Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (61 page)

“I want to fuck,” she said brutally, releasing the knot of her kimono, as she backed up to the window, bracing her naked shoulder blades against the glass. “I want to feel. Make me feel, Jack,” she rasped, her voice hoarse with desire, breasts jutting up. His mouth turned cotton-dry, hot flame rolling through his blood as he looked at her.

God, it had been so long…
too long.

Samantha pushed the rest of the heavy kimono down, letting the silk pool at her feet as she stood naked before him, the angles and curves of her body illuminated and shadowed simultaneously by the moonlight. Jack was struck by the visual—didn’t think he’d forget it as long as he lived—her standing there, exposed, scarred yet beautiful, her body open to him, though her heart remained inscrutable, an enigma.

Jack slid a hand up her neck, tilting her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. He could see she didn’t want to talk, but she was brimming so full of unexpressed emotion that the only way she knew how to deal with it was to screw it out. Jack knew what that felt like. He’d played that game more than a few times.

“If I take you, Samantha—I’m not giving you back,” he warned her, gripping the back of her neck in one hand, his other hand sliding down her side, slipping over the old wounds until he got a good grip on her ass.

She stared back at him, wordless, eyes black and gleaming, fierce and vulnerable at the same time. She slid her hands up his face, fingers pushing through the tangle of his hair as she bent him to her and took his mouth aggressively, like she was staking her claim. With each flexing stroke of her tongue, Jack mimicked the movement with his hips, rolling against her, making her feel him. He lifted her up, ballasting her against the glass, the city glowing beneath them like a galaxy.

“This what you want?” he taunted, “To be taken? To be possessed and dominated by someone stronger? So you don’t have to think? So you don’t have to look too closely at what I make you feel?”

“Do it,” Samantha demanded suddenly, pulling back enough so she could fit him to her, bathing him in the sleek heat as she undulated against him. “I need you, Jack—I need
this…
—” her breath broke into a gasp as he obliged her, bringing her full weight down on him as he pushed through the soft, wet tissue, forcing her open, making her take him to the root.

Jack groaned against her throat at the incredible feel of her, like hot silk.

God, I fucking missed you—missed this—missed us—

Samantha threw her head back as she gasped out her cries, her shoulders braced against the glass, tilting up to meet each upward-plunge greedily. His mouth found her breast, sucking strongly, with each pull and stroke inside her spreading super-nova pleasure through his body, making him harder, rougher, faster. She answered each hammering, vicious stroke with plangent, groaning cries, straining against the pressure, driving against him, pushing him back, then pulling him in … in …

I could do this forever—love you forever—

Samantha tightened around him, riding the heat, the tell-tale spasms beginning too fast, too soon.

No
—
Not yet—

Jack wanted her open, needed her to stay with him like this, raw and unshielded. He pried her off the glass, swinging them both around to move toward the bed. He pushed her down to the soft linen sheets, and Samantha turned over, gripping one of the pillows from the top of the bed and dragging it down before she situated it under her hips.

She looked over her shoulder at him, sexy, devilish, and determined. “Don’t go easy, Jack. Make me feel you.” She gripped his wrist, draping him over her back, and Jack let her do it, pushing back inside with a digging shove, making her trill and gasp with the delicious pain-pleasure of it. He pulled back, almost completely, changing the angle just enough to strike against that perfect spot with his next drive inward, making her jolt and clench.

He gave her what she wanted: a vicious, visceral cadence that had him gritting his teeth as he buried himself over and over, awash in sensation, driving forward, sliding back, the friction mind-bendingly good. Samantha groaned and writhed, pushing back, lost in the pleasure, the accumulating pressure, gripping the thick muscles of his wrist as he bent over her, serving her relentlessly.

But there was a feeling of unreality about it. Jack couldn’t see her face, couldn’t gauge her expressions as she bowed and pressed against the mattress, her sex sounds hard and fractured, like she was going to get off regardless of whether it was him fucking her or the ghost of someone else. It could be any cock, any man attached to it. She was fucking him like a nameless, faceless stranger, and he was letting her do it.

Jack wanted her to see him, acknowledge him—
choose
him. Not Wes. No other man. Just as he wanted no other woman. His need for her was intense, possessive, almost violent. But he didn’t want to claim her. He didn’t want to demand her submission. Jack needed Samantha to give herself to him.

Choose me, Samantha.

Jack pulled out, flipping her over and dragging her down to him, opening her thighs, seeing the wet, tender center of her, blooming for him like the unfurling of a tight pink bud. He slid his fingers down her face, turning her face to him, making her meet his eyes—
see
him before he’d come into her again. Samantha gazed back in a daze, motionless, waiting to be filled. Jack wanted in that moment to tell her she was the fixed point of his universe. He wanted her to tell him she felt the same.

She was open and resistless now, slick and protean—a rarity he was going to take advantage of. He eased back, hooking her knee over his arm, levering her upward so he could shunt inside, deep and easy, his pace deliberately delayed, slow and dreamy compared to the hard fucking he’d been giving her just a moment ago. Samantha pushed and struggled, spread wide and helpless beneath the erotic gentleness of his movements. He wanted her to lose her infamous composure. He wanted to see what she looked like in total abandon, when she trusted him completely.

“No,” she panted, gripping his flexing ass harder, trying to force him deeper. “
No
—I don’t want it like this, Jack.”

“Like what?” he taunted, staring down at her, making her accept his pace, the shallow thrusts that teased and parried. “You don’t want me to make love to you?”

