True Divide (16 page)

I want to respond and tell him not to stop, to give me even more, but I don't. I can't. The weight of him this way means I've had to turn my head to breathe, my cheek flush to and moving along the silky feel of the duvet with each hard thrust. The only thing I can do is moan and pant encouragement like a wild creature on the edge of being broken.

Thank God, he evidently speaks crazed wild animal. Because when I give in to letting the sounds emerge, he narrows the circle of his fingers to center the pressure and my mind turns fuzzy. I get a few more wild moans in just before he takes his fingers away and every part of me panics. Fuck.
No.
Without that, I'll never finish.

But, quickly, one hand snakes up to twist his fingers into those on my left hand, then his other knots and fists up a section of my hair and I realize it won't matter this time. For the first time, I won't need the complex orchestration of things I normally require. I just need him, doing all the right things, doing whatever he chooses.

Now, with the brace he needs, he unleashes everything, every thrust at the perfect angle, and it drives a gasping scream from my lungs when I come. When he follows, all those painful-sounding groans are replaced, first by silence, then by a low-pitched rumbling of satisfied cursing.

In the descent, I really can't breathe. Likely because I have a hundred and eighty pounds of solid man in a heap on top of me. Don't care, anyway. Breathing is overrated. Hell, anything compared to everything he just gave me is overrated.

Jake finally presses up slowly, with his arms outstretched on either side of my body, and I can see the flex of his sturdy biceps and forearms as he does. The sight nearly makes me giggle. All that, mine just now. Mine for the next few days.

Once he's lifted his body from pressing against mine, he bows his head forward and kisses across the length of my spine until his mouth rests against one of my shoulders, murmuring quietly to ask if I'm OK.

“I'm perfect.”

A chuckle follows my breathy statement. “Well, I already know
that
, Shoelace.”

Merry freaking Christmas to me.

When we stumble back into the sheets, warm from a joint shower Jake insists he has to have otherwise he won't sleep, the next moments in the dark sing of unnamed tension. The moments between sex and sleep begging for the right words that sometimes don't exist. A long time ago, I learned to turn off the way these empty minutes used to destroy me. The way I could feel so alone even when another human being was only inches away. Before that feeling has a chance to take over, Jake curls up next to me and drapes his arm over my waist.

“Hey, Lace?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm not sure how we got here or what weird universal force field we tripped so we could be together again . . .” Jake shifts to tuck one of his legs so that it is shoved between mine, then lets his callused foot rub across my calf. “But I'm really glad we did.”

The right words. For the first time in so long, all the right damn words.

9

I
n the morning, Jake does exactly what he said he would in his wish-list email. Wakes me by kissing my skin, my hair, my lips. The only downside comes when I wave my hand toward the nightstand drawer and Jake leans over to grab a condom, choking out a groan when he slides it open.

“Holy hell. I don't know if I can do this now. Suddenly feeling a little inadequate.” The sound of
everything
in my goodie drawer begins rattling under his inspection. “Seriously, do they have names? I bet you call this one Gerard. Or, like, Jax. Something really powerful-sounding.”

Groaning, I drop my hands to cover my face and mumble through the press of my palms there. “Good God, Jake. I'm a grown woman. What did you expect to find in there?”

“I know you're a grown woman of a certain era, but, fuck me, these aren't entry-level or anything.”

I let out a frustrated growl and slap his chest a little. “Get back on track. Condom. I want the real thing.”

When he complies and finally plucks out a condom, he rises up on his knees, still straddling me, but now he's displayed like every fantasy I've ever had about slow, slumbery morning sex: hair all messy, body naked and hard, hovering above me. Reaching up, I take him in my hand, moving my fist up and down slowly. As he tears open the condom with his teeth, his eyes drop to watch me.

“You look so goddam pretty right now. Show me how bad you want it. Show me how you want the real thing.”

