Jackson (4 page)

The firefighter emerged from her bedroom empty-handed and stalked into her little kitchen, where he banged doors and rattled dishes while searching it. Audrey went in after him and found him going through her trash bin.
 

“Really? You’re searching my garbage? What the hell are you looking for?”

“Your spell book, your herbs, your potions, your blades––everything you use for casting and scrying and working your spells.” He dropped the bin and used her sink to wash his hands before he turned to glare at her. “Where are you hiding them?”

“You think I’m a
real
witch.” She couldn’t help laughing. “Right, okay, I get it now. Did Norm put you up to this? Because you really scared the crap out of me on the porch. If you’re going to pull a practical joke, Jack, it should be at least a little funny.”

Instead of laughing and confessing, Jackson closed his eyes briefly and muttered something under his breath.
 

“Look, uh, I better take care of your arm, and then we’ll call it a night.”
 

Audrey reached out to him at the same time he turned away, and in the process her fingers trailed over the gashes Plato’s talons had left on his arm.

The wintery blue light flared from her fingers, and she couldn’t resist the urge to press them over his wounds. As she did his skin begin to glow a bright amber, and the two lights merged into the most beautiful green color she’d ever seen.

Jackson stared down at her hand. “The hell?”

“It’s okay,” she murmured absently.
 

She focused on the tears in his skin, pouring the cool energy streaming from her fingers into his flesh. One by one the gashes shrank and closed until his arm bore no trace of the owl’s attack. Instead of fading the light intensified, and Audrey felt a new, beautiful warmth spread through her hand and drift up her arm as her desire for the big blond firefighter returned with a vengeance.

Jackson touched his now unmarked arm and then seized her hand, turning it over to inspect her palm before staring at her.
 

“You healed me by touch.”

“It was the light, not me.” Her voice sounded breathless, and her heart was pounding so hard it throbbed in her ears. “I can’t do it all the time. Only on certain nights.”

He turned his head to look through the glass panes of the porch door. “Moonlit nights.”

“I guess.” She drew her hand away to break the contact with him and felt a strange hollow ache collect in her chest. “I don’t really know how it works, only that I can’t do it at all during the day, or on nights when the moon is dark.”

“This is what you did at the fire,” he said, sounding confused. “You touch-healed that child.”

“She had deep burns that would have left her scarred for life,” she told him. “I had to do something to help her.”

Jackson seized her arms. “Who taught you to do this?”

“No one.” Why did she want him so badly when he was treating her like some criminal? “It just started a couple years ago, when I was in college––when I found Plato, actually.”

“You healed the ghost owl.” His hands fell away. “Of course.”

“He was almost dead, and when I touched him the light appeared and his wound stopped bleeding and then…it was gone.” She ducked her head. “I thought he had something to do with it, so I brought him home and watched him. Then it happened again, on the job.”

Jackson began to pace back and forth. “You healed a human being the second time.”

“I responded to a call for an epileptic who’d fallen off a ladder,” she corrected. “I was just moving him into a recovery position. But the moment I touched him the light appeared again and his seizure stopped. So did the bleeding from his head wound.”

“And this man is no longer an epileptic,” Jackson guessed.

“He hasn’t had a single seizure since I touched him.” She wanted to go to him so badly she had to turn away. “So if that makes me a witch, then yes, I guess I am. I don’t know. You’re the only person I’ve told about it.”
 

He stopped pacing and gave her an astonished look. “No one has taught you
anything
about your power?”

“There aren’t exactly any touch-healing schools in Seattle,” she countered. “Besides, if the county emergency services supervisor ever found out what I was doing, I’d be fired instantly and brought up in front of the board to have my licenses and certifications suspended. I’d probably never work as a paramedic again.”

 
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Audrey, if what you’re telling me is true–”

“Why would I lie?” She advanced on him. “What were you really searching for when you came in here? Are you some kind of undercover reporter going after my godmother? Because she’s into New Age and makes her own herbal remedies, that means we’re both witches? Is that your angle?”

