“And I am tired.”
“Me too.”
“Shall I get the light?”
“It’s on my side of the bed.” Jackson quirked an eyebrow.
Her expression was suspiciously innocent. “I’m happy to help.”
Leah’s pounce was feather-light and flexible, as stealthy as an arctic fox. She landed across his hips even before he’d prepared himself for the move, settling astride his groin, her hot, wet center poised above his enraptured cock. Fuck, her breasts looked amazing from this angle. His hands went straight to them like homing devices, his erection turning to steel beneath the curve of her rear.Leah braced herself against his chest, her lower lip caught between her teeth, mischief dancing across her face.
“It’s further than I thought. I can’t seem to reach.”
“Reach what?” Jackson tugged her down with a hand at the back of her neck. The movement shifted her over his length and he groaned into her mouth. All he wanted to do was bury himself inside her again, lose himself in her soft warmth. She was unbearably enticing, blindingly dazzling. Like a bolt of pure magic. Sheet lightning flashing through clouds. His lips on hers, he tasted the sizzle. His hands traveled to her waist and Jackson dragged her roughly against his cock. He swallowed her sharp exhalation of breath with vicious satisfaction.
“Jax—”
Leah’s eyes were closed, her teasing forgotten. Slashes of color highlighted each cheekbone. Powerful pride swelled in his chest. He’d done this. His whisper against her neck raised goosebumps on her skin. His breath on her nipples hardened them to tiny peaks on his tongue. Seeing her surrender willingly to the pleasure he was only too happy to dish out lit a fire under his own growing arousal. This wasn’t an obsession. It was win-win all the way.
“My fucking Raven,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “Mine.”
Leah’s eyes opened, her pupils blown, eyelids heavy. She trailed her fingers from the base of his throat down to his navel in a slow, teasing movement, undulating against him in a ripple Jackson felt right in his core. When she followed the vertical line of body hair and enclosed him in one delicate hand, he pulsed within her grip, hissing through his teeth.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he muttered as she rose above him, and he bit back strangled expletives when she lowered herself onto the tip of his cock. Leah rose and fell, infinitesimal, teasing movements designed to drive him out of his fucking mind,never taking more than an inch of him inside herself. She played with him, winding him tighter and tighter, her eyes fixed on his face, alight with willful pleasure.
He stood it as long as he could, mainly because it felt mind-shatteringly, toe-curlingly good. So good that, although he wanted to protest, he found no words to do it. But all too soon, the teasing was unbearable and Jackson needed more. He closed his hands around her hips, dragging her down onto him until he bottomed out and it was Leah who gasped, Leah whose eyes rolled.
Slow and playful went out of the window.
She rode him hard; he gripped her harder. His right palm covered the dark shadow of the bird in flight on her skin, the sheen of her sweat beneath his hands. He was sure he was bruising her but her moans were all joy and encouragement. “Yes, Jax... Oh, God—that feels amazing!” Leah’s eyes burned into his. She pushed the pinched words out through tight lips. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for so long.”
Her words sent him hurtling toward the edge. He twisted his wrist to brush a thumb over Leah’s clit, once, twice, his legs shaking as his climax built. She bucked beneath his touch, her body rigid, and came with a shuddering gasp, the force of her tremors dragging Jackson headlong after her. He smothered his cry in her neck as she collapsed on top of him, spent and locked together.
He wrapped his arms around her back. “Fuck me, Raven. You’re deadly.” The breath rasped in and out of his chest.
“But cute, too, right?” Leah didn’t move. “Deadly and cute.”
“Yeah. Too damn deadly and too fucking cute.”
“Then my work is done. I think I’ll stay here and you can wake me in the morning.”
Her words were slurred. Jackson had no doubt she meant it. His arms tightened around her reflexively. And as his heart gradually slowed its desperate pounding, he’d never felt more content in all his life.
Chapter 29
Leah
He’d made himself busy in the kitchen while she got dressed, and she came downstairs to find a mug of coffee waiting on the counter and French toast being flipped on the stovetop. Bowls and utensils littered the wooden counter, afloat in a sea of spilled egg. On the very edge of the devastation zone lay a plate holding a selection of berries, and the bottle of maple syrup.
Leah paused in the doorway and let her ovaries have a flutter at the barefoot and rumpled man-mountain making breakfast for her with such fierce concentration. White t-shirt today, same cargo shorts. Fit, unpolished, and relaxed, he blinded her like sunshine on water.
Jackson glanced over and grinned. His face was irrepressibly roguish and unbearably sweet. “I thought you might be hungry.”
Her stomach rumbled and his answered. They both smiled. “I could eat.”
Carrying their plates out onto the veranda, they sat on the top step, looking over the backyard. The heat was building already—it was going to be another hot one—but the house cast enough shade that it was cool and comfortable where they perched. A lightbreeze danced in the branches of the huge beech tree way beyond the gazebo, and she breathed in the scent of summer flowers and Jackson—a potent combination that made her pulse dance.
Taking a bite of French toast, Leah marveled at the fact that this man, who had grouched and snapped at her from the moment they’d met, had not only given her the best night of her life but also made her breakfast after. Sliding her eyes over to take him in, she knew the attraction would have flared in the same way for her however they’d met. Would he have felt it, too, if they hadn’t been forced to live under one roof?
