JESS had no idea how much time passed before she became aware of her surroundings again. The moonlight spilling across her face. The feel of the mattress against her back. The weight of Adam against her front.
The settling of two frenetic heartbeats. The mellowing of two rapid breaths.
A delicious warmth radiated from her centre, soothing the slight ache where his hardness still nestled deep inside her.
‘Wow,’ she murmured, her lips brushing a warm shoulder.
Adam, his face buried in her neck, chuckled. He couldn’t have put it better himself. ‘Indeed.’
When was the last time sex had been this…sweet? This special?
Jess pressed a kiss against the solid roundness of his shoulder. It was round enough to bite, smelled and tasted good enough to eat and despite an all-consuming lassitude she found herself wanting more.
‘Again,’ she murmured, turning her head to press a kiss against his throat.
Adam laughed. ‘I might need a minute or two.’
Jess smiled against his throat as the rumble of his words tickled her lips. She moved against him. ‘Doesn’t feel like it.’
Adam sucked in a breath. Every cell urged him to pull out and plunge back in again.
Out, in. Out, in. Out, in.
But.
They needed to talk first.
With a monumental effort he silenced the mantra thrumming through his blood, roaring through his ears, and gently withdrew.
Jess gasped as he left her body. The glide of him against sensitive skin was delicious. The ache left in his wake illicit.
But still she mewed a protest as he shifted off her and said, ‘We need to talk.’
‘I don’t think I’m capable.’
Adam laughed as he settled onto his back. He could most certainly relate. ‘That makes two of us.’
Jess rolled on her side, resting her head on his shoulder and sliding a palm across Adam’s chest until it was tucked down his opposite side. His arm curled up around her back and his hand came to rest on her shoulder. Jess sighed contentedly.
She’d always known it could be like this.
Adam lay in silence, appreciating the feel of her pressed against him and the aromas of sweet, sweet woman.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked eventually, to ward off the tug of post-coital lethargy.
Jess fluttered her eyes open. There was no use pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘Would you have gone through with this if you’d known?’
Adam stroked the skin beneath his fingers with long, languorous strokes as he stared at the ceiling. ‘No.’
‘That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
Adam shut his eyes as guilt began to rear its ugly head. ‘It would have been nice to know, Jess…’
‘What difference would it have made other than you running a mile?’
He opened his eyes. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have taken you against a door.’
Jess pushed herself up on her elbow and looked down at him. ‘Why not?’
He looked into her earnest face. ‘It’s hardly sexual intercourse 101, Jess. There are…easier ways.’
Jess could hear the guilt rampant in his voice. ‘No. Don’t do that, Adam. It was…amazing. I wouldn’t change a thing.’
Adam shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I figured you probably hadn’t had a lot of experience, I didn’t realise you’d had none.’ He pushed a lock of hair that had fallen forward back over her shoulder. His gaze fell to her mouth. ‘You don’t kiss like a virgin.’
Jess smiled. ‘Oh, and how do virgins kiss?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. But not like you. Not all hot and heavy and…just the right amount of hard and soft and…not with tongue or that little whimper at the back of your throat.’
Even thinking about that whimper got him hard all over again.
Jess grinned at his detailed recall of their passionate kisses. ‘I have been kissed, you know. Quite a bit, actually. I’ve had boyfriends. Dates.’
‘So why didn’t you…?’
‘Go all the way?’
‘Yes.’
Adam dropped his gaze as a knot of emotion tightened his gut. Now it was over, the thought of anyone else introducing her to the intimacies they’d shared did not sit well.
Jess waited until he looked at her again. She wanted him to see the honesty of her answer when she replied.
‘I hadn’t planned on being a virgin at twenty-four, Adam. It was just the way it worked out.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m an old-fashioned girl. I was brought up to think that my virginity was something special. That it should be saved for someone special.’
Adam shut his eyes and groaned. What had he done? Taken something that he didn’t deserve? ‘For a husband?’ he asked, opening his eyes.
