Page 25 of With This Wish

“I have the best view right here,” he explains. He doesn’t even bother to keep his voice low as he runs his hand up and down my neck in long, languid strokes, causing goose bumps to break out all over my skin. My eyes widen and dart to the couple across from us, only to see the older woman smile and nod her approval before turning back to her dining companion. Well, if they don’t care, I certainly don’t, so I lean into his touch only to pull back when our waiter shows up.

After ordering a dinner of ratatouille and roast chicken to share, we resume our canoodling while we wait for the food to arrive. The hand that isn’t currently sending shivers up and down my spine with every swipe along my neck rests on the table, and I reach up and stroke the back of it, noticing the raised skin of a scar running through the dusting of copper hair. “What happened here?” I ask.

Jake chuckles lightly, flipping his hand over so he can hold onto mine. “That is from one of the few times I didn’t follow my parents’ schedule for me,” he says with a smile. “I was twelve, and I was supposed to be in karate, or maybe it was tae kwon do.” His head shakes for a moment, like he’s trying to rattle the answer free from memory before he continues. “Anyway, I skipped out on the lesson and went exploring the neighborhood with Billie. She was always running around, doing whatever she wanted and I was always a little jealous of that, so I joined in. Well, what Billie wanted to do that day was go into a foreclosed home and see what we could find. I ended up cutting the back of my hand on a rusty metal cabinet.” He shrugs a shoulder and smiles at me. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I return the smile, but it doesn’t quite reach my eyes as I continue to trace the scar with my finger. “When was the last time you did something for you?” I ask, noticing Jake’s smile fall and his brow furrow. “Even when you were ditching plans, it was to do something Billie wanted to do, and coming here this time was her idea, so…” I don’t want to ruin the mood, but I need to make sure he’s here because he wants to be, not because he’s following someone else’s idea of what he should be doing.

Jake holds the back of my head in a gesture that is both sweet and possessive. “I need you to understand something, Beautiful. No one makes me do anything I don’t want to do,” he tells me, his gaze intense and unwavering. “And what I want to do is be with you. Not out of a sense of obligation because you are the mother of my child, not because of a wish either of us made in a fountain, but because you are the strongest, most caring, most capable, and most outright amazing person I have ever met.” He rests his forehead against mine and sighs. “I love you, Maya. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from here.”

His words are a balm on my battered heart, and I let the last of my doubts slip away. Cupping his jaw, enjoying the feel of his freshly shaved skin against my palm, I take a shuddering breath. “I love you too,” I tell him, letting the feel of him ground me. “I have loved you since the moment we locked eyes in the store three years ago.”

“Me too, Beautiful. Me too,” Jake breathes out. His lips feather across mine before pulling back. His expression is so affectionate, but I see the fire blazing underneath. I squirm a little in my seat, a hunger that has nothing to do with our meal taking over, the need to be with him getting out of control again. One look in his eyes lets me know he feels it too.

Jake raises a hand to flag down our waiter and switches our meal to takeout. He glances over at me, a mischievous smile on his face. “I hope you’re okay if we speed things along a little. I know I promised you a date, but I find I’m not in the mood to be in public at the moment.”

I reach over and grab the upper half of his thigh and give it a squeeze, swirling my fingers suggestively. “Fine by me,” I tell him. My voice is husky with desire, and I smile wickedly as his head lolls back and he shifts in his chair.

“You’re a menace,” he growls, but he doesn’t tell me to move my hand. I continue to knead the strong muscle of his leg as we wait for our food. Once it’s at the table, Jake tosses a few hundred-dollar bills on the table and grabs our coats and the food boxes. “Let’s go, Beautiful.”

Giggling like a schoolgirl, I stand up with him and walk out the door. I’m so worked up and my skin is so heated that I barely feel the cold air on my skin as we head to the car. When we get there, I laugh as Jake unceremoniously dumps everything in the back seat before opening my door for me. “You in a hurry? I got a sitter, remember,” I tell him, stepping into his space and leaning up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “We have all night.”

Jake’s chest rumbles and I smile as he lightly swats my behind. “Don’t I know it? Now get in, Beautiful. I plan on using every minute of our night to my advantage.” With that and a swift but fierce kiss on my lips, Jake helps me into the car and runs around to his side. We simply stare at each other for a moment, a swirl of emotions surrounding us. Finally, he starts the car and heads back to his place, and for me, the time cannot go by fast enough.

Chapter Twenty

Jake

The drive to the rental was mercifully short, though it could never be short enough after hearing Maya tell me she loved me. When she spoke those sweet words in my ear, my heart nearly beat out of my chest and I wanted nothing more than to make love to her right then and there. I was happy to see she was on the same page, but I don’t think either of us wanted an audience. As quickly and as inconspicuously as possible, I got us out of the restaurant. There was also the desire to not embarrass myself by coming in my pants as she rubbed her hand up and down my thigh. The slightest touch from her sets my skin on fire and as much as I liked what she was doing, I was happy she had to stop when we no longer had the privacy a tablecloth was providing.

Now we’re alone at last, and after letting Maya into the cabin, I practically kick the door shut before moving to the small kitchen in the rental and dropping off the food boxes and our coats. When I turn back and look over at my beautiful girl, her eyes are hooded and she’s kicking off her boots, nodding for me to do the same. “Normally, I would try to tease this out a little, try to be a little sexier, make it last, but I’m too far gone for that,” she says with a shrug of her shoulder. Her hands reach the hem of her sweater and whip it off and over her head. My eyes rake up and down her creamy-looking skin, my mouth watering, itching to get a taste of it. The sound of a zipper has my attention going south and I move my eyes there just in time to see a hint of pink peeking out from between the open window of her jeans. She lowers them to the floor and kicks them aside, sauntering over to me. “You’re a few steps behind, Love.”

