Page 71 of This Time Around
“You feel so good,” he groaned into her hair, driving into her harder.
“So do you.”
He slid deeper inside her, losing his grip on reality as he lost himself in the sensation. There was a loud hum vibrating his eardrums, and he was pretty sure he’d have to stop soon or change positions or think about operating systems or UX testing or the World Series or?—
“Jack, I’m close.”
He knew that plea. Had it ever happened this quickly before? He didn’t think so, but he sure as hell wasn’t complaining. He drove into her again, teetering on his own brink.
“That’s it, Allie,” he whispered, kissing her ear. “Come with me.”
He’d never said something like that before, not to her anyway. But the words seemed to spark something inside her. She cried out, arching tight against him.
It was Jack’s cue to let go, and he did, letting the first wave of pleasure grab hold and pull him under. He drove into her again and again, not sure whose shudders he was feeling and wondering when they’d melded together into one sensation.
When the last wave subsided, he felt her go still. He rolled to his side, pulling her with him. She smiled and came willingly, her cheeks flushed with pleasure.
“Well,” she said softly. “You’ve developed some skill in sixteen years.”
He laughed and drew her closer. “You, too.”
“Gotta admit, I thought we had a pretty decent sex life back then. But that was—holy shit.”
He laughed and planted a kiss on the edge of her temple. “I think I’ve heard you swear more in the last fifteen minutes than I have in my whole life.”
“What do you expect when you fuck me like that?”
“Good Lord.” He chuckled at her filthy mouth. “Why is that such a turn-on?”
“If I knew it would be, I would have cursed at you years ago.”
He smiled and stroked his fingers through her hair. His heartbeat was slowing back down, with a few brain cells beginning to buzz back to life. He lay quietly for a moment, not sure what to say next. What did this mean? Was she expecting something now, or had this just been for fun?
At that moment, she angled up to look at him, and her smile sent tiny daggers of warmth right into his core. He leaned down and kissed her, thinking maybe he didn’t have to figure it out now.
Allie was alone when the woodpeckers woke her around eight the next morning, their beaks battering the cedar outside her window like miniature jackhammers.
“For the love of all things holy,” she muttered, pulling a pillow over her ears.
She lay that way for a long time, savoring the fuzzy memory of Jack kissing her sometime after midnight before crawling out of bed and dressing silently in the darkness.
“Sorry to be that guy,” he’d murmured against her hair when he’d kissed her again. “I need to be there when Paige wakes up.”
“Mmhm,” Allie had mumbled without opening her eyes, drowsy with post-sex glow in her bliss nest of feather duvets and Egyptian cotton sheets.
Warmed by the memory, Allie pulled the pillow off her head and turned to snuggle the one Jack had used. It smelled like him, all woodsy and earthy, and the memory of last night made her smile.
That had been . . . different.
And the same, in some ways. In sixteen years, she’d never once allowed herself to conjure memories of what Jack was like in bed or how his sexual prowess might’ve changed over the years. Sure, there were occasional flickers of memory the first time she’d gone to bed with someone else. The feel of different thumbprints on her flesh, or a hitch in breathing that tickled her eardrums with familiarity. But it’s not like she’d had many lovers over the years, and she’d gotten engaged to most of them.
Remembering the flash of jealousy in Jack’s eyes, she hugged the pillow tighter. Okay, so he hadn’t been thrilled to hear about her serial engagements. It’s not something she felt proud of. Not something most people knew. The idea of getting married had always been appealing to her, ever since she was a little girl sitting in the parlor of the B&B holding a silver-framed photo of her parents’ wedding.
“That was such a perfect day,” her grandma used to tell her, beaming down at the photo. “Your mother looked like an absolute princess, and your dad was so handsome.”
Something about that fairy tale had always tugged Allie’s heartstrings. She’d wanted that for herself, even after visions of Snow White and Cinderella had been replaced by thoughts of Vera Wang and Dom Pérignon. The look on her parents’ faces in that photo had driven her to want what they had, at any cost.
Then again, her parents’ union had turned out to be a criminal partnership as much as a blissful romance. Maybe that wasn’t the best example.
