Chapter 32 Above the Clouds
Chapter Thirty-Two
Above the Clouds
Jasmine…
The scent reached her before consciousness did, threading through the gauze of dreamless sleep like a gentle hand coaxing her toward the surface. Daisy opened her eyes to a room washed in pale gold, where ivory curtains swayed against tall windows and light pooled on the walnut floor.
She had slept. Not the fractured, haunted sleep that left her exhausted for weeks, but the deep, boneless surrender of a body that had finally stopped fighting.
Steam billowed from the bathroom in a fragrant cloud as Jack emerged, dark hair slicked back from his face and beads of water clinging to his shoulders. A white towel clung to his tapered hips, drawing her eye to the carved lines of muscle that shaped from his abdomen.
His gaze found her in the tangle of cream sheets and pillows. “You’re awake.”
He made no effort to angle his body or shield his scars.
“I don’t even remember falling asleep,” she murmured, voice husky.
His grey eyes darkened as they slowly traced the slope of her bare shoulders, predatory and tender. He crossed the room without a word and lowered himself onto the bed, capturing her legs with his own.
“I like having you in my bed.” He lowered the sheet with deliberate, unhurried tugs, exposing her bare breasts.
“Lucky for you, I like being in your bed.”
A masculine growl rumbled from his throat as he moved up her body, caging her in. His mouth found her neck. Not a kiss but a claiming, his lips dragging along the sensitive cord of muscle below her ear with a pressure that sent heat flooding to the surface of her skin.
Her breath stuttered when his teeth grazed her pulse point, her body responding to him with an immediacy that should have embarrassed her. Her nipples tightened, flushing pink, and his gaze dropped to them with naked hunger.
He drew one stiffened peak into his mouth, his lips closing around her with a slow, wet suction that made her spine lift off the mattress and a moan spill from her throat.
He released her with a soft, obscene sound that sent a pulse of arousal straight to her core, and his hand trailed down her stomach, over the gentle curve of her hip, slipping between her thighs with a featherlight touch.
He cupped her sex gently. “Sore?”
“A little.”
He glided his palm with a tenderness that made her chest ache, his broad hand cradling her with warmth rather than pressure, as though holding something bruised.
“A bath will help.”
“I think what you were just doing might help more.” She rocked her hips against his palm, testing the soreness, finding it tolerable and overshadowed by her desire to have him again.
His breath caught against her collarbone. “Daisy.”
“Please.”
When he lifted his head to look at her, his eyes had darkened to the color of a winter sea, and the muscle in his jaw twitched with the effort of restraint. She arched her back, pressing her breasts toward him in deliberate invitation, and his resolve fractured.
He descended on her, his mouth capturing her neglected nipple as he sucked deeply, his tongue swirling the sensitive bud in tight, wet circles that made her gasp and dig her fingers into the damp hair at his nape.
He lavished her with thorough, consuming attention, alternating between peaks with greedy focus, drawing each one to an almost painful point before soothing the sting with the flat of his tongue.
The suction intensified as he pulled her deeper into the scorching heat of his mouth, hollowing his cheeks until the sensation bordered on exquisite agony, a pleasure so sharp it lived on the knife’s edge of too much.
She cried out as waves of pleasure traveled from his mouth to her core. Her hips rolled against his palm in urgent, involuntary rotations, chasing friction he wasn’t providing.
He responded by shifting his thigh between her legs, the hard muscle pressing against her swollen sex, and the pressure was so perfectly placed she moaned into the sunlit room without shame.
She ground against him, coating his skin with her arousal, riding the firm ridge of his thigh while his mouth worked her nipples into throbbing, glistening peaks.
“Jack.” His name was a plea and a warning.
He pulled back just enough to speak against her flushed skin. “Your body needs time to rest.”
“I don’t want to rest.”
Her hand slid beneath the loosening towel and closed around his cock, thick and rigid, pulsing with heat. The strangled sound he made at that first stroke sent a thrill of power cascading down her spine.
She caressed him slowly, root to tip, her thumb dragging over the swollen crown where moisture had already gathered. His hips thrust into her fist, a reflexive, helpless motion that contradicted every word of protest he’d uttered.
