SIX
The sun shining through the sheer curtains woke Carla up.
Immediately, she felt a sense of peace wash over her as her mind came slowly awoke. Eyes closed and still feeling sleepy, she stretched lazily on the bed, feeling the fluidness of her bones. She felt good – she had slept soundly, tired from the nights exertions. Attempting to roll over, she encountered hard solid flesh beside her and her eyes flew open.
Jackson was smiling down into her eyes looking absolutely like he belonged there. He was up on his elbow and Carla had to admit that he looked good enough to eat.
“Hi beautiful,” he said and placed a kiss on her nose.
Carla laughed giddily. “Last night,” she said. “Last night was real?”
“Yes Carla,” he answered wryly. “Why? You doubt? I must not have made a very good impression if you are in doubt already.”
She laughed as he drew her into his arms.
“Believe me, you made a very good impression,” she told him, smiling.
“I thought I did especially considering you kept making all those sounds last night,” he winked at her. “How many times was it – three or four? But if you’ve forgotten so easily I’ll have to remind you.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
She gasped as she felt two of his fingers inside her. She hadn’t even noticed his hand move underneath the sheets, the cad! “Oh, that feels good,” she said as his fingers began to move.
“I bet it does,” he smiled unrepentantly into her eyes. “What do you say we miss our flight this morning,” he asked calmly.
Carla writhed on the bed. He now had three fingers inside her and was clawing at her, moving his wicked fingers slowly inside her. Carla felt hot liquid pour over his fingers, but he didn’t stop.
“Answer me,” he demanded.
“Miss – mi-ss our flight… Oh… That – that is amazing!”
“Hmm… so should we miss our flight or not?”
“Absolutely, please let’s,” she cried as he suddenly pushed all three fingers deep inside her.
“Good,” he smiled. “So, you were saying you forgot we had sex last night?” He still looked like he was only having a normal conversation.
“Uhm, no, no,” she was thrashing on the bed now. “Please Jackson, I want you. I want you inside me.”
“Say it again,” he ordered. “I’ve waited so long to hear you say that.”
She couldn’t hear him anymore. She rose to meet the tempo of his fingers as they moved inside her. Her body was flushed, and she clung to him. With his other hand, he dragged the sheets away from her body and leaned down to take a nipple in his mouth. He bit down hard and blew on the nipple immediately. Her breath came out on a loud whoosh.
“Say it again,” he instructed.
“What? Please?”
“Say you want me,” he said.
“I want you,” she obeyed. “I want you, I want you, I want you. Please, I need you inside me.”
His fingers began to move faster, driving her insane with desire. He sucked and pulled and bit at one breast and then the other. He climbed on top of her and she raised her hips to meet him, but he didn’t enter her.
“Jackson!” she cried.
But he continued to tease her with his rock-hard cock, fingers and tongue. She burned for him. She begged and pleaded but he would not give her what she wanted. Her mind had taken flight and all she could think about was having him inside her. When she couldn’t take it anymore, her hands went frantically in search of his cock and she almost wept when they found him. He was as hard for her as she was wet for him. Too mindless with desire, she didn’t know where she found the strength to throw him off her. Before he could recover from the shock, she was on top of him and gliding around his shaft.
“Oh God, Carla!” he groaned loudly.
His voice sounded like he was dying a thousand deaths. Good, she was too. She folded her legs beneath her, effectively holding him in place and began to move – slowly at first, clenching his rigid shaft with her inner muscles. He was the one writhing on the bed now, trying to get her to move faster. She held him down firmly, deliberately going at her own pace, torturing him as much as he did her.
“Come on, Carla! Move!”
She stopped her movements and he cursed incoherently then tried to reach for her, but she slapped his hands away.
“Please Carla, you’re killing me. This is torture, please…”
His eyes were rolling in his head and sweat covered his chest. He was shaking like a leaf in a storm. He made her feel so powerful. Suddenly, she pushed down hard and was gratified to see him shudder beneath her. Again, she lifted up slowly and before he could blink, pushed back with even greater force. The torture was killing her too, but she was making a statement.
She wanted him to know that when it came to sex, she was his equal. He seemed to be getting the message loud and clear.
“Oh my God!”
The words were more like a curse. When she was sure that the lesson had sank in enough, she pushed against his shaft one more time and took him in completely. They were a perfect fit.
She began to ride him faster, faster, and faster until all she could see were his brown eyes staring into hers in blissful ecstasy.
****
“Why do you and Adrian hate each other so much?”
She was seated right in front of him in the first-class cabin of the plane and Carla could see Jackson tense up at her question. Though her gaze remained fixed ahead, she could feel his probing gaze on her. She thought if he could, he just might ask the pilot to stop the plane, so she could get out.
It was Sunday afternoon and they were on their rescheduled flight back to Manhattan. Apart from an elderly couple who were fast asleep already, they were the only ones in the cabin and it was just as well; Carla didn’t need an audience for the spectacle that may ensue. Before she opened her mouth to ask her question, they had been sitting in utter silence – the kind that could be cut in a knife. Jackson hadn’t said anything about what would happen when they got to Manhattan and she hadn’t either.
