Chapter Fourteen

After the day she’d just had, Jenna needed a swim.

Dusk had settled when she slipped open her back porch sliding-glass door. Barefoot, in only her bathing suit, with a beach towel draped over her arm, she stepped onto her deck. The warmth from the setting sun, which had soaked the wooden planks, heated the soles of her feet. She let the temperature work up her legs and into her thighs as she strolled to the edge of her pool and flung her towel onto the arm of a deck chair.

Her eyes narrowed as she lifted her gaze to the woods lining the back of her property. She could barely make out the tops of the branches above her privacy fence, not that it’d given her much privacy. The Snatcher had still been able to look down and see everything. Hell, maybe he was out there again, still watching her.

No matter what she did, he was always there.

If today hadn’t taught her he could get close to her no matter what, then nothing could. If she let him, he could probably drive her insane, purely from fear.

But she had no intention of letting him control any aspect of her life.

Narrowing her eyes, she defiantly reached for the straps of her one piece. Ripping the stretchy material down her arms, she bared her breasts to the trees. If the bastard wanted to watch her, fine, he could see everything she’d never let him have.

Enjoy the show, bastard. This is one woman you won’t cow.

She wiggled the last part of her swimsuit off her hips and let it drop to her feet. Proud and naked, she stood alone next to her pool, letting any pair of prying eyes have their fill. Then, scooping her hands together over her head, she bowed her body over the water and dove into the lazily rippling depths. She sliced through the deepest part, relishing the first cool jolt and then the soothing wet glide that followed. As they worked, the muscles in her arms and legs actually relaxed.

Vetoing Jenna’s objections, Paige and Skyla had shut down Pick-a-Posy’s for the foreseeable future. Now she had nothing to occupy her time, except to give Mr. Snatcher the metaphoric bird. Her family wanted to crowd around her, smother her with attention, but she’d shooed them off. The only person she could stand being close right now was Joseph, and he was still on duty. So she embraced her solitude.

Jenna made two laps before she came up for air.

She almost pissed herself when the strident yell boomed from above her. Letting out a yelp, she lifted her eyes to take in her sexy deputy, fully clothed in blue jeans, black t-shirt, and hiking boots—obviously no longer on the clock. His big hand wadded a fistful of her blue swimsuit as he shook it madly in her direction.

“What the hell are you doing?” he thundered. “Anyone out in those woods could see you right now, do you realize that? What if he’s out there? Again.”

Setting her hand on the edge of the deck, Jenna lifted her chin and sent him an insolent look. “I hope he is. I hope he sees how much he doesn’t matter to me, how much he cannot disrupt my life. He’s fucking with me, Joseph. Playing with my head and trying to drive me insane.” Pushing up from the pool, she slid up onto the deck to stand, water streaming down her naked body.

Joseph lowered his gaze, watching her nipples pebble and her pussy glisten. He continued to look down as if following the slide of water along her thighs was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen.

She strolled toward him, putting an extra hitch in the swing of her hips. “Well, I’m going to strike back. I hope he is watching. I hope he sees me take you, right here, right now, so he’ll know he doesn’t own me.”

As she reached out, tugging his shirt up and over his head with a savage jerk, Joseph didn’t resist, he even lifted his arms to assist her. But his voice was dry as he said, “So, I guess you expect me to play this voyeuristic game with you.”

“Oh, you’ll play,” she assured him with all confidence. “And you’ll like it.”

His smile was amused and indulgent. “I’ve yet to dislike anything you’ve ever done with me.”

Her hand went to his zipper. He sucked in a breath.

When she’d first seen the present her admirer had left in the back room of her flower shop, she’d wanted to run and hide. But as the fear bloomed into anger, she decided ‘fuck that’. She was going to fight back, and she was going to win this little pissing contest that coward murderer had started.

She hadn’t even realized she’d ripped open Joseph’s fly and was kneeling in front of him until he buried his hand in her hair to pull her off.

“Jenna,” he warned. “Remember what happened the last time we tried this?”

