Private Passions (11 page)

Her dagger didn't miss its mark. "It should
be obvious now that that couldn't be further from the truth," he
said, and tightened his arms around her. "I'm sorry I made you feel
that way, but at the time I thought you regretted what happened.
Seemed a lot simpler just to get the hell out of your life." Not to
mention, there was no way in hell he could go back to being just
Deck the bodyguard, no more important than a piece of furniture. He
wouldn't have lasted a day without crossing the line.

As evidenced by his willingness to fly across
the country and then some on the wild chance she might want to give
them a shot at something real.

She nodded against his chest. "I know. I'm
sorry I made you feel like I was just using you."

"Oh, you can use me all you want," Deck said
with a low chuckle. "I just didn't like the implication that I was
going to go cash in by blabbing to the tabloids about it."

"I should have trusted you," she said with a
wince and a shake of her head. "I do trust you," she said, her
green stare suddenly crystal clear and piercing.

He felt a twist of unease in his chest at the
intensity of her stare. Was she trying to let him know that she
trusted him not to tell this time around too? Was she still afraid
"fucking the help" would irretrievably damage her image? He tried
to shove the thought away, but there was a lingering bitter taste
in his mouth. He curved his hand around the back of her head and
held her still to meet his kiss, determined to chase it away. "So
you didn't answer my question," he said when he came up for air,
feeling a surge of satisfaction when he saw that her eyes had gone
slightly blurry once again. "How long do we have?"

How long do I have to convince you that what
we can have together trumps anything anyone else might have to say
about us?

"The studio agreed to shoot everything they
can without me, but I absolutely have to be on the set May first.
I'll need to go home a few days early to help Hailey pack me
up."

It was already April eighteenth. "So we have
a week, give or take a few days."

Jane nodded. "Then it's back to brutal
reality, whether I like it or not." She tried to smile, but there
was no hiding the downward curve to her mouth.

"I'll just have to make the most of it," Deck
scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the shower. He
turned on the faucets and adjusted the temperature before he pulled
her into the spray. One week, he thought, as he lathered his hands
with soap and ran them over the plump curves of her breasts. One
week to convince Jane that her reality would be a lot more bright
and a lot less brutal if she let him be a part of it.

###

They spent the next several days swimming,
sunning, and having the kind of sex Jane never imagined existed in
real life. Deck took her through her personal catalog and then
blazed his own path.

Now they lay naked on one of double loungers,
Jane on her stomach, her head turned to face Deck. He was on his
side, his head propped on one elbow while his other arm rested
possessively on her hip.

"So what do you really want to do?" Deck
prompted.

Over the past few days, when they weren't
having loads of amazing sex, Jane and Deck had spent hours talking.
She was surprised to find that although he'd always come off as
stoic and somewhat closed off, Deck was amazingly easy to talk to.
Maybe, like her, he'd been careful all these years not to open up
too much, afraid he'd reveal something he didn't want her to
see.

But now that he'd opened up—and gotten her to
open up—she found herself able to talk about things she never
discussed, even with her closest friends. Like the fact that even
though her movie career was just beginning, she really wanted for
this movie to be her last for a good long while—maybe even forever,
so she could focus on other things. "I'd really like to move behind
the cameras," she replied. "I've spent ten years now basically
playing the same person, and I want to do something that's more
interesting."

"What about your role in
The House on
Mulberry Lane
? That was something different," Deck pointed
out.

"That was the one movie out of the last four
where I wasn't playing the sweetly clueless chick from the sticks,
another variation of Sarah Nelson," she said, referring to her role
on the long running sitcom
Best Friends Forever
that had
made her a household name. "Don't get me wrong," she continued,
"Sarah Nelson bought me my house and made my career, but I'm
getting too old to play the innocent ingenue-"

"Ooh, thirty-two. You're practically
ancient-" Deck interjected.

Jane gave him a playful swat on the arm. "You
know what I mean. And not only will the parts dry up, that's not
even close to who I am any more. I'm not some bright-eyed innocent
who hasn't experienced anything. I've got too many battle scars for
that."

"So why not quit the acting and do what you
want?"

She shook her head. "I can't. Not yet. Not
until I have a couple of projects under my belt so people will
actually take me seriously. If I announced right now I planned to
quit acting to produce and direct, it wou;d be like, 'ha ha, there
goes Jane, playing at directing to take her mind off her disaster
of a personal life.' Then my agent would fire me because he'd
realize he couldn't make any money off me and the next thing you
know the only gig I can get is on some reality show."

Deck was silent a few seconds. "Do you ever
think about what might happen if you spent more time focusing on
what would make you happy instead of what people think about
you?"

Jane swallowed hard as Deck's question struck
a chord. What would really make her happy? She hadn't thought about
it in such a long time she didn't even know.

Right here, right now, this makes you happy,
a little voice whispered. But this isn't real, another, more
logical voice retorted. This is a fantasy, and no matter how happy
it makes you, it can't exist in the chaos that is your reality.
"Where I am right now, I have to think about how everything looks
to the rest of the world. What about you?" she asked, ready to turn
the spotlight off herself. "Are you happy doing what you're doing?
Did you ever want to do anything else after you got out of the
army?"

Deck's full lips spread in a smile. "Growing
up in Big Timber Montana, population sixteen hundred, did I think
I'd have a career training celebrities to fight and guarding the
body of the most beautiful woman in the world?"

Her face flushed as he squeezed her hip in
emphasis.

"No, that didn't ever enter my mind. To tell
the truth, I didn't have much of a clue what I wanted to do. The
military was a given for me and my brothers—every man in my family
has served since the civil war. When I got out, all I knew is I
wasn't ready to go back to Montana. Sam—you know him from Holley
Cay—hooked me up with Malcolm's company and it turned out to be a
great opportunity. And it got me here," he said, grinning as he
leaned in to kiss her, "so I've got no complaints."

