“I think I’d like to lay down.” Jenn snuggled closer, wrapping both arms around my neck and placing a kiss on my neck. “How about the bedroom?”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I carried her up the stairs and to her room, flicking on the light. She sighed, placing more kisses on my neck, one of her hands moving to the buttons of my shirt and undoing the first three. She was wearing a blue dress that looked like a long sweater, except it wasn’t baggy. It hugged her curves just right and had been driving me crazy all night.
“This dress,” I said, placing her gently on her feet in front of her bed, “it wants to come off.”
“Does it?” She grinned up at me, continuing her work on the buttons of my shirt.
“It does.” I frowned at the material, not certain how to proceed because I hadn’t spotted a zipper.
She placed a kiss on my collarbone, pushing off my jacket and encouraging it to fall to the floor. Then she tugged at my undershirt.
“Cletus, I miss your touch,” she whispered, pressing her body to me and brushing her lips against mine. “Won’t you touch me?”
I nodded, entranced as usual by this woman. I slid my hands under her skirt, relishing the silky skin of her thighs. Jennifer lifted her arms and I took the hint, removing the dress as one would remove a sweater, pushing it over her head.
This left Jenn standing before me in her bra and underwear, a sublimely luscious temptation.
Before explicitly telling my brain to do so, I’d unhooked her bra and bent to savor her breasts, filling my hand with one and my mouth with the other. I kneaded and massaged her flawless skin, tugging and twisting her nipple. She moaned and her breath hitched, the sounds driving me mad. Jenn slid her fingers into my hair, pressing on the back of my head, arching to get closer.
We were alone. In her home. And I wanted her. Very badly.
My lungs burned and my veins throbbed with how badly I wanted her, this woman. My woman.
Times like these, it was difficult not to take advantage. Times like these, my baser instincts fought to seize control, pushing me to tease her, leverage the advantage of my experience until she begged me to ease and fill her ache.
I wanted every inch of her perfect body. As my control slipped, I convinced myself I needed it. I needed her, to possess her, to claim her. The need gripped and suffocated me . . .
“I love you,” she whispered as her hands slipped under my shirt. She smoothed her palm from my chest to my stomach, curling her fingers into the waistband of my pants.
Her words, her confession of love, sobered me. I stilled my movements, waiting for the frenzy of recklessness to recede.
Her home was not yet my home. She wasn’t ready. Not yet.
I may have wanted to possess her, but I didn’t need it. I needed to love her, not possess her. And she needed my love, not my trickery. Not my control.
So I breathed out. I did not possess her. I did not push her.
Instead, I eased her back to the bed, drawing the only remaining scrap of fabric down her legs, leaving her naked and vulnerable and stunning and shivering.
Lifting my greedy stare from her body—this body I coveted with raw desperation—I met her extraordinary eyes. On the floor before her I knelt, spreading her legs, and witnessed the beauty of her trust.
And then I loved her.
CHAPTER 31
“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”
― André Malraux
Cletus
It was a beautiful ceremony.
Jethro, unsurprisingly, wasn’t nervous. My oldest brother wasn’t the nervous type. But he did choke up when Sienna walked down the aisle.
Heck, I think we all did.
She appeared at the edge of the wildflower field, gussied up in a white cloud of a dress, looking like an angel. Sienna was beautiful, made even more so by the way she looked at my brother.
She took three steps toward the altar and my eyes cut to Jenn.
My Jenn.
My Jenn wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Sienna with a big, happy smile on her face, so she didn’t see me as I stared at her, and imagined our wedding day. I imagined the moment she would appear, gussied up in a white cloud of a dress, looking like an angel.
Or maybe we would elope, just the two of us. Maybe to Alaska, where we’d have a private ceremony under a surprising sky.
Honestly, I didn’t care.
Virtuous fortitude, I reminded myself. Patience. The reminders made me grumpy, so I focused on the beautiful ceremony and my brother’s happiness.
After the I dos were over, the festivities started. I sought Jennifer as soon as the wedding party arrived at the reception site.
A large tent had been erected at the back of the property with a huge dance floor, covering a giant area both inside and outside the temporary structure. Traditional Mexican dishes and traditional Tennessee home cooking were side by side on the buffet, with vegan options also available for those lunatics that didn’t eat meat.
The good news was I found Jenn almost immediately. The bad news was she was talking to Jackson James.