Hidden Currents (44 page)

The confidence in his voice steadied her. “I’m not going to think about him tonight. At least he’s not feeling very well.”

“I still can’t believe your sisters did that,” Jackson said, leaning back, linking his fingers behind his neck. “You’re all a little out of control.”

Elle pillowed her head on his chest, giving him a tentative smile. “Actually, I thought they were very controlled. No one even peeked at my memories and you shielded them beautifully from my emotions.”

His hand stroked her hair. “Let me just say, you’re all a little crazy and I never want to get on any Drake woman’s bad side.”

“It was your idea.” She felt compelled to point this out.

He tipped his head up to look at her. “Oh, no. I was thinking to go for the throat.”

Elle laughed softly. “I think that’s just as bad.” She tightened her arm around his waist, snuggling closer. “Whatever happened, I think we scared him enough that he won’t be visiting me for a day or two.” This time there was satisfaction in her voice.

Jackson rolled over until his body was half blanketing hers. He framed her face with his palms and looked down at her, looked into her eyes. “Have I told you that I love you?”

His wide shoulders blocked out the sky and then his face was descending slowly toward hers. She could see his long lashes and straight nose, the compelling hunger in his eyes. He always managed to make her heart beat a little faster and her body just melted, right there in the sand, soft and pliant and accepting.

She took a breath and he kissed her, long and leisurely, his hunger growing as he fused their mouths together. She pressed her body closer, wishing they were skin to skin, wanting the feel of his chest rubbing against her aching breasts. Her fingers settled in his thick, wavy hair and she gave herself up to the pleasure of his marauding mouth.

It took moments—or hours—before she realized he had somehow opened her blouse and exposed her breasts, and was now making his way down her throat and over her sensitive skin. A jolt of electricity went from her breasts to her womb, so that she felt the clutch and the emptiness and needed him to fill her.

“Undo my jeans,” he whispered and bent to feed at her breasts.

With his teeth and tongue wreaking havoc, her fingers fumbled at his zipper. It took forever for her clumsy hands to free him from the opening. At once she felt the hot brand of his heavy erection lying along her thigh. Now she needed her clothes gone. All of them. She desperately wanted to feel him against her skin.

Jackson lifted his head from the soft pillow of her breasts, and let his gaze drift over her flushed, aroused body. He slid his hands inside her shirt, feeling the heat of her soft skin, inhaling her scent. Elle. He just wasn’t whole without her. His fingers slid around to her ribs so he could lift her slightly, forcing her breasts to thrust upward toward his mouth. She looked beautiful, exotic, so sexy his blood heated, sizzled, and rushed through his veins like a drug.

She moaned when his mouth closed over her breast and his teeth tugged at her nipple. Her body writhed under his. She was so sensitive. So responsive to him. Her fingers slid up and down his shaft, stroking and caressing, nearly driving him out of his mind. He could feel her heartbeat against his mouth, along his palm, knew she could feel his heartbeat through his pulsing, eager cock.

He bit her ear and then her neck, tiny little nips that took her breath and then he licked and kissed each spot. “Let’s go into the house, baby.”

She could only give him a little whimper as he rose, dragging her with him, leaving the blanket behind. Her breasts spilled out of her shirt and he pulled her around after three steps and kissed her, his hands cupping the soft mounds, thumbs sliding back and forth in small caresses.

They never made it into the house. They were too hot for each other. Even the breeze coming off the ocean did nothing to cool the heat raging between them. They got as far as the deck and he shoved the shirt from her shoulders so that it floated to the deck a little distance away. He caught her around the waist and brought her up on her toes, kissing her again and again, welding their mouths together, his tongue stroking and caressing, while his hands tugged down her jeans. Without taking his mouth from hers, he ordered, “Take them off, kick them away.”

She couldn’t think with his mouth raging against her, devouring her, so hungry he was ravenous. Her body throbbed with need, wet and hot and desperate for his. He never stopped kissing her, as she struggled to kick away her jeans until her body was bare and she was pressed against his. His shirt was long gone, but his jeans still covered his legs. It didn’t seem to matter and there was something a little primitive and sexy about being totally naked when he was partially clothed.

