closet doors, and I figured he was what was responsible for what felt like a figure eight on my right butt cheek unless some random artist had climbed into bed with me.

My back was bare.

Hell, the sheet and covers were somewhere tangled around my upper thighs and I was sure that Jax could see the mess of skin, just like last time when he’d flipped me around and taken me from behind. My back being visible last night had been . . . somewhat okay because I doubted he was really paying attention.

I tensed and let out a shaky breath, preparing to roll away from him, which would give him an eyeful of boobs. And while I wasn’t so self-conscious about my front as much as my back around him now, I was sure I had weird lines from his wrinkled sheet embedded in my skin, and that, on top of everything else, would not be sexy. Like I was pretty sure I was in the negative realm of sexy right now.

“Don’t.”

I stared at the closet, considered pretending I was still asleep, and then dismissed that idea because it was dumb, so I went with
playing
dumb. “Don’t what?”

Jax’s hand curved over my bare hip. “Don’t hide. I know you were getting ready to turn away. Don’t.”

My eyes fell shut and I forced myself to stay still. After a few seconds, he went back to tracing smiley faces on my ass or whatever the hell he was doing. It felt like his eyes were boring holes into the discolored and rough skin, like peeling back the layers with X-ray vision.

“You have a sweet ass.”

Uh.

“I mean, really. Your ass is fucking sweet, babe,” he went on, and my lashes lifted and my brows pinched. “You are one of those women just born with a nice ass. No amount of workouts can create this ass.”

“That’s correct,” I said after a few seconds. “I think it was Big Macs and tacos that created that ass.”

Jax’s deep laugh pulled at the corners of my lips and then I felt his leg moving over mine, followed by his hot and hard length pressed into said sweet ass. “Then don’t ever stop eating those Big Macs and tacos.”

Immediately, I was wet. Totally. I don’t know if it was the feel of him so close to the softest part of me, or the fact he’d just told me to never stop eating Big Macs and tacos. Either way, I was ready.

“I can do that,” I said, voice throaty. “Eating Big Macs and tacos.”

He dropped a kiss on my shoulder as his knee pushed my thighs apart and his hand slid between his body and mine. “We should be getting up soon.”

I might have grunted something to the negative.

His chuckle danced over my shoulder. “It’s almost ten. I have no idea when your friends are coming over.”

“We have time,” I told him when I had no idea if we did or not.

Jax’s hand made it between my legs, and my hips jerked as his fingers brushed across the dampness. “Damn, honey, you’re fucking insatiable. I love it.”

Oh, my heart did a little happy dance at the use of the word
love
even though it probably meant nothing.

His hand disappeared and I expected him to roll off and grab a condom, but he didn’t move, and after a few seconds I started to feel those whorls again. Pushing myself up on my elbows, I looked over my shoulder at him.

God, only he could look so freaking, ridiculously sexy after getting only a few hours of sleep, with his hair sticking up everywhere and a rough stubble across his jaw. For a moment, I got kind of lost staring at him and then I realized he was staring at my back. For real. Tension crept into my shoulders, and after what felt like a lifetime, his gaze found mine.

And I said what I needed to say. “I don’t like this.”

His expression tightened. “Why, baby?”

I knew from the way he’d asked, the question was genuine, and for some reason, that created that damn ball in my throat. My arms slid out and I rested my cheek back on the pillow. “It’s ugly,” I whispered.

Jax was quiet as he brushed a few strands of my hair back. “Do you know what I see when I see your back?”

“That it kind of looks like the Appalachian Mountains on a map?” I joked, but it fell flat as an iron.

“No, honey.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to be honest, okay? I’m not going to sit here and tell you that what I see right now is easy to look at.”

Oh God. My heart dropped and I thought I might hurl.

“But it’s not the reasons you think,” he continued, and then I felt it, his hand over the worst part of my back, and my entire body seemed to have a reflexive curl, but I couldn’t go anywhere, because he was practically lying on me. “When I see your back, what I think about is the pain you had to have experienced. I don’t personally know what it feels like, but I had hot shrapnel rip through my skin, and I’m sure that wasn’t even a ball’s hair worth of what you felt. But when the bomb went off in the desert, I saw soldiers—my friends—catch on fire.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, but his words sparked images I didn’t want to see but needed to.

“And I know that there is no amount of pain meds that really dulls these kinds of burns and you lived through that. That’s what I think about when I see them. And I also think about how these fucking scars shaped your life. How they’ve beaten you down when you still are one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen and these scars don’t even touch that. They aren’t anything compared to your smile or your pretty blue eyes or that sweet ass.”

Oh my God.

He wasn’t done. “You know what else I see? A physical reminder of how fucking strong you are, Calla, how fucking brave you are. That’s what I see when I look at your back. A map of how brave you are, your strength and your courage.”

Oh my God
.

Tears pricked at my eyes. That ball of emotion was at my throat again, ready to pour forth and flood the earth.

“And that shit isn’t ugly.” His voice dropped to a whisper.

I twisted, pushing up on my elbows, and looked over my shoulder at him again. His face blurred. “Jax . . .”

“That shit is beautiful in its own way, but still fucking beautiful.”

Some of the tears spilled over, and I knew I was really going to start sobbing, because that was the most perfect thing I’d ever heard, and all I could say was a lame “Thank you.”

One side of his lips kicked up.

I wanted to say more and I was so going to cry more, and it was a good thing that his phone started ringing, because I was seconds away from telling him that I loved him and wanted to have his babies. Not have his babies right now, but later, and I figured that might’ve been too soon to say something like that, but oh God, I did love him.

Jax ignored his phone as he rolled me onto my back. “I think you get it.” Leaning onto one arm pressed into the pillow, he brushed away the tears with his other hand. “Finally.”

A little kernel of “getting it” was there, and it was small and fragile, but it was there, pitted in my stomach like a little seed that just started to sprout. It needed love and care, but I was starting to get it.

He grinned and said, “Yeah.” Then he dipped his head, kissing my left cheek just as his phone started ringing again. He pulled back, shooting a glare in the direction of the nightstand.

“You should get that.” My voice was thick.

Jax really didn’t look like he wanted to, but with a curse, he shifted off me and snatched his phone. He answered the call with a “What?”

I’d just settled back against the pillow, about to replay his whole speech over again in a slightly obsessive way, when Jax suddenly sat up. “
What?
”

The tone of his voice caused a rush of unease, and I reacted to it. Sitting up, I grabbed the sheet and tugged it to my breasts.