Chapter 2 #2
“Since his stress hormones eased off a tiny bit,” I said. “And since he realized how much happier I am when you’re with me. We belong together. We’re stronger and safer together, too. So let’s embrace that. Let’s celebrate that.”
“You’re still not safe enough to go back to Seattle to your studio,” he said. “You’re still remote-working. Holly’s not safe enough to enroll in fourth grade.”
“No, we’re not. Not yet,” I agreed. “But we’ll get there.”
“There’s a lot of ground to cover,” he said. “Not just Nicole. Even if we took her off the playing board, we still have to figure out who took Shane.”
“Yes,” I said. “One thing at a time, okay?”
A silence fell between us. The darkness in his eyes worried me. Goddammit. We’d been through so much. We deserved this. “Listen up, Jed Clearwater,” I said.
“Uh-oh.” A ghost of a smile started in Jed’s eyes. “Sounds like an ultimatum. Should I be scared?”
“No, just careful,” I said. “Just keep this in mind. I’m giving you everything. My heart, my body, my soul, my company for the rest of my life. All of it. You are my man. All I want from you in return is that you let yourself be happy.”
He looked puzzled. “Just like that.”
“Just like that,” I echoed.
“But what if I can’t make you happy?”
I sighed. “You are not listening,” I snapped. “I told you. That’s not your fucking job. I’m responsible for my own happiness. You are responsible for yours.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Ah...right. Yeah.”
Aw, crap. From his voice, I really doubted that he grasped what I was asking of him. Not a guy who was wired up to take responsibility for everything. “It wasn’t your job to make your parents happy, either,” I told him. “Same damn thing.”
Jed’s eyelids tightened. “What do they have to do with any of this?”
“Everything,” I said. “I used to blame myself for what my aunt and uncle did to me. They almost convinced me it was my fault, because I was bad. But the problem was never me. I’m perfectly good.
Same with you, Jed. You are not the problem.
Nicole and Boer and the scum who stole Shane?
They are the problem. Not us. We’re good.
You’re good. You’re fucking fabulous, and tomorrow, I’m going to marry your gorgeous ass, so get ready, because I am coming for you, big guy.
And nothing will ever be the same afterward. ”
Jed looked impressed. “Is that a mortal threat, or a pep talk?”
“It’s whatever you need it to be, lover-boy,” I kept my voice cool and challenging. Tenderness didn’t work on Jed, not when he got those shadows in his eyes and started blaming himself for all the problems in the world. A more aggressive approach snapped him out of it faster.
It also tended to piss him off, but tough shit. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.
“So what do you mean by ‘coming for me?’” he asked. “In what sense?”
Ah, yes. Now we were on home turf. I crossed my arms out my chest, making my tits bulge out, and drew his gaze right down. “You decide,” I told him.
I strolled over to the couch, the one angled toward the long wall made of glass that overlooked the mountain valleys, now filled with shadow, and sat down in the middle of it.
“Your official husbandly duties start after the ceremony tomorrow. But if you want to get a jump on it, this will be our last chance before the guests arrive tomorrow. After that, we’ll probably have to wait until we get to our four-poster bed in the beach house in Indonesia.
Inside the mosquito curtain, caressed by the tropical breezes.
Lovely, but many long travel hours away. Factor that into your decision.”
He was grinning. “The memory of this morning’s orgasm has already faded?”
I fluttered my lashes. “It’s your own damn fault for spoiling me.
It feels like an eternity. Plus, I went to the spa this morning, for a mani-pedi, and a bikini wax.
I wanted to be ready for our honeymoon. Want to see the final result?
I’m very bare down there. Just a swatch of hair right over my clit, but the rest of me is silky soft. ”
He had that hot flush again. “Show me.”
“First show me yours,” I flung back.
“Anytime, anywhere.” He walked toward me, and stood there, with a broad, aggressive stance, his erection straining against his jeans, right at my eye level.
He whipped off his shirt, and tossed it away. Then jerked open the belt buckle, wrenched the buttons on his jeans open, and dragged them down, along with his underwear. He stepped out of them, shaking the jeans off his ankles.
And there he stood, spectacularly naked. Letting me look.
God, it was just ridiculous, how fine he was.
Those beautiful, powerful legs, those sculpted muscles, every bulge and dip and swell right where it needed to be.
His lean flanks, his powerful thighs, his thick, engorged cock, rising proudly from the dark thatch of dark hair.