“I don’t care about your godmother,” he grated. “You’ve been using an ability you haven’t been taught to control, or even understand entirely, on helpless human beings. Audrey, with the amount of power you possess, you could easily kill someone.”

She slapped him, hard. The contact sent blue and amber sparks flying between them, and then the tiny lights swirled and danced like tiny fairies between their faces. As her eyes widened Jackson swore under his breath and dragged her into his arms.

“You see?” He cradled her face between his big hands and looked all over her face. “Your power is connected between your heart and your mind. When you use it in kindness, you can heal, but used in anger, it will wound.”

She stared at the rapidly-fading red mark on his cheek.
 

“I don’t want to wound you. I’d like to
kick
you, somewhere very personal.”

“I think not.” Jackson deliberately placed his hand over the same spot where he had touched her at the fire. “Show me what is in your heart, Audrey Mather.”
 

As he spoke his breath mingled with hers, and without thinking she pressed against him, her hands slipping up to rest on his shoulders. Something more intimate and shocking than his touch welled up inside her, burning through the doubts and fears.
 

“I want you,” she heard herself say. “I have since the first time I saw you.” She pressed her lips to his chest, unable to stop herself now. “I want to know if you feel the same. I want to know it so much I brought you here, so I could seduce you. I know you want me. I can feel it.”

Jackson muttered something and ducked his head, pressing his brow to hers.

It began so softly at first Audrey didn’t realize Jackson was kissing her. The touch of his mouth felt at first like his breath, and then like the delicious heat radiating from his skin, warming and caressing her without a touch. Then she parted her lips to speak to him and instead tasted him.

His tongue stroked hers as he gathered her closer. The slow, sexy caress sent streaks of hot delight into her chest to furl tightly in the peaks of her breasts. She gasped as she felt her nipples bead, and a wanton ache spread down into her belly to collect between her thighs.
 

Jackson lifted her off her feet and carried her back into her bedroom, dropping her onto her bed and propping himself over her as he covered her mouth with his again. The warmth and weight of him on top of her felt so good that Audrey moaned out loud. He drank the sound from her lips as he deepened the kiss, his big hand gliding up under her blouse to tug down her bra. The feel of his fingers on her soft breast made Audrey arch and rub her nipple against his palm. He brushed his thumb over it as he used his knee to spread her legs and settle between them.

Feeling the long, thick bulge of his erection pressing against her crotch made Audrey curl one leg around his and tilt her hips so she could rub herself gently against him.

Jackson wrenched his mouth from hers. “I want you naked, Audrey.”

She swallowed hard and nodded, shivering a little as he began stripping off her clothes. As efficient as he was, she could feel his hands shaking, and once she was completely bare to his touch he stopped and looked from her swollen, hard-tipped breasts to the satiny dark curls veiling her sex.

“You are like a dream,” he murmured as he trailed his fingertips from the dip in her collarbones to the dent of her navel. “One from which a man never wants to awake.”

Jackson pulled off his shirt before he bent to kiss her, and Audrey boldly brought his hands to her breasts. He fondled her with maddening leisure, rubbing and shaping her mounds to his touch before teasing her throbbing nipples with gentle tugs. When a whimper escaped her he lifted his head and smiled a little before he shifted down and covered one peak with his mouth.

The wet, luscious lash of his tongue on her nipple sent a burst of new sensation through Audrey, who writhed under him as her need billowed out of control. She gripped his arms and groaned as she clenched her thighs against the intense pulse of her erect clit.

“Easy, my lovely one,” Jackson crooned, his hand stroking her thighs as he blew a warm breath over her glistening nipple. “Open your legs for me. Yes, like that.” He stroked his fingers over her sensitive folds, parting them deftly before he rubbed the pad of his thumb back and forth over her aching nub. “You feel like honeyed silk. Do you need me here, Audrey? Do you want me inside you?”

“Yes.” She was almost crazy with need, but she knew she couldn’t do this. “But we can’t. I’m not protected, Jackson.”

