A Moonlit Serenade Read online

  “With Isaac.” Jake’s gaze slashed to mine, nearly ruthless as it stripped me bare. “You going to tell me what you were thinking?”

  Something in his demeanor seemed predatory—dangerous. I licked my lips, trying to figure out how to approach him.

  Nothing came. I sucked in a breath and went with honesty. “You frighten me.”

  Jake’s eyes softened but his arms remained crossed over his chest. “What are you scared of, love?”

  I turned my back on his knowing eyes and moved into the middle of my living room, but I remained too antsy to sit. Instead, I made a tour around my furniture.

  “Not you. What you make me feel. For you.” I paused, sifting my thoughts and emotions to explain the truths I’d stumbled onto this week. “Since meeting you, I’ve questioned my feelings for Dez. You heard his sister—Dez is kinda sacrosanct. Because he died, mainly, but also because everyone doted on him. Me included.” The words rushed out faster and faster. “But much as I loved him…” Jakes eyes shuttered as his jaw clenched. “Maybe I wasn’t the right woman for him. I’ve been working toward that conclusion for a while.” I hesitated, but I’d gone this far. “That’s what writing, singing ‘A Moonlit Serenade’ was. My emotional cleansing.”

  “That longing, then, is it for Dez?” Jake asked.

  I shook my head, sucking on my bottom lip. Why was this so hard? “It’s for the child I’ve always wanted.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “Why I want kids?” I shoved my hands through my hair, considering. No, I wasn’t ready to go that far. “I just always have.”

  Jake’s eyebrow shot up at my words, but he stayed silent.

  Annoyance began to mingle with fear that he didn’t want to put in the work of dealing with me and my baggage. Still, I needed to change the subject. Fast.

  “I get that I can’t control everything, but I need to have more say over my life than I did with a military husband, who set his deployments without input from me. I need to decide where I work and who I date and…” I trailed off at the sadness sliding over his features.

  He rubbed his palm across his cheek, and I heard the light scrape of his scruff against his skin. “Right. I can see why you’d worry about that. I’m not a control freak. Never have been. You’re capable of taking care of yourself.”

  He narrowed his left eye into this sexy squint that made my thighs quiver. “Except with you,” he murmured. “I like being in charge with you. Not because I want to own you.” His words were slow as though he was reasoning this out as he spoke. “But because I care about you and want you safe and happy.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, which caused his biceps to flex against his T-shirt. His gaze sought mine and the vulnerability there shocked me. I want you safe and happy. I believed him.

  “I’ve never loved a woman before. Never fallen in love.” He stepped nearer, his footfalls a metronome of change.

  “I bet it’s the same for you.”

  He waited for me to shake my head.

  “But I think…I think that’s what I’m doing here. And, Ryn, it scares me, too. I’m not ready for a bub.” He raised his hand when I opened my mouth. “Yet. We don’t know where we will go. So…so…maybe we muddle through together. And I can live with that for now—as long as we’re together.” His big hands wrapped around my waist, tugging me nearer to him. “Because I’ve hated every minute of these days apart, and I don’t want to do that again.”

  “I missed you.” My eyes filled with tears that I blinked back. Nothing really had changed. I wanted Jake but his life, his dreams differed from mine.

  “Can you give me that? A few months to see if we fit? Then . . .” He swallowed, his jaw flexing as his hands tightened around my biceps. “Then maybe…well, let’s just see how we do.”

  I bit my lips and Jake’s face turned stormy. “Are you sure you want to do…whatever this is with me? I’m a mess. You can have any women you want—”

  “Stop right there. I want you as my girlfriend. Only you.”

  I’d googled him this week—too much time and too much desire for him. Jake hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since his junior year of college when he dated another art student for a few months. The previous women linked to him were “dates” or “friends,” an interesting classification for a famous rocker. Warmth spread through me as I realized what Jake had said. I was his girlfriend—his first serious relationship in years.

  I pulled his head down and kissed him, because I needed to, and because I would never get enough of the feel of his lips gliding over mine.

