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Realization hits me. “When your mother left.”
“Exactly. My father owned the land, and he built this house for us to be the new family we’d become. He said it was for us, but I think it was for him. He needed to get away from the whispers and gossip about my missing mother. No one has lived here since my father died, but I come here often. It was his escape and then mine. Now it can be ours.” He takes my hand. “Let’s go look.”
Warmth spreads through me all over again. He’s letting me inside his world, and I want to be in his world.He matters, I repeat in my mind. Just him. He leads me forward, the ocean to our left, close, so close that I can hear the waves crashing on the shore and rocks. Jax stops at the door and uses a security system to unlock it, pushing it open and reaching inside to flip on the light.
“Ladies first,” he says, and I move forward. I catch his hand and pause to push to my toes, pressing my lips to his cheek. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
He cups my head and kisses me, and it’s not just any kiss. There’s passion, so much passion, so much that it consumes and drugs me. It owns me,heowns me, because he kisses me like no man has ever kissed me, like he can’t breathe without me. And when our lips part, for a moment, or two, or ten, I can’t say, we just breathe together. The moment, or moments, end with his fingers on my cheek. “Go inside, baby.”
I nod and move forward, pleased when Jax catches my hand, stepping in behind me, his body close, the door slamming behind us. I’m now standing in a stunning room, which is so completely different from the castle that it’s as if I’m in anotherworld. The room is long, the ceilings high, the floors a dark shiny wood. The fireplace is almost floating inside a wall to my left. A giant winding stairwell of the same wood as the floor is to my right. I imagine him and his brothers running up and down those stairs. I imagine their father sitting by that fireplace with his sons, and I’m sad that it seems he never loved again.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and when I turn to face Jax, his hands are already in my hair.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice is low, rough, and when he kisses me, his tongue is gentle, sensual. “This can be our place. Or the castle. Or anywhere you want. I don’t care where.”
Every part of me is alive for this man. My body heats. My heart swells. I want to say yes right now. It’s what he wants me to say. I could so very easily, but what if he ends up hating me? What if the truth reveals something he can’t live with, and I’m here, heart and soul, when he does?
“Jax—”
“Don’t answer now,” he says, and then he’s kissing me again, but this kiss isn’t like the kiss of moments before. It’s changed. It’s darker. It’s deeper. It’s demanding, possessive. A kiss that claims and says that he owns me. And with any other man, I’d fight to prove he doesn’t own me, but not Jax. I don’t resist even a little bit. I don’t fear what that means. I want him to know I’m all in because that’s what this is about. My hesitation. My trust that he still doesn’t feel he has.
And so, I kiss him with all I am. I kiss him, and I tear at his clothes. He responds, catching my hair in his hand and dragging my gaze to his, searching my face, looking for something, I don’t know what. I don’t know if he finds it, but he’s kissing me again, and God, how the man can kiss. I shove my hands under his jacket, and he releases me just long enough to shrug out of it. From there is a blur of want and lust. My shirt comes off. Hisshirt comes off. We’re naked, and his hand is on my breast, fingers teasing my nipple until I moan.
Somehow. we’re in front of the couch, when I’m pretty sure we were just by the door, and his cock is thick and hard at my hip. I reach for it, closing my hand around it, and he squeezes my backside and then smacks it. I yelp with the impact, surprised, aroused, so damn aroused when I didn’t believe a hand on my ass could ever do that again, and yet, it has, it did. I am. But Jax doesn’t repeat that hand on my ass. He drags his mouth from mine, his breath heavy and fast as he curses, “Fuck. Emma—”
Anger and embarrassment come over me hard and fast. “Don’t say what you’re about to say. Don’t do what you’re doing right now. I’m not a delicate flower.” I shove at his chest and look up at him. “Jax, damn it, I said—”
He cups my head and drags my mouth to his. “You’re not a delicate flower.” He sits down with me and pulls me into his lap, the feel of him thick and hard against my backside. “I know,” he promises.
“You want to spank me, do it,” I say, pressing on his chest to look at him. “I’m not—”
“A delicate flower,” he says. “I know,” he repeats. “But baby, until you tell me what happened to you—”
“That hasnothingto do with us, Jax.” The words hiss from my throat, no, from my gut, from my soul. “The past doesn’t get to be in this room with you and me.”
“Everything that happened to you is about us. We’re not about a moment. We’re bigger than this moment.”
My fingers dig into his shoulders. “And I’m telling you that we’re more than my past. I’m naked and telling you to just be you, and do you with me,” I say. “If you hold back—just don’t hold back. I liked how you were when you weren’t holding back. I loved how you were when you spanked me.”
“Emma—”
I catch his hair in my fingers and lean in, my lips at his lips. “I’m giving you my trust. Be here in the moment with me, Jax. If you want to spank me,spank me.”
Chapter sixty-six
Jax
What the hell was I thinking? I know Emma has a damaged past, and I pushed her because I wanted her to just say yes to moving in with me. I flip her to her back, with that pretty little ass of hers pressed to the soft cloth covering the leather couch, my body settling over hers.
“Damn it, Jax. What are you doing?”
“Iwantto do all kinds of things with and to you, Emma. Dirty, dirty fucking amazing things, including spanking your perfect ass. When the time is right.”
“The timing was right now. You got spooked, not me.”
“I pushed you because you didn’t just say yes to moving in with me and that’s not the way for us to do those dirty fucking amazing things. That’s the way to make sure they aren’t amazing. I don’t want anyone or anything the way I want you, Emma. I’m not wasting one minute on anything with you that’s not amazing.”
She softens beneath me, and I roll us to our sides, her back against the couch. “Only amazing,” I repeat, stroking hair fromher face. “Like you said. You and me, baby. We’re keeping it all good.”