Jess shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. My grandmother always says I’ll know who when the time comes. And I did. You’re that person.’
No. He wasn’t. He loved and left. His next mission was only weeks away and he had every intention of being on that flight.
He’d taken her against a door, for crying out loud.
He wasn’t who she thought he was. ‘Jess.’
She could see the denial forming in his lapis lazuli eyes and couldn’t bear to hear it. ‘Shh,’ she murmured, dropping a kiss on his mouth. ‘Don’t talk,’ she whispered. ‘Just kiss me.’
He groaned against her mouth as he devoured it like it was his last-ever chance to kiss her.
When they pulled apart they were both breathing hard again. Jess looked down his body. His breath wasn’t the only thing that was hard. She looked back at him as her hand slid down his belly and her fingers connected with the thick bulk of him.
He sucked in a breath as she closed her palm around him. ‘You like that? Tell me what you like.’ Adam shut his eyes as she squeezed him. A bolt of desire jolted through his belly, his thighs, his loins. ‘Jess.’ His breath hissed out her name.
‘Show me,’ she murmured against his mouth.
Adam opened his eyes. The desire to do just that, to take her hand, to push her down, to flip her over, to show her where he liked to be touched and how was so, so tempting.
It was like a thousand male fantasies rolled into one.
Initiating a virgin.
But it felt wrong.
Jess was a novice and it should be about her. Not about his own selfish needs and fantasies. He’d yet to love her properly. To run his tongue over every inch of her. To taste her everywhere but especially where he knew she’d taste the sweetest.
To make her come while he did it.
The extent of his desire for her was frightening.
And somehow with her hand locked around him and her eyes innocently begging him for sexual tutelage it made him excruciatingly aware of their age difference, of the yawning gap in their experience.
It reminded him of his broken promise to Ruby.
She moved her hand up the length of him and his hips bucked involuntarily. He quickly covered her hand with his, stilling any further action.
‘No,’ he murmured as he moved swiftly, flipping her onto her back, covering her with his body.
‘But—’
Jess didn’t get another word out as he smothered her protest with a kiss that left her clinging and gasping when he finally broke away.
‘This time,’ he said, kissing her neck, ‘I’m going to taste you all over.’ He moved his kisses further south, trekking across her throat and along a collar bone. ‘Lie back,’ he murmured against the swell of a breast. ‘Enjoy.’
‘Wait,’ she protested, raising her head off the pillow. She didn’t want to just lie there and be serviced, she wanted to participate.
But then he swiped his hot tongue across a rapidly tightening nipple and she fell back against the bed as all her bones melted in a scorching-hot blaze. She cried out as bolts of desire pinned her to the bed.
And when his mouth trekked lower she could no more have stopped him than flown to the moon.
Jess woke as the bed shifted beside her. A beam of soft sunlight filtered through the blinds and she squinted. Adam was rising from the bed, his back to her. She reached out her hand but he was too quick and her arm fell uselessly against the mattress.
‘Come back to bed,’ she murmured.
He spun around. ‘Sorry.’ He grimaced, his voice low. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’
Jess sucked in a breath at the perfection of his naked body. The sunlight painted tawny stripes across his chest and abs and he looked every inch a virile male animal. She hadn’t seen him fully naked in daylight and the sight of him was truly magnificent.
She dragged her gaze upwards. ‘Did we even get to sleep?’
Adam smiled. ‘Briefly.’
He hadn’t slept at all actually, watching her as she slept a deep, deep sleep of absolute exhaustion. He’d lost track of how many times he’d taken her body last night. How many times he’d kissed her. How many times she’d cried out, begged him for more, begged him to stop.
Begged him to never stop.
He’d been curiously calm about something that should be making him very nervous. And even now, looking at her exposed to the waist, legs tangled in the sheets, a thoroughly sated look on her face, he still felt at peace.
He should have known when he’d opened up to her about his father that she was different from the rest.’
