SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (29 page)

"I like that."

"What else?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"What I did before wasn't ...
this.
If that was sex, this isn't. If you know what I mean."

Jax sat back on his heels and contemplated the woman stretched before him on the mounded pillows. Her lips were swollen and scarlet from his kisses. Her round breasts with their large golden-brown aureoles, now coral-tipped, heaved with arousal. Her eyes were the deep blue of the ocean at thirty-five feet.

Jax had always been a generous lover. He liked sex too much not to enjoy his partner's participation as well as his own. That's what he meant when he'd asked the question. But just like Pickett could, she managed with one sentence to make him reevaluate all his plans.

She was, as he suspected, deeply sensually aware, and easy to arouse. They could just go on and she would be satisfied, he'd see to it. But for him that wouldn't be enough.

When they were done he wanted her to know what she liked.

He wanted her to know that what she
liked
was him. His imprint on every inch of her body. No matter who came after him she was always going to define her experience by his lovemaking.

The thought of anyone else seeing her like this, touching her the way he was, annoyed him. He dismissed the idea before it could distract him. They weren't here now. He was. For now she was his.

"Does it matter so much, what I like?" That wary look was creeping back, shadowing her brow. "Am I doing things wrong?"

He had been looking at her, thinking, too long. She never stopped thinking, and damn if she wasn't making him do it too.

"No, sweetheart, you're not doing anything wrong, and it does matter what you like. I want to please you." That was the palest possible interpretation of what he wanted but didn't know the words to tell her. "I want to make it wonderful for you and I want to learn you, so that the next time we make love, it will be ten times better."

Pickett tilted her golden head. "We're going to do this again?"

"Oh yeah."

She sat up and began shoving pillows right and left, pushing them aside and to the floor. On all fours, the delicious, pale globes of her bottom in the air, she tugged back the covers. Then she lay back down and with a smile as old as Eve held out her arms. "Come here."

He rose over her, caging her with arms like tree limbs, white teeth gleaming through a feral smile.

"Oh, lady. You are so going to find out what you like."

And she did.

Sex with Jax was nothing like she'd thought it would be. It was hotter, and raunchier. He pushed her past every inhibition, allowed no reluctance. When she would have pushed his head away as he nosed the curls between her legs, he held her thighs open wider. "We have to find out if you like this enough to do it again." She did. When she felt the hot slide of his tongue enter her, she almost screamed.

And that was another thing. He demanded she squirm, and make noise.

"Scream," he said. "I love the sounds you make. Let me hear you. Let me know."

And maybe that was what she liked best. The way he relished every proof of her response. He liked the slick slide of sweaty bodies and the slurping sound that happened when they stuck together. Still joined, he effortlessly held her to him with one arm while he turned them over and piled pillows against the headboard with the other. He showed her how to rock in rhythm with him. He inhaled deeply. "Smell that," he said, his voice more a vibration she could feel from the seat of their connection than a sound. "That's us, together."

She wasn't experienced enough to know how to stay on the edge. He had rolled them over and pulled her legs around his hips so that he could better control her motions and give her time to savor their joining, but as soon as he spoke he felt her inner muscles clench, and shudders overtake her.

At the screaming edge himself, he supported her with hands spread across her shoulder blades as she gave in to wave after wave of ecstasy. Then he pulled her limp form against his chest and came and came and came.

Jax lay with Pickett tucked beside him, her head on his shoulder, one leg thrown across his legs. His fingers idly stroked her upper arm lying across his chest. Under the rose-petal skin, he could trace the well-defined shape of biceps and triceps, but with only a little more pressure he could feel the bone, hardly larger than the bones of Tyler's arms. She was so vivid, so maximally present; he rarely thought about how little she was, until he measured her with his hands. Then her delicacy made something catch in his chest and made him want to surround her, putting his arms, his body between her and everything.

The secret she'd revealed at the burger place came back to him. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Pickett chuckled, and slid her legs against his. "I'm a whole lot better than okay."

"No, I meant what you told Tyler about celiac disease. Is it more dangerous than you told him?"

"I'm healthy, and as long as I watch my diet, I'm likely to stay that way." A clinical chill crept into her voice. "There is a slightly increased risk of cancer, but it's slight. Why?"

"But is it dangerous?" She hadn't really answered his question, and she was smart enough to know what he meant.

"You sound like Tyler."

Jax shook her shoulder gently to let her know he was serious.

"If I didn't watch my diet, it would be devastating."

Devastating.
Strong word. Jax's belly tightened, but he resumed his slow stroking of her arm.

"But I do," Pickett went on, "and I will for the rest of my life, and since my diet is so good, I'm probably healthier than most people."

