That Thing Called Love (20 page)

“Oh. My. God.” Jenny twisted with languid sensuousness against the quilt-covered bedding. She’d gotten a kick out of being in charge—how often had that happened in her admittedly limited sexual dealings? But she liked this, too, this conceding of authority. She was accustomed to being in charge of damn near every other area of her life and hadn’t known how good it could feel to let someone else take over.

And, oh, my, how Jake had taken over! She was
this
close to climaxing simply from the sound of his voice, from the inflammatory words he used. Without so much as a naked skin-to-skin touch. She couldn’t discount that lace rubbing, rubbing,
rubbing
against her nipple, but still—she’d never been with a guy who talked like this. Never dreamed how sexy it could be.

But words were just the additive in the fuel; Jake didn’t need dirty talk to rev her engine. That silver tongue of his was so fiery against her skin she wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d branded his initials all over her with it.

Oh, God, indeed.

“I think you’ve got on too many clothes,” he murmured. “We need to lose this sweater. I wanna see what I’m touching.”

The tension holding her throat arched for his kisses disappeared as his long fingers slid out of her hair. And before you could say “striptease,” he’d whipped the offending sweater over her head and off her arms, now flung over her head. She started to lower them.

“No, you don’t.” He was back in place, one hand spreading across both wrists, staying her. “I like having you in my power.”

She snorted at the same time that tissues deep between her thighs gave a fast, sharp contraction.

Jake’s gorgeous mouth quirked up on one side. “Don’t see that happening, huh?”

Oh, I don’t know.
But, of course, she couldn’t say that.

Could she?

No, of course she couldn’t. “Not in this lifetime, bud.”

“Oh, you never wanna say never,” he murmured and rolled to his feet alongside the bed. “That’ll only get my competitive juices flowing. Because I’m pretty sure that I can make you feel things—do things—you’ve never dreamed of.”

No fooling.
“So...what?” she said in a tone that said,
In your dreams.
“You have a yen to play sheik to my slave girl?”

His hands, which she suddenly noticed had lost a good deal of their tropical tan, shoved his cords down his legs and he kicked free of them. “Aw, now you’re just messing with me,” he said as he went to work shaking her out of her jeans. But he took his gaze off his work long enough to pin her in place with intense eyes. “I’d make a
kick-ass
sheik. I can think of all sorts of things I’d do to you—make you do to me. Honey, we’d be howling at the moon before I was done.”

She swallowed hard—and squeezed her thighs together. Okay, maybe his way of talking about these things was a fuel all its own. But she managed to give him a supercilious look, complete with raised eyebrows.

“You know you like the idea,” he said, but she could tell by the humor in his voice that he had no idea how much.

She forced a sigh. “I have an early meeting in the morning. You plan on talking all night?”

Jake laughed. “No, ma’am,” he murmured. And thrust his boxers down.

She gawked—there was no other word for it. Not when the sudden loss of the last bit of clothing left his penis aiming like an assault rifle straight at her. “Oh. My. God.”

“I know,” he said ruefully. “It’s not polite to point.” And giving her a crooked smile, he hooked her calves in his hands and yanked her down to the end of the bed until her lace-covered butt slapped against his bare thighs. Bending her knee, he wrapped a warm hand around the instep of her right foot and pressed its sole against his penis, using it to push his sex back against his ridged stomach. “Better?”

She stared at the length that thrust out above the tips of her red-painted toes. “That’s really not as long as it looks, you know. It’s just that I have little feet.” Instead of sounding dismissive, the pitch of her voice started rising higher with each word until “feet” cracked in two beneath its inability to reach an impossible octave. God, could she
sound
more idiotic? She had to quit trying to act all cool—it only served to bite her in the butt. Just being herself couldn’t possibly sound any less ridiculous than that lie.

She cleared her throat. “Still. Maybe you’re a more important god than I thought.” She curled her toes against him.

His penis twitched against the bottom of her foot and he flashed her a white, white smile as he stepped back, allowing her foot to slide down his thighs. “You have to be the most fun woman I’ve ever met,” he said, reaching for her and rearranging her back on the middle of the bed. He fetched his wallet from the back pocket of his discarded cords and tossed it on the nightstand.

