Loving Jessie (18 page)

It was like falling into the sun. Shining gold fire ran over her, through her. She burned with the power of it. She moved with him, taking him as he was taking her, demanding as much as she was giving.

The climb was fast and hard, too intense to last long. Matt saw her eyes cloud over, heard the breath sobbing from her, and knew she was a heartbeat away from going over the edge. His own climax was clawing at him, but he waited. He needed to see it take her. A moment more. Almost. There. Just there.

Jessie arched beneath him, head back, eyes blind, her breath exploding outward in a thin scream. Delicate inner muscles contracted around him, relaxed, contracted again, dragging him into the maelstrom with her. He groaned as his hips jerked convulsively, his body shuddering with the jetting force of his own completion. It went on and on, draining him completely.

Matt sprawled over her, dizzy with the force of his climax. He’d lost his virginity when he was fifteen, and
in the nearly quarter century since then, he’d had perhaps a bit more than his fair share of sexual experience. If asked, he would have admitted that there wasn’t much he hadn’t tried, and he’d enjoyed most of it. But he had never experienced anything like this, never felt so completely emptied, body, heart and soul.

Jessie was warm and soft beneath him. Every breath brought the mingled scents of shampoo and soap and sex, and he realized, with something that was half surprise, half anger, that he wanted her again. Aftershocks from the most incredible climax of his life were still running through him, but he was already thinking about the next time.

With an effort, he lifted his weight from her, bracing himself on his elbows. He looked down at her. Her face was flushed, her lashes a damp tangle on her cheeks. As he watched, a single tear slipped free, tracing a silvery trail across her temple before disappearing into the honey-colored softness of her hair.

His heart contracting, he brushed quiet kisses across her face, tasting the salt tang of her tears, tasting the heat of her love-flushed cheeks, and finally settling on the swollen softness of her mouth.

“Jessie?” Her lashes lifted slowly. She looked up at him with eyes still half-dazed by what had passed between them. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“No. Yes.” She swallowed and shook her head, her mouth curving in a trembling smile. “It did hurt a little at first, and then it didn’t, and it was…” She struggled to find the words, but there were no words to describe what she’d felt, what he’d given her. In the end, she settled for what was in her heart. “You made it wonderful for me.” She lifted one unsteady hand to touch his face,
tracing her fingertips over the strong curve of cheek and jaw. “Thank you, Matt.”

His smile was slow and warm. His gaze held a look she’d never seen in a man’s eyes before—an awareness, a knowledge that brought color creeping into her face. She was suddenly achingly aware that he was still a warm, heavy presence between her legs, sharply conscious of the fact that her body would never again be hers alone.

“Trust me, sweetheart, the pleasure was all mine,” he assured her, his voice husky. Her blush deepened, and he grinned as he lowered his head to kiss her. “Always happy to do a favor for a friend,” he murmured against her mouth, startling a laugh out of her.

Her laughter created all sorts of interesting sensations, none of them having anything to do with humor. Matt groaned, swallowing her gasp as he began to harden inside her. His smile faded, disappearing in the heat that rose in his eyes.

“Again,” he whispered.

Shivering, her damp hands clinging to his shoulders, Jessie gave him what he wanted.

So this was what the morning after felt like
. It was a deep, silken ache that rode her body like a heavy blanket, a tangible reminder of the night that had gone before. It was tangled sheets, and the musky scent of sweat and sex drifting on the air. It was a new awareness of her own body, a shivery knowledge that everything was different—that
she
was different.

Somewhere in the distance, Jessie could hear the muffled whine of a vacuum cleaner—the housekeeping staff working in a room somewhere down the hall. She wondered what time it was. Late, probably. It had been almost
dawn when they’d finally fallen asleep. She’d never thought of herself as a woman of deep passions, but Matt had shown her how little she knew herself. It had been an amazing night.

Opening her eyes, she met her own gaze in the mirrored ceiling over the bed. The reflection chased away any lingering traces of sleep. The bed was a wreck, covers pulled loose and twisted. The plush bedspread lay on the floor somewhere, along with several pillows. The pillow under her head was crooked, half stuffed under the headboard. The bottom sheet was pulled loose on the corner nearest her head. She had a vague memory of Matt pulling the top sheet over both of them, but, sometime during the hours they’d slept, it had slithered downward and now trailed half off the bed.