Elle could hear the blood pounding in her ears, a roaring, a need that wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t get close enough, her hands cupping him, stroking and caressing the thick hardness, so velvet soft and hot. She groaned and felt the shudder run through him as if she’d ignited a fuse. He simply lifted her, taking a step so that her back hit the wall and steadied her.

“Wrap your legs around my waist.”

His voice was hoarse—sexy, so needy she felt another rush of welcoming liquid. She hooked her ankles together around him and clasped her hands at his nape, head back, hair cascading in a long fall. His body was so hard. So perfect. The air on her nipples added to her arousal, the wind teasing over her body like fingers.

Jackson was slightly shocked to hear a growl rumbling in his chest and throat. He felt like a mad animal, consumed by lust and love, a need to be inside her so strong he brought his hands to her hips and using his strength, pushed her hips down hard, impaling her on his thick cock. He felt her body sheath his, drawing him in, so hot and tight and wet, gripping and squeezing and taking his breath.

As he drove upward, he felt the resistance of her body, her breath slamming out of her lungs, the thrill of pleasure in her mind that went from breasts to belly to her hot core so that her muscles clamped around him hard. The pleasure burst through him, shook him, consumed him until nothing mattered but driving deep into her, over and over, feeling the hot clasp of her body, the tight, burning sheath gripping at nerve endings determined to drag his release right out of him.

Her body tightened. She shuddered, her eyes going wide. A whimper slipped from her throat. As his hands forced her down, she moved her hips in a tight circle, riding him, rising and falling, matching the intensity of his frantic rhythm while her body coiled tighter and tighter around his. Her body was scorching hot now, a fire that roared through his veins and pulled every part of him to the center of his body. Mind and blood and strength. Building . . . building.

He heard her moan, and his body jerked in response. He knew she was close. That soft sound was a musical symphony to him, a song he played in his mind, and he wished he could transfer to the keys on the piano and hold forever to him.

Another rising moan. She chanted his name. Soft. A whimper. She threw her head back again, her soft hair sliding over his arms, her face flushed with arousal. He loved her like that. That perfect moment before her body clamped down like a vise on his, drawing out his hot release. Her unknowing song, her heat. The look on her face. It all combined to give him a fierce, primitive satisfaction and added to the wicked pleasure swamping his own body.

The first wave hit her hard, consuming her. He drove deep, his cock stretching her tight channel. A ripple went through her, from her womb to her belly and up to her breasts. He actually felt it. Another loud moan and her entire body locked around him, a vise that clamped down so hard for a moment he couldn’t separate pain from pleasure. She shuddered again as another wave built. He felt the contraction move through her, through him, swelling like the tide, a shock wave jolting outward from her feminine sheath, surrounding him, vibrating through him. He felt her heart beat against his.

He thrust again, heard her soft cry, her music crashing in his ears, and then there was that moment, that perfect, glorious moment when he felt the power coil in his body, gathering, and his blood roared—the sound of thunder—racing up through his body, his balls tightening, his cock rocketing pulse after pulse of hot seed deep so that his body shuddered with hers as the burning pleasure washed over him and her tight muscles gripped him hard, milking his shaft until he was empty. For a moment, everything blurred around him and he felt spent, deliriously happy, and totally, completely at peace.

Elle pressed her face into his shoulder while her body trembled with aftershocks, each quake rushing through his body like an electrical current, spiraling pleasure through him. He waited for the air to come back into his lungs and his legs to get their strength back. He kept his body tight in hers.

“I dreamed about you for years, Elle, of this, taking you over and over. I love hearing your moans and that little whimper you give when you can’t talk anymore. Your eyes go unfocused and you have this sexy as hell dazed look on your face. I see you like that every time I close my eyes and my cock gets hard as a rock and I’m desperate to be inside of you—I see you soaring into another place.”

He stroked his hands over the curve of her bottom, reveling in the feel of her soft skin. “I swear, Elle, you really were made for me. We fit. You’re so damn perfect I lose my mind when I touch you.”