The word “love” has me floating on cloud nine, but her hands snaking their way underneath my sweater brings me crashing back down to earth. I smirk as I look down at the woman in front of me. “Think you could help me out with that, Beautiful?”

Maya nods, a playful smile on her face. “I will gladly help with anything that involves you in less clothes.” Her warm hands skim over my chest for a moment before shoving my sweater up and over my head while I toe off my shoes and drop my pants. Maya steps back so I can kick them to the side, and when my gaze meets hers, her expression is one of barely restrained want as she takes in the tent of my boxer briefs. She makes a whimpering sound as she stares before finally snapping back to it and reaching behind her back to unclasp her bra. When it drops to the floor, I nearly follow along with it, wanting to drop to my knees to pay homage to her gorgeous breasts. They are bigger than before. I should know because I spent half that first night together searing every inch of her body into my memory banks. God, I need to get my hands and mouth on them again.

“Fuck,” I whisper. Reaching over, I pull her closer to me so I can press her body up against mine. “You are beautiful in so many ways, but this body is unreal.” I run a hand up her side until I can run my thumb under her breast. “I cannot wait to spend the rest of the night worshipping every inch of you.”

Maya looks into my eyes, a fire beneath the icy-blue depths of her own. “Don’t tell me, show me,” she commands, before she pulls my mouth to hers for a kiss. We don’t even make a pit stop at sweet and take the kiss directly to sultry and sizzling, my desire amplifying with each pass of her lips. Maya drives into my mouth, sucking on my tongue so hard I’m spilling pre-cum in my briefs. Her other hand moves to grip my ass and I buck into her, a whimper sounding against my mouth. It could be her or me, I’m not sure. The only thing I know is that the whimpering soon turns into moans as I tweak one of her nipples with my thumb and forefinger and she kneads my behind. We continue to explore each other’s bodies, getting reacquainted with what’s familiar and what’s different. She’s a little softer from pregnancy and giving birth, and I’m a little harder from having nothing better to do than work out, but the changes don’t matter. We’re still a perfect fit. Finally, it’s Maya who breaks the kiss. “Need you,” she breathes out. Seconds later, she’s diving back, nipping and sucking at my lower lip while our bodies press against each other.

I moan my agreement and let her lead me over to the bed, flopping backward when she pushes me down. A wide smile pulls across my face as I scoot back and she strips off the last of her clothes. Her inhibitions and lack of confidence from earlier this week have melted away as she stands in front of me as the proud and beautiful Viking goddess she is. Maya tosses her panties to the side before crawling up on the bed, running her hands up my legs until finally she’s grasping the waistband of my briefs. She raises a brow in question, and I’m nodding so fast I’m surprised my head doesn’t pop off. “Do it,” I tell her. I’m loving the look on her face as she shucks my underpants and flings them behind her, but I love her even more and I can’t wait to express that with more than just words.

Maya smirks and crawls back up, and I close my eyes and wait for her to come kiss me again, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, all the air leaves my body in a giant whoosh as I feel her mouth close over my rock-hard cock. “Fuck, Beautiful. What are you doing?” I was supposed to be spoiling her, not the other way around.

Maya pops off me with a frown on her face. “Did you not want me to?”

I huff a laugh. “Um, no, I definitely want you to, but I want to give you what you need first.” I always want to give her what she needs if it’s in my power to do so.

The frown leaves Maya’s face as she grips my base with one hand while teasing my balls with the other. “This is what I need,” she says before she teasingly licks the head with the tip of her pink tongue. “And what I want.” She takes all of me in one move and any protest at what she is doing flies away in the face of just how good her hot mouth feels. Maya continues to bob up and down, working me with her hands and sucking on me like I’m the tastiest lollipop that has ever been invented as I lightly stroke the side of her face, amazed once again at just how much this woman gives of herself without expecting anything in return.

After another couple of minutes of her amazing mouth skills and me feeling like my body will burst into flames, I feel myself getting close. Too close. The need to come is so strong, but I want our first time back together to be about more than my own pleasure. “Gotta stop,” I grit out, feeling relief only after Maya halts what she’s doing.

Soon, she’s hovering above me, the silky strands of her hair cascading down in waves. “Why didn’t you let me finish?” she asks with a pout. While I would like nothing more than to suck that full lip of hers into my mouth, I need to back away from the edge and that certainly won’t help.

I chuckle lightly. “Turn that frown upside down, Beautiful. You can do that to me wherever and whenever you want in the future, but right now I want to play a little too.” Gripping her hips and giving them a squeeze, I roll us so she’s on her back and I’m on top, my body settled between her long legs. Leaning down, I kiss her plump lips one more time before trailing my kisses south along her cheek, jaw, and neck. When I get to her chest, I cradle one breast in my hand, flicking her nipple with my thumb as my mouth latches onto the other, sucking and nipping as her body writhes beneath mine. I do this for a while, honestly loving it and thinking I could easily set up camp right here, but I won’t. I pop off her breast, smiling wickedly as I switch sides and go after the other one. Maya is a mewling mess beneath me, her hands tangled in my curls as she arches her back, begging me for more with her actions. Nothing has ever looked as good as the sight of her being pleased by me.

“Jake,” she whines. Her hips grind against me as she tries to get the friction she needs so badly. “Need you inside me. Please.”

I stop my ministrations and move above her face, leaning down to kiss her breathless once more. “No need for please, Love. You can order me around any way you want.”

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