Page 70 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“I just… you know, I just… I wasn’t certain when you and Graciela were coming back. I don’t like to smoke in front of her. It sets a bad example.” She couldn’t believe she was managing to speak coherently when all she could think about was his hand dangling so near her breast.
“You’re something, you are,” he said, laughing softly. “As hard and brittle as an eggshell on the outside, soft as yolk inside.”
“Are you going to talk nonsense all night, or are we ever going to get to the kissing part?” When he laughed again, his lips in her hair, she shivered in anticipation. “Do it quietly. We don’t want to wake Graciela.”
“Kissing doesn’t make too much noise.” Sliding down, pulling the pillow with him, he brought his head next to hers. Then he caressed her face, gently teasing a thumb across her lips. “Do you know what I wish we could do?” he whispered in a thick voice.
“We can’t,” she said, her mouth dry. Already her heart was pounding so hard that she could hardly breathe, and her skin was flushed with fire. He’d moved close, not pressing against her, not risking causing her pain, but close enough that she could feel the rigid length of his arousal. She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes.
He kissed the corner of her lips, his hand hot on her throat. “I’d like to skin that nightgown off of you and run my tongue all over your body,” he murmured.
“My God!” Jenny eased back and blinked at him. She’d never heard of such a thing. The idea of someone licking her body should have been disgusting… but, strangely, it wasn’t. Oh, it wasn’t. Imagining what such a thing would feel like made her tremble and feel hot and shaky inside. If she hadn’t already been lying down, she would have fallen flat the way she did the first time he touched her breast.
He kissed her eyelids and his hand moved in a light caress over the top of her bosom. “I’d like to kiss you here,” he whispered, dropping his hand farther to stroke her nipple through her nightgown. She gasped and felt her rib cage swell. “And here.” His fingers passed lightly over the bandage at her waist and stroked her lower belly.
“Oh my God.” Panting lightly, she squirmed against his hand. She couldn’t have remained still if her life had depended on it. How was he thinking of these things? These strange, erotic things that she had never even imagined.
“And here.”
“There?”Her eyes flew open and her mouth dropped in amazement. His hand cupped her most private part, scalding her right through the thin material of her nightgown. “You want to kiss methere?” She thought she might faint just thinking about it.
He laughed softly against her lips. “Right there. Give me your hand. I’ll show you what thinking about kissing you there does to me.”
She knew what he was going to do, and she didn’t resist. She let him draw her hand down between them, down to where his long johns tented out.
“My God,” she murmured again, curving her fingers around the length of him. When he groaned, she snatched her hand back, but he caught her fingers and pressed them back around him. Tentatively at first, then with growing curiosity and assurance, she explored the power and maleness beneath her hand.
To her astonishment, she discovered she could create a baritone symphony of groans and moans and low, tortured whispers. If she did this, his body arched and quivered. If she did that, he kissed her so fiercely that her mouth burned. When she did this and this, he went limp and groaned.
He held the power to kindle a fire in her belly and drop her to her knees with a caress. But she had power, too. The realization astonished her.
“Wait,” he begged, his voice a hoarse rasp. “Stop for a minute. This is torture.”
“I like torturing you,” she whispered wickedly, covering his face with kisses, teasing him with her hips to see what might happen.
A groan of pain rumbled in his chest. “I might have known you’d learn fast.” Then he slid down and opened the top of her nightdress, his mouth and tongue finding her breasts. “I’ll show you what torture is.”
When Jenny staggered back to her own bed near dawn, her lips swollen and her breasts aching, she decided he’d kept his promise. She burned for him, was on fire for him. Never had she experienced anything even remotely similar to this kind of arousal and desire. He had brought her to explosion after explosion with nothing but his hands and his voice in her ear. And she had discovered she could do the same for him. It had been wild, erotic, exhausting, and delirious. And informative.
When she crawled into bed beside Graciela, she cast the kid a glance of resentment and grudging affection. If Graciela hadn’t been here… but then, if Graciela hadn’t been here, she and Ty wouldn’t have been here either.
“Ty?” she whispered, leaning forward to look across at him.
“Hmmm?”
“Before tonight, I never had an…” She didn’t know the proper word. Lordy, Lordy. She hadn’t even suspected that a woman could erupt like that. “Ty? I thought I knew about—you know, men and women—but I didn’t know a damned thing.”
“Well, you sure do now,” he said softly. A low chuckle groaned from his side of the room. “You sure know now.”
Chapter Fifteen
Uncertain if the Barrancas cousins were searching for them in Chihuahua, Ty and Jenny stayed off the streets as much as possible, seldom venturing outside their hotel room. Jenny decided being cooped up in the room was the worst part of her healing process. She would go stark raving mad if she heard Graciela whine, “What can I do now?” one more time.
Staring blindly at the pages of a Mark Twain novel that Ty had bought for her, she considered her situation regarding Graciela. She didn’t want to be a parent, had sworn never to be a parent, and she hated being forced into the responsibilities of a parent. She didn’t like kids, had never liked kids, didn’t believe that she ever would like kids.
But, much as she detested it, she was starting to sound like a parent. This astonished her as greatly as hearing parental-type admonitions and cajoling fall from Ty’s handsome mouth.
If their circumstance hadn’t been so wearing and worrisome, it might have been amusing. She and Ty were two people who disliked children and had never expected to have to deal with any. But here they were, struggling with parental problems such as lack of privacy and setting an example, arguing over a six-year-old and expectations of her capabilities, and, at the moment, trying to hang on to their sanity while confronted with a bored and irritable kid.
