Breaking Bailey's Rules(36)

It was everything he remembered and more. The fragrance of her silky skin. The sound of her soft, incoherent cries. His body and his soul would have recognized her even in the dark, anywhere in the world.

He felt her heart beating against his chest. Or maybe it was his heart. It was impossible to separate the two. Burying his face in the crook of her shoulder, he moved in her steadily, sucking in a sharp breath when she wrapped her legs around his waist, driving him deeper.

He thrust slowly at first, but all the willpower in the world couldn’t stem the tide of his hunger. His body betrayed him, his desire cresting sharply in a release that left him almost insensate.

Lucy hadn’t come. He knew that. But his embarrassment was blunted by the sheer euphoria of being with her again. He kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, love.” He touched her gently, intimately, stroking and teasing until she climaxed, too. Afterward, he held her close for long minutes.

But reality eventually intruded.

Lucy reclined on her elbow, head propped on her hand. “May I ask you a very personal question?”

Though his breathing was still far from steady, he nodded. “Anything.”

Lucy reached out and smoothed a lock of his hair. Her gaze was troubled. “When was the last time you had sex?”

Here it was. The first test of their tenuous reconciliation. “You should know,” he said quietly. “You were there.”

She went white, her expression anguished, tears spilling from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. “You’re lying,” she whispered.

Her accusation angered him. But he gathered her into his arms and held her as she sobbed. Two years of grief and separation. Two years of lost happiness.

“I know you don’t believe me, Lucy.” He combed her hair with his fingers. “Maybe you never will. Don’t cry so hard. You’ll make yourself sick.”

Perhaps they should have talked first. But his need for her had obliterated everything else. Now she was distraught, and he didn’t know how to help her get to the truth. Was this going to be the only moment they had? If so, he wasn’t prepared to let it end so soon.

Feeling her nude body against his healed the raw places inside him. She was his. He would fight. For however long it took. No matter what happened, he was never letting her go again.





Sixteen

Lucy’s brain whirled in sickening circles. Jeff wanted her to believe he hadn’t been with another woman since she walked out on him. He expected her to believe he had not cheated on her.

She should have been elated...relieved. Instead, she was shattered and confused and overwhelmed. Was she going to be one of those women who blindly accepted whatever her lover told her? Where was her pride? Her intuition? Her intellect?

Jeff was silent, but tense. She knew him well enough to realize that he was angry. Even so, the strong arms holding her close were her only anchors at a moment when everything she thought she knew was shattering into tiny fragments and swirling away.

At last, the storm of grief passed. She lay against him limp with emotional distress. Taking a deep breath, she tried to sit up. “We need to go back to Royal. Right now. I need to see you and Kirsten in the same room at the same time to hash this out.”

Jeff moved up against the headboard. His jaw was tight, but he scooped her into his lap. “It can wait until tomorrow. We deserve this night together, Lucy. You and I. No one else. Even if you don’t believe me.”

With her cheek against his chest, she seesawed between hope and despair. Was it possible she hadn’t lost him after all, or was she being a credulous fool? If she had placed more trust in what they had from the beginning, it might never have come to this. Was it too late to repair the damage and to reclaim the future that had almost been destroyed?

And what if Jeff had initiated the kiss with Kirsten? Could she forgive him and move on? Was what they had worth another chance? Would their relationship ever be the same?

She was deeply moved, unbearably regretful, and at the same time giddy with hope. Tipping back her head so she could see his face, she memorized his features. The heavy-lidded green eyes. The strong chin. The slightly crooked nose. The tiny scar below his left cheekbone.

He gazed down at her with a half-smile. “Are we good?”

“I’m not sure.” She wanted to say more. She wanted to pour out her heart...to tell him about the endless months of despair and loneliness. But now was not the time to be sad. “Kiss me again,” she whispered unsteadily. “So I know this isn’t a dream.”

Jeff leaned her over his arm and gave her what she asked for, warm and slow...soft and deep. With each fractured sigh on her part and every ragged groan from him, arousal shimmered and spread until every cell of her body pulsed wildly with wanting him. She grabbed handfuls of his hair, trying to drag him closer.