“Please.” She whispered it into the hollow of his throat, stroking him again, harder, feeling him swell and throb in her grip. “I want you inside me.”
His restraint collapsed. The towel vanished and he drove into her in one deep, possessive thrust that punched the air from both of them. His hand gripped her jaw, tilting her face to his, as his mouth crushed against hers in a kiss that tasted of total ownership.
This was different from the first time. This wasn’t reverence. This was hunger.
He withdrew and slammed back into her with a force that rocked the headboard against the wall, and the raw sound that tore from her throat only drove him harder.
His grip on her jaw tightened as he kissed her between thrusts, swallowing her moans, feeding her his own, his tongue claiming her mouth with the same relentless rhythm his cock drove into her body.
His free hand found her breast and he palmed her roughly, squeezing, kneading, rolling her swollen nipple between his fingers with a pressure that made her vision blur. There was no gentleness in his touch now and she relished the rawness of his reckless love.
She wanted exactly this, the full, unleashed weight of his desire bearing down on her without apology.
He broke the kiss to bury his face against her throat, his breath scalding her skin as his hips snapped forward in hard, demanding strokes that filled the room with the wet, rhythmic percussion of their joining.
Each thrust drove deeper than the last, stretching her, claiming her, reminding every tender inch of her body that she belonged to him.
She gave herself over to him like an offering, wanted to be his answered prayer, and she loved that—once he dropped his guard—he denied himself nothing.
His pace turned savage. The controlled rhythm shattered into something primal and graceless, his hips pistoning with a ferocity that drove her up the mattress until her fingers clawed at the headboard for purchase.
Sweat slicked the hollows of his collarbones, his chest heaving, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons in his neck stood out like cables.
Every muscle in his body coiled and flexed beneath the scarred landscape of his skin as he drove into her with the single-minded desperation of a man trying to fuse his soul to hers.
Her orgasm ambushed her. It crested without warning, a detonation that radiated from her core to the tips of her fingers, locking her thighs around his hips as her inner walls seized his cock in merciless, rippling contractions.
“Jack!” She screamed his name so loud it cracked in the middle, her back bowing off the bed, her fingers dug into the hard muscle of his shoulders.
A guttural, almost wounded sound tore from his chest as his hips stuttered and slammed forward one final time. He spilled into her in violent, pulsing waves, his whole body shuddering above her as though something structural had given way.
His arms buckled and his full weight collapsed onto her, his face buried in the curve of her neck as his breath punched out of him in ragged, broken gasps.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. His heartbeat slammed against her as a fine tremor ran through his arms. Skin damp. Muscles twitching. She shivered and groaned.
When he finally lifted his head, his expression was wrecked. She tried to look regretful but failed miserably.
She hitched her shoulders. “Sorry?”
He pulled out of her carefully, breath sawing in and out of his lungs. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, voice hoarse from panting.
Daisy laughed, the sound bright and unrepentant. Her body already hummed with the promise of soreness, but she could not summon a single ounce of regret.
“Jack, I’m fi—”
He moved before she could finish. One arm hooked beneath her knees, the other bracing her back, as he lifted her off the mattress in a fluid sweep.
“What are you doing?”
“Drawing you a bath.” He carried her through the bathroom door where steam still lingered from his shower, the marble tile warm beneath his bare feet. “Trust me, your muscles will appreciate it.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m perfectly fine.”
“Humor me.” He pressed his lips to her temple, and the tenderness of the gesture, so at odds with the man who had just driven into her with enough force to knock the headboard loose, dissolved her protest entirely.
He ran the water until the temperature satisfied his exacting standards, then lowered her into the deep porcelain tub. Daisy sighed as the heat enveloped her, sinking into muscles she hadn’t realized were clenched until they released.
He climbed in behind her, settling her back against his chest. His long legs bracketed hers.
They soaked for what felt like hours, the bathroom filling with jasmine-scented steam and the quiet murmur of conversation that wandered without destination. He washed her body with unhurried hands, lathering soap along her arms, her collarbones, the tender space between her legs.
Every time the water cooled, he reached for the tap and added more, adjusting the temperature with the same meticulous attention he applied to everything else.
Afterward, she dressed, unsure if he wanted her to stay or if she should find her purse and start making her way home.