Then he fell over her, catching himself on his palms and toes. Holding a plank position over her body, he lowered his head and kissed her.

Softly.

Sweetly.

With lips that moved gently, sucked lightly, licked lazily at hers. As if he had all the time in the world.

Unlike Jenny, who, just like that, went up in flames, plunging back into the conflagration that his break to disrobe them had temporarily banked. Threading her fingers through his hair, she held him to her as she kissed him back. Without nearly the softness, the sweetness or the gentleness he demonstrated.

Jake growled deep in his throat and, lowering himself to her side, reached for the front clasp of her bra. He unfastened it with a dexterous snap of his fingers and gently peeled the cups from her breasts. “Look at you,” he said softly, doing just that.

No, don’t.
It was a knee-jerk reaction and she swallowed the words, because, really:
Show a little pride.
Her boobs might not be as grown-up looking as she’d like, but their slight roundness was pleasing and her nipples were pretty.

And, oh, God, with his hand shaping one and his mouth nipping at the other, she couldn’t think straight. “Not requiring much foreplay here,” she panted, shifting restlessly on the quilt and arching her back to push her breast deeper into his mouth. She felt as if he’d been teasing her for hours. Days.
Weeks.

He released her nipple with a pop. “No? Too bad I’m in charge here, then, isn’t it? ’Cause I’m all about the foreplay.” His eyes locked on hers, he sucked her other nipple into his mouth and slid a hand down her stomach. Inserting it beneath the hip band of her undies, he slipped a sly forefinger between her legs, separating buttery folds to feather her clitoris.

Shooting Jenny straight into a climax, detonating her so hard and fast his name was a startled cry from her lips.

“Holy shit,” he said, his eyes smoldering green sparks behind narrowed lashes. “Take note, Bradshaw,” he murmured to himself. “Listen to the woman the next time she tells you what she does or doesn’t need.” His finger kept up its gentle circling until the last contraction faded and her hips abruptly lost their high arched rigidity and she collapsed back on the bed.

Slowly, he pulled his hand out of her panties, tugged them off and fumbled on the nightstand for his wallet. “You game for round two?”

She looked at his raging hard-on and bestirred herself guiltily. “Oh, God. For all my big talk about heavy lifting, I’ve let you do all the work. Give me a second and I’ll rectify that.” Maybe. If she could slap hands on her skeletal system, which seemed to have deserted her.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, unrolling a condom down his sex, then turning on his side to face her and propping his head on his hand. He trailed the backs of his fingers down her body, from her collarbone to her navel to the tops of her thighs, coming close to but not touching what she most wanted touched. “Like you, I don’t think I’m up for much foreplay. When a woman comes fast, they call it multiorgasmic, because she can turn around and do it again. When a man does, they call it premature ejaculation.” He grimaced. “Not exactly what any guy wants to hear applied to him.”

It startled a laugh out of her. “Ooh. Let’s test that theory.” She reached for the proud jut of his penis.

“Let’s not.” He intercepted her hand. “Let’s get you back up to speed.” He used her own fingers to track a reverse path up from her thighs. She tried stretching them out as they neared her erogenous zones but once again he detoured past them.

She huffed out a breath. “What’s the point of this if we don’t get to touch the good stuff?” But she knew. Because this sexual dodge-’em had the walls of her sex clasping at emptiness. Emptiness she wanted, needed, had to have filled.

“I want you ready,” he whispered. “Ready to take me when I fuck you hard. When I go deeper than any man’s ever gone before.” He caught an earlobe between his teeth and expelled a breath. It was a hot rush shoving cold chills down her spine. “When I turn rough.”

Oh, God, there was that voice again. That dirty talk, promising her things she’d never experienced. But she
could
not let him reduce her to sounding like a Victorian virgin again. Bringing her free hand up, she toyed with her nipple. Pinched it between her fingers. Tugged on it.

Jake’s Adam’s apple took a slow slide up his throat as he watched.