“I’ll deal with that.”
 

He stood up and took something out of his pocket before he took off his trousers. Dazed by the beauty of his body and the thick length of his penis, she watched him place a handful of condom packets on her night stand before opening one to sheath himself.

Knowing he was prepared to have sex––a lot of sex––should have upset Audrey. Instead she felt amazed and grateful.
 

“So I guess you planned on this happening.”

“No.” He sat down beside her, and bent to press his lips to her brow before he looked into her eyes. “I never would have touched you if I couldn’t protect you.”

The way he said that made Audrey think he meant something much more serious than pregnancy or an STD, but before she could ask he gave her a kiss so deep and carnal she felt it in her bones.

Audrey expected to feel the same panic and doubt she’d experienced when she’d lost her virginity; Jackson’s big, muscular body all but dwarfed hers, and he’d already proven he could do whatever he liked to her. Yet as he kissed her breathless the delicious warmth of him enveloped her, and sank into her to stoke the rising heat in her core, making her desire to surrender to him almost ferocious.
 

 
He shifted onto his side and stroked his hand down the front of her torso before he cupped her mound and probed her, deftly exploring her slick folds before he pressed one long, thick finger inside.
 

“There you are, my lovely one,” he murmured as she clenched around him. “Your sweet little pussy is as soft and furled as a new bloom.” He began gently pumping his finger in and out. “It’s going to feel so good on my cock.”

Audrey trembled as he used his thumb to stroke her clit while he penetrated her, and heard him unzip his trousers. A streak of sexy delight bolted through her when he wrapped her fingers around the broad, heavy girth of his shaft; even with the condom sheathing him he felt as hot and hard as new steel. Then he shifted over her, holding her hand on him as he spread her thighs wide
.

“I need to be inside you,” he told her, his deep voice taking on a ragged edge as he nudged her with the big satiny bulb of his penis. “Will you take me now, Audrey?”

“Yes, please.” She tightened her fingers and rubbed him against her, working his cockhead between her slick folds before she released him to grip his hip.

Jackson pressed into her, grunting a little as he forged through the narrow ellipse of her opening and squeezed his thick head inside her body. When he stroked another inch of his shaft into her, Audrey could feel her folds bulging around it as her sex strained to accommodate the hard, intimate invasion. As wet as arousal had made her, their joining felt so tight she didn’t know if she could take any more without pain.
 

He went still. “Look at me, Audrey.”
 

When she did he pressed his hand to her cheek and his thumb to her mouth before he murmured something under his breath. A warm tingling sensation spread across her lips and down her throat, startling the breath out of her as she felt it soak through the tension of her muscles to swell up into her breasts and sweep down into her belly. The warmth deepened and the tingling flowered into a slow, luscious craving that began to pulse deep inside her.
 

“What is that?”

“My wanting.” He bent to kiss her, catching the sounds she made and answering them with a low, hungry sound. “Let me give you all of it, and I will take yours.”
 

Audrey slipped her hands over his shoulders as the strange sensation swept away the last of her resistance. Jackson began to move again with a slow, sensual deliberation, and more and more of his heavy shaft pumped into her with every graceful stroke, stretching and filling her softness again and again. He pushed deeper into her core, and she felt her clit swell and pulse madly.

Jackson worked steadily into her until she clasped him to his root, his full, thick length filling her so completely it felt as if they’d merged into one flesh.
 

“There, now you have me, my lovely one.” He used his thumb to circle one of her aching nipples. “Your pussy takes me so sweetly, too. I knew it would.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted, almost panting the words.

“Let me show you.”
 

He worked one arm under her hips and drew out of her until only his tip nestled between her folds.

Audrey clutched his shoulders as he gave her his full length again, the thrust as hard as the friction was arousing. Before she could catch her breath he recoiled and plowed into her again, pushing past her fluttering tissues to possess every inch of her. Jackson was fucking her now, his hips pumping between her thighs with smooth, steady rhythm as he worked his penis deeper into her tightness.