Don't Let Go (9 page)

Jillian drew back. “What does that mean?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jordan answered, glancing at Rafe. “You’re keeping Rafe waiting.
Ciao!
” She ducked into her car and took off.

“I should be leaving, too,” Rafe said, as Jillian made her way back to him. In the twilight, her hair shone like platinum as it cascaded over her shoulders, loosed from the ponytail she’d kept it in all day. He experienced a heightening of his senses as she stepped closer, her lavender scent stealing around him. Before she could speak, the front door flew open.

“Mommy! Can I use this jar to catch fireflies?” Agatha asked, holding up an empty pickle jar.

“Oh, sure, honey, but hold it by the bottom, so it doesn’t fall and break.”

“Watch this, Mr. Rafael. I’m going to catch fireflies and make a lamp!” With that, Agatha scampered past them, bearing her jar into the front yard in pursuit of the bugs that sparked here and there in the cooling air.

Rafe sent Jillian a wry look. “I guess I’d better watch for a while.”

“Let’s sit on the porch swing,” she invited, with a smile.

“Will it hold both of us?” He wasn’t so much wary of it collapsing as he was of sitting beside her. That had never been an issue back when she was married.

“I guess we’ll find out. Everything around this house is falling apart. My father was too busy caring for my mother to keep things up. And then he died two months after she did.”

“He must have loved her very much.” He held the swing still so she could sit on one end.

“He did,” she concurred, easing onto the swing with a groan of relief.

“You’ve been on your feet all day,” he observed, sitting tentatively beside her. The chains creaked but held.

“That’s nothing new.”

He knew she should put her feet up. That’s what Teresa had done in her third trimester. He pushed the offer nervously through his throat, afraid of where it might take them. “Why don’t you put your feet up?” he offered, patting his thigh.

At her quick look of surprise, he was grateful for the shadows that hid his coloration. “A nurse should know better,” he chided, to make the offer seem impersonal.

“Well, if you’re sure.” She kicked off her garden clogs and swung her knees sideways, lifting her calves up on his thighs. The soft, warm weight of her legs made his breath catch.

“Put this behind your back,” he suggested, lifting a blanket off the back of the swing. “You must sit out here often,” he added, as she stuffed it behind herself.

“I do.” Her tired, husky voice washed over him. “I love the quiet of the country. Living in the city wasn’t for me. You can see the stars out here, smell the soil, and hear the leaves rustle on the trees. I missed that in the city.”

His palms itched to massage her calves, but that wouldn’t be appropriate.

Jillian gave a groan. “I didn’t realize till now how much my legs ache,” she admitted. “Now they’re tingling.” She tried to lean over her bulging midsection to rub them.

He had no choice but to help.

“Oh, thank you,” she breathed, leaning back with a sigh.

It wasn’t any hardship. Not at all, except that he felt a little out of practice. How long had it been since he’d touched a woman, let alone caressed bare skin, all soft and silky?

“That feels good,” she admitted with the slightest hint of her own heightened awareness.

In the twilight, they shared a long, thoughtful look, each one assessing the other in a different light.

Frightened by the direction of his thoughts, Rafe moved the conversation into safer waters. “You need to slow down,” he cautioned. “You’re trying to do too much.”

Her smile was faintly sardonic. “Do you think I have any choice?” she countered. “I can’t start this ranch up with a baby in one arm.”

He sensed grief welling inside of her. “I’m sorry,” he heard himself say.

She shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t be sorry. When I married Gary I knew what I was getting into. He needed the danger that went with being on a SWAT team. It made him feel alive, like he was making a difference. I took a chance and loved him anyway. It’s all a part of being real.”

He couldn’t relate to what she was saying, so he kept his mouth shut.

“Did you ever read a children’s story called
The Velveteen Rabbit
?”

“I don’t believe I did,” he answered, searching his memory. Those days of reading bedtime stories seemed so long ago.

“It’s about a toy rabbit who wants to be real. He’s talking to the old Skin Horse, who says that you can only become real by being loved. Your fur will get worn and your eyes will get loose and jiggly. But once you’re real nothing can take that away from you.”

The night air seemed suddenly thick, hard to breathe.

“I was married to Gary for fifteen years. He made me real, and being real hurts sometimes. But I wouldn’t change a thing that happened, except that it happened when my children were still young. At least I was loved.”

Rafe swallowed hard. She was so much braver than he. Eight years ago he’d come home to a bloodbath. His entire family had been gunned down in retaliation for his work in putting the mob boss, Tarantello, and his right-hand man in jail for life. The night he’d found his family killed, Rafe had cut his bleeding heart from his chest and buried it with his family in the vault at St. Raymond’s cemetery.

He’d never wanted to be real, to feel, again.