She had a sudden flash of memory of looking into the mirror and seeing Matt’s naked back, muscles rippling as he moved over her, her own hands flexed against his tanned skin. Remembering it now, she felt color come up in her cheeks.

Her eyes shifted to Matt’s reflection, and her flush deepened even as her mouth curved in an almost feline smile.
Mine
. He lay sprawled on his stomach beside her, one arm thrown across her body, his hand resting just below her bare breast, fingers open and relaxed, his tan dark in contrast with her pale skin.

He looked younger in sleep, some indefinable tension gone, lashes lying on his cheekbones in a tangle of black lace. She frowned over the scar on his shoulder. The bullet’s exit wound, larger and less tidy than the neat, puckered scar on the other side. He’d shrugged aside her questions when she’d asked about his injury, but she didn’t need a medical degree to guess that he’d come closer to death than he would ever admit.

She shied away from the frightening thought and shifted her gaze to the long line of his back. The sheet had slipped down below his waist, baring the upper curve of his buttocks, baring a long, smooth expanse of tanned muscles. Jessie frowned at the series of thin red lines over his shoulderblades, and then her face burned as she realized they were marks from her fingernails.

Good grief. She couldn’t believe she’d actually lost control to the point where she’d scratched him like a… Well, she didn’t know what it was like, but it wasn’t her. She was quiet. Reserved. Controlled. Maybe even undersexed. Not at all the sort of woman who left marks on a man’s back in a moment of passion. Not the sort of woman who ever had moments of passion, for that matter.

Uneasy with this startling glimpse of an unfamiliar side of herself, Jessie looked away from Matt and met her own eyes in the mirror. For just a moment it was like looking at a stranger, a woman with honey-colored hair spread in a tangled halo over the pillow and wide, dark eyes that held both uncertainty and a deep, feminine knowledge that hadn’t been there before. She looked…ripe. More of that agricultural theme, she thought, and smiled a little.

I might be pregnant
. The smile disappeared under the sudden rush of awareness. Making a baby had been the main reason for marrying Matt, but she hadn’t given the possibility so much as a thought last night. Actually, she hadn’t given it much thought since the day she’d agreed to marry him. Her teeth worried her lower lip as she wondered if she should be bothered by that.

“Looking for signs of dissipation?” Matt’s voice was slow and husky with sleep.

Startled, Jessie turned her head to find him watching her with sleepy blue eyes. Eyes that warmed as they left her face to skim lower, making her suddenly aware that
the sheet was down around her waist, baring her breasts. Blushing, she tried to tug it up, but he was quicker, catching hold of the soft linen and pushing it farther down. She tugged harder. He refused to yield. She scowled. He grinned.

“Men who use brute strength to get their way are beneath contempt,” she informed him. It was difficult to look haughty when you were lying in bed, half-exposed and all the way naked, but Jessie gave it her best effort, looking down her short straight nose at him.

“I’ve always believed that a wise man uses every advantage he has.” He nudged the sheet lower, his eyes dropping to her bare breasts. When he lifted his eyes to her face again, she could see a familiar heat. “All’s fair in love and war,” he murmured, leaning toward her.

“Especially in war.” Jessie rolled toward the side of the bed, intending to slide off and make a dash for the dubious safety of the bathroom. But Matt was quicker. His arm snaked around her waist, dragging her back onto the tumbled bed. During the laughing tussle that followed, the remaining pillows landed on the floor and the last three corners of the bottom sheet were pulled loose.

It ended with Jessie sprawled on top of him, holding his hands pinned to the bed on either side of his head. “Give up?”

Matt arched one dark brow. “Surrender to a weaker force? I don’t think so.”

“Who has whom pinned and helpless?” she asked haughtily.

He moved with a speed that left her gasping, one strong arm wrapping around her waist as he rolled, tucking her beneath him and settling between her legs. Jessie
groaned, arching in shocked pleasure as he filled her with one heavy thrust.

“I win,” he whispered against her mouth.

Jessie was too busy moaning to argue the point.