His lean belly and powerful chest, his smoldering eyes.
He seemed so dense, like he was made from some material not of this world that that radiated heat, power.
“So?” he said. “Now show me yours.”
My hands were shaking with excitement as I grabbed the skirt, and pulled it up. I had thought ahead, and not bothered with panties, as soon as I knew that Holly had a date upstairs with Angela. The arc of our evening was, well…inevitable.
But he still had the grace to look shocked when I pulled the skirt up and showed him my bare naked self beneath it.
“Whoa,” he said. “You are so fucking beautiful, Frey.”
“You too,” I said, shakily. Then I cupped his hard, taut ass with one hand, gripped his cock with the other.
Felt him gasp, and shudder as I pressed a slow, tender kiss against the broad, shiny head of his cock.
Then licking it, savoring that velvety heat, that steely hardness, that rich, salty taste. Bursting with power and readiness.
“Hey.” He cupped my face. “I thought I was supposed to make you come.”
“Oh, but you will. It’s all part of my wicked plan.” I slid my tongue slowly, lavishly around his cockhead, and he gasped sharply, his fingers tightening in my hair. “Playing with your cock gets me all heated up.”
“Don’t make me come yet. I want to keep this hard-on ready to serve.”
I would have replied, but I’d already pulled him into my mouth, and was busy taking him in, so deep...then caressing him on the out-stroke with lips, tongue, hands.
It made me wild with lust, to feel that helpless pleasure vibrate through him. The look on his face, a mask of desperate tension. Right on the edge of losing control.
After a few minutes of that, he seized my hands, pulled himself out of my mouth, and sank down to his knees in front of me. “My turn,” he said.
He threw my skirt up, and pushed my legs apart. Stroking the only remnant of my pubic hair with his fingers. “Nice,” he said. “I love your bush when it gets all fuzzy and curly, but this is fun, too. You’re going for the Sandee vibe again. Yum.”
I laughed. Sandee had been the name of my fake persona, back during our wild adventure, when he still didn’t know that I was Freya Masters, his business partner’s little sister.
It had been very liberating to pretend to be the girl I had dreamed up.
Sandee was uninhibited, unabashedly sexy.
She didn’t waste time worrying about the past or the future, or anything but her own feelings, her own pleasures.
Which made her terrifying and dangerous and uncontrollable.
Sandee had taught me a lot. She’d given me the courage to approach Jed, and seduce him.
In a way, I was alive because of her. Boer would have taken me out in a heartbeat, if I hadn’t glommed onto Jed—as Sandee.
Now she was an integral part of me. Sandee, running amok, wild and free and hungry for her man. She wanted him inside her, body and soul, and as often as possible.
It worked for us, so we weren’t even conflicted about it anymore.
Jed pushed my legs wide, with that aggressive boss-man vibe he knew I liked, when I was in Sandee mode.
His master-and-commander vibe made me helpless and trembling.
He stroked my labia with his fingertips, letting out a growl of excitement to find me slick and wet.
Ready to take his thick shaft deep inside.
“You’re so juicy and sweet,” he murmured. “Ready to fuck, right now.”
“Yes. I’m ready,” I told him, sliding my fingers into his closely shorn hair. The heat, the rasp, the silk of him. God, I loved it. “Come here and give it to me.”
“No, not yet. I have something to prove tonight.” He resisted my pull, kissed my belly, and then slowly kissed his way down. Long, hot, suckling, dragging kisses, while brushing my pussy folds with teasing fingers, rolling his thumb around and around my clit. So talented at driving me wild.
He leaned in and started licking me, “Delicious.” His voice vibrated against my mound.
I tried to say something back, but completely forgot whatever clever quip I might have had loaded in the queue.
Jed knew perfectly well that this was the only way to make a mouthy woman like me completely speechless.
When he went down on me, all I could do was whimper and gasp.
He was so good. I arched and writhed helplessly in his grasp, lifting myself against his thrusting, caressing tongue, wild for that luscious liquid sliding, melting, swirling.
He held up the hood of my clit, kissing tenderly around it with slow, pulsing circles while he thrust his long finger deep inside my pussy, plunging and gliding, spreading it around.
Making me a slippery lake of lube, to get me ready for his cock.
Driving me to the edge of breathless anticipation—and over it.
Wild pleasure rushed and throbbed through me, wiping out everything.
When I opened my eyes, he was on top of me, waiting. Gazing into my eyes.
