Chapter 33 Jack #2
Her fingers catch in the fabric at my shoulders while my hands find her waist and hold us there, steadying both of us.
Kissing Isla always feels like two impossible things happening at once, like coming home and stepping off a ledge in the same breath.
I don’t know how it manages to feel safe and reckless together, only that it does.
She opens to me without hesitation, and the tension that’s been locked between my shoulder blades eases the second her tongue brushes mine.
She tugs my shirt over my head. My hair’s grown into something like a short mullet again, though the ends are still a little too blond from that ill-advised bleach job. I need to trim it soon.
She pushes a few strands back from my eyes, looking at me with a kind of focus that makes me feel like she’s trying to memorize every version of my face at once.
I strip off her hoodie and T-shirt in quick succession, and her bra follows them to the floor. Her skin is warm under my hands, all those places I’ve wanted longer than I know how to admit—the slope of her shoulders, the soft curve of her breasts.
She shivers when my thumbs brush over her nipples.
“Cold?” I ask.
“Not even a little.”
We make our way to the bed in uneven, stumbling steps, breaking apart only long enough to breathe or laugh when one of us gets caught up in a pant leg. By the time we reach the mattress, we’re both a little breathless.
I sit on the edge and pull her in between my knees. Her jeans are already unbuttoned, hanging low on her hips, exposing the softness of her stomach.
“If you want to call this and make me sleep on the floor, now’s the time.”
She cups my face with both hands, thumbs at the corners of my mouth. “I want you here all the way. No floor. No guest room. No cooldown period. I want my husband in my bed.”
Any remaining ability I have to play it cool evaporates.
“You keep saying things like that and I’m going to start thinking you like me, freckles.”
“I’m starting to suspect it myself.”
She pushes me back onto the mattress, and we land in a loose tangle in the middle of the bed, limbs everywhere, half sideways and half on top of each other. Her leg slides over mine, and the brush of her thigh against my hip sends a hard, immediate rush of heat through me.
I shift and roll us so she’s on her back and I’m braced above her.
Her hair spreads across the pillow in dark waves. Her eyes look darker, too, blown wide in this light, freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose like something deliberately designed to ruin me.
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
“Less distance,” she says, simple and certain. “Everywhere.”
I nod and lower my mouth to her throat. Her pulse beats fast against my lips as I kiss my way down, over the line of her collarbone, the center of her chest, lower still.
I take my time with it, but there’s urgency underneath the care now, sharpened by the fact that I walked out of this cottage an hour ago with half the wrong words in my mouth and all the right ones stuck somewhere I couldn’t reach.
When I slide my hand between her thighs, she’s already warm and slick for me. Her breath catches, and her hips lift into my touch before she can stop them.
“Still with me, baby?”
“Yes,” she says. “Don’t stop.”
I stroke her until the tension starts winding through her muscles and her fingers bite into my shoulders. I watch her face as she rises toward it, the way her mouth parts, the way her eyes drift shut.
When I feel the first tremor move through her, I slow my hand, lift myself back up, and kiss her again. “I want to be inside you when you fall apart,” I murmur against her mouth. “If that’s okay.”
“Please.” That single word hits me like a live wire.
I drag my hips against hers once, only to feel that first slick glide, and it nearly undoes me on the spot.
She reaches between us and guides me where she wants me. Something about that, the quiet certainty of it, the way she takes that last small piece of control, makes my vision blur at the edges.
Then I’m pushing my cock all the way into her, and it feels like relief so sharp it almost hurts.
We find each other quickly after that. There’s no awkwardness or searching for the right rhythm. We already know it by heart. Every small sound she makes, every shift of her hips, every tightening breath feels like part of a conversation we’ve been having for years.
I keep my forehead against hers. I want to see her. I want her to see me.
“I’ve got you,” I say when her breath starts to stutter. “I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”
“I know,” she whispers. “I’m trying to believe you.”
Her cunt grips me tight while I rock into her, fluttering hot and frantic.
Her nails drag down my back as she comes, and her whole body tightens around me. I follow a few thrusts later, the pleasure breaking through hard and bright before softening into something deeper.
We stay like that for a while, breathing each other in. Then I shift carefully and roll us so I’m not crushing her. She ends up half sprawled across my chest, one leg hooked over mine, like pinning me there is the only way to make sure I stay.
Her fingers move in lazy shapes over my ribs. “I think I might dissolve,” she says into my skin. “But in a good way, I think.”
“Strong endorsement.”
She lifts her head enough to look at me, and her eyes are softer than I’ve ever seen them. “Thank you, Jacky.”
“For what this time?”
“For not leaving. For yelling with me instead. For listening. For . . . this.”
She gestures between us, as if the bed and our tangled bodies and the clothes scattered across the floor are all saying the same thing.
“You’re welcome, baby.” I brush my hand down her back. “I like being exactly where you put me.”
For the first time since we signed the papers, I don’t feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. The problems are still there. The grant, the debt, and whatever sordid blackmail Stein might decide to throw at us next.
But she’s here, on me and with me, and when I let myself picture the future, it looks a lot like this. Messy, hard-won, and worth staying for.