Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen)

chapter Nineteen


Lili’s body was hyperaware, every nerve teased and tensed. She had never felt so desired. So powerful. Jack had gone months without sex; he could have any woman he wanted, but he had held out for her. Okay, he’d held out three days for her but still.

Her planned outrage had fizzled the moment he opened that door and she saw a hollow-eyed Jack staring back at her. Hurt made people act ten kinds of crazy, and while she was the kind of person who internalized her pain, Jack wore his emotions on his sleeve, then wanted to talk about the soiled shirt. Passion that raw scared the hell out of her, but she knew she was the person to fill those deep pockets of sadness he wore, to give him what he needed and get what she needed in return. This time, this place, they could do for each other what no one else could.

As she rolled her hips, he arched to meet her, his fingers digging into her flesh so hard she suspected she might have bruises later. She contracted her muscles around his length, muscles that hadn’t been used in a while, and imagined they would have something to say about that later, too.

He lightly brushed his knuckles against her breast. A shivery tease, but she needed it rougher. She leaned into his touch, urging more pressure, and his thumbs dragged over her nipples and rolled. She almost died from pleasure. He slid his hands under her famous butt and raised it a couple of inches, reminding her of where she was. What she was doing. Jack was buried inside her, and a man’s hardness had never felt this good.

“Move with me,” he panted.

Slowly, she slid up, down, accelerating the pace in rhythm with the urgency of his hands. Every motion was slick and wet, pulsing through her with fluid heat.

He cupped her neck and drew her close. Their mouths joined hungrily, tongues meeting and getting along like a house on fire. She licked his stubbled jaw, his scar, his gorgeous, crooked mouth. Her own personalized tasting menu. Jack à la carte. The brush of his chest hair tickled and warmed her breasts, a strangely comforting sensation in the midst of all this down and dirty lust. She continued to slip up and down, her *oris getting the love against his sleek, thick length. Arousal, sharp and urgent, surprised her and she moaned softly.

“Better,” he said. Not a question, just a statement of fact.

“Yes.”

He knew the right angles, the right moves, the right pressure. He knew her body and what she needed. He was in her head, reading her lusty thoughts before they could fire. Yeah, just there. Baby, so good. Never, never stop.

She loved the feel of him, the silky slide of his skin against hers. Being on top, getting that deep, deep penetration. It had always been a favorite position but self-consciousness usually prevented her from enjoying it fully or even asking for what she wanted. But not now. In Jack’s eyes, she saw unguarded appreciation of her shapely, sexy body. She saw everything she had been missing.

His thick girth glided in and out of her, every downstroke caressing her core until her vision hazed. Such a simple motion, Jack filling her up, again and again, but it was too restrained. Too…British. She needed more. She needed to be broken open.

“Jack?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” His fascinated gaze lifted from where their bodies joined. Halting the show for a moment, she settled and leaned in so close she could count every beautiful eyelash.

“I’m a big girl. Don’t be gentle.”

A very male sound rose in his throat, barely human but unmistakably Jack. He flipped her on her back and still managed to stay inside her. Not expecting that. Neither was she expecting his hot, deep reach as he impaled her to the root. She grasped the tightly loomed muscles of his excellent ass. She scratched and clawed. She might have hurt him but she didn’t care. His moans as he pounded her said he didn’t care all that much either.

She loved a man who could follow instructions.

She rocked with him as his powerful hips thrust him farther into her and he speared her with long, rhythmic strokes. Every motion generated waves of pleasure, starting with where their bodies connected, radiating through her belly, her rear, her breasts, and her toes, and back down the spokes again.

“Yes, that’s—ah, yes,” he moaned, and her body pulsed in agreement.

It’s never been this hot it’s so hot this can’t get any hotter. And just as those thought fragments bonded, he hooked her leg up, creating an angle that had her close to losing the will to live. His other hand gentled her jaw, coaxing her to face him and meet that intimate green-gold gaze.

She resisted. She had to, knowing that as soon as she went there, she would come and it would be over. And she would be over because one look from Jack would confirm it had never been like this with anyone, and likely never would be again.

