Chapter 4 #2
His hands were shaking a little more now, had lost dexterity. He fumbled a bit, fitting his fingers into the elastic at her hips, careful not to rip. Very careful, because they felt like silk and looked expensive. They fell to her feet and he kneeled, lifting each foot until the panties were off. A moment later, her soft slippers were off, too. That left only black thigh-highs, and he stopped for a second, kneeling before her, just looking, because it was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life. Lauren, naked except for those dark stockings with the lace at the top hugging her thighs. Pale and soft and perfect. A wet dream.
Slowly, slowly, he rolled the stockings down, face so close to her mound he could smell her desire. When he got her stockings off, he kissed her flat belly and stood, wincing at the boner.
When he stood back up again, his dick felt like a club hanging off the front of his body. She was beyond beautiful. It was as if life had reached inside his headand pulled out a picture of the kind of woman guaranteed to drive him wild, then came up with a match. Soft, slender yet curvy…just perfect.
And…blonde. She was a natural blonde, a strip of pale pubic hair covering her mound.
She didn’t try to hide herself, didnpt position her hands to cover herself. She just watched his eyes and must have seen something in them that made her smile-
“Me, now,” Jacko said, voice rough.
She blinked.
“Undress me.”
“Oh!” Lauren cocked her head to one side, stepped closer to him. He could feel her body heat all along the front of his body. She thought he wanted her to undress him as a form of foreplay, but that wasn’t it. He wasn’t sure he could get naked in a way that wouldn’t scare her. Ripping his shirt and trousersoff would probably scare her.
So he stood, trying not to pant, as she reached up to unbutton the super-white dress shirt he’d had tailor-made together with the tux because he couldn’t find sizes that fit him. He was glad he’d sprung for the outrageously expensive Egyptian cotton because he could tell the feel of it pleased her. When she’d unbuttoned him to the bottom and unbuttoned his cuffs she placed her palms against his chest and rubbed her fingers over the material.
“Off,” he ordered and she gave a secret little smile, as if she understood she’d reduced him to one-syllable words.
In a second, his shirt was fluttering to the floor, the heavy cotton making a slight sound as it hit the ground. Her fingers moved to his pants and he bit back a moan. His dick, swollen beyond any reasonable measure, made it hard to unfasten the tux pants. Every time her fingers brushed him beneath the cloth, his dick moved, trying to get closer to her.
Finally she got him unfastened and unzipped. He actually had briefs on, something rare for him. But he was glad he did because it made him seem more civilized than having her unzip him and having his dick spring out in her face.
She looked down at him.
Tactics.
He was really good at tactics. And strategy. Goal: getting naked. How? That was where tactics came in. He reached down and unzipped the sides of his botts, again glad he’d sprung for brand new ones. He and Metal both disliked shoes, being too used to combat boots. These didn’t lace up but that was fine. He toed them off and stood in his stocking feet.
Christ. Why did people have to wear so many fucking clothes? He should have had a loincloth that he dropped and he could pick her up, toss her on the bed and climb on top of her. The whole process taking about two seconds.
But no.
And she was so freaking slow. Or at least that’s what it felt like. She pulled his pants down and he obediently lifted his feet, and she actually turned and placed the trousers on a chair, neatly folded. He couldn’t have managed that, not in the state he was in. She pulled off his socks, slowly, laying those neatly across the top of his boots.
Lauren stood, eyeing him. He stood at a modified parade rest, except he didn’t have his hands folded over his crotch, as soldiers usually did. He had on a white tee and black briefs and he thought he could actually see the options flit through her mind. Tee first or briefs? Tee. She lifted the hem, tugged, and he obediently bent forward so she could pull it off, then stood straight again.
Her eyes went right to his shoulder. She’d seen his wrist tats, of course. Unless it was freezing, Jacko usually dressed in a tee and vest. She’d never seen the tribal tats that covered one shoulder, down over his pec, one swirl surrounding a nipple. A Samoan American buddy of his had drawn them for him, each inch symbolic of something in his life, though right now he was too blasted by lust to remember anything.
“That’s beautiful,” she whispered, running her hand over his shoulder, over the tribal tats. They were dense and dark. “Did it hurt?”
“Some,” he admitted. Like a bitch. “You’re missing an item of clothing.”
Her gaze lowered and her eyebrows lifted. She caught her thumbs in the sides of his briefs and tugged them down. They caught on his dick and he closed his eyes when she pulled out the material so it could slip over him. The briefs fell and he kicked them aside.