I lick my lips and let my teeth drop into my lower lip for a moment, saying nothing. I don't even know what to do that would properly show him how badly I want him, so wonderfully real in my hand that it makes every other part of my body quake a bit under the notion of having him here. But when a bit of precum seeps from the tip of his cock, a small moan tumbles from my mouth and I sit up, loosely pulling the head into my mouth to let that drop find my tongue instead of my palm. A grunt sounds above me, just before Jake takes his free hand and slips it to grasp against the back of my neck, moving his hips slightly to urge more of his length into my mouth. I take it, willingly and with a little whimper to encourage him.

“I only want Gerard around when I'm not, Lace. You good with that? No one else.”

Pulling back, I give him my hand again, and when I look up, Jake takes and threads the hair back from my face. Tension twitches across the firm set of his jaw, the creases of his forehead. When I don't answer right away, his eyes turn softer. The vulnerability there means that we're delving into something else here. Odd inspiration for this conversation, though, sparked by Jake's discovery of Gerard, of all things.

“What about you? No one else for you?”

“Yeah. No one else.” He shrugs a little. “Just me and my right hand, of course. Sometimes I use my left hand a little, too. But other than that, no one else.”

Slinking back down to the mattress, I give up his cock and use my hands to draw across my own body, breasts first, then over my belly, settling between my legs with all my fingers and watch him, watching me. In that gaze, there is pure want. No judgments. No demands beyond asking me to say he is enough. No expectations that I can't meet. Just this man and no one else? No problem.

When I tell him to get down here, he quickly rolls the condom down and drops heavily onto outstretched arms around my head. Then, with one of his arms slinking around to pull one of my legs up and push it against my chest, he presses inside.

We try to make up for going hard and fast last night. With something like missionary, and all that “looking at each other and shit,” as he puts it. Only a few minutes in, though, something volleys inside me, and before he can stop it, I've turned to put him under me, where the intensity of it all drives my hips into frenzied jerks against him. So much for slow morning sex, because once he latches his fingers to my hips and encourages every move with a push and a pull, it's just like last night. Rowdy, wild in good measure, until I think my head might explode.

Jake's plan to cook for us hits a small snag upon discovering only bagged salad mix, condiments, and yogurt cups in my fridge. None of which he can turn into breakfast, he claims with a shout from where he stands in the kitchen, while I remain in bed, still trying to remember my middle name because all the feel-good hormones in my body make thinking tremendously difficult. Jake insists, with another holler up the stairs, that we walk to the A&P for at least a few groceries to get us through the next two days before he leaves. When he finds me still tucked under the covers after he is fully dressed, he unceremoniously yanks all the covers on my bed off my naked body. A rough tug on my ankle further proves his point that it's apparently time to get up.

“You know where the store is. Walk your butt down there. I'll be right here when you get back.”

“Hell, no. I'm not walking around Crowell without you. You're like my passport. Get up. Do you want me to pick out something for you to wear? I'm thinking a pair of baggy cargo pants and an oversized turtleneck. With hiking boots.”

I scrunch up my nose and flail my head around on the pillow. “Fine. I'm getting up.”

“I'll be waiting downstairs. If I keep looking at you spread out all naked in bed, we'll starve.”

Before I can do something seductive to entice him toward starvation, the sound of his boots stomping down the staircase forces me to shuffle toward the closet, where I tug on a pair of leggings and a loose cashmere tunic sweater that slips off one shoulder more often than it should. Here's hoping that the combination of a little bare skin exposing the nip marks left behind from his teeth last night and a pair of tight leggings inspires Jake to mad-dash it through the grocery store. The very idea of us shopping together in the A&P for all to see makes my stomach hurt. I'm not particularly ready to put any of this on display to the inescapable rural grapevine just yet.

Downstairs, I find Jake on his back, under my kitchen sink. I nudge his knee with the toe of my wellie.

“Your faucet drips.”

“And?”

Jake adjusts his body slightly to crane his head up into the dark corner of the cabinet opening where the pipes curl under the sink. “I'll fix it. Do you have any tools here?”

“Most of my dad's stuff is still in the shed out back. You don't have to do that, Jake.”