“Lili, please.”

His vibrating voice reached inside and lay siege to her heart. She was used to being needed but not like this, and that need in him jumbled with her need for him until they were entangled in a crush of mindless want. She opened her eyes and surrendered her fate to this man. Her man.

Her arousal heightened and a keen pleasure swept over her, around her, inside her. Thought, speech, none of it was necessary as her brain switched off and her blood and skin and nerve endings took over. Slowly, he raised his body up but his gaze never left hers, and she wanted him to look at her like that forever. She hit that flash point, wailing while her body convulsed and flew apart in pure sensation. Depth charges exploded at every nerve ending. Shards of pleasure lingered at each for a moment before returning to their source.

As she rode the dying shudders of her pleasure-drunk haze, he gave one final thrust. His jaw clenched; his neck muscles strained. Simply watching him was its own high. She felt him rattle and release before he went rigid and collapsed on top of her.

Quietly, she lay there, loving the weight of him and how he smelled and sweated and breathed. The natural fit of him in her body. Moments passed while he remained lodged deep, branding her from the inside out until he shifted them both on their sides to face each other. Hating to leave the heat of him, she inched back, but he clamped a big hand over her butt and draped her leg over his.

“Stay.” He was still wedged within, firmly filling her and my God, that was sexy. Most guys would be creeping to the other side of the king-size by now.

Forever, she almost said. With a purr of assent, she slipped into a dreamy doze, loosely aware of his lips rasping her jaw and his hands roaming her curves. Learning her shape, making plans for later. When she opened her eyes again, he had left her body, but she didn’t feel cold. Light from the bedside lamp threw eyelash-smudged shadows on his cheeks, illuminating his big, dopey grin.

Blinking, she took a candid for her memories, then curled into his side.

“What are you smiling about?” Yep, she was shamelessly fishing.

He squeezed her tight to his chest. “I just got laid and it was damn near perfect.”

“Only near perfect?”

“Well, it was a little fast, but that’s understandable considering how desperate you’ve been. Next time, we’ll take it slower.”

She pinched his biceps to punish his cheekiness, but he didn’t even flinch. Ridiculous, hard muscles.

“Seriously, though,” he said. “I can’t remember it ever being this good.”

“Abstinence makes the penis grow fonder.”

“It’s not a line.”

She lifted her chin to study him. No, it wasn’t a line. He was more honest than anyone she knew but she refused to get caught up in his postcoital hype. Someone had to keep a clear head.

“You must have slept with—” Lots? Best to stop there. “Lots of women. You can’t possibly think that.”

“You’re the hottest, sexiest woman I’ve ever seen, and I love how you make me feel.” He swept her hair from her eyes and gifted her a wicked burn of a smile. “I’m not saying it to drag some matching confession out of you. It is what it is.”

Stunned, she laid her cheek against his chest and listened to his heart, the ultimate lie detector. It clacked along like a galloping horse, finding a rhythm with the hammering pulse all over her body. She felt the same way, though she didn’t have to dig deep for comparisons. No one had ever wrung this much pleasure from her. No one had ever made her feel this special. No one had ever cared enough to.

She traced a finger around his nipple and kissed it when it popped up to say hello; then she kissed lower. Over the most open heart she had ever known.

“Have I freaked you out?” he asked.

She nodded, but it turned into a sensuous cat rub against his delicious fur. Laying bare was so not her forte, and years of avoiding attention had produced coping mechanisms Freud would have a hard time unraveling. In spite of those guardrails, her heart rolled over, revealing its underbelly.

When she looked up, his burning gaze met her head-on, all artifice stripped. Only Jack and those eyes that held no secrets.

“Lili, when I want something…well, you’ve probably noticed I can be a bit intense. I know that scares you. Am I right?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely registering in the cavernous suite.

“Good. Scared is good.” He nodded a few times, and then a few times more. She wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to be more attractive, but here he was, naked and vulnerable in every way. It toppled her.

