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Chapter 21
Finding Jordan on her doorstep, Hope wondered if someone had heard her wishes, her regrets, her fears. From the moment she had left his car, she had thought of what Libby had told her not long ago, when they had talked about her and Luke. “It’s the what-ifs that sting the most. I’d rather regret doing than regret not doing.”
Changing into her comfort clothes—the stained Tweetie sweatshirt and loose, dark lounge pants—she had walked around the empty house, putting things in place and wishing her daughters were there, or at least one of her friends. To banish the silence, she had turned the music on.
The beat of the song made her miss the first knock, but when she had heard the second one, her heart rate mimicked the fast rhythm of the music without her even realizing why.
From the moment she saw Jordan standing there, she knew she wasn’t going to regret not doing this time. Like a guided missile, she locked her eyes on his lips and didn’t even feel herself moving until her mouth was on his.
The soft kiss she placed on his lips was answered by a deeper one as Jordan wrapped his arms around her faster than mercury could spread. He lifted her, and she was clamped between his hard body and the door, the back of her head nestled in his large palm, his fingers threading in her hair and fiercely welding her mouth to his.
Their breaths were rugged. She drank in his taste and smell, and everything inside her head vaporized, leaving a thrumming heart and a hungry body that now, with clothes that enabled her to feel every inch of his hard body, was pulsating with desire.
Acting on their own need to feel as much of him as they could reach in this posture, her hands raked into his hair then slid to his neck, shoulders, the plains of his chest, then crossed to his back.
Eagerly, she tugged at the dark grey Henley that had taunted her all afternoon, lifted it, and took it off him. Now she could graze her hands over every ridge of his exposed, warm skin—the muscled expanse of his wide chest, the corded arms.
God, he was five years older than her but so taut. Everything was in its place, and everything so well shaped. His muscles weren’t bulges; they were well defined, and her lower belly clenched just from the feel of them under her palms. She thought of what hid under her clothes, and knowing there was no way she was going to give up now on feeling and seeing all of him, she knew it also meant he would have to feel and see all of her.
Two plus years without sex, and longer than that with a critical male gaze for a companion, had left her self-aware, even now, even through the haze of this man’s panty-melting touch.
“The bedroom. To your right,” she whispered into his ear. The living room was washed with too much light.
“Door, bedroom, table, we’ll get there,” he rasped against her neck. Supporting her by pressing his weight into her, his hands were free to roam all over her. If this was how it felt over her clothes, she couldn’t wait to feel him under them.
She kissed his neck and shoulder, and before her eyes flickered shut again, she caught a glimpse of his tattoo that was completely exposed now. The surge and ripple in black and grey mimicked what he was doing to her body with his mouth and hands before he even took her clothes off. She moaned against his mouth that was back on hers.
Though she wanted him to pummel into her right there at the door, when Jordan attempted to remove her sweatshirt, raking it up to her armpits with one hand and eagerly caressing the skin he exposed with the other, she broke their kiss and rasped again, almost begging now, “The bedroom.”
With his arms wrapped around her, his hands splayed on the heated skin of her back, Jordan moved away from the door. He could easily carry her, even if her legs weren’t wrapped around him, but she clasped him tighter, craving to maintain contact with the hardness in his jeans.
As soon as they entered the bedroom, he threw them both unceremoniously onto her bed.
She hadn’t realized how much she had missed this—a strong, male body on top of hers, the weight pressing into her. Everything in her soared, soared, soared. She kissed him hungrily, feverishly, hardly letting him pull himself back a little just so he could take her sweatshirt off.
While he raked it up, exposing her untucked skin, she reached to the bedside lamp that she had switched on when she had changed before. It yielded enough light for her to see the hard angles of his jaw, his lips, the fire in his eyes, the muscled shoulders and arms. Just the sight of his pecs and abs could make her come. She was sorry not to see more of it when she found the switch and turned the light off.
She lifted her arms and let him take her shirt off. Then she felt one of his hands leave her body. A click was heard, and the light was back on, seeming stronger than before because of the momentary darkness that she had bathed them in.
She watched his face as he glanced down at her, his gaze sliding then rising, sweeping, eyes meeting, before he bent to kiss her neck and shoulders, sliding off the straps of her bra and kissing his way to her breasts that were cupped in his palms over her bra.
She lifted her hand again and switched the light off.
Jordan grabbed her wrist when it was halfway back, pinned it above her head, then turned the light back on, stilling above her and looking into her face in the softly lit room.
“I prefer the light off,” she expelled into his face.
“And I prefer to see you,” he rasped, his eyes flaring, searing hers. “I want to see this,” he half-whispered, skimming his gaze over her face, caressing her with his eyes from her hair to her lips, drawing his thumb over the same path, parting her lower lip, and sliding down her chin. “And this.” He traced his gaze further down, sliding his palm with it to her breasts and further south to her belly. Then, bringing his eyes back to hers, as if he was making a point, he slanted his head and kissed the flesh she was sure just flabbed above her bra without taking his eyes off hers.
She ached for him.
The touch of his lips and tongue on her skin made her eyes flutter shut.
She thought of the stretch marks, half-hidden beneath the waistband of her pants.
And, as if he read her mind, Jordan hooked his fingers into it and dragged it down to her hips.
She swallowed and opened her eyes.
