Smooth Irish (Book 2 of the Weldon Series) (18 page)

Jackson thrust up watching the
sunlight set Nan’s auburn hair ablaze with fiery lights. She was so
hot and so damn sexy that all he could think about was getting
deeper and deeper into her. He wanted to keep thrusting and
thrusting until they both went crazy with desire. “That’s it. Yeah,
just like that. Slow, steady, and hard, sugar,” he murmured,
rocking his hips harder and harder. She was a wet dream come true,
and he wanted to be the man with whom she came apart.

Last night, the numbness that had
ruled his body for so long had faded. How could he remain
indifferent with a woman like her? Her full breasts rubbed his
chest and bounced with her every move. The sun kissed her naked
flesh to a peachy glow, and the hot heat of her sex nestled in
red-blonde curls grabbed his erection, smoothly milking him to an
excitement that had his blood rushing like the wind. She was taking
him for a ride and as before, being with her was unlike being with
anyone else.

Her honey eyes were darkened with
secret desire and slanted to a love-me-baby angle. And her lush
mouth, parted with the force of her desire, seemed ready to take
anything he had to give. He pumped into her harder, forcing his
hands to keep the bike steady when all he wanted to do was to grab
her and pump them both into insanity. “How long, sugar? How long
have you been thinking about this?”

“
Three,” she
gasped.

“
Three whole days, huh.”
He smiled pushing up into her and reveling in her slick,
smoothness.

“
Three months.” Her breath
caught and her muscles tightened on him and he couldn’t hold back
any more.

“
Months? Damn, sugar,
you’re killing me. That’s it, come with me.” He thrust into her one
last time and her convulsing orgasm sent him over the edge. He
jerked with the force of it, his spasms moving him deeper into her,
and still it wasn’t enough. When she settled in his arms, her
breathing a heavy, rasping in the air, he stayed buried inside of
her as he slid off the bike and carried her to the quilt. Lying on
top of her, he kissed her tenderly, breathing in her essence and
loving the feel of being intimately connected. He was in trouble.
His erection was gearing up for another hard ride and his heart was
revving up his blood to fuel the action.

The sound of a plane had him shift and
his thigh suddenly felt damp. “Damn,” he sat up quickly to see. The
condom looked intact, but his leg was just a bit too
wet.

“
Oh my Gosh!” Nan bolted
upright in a panic. “I don’t believe this.”

He slid the condom off and placed it
with the used paper plates to be thrown away. He didn’t see any
fluid leak from it, so he figured they were safe. “Don’t worry.
Odds are that it won’t matter.”

“
Won’t matter! Don’t you
hear the plane? They’re going to see us like this!”

Jackson switched gears from the
possible condom leak to realize Nan was upset about being seen
naked from the air. “You won’t be anything more than a speck on the
horizon to the pilot.”

“
Even being a naked speck
is mortifying,” she said. “They’ll know what we’ve been
doing.”

He found her flustered embarrassment
as endearing as her wild streak had been a turn on. She was a
mixture of black lace and prim nurse’s whites. The roar of the
plane drew closer. He rolled over on top of her to cover her body
with his. “The only thing the pilot can see is my backside. You’re
safe.”

“
I want clothes,” she
grumbled, wiggling.

He kissed her and neither of them knew
when the plane finally flew over. Nan was a wonderful distraction
and he had packed another condom in the other pocket of his jeans.
This time they went green and made good use of the trees for
support.

* * *

“
You cook a mean steak.”
Nan sat back in her chair and folded her napkin after dabbing her
mouth.

Jackson had already polished off his
dinner and sat with his legs stretched out, sipping the last of his
beer. Physically there wasn’t any part of Jackson she hadn’t had
the pleasure of seeing or touching. They’d spent the morning sun
bathing naked on the quilt by the creek, and the afternoon in his
bed. They’d both gotten sun today. Jackson’s tan had deepened,
making his teeth flash white when he grinned. “My motto with meat
is if I can’t grill it then I don’t eat it.”

“
I wondered how you did
without a stove.” She couldn’t imagine living such a makeshift way
every day, but he had turned out an excellent meal. A fresh salad,
and microwaved potatoes and veggies went with their steaks. “The
steak was heavenly.”

“
No. The steak was good.
You’re heavenly.” He leaned over and kissed her soundly.

She moaned. Making love again right
that minute would kill her because she was already so replete.
She’d lost count how many times they’d made love since she’d
arrived last night. But with Jackson making the moves, she couldn’t
deny him, and was ready to die for pleasure.

He didn’t move in for the kill this
time though, he stood up and tugged on her hand. “Let’s go sit on
the porch.”

He sat on one corner of the swing and
placed a long leg across the bench seat, leaving his other leg
planted on the porch. He patted the wood between his legs. “Sit
here.”

She snuggled into him as he wrapped
his arms around her, spooning her against him so they could both
look out at the starry night and see the moonbeams peek through the
clouds at the hillside. A chorus of crickets and frogs sang in the
distance.

“
This is beautiful. Quiet
and peaceful. We haven’t seen anybody all day,” she said surprised
to feel the contentment inside of her. She’d grown up in the
country, and was no stranger to it. Yet her memories of it were
different. The dark had always been too dark, the crickets too
loud, and the isolation too acute. Moving to the city, having a
career, and being hemmed in by people rather than land had been
something she’d yearned to do for as far back as she could
remember.

“
In the four years I’ve
lived here, you’re the only person who has been to my cabin. No
reason for folks to stop by, this is private property and my family
respects my privacy.”

His words intrigued her. Was she
special to him? Jackson had made love to her with a passion and
tenderness unlike any other, yet she’d never met a man so against
making any type of a commitment to anything. “Don’t you get lonely
out here?”