J
essie had left all the honeymoon arrangements up to Matt. It had seemed safer that way, since, as crazed as she’d been with trying to manage the wedding, any honeymoon plans she made would probably have involved a padded cell and a straitjacket.

Matt had picked out a small hotel on the Monterey Peninsula. Nestled amid pines sculpted and twisted by the winds that blew off the ocean, the hotel was a collection of half-a-dozen buildings, none more than two stories high, all built of weathered wood and glass. The simple architecture suited the stark beauty of the setting.

The grounds butted up against a series of windswept dunes that were in the process of being carefully restored by the park service. Boardwalks wound through the dunes, leading to a wooden gate. Once through the gate and across a narrow, two-lane road, you were just a few short yards from the ebb and curl of the Pacific. This was not the wide, sandy-beached ocean of surfers and sunbathers immortalized by the Beach Boys but a twisting, harshly beautiful place of rocks and inlets, tidal pools and
crashing waves, broken up by occasional patches of white sand scattered with seaweed and driftwood.

Deer meandered among the dunes, occasionally pausing in their browsing to watch the humans on the boardwalks, their dark eyes faintly puzzled, as if they found these bipedal creatures harmless but peculiar. On their second day there, a long walk up the rocky beach was rewarded with a pair of sea otters at play in a quiet inlet.

Jessie was enchanted—with the otters, the deer, the windswept trees, the subdued luxury of their room and the spectacular view from the balcony. If she’d been asked to describe the perfect spot for a honeymoon, she couldn’t have imagined anything better. But, wonderful as the setting was, she was reasonably certain that she would have enjoyed her honeymoon just as much if they’d been camped out at a ratty motel in Death Valley. It wasn’t the cute furry animals or the crashing waves that made the world seem a new and shining place.

“Matt? Wake up.”

“No. I’m asleep,” he muttered, burying his face deeper in the pillow. “Deeply asleep.”

“I don’t believe you.” He felt the bed dip as Jessie sat down. “If you’re talking, you’re awake.”

“I’m talking in my sleep.”

“You’re lying in your sleep,” she said reprovingly. Ignoring his whimpered protests, she dragged the covers down. “It’s time to wake up.”

“What time is it?” he asked, pulling the pillow over his head without opening his eyes.

“Six o’clock.”

“In the morning?” His tone was one of horrified disbelief.

“In the morning,” she confirmed heartlessly. “Get up. You promised.”

“It was under false pretenses,” he muttered, shoving the pillow back as he rolled over and glared at her. “When you said six o’clock, I thought you were kidding.”

She looked disgustingly wide awake, he thought sourly. And cheerful.

“Come on, rise and shine.”

God, she was teetering on the brink of being chipper. Matt groaned and fell back against the pillow, still glaring at her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, one bare foot curled under her. She was wearing a long, soft cotton skirt in a multihued print of golds and blues, and a bulky off-white sweater that hung to midthigh. Her toffee-colored hair was caught back from her face with a pair of bright blue clips. Actually, she looked kind of cute, he admitted, feeling a stir of interest.

“I didn’t sleep very well.” He gave her a pathetic look that suggested he was suffering from severe sleep deprivation. “I kept waking up last night.”

“That’s hardly my fault,” Jessie said sternly, color rising in her cheeks as if she was remembering exactly how he’d occupied his sleepless time.

“Of course it is.” He reached out to catch her hand, tugging her toward him. “What’s a man supposed to do when he wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a delectable wench draped over him like a fur coat?”

“I was not.” Jessie’s flush deepened. She pulled back against his hold. “You’re the one who woke me twice last night.”

“Three times,” he corrected her, feeling his interest—among other things—perk up at the memory. “Let’s try for four.”

“You’re insatiable.” Her cheeks were pink, but there was a look in her eyes that told him he wasn’t the only one with warm memories of the night before.

“I’m on my honeymoon,” he said, widening his eyes innocently. He tugged harder, his grin taking on a wicked edge. If he had to wake up at this ungodly hour, he might as well make the best of it. “I have certain traditions to uphold.”

“Matt, I really— Oh!” Jessie’s breath caught on a squeak as he yanked her forward, tumbling her onto his chest.

