Smooth Talking Stranger (26 page)

But without warning the rhythm broke, and he withdrew, leaving me trembling, bewildered. “No,” I said, clinging to him. “Wait, I didn’t. . . Jack . . .”

He was turning off the knobs, the waterfalls disappearing.

“I wasn’t finished yet,” I told him woefully as he came back to me.

Jack had the nerve to grin. Taking my shoulders in his hands, he guided me out of the shower. “I wasn’t, either.”

“Then why did you stop?” Privately I excused myself for whining. Any woman would have whined in such circumstances.

He reached for a fluffy white towel and began to dry me efficiently. “Because you’re dangerous when it comes to standing-up sex. Your leg muscles give out.”

“I was still standing!”

“Barely.” He scrubbed my hair with the towel, and reached for another to dry himself. “Face it, Ella—you’re at your best horizontal.” Throwing the towel aside, he pulled me back to the bedroom. In a matter of seconds, he had tossed me onto the bed as if I weighed nothing.

I squeaked in surprise as I bounced on the mattress. “What are you doing?”

“I’m fast-tracking this. It’s twenty to eleven.”

I frowned and pushed a tangle of damp hair back from my face. “Let’s wait until we have more time.”

But I found myself covered with nearly two hundred pounds of playful, aroused male.

“I can’t go downstairs like this,” Jack said.

“Too bad,” I told him sternly. “You can either wait or do it a cappella.”

“Ella,” he cajoled, “let’s finish what we started in the shower.”

“You should have finished it right then.”

“I didn’t want you to fall and get a head injury. The afterglow never lasts as long in the ER.”

I chuckled, and Jack pressed his cheek against the soft bounce of my breast. His hot breath rushed against the distended tip. Slowly his mouth opened over the rosy flesh, his tongue circling. Sliding my arms around his neck, I kissed the thick, damp locks of his hair. He lifted his mouth and took the nipple between his fingers, clamping softly while he moved to kiss the other breast, and my hips pressed upward into his weight. In a matter of seconds I was steaming. He browsed over me as if I were some lavish buffet, nibbling and licking and kissing, lifting and turning me to make certain there was nothing he had missed. I lay on my stomach, gripping fistfuls of amber quilt as he took my hips and hoisted them upward.

“This okay?” I heard him whisper.

“Yes,” I panted. “God, yes.”

His electrifying weight lowered over me from behind, and he nudged my stiff limbs apart. I groaned at the heavy penetration as he glided easily into the wetness. His hand slid beneath me, fingers going to the exact place I needed them.

Caught deliciously between his body and his hand, I pushed upward invitingly, and he went as deep as I could take him. His mouth went to my back, kissing the top of my spine. He waited until I pushed up again before he thrust. I realized he was letting me set the rhythm, his every motion a counterpoint to mine. I arched and gasped as I took him, worked him, feeling him shove deeper while those gentle fingers tantalized and teased. Sensations flowed together until I could no longer recognize their separate sources. I gripped his thick muscled wrists, one braced near my head, the other down between my thighs, and I held him there as I went over the edge. The climax was lush and brimming, and each time I thought it had died down, it gave another voluptuous kick. I felt Jack shudder, the heat of him flooding me in violent pulses.

When he finally caught his breath, he muttered a few curses. I had to bury a shaky laugh in the covers, because I understood. It felt as if, somehow, a thing that was entirely ordinary had been reinvented, and the two of us along with it.

We dressed clumsily and went down to my apart-ment, and Jack overpaid the babysitter, who pretended not to notice how disheveled we were. After checking on Luke, who was down for the count, I told Jack that he was welcome to spend the night with me, except the baby would probably wake him up.

“No problem,” Jack replied, kicking off his shoes. “Wasn’t planning on doing much sleeping anyway.” He stripped off his jeans and T-shirt, climbed into bed, and watched me change into my pajamas. “You don’t need those,” he said.

I smiled at the sight of him leaning back against the brass headboard with his hands clasped comfortably behind his head. He was brawny and tan, incongruously masculine against all the frilly antique fabric and lace.

“I don’t like to sleep naked,” I told him.

“Why? It’s a great look for you.”

“I like to be prepared.”

“For what?”

“If there’s ever an emergency—a fire or something. . . .”

