Chapter 11
11
Ella’s nipples hardened to tight points at the thick, rough edge to Jake’s voice. She was aware of him like never before. His lungs expanding, his pulse thumping against her back, the hard ridge beneath his zipper pressed into her ass.
She’d taken none of his lesson in since he’d pressed himself against her. Nor the wonderful randomness or the mathematical possibilities as the balls had bounced and collided, spiraling off each other like fireworks squirming into the night.
She was only aware of him . And the urge to rotate her hips like she was… on heat . An urge that apparently could not be denied as she involuntarily pressed into him, gasping as he slid hard against all her sensitive places.
“ Fuck ,” he ground out, his hand shifting from the cue to her hip, gripping firmly.
Ella dragged in air thick as soup. What was she doing? This was all kinds of crazy. If they didn’t stop this now it would be unstoppable.
Dredging up her last ounce of resistance, Ella straightened. He straightened with her, easing back a little as she turned. But he was still close enough to touch, his body pumping off heat and pheromones that were muddling her senses.
“I shouldn’t.” Ella shook her head as she drew in a husky breath. “We shouldn’t.” She looked into his hooded green eyes. “We’re complicated. And we have to work together. I should get out of here.”
He nodded. “You should.”
But Ella didn’t move because it didn’t seem to matter how many times she told herself Jake was backward her body was screaming for his touch. For the magic she knew he had in his fingertips. For his mouth. For the rock of his hips.
She made one last appeal. “Please, just send me away.”
“Shit, Ella,” he muttered on a groan as he lifted a hand to cup her face. “I can’t.”
His head lowered then, his mouth capturing hers in a kiss that was out of control from the first touch. All she could do was hang on as it exploded around them, as his hands slid to her ass cheeks and lifted, setting her on the edge of the table before he stepped right between her legs.
She tore her mouth away, staring at him dazedly. His eyes were glazed and his chest was heaving air in and out like a bellows. He looked like she felt, so goddamn lust-drunk and confounded she was almost overwhelmed by the rawness of it all.
But then he swooped again and her pulse ratcheted up as his tongue tangoed with hers and somehow, she was falling back, and he was joining her, pushing balls out of the way as they went. Ella whimpered as his lips left hers but then they were at her neck and at that spot behind her ear, then licking along her collar bone.
He straightened and she almost mewed at the loss of him but his eyes were hazy with lust as he looked at her, the overhead lamp putting her squarely in the spotlight. His breath falling in rough pants, he placed a hand on her belly and the muscles beneath leaped at the touch. His hand moved then, pushing at the hem of the jersey.
Up, up, up.
Exposing her stomach then her belly button then her ribs and further still until her breasts were exposed, his gaze zeroing in on her nipples, hard as nickels.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his eyes hot as they roved over every inch of her bare flesh. “I want to lick you all over.”
Ella’s stomach clenched at the naked desire in his gaze and part of her wanted to arch her back and yank him closer. But the other part wanted to lick him all over too and there were way too many clothes between them.
Her pulse tripping, she curled up, whisking the jersey off her head and throwing it on the ground. As far as she was concerned it was just one more thing in her way.
Sliding her arms around his neck, she kissed him full on the mouth as she grabbed his T-shirt from behind and pulled. Within seconds they were both topless, both breathing hard as they just looked at each other, their hungry gazes devouring the playgrounds before them.
And then they were on each other.
Ella pulled on Jake’s shoulder, yanking him down and he climbed onto the table with her, dragging her into the middle as he went, pressing her into the felt, his lips plundering. His skin was warm and smooth beneath her hands, the muscles bunching enticingly. She’d forgotten how broad he was, how perfectly her hips cradled his.
His mouth moved lower, hot and wet, blazing trails, leaving devastation and pleasure in its wake. And when his whiskers grazed the aching tightness of her nipples, she writhed beneath the onslaught.
Ella needed him. Now.
Grabbing for the fly of his jeans, she tugged it open, her hand sliding into his underwear, wrapping her hand around his rigid cock. The groan that tore from his throat was so base, so male , Ella almost came from that alone.
She was vaguely aware of Kenny Rogers singing about being someone’s knight in shining armor as her hands pushed at her sweats and underwear. Finally disentangling herself enough, she wrapped her legs around his waist and demanded, “Now.”
His low chuckle buzzed against an impossibly taut nipple before he sucked into the heat of his mouth, dragging a moan from Ella’s lips.
Oh Lordy . Good… So. Good.
But she needed more than that. Tugging his head from her breast, she yanked his face close to hers. “I need you in me.”
“But—”
“I don’t want the fancy stuff. Not now. All I need is this.” She reached between them and grasped him again with rough hands, satisfied by his guttural grunt. “Inside me now.”