“Then let’s go,” she said with a calmness, even an edge of amusement, that made her proud, and she met his gaze when it snapped back to stare into her eyes. “This is your lucky day, Bradshaw. Because I’m ready now.”

I hope,
she thought as heat flared in his eyes and he rolled on top of her.

“You sure?” he asked softly. Gripping his penis, he stroked its head up and down the furrow of her sex.

Okay, she hadn’t been entirely ready until she felt the head of his erection bump her clitoris. Then she didn’t have a doubt. “I am.” She was a little nervous, however—she couldn’t deny it. Because she’d made it sound as if she were way more experienced than was true, and she wasn’t sure if she was prepared to have him slam that big boy into her.

But she’d underestimated Jake. He kissed her the way he had earlier—with that you’re-worth-all-the-time-it-takes gentleness—and eased his way into her body inch by inch, until he filled her like she’d never been filled before. Then he slowly withdrew, dragging tender tissues in his wake until only the head of his penis remained in her. He slipped back in with equal care.

It only took a minute or two of the tortuously slow slide method before Jenny felt as if she were about to come unglued. She drew her knees back toward her chest, and then back even further, dying for that hard, deep,
rough
he’d promised her, but unable to ask.

She didn’t need to. Jake had been hanging on with everything he had, watching her for that moment when she was finally ready. Seeing it, knowing this was the real deal and not just bravado this time, he gave a grunt of approval—hell, of
thanks
—and hooked the insides of his elbows behind her knees. He planted his hands next to her shoulders, tipping her thighs back against her breasts and her hips up off the mattress.

And caution became a thing of the past. He pulled back fast, then pistoned his hips to drive in hard and fast until body slapped body. Pulled back, slammed in.

“Jake?” Jenny’s nails dug into his back. “Omigawd—
Jake?
”

She was so wet and hot and
responsive.
His name on her lips an ever-escalating question, she alternated between gripping him to her as tightly as she could and clawing his back.

“That’s it, baby, that’s it,” he grated in her ear. He didn’t even hear himself, the words just poured out of him without any real consciousness. “Come for me, Jenny. God, I want to feel you come all over me.” He knew she was close,
knew
it, and changed his angle fractionally, then thrust with hard, emphatic strokes.

She made a feral noise deep in her throat and
there!
Thank you, Jesus,
there.
Her wet silken sheath contracted hard on his cock, then clamped down again and again, rippling up and down its length, clasping then loosening its milking grasp only to immediately clasp him once again.

She was so good-girl tight and bad-girl relentless, and the top of his head threatened to blow off as his own orgasm roared up his cock like a ninja on crack. With a final thrust, he held himself deep and gritted out her name as he came in scalding pulsation after scalding pulsation.

They seemed to go on forever before he finally realized he was finished and collapsed atop her as if someone had just shot his legs out from under him.

Jenny’s breath exploded out of her, but she wrapped her arms around him to hold him to her when he made a halfhearted attempt to lift himself off her. Thank God, because all he could do was lie there like a wounded moose and breathe heavily into her neck, knowing that what they’d just shared was different than anything he’d ever had with anyone else.

Better. It was more than simple fucking.

His heart pounded with something other than just exertion. Because, if he was feeling what he thought he was feeling...well, he couldn’t be, that was all. Hell, he didn’t believe in it.

And yet—God.

The
way
he felt.

It had to be the sex. The sex had him feeling—

And if it isn’t?
a voice he wished would shut the hell up whispered in his brain. He buried his face in Jenny’s hair. But, oh, crap. What if this was love?

No. It couldn’t be. Because, well—look how great that had worked out for him in the past. Yet it sort of felt like it was.

Damn, fuck, hell.

He was in way too deep—and sinking fast.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“I’
M
SO
SCREWED
,
T
ASH
.” J
ENNY
watched her friend chop up ingredients for her Monday pizzas. Bella T’s didn’t open for another forty-five minutes, and Tasha’s helper Tiffany wasn’t due for another fifteen.

Tasha glanced up to give her a little half smile. “So you’ve been saying.”