“Jesus, Ella.” He was laughing. “Think of it this way—going to bed naked is better for the environment.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Come on, Ella. Sleep green.”

Ignoring him, I got into bed wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts printed with penguins. I reached over to the nightstand and flipped off the lamp.

A moment of silence, and then I heard a lecherous murmur. “I like your penguins.”

I snuggled back against him, and his knees tucked under mine. “I’m guessing your usual female company doesn’t wear boxer shorts to bed,” I said.

“Nope.” Jack’s hand settled on my hip. “If they wear anything, it’s usually some kind of see-through nightgown.”

“That sounds pretty pointless.” I yawned, relaxing into the warmth of his body. “But I’ll wear one someday if you want me to.”

“I don’t know.” Jack sounded pensive. His hand circled my bottom. “I’m kind of partial to these penguins.”

My God,
I thought,
I
love talking with you.
But I stayed silent, because I never used the word “love” with a man.

I woke up alone and worried, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. The source of the worry was the bright glitter of sunshine coming through the shades. I hadn’t heard the baby. Luke never slept this long.

Galvanized, I leapt out of bed and flew to the main room, only to stop like a cartoon character quivering at the edge of a cliff.

There was a mug of half-finished coffee on the table. Jack was on the sofa, dressed in his jeans and T-shirt, with Luke cuddled on his chest. They were watching the news.

“You got up with him,” I said bemusedly.

“I thought I’d let you sleep.” His dark gaze slid over me. “I worked you out pretty good last night.”

I leaned over both of them, kissing Luke and teasing a gummy smile out of him.

Luke had awakened once in the middle of the night, and Jack had insisted on getting up with me. While I had changed the diaper, he had warmed the bottle, and sat with us until Luke had finished feeding.

We had gone back to bed, and Jack had held me and caressed me with artful stealth. He had slid along my body, his lips parted, tongue stroking and darting for long minutes of refined torture. He had lifted me, turned me over and around, and we’d had sex in positions I wouldn’t have thought were possible. As it turned out, Jack was an athletic and highly creative lover, and it was only at my insistence that we had finally stopped. Exhausted and sated, I had slept without stirring for the rest of the night.

“I haven’t slept in this late forever,” I told Jack earnestly. “This was the nicest thing you could have done for me.” I went to pour myself some coffee. “I am chronically sleep-deprived. I can’t tell you how good last night was.”

“The sleep or the sex?”

I grinned. “The sex, of course . . . but by a narrow margin.”

“What about getting your mom to help with baby-sitting?”

I stirred cream into my coffee. “She could probably be talked into it, especially if it’s on the right day and it’s not interfering with something else. But the amount of gratitude you have to shower on Mom for something like that is exhausting. I mean, you owe her
forever.
And the other thing is . . . I don’t trust her with Luke.”

Jack watched intently as I came to the sofa. “You think she’d hurt him?”

“Oh, not physically, no. Mom never hit me or Tara, or anything like that. But she was a drama queen, and she yelled a lot—which is why, to this day, I can’t stand raised voices. I don’t want her to do that to Luke. And basically, if I don’t want to be alone with her, I can’t imagine subjecting Luke to it.” I set my mug on the coffee table and reached for the baby. “Here’s my boy,” I murmured, snuggling his warm, wriggly body against my chest. I glanced at Jack. “How often do you raise your voice?”

“Only at football games. No, that’s not true—I also yell at contractors.” He leaned over and kissed my temple. His hand closed lightly in my hair. “Do you have plans for the day?”

“No.”

“You want to spend it with me?”

I nodded immediately.

“I’d like to take you and Luke to LakeConroe,” Jack said. “I keep a boat there. I’ll call ahead to the marina and they’ll pack lunch for us.”

“Would it be okay to take Luke out on a boat?” I asked uncertainly.

“Yeah, he’d be safe in the cabin. And when he’s on deck, we’ll put him in a life vest.”

“Do you have one his size?”

“We’ll get one at the marina.”

Lake Conroe was about forty miles north of the Metroplex, and it was unofficially known as Houston’s playground. The lake was approximately twenty-one miles long, vaguely scorpion-shaped when seen from overhead, with a third of its shoreline bordered, by the SamHoustonNational Forest. The rest of the area featured high-priced residential communities and almost two dozen golf courses. I had never actually been to Conroe, but I had heard about the lavish water-color sunsets, the luxury resorts and fine restaurants, and its reputation for world-class bass fishing.