The room was quiet for a few minutes, except for a few soft sighs and one definite moan. Matt was just starting to think that waking up at six o’clock in the morning might not be completely without merit when Jessie abruptly dragged her mouth from his.

“No you don’t.” Her protest was breathless but firm. “You’re not going to distract me again.” Evading his determined hands, she scrambled off the side of the bed and stood glaring at him. “Yesterday we didn’t get out of here until noon.”

“Can I help it if you find me irresistible?” Leaning on one elbow, Matt gave her a disingenuous smile. “Come back to bed, Jessie. The Pacific will still be there later.”

“But the deer may not be.” As if compelled, Jessie’s eyes moved down his body, lingering on the muscles of his chest before following the line of hair that traced across his stomach to disappear beneath the covers draped low on his hips. Her cheeks warmed at the blatant arousal he made no attempt to conceal, but she didn’t look away.

The combination of bold interest and shy embarrassment made him want to drag her down on the bed and ravish her. Then again, over the last few days, he’d discovered that almost everything she did filled him with a
similar urge. It was amazing to think that he’d known her all these years and never once felt this urge to devour her. Now he couldn’t keep his hands off her. He gauged the distance between them and decided it was too far to risk grabbing for her. A more subtle tactic was in order.

“You know, it’s very painful for a man to become aroused and then not have any…outlet for it.”

His look of quiet suffering was met with a snort of laughter. “Nice try, Latimer.” She grinned heartlessly. “Do you remember the summer I was fifteen and you caught me necking with Billy Thompson in Grandad’s gazebo?”

“The kid with no neck?” When she nodded, Matt scowled. “He had his hands under your blouse,” he muttered. The memory was surprisingly vivid. And annoying.

“Yes, but he hadn’t done anything interesting with them yet,” Jessie said with wistful regret. “And Billy was a weight lifter, which was why he was…neck impaired.”

“He was eighteen. Way too old for you.”

“You said as much at the time. Rather loudly. Do you remember what else you told me?”

“Maybe,” he admitted cautiously.

“After you scared poor Billy out of a week’s dose of steroids, you sat me down and told me all about boys and the tricks they might use to try and talk a girl into going all the way. Remember?”

Matt’s scowl deepened. He did remember.

“You told me that I shouldn’t believe any boy who told me that getting aroused and then not being able to…um…do something about it might do them irreparable harm.” She gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence. “You didn’t lie to me, did you, Matt?”

Talk about hoist on your own petard
. Matt cleared his
throat and tried to look as if he wasn’t wondering if there was a bra under that bulky sweater. “I didn’t lie, but it’s…different after you’re married.” She raised her eyebrows and looked doubtful. “There’s an actual chemical change that occurs in a man when he—” Her giggle made it clear that she wasn’t buying it. “Fine,” he muttered. “Don’t believe me. But you’ll be sorry when I’m writhing in agony.” The giggle became outright laughter. Her eyes danced with it, and he had to work at keeping his sulky look in place. He edged subtly closer.

“Nice try, Matt, but I don’t think you’ll suffer any permanent damage from—”

Her voice rose on a startled little shriek when he moved suddenly, one long arm snagging her around the waist to pull her down onto the bed in a tumble of long legs and soft skirts. Any protest she might have made was lost in the quick, hard possession of his kiss. When he finally lifted his head, all that emerged was a soft moan at the feel of his warm hand sliding under her sweater.

“You promised you’d get up early,” she managed to say, though the fact that she was arching into his touch made the reproach less effective than it might have been.

“Honey, if I get any more up, I’m going to explode,” he muttered. He opened the front clasp of her bra and shoved the sweater up, baring her to his gaze. And his mouth. Oh, his mouth.

“We’re not staying in bed until noon again,” she panted, her hands sliding into his hair as her back arched, offering herself to him.

“I’ll make it real quick,” he offered, startling a laugh from her. “Five minutes. I swear.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” she said breathlessly.

His hands were busy under her skirt. There was a
quick, tearing sound, and he tossed her ruined panties to the floor.

“I’ll make it a very good thing,” he promised as he lifted himself over her.

And he did.