But what was it she’d just said?
Once you’re real nothing can take that away from you.

He felt suddenly, inexplicably panicked. “I have to go now, Jillian.” He drew his hands regretfully to her ankles.

She just looked at him for a long, sad moment. “Okay,” she relented. “Good night, Rafael. Thank you so much for coming.” She swung her feet to the porch plank so that Rafe could stand.

“Wait!” Agatha shouted from a dark corner of the yard. She ran in their direction, bearing her glass like a trophy. “You have to see my lamp.”

“Let me see,” Rafe offered.

She placed the jar on the porch steps and bent over to be eye level with it. “You have to wait. I caught four of them!”

Charmed by her enthusiasm—she reminded him only a little of his daughter Serena—Rafe went down on his haunches to wait. He could feel Jillian’s gaze on him as she swung herself gently back and forth, back and forth.

A burst of pure gold light illumined the glass jar, then another, and then another. “See!” Agatha exclaimed, her smile ecstatic. It shot through Rafe like a sunbeam.

“Thank you,” he said, “for sharing your lamp with me.” He ruffled her hair and strode quickly to his car. “Good night, Jillian,” he called. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

“Good night, Rafael.”

He could tell by her tone that she understood what he was thinking. It’d been like that from the beginning of their friendship. They shared an uncanny ability to read each other’s minds.

He slipped into his car and pulled away. She knew that he was running away. She probably even suspected he might never come back.

Chapter Nine

Solomon met Jordan on the pier. “You’ll have to tutor Silas later,” he announced with a serious look. “We’re going to the health clinic.” Silas’s wrist was imprisoned in his fist. “I want you to come with us.”

A rumble of thunder warned of the approaching storm. Charcoal-colored clouds surged over the trees mirroring Jordan’s sudden concern. “Is he sick?” She glanced down at Silas, who struggled against Solomon’s hold, looking pale and frightened.

“Not sick,” said Solomon. “He needs shots.”

“I don’t want shots!” Silas cried, his eyes filling with pitiful tears.

“Oh,” said Jordan, putting two and two together. “He can’t go to school without his third DPT.”

“Not just school,” Solomon replied, “day care, too. He needs four shots total.”

“Four!” Jordan exclaimed, tempering her dismay for Silas’s sake. He looked scared enough. “You’re hurting him,” she pointed out.

“I can’t let go. He tried running from me once already,” Solomon explained.

Jordan frowned in disapproval. “He needs reassurance, Solomon, not manhandling,” she scolded. “Come here, honey,” she said, bending down and holding her arms out to him.

Silas glanced at his father, who grudgingly released him. He stepped stiffly into Jordan’s embrace, too proud to cling or cry, but Jordan could feel him trembling. “I’m assuming his shot record is lost,” she said to Solomon.

“I kept a record of his earliest shots,” he clipped. “And I’m sure that Ellie had him immunized with her other boys, but the only way to reach her is through snail mail, and I don’t have time for that.”

“Silas, honey,” Jordan said, putting him at arm’s length to give him a firm but compassionate look, “you have to cooperate and get your shots. They really don’t hurt that bad. If you’re a good boy, your father’s going to take you to the toy store afterward and buy you whatever you want.”

She glanced upward for corroboration and caught a bemused look on Solomon’s face. “Won’t you?” she asked him.

He hesitated only briefly. “Sure. Whatever you want, Silas.”

“Okay?” she asked Silas, whose imagination was clearly working overtime.

“’Kay,” he whispered.

“Within reason,” Solomon added.

“Don’t worry,” drawled Jordan, straightening and taking Silas’s hand. “He’s not going to ask for a new car till he’s sixteen.”

Leading him off the dock, she glanced at the ominous line of clouds approaching. “Are you sure you need me to go with you?” she called, as a gusty breeze molded her skirt and blouse to her body. She glanced back, catching Solomon’s appreciative regard. “You’re paying me to tutor, not play nanny,” she reminded him.

He jingled the keys in his pocket. “Come with us,” he said with a nod.

Jordan sighed. “Use your manners, Solomon.”

“Come with us, please,” he bit back.

The squeeze of Silas’s hand prompted her decision. “Fine,” she agreed. “I’ll tutor him later this evening if he’s feeling up to it.”

But Silas wasn’t feeling up to it. By seven o’clock that evening, the injection sites on his arms and thighs were swollen and hot, and he was running a temperature. Jordan settled down with him on Solomon’s reading couch and pulled a book from her bag. “This is
The Velveteen Rabbit,
” she announced. “Agatha said you’d like it.”

