“Popcorn.” Sam dropped a bowl into her lap with an indication to share.
Leah offered it to Jackson. There was a tremor in his fingers when he took a small handful. She nibbled on a kernel and fought to clear her head. The second half of the movie flew by. He didn’t touch her again but she knew he wanted to. It was written in the clench of his hand against his thigh, the sweep of his eyes over her profile while she pretended to watch the screen. As the action climbed toward a noisy climax, Leah’s nerves strung tighter and tighter.
Sam threw a last kernel into his mouth and glanced over when the closing credits began to roll. “You haven’t finished your popcorn, you weirdos. Who doesn’t finish popcorn? Hand it over.”
Leah passed him the bowl. “I was distracted. By the movie.”
She avoided looking at Jackson, who chuckled softly behind her. Tonight, at the house, they’d be alone. The thought thrilled her as much as it scared her.
Chapter 26
Jackson
They barely spoke on the drive home.
Jackson couldn’t remember the last time he’d ached for someone for an entire day, wasn’t sure he ever had. Taking Leah’s hand to run from the bees had untethered the craving inside him for more. Kissing her had ramped up that hunger to a feverish level and done nothing to quell it. Throughout the afternoon, with Hazel playing chaperone, he’d distracted himself as best he could, but every time he was near her, every time he caught her eye or heard her voice, the need to taste her again shot through him like a bolt from an electric fence.
And this evening. Kissing her and keeping it light had come with a vicious internal battle between greed and good sense. His lips and his hands might have remained PG but his mind had gone to some filthy places, even as he’d forced himself to rein it in. Fantasies of his fingertips tracing over more of Leah’s skin had played out inside his head until he fought to see anything else, his whole body hypersensitive to her every move, her every breath.
Jackson turned the handle of the front door and pushed it open, stepping back to let Leah walk through. Handyman Stan slunk out of the shadows. The cat blinked between them, sampledthe atmosphere and padded noiselessly away, back down the porch steps and onto the drive. Jackson watched him go, then followed Leah inside. He closed and locked the door, the latch echoing loudly in the silence of the dark foyer.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
She shook her head and toed off her sneakers, leaving them, as always, in a heap on the doormat. “Do you?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
The grandfather clock struck twelve at the end of the hall; neither of them moved for the painfully long time it took to fall quiet again.
“Something to eat?” Leah suggested. “Midnight snacks are the best snacks.”
He’d never felt less hungry for food. “No, I’m good.”
A predatory urge to possess her thrummed through his body, the intensity of it locking every muscle tight. Jackson looked away. He had to calm the fuck down before he scared her.
Leah’s hand closed around one of his. She gently prized his fingers open, sliding her own inside and threading them between his. Her eyes glittered in the semi-darkness, awash with the same desire that blazed in him. Jackson’s stomach turned a cartwheel.
“Jax,” she whispered. He was completely spellbound. Leah’s hand slipped back out of his. “I’ll race you.”
She had more than a half flight of stairs head start on him before he could process her words. Her squeal when he finally hit the bottom step and took the first eight in three huge bounds was borderline hysterical. He couldn’t hold back the laugh that burst from his throat as the frantic chase shattered the tension, leaving it lying in shards behind them.
She reached the first landing well ahead of him but her giggles were hampering her speed. Jackson’s long legs ate up the distance between them, until he was breathing down her neck by the secondflight of stairs. As they reached the top, he grabbed Leah from behind, sweeping her off her feet and over his shoulder. She slapped helpless hands against his back, disjointed exclamations tumbling through laughter and breathless gasps.
“I’m so unfit! That was a terrible idea! Your legs are seven times longer than mine.” She tried to jab her fingers into his ribs. Jackson felt her shift and tensed his muscles, blocking the attack. Leah went for his ears instead but couldn’t reach them. It was like trying to grip a sack full of bobcats. “You’re not even out of breath! Why are you not out of breath?”
Honestly, he’d have happily climbed both full flights with her over his shoulder. She felt fucking amazing in his arms. He had so much blood rushing south to his groin, it was a wonder there were any thoughts at all going through his brain. Just one stood out. One last question, so important he almost couldn’t bear to voice it.
“Which room do you want, Leah?” Jackson forced the words, as rough as broken glass, between his teeth. He twisted his body at the waist to point her in two different directions—her bedroom door lay at one end of the landing, his at the other. Then he flipped her upright and started to slide her back onto her feet. “Where were you racing to?”
Leah’s legs wrapped around his waist, her arms looping behind his neck. Her lips were a breath away from his own. “Your room, Jackson,” she murmured. So courageous, so sure. “Please can we go to your room?”
His thighs shook with relief. He was undone. His cock, rock hard beneath her ass, throbbed and flexed. He might even have dropped to his knees and begged if Leah had wanted to go to her own room and her own bed.
“Your wish is my command.” Jackson carried her through the doorway, his hands on the silky skin of her bare thighs, thumbs brushing the frayed hem of her denim shorts. “You’ll be the death of me, LeahRaven,” he muttered against her mouth, kicking off his shoes. His heart rattled. “When I get your clothes off, you’ll be the fucking death of me.”
Her tongue danced with his. He couldn’t stand to break the kiss even to put her down. They stood by the bed, tasting and teasing. Anticipation licked at senses stretched nearly to breaking point by Leah in his arms, making the sexiest, breathless noises he’d ever heard. And, all the while, she undulated needily against the hardest part of his body until Jackson couldn’t take it anymore. He prized her away from his chest and dropped her roughly onto the bed.
“Hey!” Leah complained, bouncing a couple of times, knitted brows at odds with her swollen lips and half-smile. “I was enjoying that.” Her hair was a mess from his hands; her shirt had slipped a button and hung off one shoulder. She was temptation and heat. Utterly magnetic.
