“Pretty damn close,” he said to himself. The only thing that would clinch it in his eyes was if Vanessa wanted to be with him. For good. He’d never felt a fraction for any woman like he did for her. They completed each other with a perfect balance of give and take.
She needed control in her daily life. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and didn’t stop until she got it. It was damn refreshing to be with someone who preferred to make the plans instead of waiting to be told an agenda. She also thrived on being the center of attention, and he was more than happy to sit back and watch her command a crowd.
Jackson had tried shedding his natural tendencies to take charge of things when he moved to the islands. After playing parent to his sister for five years, he longed for a life where someone else took the lead for a change. Except every time he tried the relationship thing, the women looked to him for everything from positions in the bedroom to what they should have for lunch. The former he didn’t mind. The latter drove him fucking crazy.
Jilli had once told Jax that on a subconscious level, he purposely chose more submissive women, despite wanting the opposite. That way he never had to worry about a long-term commitment because deep down he knew they weren’t compatible. At the time, he’d called “bullshit” on her female relationship psychobabble. But now he realized just how right she was.
The truth of the matter was, he had been afraid of finding someone he could get serious about. He’d grown rather fond of not having responsibility for anyone other than himself. And regardless of how strong either person was, when it came to relationships, they were a shared responsibility for the other person. As much as he’d loved his sister, for the years he’d taken care of her, he’d felt trapped. He never let her know that, of course. But with the sudden deaths of their parents, finding out he’d been adopted, and then putting his life on hold for half a decade to raise Lucie… Well, it’d been hard not to feel a little overwhelmed.
So yeah. Once he settled in Oahu, the last thing he’d wanted to do was chain himself to another human being, no matter the reason. He’d been perfectly content with his three-month average for keeping the occasional girlfriend and the friends-with-benefits situations he’d enjoyed while they lasted.
Which was why it was a total fluke that he and Vanessa were together in any sort of intimate capacity. Hell, under normal circumstances, even though his dominant demeanor might not have chased her off, her rules would’ve had her running in the opposite direction for sure.
But here they were. Like two halves of a puzzle that filled in the other’s empty spaces, making them whole for the first time. Jax knew in his soul there would never be another woman who completed him so perfectly.
And now that he’d found her, there stood a damn good chance he’d lose her. And he’d have no one to blame but himself.
It wouldn’t matter that things between them had worked out. That they’d had an amazing five days so far and, if his suspicions were right, that they both wanted more time with each other. She’d made her rules to protect herself from ending up with someone who could hurt her in any way like her parents did, and that included someone who lied. Vanessa wouldn’t see only the lies he told that first time. She’d see every minute they spent together as a deception. Everything he’d said to her. Everything he’d done to her. Everything he’d made her feel.
Jax knew he had one shot at this. He needed to show her just how much she meant to him—show her how much he meant to her—and hope like hell it would be enough.
It only took him a few minutes to spread out the blanket and check that all the snacks he’d brought with them hadn’t been jostled open and were still safe in their containers. He planned on cooking her dinner later at his place, but until then, he’d brought fun finger foods to keep their energy up. Because one thing was for certain: he planned on burning through a whole lot of their energy.
Jax shucked everything but his shorts in record time. To say he was anxious to play in his favorite swimming hole with Vanessa was a gross understatement. Turning around, he found her relaxing on a large, flat boulder on the other side of the natural pool. Propped up on her elbows, one leg bent, head hanging back, and a cascade of dark red hair spilling onto the rock below like the waterfall not far away. She looked like a water nymph, sunning herself and tempting men with the strongest resolves to fall under her spell. And he was no exception.
But just as he was about to get in, she said something that had him stopping with one foot hovering over the rippling water.
Without opening her eyes or breaking from her cover-shoot pose, she yelled to him to be heard over the splashes of the waterfall. “You’re taking forever over there. I didn’t realize you had to actually make the blanket before setting it out.”
Oh, really. Her smack talking put a big-ass grin on his face and brought out his playful side.