With rain drumming the boat’s decks and flecking the windows and with Silas’s cheek against her shoulder, his new toy in his lap—a Dragon Ball Z figurine—Jordan was sharply aware of Solomon’s restlessness. He approached Silas three times in the course of the story: once to take his temperature; again to administer Tylenol that the doctor had sent home with him; then with a cool washcloth for the boy to keep against his forehead.

On his fourth approach, Jordan snatched her head up. “Solomon! He’s fine. This is a normal reaction to immunizations.”

“He’s asleep,” Solomon pointed out.

“Oh.” Sure enough, Silas had nodded off against her arm.

“I’ll put him in bed,” he added.

Silas came awake as his father lifted him off the couch. “Jordan,” he cried, reaching out a hand for her.

Touched, Jordan stood up to stroke the hair off his sweaty forehead. His fever had broken. “You rest, big guy. I’ll see you tomorrow.” It did not escape her notice that she and Solomon would be more or less alone once Silas was put in bed. And given the thoughtful glance he swung her way, he was realizing the same thing. She had probably better get out now while the getting out was good. Grabbing up her bag, she headed for the door.

“It’s pouring out there. Why don’t you wait until the rain stops?” With that suggestion, he turned and carried Silas down the hallway to his bedroom.

Jordan peeked outside to see if he was telling the truth. Sure enough, sheets of rain dimpled the surface of the inlet and obscured the shoreline. She’d be drenched by the time she got to her car. Perhaps she could afford to wait for the rain to clear.

Perhaps she didn’t really want to leave. Besides, how far could Solomon take things with Silas sleeping in his bed?

Excited, terrified by the thought that she was willing to risk an encounter of the personal kind, Jordan moved away from the door toward the bookcase. Examining the vast collection, she drew out a copy of
Jane Eyre,
by Charlotte Brontë.

Solomon’s voice made her jump, coming as it did from right behind her. “Why is it you women always go for the romance novels?” he queried, his tone contemptuous.

She quelled her leaping heart, her sudden nervousness. “I take it you don’t believe in love,” she shot back.

“Love?” He raised a mocking eyebrow. “Love is a fabrication. To believe in it is to invite disillusionment.”

She had to agree with him somewhat there. “Sometimes,” she acknowledged, with a pinch of sorrow.

“We’d all be better off calling it what it is: biology,” Solomon continued, his gaze sliding warmly over her as she pretended to read the back cover of the book. “The compulsion to propagate the species,” he added, quietly.

That familiar, giddy warmth spread insidiously through her. “That’s crass,” she retorted, but she lacked the willpower to step away. Or even to leave, though the rain sounded softer.

He stepped abruptly closer, took the book from her slack hands, and laid it aside. Jordan’s heart started to race. She knew what was coming next, waited for the slightest reluctance on her part, and felt nothing but tingling anticipation.

Putting his powerful arms around her, Solomon pulled her hips to his, giving her fair warning of his intentions.
He wanted all of her.

Her blood heated instantly at the possessive gesture. She coiled an arm around his impossibly broad shoulders and crushed her breasts against his rock-hard chest, wanting desperately, ironically, to feel him deeper.

“Jordan,” he murmured, lowering his head to speak against her lips. “Don’t think about it,” he advised. “Just feel. Let your instincts take over.”

He didn’t need to persuade her. Her mental processes had all but shut down. She was a bundle of yearning, frightened by the ferocity of the desire that gripped her, that made her want to climb his body and coil her legs around him. How could she want a man who infuriated her?

Glancing down, she watched her buttons melt apart beneath his deft fingers, exposing the purple satin bra she wore, stretched taut over her peaked nipples. He bent his head, and her breath caught as he tipped her back and nuzzled her, grazing her tender flesh with his teeth.

She clung to him to keep from falling.

With a feral growl, Solomon swung her onto the sofa. He went down on his knees and divested her completely of her blouse and bra. Before she knew it, she was leaning back against the cushions completely topless, her body on fire. He put his hands on her, stroked her from her neck to her navel and back up again, cupped her breasts, lowered his mouth, and drank of her.

Oh, God.
Jordan had never felt desire like this. The passion roaring through her blood was a hurricane where, in the past, she’d only experienced spring showers.

She had to get her legs apart—
now
—only her skirt was in the way. With a tug and a wriggle, she bunched it shamelessly at her waist and anchored him with her thighs to keep him close.

This is biology
,
she repeated to herself. Animal instinct. She hadn’t had sex in so long, she was rabid with need. What else explained this compulsion to incinerate?

Leaving her nipples taut and aching, he dove into her mouth again and kissed her till she was light-headed. His eyes flashed with a predatory light as he pulled back suddenly, watching her reaction as he placed his hands on her thighs and stroked them, higher, higher.

“Say my name,” he commanded.

“Solomon,” she whispered, burning with ferocious desire, her eyelids so heavy she could scarcely keep them open.