  “I’ll do the album.”

  At my words, Jake pulled back. Those piercing eyes lay half-hidden behind his drooping lids. His lips were wet from my kisses. His newly acquired scruff teasing and soft against my sensitized palm.

  Jake huffed, dropping his forehead against mine. “You sure?”

  “That scares me, too. Because I get that my life will change in ways I can barely imagine. But…but that has nothing to do with us. Together, I mean.”

  “Oh, it has everything to do with us together.” He leaned closer with a growl and nipped at my jaw. My knees weakened and he tightened his arm around my waist.

  “I’ll do the album whether you want to be with me or not. I pushed you away, and I’m sorry, but I want to be with you. If you still want me.”

  “Think I proved I want you, too. Thrilled to have you on the album. Ecstatic. Now can I get back to kissing you?”

  I slid my fingers through the top of his long, unruly hair. “Yes, please.”

  But he didn’t kiss me. He stared at me with those eyes that ripped my soul to shreds and stitched me back up—all in one heartbeat. His confidence built with whatever he saw in my eyes. He stood taller, more in charge. My breathing grew shallower in response.

  “I want to take you to bed, Lauryn. And I want to love you all night long.”

  Heat bloomed across my skin as I nodded.

  “With words. I want to hear you say you want me, too.”

  “I want you,” I breathed.

  I stood on my tiptoes and brought my lips up to his, molding my body and my mouth to his harder planes. His fingers speared through my hair, tugging me tighter to him so our teeth clashed. I moaned, unable to hold back the onslaught of desire pulsing through my body, sending heat to pool in my lower abdomen.

  His hardness pressed against my stomach and I reveled in his hunger. Jake’s hand splayed across my lower back, right above my bottom, pulling me even tighter into his embrace. Our kisses turned ferocious in their need. Ten days was too long apart.

  Somehow, my shirt was off, and Jake flicked the clasp on my bra, sliding the straps down my arms as he trailed soft kisses down my throat. This man, his raw masculinity tamed by this sweetness, caused my breath to catch and my body to warm further. I tugged at his shirt, desperate for the feel of his bare skin against mine.

  He stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head in one smooth, lithe movement. I gasped at the sight of him—tanned skin, firm, hard pecs trailing into a taut, ridged abdomen. I traced the sculpted muscles, my fingers tingling as they drifted over his hot flesh.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice low and pulsing with the lust that clogged the air between us. His palm covered my breast and I arched my back, needing more pressure against the sensitive bud.

  “Bugger it,” he muttered, lowering his head to suck on my other nipple.

  “What?”

  “Wanted to talk it out, but you’ve got me so bloody famished for you, I can’t think.”

  “Anything specific?”

  His hands on my hips tightened, as if he feared I’d pull back. He raised his eyes and met my gaze, his serious.

  “I told you about my father. That’s my role model. That’s what I know of fatherhood. Hiding in the back of a cupboard and putting my hands over my ears because my dad was drunk and mean. Can’t continue that cycle, Ryn. It’s bloody awful.”

  I covered his
fisted hands with mine, bringing our joint arms up until I placed his hands on my chest.

  “How old were you?”

  “Just a mite. Three, I think.”

  I digested that while he opened my hands, palms warming from my body’s heat. “Dez left me a month after our wedding. To go to basic training. I never had a choice in his decision because he signed up while I was at class.”

  His hands started to fist again, but I pressed my palms against the back of his, holding them to my body. “I’ve never said that aloud before. Never told anyone.” I met his gaze; his filled with the same vulnerability I’m sure flashed through mine.

  “I want to…blimey…I…can see me, holding you in bed, loving you every night for years. But kids? That’s more than I…”

  Sweat pooled at his temples and into his sideburns.

  “Do you think Murphy will be a good dad?”

  “Too right. He wants this nipper. Bad. Loves the baby like he loves Mila—single-minded in his focus. Never seen him so broken up as when he found out that bub Mila miscarried was his.”

