CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when Hayley and Jonathan finally got back out of bed. Hayley felt... Well, she didn’t know quite what she felt. Good. Satisfied. Jonathan was... Well, if she’d ever had insecurities about whether or not she might be desirable to a man, he had done away with those completely. He had also taught her things about herself—about pleasure, about her own body—that she’d never in her wildest dreams conceived of.
She didn’t know what would happen next, though. She had fallen asleep after their last time together, and when she’d awoken he was gone again. This morning, she had looked for him. She wasn’t sure if she should do that twice.
Still, before she could even allow herself to ponder making the decision, she got out of bed, grabbed his T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over her head. Then she padded down the hallway, hoping he didn’t have any surprise visitors. That would be a nightmare. Getting caught wearing only a T-shirt in her boss’s hallway. There would be a lot of questions about what they had just spent the last few hours doing, that was for sure.
She wondered if Jonathan might be outside again, but she decided to check his office first. And was rewarded when she saw him sitting at the computer, his head lowered over the keyboard, some of his dark hair falling over his face after coming loose from the braid he normally kept it in.
Her heart clenched painfully, and it disturbed her that her heart was the first part of her body to tighten. The rest of her followed shortly thereafter, but she really wished her reaction was more about her body than her feelings. She couldn’t afford to have feelings for him. She wasn’t staying in Copper Ridge. And even if she were, he wouldn’t want her long-term, anyway.
She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the strange, constricted feeling that had overtaken her lungs. “I thought I might find you here,” she said.
He looked up, his expression betraying absolutely no surprise. He sneaked up on her all the time, but of course, as always, Jonathan was unflappable. “I just had a few schematics to check over.” He pushed the chair away from the desk and stood, reaching over his head to stretch.
She was held captive by the sight of him. Even fully dressed, he was a beautiful thing.
His shoulders and chest were broad and muscular, his waist trim. His face like sculpted rock, or hardened bronze, uncompromising. But she knew the secret way to make those lips soften. Only for her.
No, not only for you. He does this all the time. They are just softening for you right now.
It was good for her to remember that.
“I’m finished now,” he said, treating her to a smile that made her feel like melting ice cream on a hot day.
“Good,” she said, not quite sure why she said it, because it wasn’t like they had made plans. She wondered when he would ask her to leave. Or maybe he wanted her to leave, but didn’t want to tell her. “It’s late,” she said. “I could go.”
“Do you need to go?”
“No,” she said, a little too quickly.
“Then don’t.”
Relief washed over her, and she did her best not to show him just how pleased she was by that statement. “Okay,” she said, “then I won’t go.”
“I was thinking. About your list.”
She blinked. “My list?”
“Yeah, your list. You had dancing on there. Pretty sure you had a kiss. And whether or not it was on the list...you did lose your virginity. Since I helped you with those items, I figured I might help you with some of the others.”
A deep sense of pleasure and something that felt a lot like delight washed through her. “Really?”
“Yes,” he said, “really. I figure we started all of this, so we might as well keep going.”
“I don’t have an official list.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous. If you’re going to do this thing, you have to do it right.” He grabbed a sheet of paper out of the printer and settled back down in the office chair. “Let’s make a list.”
He picked up a pen and started writing.
“What are you doing? I didn’t tell you what I wanted yet.”
“I’m writing down what we already did so you have the satisfaction of checking those off.”
Her stomach turned over. “Don’t write down all of it.”
“Oh,” he said, “I am. All of it. In detail.”
“No!” She crossed the space between them and stood behind him, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders as if she might restrain him. He kept on writing. She peered around his head, then slapped the pen out of his hand when she saw him writing a very dirty word. “Stop it. If anybody finds that list I could be...incriminated.”
He laughed and swiveled the chair to the side. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. “Oh no. We would hate for you to be incriminated. But on the other hand, the world would know you spent the afternoon with a very firm grip on my—”
“No!”
He looked at her and defiantly put a checkmark by what he had just written. She huffed, but settled into his hold. She liked this too much. Him smiling, him holding her when they had clothes on as if he just wanted to hold her.
It was nice to have him want her in bed. Very nice. But this was something else, and it was nice, too.
“Okay, so we have dancing, kissing, sex, and all of the many achievements beneath the sex,” he said, ignoring her small noises of protest. “So what else?”
“I want to go to a place where I need a passport,” she said.
“We could drive to Canada.”
She laughed. “I was thinking more like Europe. But... Could we really drive to Canada?”
