Chapter Twenty
Emma peeked through her window and frowned at the sight of Jake rolling out his sleeping bag in the back of his truck.
The most stubborn, sweetest man alive, ladies and gentlemen.
With his living a few hours away, their staying out late tonight meant he’d get only an hour or so of sleep before having to turn right back around to make it to work at the library in the morning. But there’d been a perfectly great solution to that problem . . .
She sighed as she looked back at her empty bed. It made no sense at all that there wasn’t a warm, slumbering lumberjack in it right now.
Tonight had been their third date—the third date. And at the end of it, when he didn’t catch any of her subtle hints, she’d actually flat-out asked him to stay over. Not because of some arbitrary third-date expectations set by society. Nope, these were 100 percent personal reasons through and through. She didn’t need society to tell her she wanted the man. Bad.
But aside from one hungry look of pure, intense temptation, he’d declined. With a gruff single head shake . . . shortly before he’d sunk his fingers in her hair and imprinted her body with a near-savage kiss as a rather spectacular thank-you for the offer.
And now here he was camping in a sleeping bag in the back of his truck.
Dang it, he was just such a good guy. How many men would do this after a date to ensure he got enough shut-eye for a grueling shift of work the next day?
None that she knew.
Which was precisely why she found herself standing beside his truck in the middle of the night, staring at his handsome sleeping face.
Climbing up onto the tire quietly, she eased herself into the bed carefully, not wanting to accidentally step on something vital.
He didn’t stir. He’d been like that the few nights he’d slept at her place after his coma; she’d actually nudged him a few times to make sure he was still responsive.
Tonight she didn’t need to check. He was quite obviously very responsive at the moment, if the fit of his jeans was any indication. Even with the lack of visibility from the soft streetlight above, she could clearly see that the sweet, handsome, honk-your-tractor-if-you’re-from-Kansas farm boy had definitely grown up.
“Into freaking Superman with a hammer,” she murmured with no small amount of awe and appreciation.
“You mean Thor,” he rumbled sleepily.
She froze in her pervy perusal and played possum.
At her continued silence, he peeked a heavy eyelid open a fraction. “You said Superman with a hammer. Superman doesn’t have a hammer.”
She glanced down and exhaled slowly, whispering under her breath, “Oh, yes, he does.”
That’s when she felt every muscle in his body harden alongside her and his arms snap around her like steel bands. She gasped. But not in fear.
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
“Do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t move.”
“Okay.”
It took a few shuddering breaths for his body to relax. Another few seconds and he was turning to face her. “If I open my eyes again, will you be looking at my, uh, ‘hammer,’ again?”
Oh God. Hearing her words in his voice was a thousand times worse. Thank goodness it was dark enough he couldn’t see her face on fire.
“You’re blushing,” he marveled, sounding pleased as punch.
Dammit!
“You’re practically burning up next to me.” His lips curved up at the corners. “So I take it that means you’re still perving on my package?”
She whacked him. “I haven’t been perving on anything.”
He opened his eyes, one brow raised to call her on her fib. “I have excellent night vision, sweets.”
“Fine. I may have . . . glanced in that direction.” She blinked innocently. “But that was only because it was practically saluting me.”
He chuckled. “Yeah well, you can thank yourself for that. I can’t seem to keep him from ‘saluting’ whenever you’re nearby smelling like . . .” Nuzzling closer to her neck, he murmured appreciatively, “Sugar and sass.”
She found the hem of his shirt and slipped her hands underneath, nipping at his lip in a pure feral response when she finally felt all those glorious muscles she’d been seeing for weeks now. Beneath her palms, his stomach tightened as his similarly roaming hands made a discovery of their own.
“You’re not wearing any shorts under this T-shirt,” he rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest. “Or a bra.”
“I was getting ready for bed.” She began tracing the ripped muscles across his back, her fingertips practically humming in appreciation.
“You walked outside practically naked.”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
He tensed. “You climbed into my truck bed practically naked.”
She took a deep breath and inhaled a lungful of lust to bolster her courage. “Okay, so maybe I wanted to do more than talk.”
“Good lord, woman. I’m trying to be a good guy here. Just because it’s our third date doesn’t mean we have to have sex.”
“True. But you said it yourself—we’ve basically been dating for a few months, just without the official labels.”
He had no comeback for that. Excellent. She was wearing him down. “Jake?”
“Yeah?”
She decided to go with honesty. “What if I tell you that yes, I want to have sex with you, but even if you want to wait, what I had come out here to ask you was if you would like to come up to my bed and cuddle with me again. Only . . . this time with some kissing involved? Those two nights you slept in my bed, all I could think about was how you felt next to me, how much I wanted you to kiss me—”
She’d never seen a human move so quickly.
