Page 69 of Don’t Go Stealing My Heart

Talking needed to happen, but not now. He only needed her eyes on him, the same trust pouring out as when she’d asked him to forgo the condom. If she didn’t trust him, she would lie again. He would question her. The cycle would undermine their progress, and this: the hot-wet melt of their bodies moving as one. He was no longer the boy who’d suffered humiliation. He wasn’t the kid who’d stuttered through his words. He was this guy now, capable of earning his woman’s faith and giving her pleasure, more pleasure. Drowning her in it.

The craving sent a punch of lust to his groin.

He gathered her wrists and pinned them above her head, shifting so just the tip of him rubbed her opening. In and out, kindling her flame. She choked out a muffled curse. “Faster, Jack. Deeper.”

“My room. My rules.”

“When I get you in my motel, the game will change.”

“It won’t.” It never had in the past, at least. With Clementine, he wondered if he could let go. For now he reveled in her every moan and twitch. He wanted to watch greedily again as she fell apart because of him.

She tried to thrust up to him, but he moved in time, keeping just his tip inside her. Torture. For them both. He altered his angle and dragged himself along her opening. “You telling me you don’t like when I do this?”

Her inner walls squeezed. “Okay, yeah. I like that. A lot. Your stamina has improved, Jack.”

He laughed. Laughed about that horrible time in his life. Laughed while making love to this woman with strawberry hair and freckled skin. “You can call me Marathon Jack now.”

“I call you Sweaty Hands Jack.”

Still moving in her. Still laughing. “Explain yourself.”

“The first day we met—I fell for your large sweaty hands.”

He surged forward, a sharp thrust that moved her up the bed. She cried out. Molten lava flooded his veins. “I fell for your greasy hands, so we’re even.”

The way she’d leaned over his Jag’s engine, sweet yet flirty, confident in her car diagnostics, had distracted him from the bank meetings that had kept him up the night prior. Other things would keep him up now. Clementine things. Moving inside her things. His heart feeling too big for his chest things.

Desire tugged at his gut. The coiling burn flooded his bloodstream, fiercer than anything he’d known. A stronger pull. A need to claim her.

He released her wrists. “Grab my ass. Pull me deep.”

Her nails bit into his flesh, and he slammed into her, harder, faster. She was getting closer, arching her back, pushing up her breasts and trying to rub herself against him. His own need clawed for release. He used his thumb on her, tight little circles that elicited a glorious cry. The second she screamed his name and clamped down on him, he detonated.

Fire. Shaking. An endless storm.

Reality returned slowly, the fuzzy edges of his room sharpening. She latched her ankles around his back and pressed her face into his sweaty chest. A lump moved to his throat. He wasn’t sure why.

“I’m all for locking us in here for eternity,” he said.

She didn’t reply or laugh. She kind of froze beneath him, and alarm bells clouded his head. He pushed up slightly, not enough to slip out of her, but he forced her to show her face. More tears. These ones sliced right through him. “What is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Talk to me.” Jesus. He was inside her and had just experienced the best sex of his life.

This was not okay.

He had replayed their first meeting the past few days, how real it had been. No agenda. No role playing. Just them on a dusty road, attracted to each other. Tonight had been just as real: the clench of her inner muscles around his hard flesh, the openness of her gaze, a hint of fear mixing with her trust as he’d dragged in and out of her.

The fear stood out now, both hers and his. A slight premonition that she’d panic and decide she’d chosen wrong. Life was hard. Living by the rules made it harder.

“I’m feeling…things,” she said. She bit her lip, a hitch to her breath.

They were both feeling plenty of things. Fear things. Too big things. But her affection for him was written all over her flushed cheeks. Her rigid limbs were just as easy to interpret. Not far from the anxiety he felt, too.

He was pretty sure he was in love with Clementine, a complicated woman he’d known less than two weeks. The time didn’t matter. His parents had gotten married after two months. There were no rules when it came to love, and if she was feeling a fraction of this overwhelming pressure on her heart, the need to lock them in this house, this room, this bed for fear the outside world would taint this perfection, then they would be okay. That kind of worry was surmountable.

He pressed in deeper, a nudge that made her gasp. “I hope you’re feeling things,” he said. “If not, I have a problem.”