“Don’t worry,” she assured, patting his hip. “It’s just a little foreplay.”

He laughed out an incredulous sound. “What in God’s name makes you think I need any foreplay? Sweetheart, I can’t get any randier.”

“I think he does though.” She licked her way up his length, humming deep in her throat, and taking him in whole.

“Excuse me?” Joseph growled. His hand tightened in her hair as he coaxed her backward again, away from him, until his cock dropped from her lips. “Jenna, look at me.”

At his odd tone, she looked up. The pain in his eyes made her lips part. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you here…with me?”

She smiled and rubbed her hand up and down his hard, bare thigh. “I don’t think I could be anywhere else but with you.”

He urged her up off her knees and kissed her. When he drew his lips off hers, he winced, looking forlorn. “No.” He gave the husky retort. “You’re not with me. You’re with him. This is all for him.”

Jenna opened her mouth to deny it, but she could only puff out an inaudible gasp when she realized he was right. She was using him as a vessel to torture an unnamed man she despised.

“You’re still letting him control you.”

Tears misted her eyes.

His own features contorted with misery as he watched, whispering her name. Scooping her into his arms, he picked her up off the ground. She felt safe and secure in his embrace. Joseph Morgan had been nothing but patient and kind with her, stepping outside his sexual comfort zone repeatedly for her, and in return she’d only used him.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped, hiding her face in his neck. He was the last person on earth she wanted to hurt.

“Shh.” He kissed her temple. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“Yes, you’ve done every kinky, new thing I wanted to try and I just—”

Silencing her with a kiss, he carried her to the picnic table instead of indoors. Setting her down on the tabletop, he gazed deep into her eyes. “You’ve given me the best few days of my life is what you’ve done. And to help you heal, to help you get over whatever issues you need to get over, I will gladly do whatever you want to do. But I want you concentrating on me the entire time, not some serial killer who keeps fucking with your head.”

God, the man was sexy when he started raving on about one of his heated, passionate opinions. Her pussy went wet. She decided it wouldn’t be difficult to focus solely on him at all.

“Who’s on guard this evening?” she asked.

“Basteil.” He growled out the name with a roll of his eyes.

She grinned, “So, he’s sitting in his patrol car, talking on the cell phone right now?”

“Pretty much.”

“And we have the entire back yard all to ourselves?” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Furrowing his brows, he glanced toward the trees. “Maybe.”

“Oh, puh-lease. He wouldn’t dare come back to spy on me after Emily shot him.”

Joseph didn’t answer, but kept scanning the distant bushy green leaves lining the top of her privacy fence.

With a grin, Jenna grasped his head and physically forced his face around. He let her pull him in for a kiss. From that point on, she had him sufficiently distracted.

Deciding he was much too overdressed for what she had in mind, she grasped the tops of his white socks with her toes and tugged them down. There. He was finally naked as the day he was born.

With an adoring grin, he whispered, “Thanks,” and kissed her.

As their mouths fused, she ran her hands over his hard, warm skin until she eventually meandered across his shaft. The welling drop of pre-cum that appeared from the end was too tempting to resist.

“Let me taste you, Joseph.”

Without waiting for his answer, she slid down off the tabletop until she sat on the bench with her face a mere inches from his swollen erection.

To brace himself, Joseph hiked up one leg and rested a foot on the seat next to her. Dangling between his spread legs, his cock bobbed toward her. She wrapped one hand around the rigid length and grinned up at him.

His smoky brown gaze was intense. Keeping eye contact, she opened her mouth and sucked around his girth. The muscles in his face tightened, the cheek under his right eye twitching from her administrations, but otherwise, he remained still, watching her.

Needing a bit more reaction from the stony-faced deputy, she drew him deeper until he prodded the back of her throat. Once she had him fully seated in her mouth, she hollowed in her cheeks and sucked hard, rubbing her tongue against the thick seam that ran up the center of his rod. When she swallowed, letting him in even more, he groaned and closed his eyes.