He had her scooped her up in his arms within the blink of an eye, shortly before he hopped over the side of his truck in a single bound.
“I think you might actually be Superman.”
His arms tightened around her as he got them to her shop in two long strides, inside the bakery with the door locked behind them in under a second. “Stop with the superhero compliments, woman. Or I won’t be able to make it up the stairs.”
“Frankly, I don’t see how you can walk with that giant thing at all.” She wriggled in his arms, enjoying having the upper hand for once. “Is that why they call you the man of steel?”
Growling softly, he stopped his staircase climb a few steps from the top landing and set her down gently . . . before pinning her back against the landing and caging her in with his arms.
His lips were on hers an instant later.
Suddenly all jokes disappeared from her brain, along with almost every other coherent thought she possessed.
He’d been holding back before. That much was clear. With just his lips, teeth, and tongue, he was already bringing her close to the edge. “Jake.”
He yanked himself back and stared down into her eyes. “Too fast?”
She shook her head.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Her hands flexed against his sides in alarm as she shook her head again adamantly, almost violently this time.
“Words, baby. Use your words.”
“Don’t stop.”
He exhaled harshly and crushed his lips to hers again. God she loved it. Loved feeling him lose control. Loved losing control along with him.
Shaking his head, he dropped down to his elbows and speared his hands through her hair. “You could try the patience of the pope.”
“And you could tempt a pair of panties off a mannequin. I thought we were going to stop with the superhero compliments.”
Grinning now in that wicked, wicked way he did sometimes, he dropped down one step lower and leaned back so he could run his eyes over her body slowly. Very slowly. She felt like prey. Well, prey that was about ready to ambush her predator.
“You’re absolutely right, sweetheart.” He slid his rough palms up her thighs. “You’re dangerous to my control when you speak.”
“To be fair, I stopped making references to anything related to your pitching a tent,” she argued innocently.
“No more dirty talking from you.” He pulled her flush against him and quickly fastened his lips on hers. A nanosecond later, he slipped his hands under her shirt and stole her ability to speak completely.
Emma didn’t know which delicious sensation to focus on more, his palms smoothing up over her rib cage or his lips dropping soft kisses down her belly.
“It’s too dark here to see if these panties are pink.”
Or she could just lose herself in that deep, sexy voice of his and try to keep from orgasming.
His thumbs brushed over her nipples just as his thick beard rubbed over the sensitive crest of her hip bone. “Are they?” he breathed the question across the fabric he was so curious about. “Pink? Like the ones you were wearing the other night?”
Seriously, at this point, if he huff and puffed in just the right spot, he could blow her house down.
He smiled against her skin as if hearing her thoughts. “Quiet all of a sudden.”
Did the man really expect her to be able to speak with his mouth rasping over her center? Close but not nearly close enough.
She was just about to take matters into her own hands—literally—when he dragged her curious fingers away from the front of his jeans and threaded their hands together . . . behind the small of her back.
Though he was more holding her, rather than restraining her, the alpha-sexiness of it all was enough to flood her with an arousal so close to the edge, she lifted her hips in a silent plea.
Which he answered by dipping his head down and tracing his tongue over the seam of her sex.
“Jake,” she gasped, her body practically vibrating with need.
The breathy, uninhibited utterance earned her a brief moment of freedom, before he gently manacled both her wrists with one hand, and used the other to—swear to God—rip her panties from her body.
She was halfway past detonation and strung out with pleasure when she felt him slip two thick fingers inside her as he fastened his mouth over her core.
It didn’t take much more after that.
More hot, wet suction.
His fingertips curling over a magical spot she’d always thought was missing in her anatomical makeup.
His eyes locking on hers in a silent promise of even more unspeakably dirty things.
Then his teeth grazing over her until she cried out.
She was a goner.
By the time he slid his tongue in deep, she was spiraling over the edge, his rough, ragged growl against her sensitive flesh sending her shattering, scattering into a thousand cataclysmic pieces.
And somehow she never felt more whole, and more inexplicably tethered, than she did in that one turbulent, riotous moment.
Holy hell.
Jake had barely managed to keep himself from coming right alongside her and making a mess of his jeans. He placed one last kiss on her soft belly before gently scooping her up into his arms. “Dammit, I can’t believe I did this on the stairs. I’m sorry, baby.”