Lauren’s eyes were fixed on his dick and he didn’t blame her. It barely looked like a human organ. It was bigger than he could ever remember it being, huge and red and inflamd. He could feel her gaze on him as if it were her hands, and his dick moved.
“Just from me looking at you?” she murmured.
“Touch me,” he ordered and her hand lifted to him. Her skin was very pale against him as she stroked him from base to tip. He jerked and hissed, completely uncontrollable reactions.
Lauren pulled her hand away as if she’d touched a red-hot stove.
Oh God. How excited was she? He was normally big and now he was huge. He didn’t want to hurt her. He looked her over carefully. How the fuck could you tell with women? She looked slightly flushed but it was too dark to be sure. Her nipples were small and hard, darker than the pale pink skin surrounding them, but was that enough?
Only one way to find out.
He placed his dark hand over her belly, smooth and sleek, ran it down, cupped her. Slide a finger in her and… yes! She was slick and soft. But small. He frowned and reached deep inside the wet softness, stroking, and felt her contract around his finger. Saw the muscles in her belly pull.
Lauren let her breath out in a long sigh.
“You’re tight,” he said, his voice ragged.
Her eyebrows raised and she studied his face. “It’s…been a while.”
At her words, his dick swelled impossibly bigger and her eyes grew large. “You like that. That I haven’t had sex in a while.”
“Hmm.” It felt like a huge band of heat constricted his chest. He could barely breathe, let alone speak.
“Isn’t that politically incorrect?”
He shrugged. Yeah, he liked it a lot that she hadn’t had sex in a while. And he was going to make damned sure she didn’t have sex with anyone else but him for the foreseeable future. But right now there was something else on his mind.
“Don’t want to hurt you,” he mumbled.
Lauren watched his eyes and stepped closer. Her breasts brushed against his chest and her belly rubbed against his dick. He blew out a breath.
“You won’t hurt me, Jacko.”
He could feel her breathing against him, breasts and belly lifting against him slightly with every breath she took.
“Jacko? Are you going to make me beg?”
Of the top ten things he wanted to do, having sex with Lauren was the top nine, riding his bike coming in last. What the fuck was he doing? She thought he didn’t want her. How crazy was that?
But…if he moved he’d explode. And he didn’t know what he wanted to do first. Sliding into her immediately was out of the question. She said he wouldn’t hurt her but he would. At least she’d be uncomfortable until he got her more excited. He didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. Not for one second. He wanted her wet and hot, completely open and ready.
So…how? How to have foreplay without his head and dick exploding first?
“Lie down.” Lauren’s eyes widened again. His tone was rough, guttural. He cleared his throat to modulate his voice, but she was already lying on the bed, quietly watching him.
Jesus. Just look at her. She was relaxed one hand lying on her belly, breathing easy, waiting. Incredibly beautiful, every line of her just perfect.
It was like having a bed full of C4 and she was the detonator.
Jacko placed a hand and a knee on the bed and prepared to blow up.
The mattress dipped to take Jacko’s heavy weight. He moved slowly and cautiously as if he expected her to run away any second now. But she wasn’t going to run away. This next part was probably going to get really interesting.
If she thought Jacko would roll on top of her like any other man would, she was mistaken. He lay at her side, propped up on one massive arm, looking at her. His entire body was like a heater—warmth emanated from him, penetrating skin, penetrating bone.
He bent his head and kissed hershoulder while his free hand skimmed down between her breasts, over her stomach, down to between her legs.
“Open your legs,” he whispered against her skin and her legs slid apart, as if they were there to do his bidding. That big hand disappeared between them. All she could see was his brawny forearm with the barbed wire tats around his thick wrist, but she could feel him touching her. Slowly, carefully. Running a callused finger gently around her opening.
He thought she needed foreplay, needed warming up? Surely he could feel how slick she was, feel moisture coming with each stroke of his finger. And foreplay wasn’t necessary with a naked Jacko in her bed. He was living, breathing foreplay.
She turned her head to look at him, take him in. He was grim-faced as usual. Well, she was familiar with his face. He wasn’t a handsome man, but then his attraction didn’t lie in his face. His attraction was that overwhelming maleness.
When they’d kissed in her living room she’d felt him, felt those hard muscles, but it had been through layers of clothing. Now she could see what she’d only felt before and it was just…amazing. His dark skin was tough, like leather. Each muscle was clearly delineated, thick ropy raised veins running under the skin. He had so little body fat that in some places she could see the striations of muscle tissue. With all that he had a bodybuilder’s physique, he didn’t look blocky or awkward. He looked like a Platonic ideal of man, perfect.
