Chapter 11 #2
We finished eating. Jace insisted on doing the dishes while I caught up on a few emails.
I should’ve responded to them at the office, but the day had gotten away from me.
My standing desk afforded me a view of Jace through the reflection in the window.
He stood at the sink as he scrubbed a pan.
I was oddly transfixed by the way his shoulder muscles moved under his T-shirt, the dark ink undulating on his forearms. Like always, my gaze wandered to my name inked onto the inside of his forearm.
Every time I saw it, I wondered why he hadn’t had it removed or covered up, but with today’s revelation, I was beginning to understand.
Jace hadn’t gotten over me yet. It should’ve made me sad or uncomfortable, but instead, it filled my belly with butterflies.
What did that say about me?
I forced myself to focus on the email I was composing and not on how sexy I found it that my ex-husband had just cooked us dinner and was currently tidying up.
“All done,” Jace announced a few minutes later after he put away the final dish.
My kitchen was sparkling, and I wasn’t even surprised that a clean kitchen was an aphrodisiac for me.
I’d always been a little obsessive about tidiness, though that was mainly because my mother would berate me if my room wasn’t perfect or if I had a hair out of place.
Honestly, the fact that my parents had never been able to stay put in one country had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Even during the seven years they’d lived in Ireland, they’d travelled a lot.
It was one of the reasons I’d spent so much time next door at Jace’s house, which was where I’d preferred to be.
Now having them live on another continent did wonders for my anxiety.
I only had to deal with seeing them once a year.
“Thank you so much for dinner,” I said as I stood to walk him to the door.
His smile was soft. “It was my pleasure.”
As I reached forward to open the door for him, I miscalculated the space, and Jace ended up brushing past me, his chest briefly meeting mine. He shot me a small grin, and my focus went to his lip ring, wondering if it would still feel as good as it used to when he …
Okay, no more thinking about that.
“See you in the morning, Shannon,” he said, and with those parting words, he left.
That night, I slept deep and dreamed vividly.
I rarely had sex dreams, but when I did, they were usually intense.
And yes, they tended to feature Jace. I lay spread out naked on my bed, while Jace—also completely, distractingly naked—kissed his way down my stomach to my inner thighs.
Sparks of pleasure lit me up while liquid heat encapsulated me from his hot, skilled mouth.
Even in my dreams, he knew just the right places to press those lips to drive me wild.
With his head between my legs, he draped his thick, inked arm over my stomach in the most possessive fashion possible and asked, “Can I taste you?”
“Yes,” I breathed, and then his mouth was on me. The lip ring added just as much sensation as I remembered. His large hand reached up to caress my breast while his tongue licked maddeningly pleasurable circles over my clit.
“Jace,” I cried out, staring down at the illicit sight of him going down on me, and even though some distant part of my brain knew this wasn’t real, it was only a dream, it felt real.
I felt like I was going to come so spectacularly that it was truly a pity it was all a conjuring of my horny, sex-starved imagination.
“Shannon,” I heard his deep, sexy voice utter my name, though it didn’t seem possible with his mouth on my clit.
“Shannon,” he said again, this time with more urgency.
In fact, there was some kind of incessant beeping to go along with it, and I wished all the distractions would leave me alone so that I could focus on coming.
His tongue increased its tempo, and I felt the impending release coil deliciously between my thighs. I was about to …
“Mam!”
Zara’s voice woke me with a start—just before what I imagined was about to be the dream orgasm of my life.
I startled upright in bed, my alarm beeping loudly in my ears.
When I turned it off, I saw it was almost thirty minutes past my usual wake-up time.
Had my alarm been going for that long? The sex dream was so good I didn’t even hear it going off?
My bedroom door was suddenly opening, and Zara appeared. “Why are you still in bed?”
Just outside the room stood Jace, his expression darkening when he saw me sitting up in bed, the blankets tangled around me, no bra under my black, V-neck sleep shirt. I was too mortified to peer down and check if my headlights were flashing.
