Page 32 of Two Hearts
“Sure I did, I just didn’t care.I’d never been looked at twice by the kind of men my mother wanted for me.I liked it that way.”
“So then why did you go along with her that night?”
She leaned a little closer.“It was a big night for her.It meant a lot to her.I thought it couldn’t do any harm to do it her way.My mother’s done a lot for me, and it wasn’t so much to ask really.”Her hand slid over the back of Jack’s fingers, lacing from behind.“Then I met you, and all of a sudden…”
“All of a sudden…?”
“It mattered.I cared.I wanted to be the kind of woman a man like you could…care for.And I was glad I’d gone along with my mother’s plan, because you…you responded.”
“And you naturally assumed that what I was responding to was the dress?The hair?The makeup?”
“What else?”she asked softly.“You couldn’t even see the real Gracie under all the gilt.”
“Maybe I could,” he told her.“I don’t even remember what you were wearing that night, Grace.”
“No?”
“No.I remember the sound of your laugh.The way you felt in my arms when I stole that kiss in the garden.I remember the way your smile made my heart spin in circles and fall over like a cartoon character who’s just had an anvil dropped on his head.”
She lowered her head a little bit.“We kind of…got off the subject, didn’t we?”
“I don’t think so.You asked if I’d been happy.I have.Being with you, being able to come home to you every night…that made me happy.”
“Having to lie about where you’d been, living with the constant fear that I’d find out and stop loving you?Did that make you happy?Planning to give up a career you obviously love so that you could be something you aren’t, and being afraid to make love to your own wife?How could you sit there and say you were happy with that?”
Jack opened his mouth.Closed it again, and tried to swallow.But he couldn’t.
“I’ll tell you right now, Jack, I haven’t been.I haven’t been at all.I almost stopped going to the gym altogether, I quit my martial arts classes, and I tried to be the perfect little socialite wife, but it’s not me.I’m tired of keeping all my trophies hidden under the bed, and I’m tired of these stupid dresses and suits all the time.I want my jeans.I want to pop open a beer and eat junk food and watch a New York Liberty game on TV in my sweats and a ponytail.And—well, I was afraid to say this before.Afraid you’d think it was…unladylike and crude…but we can’t go on like we’ve been, Jack.We’re going to fall apart if we try.So here it is, straight up and undiluted.I want sex.”
Jack didn’t think he could talk, but for some reason his mouth was moving and words were coming out, anyway.“But…wehavesex.”
“We make love, Jack, and I’m not even sure there’s enough feeling involved to call it that.You’ve been doling it out with an eye dropper, and so damned gently I barely know I’ve been touched when we finish.That’s not sex.I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s not sex.”
Jack sat there, cut to the bone.“I—I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, and she turned toward him, laid her palm on his cheek.“I thought you must have some wild lover who was leaving you too worn out for me, Jack, but it wasn’t that, was it?It was that you were thinking I was too damned delicate to touch the way you wanted to.That you’d shock me or scare me or hurt me if you loved me the way you wanted to….Unless…it was just that you didn’t…want to…at all.”
Jack slid his good arm around her waist and pulled her hard to his chest.“Don’t think that, Gracie.Don’t ever think that.Because it couldn’t be further from the truth.”And then he kissed her.And for the first time, he let himself forget who she was, and what she was…and to just feel the woman in his arms.Nothing else.Woman.And man.And good old-fashioned lust.
Her heart pounded hard as his tongue delved deep into her mouth, licking and tasting every bit of her, like an invasion, but one she wanted.One she’d asked for.
When he lifted his head, she lifted her hands, and Jack heard the zip of her warm-up slide down.Heard her take it off.Then there was more rustling, and he couldn’t believe she was doing this…undressing, in this dark, dirty room…for him.He could feel soft skin, warm wherever she brushed against him now, and it drove him crazy.But then her hands were on him, sliding over his chest, curling around his shoulders.And her lips were on him, following the path her hands set on fire.Warm and wet, but doing not one damn thing to extinguish the flame.
His hands slid down the length of her spine, closed over her buttocks, and he almost exploded when he found them bare.She’d taken off every stitch.And the floor in here was dirty, and she didn’t seem to care.She pulled him on top of her as they kissed, cradled him between her legs, and moved against him.He still had his jeans on, but she wasn’t waiting.And slow, tender foreplay didn’t seem to be what she had in mind, either.Not when her hands slid between them to tug at the button fly of his jeans.Not when she shoved them down over his hips, underwear and all, and dug her fingernails into his flanks as she pulled him to her.
He entered her, hard and fast, and she didn’t flinch or pull away.Instead she arched against him, held him to her.There was no way to be gentle with her when she was like this.Each time he pulled back, she clamped her hot little hands hard on his backside and jerked him deep inside her again.And pretty soon she didn’t have to, because he was gone, over the edge, thrusting into her with everything he had.She panted, whimpered, cried, moaned his name, kept saying, “Yes, yes, oh, yes.”Those sounds in his ear, breath on his skin…his mind spun out of control as he drove into her.He didn’t think.He didn’t plan.He just felt and acted on those feelings.His mouth captured her small breast, and he tugged and worried its distended peak as the pace of their frantic coupling increased.And he bit down when he finally spilled the essence of himself into her, and he felt her shuddering release, the way she pulled against his teeth, the fierce bite of her nails and the convulsing of her body milking his.One ecstatic moment that stretched out endlessly…until finally his body was spent and he melted into a puddle of sated, drained flesh.Sliding to the side, he pulled her with him, keeping her anchored tight and close.Sweat coated his skin, and hers, as well.And she was breathless and limp as she burrowed closer to him.
“Better?”he asked after a long moment.
“Nowthat’swhat I call sex,” she murmured, pressing her mouth to his chest one more time.
“If you only knew how hard it’s been for me to hold back…but I thought…I thought I had to.”
“You thought wrong.I think we both did, about a lot of things.But just so we’re clear on this, Jack, I’m not gonna stop loving you because you’re a cop.”
“Yeah, well, I won’t be a cop much longer.But just for the record, I’m not gonna stop loving you because you’re a jock.”
She sighed.“That remains to be seen,” she said softly.