‘It’s five am.’ She dropped her gaze again tracking downwards to admire him. ‘Come back to bed.’
Adam felt himself twitch and then begin to harden before her gaze. Her hand was resting on her belly where the sheet sat low on her hips and all she had to do was push her fingers underneath and she’d…
He swallowed. Don’t go there.
Jess wasn’t a woman who had any experience of sexual games. He doubted she knew the first thing about the multitude of ways to turn a man on besides ogling his naked body. He was damn certain she didn’t know how to tease, how to suggest.
Or how watching a woman touch herself could be even more alluring than doing it yourself.
God knew, he was finding it hard enough staying out of his bed just looking at her looking at him with eyes that still seemed innocent despite the things he’d done to her body last night. If she ever got sexually confident enough to tease him, he’d be a goner.
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ he said, turning away, striding to his wardrobe and reaching for his boardies. ‘I need to recharge my batteries.’ He stepped into them and tied them before turning back to her. ‘I’m going hit the ocean.’
She’d rolled on her side, her head propped up by her hand. Her hair fell forward over her shoulder and her small high breasts, the nipples erect, lay bare and proud before his eyes. The sheet had dipped lower and he could just see a hint of dark shadow.
He wanted her again. Bad.
But he was afraid he’d break her with the weight of his desire. The extent of his need.
Overwhelm her.
Overwhelm himself.
‘Come with me,’ he said, the thought of not being near her suddenly unthinkable. ‘Let me teach you how to surf.’
Jess had absolutely zero desire to learn how to surf. In fact, she wasn’t even that enamoured with the ocean. Sure, she loved to look at it, to hear it, to sit on the beach and feel the sand between her toes, but going in it had never been her favourite pastime.
Conquering its waves even less so.
But at this moment Jess knew she’d do anything to prolong being with Adam. So she opened her mouth and said, ‘Yes.’
With one arm occupied by the board, he didn’t hold her hand on the walk down the hill to the beach. She hadn’t expected him to. And she didn’t reach for his either, keeping both her hands firmly buried beneath their towels. Instead she fretted that he was trying to pull away already and it nagged at her all the way to the beach.
But when he picked her up near the water’s edge and strode with her into the surf, laughing and kicking, her worries melted away. He dumped her in the sea and then kissed her hard when she came up for air.
He also dropped a kiss on her shoulder as she practised on the beached board. His hands strayed frequently over her bottom and low on her hips and belly as he helped with the transition from lying to standing.
And when his tongue trailed a hot path up the back of her thigh as they paddled the board together on their stomachs, she barely suppressed a whimper.
By the time the lesson was over Jess was so turned on she could barely see straight let alone remember any of the things he’d taught her.
Was it any wonder she couldn’t stay on the damn thing?
Jess beached the board after her seventh failed attempt at the baby waves close to shore.
‘You’ll do better tomorrow,’ Adam said as she joined him in the shallows where he was watching one of his fellow early morning surfers glide across the surface of a good-sized wave further out.
‘Well, I can’t do any worse.’
If he’d been any other man she would have politely declined any further lessons. But while he wanted to be with her, she was going to take all opportunities presented to her.
She watched his profile as he tracked the path of the surfer. ‘Are your batteries recharged?’ she asked.
Adam grinned as he admired a beautifully executed cutback. ‘Fully.’
‘Well, then, let’s go back to bed.’
Adam felt an instant streak of lust slam into him at the forthright words coming from her sweet mouth. He turned to stare at her, the surfer forgotten as his wet, clinging boardies suddenly became tighter.
Thank God for his surfboard.
‘I’ve created a monster, haven’t I?’
‘Yup.’ She grinned and turned to walk back up the beach.
She could feel his gaze on her butt and added an extra swagger to her hips and deliberately bent over with as much provocation as she muster to pick up the towels.
‘Jess,’ he growled.
She grinned over her shoulder, throwing him his towel and taking off ahead of him.
