Rhyannon Byrd - Waiting For It (12 page)

The only thing she couldn’t figure out was what this gorgeous man was doing here with her in the first place.

Chapter 9

Jake’s desire to care for her seemed to have no end as he gently wrapped her wet body in a soft, fluffy towel and carried her back to their wreck of a bed. While she watched him with curious eyes, he pulled her brush from her small bag of toiletries and settling himself behind her, slowly began working the tangles from her hair, his strokes amazingly gentle considering his intimidating size and strength.

When he was done, he tossed her wet towel on a nearby chair and pulled her chilled body beneath his own, heating her faster than any blanket or fire ever could. With a wicked, carnal smile, he began kissing his way down her front, beginning with the delicate lobes of her ears, over her throat, treating her puffy pink nipples to slow, wet strokes with the flat of his tongue, and then trailing biting kisses down the center of her stomach straight to the soft, luxurious patch of curls decorating the apex of her thighs.

Then he stopped, and she moaned from the loss of his mobile lips as he rolled her to her stomach, working her body as easily as a doll, repeating the same process on her back. He gave a provocative lick to the sensitive skin across the nape of her neck, then kissed his way down the elegant slope of her spine. Even the cheeks of her ass were treated to gentle, teasing bites, and then he stopped, flipping her back to her front again.

Taylor looked up at him from beneath her lashes, her mind flooding with memories of him as a boy, marveling at the fact that she was here with him like this now—every facet of her being, both emotionally and physically, being ravaged by the powerful man he had become. He was everything she’d always known he’d be…and so much more.

He was devastating—in the truest, most brilliant sense of the world.

“Do you remember the last time we ever saw each other? The night before you left?” Her voice was  husky from her earlier cries of pleasure, her limbs feeling deliciously heavy as she raised her hand to  sift through the black silk of his hair.

“Yeah, I remember,” he rasped, drawing her hand to his mouth.

His lips pressed a tender kiss to her palm, as if he were desperate to place a claim on every part of her.

“I almost hated you that night,” she whispered, recalling the torment of finding him screwing Wanda  Merton in the backseat of Mitch’s car at the drive-in. It’d been just a few weeks after his graduation,  and she’d gone on one of those rare outings with her mother, to the movies of all things. She’d been on  her way to the restrooms when she’d passed Mitch’s car parked four rows behind where her mother had  parked their old Chevy.

She still remembered with perfect clarity walking up to the door and opening it, fully expecting to find  Mitch screwing around with someone inside, instead of being on the hunting trip he’d claimed to be taking with his Dad. But the face that had looked back at her from the backseat hadn’t been Mitch’s.  No, it’d been Jake’s, his eyes shocked wide, staring straight back at her while she’d stood there for those stunned seconds, watching Wanda ride him while he sat sprawled across the backseat. She’d wanted to run—to run and find the nearest place to lose the churning contents of her stomach, but her feet had been rooted in place. At least until Wanda had thrown back her head, her long red hair tumbling down her naked back, and let out a bloodcurdling scream while her then thin body had writhed in the throes of ecstasy.

Suddenly she’d been running across the dirt lot, her feet moving without any recognizable direction from her brain—and then Jake had been grasping onto her arm from behind, pulling her around so quickly she’d been thrown against him.

“Get away from me!” she’d screamed, hating the fact that he would see her tears. Hating the fact that  she cared what he did and with whom. Hating that it hurt so badly—that she wanted him for her own.  She’d lashed out in her fury, pounding her small fists against his sweatshirt-covered chest, struggling to  be set free.

“Taylor, damn it, stop it before you hurt yourself,” he’d growled, gripping her upper arms so that he  could hold her still. His green eyes had been wild as he’d stared down at her in the moonlit darkness,  hair tousled from his back seat romp with Wanda, blue jeans hanging onto his hips by sheer force of  will, the fly still undone. His cock had been a long, thick ridge beneath the soft cotton of his boxers— her every sense tuned into the fact that he was still hard.

