Page 38 of Seven Minutes In Heaven
Claire sank into his embrace, their kisses lingering longer and longer until it was inevitable that they would end up in bed. Because even if everything came crashing down around them the next day, Claire would at least be able to say that she spent her first night of marriage making love to the only man she could claim to love.
Yes, itwaslovemaking. For weeks, Claire had questioned whether what she and Jake had was real love or the ongoing lust festering between them, and nothing more. Circumstances and chance had brought them together. A baby kept them coming back to one another. Was it enough to base a wholemarriageon for the rest of their lives? Or were they doomed as soon as the baby was born and their reputations were tarnished?
Like most couples, their conjugal nights often veered between hot and fast like in the closet, or slow and sensual, like the night Claire dropped by his apartment because she was lonely – and it turned out Jake had been missing her as well.If my baby ever braves asking how she was made, I’ll tell her it was that night.Or maybe this night, when Jake laid her down on the hotel bed and spent the next few blinks of an eye worshipping her body.
This is how I want to spend the rest of my life.No matter what she looked like or what she went through, Claire wanted to imagine this man always ready to kiss her, love her, hold her through the coldest nights and the warmest days.I barely know you, Jake Carter.She didn’t care. What she felt – beyond his tongue massaging the cleft of her nether lips and his gaze resting upon her breasts – was real. When Jake kissed her lips again, bringing with him his naked body and the strength it offered, Claire grew even more famished for reassurances that they hadn’t made a grand mistake.
“I’ve never felt like this for a woman before,” Jake whispered in her ear, his thighs pushing hers apart and opening her body up to his. “Even when I thought I was falling in love with someone before, it wasn’t like this.”
He said such lovely things, but his voice was laced in that aching need to be inside of her. Claire couldn’t say that she felt much differently.When we’re finally together like that, I’ll be able to forget everything plaguing my feeble little head.It couldn’t come soon enough.
Just likeshecouldn’t come soon enough.
Was it the pregnancy hormones elating her senses? Or was it the rush of love she felt now that she was married, and she no longer had to worry about a defunct engagement to a man she would never respect? Or maybe it was the thrill of the night. Here, in Vegas, a sinful city where silly couples like Jake and Claire ran off to make fools of themselves. It wasn’t something that would stay in Vegas – the baby made sure of that. Yet itwasso heart-crushingly romantic that Claire didn’t think twice about welcoming her new husband into her body and making love until she screamed his name in ecstasy.
The lights were still bright outside of their darkened hotel room when she came down from her first climax of married life. Yet Jake was the one who was not finished. He made that known when he rolled his bride onto her stomach and surrounded her with his body that was coated in sweat, musk, and desire.
“You’ll never have to worry about a thing again.” His breath washed across her ear as the pillow swallowed her cheek and her hair pressed upon her eyes. Jake entered her from behind so easily that Claire wondered how such simplicity was possible, even when two people were so in love. “Your career, the baby, money… all of it. We’ll find ways to make it work. Don’t ever worry about a thing again, Claire.”
She believed him when he said that. How could she not, when everything she heard and felt was so good?
Jake was not gentle as he made love to her like that. Claire didn’t care. It was what she wanted – the arduous, passionate motions that had brought them into this mess back at that farce of an engagement party. She wanted the bed to rock. She longed to hear her husband groan in her ear and steel himself for his long-coming climax. She desired to know that she was the only one who could make him lose himself in a woman like this.
Claire wanted every night to be like this. If not every night, then every night she desired to feel alive.
She clutched his hand as he came, her body ready to accept him and everything he had to give. Yet was her heart? Her soul? Only time would tell over the months and years to come.
(Yes.)
“Oh my God,” Jake cursed into the crook of her neck. His thrusts had slowed, but the breaths coming from his throat were as powerful as they had been five minutes ago. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Me?” Claire giggled into her pillow as her husband cocked his weight off her. Jake still surrounded her, but Claire had freedom of movement if she so pleased. She didn’t. “You’re the one who was doing all the work for the past few minutes.”
“You really think so? Because I believe it takes two to come like that.”
Claire wrapped her arms around her pillow and spared her husband one sly glance that instantly relieved whatever pressure remained on his reddened countenance. “Believe whatever you want. I had the extreme pleasure of lying here and taking the good stuff.”
“It’s the least I could do for the woman carrying my progeny.”
“Are you kidding me?” The happy changes in her brain ensured that Claire laughed to hear that. “How can you say a word like ‘progeny’ one minute after coming like that?”
“Like what?”
I see your bet and raise you more money, Mr. Carter.They were in Vegas, after all. Some form of gambling was appropriate. “Does this mean you have to try again?”
He grinned. “Only if I’m the one who gets to lay down this time.”
“Why don’t you start with the lying down, and I’ll start with getting you ready to go?”
“Is this how you always are, or is it pregnancy making you so insatiable?”
“For all I know,you’rethe insatiable one.”
“Two insatiable people in a marriage? This explains so much about how we got here.”
Claire tackled her husband to the bed with a flurry of laughter and sheets fluttering in the air. They shared two sweet kisses before she left a whole trail of them down his chest and to his hips.
The greatest wedding gift he could have given her was a night of forgotten fears and nothing but happy, hopeful love. That’s exactly what Claire received. Ten-fold.
