“Come on,” I say when his eyes are no longer glassy. “We need to get going.”
“Not just yet,” he says, reaching for the handheld shower and turning it to a steady pulse. “I don’t think you’re quite ready yet.”
“Jackson …” I’m too ready, too sensitive, and I’m not at all sure that I can handle what he has in mind. But this is not a morning for mercy, and when he pulls out of me and I settle one foot back on the shower mat, he keeps hold of my other leg, then aims the pulsating jet at my clit.
“Oh, god, oh, Christ, oh, Jackson.”
I clutch his shoulders, my body shaking with a growing pleasure that is almost too much to bear.
“If we’re in a hurry, I can stop.” His lips are right by my ear, and he highlights the words by tracing his tongue along the edge of my ear, making me even more crazy. “Is that what you want?”
“Don’t you dare,” I say. “But, Jackson, oh, please, I’m so damn close.”
“Then let’s see what I can do.” He puts the handheld back, then drops to his knees. With one of my legs over his shoulder, he closes his mouth intimately on me, and it is that combination of his tongue, his lips, his touch that pulls me that final distance. My body shatters as a million volts pour through me, ripping me apart so that I am nothing more than atoms spinning in space. Nothing more than heat and desire lost in the arms of this man.
“Wow,” I say. “I don’t even care if we’re late.”
“Convenient,” he says. “Because neither do I. Still, the man is your boss. We should probably make an effort.”
I nod, then reach for a towel once he has turned off the shower. Outside the glass enclosure, I drop the towel in favor of my robe. I’m about to tie it when I look down and notice the red ribbon tattoo.
Jackson is a few feet away, a towel wrapped around his hips as he runs a comb through his hair.
“Come here,” I say.
He turns, but I simply crook a finger.
“At your service,” he says with a small smile, but I can see the curiosity on his face.
I take his hand, then trace his index finger over the red ribbon.
“Theo Stiles. Kevin Carter. Dan Weiss.” I give him the names as I brush his finger over each of the initials. “I didn’t answer you earlier.”
“Boyfriends?” he asks, though I can tell by his tone that he knows they were not.
“Weapons,” I say. “Blunt instruments.”
“Tell me.”
I wrap my robe tight around me in defense of the cold. But we are still in the steamy bathroom, and there is no chill. It’s Jackson I want, and I go eagerly into his arms when he pulls me in close.
“I told you how I hid at first,” I say. “After it stopped. In boring clothes and no makeup.”
I have my cheek pressed against his chest, and I am speaking softly. But I know from the way his body goes stiff that he has heard me just fine. “You didn’t want to be seen.”
“I would have become invisible if I could.” I draw in air. “My friend Cass is the one who finally got through to me. She told me that the more I hid the more he won.”
“I think I like your friend.”
I look up at him, then smile at the warmth in his eyes. “She’s great. Strong, too. Because she managed to pull me out of hell. But there were times—” I cut myself off, suddenly realizing how hard this was to talk about. I move away from him, then press my hands and forehead to the tile and simply breathe.
“It’s okay,” he says as his hands close over my shoulders. “You don’t have to go on. I think I understand.”
I shake my head. “You don’t. You can’t possibly.”
“It was better for a while,” he says. “You proved to yourself that you didn’t have to hide. But it didn’t stay easy. Maybe a man asked you out. Maybe he got too close. Maybe it wasn’t even about sex, but something happened at work or at school. You felt out of control. Like you’d lost the reins of your own life.”
I squeeze my eyes tight. “How can you know that?” I ask, then turn in his arms so that I can see his face. “How on earth can you possibly—”
“I saw it, didn’t I? With Louis? I’d knocked you down,” he says with so much self-loathing that I have no choice but to grab his hand and clench it tight. “I’d sent you racing right toward him. Right toward something you could get your head around. That you could control.”
“And you stopped me, too.”
He glances down, and I know that he is looking at the red ribbon. “Would you have gone to bed with him?” he asks.
I think of how lost I’d felt. How turned on I’d been by the way Jackson had touched me, kissed me. And how angry I’d been when he’d offered that deal. “I don’t know,” I whisper. I gather my courage, then lift my head and meet his eyes. “You mess me up, Jackson. No one has ever messed me up the way you do.”
“Baby,” he says, “I know the feeling.” Gently, he pulls me against him, then holds me close. He is hard, and I feel the press of his erection against me, but this moment isn’t sexual. Instead, it is tender, and I cling to him, feeling cherished for the first time in a long time.
Five years? Forever?
For me, I realize, they are the same.
“I want to make love to you right now,” he says. “I want to hold you and sink deep inside you and make up for five long years without you, when you should have been in my bed,” he says, as my body warms and tingles under the gentle caress of his words. “I want to touch you and please you. I want to hold you and caress you and make you laugh and come and hope and dream. I want to watch your eyes when you soar with me. And then I want to hold you while you sleep and stand guard against your nightmares. I can’t change your past, but I will stand with you to fight your battles now.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, but I don’t quite meet his eyes.
He tips my chin back so that I am forced to look at him. “What?”
I draw a shaky breath. I should have known better than to think I could keep something hidden from this man. “I don’t like being weak.”
“You’re the strongest person I know, Sylvia. You walked away from us and managed to survive, didn’t you?”
I know his words are a tease to make me feel better, but there is truth there, too, and I can’t help but think that after surviving the past, this present is my reward.
“And now we need to get dressed because there’s someplace I want to show you on the way, and if we don’t hurry, we really will be late.”
He runs the comb through his hair once more, then relinquishes the bathroom so that I can do my hair and makeup.