“How could you?” she’d groaned, not knowing where the words tumbling past her lips were coming

from, unable to stop them. “How could you do that with
her
 
, Jake?”

It was bad enough that she’d found him in the act with another girl, when she’d loved him with all the budding passion of a young girl’s heart, but the fact that it was Wanda had simply been too much to bear. Wanda, who had systematically tried to make her life a living hell. Wanda, who had spent the

entire year trying to turn people against her. Taylor hadn’t even known why the captain of the

cheerleading squad hated her—she only knew that she did.

Jake’s hands had tightened against her flesh, fingers biting hard enough to bruise. He’d pulled her closer, not close enough that they were actually touching, but close enough that he could lean down and look her in the eye, face to face. “What’s it to you who I fuck, Taylor?”

She’d swallowed her girlish pride enough to say, “Nothing, Jake. Fuck every whore in town if that’s what you want.”

His face had tightened, a pained look of need spilling from the deep green pools of his eyes. “What do you know about what I want? You may see me every damn day of my life, but you don’t know shit about me.” Then his eyes had traveled over her tear-stained face in the softest, most intimate caress, as if he’d touched her with a gentle brush of his lips instead. “You don’t have a fucking clue, Taylor.”

Then he’d let her go, taken a quick step back away from her, and then another, his big hands clenching into fists at his sides. She’d watched him with anxious eyes, knowing he was trying to tell her something, but too naïve to understand what it was.

And they’d stood there just like that, staring across the moonlit darkness for what seemed like forever, until the car on the low rise above them had started honking its horn for them to move.

“When you talk to him, tell Mitch I’ll leave his car at the school,” he’d said in a low, hoarse rumble,  and with a last sweep of his smoldering green eyes down the length of her body, he’d turned and  walked away.

That was the last time she’d ever seen him.

Until today.

And now she lay on her back beneath him, her entire body strumming in anticipation, her skin tingling from the slow burn he ignited, making her simmer. It was an odd feeling, both relaxing and uncomfortably exciting, languid yet expectant, so that it was both a shocking relief and a startling rush of ecstasy when his fingers found her center, two twisting deep into her core, thick and wide, scraping her inner walls with his short nails as he explored the fist-tight sheath.

When he spoke, his voice was a deep rasp of need, honest and sincere. “I remember that night, Taylor.  I remember that I wanted you more than anything in the world. More than my own life. I remember almost hating you for wanting you so bad, until it was like a sickness in my gut, pulling me apart. I remember screwing Wanda if for no other reason than to get back at you for not wanting me the same way.”

He leaned down, brushing his lips across hers, rubbing the words into them. “I remember thinking of you the entire time I was pounding inside of her, and when I saw you looking in through that open car door, it was like a knife through my heart. I felt so sick and ashamed I wanted to fucking die, so angry and hungry for you I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and take you away from this place forever.  Take you anywhere where I could make you mine.”

He lifted his face, looking straight into her big brown eyes, knowing that everything he felt was there on his face for her to see, if she’d only look close enough. “I knew that night that I had to go, but I shouldn’t have left without you, Taylor. I should have told you how I felt. You
are
 
mine, and I should have taken you with me. And I’ve regretted not doing it every second of every miserable fucking day  I’ve spent without you.”

Her eyes closed, smooth brow knitted in thought, and his heart sank. He watched as her long lashes lifted, and when she looked back up at him, he knew she wasn’t going to acknowledge the words that had tumbled forth from his heart. The words that he wanted to keep saying and shouting again and again until she finally got the message. Until they finally battered down all those damn walls she’d spent the last ten years of her life erecting. Fortifying. Hiding behind.

“What—what made you decide to build houses?”

The sudden, abrupt change in topic was jolting, and he removed his hand from between her thighs with a small sigh, knowing he’d pushed her too far again too quickly. With an inner grimace, he thought about how to answer what should have been a very simple question—but wasn’t.