He was lying on his side, his shoulders so broad that he blocked out her vision. All she could see, stretching from horizon to horizon, was dark-skinned muscle, her world reduced to a cage of man.
Everything fell away. Her problems remained, but as distant clouds on the horizon. There, menacing, but not a threat right now, zooming out to the distance while the foreground of her consciousness was heat and desire, not cold, empty loneliness.
Fine by her. Let Jacko drown out the world. The world had taken huge bites out of her. Jacko wasn’t going to hurt her in any way. If anything, he was being too gentle. His fingertip circling her was barely touching her flesh. Her hips were gently moving, trying to deepen his touch.
She opened her mouth, though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, and he leaned over and kissed her breast and all that came out of her mouth was a deep sigh. Everything was happening in slow motion, slow movements, lush and languid. Except for those moments when he thumb brushed her clitoris and sent electricity through her. But then he moved right past, the beast.
His mouth, too, teased her as he nibbled his way around her breast, soft lips with the slight bite of stubble giving her goose bumps.
Clearly Jacko wasn’t going to do anything fast, and she couldn’t imagine making him do something he didn’t want to do, so she let herself enjoy the slow—very slow, glacially slow—seduction. It was so silent in the room, no noises from the street. It was a quiet street and the gentle snow ate up all sound. The only sounds were the incredibly erotic sounds Jacko was making with her body, as if she were some musical instrument—his lips on her breast, his hand on her sex.
She felt cocooned in some magical place where no worries were allowed. The only things allowed in the room were heat and desire, Jacko’s hands and mouth bringing them up from someplace deep inside of her. A place that had been deserted for so long.
Jacko’s mouth found her nipple just as his finger penetrated her and that lazy warm feeling of floating on water changed, sharpened, and she started contracting around his finger in an electric climax.
Usually it took her a long time to climax. She’d feel it coming from a long way away and would coax herself to it. Now it shot like a lightning bolt through her, her body taking over completely.
“Yeah,” Jacko muttered, mounting her. He held her open with two fingers and slid deeply inside her, then stilled.
Amazingly, Lauren was still coming, clenching over and over again around him as he held still for her. He was kissing her deeply and every sense she had was infused with Jacko. With the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him. All dark and delicious and so exciting she could barely breathe.
“Need to get deeper,” he whispered into her mouth and she arched her back and opened wider for him and just as the spasms started dying down he held her head still for his kiss and started moving inside her, hard and fast.
Lauren wanted to open her eyes but, whoa. Way too much of an effort. She felt really really good exactly where she was.
Where was that?
Well, wherever it was, it was a great place to be. She was lying on something hard and warm. And that smelled really good. And felt even better.
Jacko.
God.
With a huge effort, Lauren didn’t tighten her arms around him, though she wanted to. Her head was cradled against his shoulder, one arm stretched across his massive chest, the other arm along a huge biceps. The temptation to snuggle, to get as close to him as humanly possible was almost irresistible because right now? In his arms? Nothing could touch her.
For the first time in two years, she felt safe.
That was so dangerous. It was a completely false sense of safety, like those kids who couldn’t feel pain and got burned all the time. Safety didn’t exist, would never exist for her. Safety, just staying in Jacko’s arms forever, was like some kind of seductive drug. One that was bad for her, one that—like all drugs—could cost her her life.
He was deeply asleep, a kind of body language that couldn’t be faked. Well, he’d earned it. A full blush bloomed all over at the memory of all the things they’d done. By rights she should be in a semi coma too, but the twin demons of fear and anxiety were waking up in her, stretching their arms, looking around with interest, noticing her new love, faces stretched in evil smiles because they knew it would all be snatched from her very soon.
Like, now.
Because a monster was after her and he would never stop. As long as he was alive, she would never be safe.
Where a moment ago upon waking she’d felt like every cell in her body had been away for a week at the spa, now she felt cold and shriveled. Alone, in the truest sense of the term. More alone than before, even, because now she knew what it meant to be truly joined to a man. It felt like her previous sexual experiences had been two people politely uniting genitals, not the earth-shattering sex she’d had all night.
She had no idea what the previous night had meant to Jacko. He’d been a more than willing participant, sure, but from the talk in Suzanne’s husband’s company, he was a highly sexed man. A player. So he’d had fun, that was clear, but it was probably business as usual for him.