Jess was pleased to find the house still quiet when she arrived home a minute ahead of Adam. Tilly was probably out indulging in her regular morning dip. Ellie was working the afternoon shift and no doubt hadn’t roused yet. And Ruby’s night shift hadn’t yet finished. She crossed to Adam’s bedroom and was sitting naked on the side of his bed when he opened the door a minute later.
Adam hissed out a breath. ‘Jess.’
He’d gratefully wrapped the towel around his hips for the walk back to the house but now, feasting his eyes on the gloriously naked sight of her, it seemed as insubstantial as a postage stamp.
He crossed over to her and stood before her. Her hair hung in wet strips to her shoulders, there was a dusting of sand on her belly and he could smell the salt on her skin.
But she glowed and she was looking at him like he was the only man in existence.
Like the original Adam.
She smiled at him and he reached out and stroked the back of his forefinger down her cheek.
‘You’re beautiful.’ Jess felt her heart expand in her chest. The revelation that she loved him pushed painfully at her ribs.
It shouldn’t have been a revelation at all.
She’d been obsessed with him for ever. But she’d never let herself think in terms of the L word before.
Besotted. Infatuated. Smitten.
Yes.
All of them.
But never love. It had seemed too unattainable and she just hadn’t ever allowed her head to go there.
But the revelation was easy this morning.
Of course she loved him. She’d loved him from the beginning.
The desire to tell him, to blurt it out pushed the words to the tip of her tongue. But self-preservation won out.
Telling him now would be suicide.
Jess smiled at him, covering his hand with hers. She brought it to her mouth, dropping a kiss against his knuckles.
I love you.
‘You’re beautiful too.’
The innocent gesture touched Adam somewhere deep inside. A warmth flowed through him, circling around his body and nestling under his skin. He dropped his hand. ‘Lie back,’ he murmured huskily.
Jess looked up into his eyes, the golden flecks making the blue even more remarkable. She shook her head and reached for the towel at his waist.
She didn’t want to be passive any more. She wanted to explore his body. To know more about what made him crazy, what rolled his eyes back, what brought him to his knees.
She wanted to be active.
She wanted to lead.
She wanted to love him.
Adam was only vaguely aware of the towel falling away as her gaze locked on his crotch. He got harder. And he hadn’t even thought that possible. When she reached for the tie he cleared his throat. ‘No.’
Jess looked at the bulge straining against the wet boardies. She stroked a finger along it and was curiously pleased when it pushed against her. ‘It says yes.’
Adam shut his eyes against the urge to thrust his hips. ‘I hate to break it to you but it always says yes.’
Jess would have laughed if there hadn’t been so much strain in Adam’s voice. She dropped her hand. ‘Lucky me.’
‘Jess…I don’t think—’
She looked up at him. ‘I want to taste you.’
Adam swallowed to moisten his suddenly parched throat. ‘You don’t have to do that.’
Even though he wanted to feel her mouth around him more than he’d ever wanted anything. Wanted to look down at her as she performed an act so intimate the mere thought almost buckled his knees.
She pulled the ties. ‘I want to. Just like you tasted me.’
A loud rip echoed around the room as Jess separated the Velcro opening and Adam’s erection nudged through the fabric.
‘Jess.’ Adam reached for the slender hold he had on his libido. ‘Some women don’t…like it.’
Adam liked oral sex. Giving it. And receiving it. Hell, he was certainly no stranger to receiving it. But that was from women who were experienced in sexual matters. Who knew what they wanted and what they didn’t. What they liked and what they didn’t. Adam knew those kind of intimate preferences came from experience.
And Jess had none.
Jess parted his fly, pushing the wet fabric back, allowing Adam’s erection free rein. It was big and thick and hard and she could smell salt and sand and something else quintessentially male.
He was so beautiful her mouth watered.
She looked up at him. ‘Do you like it?’
Adam almost groaned. ‘Of course… I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who doesn’t.’
She smiled at him. ‘Well, that’s all I need to know.’