He winced and laughed. “Easy, darlin’. I don’t want to go bald just yet.”

His trademark humor was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the beginning. That and his broad-shouldered, lanky body.

Before she knew what was happening, he had levered her onto her back and was leaning over her, shaping the curves of her breasts with his fingertips. Her nipples were so sensitive, she could hardly stand for him to touch them.

“I need you inside me again,” she pleaded.

“Not yet.” His smile was feral. “Have patience, Lucy, love. We’ve got all night.”





Seventeen

Jeff wanted to worship her body and mark it as his and drive her insane with pleasure. It was a tall order for a man still wrung out from his own release. Not that he wasn’t ready for another round. He was. He definitely was. His erection throbbed with a hunger that wouldn’t be sated anytime soon.

But somehow he had to make Lucy understand.

When he tasted the tips of her breasts, circled the areolas with his tongue, she gasped and arched her back. He pressed her to the mattress and moved south, teasing her belly button before kissing his way down her hips and thighs and legs one at a time. He even spent a few crazy minutes playing with her toes, and this from a man who had never once entertained a foot fetish.

By this point, she was calling him names...pleading for more.

He laughed, but it was a hoarse laugh. He knew the joke was on him. All his plans to demonstrate how high he could push her evaporated in the driving urge to fill her and erase the memory of every hour that had separated them.

His brain was so fuzzy he only remembered the new condom at the last minute. Once he was ready, he knelt and lifted one of Lucy’s legs onto his shoulder. He paused—only a moment—to appreciate the sensual picture she made.

Everything about her was perfect...from the graceful arch of her neck to her narrow waist to the small mole just below her right breast.

He touched her deliberately, stroking the little spot that made her body weep for him. Even though he was gentle and almost lazy in his caress, Lucy climaxed wildly, her release beautiful and real and utterly impossible to resist. “God, I want you,” he muttered.

When he thrust inside her, her orgasm hit another peak. The feel of her inner muscles fluttering against his sex drove him to the brink of control. He went still...chest heaving, hips moving restlessly despite his pause.

“Lucy?”

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. “Yes?”

“I was furious with you for not trusting me. But I never stopped loving you.”

“Oh, Jeff...” The look on her face told him she wasn’t there yet. She still had doubts. He could wait, maybe. He wanted her to be absolutely sure. For now it was enough to feel...and to know...

Lucy was his.

He retreated and lifted her onto her knees, stuffing pillows beneath her. Her butt was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, heart-shaped and full. Lucy had bemoaned the curves of her bottom on numerous occasions. Tonight, as he palmed it and squeezed it and steadied himself against it to enter her again with one firm push, he decided he could spend the rest of his life proving to her how perfect it was.

Leaning forward, he gathered her hair into a ponytail, securing it with his fist and using the grip to turn her head. “Look in the mirror, Lucy. This is us. This is real.”





Eighteen

Lucy hadn’t even noticed that the dresser was conveniently situated across from the bed...and that the mirror faithfully reflected Jeff’s sun-bronzed body and her own paler frame. The carnal image was indelibly imprinted on her brain. As long as she lived, she would never forget this moment.

She closed her eyes and bent her head. Jeff released her hair, letting it fall around her face. Behind her, his harsh breathing was audible. At last, he moved with a muffled shout, slamming into her again and again until he shuddered and moaned and slumped on top of her as they both collapsed onto the mattress.

Minutes later...maybe hours, so skewed was her sense of time, she stirred. In the interim, they had untangled their bodies. Jeff lay flat on his back, one arm flung across his eyes. She snuggled against him, draping her leg across his hairy thigh. “Are you alive?”

“Mmph...”

It wasn’t much of a response, but it made her smile.

She danced her fingertips over his rib cage. At one time, he had been very ticklish.

His face scrunched up and he batted her hand away. “Five minutes,” he begged, the words slurred. “That’s all I need.”