Ella didn’t care that she still had sweatpants and her underwear caught around one knee or that Jake had one shoe on and his jeans barely off his hips. She didn’t even care about the carpet burns she sure as hell was going to have on her ass tomorrow or the distinct possibility that Jake was going to have to have the pool table professionally cleaned.
All she cared about was him putting a condom on and pounding all that hardness into her over and over. And she knew she shouldn’t want it but it had been too long between drinks for them and she needed it.
In a way that wasn’t just sexual.
“Mmm,” he murmured, a smile on his lips. “I love it when you use your bossy teacher voice, Ms. Lucas, ma’am.”
As if to prove it, he was suited up in twenty seconds flat. Considering her ankles were locked around his waist and her tongue had gone to town on his neck, it was an impressive feat.
But then he was pushing inside her on a low deep groan and everything outside the pool of light ceased to exist. There was just their breathing and the combined knock of their heartbeats and the entwined heady musk of their arousal. The deep, hard thrust of him and her yes, yes, yes every time she clenched around him and the way every stroke hit that spot he was so good at finding.
The spot only Jake seemed to know how to find. No hand-drawn map, no GPS coordinates just – bam! Every damn time.
“God… Ella. You feel so good,” he panted as he gripped her bent knee, pushing it back further, lifting her foot off the table and thrusting again.
Ella cried out as the different angle went deeper and pulled down hard in all the right places, heat suddenly coalescing then bubbling and finally rippling out in ever increasing waves. She shut her eyes, trying to hold it back, wanting him to keep doing just that , just there forever.
But she could feel the tremble of his biceps beneath her hands and knew he was as close as she was. So she let it go, falling into an abyss of such intense pleasure she didn’t think it was possible to survive it.
Until Jake joined her and they came out the other end, together.
Jake woke the next morning to a hand sliding up his chest. He cracked his eyes open as Ella draped a leg over his thigh and snuggled her head into his shoulder. Her hair brushed his chin and he shut his eyes again. He’d only been asleep for a few hours and the post-coital buzz had set firmly in his marrow, leadening his bones and eyelids.
A smile touched his lips as his mind drifted back to their brisk walk from the bar to her place as the first blush of dawn streaked the sky. They’d slipped into the darkened house like teenagers late home for curfew and hit her mattress, Ella’s hand over his mouth, smothering his laughter, finally kissing him to shut him up. And then passion reigniting, racing to shed their clothes and do it all over again.
And again.
Ella Lucas was insatiable. To prove his point her hand drifted south and his smile grew wider. Very insatiable.
“You asleep?” she murmured, her hand traversing the flat of his stomach.
He grinned. “Not anymore.” Neither was his dick.
She trailed her finger across the soft vulnerable strip where his belly met groin and he moaned appreciatively, eager for her to stay and play a little longer.
“Mmmm,” Jake sighed.
Even the brief, loud knock on the door wasn’t enough to kill his morning glory despite Ella withdrawing her hand like a child who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
His cookie jar.
“Ella, are you awake?” Rosie whispered loudly on the other side of the door. “I’ve been worried about you.”
Jake chuckled and Ella dug him in the ribs. “I’m fine.”
“Jake? Is that you?”
“Morning, Miss Rosie.”
“When I said take care of her I didn’t mean seduce her.”
Jake could hear the smile in her voice all the way through the door. “What makes you think I seduced her ?”
Rosie snorted. “Almost twenty years of friendship. Ella thinks too much.”
He laughed, remembering how she’d asked him to send her away. “That she does.”
“Hey, smart asses, I’m right here,” Ella grouched.
“I’m making bacon and eggs,” Rosie said. “You must both be famished?”
Jake was starving. But now Mr. Woody was involved, food was low down on his list of priorities. “No.”
“I do some mean mushrooms.”
“No.”
“And grilled tomatoes to die for.”
Jake laughed. “Go away, Rosie. Ella needs some more TLC.”
“No. I’m good,” she said, her stomach rumbling audibly.
“Really?” he asked, sliding a hand up to cup a breast.
It was gratifying to see her swallow. “Well…”
Jake brushed a thumb over a nipple that seemed more responsive to his suggestion than Rosie’s. “Really?” he murmured again, lower this time.
“Maybe I am having a relapse.”
Jake smiled. “Another time, Miss Rosie.”
“Okay, okay. But you know you’re passing up one of the best experiences of your life.”
Jake smiled into Ella’s eyes. “No, I’m not,” he murmured as he rolled on top of her and she spread her legs to accommodate him.
“Rosie really does make the best breakfast in all fifty states,” she said, twining her arms around his neck. “I know lumberjacks who’ve wept at her breakfast table.”
“I’m craving something a little different for breakfast,” he said, waggling his eyebrows before disappearing beneath the sheets.