He seized her knees, lifting them from his hips to his shoulders, and then he looked down at her. She followed his gaze to where the crotch of her purple panties peeked out beneath the hem of her rucked skirt, the most erotic sight she’d ever seen.

Very lightly, teasingly, he moved his thumb over the exposed mound. A satin panel was the only thing between them. Jordan swallowed a moan as liquid heat instantly dampened it.

He asked her a question so explicit that she could only tremble and nod her head.
Yes. Oh, please, yes.

With a smile of anticipation, he drew her panties down her legs, slowly, building her excitement. He kissed her inner thighs, his lips hot and silky. He nuzzled her with his moustache, breathed deeply. “You smell so good,” he muttered, and then he devoured her.

Jordan came off the cushion, then settled back down as his devouring turned into languid caresses, followed by flicks and nips that had her digging her nails into the fabric of the cushions. The room reeled, and her blood roared. An unfamiliar voice cried out and moaned before she realized it was her own.

She was at the verge of splintering into a million pieces when he suddenly stood up.

Spread-eagled, her senses too drugged to allow for self-consciousness, Jordan watched shamelessly as Solomon stripped off his shirt, exposing a chest that made her inner muscles clench with desire. He released the buckle of his belt, unzipped his jeans, and stepped out of them. Jordan forgot how to breathe.
Oh. My.

This was her last opportunity to run. Instead, she reached for him. But he sidestepped her.

With an effortlessness that made her gasp, he hooked an arm beneath her waist and swung her lengthwise on the couch. He crawled over on top of her, his expression taut, his eyes like twin lasers.

Jordan’s hands came up. With awe and just the tiniest bit intimidated, she ran her palms over his thickly corded arms to the bulging muscles of his upper chest and the mat of dark fur at the center. “Now touch me,” he encouraged, roughly.

Heart pounding with discovery, she smoothed her fingertips downward, over the taut surface of his abdomen to his jutting arousal. His eyes melted shut as she closed her hands over him, marveling at the contrast of satin softness and unrelenting turgidity. An impulse compelled her to band his thickness, and he shuddered, growling low in his throat.

A moment later, he wrested her hands from him, held them against the cushions on either side of her head, and centered himself. His face was ruddy with expectancy, his gaze focused. In the next instant, he was entering with purpose, retreating, entering again—filling her, filling her, filling her, until their hips ground together. She whimpered, torn between a feeling of utter fulfillment and still wanting more.

She could feel his heart hammering against her breasts. “Open your eyes,” he softly growled. “I want you to know who’s fucking you.”

Shocked, her eyes flew open. He could have said making love or having sex, something a little less crude. But then again, at the moment, the man was like the act: base and instinctual, totally driven by his lust and passions. He’d pushed her so far beyond her normal impulses that she nearly reveled in his crudeness.

He thrust again, and Jordan’s vision blurred. She couldn’t believe this was happening; couldn’t believe the intensity of the feelings crashing through her. Crude or not, what he was doing felt incredible.

He kissed her, his tongue imitating the movements of his lower body. The maddening assault made her whimper and squirm. He released her hands, giving her freedom to rake his warm shoulders with her nails, to clutch him closer, as their straining grew urgent, tempestuous.

A roaring filled her ears. Her skin was on fire.

“Look at me,” Solomon commanded against her lips.

She slit her eyes open, excited beyond bearing by his insistence, frightened by the power of the release that was on the verge of detonating. “Solomon!” she cried, skewered by his silver gaze as she tensed, arched, threw her head back and screamed, overpowered by the force and magnitude of her climax.

She felt him convulse deep inside of her before pulling out on a groan. An unmistakable, wet warmth landed on her thigh as he used his own hand to finish what they’d started.

Jordan hadn’t given a thought to birth control. Neither had Solomon, apparently, until it was almost over. “Sorry,” he muttered, catching her startled look. “I’ll get a towel.”

With a ripple of muscles, he withdrew and walked in splendid nakedness down the hall to fetch a towel. Jordan looked down at herself, disbelievingly.

Her skirt was twisted around her waist. Solomon’s ejaculate glistened like pearls next to her auburn curls. Seeing it, a surge of emotion crested unexpectedly inside of her. She held in the sudden urge to weep by holding her breath.

He reappeared, towel in hand. With a hot face, she watched him wipe away all traces. He caught her eye, perhaps catching a glimpse of the unwieldy emotion she struggled to contain. “You okay?” he asked her gruffly.

“Yes. I have to go.” She scooted quickly to the edge of the couch, stood, and covered herself, hunting for her clothing.

This wasn’t supposed to have affected her emotions.

Solomon remained in one place, totally unself-conscious and apparently unaffected. “What’s the hurry?” he finally asked.