  Someone once told me the fastest way to understanding was through the back door. “And you were raised in the same house? Had the same experiences?”

  Jake’s lips parted and his eyes shone with a different emotion. A better one. I leaned up and kissed him before he could say anything else. We’d talked enough for now.

  “I’m going to say something to you I’ve never said before.” I kept my voice light, though I was dead serious. “I want you to make love to me, Jake.”

  His lids lowered as his face transformed, sharpening, with lust. “You’re all I think about. I fantasize about your skin, flushed with pleasure, your voice as you come.”

  With a boldness I never knew I had, I reached down and cupped him through soft denim, molding him to my hand.

  Jake hissed a curse, his hips bucking.

  “I meant it when I said I missed you,” I said against his lips.

  “I missed you, too. Murphy called me a whingeing arsewipe.”

  “Were you?”

  “Reckon.”

  I’d never wanted like this—a raw, driving need that frightened me even as I yearned for more.

  I couldn’t get enough of his hair, the silky texture, as the strands locked around my fingers—another connection between us. He bent, biceps flexing, as he scooped me into his arms.

  With long, sure strides, he carried me into my bedroom, laying me down on my bed. He settled next to me, head in his palm, as he stared at me with reverence. Using his index finger, he trailed a path from my lips, down my throat, to my chest, circling one nipple. I shivered, goose bumps raising, as my body responded to him.

  I wanted to kiss him, so I did. Jake’s lips parted as mine approached, and his days-old scruff tickled my lips and chin as our tongues touched, swirled, and delved. I moaned as his palm skimmed over my stomach and into the waistband of my leggings. His palm cupped my hipbone, his fingers pressed into the side of my bottom.

  I shifted, swinging my leg over his hips and settling on top of him as he twisted to lay on his back.

  His hands romanced my back as my palms cupped his cheeks, holding him where I wanted him while I sank deeper and deeper into the kiss—into Jake. Long minutes later, Jake pushed up, his abs flexing in the most delicious way, as he set me to the side. He stood, too, and with slow, easy motions, he removed the rest of my clothes.

  Moonlight from the open window drifted over us as he touched and tantalized his way across my skin. I burned with a fever caused and only cured by Jake. Impatient, I reached down and undid his button, the rasp of his zipper exciting me, making me press against him as his fingers drifted up my inner thigh to my throbbing center.

  “Please,” I murmured.

  “I’ll love your sweet body, Ryn. When you’re ready.” His fingers eased inside me and my breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Slow, easy—Jake’s way—he filled me with his finger before retreating. Again and again, he stroked me, readying my body for his.

  I pushed my hands inside the waistband of his pants, and I trailed my fingertips up and down the thin streak of hair below his navel and above his boxer briefs. They were red. Sexy.

  Jake added a second finger inside me, and I cupped his bulge again, gulping at its size. I massaged him through his underwear for a moment before building up the courage to slide my hands under his waistband and pushing his boxer briefs off his hips.

  “I love the way the moonlight kisses your skin. Soft. Dreamy. Sexy as fuck.”

  His words made me whimper again. His fingers curled forward and hit that spot—the one that caused my knees to buckle and my brain to short circuit.

  “Don’t stop,” I panted.

  “Don’t plan to. Not till you beg me to, anyway.”

  I wrapped my hand around the base of his thick erection, squeezing. Jake moaned, pressing himself more tightly into my hold. I pulled forward, letting my hand glide up toward his tip, my thumb flicking at the drop of moisture there.

  “Hope you’re ready, woman, because I can’t bloody wait a moment longer.”

  “Yes. Now.”

  He eased me back onto the comforter and I lay there, nearly boneless with pleasure and anticipation.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Be you.” He kissed one cheek. “Tell me what you like. What you want.” He kissed my shoulder.

  He stepped back from the bed and I shivered, trying desperately not to think of Dez, who had no place in this moment whatsoever. But that’s what came from being with the same boy my whole life—I compared every experience with a man to Dez. Most had come up lacking. But Jake . . . I was beginning to believe Jake showed me just what a real man could—should—be.