"So why didn't you tell me that you had celiac disease?"

Under his stroking hand he felt her shoulder muscles tighten.

After a long pause, she said, "It's hard to talk about."

"Why? And don't tell me I sound like Tyler," he forestalled her. "I'm serious. And I'm going to keep asking until you talk to me."

"You are like a dog with a bone!" Pickett pulled away and rolled to the edge of the bed.

Uh-uh, she was not going to do her sliding-away thing. He snaked an arm and pulled her back, deftly turning her and tucking her against him. "Yep, I am."

Her soft body was still and stiff against him, but she didn't fight to get away. He hated the loss of the warm contentment, and thought briefly of loving her and stroking her until she was warm and pliant in his arms again. It would be easy. She was so responsive to his every touch, and there were ways he wanted to touch her, places to kiss, that he hadn't even started on. He felt himself stir, which was amazing considering what they had done a short time ago.

But somehow that wasn't good enough. He wanted more from her, more than her body, exciting as that was. It irritated him a little that she didn't want him to know something this important. She didn't go for shallow relationships. Hell, he might, but she didn't. What did she think was going on here?

He wasn't going to give it up. Pickett could feel the strength of the arms that gently caged her. With no hint of roughness, he had grabbed her and tucked her back against him so efficiently, so quickly, she was almost disoriented for a moment. The potent demonstration made her aware on a previously unacknowledged level of what his training and strength meant. It was a little scary to realize he could have hurt her with the same efficiency. But he hadn't. Hurt her. At all. One second she was rolling over to get out of the bed, and the next she was tucked back against him exactly as before.

If she protested, even slightly, he would let her go. She let her head relax against the solid wall of his shoulder instead, knowing that it was a kind of acquiescence.

He fingered her hair. Traced the shell of her ear with one fingertip.

"You said 'potentially devastating.' This is not a mild case of the flu we're talking about here. Didn't you
know
something like that would be important to me?" His voice rumbled against her cheek. His words said barely contained patience, but the finger that traced patterns on her neck, her shoulder, down her arm said something else. She'd figured he'd lose interest in her once he knew. "How long have you had it?"

Pickett took a deep breath. She didn't know what to make of his sudden curiosity, but she could tell him the facts. "It's genetic. In some people it shows up in early childhood. Looking back, I think I started having symptoms when I was twelve or thirteen, but I wasn't diagnosed until a couple of years ago."

Jax was silent, slowly stroking her shoulder, down her waist and across her hip, then back up again. "What else?" he asked, at last. "What made you not want to tell me?"

"I don't know." She wasn't going to tell him she'd imagined he would be disgusted if he knew. She started to move toward the edge of the bed again.

"No sliding away. You do that a lot. Are you ashamed of having a disease?"

Ashamed? No, it wasn't anything to be ashamed of. Pickett started to shake her head, then stopped, stunned at the accuracy of his insight.

She
was
ashamed, not of having celiac disease, but of how she had been before. Fat, unattractive, an underachiever, depressed, a weakling, and all the character defects she had assigned herself— lazy, undisciplined, passive, helpless, hopeless. She had felt so ashamed of herself for years. Compassion for her younger self made her eyes well up.

"You know what? I was ashamed. I was fat and there wasn't anything I could do about it. Everybody thought I didn't have enough willpower or self-respect to stick to a diet. And after a while that's what I thought too. When I was lethargic, I thought I was lazy. I had colds and sore throats and bellyaches so often, my sisters thought I was goldbricking."

"The celiac disease was causing all that?"

"In effect, I was starving. I ate nutritious food but my body couldn't absorb it."

"How could you be fat if you were starving?" He sounded like he really wanted to know.

"Doesn't make sense does it? And a lot of people with celiac are too thin, but sometimes they're not. In the early stages of celiac the symptoms are very confusing. Most people have it for years before they're diagnosed."

"What the hell is the matter with doctors?"

"American doctors don't find it as often as they should. But to be fair I'm not sure I ever told a doctor everything. I didn't know that everybody's guts didn't hurt after they ate. I thought it only counted if it hurt bad enough to double you over. Not just how I felt but
what
I felt turned into something I had to hide. I learned to suck it up and keep going."

Pickett tried to shrug as if it meant nothing, but it didn't mean nothing. Tears welled again as she thought of all the times she had whipped herself with hatred just to find the energy to do the simplest things. Now that she knew what it was to feel well, she saw what Herculean tasks she had performed.

"Hey, are you crying?" Jax rolled to his side to put both arms around her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push you. No, that's a lie. I did mean to push you, but I didn't know it would hurt you."

Pickett tried to swallow back her sobs, but the tears wouldn't stop. "I'm not hurt," she managed to choke out.