Thank God he’d at least been able to control himself enough to take her to the top of the stairs before, well, taking her. The street was a ghost town at night, and the stairs were situated behind a curtain and far enough back behind the bakery counter that no one outside could really see up the stairwell, but still. The idea of anyone else seeing Emma’s lush body made him a little crazy.
He looked down into her dazed eyes and couldn’t help but smile. It was a good look on her he intended to draw out again, but on top of a proper bed this time.
After laying her down on top of her comforters, he debated whether he should keep his jeans on or not.
Clearly Emma was thinking “or not.”
He hissed when he felt her hand undo the fly of his jeans. She demanded, “Why are all your clothes still on?”
God, he loved it when she used that bossy tone. He looked up at her, and, sure enough, her cheeks were flushed. Freckles on full deployment.
He had every intention of finding every last freckle on her body and kissing each one before the night was through.
Damn. If possible, he’d just grown another hard inch. And her muffled murmur of appreciation wasn’t helping. Neither were the soft kisses she was placing along his one-slight-breeze-away-from-bursting length.
A long few seconds later, he had to gently yank himself away from her. His entire body vibrated with the effort it took.
Jeans were definitely staying on.
“Sweetheart, we don’t have to rush this. We’ve only had a few dates. Sex can wait. I want us to wait.”
She gave him a dubious look. “And the stairs were . . .” Her expression hardened. “If you tell me that was a mistake, I’m switching you back to decaf.”
He blanched. Well, that was almost enough to get his raging hard-on under control. “Woman, don’t joke about that. I’m still traumatized from the last time.”
Burying his lips against her neck as he dropped onto the bed beside her, he smiled when he heard her grouse that she wasn’t joking. “Of course I don’t think it was a mistake. I didn’t say we can’t keep doing that. We’re definitely doing more of that. Right now, in fact.” He started sliding his palms down those sanity-stealing curves of hers.
Emma snapped her thighs closed—with his hand happily trapped—and, swear to God, he almost came just a little bit. “Wait a minute. You’re saying it’s okay for you to make me come all over the place, but you won’t let me do the same for you?”
Good lord.
Raggedly he dropped his forehead down onto her chest, praying for strength when he saw how thin her shirt was. One good tug would shred the fabric and he’d be able to taste her soft skin.
Focus, Jake.
He forced his mouth away from the pebbled nipple tempting him.
Erection hard as a spike, he tried to stop all the rabid lust from coursing through his system. “I didn’t say that. I said let’s not rush having sex.” He nibbled on the exposed skin at her shoulder and used his free hand to pull her shirt down just a tiny bit more—he was only human. “But other things, on my part, at least, I obviously want to keep doing. But you don’t have to. I know not all women enjoy that.”
“Jake, look at me.”
He wasn’t sure he had the strength.
But the stubborn woman wasn’t taking no for an answer. Nor was she loosening her grip on his one trapped hand. Locking on to her cornflower-blue gaze, he prepared himself for a full-tactile assault of the Emma Stevens variety.
He got a soft sigh from her instead. “You make me crazy—you know that, right?”
He grinned. “Right back at you, babe.”
She let his trapped hand free. “Do you really want to wait? Is it important to you? One thing I’ve learned about you is that you only get bullheaded about things when it’s important.” Her lips quirked up at the corner. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but I get bullheaded about stuff all the time.”
No comment. He wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole.
“But you.” She sighed again. “You’re serious—aren’t you? Waiting is important to you.”
He loved that she got him. “It is.”
“Can you tell me why?” She chewed on her lower lip nervously. “You’re not . . . this isn’t your first . . .”
He barked out a laugh. God, she was cute. “No. I’m not a virgin, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Not with how hard you made me—” Her cheeks burned bright red.
“Woman, you need to stop deploying your freckles. I’m trying to dial it down a notch, remember?” He dropped a kiss onto each new freckle he found on her bare shoulder. Forget her bourbon pecan pudding, Emma’s skin was his new favorite dessert.
“Jake. Focus.”
“I would if you weren’t so damn wet,” he complained as his fingers slid up her thigh to find her even wetter, hotter than she’d been on the stairs.
“Jake.” She grabbed his hand, then really got his attention by using the other hand to grab—
“Christ, Emma.” He was a weak, weak man. And with each slow pump of her hand, he was getting weaker by the second. “You’re going to make me come if you keep that up.”
She stopped . . . only to slip her hand into his boxer briefs a moment later.
“Now do I have your attention?”
Hell, she could have anything she wanted at this point.
Rubbing her thumb over his feverishly hot, almost painfully hard, shaft slowly, she asked again, “Why do you want to wait, Jake?”
