Chapter 28 Jackson
Jackson
Fearing she couldn’t breathe, he rolled to one side, pulling Leah with him until she lay sprawled like a starfish across his chest. An oversensitive shiver shot through him as skin moved against skin. He hadn’t come that hard in living memory. His nerve endings were still jumping from the release.
“That was fun.” She gave a winded laugh.
“Fun?” Jackson flicked her ear. “Is that the best you can do?”
His hand drifted rhythmically over her curves; he couldn’t stop touching her.
Leah pressed a kiss to his jaw. “It’s just as well you held out for so long, with your stomping and your glaring, or we’d have run ourselves ragged by now. We’d be husks of our former selves.”
His fingers tightened on the contour of her thigh. “There’s still time, Raven.”
Her hair spread, oil-slick black, over the white sheets, over him. Her outline monochrome in the moonlight. Impossibly, his cock twitched and he wanted her again. Jackson drew the bedspread up over them both and pulled her closer to his chest. As close as he could.
“What will you use the money for when you sell Amity Court?”
Of all the questions Leah might have come up with at that moment, this was one he’d expected the least. His mouth against the crown of her head, the softness of her curls tickling his lips, he hesitated.
“No, wait. Let me guess,” she continued. “A bigger beach house? A home cinema in your condo? A gold-plated hammer?”
“I’ve got two of those already,” he joked in reply. Feeling the huff of her snicker against his skin, Jackson realized he didn’t want secrets between them. “Honestly?”
Leah gestured around them and he smiled—right, they were in the Bed of Truth.
Spilling the whole tangled story into the dark, he told her about his dad’s purchase of the Kingswater site, the loan from Landon Peake, and the messy conflict between his father and the Addlestone-Blacks.
He explained the holdup with the Indiana bats and his desire for a more equal footing, a steadier working partnership with his father going forward.
All the while, Jackson traced circles on her shoulder, running his fingers up and down her arm.
“So Peake was kind of casing the joint when he visited. Seeing if you were good for the money?” Leah propped her chin on his chest once he’d finished.
“Yes. A little dramatic but basically true.” Jackson shifted, still incensed by the thought. “He won’t be back.”
“Hmm.” She gave him a small smile. “And is that what you really want—to be a bigger player in Hale Evolution?”
“It’s the family business.”
“You said that before when I asked if you enjoy it, but it isn’t an answer.” Leah’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“It’s what Dominic was planning to do.”
“Also not an answer,” she pointed out, no judgment in her tone. “And, in fairness, it sounds as if you didn’t get to have an honest discussion with your brother about whether or not he wanted it either.”
Dammit if she hadn’t hit the nail squarely on its head. Jackson frowned into the darkness. “I’d give anything to be able to talk with Dom again. I have so many things I’d ask him.”
Leah pressed her lips to his collarbone, comforting, understanding. “I wish I’d met him.” She flashed him a witchy smile. “Even though it probably would have worked out badly for you. I mean, I’ve heard what a catch he was.”
His growly laugh only made her grin wider. Jackson pinched the flesh on her hip. “Brat.”
“I hope the house sells soon so you can repay the loan. It’s a horrible situation to be in.”
Her innate kindness blindsided him, blowing away another of his rusting defenses.
She still knew nothing about the financial gift his grandmother had requested he give her.
She’d made no reference to where she would go once he found a buyer.
After weeks of wanting to see the back of Leah, it made him edgy and uncomfortable to think of her moving on.
Looking for a distraction, Jackson gave in to the urge to run his fingers through her hair, sweeping it off her neck, baring the tips of her ears, the edge of her chin.
Leah’s eyes were closed; her eyelashes lay in the darkest semicircle.
That almond freckle called to his thumb and he brushed it lightly.
She purred. She actually purred. And it was the sexiest fucking sound he’d ever heard.
“You are one hell of a package, you know that?”
He could just make out the twitch of her mouth in the dark. “A package, Jax? Really? Do flatter me some more.”
He stared up at the ceiling, his hands back in her hair. He tugged on one of the tangled waves. “You can’t expect flowery language from a guy who’s been blindsided by a combination of fish stick sandwiches, terrible puns, and gorgeous fucking curves.”
And more. There was so much more to Leah. He was greedy for it all.
She propped herself up on an elbow. “I’m sensing some residual hostility there, Hale.
You got resentment you need to talk through, now would be a good time to get it off your chest.” Even her smirk was sexy.
Infuriatingly sexy. He might have taken issue with it if Leah hadn’t reached out to run exploratory fingers over his chest, around and across one nipple and then the other.