  He pulled out a condom and rolled it down his considerable length. My body clenched at the realization he was going to be in me.

  “What are you worrying on?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jake eased his knee onto the bed.

  “Spill it, blondie. Or I won’t do you.”

  I smiled, shaking my head. Jake was good at that—breaking tension and making me laugh.

  “Just that you aren’t Dez. You’re you—and it’s sexy and scary and . . . and hot as hell to have you here, in my bed.”

  He eased his body over me. “I gotta tell ya, love. I don’t want you to make comparisons between us. When I’m here—it’s just me. And you. Can you do that? For me?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” I rubbed my hand over his sun kissed brown scruff. “You’re all I think about. All I want.”

  “Best words I ever heard.” Jake kissed me, slow and sweet and so damn hot, I panted with need.

  He glided over me, his muscles smooth and sensual as they slid across my belly and breasts.

  “I’m going to love you now, Lauryn.”

  I slid my hands upward into his hair.

  He worked his hand into my hair and made a fist, tugging my head back and exposing more of me to his mercy. He kissed my throat, sucked and nibbled at my breasts. “You’re mine, Lauryn. Say it.”

  This alpha side of Jake shocked me. But in the best possible way. He waited, eyes burning into mine, his thick erection nudging my aching entrance. I shifted wanting more, but he pulled back.

  “I’m yours, Jake.”

  “Right you are.” And he brought his hips forward to plunge into me. I took him—all of him—and I keened at the heavy weight of his body sliding into me, over me.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” I chanted.

  “Too right,” he growled.

  I pulled his head down for another kiss, and he obliged, taking my mouth with the same thoroughness as he took my body. His tongue speared into my mouth as he settled into a steady, intense rhythm.

  I wanted to writhe against him, but his hips pinned me down, circling in small increments, grinding against my engorged clit.

  “Oh!” I orgasmed. Hard. Harder than I could remember. And i
t went on and on as Jake circled his hips. He was relentless in his push to wring every drop of pleasure from my body.

  I finally settled back, sated. He gazed down at me, a thin sheen of perspiration covering his skin, making him even sexier if that was possible. Inside me, his erection throbbed.

  “You’ll do that again before I come.”

  And he kissed me like I was the very air he needed to breathe.

  My last—only—coherent thought was when he focused on a goal, Jake Etsam was a force.

  One I wasn’t sure I could withstand.

  12

  Jake

  Ryn’s eyes were dazed, slumberous as she stared up at me. When I nipped her ear, she moaned again, pressing her gorgeous breasts into my chest as she clenched tighter on my raging hard-on. I slid a hand behind her back and pulled her hips back to mine.

  Her eyes widened with shocked pleasure as the next burst of sweet, hot desire flooded her body. I planned to keep her in this state as often as possible. I loved her like this.

  “I want you to scream my name.”

  She murmured a response as my lips crashed down on hers.

  I wasn’t sure where my assertiveness came from, all I knew was that Ryn brought it out of me.

  I caressed her, learning what she liked—how hard to nip and pinch—where to kiss and nibble. The hotter she burned, the hotter I did, too.

  Ryn did scream my name. Twice. Second time, I couldn’t hold back any longer, and I bellowed her name as my body exploded with wave after wave of pleasure. My release complete, I took a minute, to rest my head on Ryn’s shoulder before I found the energy to roll over, taking her with me. Our connection remained.

  I ran my hand down her back, keeping the touch light. She shivered, snuggling closer.

  “Cold, love?”

  “A little. Only my back. You keep the rest of me toasty.”

  I maneuvered my hand down and managed to disentangle our limbs from the bedclothes. With a firm tug, I covered us both. “Do my best.”

  We lay there, hearts calming and bodies easing into each other.

  She lifted her head and I ran my fingers through those long, thick curls, loving how the moonlight caught in the gossamer-thin palest strands. As if spun by moonlight. Soft but warm. There she is, smiling down, filled with the joy that our love was born.