Taylor could tell by his expression that he was weighing his words, deciding on how much to tell her.  It was odd, she mused, because his choice of occupations couldn’t have had anything to do with her.  Maybe it had to do with a woman.

Someone from his past?

Not that she wanted to know about her, but then Jake wasn’t likely to go spouting off about some old girlfriend either. He was too much of a gentleman for that—though not so much of one that he didn’t completely overpower her with his aggressive, dominant sexuality.

And that was just fine by her, she thought with a luxurious stretch of deliciously well-used muscles, refusing to think about the warm rush of ecstasy his heart stopping words had sent rocketing through her.

Fine and fucking dandy.

His eyes watched the movement of her body as she stretched, following every shift of muscle as she moved with total, almost fixated attention. A long sigh of feminine pride passed her lips, and the corner of his mouth lifted, his hand moving from her thigh to rest heavily upon her stomach.

He rubbed slow circles around her navel, watching the motion of his big, dark hand against her pale flesh, and answered her question. “I knew I didn’t want to be stuck behind some desk for the rest of my life, stuffed inside a suit and kissing corporate ass every damn day.”

He snorted, shaking his head, and she watched as the movement caused a lock of black silk to fall down across his brow, giving him an even more rakish appearance.

“After I blew my knee out my sophomore year of college, football was out of the question, so I sat  back and thought about what was really important to me—what I really wanted to spend the rest of my  life doing.”

Without meeting her eyes, his hand still making those slow, delirious circles, he added, “Learning to build someone’s foundation—maybe even their dream—with my own hands seemed like a fairly meaningful thing to do, though it probably sounds lame as hell.”

“Don’t do that, Jake,” she said, hating to hear him belittle something that had obviously been a very  important decision to him. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to give your life meaning. Nothing  wrong with it being about more than a paycheck.” She smiled, thinking of the brand new full sized  truck parked outside the hotel and the fact that he’d repaid his start up loan within his first two years of  business. “Though I’m thinking your doing all right in the paycheck department as well.”

His index finger dipped into her navel, while his fingers and thumb spread, nearly spanning the width of her stomach. “I can’t complain, sugar, but it’s not about the money. I need to be out in the sun and the rain and the snow, working with my hands, going till my muscles burn and I’m soaked in sweat. It’s grueling, but it’s what keeps me sane.”

And in such mouthwatering shape, Taylor mused silently to herself. “It sounds just like you,” she whispered, finding it ridiculously erotic to watch him watching his hand on her stomach. “Your life—building things that are exceptionally beautiful and strong—that suits you, Jake.”

He lifted his head, his glittering green eyes capturing her gaze. “You’re beautiful—and strong, but for some damn reason, you just don’t know it,” he murmured in a husky caress, seducing her with his voice alone.

She would have loved to believe him, but she had to be truthful—at least about this. “I’m not strong,

Jake. Not at all.”

“You are, Taylor, but you just don’t see it. You think I don’t know the hell it’s been for you to stay  here—through your marriage and after? Damn, Taylor, anyone else would’ve run at the first chance,  but you stayed.”

She shook her head slightly. “That was just stupid, stubborn pride, Jake—not strength. I’ve let people walk all over me my entire life.”

His brow arched, fingers flexing against the firm muscles of her belly. “And what about when you knocked Jackson Blaine’s teeth down his throat at the Winter Wonderland Dance when he came up behind you and grabbed one of your pretty little breasts?”

“He was asking for it, the jerk,” she mumbled, unable to stop the blush from spreading across her  cheeks. “And I wasn’t the only girl who’d had enough of his groping. By the end of the night, someone  had given him a black eye to go along with his busted lip.”

His mouth twitched, eyes gleaming with a mischievous sparkle. “You didn’t,” she gasped, though the idea of Jake having stood up for her back then sent a warm feeling through her fluttering stomach that had nothing to do with sex. “If they’d found out, you would’ve gotten thrown off the varsity team for fighting!”