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His gaze narrowed. “I think I’ve changed my mind.”
“No, you haven’t.” She took her time, working her way down the buttons. Watched him as she stripped off the shirt and dropped it to the floor. His gaze fell to her breasts encased in cream-colored lace, her nipples already hard and pressing insistently against the confining material. He swallowed hard.
“Still want to change your mind?”
“No,” he rasped. “I’m good.”
She straddled him. Waited for the detached feeling that always came with this. But his eyes wouldn’t let her; they held hers firm and forced her to connect. With Jared there was only the truth. There only ever had been.
His heavy-lidded stare dropped to her erect, pink-tipped nipples. “I’m not sure why they call this a lap dance. Feels more like torture to me.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “it could be described that way. Except,” she murmured, rotating her hips in a seductive circle against him, “if you’re a very good boy you might get more.”
He muttered something under his breath she thought she deciphered as, “I sure hope so,” and closed his eyes.
He was hard beneath her, thick and long under his suit pants, and this time it was she who swallowed. She remembered how he had filled her. Remembered how her muscles had clenched around him and how powerful her release had been. Lord.
She kept up her sinuous rotations. His thighs tensed beneath her, his hands fisting at his sides. “This better be special treatment, Bailey. Because if you did this for another man, I might have to kill him. Kill them all.”
She leaned down and gave him a kiss. “Easy, tiger. It is.”
He slid his hands over her hips. She removed them. “No hands.”
“But you just kissed me…”
“That’s because I’m in charge.”
Ruddy color dusted his cheekbones. “Go ahead, convince yourself of that.”
“No hands,” she repeated, swaying closer. “Lips, however, are allowed.”
He dipped his head and took her engorged nipple in his mouth. The hot warmth of his lips around her sent a bolt of heat to her core. She arched her back on a low moan and gave herself to him, wholly, sinfully, rocking against him.
He transferred his attention to the other hard peak and took her higher. She felt herself unraveling under his touch, losing the control she’d once so desperately craved. But this was Jared, and she was mad about him.
“Goddammit, Bailey.” He lifted his head, eyes glittering. “I’m waving the white flag, whatever you need.”
She stood up and slid her skirt off. Her panties. His gaze tracked her every movement, hot, hungry. She came back to him, moved her fingers to the button of his trousers and slid it out of the material. Then she eased his zipper down.
“Please,” he was begging now. “Hands are good. I do good things with them.”
She freed him from his boxers. Lowered herself to brush against the hard, hot length of him. “No hands.”
She was slick and fully aroused, but he was a lot to handle. It took all her concentration to take him inside her, ease herself down on the potent length of him. She hadn’t taken half of him when a low groan escaped her lips. “Jared—”
“Oh yes you can,” he rasped, reading the look. “But you need to let me use my hands.”
She nodded. Closed her eyes as his palms took the weight of her hips and held her over him, sliding farther inside her. He held her there while her body adjusted to him, his superior strength sending a surge of lust through her.
“More,” she groaned.
He gave it to her, slowly, inch by inch, whispering in her ear how much he wanted her, how good she felt. His sexy voice excited her, inflamed her, softening her body until she took him all. It was all she could do to breathe with him buried inside her, but his hands supported her hips, controlling the rhythm, easing her into it.
The feeling of intense fullness morphed into a slow, hot burn every time he took her. The angle, the spot he was reaching deep inside her, promised extreme pleasure. Higher and higher he led her until it wasn’t enough anymore—until she wanted to scream. She buried her hands in his hair and pleaded in a husky tone she didn’t recognize as her own.
He slid his hand between them and pressed his thumb against the throbbing center of her. She looked down, watched him, the erotic sight of the rough passes of his thumb over her throbbing center summoning a wild, shattering release within seconds, her love for him escaping her lips as the white-hot intensity tore her apart.
He heard her, she knew, from the way he froze beneath her. Then the tight convulsions of her body around him pushed him over the edge, an animalistic groan tearing itself from his throat. And then there was no room for thought. Only pleasure.
The fact that he didn’t repeat her words as he settled her against his chest and put his lips to her hair, his breathing hard and uneven, didn’t completely throw her. This was Jared, after all, who’d just taken a huge step in telling her how he felt. She was going to focus on that and nothing else. Not on the very real possibility he would never get there.
* * *
She woke by the light of the moon, by herself in the bed. A glance at the clock told her it was almost eleven, another couple of hours before they would land. She sat up, looking for water, figuring Jared had left her to work. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw him sitting in a chair by the windows, dressed only in jeans. He looked lost, distant, in his own world.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
He lifted his head. Blinked. “No.” He didn’t invite her over but she went anyway, setting her hand on his shoulder. His stiffness beneath her fingers made her hand still. The utter remoteness on his face made her consider retreating, until he reached up and pulled her down on his lap. Her heart squeezed at the near rejection. He was such a complex, multifaceted man. She was sure she only knew pieces of him.
She stayed there, curled against his chest, until the restlessness emanating from him made her draw back. She traced the hard line of his jaw, the unyielding curve of his mouth, the jagged white scar that bisected his upper lip. “How did you get this?”
He frowned, as if he had to pull the memory from the deep recesses of his mind. “The son of one of our friends my father embezzled the money from went to Stanford with me. After my father was sent to jail, he confronted me in one of the campus bars. He was angry, said some things about my father I couldn’t let pass, and we got into a fight.” His mouth twisted. “I thought it was a fistfight, but when Taylor started to lose, he added a beer bottle to the mix.”
She shivered as she looked at the vicious-looking inch-long scar. “He could have done much worse.”
His shoulder lifted. “He was hurting. His family was ruined. I got it.”
She ran her fingers across the heavy dark stubble on his cheek. “You were too. Couldn’t he see that you weren’t to blame for your father’s actions?”
“When you’re angry and sad, you lash out.”
Yes, but it hadn’t been his burden to carry. Her heart squeezed. How hard must it have been for a college-aged boy to have to defend his hero.
He pulled her tight against his chest, his hand smoothing her hair. “My father wants to see me. That call you heard yesterday morning was my PI saying he’d done his usual check on him, that he didn’t look great and he wants to see me.”
The call that had come right before he’d gone ice-cold on her…it made sense now.
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. When he got out of jail, he told me he needed time to get his head together, to figure out what he wanted to do. My mom had already remarried, and many of his friends wanted nothing to do with him. I was it really for him, but he didn’t even want to see me. He disappeared, showed up in the islands. I told myself distancing myself from him was the best thing for me. I was hurting so badly, I needed space. But we never really reconnected after that, except over legalities. Every time I tried, he pushed me away.”
“I’m sure he felt a lot of shame.”
His fingers traced the curve of her ear. “I think I was afraid to face what had become of him. He was such a strong, proud man. Afterward…it was like seeing a ghost of him.”
Her heart contracted in another long pull. She took his hand in hers and laced her fingers through his. “That could never happen to you. You are self-possessed in a way I have rarely seen, Jared. You know who you are.”
His fingers tensed beneath hers as if he might pull them away, then he let out a breath and curled them tightly around hers. “I should have gone to see him. I should have insisted on it instead of just having him watched over. He’s my father, for God’s sake. He’s not well and I’ve let him become a virtual hermit.”
She shook her head. “You were hardly more than a boy when he left. You were sad and angry because he was supposed to take care of you.”
“It doesn’t excuse my behavior.”
“It’s never too late to make it right.”
There was a long pause. Her fingers tightened around his. “Go, Jared. Talk to him. You won’t forgive yourself if you don’t.”