“I love you,” he said.
It took a moment to remember how to talk. “I love you, too.”
“I want to make you happy.” His voice was rough “Maybe it’s not my goddamn job, like you say. But I still want it.”
“Well, guess what?” I admitted, voice shaking. “You do. But it only happens because I let it happen. You have to let yourself be happy, too. You have to give me that. Because of what we are together. It’s a fucking miracle, Jed. Let’s celebrate it. Tonight, tomorrow. Forever.”
“Forever,” he said. “It scares me. It sounds like we’re tempting Fate.”
I grabbed his hips, pulling him closer. “I am your fate,” I told him, laughing. “And you’re sure as hell tempting me. Give me the goods, boyfriend.”
His smile widened. “Husband,” he said softy. “Tomorrow, I’ll be your husband. Think it’ll change anything?”
“You’ll just be deeper than ever in my sticky web,” I told him, as he thrust slowly, heavily inside me. All the way, until we felt the pressure deep inside me, and his strong, rapid heartbeat.
“I’m already in pretty deep,” he said. “Pretty damn sticky, too. Mmmm, nice.”
“This is just the beginning,” I teased, as he slid out, and surged forward again.
He shoved my legs wider, pulling my hips down so my ass was perched on the edge of the couch.
Both of us gazed down at the erotic spectacle, the soft gasp of pleasure that jerked from my throat as his thick, flushed cock pumped heavily into me, then eased out, shiny with lube.
His long, thick cock just petted and caressed me everywhere, stirring me around, stroking me in all the right places, drawing out a pulsing glow of heat and pleasure.
A slow, shimmering churn, a slow, steady build.
The more times we made love, the more completely I yielded to it.
The more abandoned my surrender. My time as Sandee had taught me that how to let my chattering mind-voice shut up, to let emotions and sensations have their way.
He let go, pumping deep and hard, shouting with his own release, and the torrent drove through me, flooding me with wave after wave of pleasure.
We lay there, wound together, for several minutes before I could speak.
I stroked his sweat-dampened hair. “I don’t understand the math of it,” I said.
“Hmm? What math?”
“It just keeps getting better, every time,” I said. “You’d think there would be a cap on it, but there’s not. Every time, we go farther and farther. Into this new place inside me that I never knew existed. But I love it.”
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “Me, too. Just like what you said.”
“So trust it,” I said.
The look in his eyes pierced right into my soul. It felt like a lightning bolt, illuminating for one astonishing moment the true hugeness, the earth-shaking beauty of this thing we had between us.
“It sounds simple, when you say it.” His voice was halting. “But you can’t just tell someone not to be afraid. It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry.”
I stroked his damp skin, feeling the powerful muscles of his back.
“It’s true. A person feels the way they feel.
But we can be vigilant, and still have joy in each other.
It’s our secret weapon, Jed. The thing that Nicole and Shane’s captor don’t have.
They don’t even know. They no idea how powerful a motivation love and joy can be.
All they know is anger, fear, greed. So we have an advantage. Let’s kick their asses with it.”
In the silence, the song on the radio came into focus. Still that same extended concert set of Nighttime Visitor. Now they were playing Trust Me Tonight.
You’re so damn good at feeling blue
like my love’s just not enough for you
But trust alone can make it right
so trust me tonight
You’re afraid of yielding to my charms
Let yourself just fall into my arms
Give in, and just let in the light.
Trust me tonight.
He looked up, eyes suspicious. “Did you plan that?”
I laughed at him. “It’s the radio, Jed. It’s fate. Give in to it.”
He curled one of my fuzzy ringlets around his finger, shaking his head.
“I know you can’t force feelings,” I told him. “Just try to let yourself feel the good ones. Accept the gifts. That’s all I ask.”
He slid his hand into my hair. “That’s what I’m doing tomorrow, in front of all of them. Promising to try, and to keep on trying. Until my last breath.”
“Sounds good to me.” My voice was wobbly. I was feeling very emotional.
“But don’t ask me not to protect you.”
“Tomorrow, just let everyone else be the protectors,” I told him.
He looked unconvinced. “Whatever. Hey, we still have food on the table, right? Let’s go finish it up. I’m starving again.”
We went back to the table, and dove into what was left of our feast, which was cold but still delicious. The sunset had disappeared, and the mountains were painted in shades of gray and blue shadow.
It was hard to eat one-handed, but he wouldn’t let go of my hand.