A bark of laughter escaped her. “No. In more ways than that. I think I’ve gone and fallen in love with him.”

Her friend raised a shoulder to brush back a curl that had escaped the mass piled atop her head. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

“Um,
yeah.
It’d be a disaster.” Then she brightened. “Maybe it’s just the sex, though. It very well could be, you know—it was really good sex.” She smiled reminiscently. “I mean, Real-ly. Good. Sex.”

“Sure, rub it in when it’s been an age since I’ve gotten any, and you won’t even share the details.” Tasha used the flat edge of her chef’s knife to scrape green peppers into a stainless steel container, then looked up to pin Jenny in place with a level look. “But you don’t really believe it was just the sex.”

Maybe it was the fact that Tasha hadn’t phrased it as a question that prompted Jenny’s “Hell, yes, I do. I’ve never
had
sex like that, and it’s turned my brain to mush. Probably I just have a killer crush that I only want to label
love.
”

Tasha continued to meet her gaze steadily and Jenny squirmed.

Held her silence.

Then folded like a cheap suitcase.

“Okay, fine. Maybe I think it’s love.”

“And I repeat, that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Tasha said.

“Are you kidding me? It’s the dumbest thing ever. If Jake even suspects how emotionally invested I’m becoming, he’ll run so fast I won’t see him through the cloud of burned rubber he leaves behind.”

Maybe it was the reference to burning, but Tasha’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, crap, the ovens! I forgot to fire ’em up.” She fished an armful of wood out of the box built into her brick pizza ovens, but paused to give Jenny a serious look. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re underestimating him?” She turned back to arrange the wood in the first oven.

“I would
so
like to believe that’s true,” she said fervently. “But I’ve never met anyone as clueless as he is about his own capacity for love.”

Tasha craned her head around, elevating an eyebrow at Jenny over her shoulder. “So, which is it? Does he have a large capacity for love? Or will he hear the word and run like hell from yours?”

“Both, Tash—it’s not a contradiction. I’ve watched him with Austin, and it’s clear he loves that kid like crazy. But I think there’s a part of him that’s still afraid to own it.”

“How about when it comes to you?”

“Well, I know he likes the sex. But I have no idea if it goes any deeper than that. No. That’s not true—he flat-out said he doesn’t believe in love. Yet there are times I think—” She shook her head. “Oh, hell, who am I fooling? It’s hard to tell what he’s feeling.”

“And you’re afraid to ask?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “Which makes me the world’s biggest coward, I suppose.”

“No.” Tasha abandoned the fire building and came over to the counter. Her stormy-sky-colored eyes were dead serious as they met Jenny’s across the narrow space dividing them. “You are
nobody’s
coward,” she said fiercely. “Your parents—the two people who should have put you first—put you dead last instead, and I know that left scars. So if you want be to cautious, you
be
cautious.” She nudged the fingertips Jenny had pressed hard against the countertop. “Do you have any idea what you’re gonna do?”

She rolled her shoulders. “Say nothing, I suppose. Let Jake believe I’m content with a strictly sexual relationship.”

Tasha’s brows furrowed. “Do you think that’s wise when you feel so much more?”

A harsh laugh escaped Jenny. “Wise?” She shrugged. “Probably not. But I do think it’s realistic.” She held her friend’s gaze. “God, Tash. The ugly truth is, I’m going to lose both Jake and Austin come the end of the school year. And it’s gonna happen whether I’m having head-banging sex or not. So I might as well grab the gusto while I can.”

“And then what?”

“Then...it ends. I’m not fooling myself otherwise. But at least, when it does?” She shrugged again. “Well, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I went into this with my eyes wide open. And I didn’t miss out on the lovemaking of my lifetime because I was too damn chicken to take a chance.”

* * *

J
AKE
TRACKED
J
ENNY
DOWN
to her office at the inn later that afternoon. He’d spent some time with Austin yesterday, had heard all about the overnighter at his teammate’s house the night before. But Jenny had been nowhere around—and the memory of how
they’d
spent the night had been too fresh in his mind to inquire into her whereabouts. He feared that if he so much as spoke her name, his son would somehow know what they’d been doing while he was eating birthday cake.