“Well,” he said, “maybe not today, since I have to be back here by Monday.”
“That’s fine. I was thinking more Paris than Vancouver.”
“Hey, they speak French in Canada.”
“Just write it down,” she said, poking his shoulder.
“Fine. What next?”
“I feel like I should try alcohol,” she said slowly. “Just so I know.”
“Fair enough.” He wrote get hammered.
“That is not what I said.”
“Sorry. I got so excited about the idea of getting you drunk. Lowering your inhibitions.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m already more uninhibited with you than I’ve ever been with anyone else.” It was true, she realized, as soon as she said it. She was more herself with Jonathan than she had ever been with anyone, including her family, who had known her for her entire life.
Maybe it was the fact that, in a town full of people who were familiar with her, at least by reputation, he was someone she hadn’t known at all until a couple weeks ago.
Maybe it was the fact that he had no expectations of her beyond what they’d shared. Whatever the case, around him she felt none of the pressure that she felt around other people in the community.
No need to censor herself, or hide; no need to be respectable or serene when she felt like being disreputable and wild.
“I want to kiss in the rain,” she said.
“Given weather patterns,” he said slowly, “we should be able to accomplish that, too.”
She was ridiculously pleased he wanted to be a part of that, pleased that he hadn’t said anything about her finding a guy to kiss in the rain in Paris. She shouldn’t be happy he was assuming he would be the person to help her fulfill these things. She should be annoyed. She should feel like he was inserting himself into her independence, but she didn’t. Mostly because he made her independence seem...well, like more.
“You’re very useful, aren’t you?”
He looked at her, putting his hand on her cheek, his dark gaze serious as it met hers. “I’m glad I can be useful to you.”
She felt him getting hard beneath her backside, and that pleased her, too. “Parts of you are very useful,” she said, reaching behind her and slowly stroking his length.
The light in his eyes changed, turning much more intense. “Hayley Thompson,” he said, “I would say that’s shocking behavior.”
“I would say you’re responsible, Jonathan Bear.”
He shook his head. “No, princess, you’re responsible for this. For all of this. This is you. It’s what you want, right? The things on your list that you don’t even want to write down. It’s part of you. You don’t get to blame it all on me.”
She felt strangely empowered by his words. By the idea that this was her, and not just him leading her somewhere.
“That’s very... Well, that’s very... I like it.” She furthered her exploration of him, increasing the pressure of her touch. “At least, I like it with you.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“That’s good,” she said softly, continuing to stroke him through the fabric of his pants.
She looked down, watched herself touching him. It was...well, now that she had started, she didn’t want to stop.
“I would be careful if I were you,” he said, his tone laced with warning, “because you’re about to start something, and it’s very likely you need to take a break from all that.”
“Do I? Why would I need a break?”
“Because you’re going to get sore,” he said, maddeningly pragmatic.
And, just as maddeningly, it made her blush to hear him say it. “I don’t really mind,” she said finally.
“You don’t?” His tone was calm, but heat flared in the depths of his dark eyes.
“No,” she replied, still trailing her fingertips over his hardening body. “I like feeling the difference. In me. I like being so...aware of everything we’ve done.” For her, that was a pretty brazen proclamation, though she had a feeling it paled in comparison to the kinds of things other women had said to him in the past.
But she wasn’t one of those other women. And right now he was responding to her, so she wasn’t going to waste a single thought on anyone who had come before her. She held his interest now. That was enough.
“There’s something else on my list,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady, fighting against the nerves firing through her.
“Is that so?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Yes. I want to... That is... What you did for me... A couple of times now... I want to... I want to...” She gave up trying to get the words out. She wasn’t sure she had the right words for what she wanted to do, anyway, and she didn’t want to humiliate herself by saying something wrong.
So, with unsteady hands, she undid the closure on his jeans and lowered the zipper. She looked up at him. If she expected to get any guidance, she was out of luck. He just stared at her, his dark eyes unfathomable, his jaw tight, a muscle in his cheek ticking.
She shifted on his lap, sliding gracefully to the floor in front of the chair. Then she went to her knees and turned to face him, flicking her hair out of her face.
He still said nothing, watching her closely, unnervingly so. But she wasn’t going to turn back now. She lifted the waistband of his underwear, pulling it out in order to clear his impressive erection, then she pulled the fabric partway down his hips, as far as she could go with him sitting.
He was beautiful.
