It was too much. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think. My nails raked across the comforter, instinctively trying to pull me away from the flood of sensation, away from the spurting cock still plunging inside me, making me take more...feel more...when I couldn’t possible withstand it.
Jax kept me with him, trapped and possessed, a willing prisoner to the endless need between us.
* * *
Jax undressed me, washed his semen away with a warm washcloth, and arranged me on the bed. I was limp and breathless the whole time, and slightly irritated that he could move and think while I was a brainless mess of postorgasmic endorphins.
“You suck,” I told him when he finally sprawled on the bed beside me, gloriously naked.
He propped his head in his hand and grinned, his fingers running lightly down my cleavage to circle my navel. “Guess you missed the ten minutes it took for me to be able to stand up.”
“I’m taking you down for the count next time,” I grumbled.
“Mmm...” Leaning over me, he pressed his lips to mine. “I’m just happy there’s a next time. Lots of next times. You’ve got two years to make up for.”
My eyes narrowed. “I’m not taking the blame. You walked. Whether or not I followed, you’re the one who bailed.”
“So I have two years to make up for.” He slid over me, kneeing my thighs open and settling between them. “I better get started.”
Reaching up, I brushed his hair back from his forehead. He was even more breathtaking after sex, his face softened and seemingly younger, his eyes bright and his smile boyishly charming. He looked happy and it twisted my heart to think I’d made him that way without even really trying.
Turning his head, he pressed his lips to my palm. “I love you.”
“Jax.” My eyes stung. “I used to dream about you saying that to me.”
“I told you a lot,” he confessed, “while you were sleeping.”
That hurt worse than thinking he’d never felt that way about me at all. “Will I ever understand why you put us through hell?”
The light in his eyes dimmed. His smile faded. “I’m afraid you will.”
Tension gripped his big frame, and I regretted bringing it up. I wrapped my legs around his hips, hugging him close.
“Let’s agree not to bring anything but us into our bed,” he murmured, running his nose along my cheek. “I want us to have someplace where it’s just you and me, a place where we can remember why nothing else really matters but what we’ve got.”
I nodded, my hands stroking up and down his back. Burying my face in his throat, I breathed him in, letting the familiar and beloved scent of his skin ground me in the moment. “I’m game for that. But I’ll warn you right now that if you don’t start including me, we won’t make it as far as this bed to begin with.”
His mouth curved against my skin. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Rossi.”
“You’re damn right.”
His back tightened beneath my hands. He started pushing inside me with a serrated groan.
“In all fairness,” he said gutturally, “I can, too.”
* * *
Drowning in one of Jax’s robes, I sipped a glass of wine and watched him slice cold cuts and cheese. His massive Sub-Zero refrigerator was bachelor barren.
“You ever live with a woman before?” I asked him.
“No.”
I nodded, admiring him in loose-fitting pajama pants. “Aren’t you worried it’ll feel like an invasion of your privacy?”
He glanced at me, his dark eyes piercing from beneath the locks of his disheveled hair. “No.”
“This place is pretty...sterile. You don’t think it might drive you a little nuts to see my shoes kicked off here and there, or my purse on the chair, or—”
“Your panties on the rug because I yanked them off to fuck you?” He straightened. “No, I’m not going to mind. You having second thoughts?”
I took another sip of the crisp Riesling before answering. “I’m just worried that you’re thinking about me so much that you’re not thinking about how this is going to affect you.”
He set the knife down and picked up his own glass. Dangerously casual with those assessing eyes. “What are you afraid of, Gia?”
I thought about the best way to say what was on my mind. “I know you’re worried about what we’re going to deal with outside this apartment. But I’m more sketchy about what’s going to happen right here. It’s all fun and games until you start feeling irritated by the day-to-day reality of living with someone.”
Jax leaned back against the counter, crossing his ankles and wrapping one arm around his chest. Holding his wineglass aloft, he looked relaxed and at ease, which wasn’t the case at all. He’d honed in on me, stripping me bare with that jaded gaze.
“Like the way you splash water everywhere when you’re washing your face?” he drawled. “How you leave dishes in the sink because you’re still pulling clean ones out of the dishwasher one at a time as you use them? How you’ve got phone charger cords stuck into outlets in every room, so you don’t have to go far to plug the damn thing in? How I’m going to be tripping over those shoes you kick off all over the place?”
I blinked. “Um...yeah.”
“Just because I like staring at your ass, babe, doesn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention to the rest of you while we were together in Vegas.” His mouth curved. “That said, if you’re really worried about pissing me off, we can establish terms for what you’ll do for me when it happens.”