Page 42 of Our Sweet Destiny
Chapter Twenty-Four
SOMETIME DURING THE wee hours of the morning they made love again, and when Jade woke up, with the sun barely brightening the cloudy sky, she lay perfectly still, wrapped in Rex’s embrace. She felt safe and warm, and as she closed her eyes, she had a momentary flash of embarrassment over the things they’d done the night before.
“No need for that embarrassment,” Rex whispered in her ear.
She felt her face flush. “How could you possibly know?” She reached for the necklace lying against her breastbone and held the charm between her fingers.
“Your heartbeat sped up and your body went stiff.”
She groaned.
“Nothing we do together will get to the Weston grapevine. I can swear that to you. I have never talked about my private life, and I don’t intend to. What you do with it is up to you. I’m not embarrassed by any of it. I find you dangerously provocative and deliciously libidinous, and I might just be the luckiest man on earth to have all that in a woman that I’m crazy about.”
She turned to face him. “I swear, you always know what to say. It’s like you studied how to say all the right things.”
“Nope. I speak from my heart, and I was brought up to be honest and loyal. That’s what I’ll always be with you.”
Her smile faded as she realized that their relationship would cause him to deny the things he believed in most when it came to his family. He must have noticed her facial features change, because he drew her eyes to his when he lifted her chin with his finger.
“We’ll figure out the family stuff. Give it a little time. This isn’t a race, and we are keeping this from them only until we figure out how best to handle it.”
She nodded, knowing he was right, but sometimes doing what was best felt very wrong.
Rex leaned on his elbow and ran his finger along her jawline. “Tell me what you eat in the mornings. Are you a coffee fanatic? Do you have a morning routine? I don’t want to get in your way.”
“Ice water with lemon in the mornings with a bowl of fruit and Greek yogurt, usually, and when I’m feeling like a rebel, I add granola. How’s that for a dullard?” She laughed.
He picked up the bedside telephone and requested everything she’d mentioned, including granola, egg whites and turkey sausage with toast for himself, and toothbrushes. He walked naked to the bathroom and returned a minute later with a thick robe for Jade. She could hardly pry her eyes from his gorgeous physique.
“And?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t really have much of a morning routine. Shower, brush my teeth, breakfast, and I usually just do some stretches. Sometimes I go for a run, but I haven’t lately.”
He sat on the side of the bed and smiled. “I’d like to run with you sometime.”
“Yeah?” She thought about what it might be like to wake up with him and move through their days side by side. Kissing each other goodbye when they had to run errands or when she had to see clients, taking walks, going for a morning run. It all seemed so reasonable—until she remembered that he was a Braden and she a Johnson. She pushed the thoughts away.
“Wanna shower with me?” she asked.
“More than you know, but I respect your space. I don’t want you to get too sick of me too fast.”
She slipped into the luxurious robe. “So getting sick of you slowly would be okay?” She kissed his chest.
“It’s preferable to too quickly,” he joked.
Jade took his hand and they went into the bathroom together, then she turned on the warm water. Steam fogged the mirror, and she thought of how natural it felt to be with Rex. She’d never showered with a man before. The thought had crossed her mind more than once, but Kane was not a very prurient man, and her other boyfriends hadn’t been the shower-together type. As they stepped beneath the warm water, she knew that moment had been saved for Rex.
“This is a first for me,” she said.
“I was hoping to make your list,” he teased.
“Oh, you already made my list of firsts in about five different places.”
He lathered his hands and ran them over her shoulders, up her neck, and down her arms in slow, careful strokes. The familiar tug began down low and tickled her senses up through her chest as he bathed her. She tried to keep her eyes from continually dropping down his athletic body, but it was difficult to ignore.
She took the soap from him and began washing him, mimicking his slow strokes. He lowered his lips to hers, taking her in a mercifully long kiss. The water rained down on them, wetting their lips and washing the soap from their bodies.
“I just can’t get enough of you,” he said between frenzied kisses.
Then he was loving her again, all of her, fast and rough, then slow and sweet, whispering sweetness into her ear, until they clung together beneath the water, feeling sated and whole.