I mean, after that dream, they definitely were.
“I overslept. Thanks for waking me,” I said, giving her a quick kiss. “Now go wash up and brush your teeth.”
Zara skipped away to the bathroom, leaving me alone with Jace. What was he doing just standing there staring? Was my hair a crazy bird’s nest or something?
“Zara let me in. I was worried …” He paused, clearing his throat and looking away as he ran a hand over his face and swore under his breath. “She said your alarm was going off and that you weren’t answering when she called, so I came up to check you were all right.”
“It’s fine. I just slept through it.”
“That’s not like you. Are you under the weather?”
“Not at all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed.”
“Sure, okay. I’ll be downstairs.” He didn’t leave right away, instead gazing at me in a way that heated my already overheated skin.
I was flushed from the dream, and somehow it felt like Jace could see exactly why I’d slept through my alarm, like it was written all over my flaming red face.
At long last, he turned, exhaling an oddly staccato breath, and went back down the stairs.
Frazzled, I hopped out of bed and grabbed my thickest, fluffiest dark grey robe.
It was bizarre, but I almost felt hung over.
I needed coffee ASAP, so I slid on the slippers that matched my robe and made my way downstairs.
Normally, I would’ve showered and gotten dressed, but Jace had already seen me in all my messy haired, braless, sex dream glory, so what more did I have to lose?
Plus, it was late, and I needed to make Zara’s breakfast.
He’d only been back in my life a short while, and already, I was letting my standards slip. Jace had a way of loosening the buttons that normally kept me all tidily held together. To be honest, I couldn’t tell if that was a good or a bad thing.
Jace turned from fiddling with my coffee machine. “Oh, hey, you’re—”
“Not dressed, I know. You’ll just have to deal with me looking crazy this morning,” I said, giving him a little shove to get out of the way since he clearly had no idea how to use the machine.
“Crazy isn’t the word I’d use,” he said, so quietly I thought maybe he was just talking to himself.
He didn’t move from the spot beside me. Instead, he watched intently as I turned on the machine and grabbed the capsules. Silence was thick between us before he asked, “Did you sleep poorly last night?”
“I slept very well.”
“I just thought that since you didn’t wake with your alarm that maybe you’d had trouble sleeping.”
I bristled. Why was he so curious about this? It was almost like there was blood in the water, and he sensed it was something to do with him.
“Nope.” I went up on my tiptoes, retrieving two mugs before setting Jace’s under the spout first.
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Why are you suddenly so interested in my sleeping habits?” Annoyance laced my words as I put my hands on my hips and faced him.
“I just want to make sure you’re getting enough. Sleep is important.”
His lips twitched, the first sign that he was enjoying riling me, and I was too jittery by what I’d recently dreamt about him to act rationally. “It was a dream,” I said. “Happy? Now you can drop it.”
I shoved his cup of coffee at him before starting on my own. He took it happily and sipped, still eyeing me with interest. “Oh, so it was one of those, this dream is so good I don’t want to wake up from it situations?”
“Maybe, sure.” My words were stiff.
“Mam, where’s my school cardigan?” Zara called down the stairs, and I was grateful for the distraction.
“It’s in the second drawer,” I called back, hoping Jace would move onto a different topic.
With the mug near his lips, he took a small sip, then asked, “What was it about?”
I glowered at him. “None of your business.” Pouring a generous amount of milk into my mug, I moved to start on Zara’s breakfast. Normally, I’d have had it prepared before she woke up.
She’d come downstairs, eat breakfast, then go back up to get ready for school.
But given I’d overslept, I was only getting to it now.
I opened the fridge and pulled out some bread to make her favourite, almond butter and blackberry jam on toast with a banana and a glass of apple juice.
“You used to love telling me about your dreams,” Jace said, which was true.
I liked telling him if I had a strange dream so that I could get his take on what it might mean.
