Page 81 of Work with Me

He slid a finger or two inside me, pulsing, and moved his lips to my clit. He started slow, with kisses and gentle licks. My legs shook harder.

“Hold on to me, sweetheart,” he said. “Can you take more?”

“Yes, yes.” The words burst out of me.

He flicked his tongue over my clit, revving it back up, before he closed his mouth over it and gave a long, hard suck that bowed me off the mattress.

Then his fingers were gone, replaced by a blunt pressure at my entrance. Cradling my hips with his hands, he slid inside me on one long, slow thrust. My aftershocks squeezed around him.

“Oh, God, baby, yes. Feels so good.” He remained motionless, gripping my hips.

At last, I opened my eyes. I wished I hadn’t because everything showed in his eyes, soft with longing. His expression mirrored the ache in my chest, the one that’d only get worse when he finally went back to California.

We stared at each other in silence for a long moment. He broke away first, looking down to where my legs splayed across the bed. One of us had flung off the comforter. He lifted my foot and worked off my shoe. Then he set my ankle against his shoulder. He lifted my other leg and placed it on his other shoulder. Then he pulled his hips back and thrust inside me again, lighting me up deep inside. A sharp squeak escaped me.

“Okay, let’s go with that,” he said with a smirk.

He set a moderate rhythm that allowed us to savor the friction as he slid in and out. My legs shook against his shoulders until he gently laid his hands across my ankles. He turned his face to kiss one, and then the other, so tenderly that tears prickled the backs of my eyes.

“What was that for?” I lifted my palms to blot away the moisture at the corners of my eyes.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all afternoon. I’ve got more spots I want to kiss.” He thrust twice more without speaking.

“You going to tell me?”

“I’ll show you,” he said. “Later.”

His mouth tightened, and he sped up his rhythm. One hand drifted down between us, and he thumbed my clit. Paired with the deepening pressure inside me, his touch made me clench around him. He sucked his thumb and pressed it back on my clit, circling. My legs slipped off his shoulders, and I counterthrust against him, once, twice, before I shouted out my climax.

He stilled, and I couldn’t tell if the pulses inside me were his or mine. Then, gripping my knees around his waist, he rolled so my body draped over his. My hair had come out of its bun and stuck to his skin.Istuck to his skin, and I wanted to stay there, adhered to him, forever. I stroked the side of his chest and then let my arm flop to the mattress. He whispered my name into the top of my hair.

I may have dozed because I was only dimly aware of his shifting out from under me, going to the bathroom, and returning.

When I blinked my eyes open sometime later, the golden afternoon light was gone, and the room was dark. “What time is it?” I mumbled.

“Not too late. Seven thirty. Are you hungry?”

Only for more of him. More of his warmth wrapped around me. More of his soothing words about how amazing I was. More of the softness in his eyes that reflected what I felt.

Love.

A tiny scream started in my brain. I’d fallen in love with Jackson Jones. With a man who’d said he’d stay although his job, his company, was almost two thousand miles away. Maybe we could play at being together for a little while, but he’d need to return eventually. He belonged there as a leader.

The curse of the Weber women had caught up with me.

Stay cool,I told that screaming voice. I’d put that pesky emotion away in a box. Sure, it’d rattle when Jackson left. But then I’d leave it alone, let it get dusty. Maybe the moths would get to it, like they’d done with Mom’s wedding gown in the attic, leaving it ridden with holes like Swiss cheese so we didn’t feel bad about tossing it in the trash.

The scream got louder. Who was I kidding? What I felt for Jackson was new, but it was too big to keep in a box. It was like the giant baby monster the superhero had fought in one of Noah’s favorite movies. Too innocent, too oblivious, to understand the destruction it was causing. It’d smash everything in its path, leaving me a ruin.

If I stayed, I was sure to confess it. Jackson may have made me lose control of my body, but I wasn’t prepared to let loose my emotions like that.

“I need to go.” I glanced at the floor. Where had I tossed my underwear, the giant, unsexy white briefs with “Big Girl Panties” printed across the butt, the ones Tiannah had gotten me as a joke my last birthday, the ones I’d forgotten I was wearing until I’d attempted that striptease for him?

“You can’t stay? Not even for dinner? There’s a great Thai takeout place near here. They’re really fast.”

I scooted away and sat up. “I can’t. It’s a school night, and I’d like to see Noah before he goes to bed.”

He caught my hand. “Want to take a shower?”

---