This morning before he left for his room to change for their journey, they had had another bout of hot, steamy sex that still had Carla’s toes tingling. However, Jackson’s mood had changed as soon as they entered into the car that would take them to the airport. He seemed so deep in thought, she wondered if he was thinking how best he would tell her that she had only been a weekend fling.
Carla didn’t blame him, nor did she regret what they had. She didn’t deceive herself into thinking things would be different once they got back home. In the recess of her mind, she had known what she was going into when she opened her hotel door on Friday night and let him in. Jackson Daniels was no woman’s man to keep – that she already knew. So, she had decided to take what she could with him and move on. He hadn’t promised anything else. At least he wasn’t giving her false hope. She only hoped that moving on would be as easy for her as it would most likely be for him.
But before they got back to reality, she needed to ask that one question.
Before Friday night, she would have quickly apologized and asked him to forget it. But a lot had had happened between them since then and she felt she deserved to know that about him at least.
His muscles were tense, and he looked like he really preferred not to answer. But she was not going to let this go.
“Why do you and Adrian hate each other so much?” she repeated.
“It is a long story,” he sighed at last.
“It is a long flight,” she replied calmly.
A small smile curved his lips. “I always liked that about you – you always know just how to respond to me.”
The words sounded too much like a double entendre, so Carla just ignored them and sat back in her seat to indicate she was ready to listen.
“My grandmother – as well as Adrian’s – is an English heiress as you may already know,” he began slowly in an impassive voice. However, Carla judged from the hesitation on his face that he wasn’t as unaffected as he made out to be. “She fell in love with an American and left everything to be with him. Her only son was the apple of her eye especially when she lost her husband. Singlehandedly, Isabelle Wood built her husband’s businesses into a formidable empire which she hoped her son would inherit one day. Clegg Wood gave birth to a son too – Adrian.” The name was said with a wry twist of his lips, but he continued. “One day while away on a business meeting together, Clegg had sex with his secretary. That one-night stand ruined his life. The woman was a single mother who was desperate for love and when she discovered that she was pregnant, she surprised Clegg at dinner with his family. Clegg denied it and his wife threw her out.”
Carla gasped. She already knew where the story was headed. She didn’t know who the woman in the story was, but she had a pretty good idea who she was to Jackson. Her heart went out to him. Carla couldn’t imagine the stigma he had to have grown up with. And she had thought the papers had his entire life story in print. Like her, the world didn’t know half of who he truly was.
“Eight years later, the secretary came back with the boy she had given birth to,” Jackson continued. His voice was softer now. “She was dying of cancer, you see, and was returning both her children to their families. At that time, Clegg had died from an accident, but the boy looked exactly like him and this time, there was no denying the baby’s father. The secretary died some months later and Isabelle Wood ordered that the boy be taken in.” Here, Jackson drew in a sharp breath and said in a pained voice, “It was the worst two years of my life, Carla.”
The torment in his voice was so real. Carla fought to hold her position, to be unmoved by the raw emotion on his face but she couldn’t. Involuntarily, she reached out to hold his hands.
“What happened?” she asked.
Jackson sighed before he continued again, “Adrian was sixteen – wise enough – but he made sure that I knew I wasn’t wanted. He tormented me both physically and psychologically. He made sure everybody in school knew that I was a bastard. His mother simply let him do with me as he liked. It was me against them both and those memories are not ones I like to dig up. Thank God for Isabelle. Gran visited and even though I had been bullied into keeping quiet, Gran saw.” A small smile of pain took over his features as he remembered the lovely old lady who had passed on only two months ago.
“You loved her a lot,” Carla said softly.
He nodded. “I owe her everything,” he said simply and truthfully. “One look at me that day all those years ago, and she knew what I was made to go through. In the twinkle of an eye, she had me pack my meager belongings and took me out of the house to live with her. She got my adoption papers ready and legally adopted me. Knowing how much I desired a sibling to love me, she had my sister join us too. Perhaps it was guilt for letting my father deny me for so long but she damn right would have jumped through hoops to please me. She even let me and Kayla, my sister, keep our mother’s name. When I left college, she put me in charge of Clegg and Hyde. She did right by us; enough to make me love her to pieces, enough to make me want to honor her dying wishes and forget the past.”
“But you can’t forget what Adrian did to you,” Carla said quietly. It was a statement of fact.
“No, I can’t,” Jackson answered, jaws clenched. “He was sixteen; he wasn’t a kid. He knew what he was doing. Even now, he still detests my very existence. He simply hates me for daring to exist, for stealing his grandmother’s love and for daring to call him brother. That’s not so easy to let go.”
With hatred so deep, Carla wondered if the burning fire of animosity between the two brothers could ever be extinguished,
“And when she died, your grandmother left you two as sole inheritors to the Wood wealth,” Carla completed the story. That much she knew from the many correspondences between Adrian and Jackson while they tried to sort out the will.
He nodded. “The old lady was hoping for reconciliation.”
“And that’s impossible?” Carla asked. “Can you even settle the will without a blood battle? You don’t seem to have made a good job of it so far.”
Jackson didn’t answer her. He simply stared at her for the longest time. Minutes later, he rested his head backwards on his seat and closed his eyes. The discussion was over.
Carla remained silent for the remainder of the flight. She simply held his hand, providing what little comfort she could for him and for herself – and knew that it could never be enough, not for him and certainly not for her.