Her palm drifted lower and every muscle in his abdomen rippled in anticipation.
Jackson caught her wrist, even as he raised his mouth to taste her lips. His length flexed against her hip at Leah’s sharp in-breath. The taste of her, the smell of her, felt dangerously like an obsession.
Brakes.
Brakes would be good right now.
“It’s late,” he murmured. “We should sleep.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Her tongue danced lightly with his and her hand twisted in the hair at the back of his neck. Jackson wished she’d pull harder. “That would absolutely make the most sense.”
“I am nothing if not sensible,” he agreed, running the flat of his hand down the impossible smoothness of Leah’s thigh, the urge to explore her again too tempting to resist.
“And I am tired.”
“Me too.”
“Shall I get the light?”
“It’s on my side of the bed.” Jackson quirked an eyebrow.
Her expression was suspiciously innocent. “I’m happy to help.”
Leah’s pounce was feather-light and flexible, as stealthy as an arctic fox.
She landed across his hips even before he’d prepared himself for the move, settling astride his groin, her hot, wet center poised above his enraptured cock.
Fuck, her breasts looked amazing from this angle.
His hands went straight to them like homing devices, his erection turning to steel beneath the curve of her rear.
Leah braced herself against his chest, her lower lip caught between her teeth, mischief dancing across her face.
“It’s further than I thought. I can’t seem to reach.”
“Reach what?” Jackson tugged her down with a hand at the back of her neck.
The movement shifted her over his length and he groaned into her mouth.
All he wanted to do was bury himself inside her again, lose himself in her soft warmth.
She was unbearably enticing, blindingly dazzling.
Like a bolt of pure magic. Sheet lightning flashing through clouds.
His lips on hers, he tasted the sizzle. His hands traveled to her waist and Jackson dragged her roughly against his cock.
He swallowed her sharp exhalation of breath with vicious satisfaction.
“Jax—”
Leah’s eyes were closed, her teasing forgotten.
Slashes of color highlighted each cheekbone.
Powerful pride swelled in his chest. He’d done this.
His whisper against her neck raised goosebumps on her skin.
His breath on her nipples hardened them to tiny peaks on his tongue.
Seeing her surrender willingly to the pleasure he was only too happy to dish out lit a fire under his own growing arousal.
This wasn’t an obsession. It was win-win all the way.
“My fucking Raven,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “Mine.”
Leah’s eyes opened, her pupils blown, eyelids heavy.
She trailed her fingers from the base of his throat down to his navel in a slow, teasing movement, undulating against him in a ripple Jackson felt right in his core.
When she followed the vertical line of body hair and enclosed him in one delicate hand, he pulsed within her grip, hissing through his teeth.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he muttered as she rose above him, and he bit back strangled expletives when she lowered herself onto the tip of his cock.
Leah rose and fell, infinitesimal, teasing movements designed to drive him out of his fucking mind, never taking more than an inch of him inside herself.
She played with him, winding him tighter and tighter, her eyes fixed on his face, alight with willful pleasure.
He stood it as long as he could, mainly because it felt mind-shatteringly, toe-curlingly good.
So good that, although he wanted to protest, he found no words to do it.
But all too soon, the teasing was unbearable and Jackson needed more.
He closed his hands around her hips, dragging her down onto him until he bottomed out and it was Leah who gasped, Leah whose eyes rolled.
Slow and playful went out of the window.
She rode him hard; he gripped her harder.
His right palm covered the dark shadow of the bird in flight on her skin, the sheen of her sweat beneath his hands.
He was sure he was bruising her but her moans were all joy and encouragement.
“Yes, Jax . . . Oh, God—that feels amazing!” Leah’s eyes burned into his.
She pushed the pinched words out through tight lips.
“I’ve been thinking about doing this for so long. ”
Her words sent him hurtling toward the edge.
He twisted his wrist to brush a thumb over Leah’s clit, once, twice, his legs shaking as his climax built.
She bucked beneath his touch, her body rigid, and came with a shuddering gasp, the force of her tremors dragging Jackson headlong after her.
He smothered his cry in her neck as she collapsed on top of him, spent and locked together.
He wrapped his arms around her back. “Fuck me, Raven. You’re deadly.” The breath rasped in and out of his chest.
“But cute, too, right?” Leah didn’t move. “Deadly and cute.”
“Yeah. Too damn deadly and too fucking cute.”
“Then my work is done. I think I’ll stay here and you can wake me in the morning.”
Her words were slurred. Jackson had no doubt she meant it. His arms tightened around her reflexively. And as his heart gradually slowed its desperate pounding, he’d never felt more content in all his life.