Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(75)

Too much pleasure, her face burning with it, her flesh aching. She was so close, just a few heartbeats away.

“Jason. Please—” She broke off with a whimper as his hands came to her bottom, rotating to make her feel the taut circling pressure of him inside.

“Tell me,” came his dark whisper. “Tell me what you need.”

She found herself gasping out words that had spilled from a heart cracked wide open. “Love me. I need you to love me.”

She felt his response, a deep shiver, a hot jolt inside her. He answered with a rasping word. Leaning over her, he murmured endearments, gathering her h*ps more tightly up against his. His hand slipped between her thighs, kneading in counterpoint to the deep centering thrusts. A cl**ax broke over her, immolating and blinding.

Pressing her face against the mattress, she made raw pleasured noises, her flesh squeezing and pulling at him. He drove deep and held, not moving, not even breathing for a moment as the release pumped through him. A shudder, a growl, as he luxuriated in the hot clasp of her body.

As they lay together afterward, groggy and spent, Justine realized what he had said to her in that ultimate moment.

Always.

Twenty-two

Since neither of them was inclined to leave the bed, Jason canceled their dinner reservations. He paused to stare at the long lines of Justine’s body. She was stretched out on her stomach, the sheet gathered up to her slender hips. “Your skin is so beautiful. Like white violets.” He ran his fingertips along her spine, marveling at the perfect paleness of her back. She blushed easily, the fever-color lingering. He found a delicate rosy shadow on her shoulder, and another on the side of her breast. “After I’ve made love to you,” he said, “these sweet little pink patches appear everywhere, especially on your—”

“Don’t embarrass me,” she protested, burying her face in the pillow.

Jason bent to kiss every patch he could find, and continued to stroke her with proprietary hands. “Making love…” he mused aloud. “I’ve never called it that before. Too old-fashioned. But with you, the other words for it don’t sound right.”

Her voice was muffled in the depths of the down pillow. “Trust me, there’s nothing old-fashioned about the way you do it.”

Jason smiled, pressing kisses at intervals along her spine. “Are you hungry?”

Her head lifted. “Starving.”

“We could call for one of the hotel’s master chefs to cook something here in the cottage.”

“Really?” Justine considered it. “But I’d have to put on clothes.”

“No, never mind. Let’s get room service.” He left the bed, hunted for a leather-bound menu in the dining room, and brought it back to Justine. “Order something from every column,” he said. “I missed lunch.”

“So did I.” She looked over the menu with evident pleasure. “You want me to order for you?”

“If you don’t mind.”

He stretched out beside her, content to watch her expressive face as she read. He loved the way she wore her feelings on the outside like a price tag she’d forgotten to remove. But even so, her motivations weren’t always clear to him.

His hand caressed her upper arm. “Justine.”

“Mmmn-hmmn?”

“Why did we just have sex?”

“You would rather have done something else?”

“No,” he said fervently, “but it was sooner than I expected. I was going to give you all the time and space you needed. I wouldn’t have said one word of complaint if you asked me to sleep on the sofa.”

“I realized that time is too important to waste.” Gently her finger traced the lines of his nose and mouth. “Even though a relationship between you and me is crazy and inconvenient and basically doomed … none of that matters. Because I love you anyway.”

Jason took her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips, and held them there.

“I’ve always believed love couldn’t be real if it happened too fast,” she told him ruefully. “That’s what makes this whole thing so confusing. You can’t just meet a person and know he’s the one … you have to spend time together, ask a lot of questions, observe him in different situations.”

Jason spoke through the screen of her fingers. “We did that.”

“For two days.”

“That’s not long enough?”

“No, falling in love should be a process. Not like a thunderbolt … there’s a French phrase for it … coup de something … coup de gras?”

“Coup de foudre,” Jason said. “A bolt of lightning. Love at first sight. A coup de grâce is when you deliver a death blow to someone. Which, for us—”

“Don’t joke about it,” she warned, covering his mouth firmly. When Jason fell obligingly silent, she removed her hand. “Aren’t you supposed to pronounce it ‘coup de gras’?” she asked. “In French, you leave the last letter off.”

“Yes, but the word is ‘grâce.’ A ‘coup de gras’ means a ‘blow of fat.’ As in death by bacon.”

Her stomach growled, and she grinned sheepishly. “I’m going to order a coup de bacon,” she said, and turned her attention back to the menu.