For instance, if I dreamt about going to the supermarket and suddenly finding myself naked in the dairy aisle.
Or if I was being chased by something scary and forgot how to use my legs.
This morning’s dream was not something I was interested in getting Jace’s take on.
My cheeks heated just remembering it. The way he’d—
“You seem embarrassed.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why is your face my favourite shade of scarlet?”
He was getting on my last nerve, and his smirking expression told me he was enjoying himself far too much. So, I made the impulsive decision to tell him the truth. Turn the tables and see if he were the one to go scarlet.
“Fine. I tried to avoid it, but you’re obviously not going to give up until I tell you, so here it is. I was having a sex dream,” I said, whispering the last two words in case Zara overheard them.
Jace’s expression shuttered, like his brain was short circuiting. Heat flashed in his eyes followed by keen interest.
“What kind of sex dream?” he whispered back.
“I’m not detailing it for you, Jace.” I focused on buttering Zara’s toast.
“Why not? There could be some interesting Freudian stuff in there.”
I scoffed. “Doubt it.”
Done with Zara’s toast, I went to the fridge to grab the apple juice when Jace said, “Wait … was I in it?” His voice was quiet, smooth, deliberate, not amused like before.
I turned towards him but didn’t answer, and that told him everything.
His eyes roamed me slowly, taking in the way I held myself, how I avoided his gaze.
He leaned just a fraction closer, shoulders relaxed, hands tucked casually in his pockets, but there was a tautness in the line of his jaw, a tension in the way he shifted his weight.
Playful, yes, but every movement screamed that he was more on edge than he wanted to admit.
A slow, knowing smile curved his lips. “So, I’m the star of your dreams, huh? You don’t have to resort to creative fantasies to get your fix of me, Shannon. I’m happy to make those a reality anytime you want.”
I felt my stomach knot with warmth as his gaze lingered, that low hum of amusement threading through his intensity, making it impossible to look away.
“I do not need …” Realising I’d almost shouted, I lowered my voice and continued, “It’s your fault I dreamt about you in the first place. Making me dinner last night, then cleaning up afterwards. You might as well have strutted around the house with no shirt on.”
“That can be arranged.”
I opened the juice and began pouring it into a glass when I felt his breath on the back of my neck.
Wearing only my robe with my sleep shirt and knickers underneath, I felt almost naked, especially with the heat that was suddenly radiating off him.
He reached past me, taking the juice carton from my hand and setting it down.
Then his mouth lowered a hair’s breadth from my ear when he whispered silkily, “What was I doing to you?”
I swear I almost came from the low, breathy way he asked the question.
“Jace, don’t.”
“Do you know what I was thinking when I saw you in your bed this morning?” I shook my head, words suddenly failing me.
I felt him smile where his lips met the shell of my ear.
“I thought about how much I wanted to crawl under the blankets and fuck you until you screamed my name.” A pause as his deft hands loosened the tie of my housecoat, his fingertips sweeping it aside and exposing the skin at my hip. “So, tell me.”
“Tell you …”
His hand went to my hip, softly stroking. “Tell me what I was doing. In your dream.”
“You … you were … you put your mouth on me.” My breaths came fast and sharp, a knot of need coiling tight in my belly. This was madness, but I was defenceless against him.
“Where?” His hand left my hip to caress my cheek.
“Here?” I shook my head. Those guitar-callused fingers went to the corner of my mouth.
“Here?” Again, I shook my head, and he turned us so I was facing him, his eyes blazing bright as he gazed down at me.
I saw his desire burning just as hot as mine as he battled to look away from me and failed.
Then, my breath caught when he lowered to his knees, the fabric of my housecoat parting with the movement before he stared up at me with the most devastatingly sinful expression.
He tilted his head. “Was I down here, Shannon?”
My throat ran dry as I nodded, and he let out a guttural, “Fuck,” before pressing his face between my thighs.