He crawls out and hitches his pants up on his hips. “Yeah, I do. I won't be able to sleep knowing it drips like that.”

When he stops to wash his hands in the sink, the sight of him there, like a real live handy boyfriend, almost turns my heart to mush. Because the sensation could bring about a fainting spell if I continue to stare at him, I grab the back belt loop of his pants and yank a little.

“If we're going, let's go. I want some of these world-famous cinnamon rolls you claim to make. I'm starving.”

“You should be. Riding a guy like that has to be a workout.”

He turns and wipes his hands dry on a paper towel. He's lucky that he's so hot. Because that self-satisfied little gleam in his eyes means he knows exactly how much he's turned my world upside down.

Halfway into our five-block walk to the A&P, Jake stops suddenly. I don't notice for a moment, likely because I've been scanning the surrounding area since we stepped off my porch, praying that all the good God-fearing people of Crowell went to church this morning and will leave us to shop in peace. When I note that Jake's shuffling walk has gone silent, I stop and turn around.

He's standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his expression entirely too annoyed to properly suit how cute he looks. A gray knit beanie covers most of his head, with a few too many shaggy locks curling out from the sides and the back. The guy needs a haircut. Badly.

Jake waits for my eyes to lock on his. “Look, if you just want to play another round of Hide the Misfit, I'm not interested.”

“What?”

“I've tried to hold your hand at least five times since we left the house. Guess what? I have a little more self-respect than I did at seventeen. I'm not going to let you treat me like I'm not good enough to hold your hand when we're on the streets. So if that's what this is about, we can't do this.”

When he puts my angst up on display like that, then points out the way it makes him feel, I vaguely want to slap myself. I let a heavy sigh take over and close my eyes, calculating exactly how to explain myself.

“I'm sorry.” Stepping toward him, I slip my hands from my coat pockets and hold them up, palms out, in front of me. “It's just, you know how this place is. We hold hands, someone sees us, the next thing you know we're the front-page story in the
Crowell Times
.”

Jake lets his arms drop. “And?”

“
And,
we just started this thing. You're going to go back to California, but I'll be here, with old Mrs. Weck at the drugstore lecturing me about giving the milk away for free.”

“Jesus Christ. We're grown-ups. Tell her you
like
giving the milk away.”

I drop my head to one side and give him an exasperated look. He raises his brows. Fine. This is a stupid thing to fight about, anyway.

I close the remaining distance between us and stick my hand out. Jake narrows his eyes and then drops his gaze to my outstretched hand. Then he shakes his head. Refusing to take my hand, he simply lets it hang there in the cold arctic breeze of a December morning in Montana.

“Not good enough.” He shakes his head again to emphasize the point.

Feeling slightly rejected, but smart enough to know bringing that up right now would scream for a pot-kettle analogy, I tilt my head and raise my brows. “What do you want, then?”

“Kiss me.”

“What?”

“Kiss. Me.” He draws his hands to clasp behind his back and proceeds to sway a little in place. “Right here, on the street where anybody could walk by. With tongue.”

I try not to let the panic inside filter through to my expression. But when a grin starts to twitch across his features, I steel myself and give it up. I kiss him openmouthed, with tongue as demanded, my hands clasping around the back of his neck, pulling him closer and moaning a little into the taste of him. Jake does what he always does: answers my body without discernable pause, using the tease of his tongue and the length of his body pressed to mine to tell me I'm giving him exactly what he wants.

We let our lips come apart enough to breathe and I feel a curve tugging into a smile across his mouth.

“Hear that, Shoelace?”

I manage to emit a soft questioning noise. I don't hear anything. Other than the sound of my heavy heartbeat and a soundtrack in my head with a screaming chorus about how we should forget the groceries, go home, and get back in bed.

“No cars screeching to a halt, no old women shrieking, no one from the
Crowell Times
leaping out to get our picture. It's like no one gives a shit that Jake Holt and Lacey Mosely are playing tonsil hockey on Main Street.”