Twenty minutes later, having thoroughly succeeded in wiping Ella’s brain of not only food but even more basic things like speech and the ability to name simple objects, Jake rolled onto his back, dragging in ragged breaths. The fact Ella lay beside him in a similar state of breathlessness made him feel like king of the fucking world.
The mid-morning sun pushed bright fingers around the drawn blinds, allowing him a proper look around her space. Ella’s room was surprisingly… girly. A lot of purple. A lot of bookshelves crammed with books. A print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night hung on the wall opposite the bed. Above it was a picture rail boasting a collection of nick-nacks.
“Your room’s not what I imagined.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “ You imagined my room?”
“Well.” He grinned. “Only insofar as you being naked on the bed.”
She laughed. “So… what did you imagine then?”
“I don’t know.” He lifted his head. “Not so… purple.”
“Does it offend your masculinity?”
“Absolutely not. But seriously, don’t you think a big-screen television would look great on that wall?” He pointed to where Starry Night had pride of place.
She gave a faux horrified gasp. “That’s a Van Gogh, Jake.”
“You could hang it in your office. Or, better still, have it as a screen saver.”
She tutted. “Philistine.”
Jake grinned as he inspected some gauzy purple fabric thrown over a tall free-standing lamp in one corner. Suddenly, he was hit by a fragment of a memory. “Actually… Deidre Hillman had a purple room. More than this though. And frilly too.” He shuddered. “The whole catastrophe.”
“Oh, really ?” Ella pursed her lips.
“Hey,” Jake protested. “Just because Roger was an asshat, didn’t mean his sister was. Deidre was actually very accommodating.”
“Let me guess. She flashed her breasts?”
Jake smiled at the fond memory. “How do you know?”
“She did it for everyone, Jake.” She rolled her eyes. “It was her specialty.” She glanced at him after a beat. “Did you and she…?”
Jake grinned as she worried her bottom lip with her teeth and couldn’t quite meet his eye. “Jealous?”
She shrugged unconvincingly. “Curious.”
“No.”
Rolling up onto her side, she inspected his face. Her hair fell in a sexy kind of dishevelment around her head. “So, who was it? Your first? Who got to deflower Trently’s bad-boy jock?”
“Ella.” Jake feigned a stern look. “A gentleman never divulges that sort of information.”
“Okay, fine.” She pursed her lips. “How old were you then?”
“Fourteen.”
“ Fourteen ? Jesus, Cameron’s fifteen and he’s flat out stringing a sentence together most days let alone something witty enough to convince a girl to do the wild thing with him.”
Jake shrugged. “I was an early starter. Plus, if it helps, I was really bad at it.”
Ella laughed. “Don’t tell me the great Jake Prince finished a little early?”
“You could say that.” He grinned at the memory, at his mortification. “But she was more experienced and very patient. Plus… I’m a fast learner.”
“And I bet your teachers always said you had difficulty concentrating.”
Jake chuckled as he also rolled up onto his side and nuzzled the swell of her breast, his hand sliding to her warm, naked thigh. “What about you?” he asked, his lips trekking higher to where her neck met her shoulder. “How old were you?”
Her blissed-out sigh curved Jake’s lips into a smile as he buzzed them against her flesh.
“I was clearly decrepit at the grand old age of twenty.”
His chuckle was interrupted by a loud banging on the door. “Jake. It’s Pete.”
Pausing his assault on Ella’s neck, Jake pressed his forehead to her sternum. “It’s like Grand Central Station here, isn’t it?” Glancing at the door he yelled, “Go away.”
“Rosie says last chance for bacon.”
Jake fell back against the bed on a groan as Ella muffled a laugh. “We said no, already.”
“She says it’s like an orgasm for the mouth.”
Ella laughed again as Jake shook his head. “Does the kid not realize that I’m trying to score a real one here?” he murmured. “Pete,” he said, louder this time, “I hired you, I can fire you. Go away.”
“Jeez, okay, I’m going, I’m going.”
Jake collapsed back against the mattress and Ella pressed her body into his side, snuggling her head into the crook of his shoulder. His arm came up around her, his fingers stroking up and down her arm, her contented sigh echoing one of his own.
Lying with women after sex had never been Jake’s thing. It didn’t usually take them long to get to the hard sell, the when can I see you again speech which usually had a lot more to do with his celebrity than anything else.
When he’d been younger the hey baby, sure I’ll call lies had been easy. The older he got, the more gnawing his arm off in the middle of the night appealed. But being here with Ella, escape was the furthest thing from his mind.
A flash of color amidst the nick-nacks sitting on the shelf above the Van Gogh caught Jake’s eye. A stray beam of sunlight had pierced a path through swirling dust particles and struck two red glass objects, throwing a deep ruby glow on the wall behind.
“Hey.” He knew what that was. “Are they the vases your mom had in her room on the window ledge opposite her bed?”