“
No.” He tensed, and she
wondered if he would continue. “I grew up with three brothers whose
mission in life was to crowd into anything their older brother got
to do. I like quiet. What about you, any brothers or
sisters?”

“
Nope. I’m it, which was
probably a good thing.”

“
How so?”

Nan shrugged. She didn’t talk about
her childhood much; it pulled her down and made her sad. “Between
me and my father, my mother had more than she could take care
of.”

“
You never say much about
your folks. Where do they live?”

“
They don’t.” She breathed
deep, and forced herself to speak. “My father drank himself into an
early grave and my mother worked herself into one trying to get
help for him and feeding me. After they died, I left the broken
down trailer they’d rented and moved to Savannah, eventually
working my way through nursing school.”

For a long moment Jackson remained
silent. “I’m sorry. Men who can’t take on the responsibilities of
caring for a family shouldn’t have one.” His voice cut harshly
through the night.

“
I don’t think my father
planned it that way. He caught the tail end of Vietnam. When he
came back, he was never the same. His platoon was massacred, and
only he and one other man survived. My father and the other man had
a run in with a land mine. They called for a chopper to medi-vac
them out. Shortly after that, a North Vietnamese sniper team
ambushed his platoon, and my father blamed himself for their
deaths. He thought that the land mine explosion and the chopper
helped the Vietnamese to pinpoint his platoon.”

“
But he couldn’t have
known.”

“
Maybe, maybe not. I’m
sorry it happened, but he let it ruin his life and took my mother
with him. She loved him with all of her heart and soul, but it
wasn’t enough.”

Jackson hugged her tighter. Nan lost
herself in her remembrances of the past. Few had been happy. Most
had been anguished with constant problems. He pushed the swing with
his foot and they swayed softly in the evening breeze for a while.
After a time she spoke again.

“Jack, tell me about your wife. What was her
name?”

He tensed. For a long time he didn’t answer and Nan
wondered if she had made a fatal mistake. He was just opening up to
her. Would he completely withdraw from her now?

“Her name was Amy. I suppose you already know she
was killed in a car crash four years ago.”

“Yes.”

“There’s not much to say beyond that. We married
when I was in school, which made life rough, but we stuck it out.
What about you, ever married?”

“Me?” Nan blinked, surprised. Didn’t he realize she
would have already shared something like that with him? “No.”

“That explains it.”

“What,” Nan said, her brow furrowing.

“
Why I’m such a lucky man.
Rumor has it that once a woman marries it ruins her for great
sex.”

Nan elbowed him in the stomach.
“Typical male reasoning. It isn’t marriage that does it. It’s the
pile up of the demands of being a mother and a wife. Plus the fact
that men either never learned the art of romance and seduction or
forget how to light a candle after the wedding. Women need more
than just sex to keep a fire burning.”

Jackson cupped her breasts and stroked
her nipples through the cotton of her shirt. “You sure about
that?”

Nan moaned, yet managed to capture and
still Jackson’s hands. “That helps, but I’m positive about the
other.”

He laughed. Leaving their hands
entwined, he set the swing in motion again. “You said something
this morning that I wanted to ask you about. Why was kindergarten
the only time you felt like you fit in?”

“
It was the only time that
not having what the other kids had didn’t bother me.” She shrugged,
reluctant to bring back the memories. “Whether it was in their mind
or in my mind, when I grew older, I always felt outside the
circle.”

Jackson released one hand and picked
up a strand of her hair, toying with it between his fingers. “I
know what you mean.”

She arched her neck to look at him.
“How? You had a big family. Great parents. This huge
farm.”

“
That didn’t count for
much when we were growing up. We’re Irish. My father works in a
shipping yard and my grandfather was a peanut farmer. Blue-blooded
folks used to refer to us as “wrong-side-of-the-tracks-Weldons. I
think that drove all of us to achieve more and more. Jesse has his
own security agency. James and Jared their own construction
company. And for a while I spent a great deal of time pursuing a
different career.”

“
Medicine?”

His muscles tightened like a twisted
rubber band. “Who—”

He unfolded his arm from around her
and she caught his hand in hers. “Alexi told me, but before that
Brad mentioned that he knew you from Chicago. You are a
doctor?”

“
I was a
doctor.”

Nan waited a minute, hoping Jackson
would explain more about why he left the medical field. He didn’t,
so she pushed further. “Why’d you leave medicine?”

“
Let’s just say I changed
my mind and drop the subject.”

“
But—”

Jackson pulled his hand from hers,
pushed her forward, and slid off of the swing. “There aren’t any
buts.” He paced across the porch, tense and agitated. “You want to
go out for a drink or something?”

She didn’t. She wanted to sit right
here and talk. She wanted him to open up to her, to let her beyond
the wall he kept erecting whenever they ventured too far past the
physical realm. But he’d already withdrawn. Were she to push
further, he’d only shut her out more. The past twenty-four hours in
Jackson’s company had taught her some things about him and herself.
The time had brought them closer. In fact, she didn’t think she’d
ever been closer to a man. She’d never ventured into shared
fantasies’ territory before. Had never known that side of herself
until she’d met him. They’d shared laughter and sex beyond her
wildest dreams. She thought about her little black book.

Well, maybe not
beyond
her wildest. She’d never had so much
relaxing, pleasurable fun, but underneath there lay a tension. And
like now that tension reared its head.

“
I’ve been tired lately.
We were up really late last night and I have to be at work by six
Monday morning. It’s already after ten. I’ll regret another late
night. In fact, I was thinking about heading home around noon
tomorrow so I can get things done and still hit the sack
early.”

Jackson walked back her way and lifted
her chin with his finger to bring to gaze to his. “You’ve fainted
once and nearly did a second time. Have you seen a doctor
yet?”