Elle licked at the hollow of his damp shoulder and then pressed kisses up his shoulder to his neck. She nibbled and bit at him, her body moving in languid circles, still coming down from her powerful orgasm. “You make me feel as if I’m flying,” she admitted, her voice drowsy.

“I’d better get you inside before you catch cold out here.”

“Libby says the cold air doesn’t give you a cold. Germs do,” she murmured, snuggling closer to him, making no attempt to put her feet on the ground. “Besides, can’t you feel? I’m still hot.”

“Scorching,” he agreed. “And you’ll always be that way to me.”

She moved her hips in another long, slow circle that sent waves of pleasure rippling over him. He was grateful she was so petite. It was obvious he was going to be carrying her inside. He managed to find the door handle and get it open and he staggered in through to the bedroom, collapsing on top of the mattress. Elle kissed his neck again and rolled away from him, her naked body sprawled across the bed.

“You think you’re going to sleep?”

“Mmm.”

Jackson laughed and went back to retrieve their clothes and the blanket. He stood over her for a long time, wondering at the miracle that had been handed to him. Not once, in the long nights on the bayou, in the humid heat and the utter loneliness of his childhood, had he ever dreamed of someone like Elle. He drew a sheet over her body and tossed his jeans aside before crawling in beside her.

Those days seemed so far away, yet he could remember them vividly, the utter desolation, trying to fish in the midst of swarms of mosquitoes, afraid to go home without some small thing for his mother to eat. By the time he was ten she’d retreated to some place inside her head, but she’d give him a distant smile and a brief kiss on the cheek when he’d take off to hunt or fish for them. Their mattresses were made of the moss he gathered and dried from the trees and stuffed in the cloth sewn together. He dodged alligators and scrounged for roots and anything pretty and colorful he could bring back to his mother.

And then his father would return and for a short time, his mother would come alive. Music would fill the house and his father would accompany him into the swamp, showing him how to set traps and run the nets and the better fishing spots. The brief good times would be interspersed with bouts of drinking and violence, screams and thudding fists, nights spent sitting outside bars and shivering in the cold or feeling sick from the heat.

And later, when he was older, there had been moments racing down the highway on the back of a powerful bike, feeling strong and invincible for short periods of time. His mother grew sicker and his father more violent and distant, but it was the only life Jackson had known and it seemed normal to him.

Elle’s family was the fairy tale. Unreal. Impossible to believe. No one that he had known lived like that. They’d fought for their existence, mostly loners like him, with fathers that came and went. The camps were places of drugs and alcohol and men who were broken from wars looking for camaraderie and finding it in violence. The women were just as hard drinking and sold themselves for a place to belong.

Maybe his life had better prepared him for his capture and torture. Elle had only known a loving environment. Maybe, in the end, the fact that he’d started alone, spent weeks on end without anyone talking to him, had made him strong enough to survive and in doing so, had shaped his determination and will so that he could find and be there for Elle.

Elle stirred, turned over and opened her green eyes. Her gaze moved over his face. She held out her hand to him. Elle with her soft welcoming body and a mouth made in heaven. Elle with her loving heart.

“Turn toward me,” he instructed softly.

She obeyed him without question, without hesitation, uncaring that she was tired, only wanting to give him whatever he needed. She made him humble with her generosity.

He pushed his pillow away and laid his head level with her breasts. Soft. Warm. Amazing. One arm circled her waist and he pulled her body to his, sliding one leg between hers. His hand slipped over the curve of her bottom, memorizing the texture and shape of her before sliding up her thigh to cup her warm mound.

He waited, but Elle didn’t protest. “God, baby, I love you.” He whispered the admission against her throat, kissing his way to her breast. He felt her heartbeat. Her breast was warm and soft as he gently covered it with his mouth, tongue sliding over her nipple. He felt the answering ripple against his hand. “I love how you want me, Elle.”

“Always,” she murmured, pressing a kiss against the top of his head. She drifted on a tide of pleasure as he suckled at her breast, his fingers exploring hidden shadows.