That feeling of intimidation she’d felt the first time she’d seen him had faded completely. Now she knew what he could do, and she appreciated it greatly. He had shown her so many things; he’d made her pleasure the number one priority. And she wanted to give to him in return.
Well, she also knew this would be for her, too.
She slid her hands up his thighs, then curled her fingers around his hardened length, squeezing him firmly. She was learning that he wasn’t breakable there. That he liked a little bit of pressure.
“Hayley,” he said, his voice rough, “I don’t think you know what you’re doing.”
“No,” she said, “I probably don’t. But I know what I want. And it’s been so much fun having what I want.” She rose up slightly, then leaned in, pressing her lips to the head of his shaft. He jerked beneath her touch, and she took that as approval.
A couple hours ago she would have been afraid that she’d hurt him. But male pleasure, she was discovering, sometimes looked a little like pain. Heck, female pleasure was a little like pain. Sex was somewhere between. The aching need to have it all and the intense rush of satisfaction that followed.
She shivered just thinking about it.
And then she flicked her tongue out, slowly testing this new territory. She hummed, a low sound in the back of her throat, as she explored the taste of him, the texture. Jonathan Bear was her favorite indulgence, she was coming to realize. There was nothing about him she didn’t like. Nothing he had done to her she didn’t love. She liked the way he felt, and apparently she liked the way he tasted, too.
She parted her lips slowly, worked them over the head, then swallowed down as much of him as she could. The accompanying sound he made hollowed out her stomach, made her feel weak and powerful at the same time.
His body was such an amazing thing. So strong, like it had been carved straight from the mountain. Yet it wasn’t in any way cold or unmovable; it was hot. His body had changed hers. Yes, he’d taken her virginity, but he had also taught her to feel pleasure she hadn’t realized she had the capacity to feel.
Such power in his body, and yet, right now, it trembled beneath her touch. The whisper-soft touch of her lips possessed the power to rock him, to make him shake. To make him shatter.
Right now, desire was enough. She didn’t need skill. She didn’t need experience. And she felt completely confident in that.
She slipped her tongue over his length as she took him in deep, and he bucked his hips lightly, touching the back of her throat. Her throat contracted and he jerked back.
“Sorry,” he said, his voice strained.
“No,” she said, gripping him with one hand and bringing her lips back against him. “Don’t apologize. I like it.”
“You’re inexperienced.”
She nodded slowly, then traced him with the tip of her tongue. “Yes,” she agreed, “I am. I’ve never done this for any other man. I’ve never even thought about it before.” His hips jerked again, and she realized he liked this. That he—however much he tried to pretend he didn’t—liked that her desire was all for him.
“I think you might be corrupting me,” she said, keeping her eyes wide as she took him back into her mouth.
He grunted, fisting his hands in her hair, but he didn’t pull her away again.
The muscles in his thighs twitched beneath her fingertips, and he seemed to grow larger, harder in her mouth. She increased the suction, increased the friction, used her hands as well as her mouth to drive him as crazy as she possibly could.
There was no plan. There was no skill. There was just the need to make him even half as mindless as he’d made her over the past couple days.
He had changed her. He had taken her from innocence...to this. She would be marked by him forever. He would always be her first. But society didn’t have a term for a person’s experience after virginity. So she didn’t have a label for the impact she wanted to make on him.
Jonathan hadn’t been a virgin for a very long time, she suspected. And she probably wasn’t particularly special as a sexual partner.
So she had to try to make herself special.
She had no tricks to make this the best experience he’d ever had. She had only herself. And so she gave it to him. All of her. Everything.
“Hayley,” he said, his voice rough, ragged. “You better stop.”
She didn’t. She ignored him. She had a feeling he was close; she recognized the signs now. She had watched him reach the point of pleasure enough times that she had a fair idea of what it looked like. Of what it felt like. His whole body tensing, his movements becoming less controlled.
She squeezed the base of him tightly, pulling him in deeper, and then he shattered. And she swallowed down every last shudder of need that racked his big body.
In the aftermath, she was dazed, her heart pounding hard, her entire body buzzing. She looked up at him from her position on the floor, and he looked down at her, his dark eyes blazing with...anger, maybe? Passion? A kind of sharp, raw need she hadn’t ever seen before.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he said.
“Oh,” she returned, “I hope so.”
He swept her up, crushed her against his chest. “You have to put it on my list first,” she said.
Then he brought his mouth down to hers, and whatever she’d intended to write down was forgotten until morning.