He leaned down to kiss her, and she jerked her head back, staring up at him, an angry flush in her neck rising to her cheeks, making her look even more wild. “I want you to fuck me, Jack. Just fuck me
hard
,” she insisted, gripping his face.

“No,
tesoro
,” he said against her lips. “Just let me love you. Even if you can’t take everything I want to give you yet—trust me to take care of you. Trust me to give you what you need, a little at a time.”

“Jack,” she breathed, struggling restlessly, trying to take what she wanted, the way she demanded it. He kissed her hard and sweet and long. Jack kissed her into stillness, his ministrations tender, sensing they were at the brink of something. He felt the tension of her conflicting desires—wanting to force him back, but powerfully drawn to him, needing to bring him closer. He waited her out, his patience steely. He wanted to take all her walls and raze them to the ground, but Samantha had to come to her own conclusions. She had to bring down her own barriers. He eased back slowly, but she stopped him from leaving her, clamping her knees around his hips like a vise.

“Fine, we’ll do it your way,” she said almost warily, her whisky voice breathless and halting, like she couldn’t believe what she was saying.

Jack stroked his thumb over her lips. “And which way is that,
tesoro
?”

She turned her head away, but he urged her back around. “Which way is that,
tesoro
?” he asked again, wanting her to just say it.
Just say the words, Samantha
.

Samantha closed her eyes, opened them again. She took a deep breath and said, “Love me, Jack. I want you to love me.”

“Why?” he pressed, caressing her cheekbone.

“Because I love you so goddamn much, it hurts,” she admitted roughly. “Because the idea of not having you in my life just tears me apart, Jack. I don’t know if I’m going to fucking survive any of this, but if I do, I want you with me, alright? I want
you.
Just
you.
”

*

April—Midnight

Wyatt Towers, Houston, Texas

S A M A N T H A

Jack smiled slowly,
and Sam held onto him, suspended between fearful longing and her intense love for this man, her body beginning to shake a little from the effects of trying to encompass and process too many feelings. She didn’t want to want him, to
need
him—because every time Sam had allowed herself the luxury of loving deeply, she’d lost that person, and each deprivation was more painful and wrenching than the last. But God in heaven, this man made her want to believe in something greater than herself. She didn’t know if she believed in forever, but Sam wanted to believe in
him
. She wanted to believe Jack meant everything he said, that each loving look, each intimate touch, each whispered promise—that it was all so much more than a fleeting passion.

She’d come in here feeling hot and agitated, was readying for battle, the crucible she’d been living in almost at boiling point. She’d been unable to give voice to her worries that this might very well be their last chance together. She just knew that she wanted this man. This breathtakingly beautiful, provocative, intelligent, honorable man. Sam wanted the world to stop for just a few hours. She wanted desperately to lose herself in his incandescent eyes, have him break her open and draw her out. She wanted him to push her into climaxes so powerful, she’d be numb afterward, drained of the fear within her—so she could be ready to wage war. Win or lose.

“What does that mean?” she whispered, her heart pounding.

“It means trust me to love you,
tesoro,
” Jack whispered into her ear, making her tremble.

“Show me,” she whispered back, aware that she was making a decision now—one she could never reverse. One she didn’t want to.

Jack’s teeth fastened around the tender lobe, tugging gently as he began to move again. His pace was focused and tireless, and each time she tried to urge him faster, Jack pushed her back, making her relax into the pleasure, making her yield to the steady, deliberate strokes. Sam choked out a needy sound, pressing against him, unable to get close enough, pulling helplessly, taking more and more of him, suspended somewhere between the tenderness of his love and the violence of her passion.

Jack remained wholly absorbed in her, intensely focused on the moment, winnowing each of her responses from her as he drove deep and then lingered, testing and teasing and tantalizing until the friction became too much.

I want you I want you I want—

Samantha dissolved around him, lost in the undertow of a rich, brimming release he prolonged with his slow, rolling rhythm. The feel of his supple skin, the scent of their sex, the taste of him in her mouth, the way he reached into her so deep it nearly hurt—it all was too much, too all-encompassing, too good from every angle. She felt herself spiral, contracting around him, clutching helplessly as the dizzying madness of her climax consumed her. Jack watched her with a kind of possessive gleam in his eyes until he finally gave into his own pleasure, shouting out his release, gripping her thighs, her breasts, her face, forcing her to look at him, to watch as he succumbed to her, a relentless stream of Italian coming from his mouth so fast she couldn’t begin to comprehend it all.

Afterward, Sam lay quiet in his arms, back to chest, her body heavy and replete with satisfaction, his fingers toying with the full-slip sweetness of her sex, still tender from their lovemaking.

“I came in here for something else,” she confessed in the quiet, coolness of the room, feeling safe in the darkness.

“I know.” He kissed and nipped her shoulder.

Sam looked over her shoulder at him. “Why do you think I came?” she asked, wondering if he really knew her as well as he thought he did.

Jack looked back at her with surprising gravity, his fingertips drawing goosebumps from her as they slid down her arm.

“You came to say goodbye to me tonight, like you did in Chicago. Like you did with Wes in Afghanistan.”

She was surprised at the unerring accuracy of his statement, at the lack of recrimination in his tone. “How did you know?”

Jack’s hand drifted around to her front, slipping over the thudding beat of her heart. “The only way you know how to feel invincible is when your back is in the corner and you think you’ve got nothing to lose, Samantha,” he told her frankly. He pulled her back against him, his lips finding hers again.

“I’ve lost so much in my life,” she murmured, running her fingers over his jaw.

“I know you have, baby. But what kind of life is there in denying yourself the people standing right in front of you?” he asked, touching her hair.