Jane smiled and kissed him back. "I never
even knew you had brothers," she mused when he lifted his mouth
from hers.

"You never asked."

There was no rebuke in his tone, but she felt
the sting of shame nonetheless. She'd known him for years and had
never bothered to ask him anything about his life, his family
before she knew him.

"I've got two, both younger" he continued,
"Damon and Dylan—my parents were into the 'd' names. Damon runs the
convenience store and filling station next to my dad's garage, and
David is still in the army.

"I wish I'd had a brother or sister," Jane
said softly. "My mom would have had someone else to distract her."
Instead of raising Jane to be her best friend and closest
confidant, burdening her with adult situations and emotions a child
had no business handling. But they weren't talking about her family
right now, she reminded herself sharply.

She looked up and met Deck's gaze. "I suppose
you think I'm pretty self-centered, never asking about you and your
family."

Deck shrugged and ran his hand idly down the
curve of her waist. "I think in your situation, with everyone
watching your every move, it would be impossible not to be."

"I suppose, but that still doesn't seem like
such a great excuse."

He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair
back from her cheek, and she marveled at how just the mere brush of
his thumb was enough to send a ripple of awareness through her. As
he continued to regard her with his heavy-lidded amber gaze, Jane
became acutely aware of the heat of his nakedness and her own. Of
the heat of his sunbaked skin emanating off of him, surrounding
her.

Her entire body went tight with awareness,
her nipples beading against the cushion under her, her sex
clenching between her thighs.

Deck felt it too. She could tell in the
subtle sharpening of his features, the slight flare of his nostrils
as he took a deep inhale.

She rolled to her side and reached between
them, trailing her hand down the taut line of his abs to take him
in her hand. He was huge and hard in her hand, pulsing eagerly in
her palm as she stroked him from root to tip.

"You know," she said, "I'm not always
entirely self-centered." She leaned in and gave his neck a teasing
nip, felt the thrill of satisfaction as he shuddered and
groaned.

He breathed her name and threaded his fingers
through her hair, shifting to his back as he tried to pull her down
over him.

She pressed her free hand against his chest.
"Lay back." Still stroking his cock, she settled between his legs
and leaned over his chest. His lips parted on a sharp inhale as he
realized what she intended, and his eyes closed on a groan as she
pressed her hot, open mouth against his throat and started her
descent.

She teased him with hot swipes of her tongue
and teasing nips of her teeth. She couldn't get enough of the warm
salty taste of him in her mouth, the way his corded muscles shifted
and strained at every soft caress. She sucked one flat, brown
nipple into her mouth and ran her tongue over the tattoo above his
heart, which she now knew was the insignia for the Army Green
Berets.

She shifted lower, trailing her tongue down
the hard line of muscle that bisected his abs. Her moan echoed his
as one of her nipples brushed against the smooth, hard column of
his cock. She leaned closer, pressing the soft curves against his
hardness. A rush of hot moisture flooded between her thighs as his
hips bucked under her.

"Christ, Jane, you're driving me crazy," he
groaned harshly.

Her lips curved into a smile but she didn't
relent, her own breath growing harsh at the feel of the smooth,
plump head of his cock circling against her hyper sensitive
nipples. At the sight of him, so huge and powerful yet completely
under her control as she teased and tormented him. Desire tightened
low in her belly and she marveled that she was almost as turned on
as he was.

She squeezed and stroked as she continued
down, exploring every ridge of his rock hard abs, circling his
navel with her tongue until the sounds ripping from his chest were
those of a man suffering extreme torture.

"Please, baby," he said as his legs shifted
helplessly against the thick cushion.

"Please what?" she whispered against the
smooth patch of skin on his inner thigh. "I want you to say
it."

"I want your mouth on my cock. I want to feel
your lips sucking me, your tongue licking me," he broke off with a
harsh groan as she finally gave him exactly what he wanted.

She closed her mouth over him and swirled her
tongue against the head, her sex clenching at the way he seemed to
swell even bigger against her tongue.

She rose up on her knees and moved her head
down, sucking him deep until she could feel him pressing against
the back of her throat. He was so big it was impossible for her to
take more than a few inches. She used her hands, stroking him in
rhythm with her steady sucking, cupping his balls in her other palm
in a gentle tease.

His fist tightened in her hair, and she could
feel the iron hard restraint it took for him not to grab the back
of her head and shove his cock down her throat.

She could feel her sex pulsing in time to the
thick vein throbbing against her tongue. She'd never been so turned
on going down on a lover. She was certain that if she squeezed her
thighs hard enough she'd come along with him. She slanted her gaze
up to his, felt the throbbing between her legs grow heavier at the
molten heat in his eyes, at the fierce cast desire leant to his
features.

He was pulled tight as a bowstring, a man on
the verge, a man pushed to the brink of insanity by his need.

His need for her.

The thought made her moan around his cock,
the sound blending with his shout. He froze for a millisecond, then
he was jerking and pulsing in her mouth. She stroked him with her
fist and sucked him hard, not stopping until she'd wrung him of
every last drop.

She released him with a kiss that sent
another aftershock rippling through his limp form. She pushed to
her knees and felt a satisfied smile tug at her lips as she took in
his huge form sprawled across the lounger, drained of every bit of
strength in his powerful body.

Because of her and how she made him feel.

As it often had in these past few days with
Deck, something powerful welled up inside her at the thought.
Something that went beyond self satisfaction at getting her lover
off, beyond her own satisfaction of having a lover who took care of
her every need and then some. Being with Deck, in every way—not
just sex—made her feel, for the first time in a very long time,
that absolutely everything was right in her world. That she was
exactly where she should be. With the exact person she should be
with.