And then she returned her attention to his erection, grasping it firmly before tentatively flicking her tongue across the engorged head. She felt Adam tremble and just heard the low guttural expletive that left his lips.
She repeated the manoeuvre and then flattened her tongue against him, circling the spongy sensitive tip. When she took him fully in her mouth his groan seemed to come from somewhere primal and she felt a surge of power shoot through her system like a tequila shot on an empty stomach.
He was at her mercy.
And it felt incredible. She held his pleasure in her palm. It was dizzying.
For the first time in her life she actually understood why sex and love and lust could make people crazy. Why empires fell and wars were waged over it.
She couldn’t remember ever feeling this powerful.
This…adult.
This…female.
Adam was gone from the first tentative flick of her tongue. Every movement of her mouth against him was a revelation as she experimented with stroke and rhythm. It was almost as if it was his first time all over again.
And just when he thought it couldn’t possibly get sweeter her hands moved down his shaft, moved lower to cup him. Squeeze him.
He moaned out loud and grabbed for her shoulders as his knees threatened to buckle again.
Jess looked up at him, pulling her mouth away. ‘You like that?’ she whispered.
Adam nodded, unable to form words. He hadn’t seen anything more erotic in his life. Her big blue eyes looking shyly up at him, like she’d just discovered the world’s most amazing secret.
And it was her.
Her pink mouth was moist, her lips slightly swollen from their ministrations. She looked incredible. Then she took him back into her mouth running her tongue up and down his shaft and he had to suppress the wild impulse to grab her head, to rock his hips to the wild rhythm that was coursing through his blood demanding that she take him deeper, suck harder.
His body trembled with the urge to take over. To seek his pleasure quick and hard and fast. He dug his fingers into his thighs, cried out with the frustrating mix of pleasure and impatience and the unnatural curtailing of the dictates of his body.
Even through the haze of feminine power and hormones Jess could hear the strangled note in his voice. ‘What?’ she asked looking up at him. ‘Tell me what you like.’
Adam sliced a hand into her hair. She was so beautiful and it was exquisite. It wasn’t her fault his body wanted to take over, that lust cared only about end result, not technique or experimentation. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he murmured.
‘No.’ He looked like a man who had an itch he couldn’t quite reach. ‘Damn it, Adam, tell me.’ He sucked in a breath at the fierce glitter in her eyes.
‘Harder,’ he whispered.
Jess didn’t need to be told twice recapturing his swollen girth and turning up the suction. When the hand buried in her hair clutched convulsively and a deeply satisfied groan tore from his mouth, she intensified it some more.
Adam felt the first stirrings of orgasm tighten his groins like purse strings. ‘Oh God, yes. Yes.’
He looked down at her as her mouth devoured him. It was such an erotic picture and the strings pulled tighter. It was hard to believe the mouth that had so innocently kissed his knuckles not ten minutes ago was now engaged in such a carnal activity.
Ripples of pleasure darted from where she cupped and squeezed him. They streaked to his thighs, his belly, his groin.
‘Yes,’ he gasped.
Jess heard the note of desperation. Could feel his whole body trembling and knew he was close. She took him deeper, sucked a little stronger, squeezed a little harder.
The ripples turned to waves, then an avalanche. ‘Jess!’ he cried out, his knees locking, his hand curling into her hair as his orgasm rushed out.
She kept up the pressure, milking him as he rocked into her mouth, welcoming his release.
The completeness of his surrender and the salty taste of him was a powerful aphrodisiac.
It was a while before the ringing in Adam’s ears subsided, before he could open his eyes and unlock his knees and trust that he wasn’t going to fall in a heap.
He looked down at her. His hand was buried in her hair at the back of her head and he couldn’t for the life of him remember how it had got there. His fingers automatically started to caress her scalp as she smiled up at him.
There was something different about her now. She looked at him with knowing eyes, with an awareness that hadn’t been there before.
‘I think you can put me down in the like column,’ she murmured.
Adam smiled back before leaning down and claiming her mouth.