Chapter 18 #2
He nodded. “Up to you. Can you at least tell me how you ended up at my house on Tuesday?”
Jenna picked at something on his pant leg. “That is part of what I have to tell you once we get to the Pointe.”
That did not fill him with good thoughts or feelings. “Just tell me you love me and I’ll wait patiently.”
She sat up more and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I love you, Jack Duncan, and I’m going to marry you in one year, one month, and twenty-eight days.”
“Fuck yeah, you are,” Jack answered with a half-grin.
As they pulled up the windy dirt road that led them to the base of the lighthouse, Jenna let out a nervous chuckle. “I think we’re the only couple who’s ever come up here to talk.”
She saw Jack’s lips twitch. “Pretty sure if I start kissing you, Jen, I’m not going to stop.”
Warmth filled her chest, because she wouldn’t want him to stop either.
They’d been forcibly separated for months.
All it had proven to her was how much Jack meant to her.
After watching Mr. Zarin fall apart today and the suddenness of Mrs. Zarin’s death, it really hammered home just how fleeting life was.
Jenna wanted Jack. More than that, she needed him.
The lustful teenagers who had visited this amorous hideaway had no comprehension of the depth and desire that amplified when you loved your partner.
Like comparing a household light bulb to stadium lights.
How a single kiss with your lover could hold more passion than the act of joining bodies with a stranger ever could.
No comprehension.
Jenna knew that she wanted to have sex with Jack. That she was ready to. She understood that a part of her decision was a reaction to Mrs. Zarin’s passing, a need to reaffirm her own life. That wasn’t all of it though. In retrospect, it was a very small part.
She loved Jack. As he’d just said, that was never going to change.
She didn’t know what would happen in a year or five or fifty.
She wanted him because she loved him. She wanted to express her love for him in the most carnal and timeless ways.
She wanted to experience everything with Jack, knowing that he would be her first and her only.
She was no longer making any decisions based on what others wanted.
If Jack wanted to have sex with her too, then she was ready.
She would not judge or pressure him into having sex if he wanted to wait.
As he’d once told her, no one was in this relationship but them. It was their choice, their decision.
And she had made hers.
She was going to marry Jack. She loved him and, God willing, she would grow old with him. They would have kids and grandkids, a life. And that life was theirs, no one else’s. No one got to make any more decisions about their life.
Not now or ever again.
Jack swung the truck around and backed it up to the rocky bluff. He put the truck into Park but did not turn it off yet. He nudged her gently. “What are you thinking about so hard?”
Jenna sat up. She turned on the dome light above them and then turned in the seat to face Jack. “I want us to have sex.”
Jack blinked, his eyebrows going up. “Now?”
Jenna nodded. “Well, after we talk, but yes.”
He cleared his throat, shifting his hips on his seat.
“I mean, yeah. Fuck,” he wiped a hand down his face.
“Please, don’t take this the wrong way. I want to have sex with you—pretty sure my right palm is raw from jerking off in the shower to thoughts of you—I just want to make sure that this is something you want.
That you’re not feeling pressured or because you’re sad after today. ”
Jenna got up on her knees. She maneuvered her skirt so she could crawl over to him before straddling his lap.
The steering wheel at her back, she looped her arms around his neck.
“I am sad about today, but that’s because today was a very sad day, Jack.
It has only minutely influenced my decision.
Jack, I love you. We’ve proven that our love isn’t fleeting, that we are willing to be patient for the right to be together.
I want to have sex with you because it feels right for us.
My heart, my body, my soul are yours, Jack Duncan.
” She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. “To do with as you wish.”
His hands skimmed up her sides. Both of their jackets were on the pile of blankets and pillow that he’d brought from the house.
They weren’t necessary inside the truck with the heat on.
“You’re too fucking special, Jenna. If you had any idea what it was I really wanted to do to this body, you’d run screaming.
I want to cherish you and worship you, show you pleasure beyond your wildest imagination.
” Her shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
“I want to make love to you, to learn your body better than I know my own.” His hand touched her throat and then started to journey down over the material of her black dress.
He wasn’t even touching her skin and yet her flesh felt scorched.
“But I also want to fuck you.” His eyes flicked up to her own.
“Do you understand the difference, Jen?”
Unable to speak, she shook her head.
His hand skimmed down over her navel, stopping just before he reached her panties, and then slowly crept its way back. The muscles in her abdomen quavered.
“I want to mark you, Jenna. It’s so animalistic. More than a ring to show the world you’re mine, I want you to smell of me. I want you to feel me inside you even hours, days, after we’ve made love. I want to make you scream my name for the world to hear so there’s no doubt who you belong to.”
Jack gripped her chin, startling her. She hadn’t realized her eyes had fluttered closed until the shock of his grip made them fly open.
His gunmetal-gray eyes were right there in front of her face. They burned with the promise of passion, but there was control there too. Like he was tampering himself back. Jenna wanted to make him release that restraint. She didn’t want some of him. She wanted all of him.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Jenna? Any concept of how much you mean to me? If today has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t survive without you. There is no me. There is no you. There is only us.”
Jenna forgot how to breathe, how to think. The only thing she could process in that moment was how much she loved this man. Because there was nothing in this world she wanted more than to be utterly and completely owned by him.
“Fuck, baby, if you keep looking at me like that, there will be absolutely no talking being done tonight.”
Jenna winced, having forgotten about that part. The heat that had been coursing through her body only a second before dissipated. “We do need to talk, Jack.”
He stretched his neck forward to claim her lips. “We’ll talk,” he promised, “and then I’ll make love to you with the stars and the waves as our witnesses.”
Jack lifted Jenna into the bed because they couldn’t use the tailgate since it was hanging over open air. Once she was in, he handed up the blankets and pillow. They were both back in their hats, jackets, and gloves.
A metal barrel that was supposed to be used as a trashcan was roughly twenty feet away from where Jack had parked the truck.
It took some maneuvering to get the ash-filled bin to roll over closer to the truck bed.
As Jenna set up the bed of the truck, Jack pilfered a pile of driftwood from under the stairs of the lighthouse.
Luck was with them because he also found a half drunk bottle of bourbon.
After three rounds of collecting the wood and dumping it into the metal barrel, Jack poured in the alcohol and lit the contents aflame. Then Jack hefted himself over the bed rail to join her.
Jenna had put the thickest of the blankets down and rested the pillow up against the cab.
Jack took a seat with the pillow cushioning his lower back.
Wrapping a blanket around herself like a shawl, Jenna straddled his lap.
Once she was settled, Jack used the third blanket to cover their legs and then tucked the ends between them to hold it into place.
“Are you sure you’re warm enough like this?” Jenna asked again.
He nodded. “I want to look into your eyes when you tell me what happened. We’ve lost so much time together. It might not have changed our love, but I do feel like I’m missing pieces of you. Start at the beginning and tell me everything.”
“I’m not even sure what the beginning really is.
I didn’t realize that what happened in the fall with your dad and what happened to Mrs. Zarin were so connected until yesterday.
” Though Jack’s eyebrows drew down, he did not interrupt.
“Here’s what I do know: last fall, my mother paid your father to rob our house here in Port Townsend.
But it wasn’t just any robbery. She convinced your father that you were trying to con my family and had recently learned the code to my father’s safe in his office. ”
Jack’s jaw dropped.
Jenna nodded as if he’d spoken his shock out loud.
“I know. It’s awful. The idea was that she would have her security personnel catch the robbery in progress and you would be arrested.
And I,” she added pointedly, “would see that you are a ‘no-good street rat’. Her words, not mine,” Jenna said with an apologetic smile.