Three days ago, Jack Kilroy had been the designated fling. The sexy rut to get her out of her boring rut. The guy to turn her on and turn off that blinking “Service engine soon” light. It was supposed to be a one-night stand, a temporary mantidote to her problems, yet here they were, scaring the hell out of each other. And oh, was she terrified.

Lili had made some big decisions these last couple of days—hitting on Bon Appetit’s Sexiest Chef Alive, agreeing to date a guy who should have been all wrong for her, coming after him because the idea of losing him made her physically ill—but even those crazy moments paled in comparison to what she needed to do. Tell him that he slayed her, too. Completely, utterly.

“Jack,” she whispered.

No response. She raised her head and lapsed into a smile.

The rise and fall of his warm chest and the steady soughing told her the afterglow soul-baring would not be happening tonight. After several sleepless nights and a very satisfactory orgasm, Jack Kilroy had finally fallen asleep.

So, mortal after all.

* * *

Jack was trying not to shout at his sister partly because being pregnant gave her a pass, but mostly because Francesca and Tad were hanging on his every word not ten feet away in the DeLuca family kitchen.

Out on the patio sofa, Jules folded her long legs under her body and set her jaw. “I told you I’m not coming to London with you.”

“You can’t bury your problems, Jules.”

She gave him an oh-yes-I-can smirk. “Francesca and Tony have offered to let me stay for a while,” she said, unable to keep the triumph out of her voice.

Irritation notched his throat, though he was already privy to her scoop. On his arrival, Francesca had laid her hand on his arm and said, “She’s safe with us,” and he almost tackled her to the ground in a hug of gratitude. Now he was having second, third, and fourth thoughts.

“You can’t stay here. They’re complete strangers.”

“Really, Jack? Complete strangers? I’d say you know one member of the family quite well.” Her eyes glittered like golden coins, a light that spread to her smart-arse smile. She was enjoying this. Pregnant in a strange city with people she met five minutes ago and she was enjoying it.

Still didn’t stop him from smiling back. Yes, he knew Lili quite well and the memory of her coming apart for him so many times would have to fuel him for the next few days. She had wrung him dry and left him boneless. He would sleep well on the plane.

“So Lili seems nice. Did you have fun?” she asked, still with the impish grin.

“None of your business. Back to you.”

“I’ll be here when you return.” She left this suspended between them, the implication being that he would whisk her away to New York in some fairy-tale resolution to all their problems.

“You know how busy I am. How much I travel. Wouldn’t it be better to stay with Pete and Daisy? They can look after you.” He sure as hell couldn’t. So proven multiple times over.

“I know you think I’m a burden,” she said, scoring a direct hit on the guilt center of his brain. “But I can get a job.”

“You’re not even legally able to work here. And you need to stay off your feet.”

Her mouth wobbled. “Jack, I’m not a little girl anymore. I can look after myself, but I have to get out of London.”

Again, that ominous dread trickled through him. “Why?”

She looked shifty. “I just do. I need the change.”

“Is the father—” He gestured to her stomach, still not quite believing the magnitude of her situation. If he said it a million times out loud, it would take him an age to comprehend it. Pregnant. His baby sister was going to have a baby. “Is he giving you a hard time?”

“I haven’t told him.”

Of course she hadn’t. “Who is it?”

“I told you it’s no one you know.”

“Jules,” he warned.

“He’s married,” she pushed out quickly, then held up her hand in a calming motion that had the opposite effect. “And before you ask, I didn’t know.”

“Married? Oh, Jules.” His skin prickled at the thought of his sister with a taken man and this piece of shit getting off scot-free. “Married or not, he needs to take responsibility.”

Her face shuttered to blank, a vacuous expression she’d perfected when she was a teen. When she pulled that one out, he knew the conversation was over. Maybe she’d be okay here with a generous, loving family who could do for her where he was incapable. The bitter tang of failure oozed from his overheated skin. Rage seething through him, he stood to leave and barely restrained himself from kicking a large potted plant on the deck.

“Let’s talk in a few days, Jack,” she said, sounding like the mature one. That was just perfect. “And bring back some decent tea. The stuff here tastes like cat piss.”