As he looked through the open door now, he saw her sitting at her desk, deep into one of several spreadsheets scattered across its wooden surface. He was transfixed for a moment, awash in a sensory overload of remembered sensations from their time together—the softness of her skin, the sweet slickness of her mouth against his, the throaty sounds she made as her pleasure built—and all he could do was stare. She wore her usual almost-but-not-quite sheer girly top—this one in a shimmery olive-green—and the overhead lights cast a sheen across her hair like a path of moonlight across midnight waters.

Jesus, Bradshaw. You’re waxing poetic now?
He tapped briskly on the doorjamb.

And smiled when, in a clear attempt to save her place, she stabbed her finger down and reluctantly dragged her attention away from the spot to look up.

“Hey,” he said. “You got a minute?”

For a moment her face lit up and his heart did the jungle drum thing.

Then, even though she still smiled at him, the wattage somehow dialed back. Became...less. Vaguely impersonal.

“Sure,” she said, grabbing a piece of notepaper off her desk and aligning its edge under a line of data on the report. “What can I do for you?”

Oh, the temptation, given the images that flashed through his head. He sternly shelved it. “It’s more what I can do for you and Austin—or what I’d like to do, anyhow. It’s gorgeous out today, and I checked the baseball calendar and saw that there’s no game or practice scheduled for this evening. Could I talk you two into going on a picnic with me?”

“Really?” The wattage of her smile sparked upward several notches. “That sounds like a fabulous idea! One of us should call Austin. He didn’t have plans when I saw him at the cottage after school, but you know how fast that can change.”

He fished his cell out of his pocket and propped a shoulder against the jamb. “I’ll do it right now.”

When Austin answered, the noises in the background put him squarely in Bella T’s game room. Jake laid out his proposal, and the teen greeted it with gratifying enthusiasm.

“Great,” Jake said and knew he likely wore a shit-eating grin the size of Texas. “I’ll be by to get you and Jenny at—what?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Four-thirty?”

“Make it five,” she said, indicating the spreadsheets on her desk.

“Jenny says five. Right. See you then.” Shoving his phone back in his hip pocket, he looked at her. “We’re on.”

“Excellent. Do you want me to ask the kitchen to prepare us a basket?”

“No.” Tempting as the offer was. “This’s my show—I’ll take care of dinner.”

That earned him yet another bump on the Smile-O-Meter. “Ooh. This just keeps getting better and better.”

“I’m a thoughtful kinda guy.” Who was tempted to cross to the desk and lay a big, warm kiss on that sweet mouth. Instead, he reluctantly shoved upright and stepped back into the hallway. “I better let you get back to work. See you at five.”

She murmured an agreement and he took off.

He arrived at her cottage to collect her and his son at five on the dot, and though he wouldn’t admit this for the world, he had spent the past fifteen minutes looking at his watch, willing the damn minutes to pass so they could get this party started. Loaded down with a cooler, a bag of groceries and a blanket, he lightly kicked a rhythm on the door to the mudroom.

It whipped open. “Hey!” Austin reached for the grocery bag balanced atop the cooler. “This is such a dope idea!” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t tell Jenny we’re gonna take my boat.”

“We’re going to take the boat?” Jenny said, coming into the mudroom.

Austin grimaced. “Sorry, dude.”

Jake grinned at his son and gave him a companionable shoulder bump. “Nothing to be sorry about. It wasn’t a deep, dark secret.” He looked at Jenny, and smiled to see her dark hair now plaited in two braids, the way she had worn it the first time he’d seen her. “We were going to surprise you with a trip to Oak Head.”

She smiled. “Excellent! Let me just change into my deck skimmers.” She crossed the small area to the built-in cubbies and pulled out a pair of what looked to Jake like regular, if girly, tennis shoes. She toed off the shoes she had on, kicked them in an empty cubby, then wiggled her feet into the navy replacements. Bracing one up against a cubby, she leaned in, hooked a finger in the shoe’s back and unbent the slight fold her foot had put in it before reseating her heel.