Not for her, not by a long shot. She had never felt so close to anyone in her life and it was more than the fact that he’d been inside her almost all night. For a moment, she’d felt part of him, felt his heart beating in his chest the way she felt her own, had breathed to his rhythms, had moved with him as if she could read his mind. She certainly felt as if she could read his body.
His body had given her endless cues as to what pleased him. Which had been more or less everything Lauren had done.
All a function of her extreme loneliness of course, but still. It had been overwhelming and she mourned the loss of it. In all likelihood nothing like this would ever happen to her again.
Actually, nothing like this ever should happen to her, because she’d have to walk away again, and once was proving painful enough as it was.
She slipped gently out of bed, slowly, so she wouldn’t wake him. There was no way she could steel herself to say goodbye right now, she was way too shaky, way too connected to him. She needed a little time, a little distance. She also needed a shower. How could she smile and wave goodbye forever when she smelled of him?
Her eyes suddenly welled with tears and she shot into the bathroom, leaning against the sink, looking at herself in the mirror, willing the tears back. She had willpower and she could do this. She could. All it took was not thinking of Jacko. Hard, but possible. Barely.
But not right now.
Lauren bowed her head, staring into the white porcelain sink, and tried to walk herself through the next hour. She’d feed Jacko breakfast, that was only polite. And she’d smile and nod at things he said, though she probably wouldn’t hear anything over the drumming of her heart. She’d see him to the door, promising that they’d meet on Tuesday for the usual lesson at the community center. He’d been coming for as long as she’d known him, even though he didn’t really need her coaching. He had an instinctive talent.
He’d do just fine without her.
A drop fell from her cheek and she stared at it coursing down the white porcelain side of the sink. Another fell, then another.
This was crazy. Angrily wiping her cheeks, she dropped her dressing gown to the tile floor and stepped under the shower. She made it as hot as she could stand because she was going to wash both her Portland life and Jacko off her skin. Portland left easily but Jacko was harder to eliminate. Though he’d been enormously delicate, he’d left signs on her skin. Five faint bruises on either hip, where his hands had gripped her hips. A light red spot, like a circular blush, where he’d sucked and bit the skin of her breast.
She’d nearly had an orgasm from that alone.
Oh God.
Even when she closed her eyes, he was still imprinted on her body. The washcloth between her thighs brushed against sensitive skin that was still swollen, still weeping moisture at the memory of him inside her. She swiped the washcloth over herself there and her knees nearly buckled. She was more aroused at the memory of Jacko than she’d ever been with any of her lovers at the moment of penetration.
She’d been so very wrong. She’d imagined a pleasant sexy night with Jacko, sort of her goodbye to sex for an unknown period. Maybe forever. She’d imagined the night as a sort of farewell treat for her, some good memories to take with her as she walked into the darkness.
Who knew it would be so overwhelming? It hadn’t been a treat, it had been something that turned her inside out, changed her profoundly. This wasn’t going to be a fond memory she’d keep with her going forward into her new life. It was like a huge boulder blocking her way, rather than a stepping stone. Jacko was like this enormous presence standing astride her life. Too tall, too broad to go around. Simply there, something she’d have to deal with.
But how?
This was crazy. Choosing her new life, where to go, how to make her living, how to stay not low-profile but no-profile…all these things would take every ounce of energy and ingenuity she had in her. She shouldn’t— couldn’t —spend all this energy dealing with Jacko in her head.
She had to get him out. Deal with him, get him out of her house, get going, without thinking of him at all. It seemed impossible but she had to do this. Simply had to.
The only way to do that was to put all her emotions into a kind of lock box, seal it away until she was established somewhere else. Then she could pull all these feelings out and try to deal with them. But not now. Being hugely distracted now would be a disaster. Maybe cost her her life.
But the time she dried off, Lauren had herself under control. The control was thin, tenuous, but there. It should see her through today at least. Who knew where she’d be tonight, or tomorrow or the day after that. Wherever it was she landed, she’d deal with Jacko then.
Lauren dressed and stood for an extra moment in the bathroom, facing the door. She straightened her spine and stared at the closed bathroom door for a minute. She could do this. She could.
Pasting a bright smile on her face, she opened the door and walked through.
“Hey.” She made her smile broader when she saw Jacko sitting up in bed. It seemed as if his bare shoulders nearly covered the entire headboard. The headboard that had beat against the wall as he pumped inside her.
Pure heat flashed through her body and her knees felt liquid. Thank God she was already pink from the hot shower, so he wouldn’t notice the sudden flush of blood to her face. She hoped. Jacko always surprised her with the things he noticed.
“Hey back.” His voice seemed to penetrate her diaphragm.