I raised a trembling hand to my chest, putting my chin down. My flight response jumped to attention. We had to stop the car. He needed to take me home. My breathing picked up a panicked rate.
Then I felt his hand snake into the hair at my nape tilting my face up to look at him. “Just breathe, Keri Ann. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure it out. Take it one step at a time. But right now, until we know what the reaction to this story will be, we should go somewhere.” He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip then dropped his hands down. “And maybe it will be nothing. And maybe I just want to be alone with you.”
I stared into his deep, dark green eyes, my vision blurry. I needed to get back the feeling of calm I’d had earlier, when I felt such trust in him. I did trust him. I didn’t want to leave him. But God, be his wife? I blew out a slow shuddering breath. We’d need to talk about that. A lot. Way, way in the future.
He watched me, waiting for my reaction. He seemed to know he just freaked the hell out of me. And after an evening like the one we’d had, he couldn’t blame me. But God, I wanted this man. I wanted him to look at me the way he did, forever.
Giving in finally to the urge to touch him, I reached forward, sliding my hands through his hair.
He stilled, closing his eyes.
Then he exhaled slowly and reached for my calves, lightly running a hand over my skin. His fingers worked the small buckle of my silver sandals at each ankle, and then slipped each heel off my feet.
Moving up my calves, he gathered my beaded dress up past my knees. “Kneel down,” he murmured, leaning back and creating space between us. His eyes were dark, somewhat unsure. “Let me help you get your dress off.”
I did as he asked, kneeling between his dark suit-clad thighs, feeling the vibration of the car beneath me. He gingerly lifted the delicate beaded dress over my head leaving me in just the champagne-tone shift beneath and carefully laid the dress out on the long bench next to him.
My tears spilled over even while I smiled.
Jack’s concerned face furrowed further. “Shit. I’ve got whiplash. Are you happy or sad right now? Please help me out here.”
“God, both. I don’t know.” I laughed. “The things you do, the way you make me feel, it’s incredible. You set my worries and fears alight until I feel they’ll burn me alive. Then I find them floating away like sky lanterns. You asked me if I could be proud to be with you. It was never that I’m not proud of you. If anything it’s the other way around, most of the time I don’t understand why you want to be with me.” I hiccupped.
“How can you not know?” He looked at me earnestly. “That’s like asking why we breathe air. Because it’s the way we were made. I’m telling you, that’s how it is for me. The way I feel about you was never a decision. It just was. I was made to love you. I never fell, I was already there. From the very first moment.”
He swiped a tear from my cheek. “Do you know that you’re beautiful even when you’re crying?”
If he kept talking like this, I would be a sobbing mess with my heart bleeding through my chest. “Just, just kiss me, Jack.”
He smiled, and cupping my cheek, pulled my face toward his but stopped a breath away. “There was a time when you asked me not to.”
“Yes, well. You certainly corrupted that girl.”
He grinned.
Leaning forward, I ran my hand up his fabric covered thighs, feeling the hard tension under my fingers. Then I touched my lips to his.
I moved over his mouth gently, reveling in the feeling of his lips and responding with a jolt of arousal as his impatient tongue swept into me, his hand twisting into my hair, tugging the bun loose.
“You looked incredibly beautiful tonight, but I’m done with your hair being up,” he whispered against my mouth. A hand swept down my spine and lower until it reached the back of my bare thigh. Then it inched back up under my slip. “And I kept imagining you were naked under those beads.”
Heat sluiced through me in a wave, pooling into a heavy throb. My hands curled hard into his thighs.
“Is there any chance I corrupted you enough that you’d let me make love to you right now?” Jack rasped.
My heart pounded. “Now? Like right here?” I looked around at the dimly lit interior, my eyes wide.
He nodded then sat back.
“They’ll hear.”
“No, they won’t.”
His warm, rough hands slid my shift up, over my lace panties, to my waist. He hissed out a breath then pulled me up and astride his lap.
A nervous, prickly heat swept over my skin and chest. I felt bare and exposed against his fully clothed body.
My nerves fizzled as I watched his face, saw the flush on his cheek bones, the flare of his nostrils, the tight set to his mouth. He looked at me like I was his end and his beginning.
I traced a finger down his neck and over his rough Adam’s apple as it moved heavily. I undid a few more buttons of his white shirt and slid my hands against his hard chest, feeling his heart matching my own in powerful thuds.
Jack simply watched me. Waiting.