“I don’t have any experience with boats and fishing,” I told Jack on the drive up. “So I’ll help as much as I can, but I just want to make certain you understand that I’m flotationally challenged.”

Jack grinned, setting his cell phone in one of the cupholders between the front seats of his
SUV
. Wearing black rimless aviator sunglasses, board shorts, and a fresh white polo shirt, he radiated sexy vitality. “There are boat valets to help us launch. Your only job is to have a good time.”

“I can do that.” I felt cheerful, alight with a sense of impatient happiness I had never felt before. I actually found it difficult to stay still in my car seat—I was tempted to wriggle like a child on the last day of school with five minutes to go before summer began. For the first time in my life, there was no other place I would rather have been and no one else I wanted to be with. I twisted around to look at Luke’s car seat, which was facing backward.

“I should check on him,” I said, reaching to unbuckle my seat belt.

“He’s fine,” Jack said, reaching over to take my hand. “No more crawling back and forth, Ella. Stay buckled in and safe.”

“I don’t like it when I can’t see Luke.”

“When do you get to turn him around?”

“He’ll have to be a year old, at least.” Some of my happiness dimmed. “I won’t have him then.”

“Have you heard from Tara lately?”

I shook my head. “I’m going to call her tomorrow. Not only do I want to know how she’s doing, I want to give her an update on Luke.” I paused reflectively. “I have to admit, I’m surprised by how little interest she seems to have in him. I mean, she wants to know if he’s basically okay, but all the details—how he’s feeding and sleeping, how long he holds his head up, that kind of stuff—she doesn’t seem to care.

“Did she ever have an interest in babies before Luke?”

“God, no. Neither of us did. I always thought it was as boring as hell when other people talked about their babies. But it’s different when it’s your own.”

“Maybe Tara didn’t have him long enough to feel a bond with him.”

“Maybe. But by the second day I was taking care of Luke, I’d already started to—” I stopped and flushed.

Jack glanced at me quickly, his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses. His voice was very gentle. “Started to love him?”

“Yes.”

His thumb rubbed an easy circle over the back of my hand. “Why does that embarrass you?”

“I’m not embarrassed, it’s just . . . it’s not easy for me to talk about that kind of thing.”

“You write about it all the time.”

“Yes, but not when it involves my own feelings.”

“You think of it as a trap?”

“Oh, not a trap. But it gets in the way of things.”

I saw the flash of his grin. “What does love get in the way of, Ella?”

“When I broke things off with Dane, for example. It would have been messy and difficult if we’d ever gotten to the point of saying we loved each other. But because we hadn’t, it was much easier to detach.”

“You’re going to have to detach from Luke at some point,” Jack said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have said it to him.”

“He’s a
baby,
” I said indignantly. “He has to hear it from someone. How would you like to come into the world and not have anyone say they loved you? ”

“My parents never said it. They thought you shouldn’t wear out the words.”

“But you don’t agree?”

“No. If the feeling is there, you might as well admit it. Saying the words, or not saying them, doesn’t change a damn thing.”

It was a hot, hazy day. The marina was busy, the weathered gray docks creaking beneath the weight of hundreds of feet. There were boys in shorts but no shirts, girls in swimsuits made of strings and scraps, men wearing T-shirts featuring slogans such as “Shut up and fish” or “Kiss my Bass.” Older men wore polyester shorts and Cuban-style shirts with embroidery running down both sides of the chest, and older women wore skorts and tropical-colored shirts and large brimmed sunhats. A few ladies with teased and frosted bouffants wore visors, over which hair billowed like little atomic mushroom clouds.

Smells of water and algae hung in the air, along with scents of beer, diesel, bait, and coconut sunblock. A busy dog trotted back and forth from the marina to the docks, appearing to belong to no one.

As soon as we entered the marina, a boat valet dressed in red and white came to greet us enthusiastically. He told Jack the boat was fueled and clean, the battery was charged, food and drinks were stocked, everything was ready to go. “What about the infant life vest?” Jack asked, and the valet told him they’d found one and it was on board.