It was considerably more than five minutes, but the morning was still young when they left their room. Matt was still grumbling about being dragged out of a warm bed and forced to tramp along a cold, rocky beach. He took every opportunity to give her a vivid demonstration of what he considered a more appropriate use of time for a honeymooning couple.

He kissed her in the stairwell. And on the steps in front of their building. He pulled her off the path and pressed her up against the trunk of a gnarled pine tree and offered a persuasive, if wordless, argument for returning to their room. And there was a conveniently placed access path between two buildings where he made one last attempt to convince her that deer and sand dunes were vastly overrated.

By the time they sat down to breakfast at a table overlooking the ocean, Jessie’s hair was tousled, her cheeks were flushed, and her breathing was not as steady as it might have been, but she’d successfully resisted temptation. She gave her order to the waiter and looked across the table at Matt. He was wearing faded jeans and a bulky off-white sweater. His dark hair brushed the collar in back and fell onto his forehead in an appealingly untidy wave. His hair had been neatly combed when they left their room, and, though she wanted to blame the wind for its tousled condition, she had a distinct memory of feeling it sliding through her fingers like dark silk during one of several stolen kisses on the way to breakfast.

Looking at him as he ordered his meal, she felt a newly familiar warmth in the pit of her stomach and wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so adamant about going for an early-morning walk. Really, deer weren’t exactly rare, after all and they had two more days to—

“You’re the one who wanted to play nature girl,” Matt commented, apparently at random, but the smug curve of his smile suggested that he knew where her thoughts had been heading.

Jessie flushed and reached for her orange juice, trying to look as if jumping his bones—again—hadn’t even crossed her mind. “There’s no point in coming to such a beautiful spot and not taking advantage of the…the beauty.”

“I thought I was doing a pretty good job of taking advantage of at least one beauty,” Matt murmured wickedly, leaning back in his chair as the waiter returned with his coffee and a basket of muffins.

Jessie sipped her juice and willed herself not to blush, both at the compliment and the warm look in his eyes. It was ridiculous. In all the years she’d known him, she couldn’t ever remember Matt making her blush. Now, all he had to do was lift an eyebrow and smile that slow smile that said he was thinking wicked thoughts and she blushed like a twelve-year-old in the throes of her first crush. It was embarrassing.

Seeking a distraction, she nodded to the strap draped over the back of his chair. “I’m glad you brought your camera. What’s the point of marrying a world-famous photographer if you don’t get any pictures of your honeymoon?”

She was reaching for a muffin as she spoke and missed seeing Matt’s suddenly arrested expression. He lowered his hand to feel the familiar contours of the camera case
he hadn’t even been aware of picking up. He’d been traveling with it for so long that he’d packed it automatically, the same way he packed his shaving gear and clean socks. He hadn’t given it any thought since he’d put it in the bottom of the closet in their hotel room, but, this morning, he’d pulled his jacket off its hanger and scooped the camera case up at the same time, the way he’d done hundreds of times before in hotel rooms all over the world.

Matt fingered the battered leather case as he watched Jessie butter a muffin. The hotel restaurant was almost completely walled in glass, offering a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of sea and sand and woods. Morning sun spilled through the windows behind her, drifting softly across polished wooden floors and crisp linen tablecloths, catching in Jessie’s hair, picking out the red and gold highlights. He wanted to photograph her, Matt thought suddenly. He wanted to photograph Jessie walking barefoot on the beach, her hair windblown and wild.

“I’m surprised you’ve been able to resist the urge to pull out your camera for this long,” Jessie said. She nibbled on one edge of a blueberry muffin and smiled across the table at him. “This place is so spectacularly beautiful, you must have been dying to spend some time messing with lenses and f-stops and things.”

“I haven’t exactly been bored,” Matt said easily. He could have told her that he had a lot more experience with photographing death and destruction than spectacular scenery, but he didn’t. It wasn’t the scenery that was tugging at him now.

By dinnertime he’d gone through three rolls of film. To please Jessie, he’d taken postcard shots of deer moving daintily across the dunes and caught the wild spume of waves splashing against the rocks, the twisted trunk of
a cypress. To please himself, he’d snapped shots of his wife, barefoot and windblown against the endless blue of sea and sky, of her laughing at the bold antics of the gulls, of her dabbling her toes in the chilly surge of the Pacific.