“Will you take me water-skiing after dinner?” Austin asked. “The water’s flat as a pancake.”

His head whipped back from admiring the snug pull of Jenny’s jeans against her round butt to look at his son.
You water ski?
he wanted to demand, but was smart enough to swallow the question before he could remind Austin just how little he knew of his life. Instead, he said, “Isn’t it still pretty cold for that?”

“Dude. Everyone and their brother has a wet suit.”

“In that case—”
Shit.
Left to him, he’d say sure, but he had no idea what a responsible parent would say. So he took the safe route. “If it’s okay with Jenny, it’s okay by me.”

“Way to cop out, Bradshaw,” she said good-naturedly as she dropped her foot to the floor and straightened. She grabbed a fleece jacket off one of the hooks above the cubbies and folded it over her arm. “Make me the bad guy if I say no.” She gave Austin the hip. “Luckily for you, it’s fine by me, provided the water’s still calm after we eat.”

“Or you could take me skiing first,” he said.

“I suppose we could. Go put your wet suit on and grab a beach towel. And bring your stuff with you so you have dry clothing to change back into.”

“Sa-weet.” He tromped out to the boat shed, where he donned his wet suit and collected his skis and towrope.

Down at the dock moments later, Jake stowed the picnic gear and turned to his son, who stood by the driver’s seat pulling on his life vest. “Do you want to ski from here?”

“That would be ridiculous!” The word might be negative, but the teen’s tone brimmed with enthusiasm, and Jake glanced at Jenny.

“I know, right?” Her lips curled up. “It doesn’t sound like it, but in this case ‘ridiculous’ is actually an affirmative.”

He grinned. “All right, then.” Turning back to Austin, he saw the boy was already hauling his towrope to the back of the Bayliner. Watching the teen kneel on the back cushions to connect the rope, he said to the back of his head, “Deep water or dock start?”

“Dude. You only use deep water if there
is
no dock. Or if you fall.” Pushing upright, he shot them a cocky grin. “Which I don’t intend to do.”

“Live and learn,” Jake said agreeably and caught the little foam floater attached to the boat key that Austin suddenly lobbed his way. He stared at it in his hand for an instant, then up at his son.

“Why don’t we have Jenny drive,” he suggested. He glanced at her. “If you don’t mind, that is. That way I can spot Austin and, more importantly, get to really see him ski.”
For the first time.

Jesus. So many firsts.

Jenny glanced at Austin and likely saw the same thing he did—his kid’s face light up like a Serengeti dawn. He swallowed, so humbled by it he hardly knew what to do with himself.

Before he could go all sentimental-fool on them, however, she’d snatched the key from his hand and slipped around him. “Works for me.”

Austin slid his ski out onto the dock and climbed out after it, turning to accept the bar end of the towrope when Jake leaned out to hand it to him.

Jenny started the engine and slowly pulled away from the dock. She glanced over her shoulder. “Tell me when the slack’s all but gone.”

He watched the line slowly unsnake beneath the water. “Okay, it’s getting there, getting there...” The rope between boat and dock came up out of the water, and Austin poised his ski over the water. “Now!”

She slammed the throttle forward, the boat shot off like a bullet train and Austin was immediately up to speed. Jake had done some skiing with Kari’s crowd back in high school. But he hadn’t grown up with the sport as Austin had, and he knew within moments that his son’s skills far outstripped his own. If he had tried that start, he’d probably be swallowing half the canal as he was dragged face-first behind the speeding boat.

But his son knew what he was doing and he jumped the wake with ease, then swung wide to the farthest reach of the rope, where he leaned until his elbow damn near touched the water. It turned him back toward center and he straightened as he whipped back within the wake, only to jump it on the other side.

Jake watched him with pride all the way to Oak Head, where Jenny sped the boat to within fifty feet of the shore before cutting a sharp turn. Austin crossed the wake for the final time and, when he reached the apex closest to the beach, let go of the towrope bar.

Jenny pulled back on the throttle, and Jake let the bar skip behind the boat, in favor of watching his son skim a few more feet toward shore before gently sinking into a couple of feet of water.