Let It Snow(67)

Looking back at Jake, she tried to assure him. “I’m fine. Honestly. You know I bruise easily.”

He was breathing only through his nose, and if he were a dragon, he’d definitely be shooting fire out of his nostrils. “I should have killed him.”

“No you shouldn’t have!” she exclaimed.

He stared at her with all the pent-up anger of a bull ready to charge.

“Oh, stop it.” She smiled as her eyes widened. “And you say Nikki’s a drama queen. You trying to take her crown, killer?”

Normally, Jake was the first one to let something go or joke around about things, but he looked far from amused at her teasing comment.

Scrunching her nose, she tilted her head and asked, “Too soon?”

Luckily, that comment was rewarded with Jake’s mouth twitching at the corners and his eyes softening as he said, “You’re a brat.”

“I know,” Tessa said as a sense of pride welled up in her. She loved that she too could affect Jake. Maybe not as much as he did her, but she would take it. Leaning forward, she softly kissed the corners of his mouth that had just turned up.

He let out a small sound of resignation. “Are you trying to distract me?”

She continued pressing kisses along his jawline. “Yes, I am.”

Her lips trailed down to his neck and she felt his vein beneath her kiss. True, it could be protruding because he’d just been angry. Its appearance didn’t necessarily mean that he was still turned on, but she figured either way she would enjoy it.

Slowly, she licked from the base of his neck where the vein began, all the way up to the sensitive spot just beneath his ear. A moan vibrated through his chest, and she felt his hands move back down to her butt, his fingers kneading her.

Leaning back, she asked as innocently as possible, “Is it working?”

A fire of arousal once again sparked in Jake’s eyes as he picked her up and flipped their positions. She was lying flat on her back on the bed now and he hovered over her.

Then he moved to her side, Jake’s hand roaming up and down her body as he leaned over and whispered, his lips brushing against her ear, “Yes. It is.”

Tessa took in a deep, shuddering breath and reveled in the sentiment, loving the feel of Jake’s hands on her body and the sound of his voice in her ear. On so many nights over the past thirteen years, this was a scene that had played out in her dreams. It had seemed too much to hope or imagine that it might one day come true. But now, that was exactly what was happening. Her dream, her wildest fantasy, was coming true at last. She was making love to Jake Maguire again.

Tessa felt Jake’s hand slip under her shirt, caressing the smooth, flat skin of her belly. Tingles exploded throughout her torso, zipping out to her extremities with the power of electric charges, until her body felt like one giant fiery mass of charges.

“Good. I’m glad.” Tessa’s strained voice was threaded with need.

She felt his tongue on the skin of her neck as he trailed his mouth lower and sensed his intensity increase with each kiss. Tessa felt totally consumed. She was torn between the impulse to slow things down to stretch the encounter out as long as possible and the equally strong drive to rush headlong through the building intensity and the explosion that would inevitably occur. The tension between these two mutually exclusive desires had stretched her taut, like a rubber band about to snap, but it was the sweetest torture she could imagine being subjected to.

In reality, she did not surrender herself to either one of the conflicting impulses, deciding, rather, to simply surrender herself to Jake. As difficult as it was, she forced herself to lay back, relax, and just enjoy the sensations that the touch of this deliciously sexy man was sending through her body.

She felt alive for the first time in a long time, and Jake was the reason. When it came to taking good care of her, Jake was a master. It had always been that way.

Tessa threaded her fingers through Jake’s hair as he moved his head lower and lower, kissing down her neck as he went. She felt his hands slide behind her back and unhook her bra. Then he slipped her shirt up and brought them off together in one fluid movement. She moaned as his rough palms traversed her smooth skin, and she pushed her body even harder against him, needing to get closer, closer—as close as she possibly could.

Jake rose up on his elbow and surveyed her now-bare torso. His gaze caressed her, moving slowly from her smooth, flat belly up to the plump, round mounds of her breasts. She felt her nipples harden under his scrutiny, which she felt like a physical touch. Jake must’ve seen this as well because she heard his breath draw in sharply as he eyes landed on her hard, pointed nipples. Then he dove for them hungrily, enveloping first one and then the other in his hot, wet, mouth.