Wait? Wait for what? His lust-fogged brain could barely make sense of her words. He was T minus less than a minute from not waiting for anything.
She squeezed gently and lazily began sliding her hand down . . .
“Emma, stop.” Those two words earned him some sainthood points for sure. Especially when she dragged his boxer briefs down completely and took him in both hands.
Holy hell, that feels good.
Jeez, focus Jake.
Only the woman had no intention of letting him focus. On anything other than the feel of her mouth on him.
She looked up at him through her lashes as she traced her tongue over his entire length.
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to do this.”
She closed her mouth over him fully and drew him to the back of her throat.
Yeah, she was right. He should stop talking.
A throttled groan rumbled out of his chest. It’d been a while, so he couldn’t say with absolute certainty, but he was pretty sure that mind-erasing swivel move she was doing was brand-new in the world of blow jobs.
His hands slid into her hair, just to hold her, not guide her motions, because sweet lord, the woman was doing a bang-up job taking him from zero to sixty. Already he was starting to see colored spots in his vision, and his breathing was erratic at best, nonexistent at her very best.
Like now, for example. There was absolutely no oxygen going up to his brain, and his lungs were burning and demanding he take in a goddamn breath of air, but he didn’t care. With each slow glide, her lips tightened over him and then relaxed each time she took him just a little bit deeper.
And the vicelike grip she maintained with both hands at his base as she stroked her tongue over his hard shaft made for a perfect trifecta.
He could feel his control slipping with each pulsing pass.
Then she took him as deep as she could go.
And swallowed.
“Baby, I’m going to come,” he ground out the ragged warning through clenched teeth, sheer determination the only thing keeping him from spilling in her hot, wet mouth.
The stubborn little thing just took that warning as a signal to swallow him down again, and work him with her throat, and he was done for.
His vision darkened at the edges as the most violent orgasm of his life crashed over him and sucked him under the tide.
When he came to a long, blurry second later, he found Emma trailing gentle kisses up his abdomen.
He wanted to say something romantic. Or at least classy. But the best he could manage was, “Jesus Christ, Emma.”
Her lips curled into a grin against his skin in response.
“Now.” She sat up and locked on to his half-lidded gaze. “Tell me why you want to wait, Jake.”
Whoa, the woman played hardball.
He sighed and tried to put his rationale into words. It had been hard enough without the post-orgasm haze. Now he’d be lucky if he could explain it without botching it up. He decided to just say what he’d been thinking ever since the possibility that something might be possible between the two of them first arose. “I know you don’t like thinking about our past, Emma, but I think about it all the time.”
Her smile faded. “Oh.”
She stopped with the distracting kisses and gave him a little more room to think. Whew.
Knowing she was going to avoid his gaze, he gently gripped her chin to keep her eyes on his. “The reason why I want to wait is because, for me, this relationship started fourteen years ago. Just because we’re now adults doesn’t mean I want to rush what I’d wanted to start back then. Does that make sense?”
Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “You think about that?”
“All the time, sweetheart. I told you—I’ve thought about our first date for years. Our second date almost as long.”
“H-how many dates have you thought up for us?”
“Hundreds, at least. But the thing is, those were dates I’d planned for the teenage versions of us. I’m only now getting to know the adult version of you. And I want time to plan new dates for this version of you.” He brushed his lips over hers. “Because I think she’s pretty darn special.”
“If you want me to stop deploying my freckles, you need to stop with all the sexy talk in that smoky voice of yours.”
He smiled. “Sexy talk? I was just being honest.”
“Exactly.” She exhaled.
He rubbed his thumb over her heated cheeks. “If it helps, I can guarantee you’ll be driving me more crazy than I’ll be driving you.”
“That does help, yes. Thank you.”
He chuckled. “And I meant what I said about what we did on the stairs. We can, of course—”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” She pulled her shirt down and scooted up the mattress. “If you want to wait to have sex, then we’re going to wait completely.”
“So earlier, when you made me come so hard I almost blacked out—”
“You got to taste me once, so it was only fair I got to taste you once.”
Jeez, he had to ask.
“But from now on, if you’re going to wait, then so am I. A hundred percent.”
Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
“But—”
“Nope.” She dragged a pillow over her lap. “Neither one of us is going to be revisiting tonight’s festivities until you and I both decide we’re ready for our relationship to have a whole lot of sex in it. Dirty, nonstop, do-it-on-every-available-surface sex. Sound like a plan?”
He groaned. “Why do I get the feeling I just armed you with a whole lot of ammo?”
Her only reply was a pair of innocently twinkling eyes.