Jenna smiled around his prick, happy she’d finally gotten the response she wanted. He undulated his hips, rolling deeper into her mouth, making her take even more. She clasped his ass, holding him firm, and finally closed her own eyes against the overwhelming bliss.

“Oh, God,” he grunted. “Jenna. I want…I need to come inside you.”

Without warning, he jerked back, yanking himself from her mouth. Zipping her head up, Jenna gaped.

“I’m too close,” he muttered in a breathless explanation as he bent down and lifted her off the bench seat to nudge her back onto the tabletop.

“Lie back,” he instructed while he went about spreading her legs wide.

Eager to feel him even deeper inside her than he’d been in her mouth, she obeyed. But he didn’t slide his hips between her opened thighs. No, the man bent down and licked her.

Unprepared for that line of pleasurable assault, she bowed her back and choked out a silent scream. Joseph ate at her in a frenzy. Sloppy and wet. His tongue licked while his teeth occasionally scraped. Two fingers entered her, then three. She humped his digits, desperate for a few extras.

It just wasn’t enough.

When she came, it was a frustrated kind of orgasm that begged for more; she needed to be filled completely. She cried out, clawing at the table under her, begging through incomprehensible moans.

He didn’t listen to her pleas until she stopped writhing. Then he pulled his fingers free to replace them with his dick. As he nudged her pulsing opening, she butted against him.

“Yes! Joseph, please.”

His gaze lifted slowly to hers. When a slow smile spread his lips wide, he pulled out, making everything inside her scream.

“Roll over,” he said.

Willing to do whatever he wanted to get him back inside her, Jenna scrambled to her stomach. He moved in behind her, grasping her hips to lift her into the position he desired. When a hot, blunt tip prodded her cunt, she groaned.

Still, he didn’t enter her. “Look at me.” He choked out the words.

Wrapping her fingers around the opposite edge of the picnic table, Jenna lifted up onto her elbow so she could crane her head around and catch his stare.

He looked so serious as he watched her.

Poised at her entrance, he spoke. “From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were different. I knew you’d be important to me. Since meeting you, I’ve only grown more sure of it. Thinking of you being harmed physically hurts me. I don’t think I could survive it if anything else ever happened to you, because…”

He began to enter her, sliding slow and deep. “I think…I think…I’m falling in love with you, Jenna Daggert.” He seated his entire length.

Moved by his words, she didn’t realize she clasped her pelvic floor muscles around him, clutching him tight, until she watched him gasp from her pressure.

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Scratch that think. I don’t think. I know. Jesus, Jenna, I’m so fucking in love with you. I’m so fucking in love.” He chanted the words, pumping her from behind, grasping handfuls of the meaty flesh covering her ass.

“Joseph,” she cried out. The sensation rocked her. She had to press her forehead to the tabletop and clutch the edge for dear life as he mercilessly rocked in and out. Emotions swelled until, shit, she wanted to say it, too. “I think…Oh God… I know…I love you, too. Jesus, Joseph, I love you, too.”

He grunted, slamming into her faster. “Look at me.” He moaned the repeated command.

She didn’t know how she managed it, but she was able to lift her face and once again twist her torso to gaze over her shoulder. His face contorted into a pleasure that spiked through her, his eyes glazed and teeth clenched.

“Now, come,” he rasped.

God help her, she did. Her muscles contracted around him, milking him until his fingers dug into her ass. Then he groaned loud and long, slamming into her and pressing himself as deep as he could plunge.

They both held still, save for the uncontrollable quivering, as their bodies were seeped in sensation.

Jenna knew she’d never meet another man like Joseph Morgan, who would put up with her baggage and actually pull her out of her funk. But here she was, leached in love and a powerful lust, so very glad she’d been lucky enough to meet the amazing man behind her.

For once in her life, she felt complete.

With him, she knew she could deal with everything else.

“How you doing?” he panted behind her.

She laughed. “Oh, jus’ fine. How ‘bout you?”

He leaned down, pressing his chest along her vertebrae. His breath stirred her hair and tickled her ears as he whispered, “I’m better than fine.”