Page 24 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

JASON HEARS A NOISE.

When the sound wakes him up that night, he’s disoriented.

It feels like he’d been asleep for hours, not minutes.

But with a quick glance at his alarm clock, he sees that’s all it’s been.

Minutes. The bedside lamp softly glows. It’s just after ten.

A window is slightly open. The sweatpants and tee he’d been wearing are hung over the back of his chair.

His crutches lean against his nightstand.

So it seems he’d changed into his pajamas, lay down and right away… dozed off.

Now he hooks an arm beneath his head and watches who’s making that noise.

It’s Maris.

She’s wearing a flannel black-and-white buffalo-plaid nightshirt with fuzzy socks on her feet.

Gradually, a flickering light falls on the shadowy room.

Flickering because Maris is scattering around votive candles, lighting each one as she goes.

Some of the candles’ glass holders are clear; others are blue-green hues.

Her insistence on bringing light to darkness today doesn’t let up.

“You know…” Jason says from the bed as he watches her.

She’s lighting a candle on his dresser now.

“Life. It so much wants to take, take, take. It can be relentless. Cruel, even.” When he pauses, she glances at him, then lights a second candle atop his dresser.

“You probably saw that this morning on the stairs,” Jason goes on. “That I was feeling that.”

Maris nods and moves to her own dresser.

She sets a blue-green votive holder there.

“And to counter that, you give, give, give,” she quietly says.

“To your work. To people in your life. To Shane, even. With that stairway project? You gave him a purpose here he desperately needed.” She flicks a lighter and touches the flame to the candle wick on her dresser.

“Even today. I’m sure when you left the stairs, you put your heart into the cottages you worked on afterward.

Then,” she says, crossing the room now, “even though not really feeling it, you gave your all at home. You totally went with me on my Christmas card scheme.” She lights a votive on her nightstand, then looks at him in bed. “You gave.”

Jason says nothing as she walks around the bed with the last votive candle. She gave, too. He knows it. Maris gave all day—sitting on the stairs with him; making that amazing dinner; orchestrating the Christmas decorating and photo session; and now, this.

Candles bringing light into the night.

She sets that last votive candle on his nightstand now. Her brown hair is loose and swings forward as she lights the wick .

“I’m seeing a theme here,” Jason quietly says, still watching her.

She glances at him with a quick smile, then walks to her dresser and leaves the lighter there. “Ha! My buffalo-plaid nightshirt.” She gives a slow twirl. “The way it matches my Christmas skirt? I couldn’t resist.”

Jason sits up, props the pillow behind him, then shakes his head.

“No?” Maris asks.

“No. That’s not the theme.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“What is, then?”

Jason motions to her. “Come here.”

She takes a fuzzy-socked step on the old wooden floor—and stops.

“Closer,” he tells her from the bed.

She takes a few small steps. “Close enough?”

“Not by a long shot.”

Her smile, then, is a little sad. He can’t tell if her eyes moisten, too. So he shifts over on the bed and pats the mattress beside him. Maris walks to him and sits right there. Touches his whiskered face.

“The theme,” Jason says, cupping her hand, “is this. Whenever I feel alone, you prove otherwise. This morning you did—on the stairs. And again, now. You have this way of sensing things. Of assuring me that I’m never alone.” He kisses her hand. “And neither are you.”

Maris just watches him. “I love you,” she whispers, tucking her silky brown hair behind an ear.

“I know you do, sweetheart,” Jason goes on in the candlelit room. “You’re also looking pretty darn cute in that plaid nightshirt.”

“Oh.” She glances down at it, then at him. “You like it?”

“I do.” He touches the soft buffalo-checked fabric. “I might like it better off, though.”

Maris looks at him with a suggestive smile this time. “Me, too,” she agrees, taking his hand and bringing it to the top button of that flannel nightshirt. They take turns unbuttoning it: top button, his; next button, hers; all the way to the bottom curved hem.

For a still moment, she sits there with the entire nightshirt hanging open now.

In the dim glow of the lamp and flickering candlelight, her breasts spill out.

Her panties show. Jason takes a fistful of her open nightshirt in each of his hands then and tugs her close.

And oh, she does more than lean over and kiss him.

As she does, she climbs fully on the bed beside him.

No. No way in hell is he alone. No way. In that open black-and-white nightshirt, Maris presses her body close against him. She drapes a leg over his. His hands move over her backside. She can’t get any closer.

But she does. All while kissing him, too.

Her hands feel along his chest, his belly until they clutch the hem of his thermal long-sleeve top and tug it up and off over his head.

Barely moving away from him, she tosses the shirt on his bedside chair and does one more thing.

She switches off the nightstand lamp beside them.

***

There are only candles now.

Flickering candles .

And murmurs.

Touches in the darkness.

Craving, too.

Jason slides off Maris’ unbuttoned nightshirt and drops it on the foot of the bed.

Cradling her face then, he kisses her mouth.

They sink deeper into the mattress with that kiss.

A kiss he now moves… down her neck, her shoulders, her breasts.

He brings his mouth to them, his tongue teasing her nipples.

Her skin is soft. Her whispers, her sighs, sweet.

In the candlelit bedroom with Maris, there is only pleasure.

Only sensation.

Only touch. His lips to her skin; her hands skimming his arms, his back.

He trails his mouth down her belly now, then slips his fingers into her panties, lowers them and moves his intimate touch there.

“God, Jason,” Maris says, her voice breathy. “That feels so good.”

Which has him give more than he takes, focusing fully on Maris… on pleasuring her. He hears her low moans then. Feels her fingers reach to his hair as she arches beneath his touch, his taste. As she relishes it all.

After, he fully lowers her panties down her legs. She helps, scooting up and doing a little shimmy to get them off, then leaning forward and taking his face in her hands. Stroking the raised scar on his jaw. Deeply kissing him in the flickering light.

Drawing him closer to her.

There is only motion then, as he lies beside her and she shifts to straddle him, her legs folded beside his hips.

When she bends low to kiss him again, her soft brown hair falls forward.

It brushes his neck, his shoulders, and something about it has him want her even more.

Has his hands reach down her back and clasp her bare hips—all while her mouth opens to his.

All while he says into the kiss, “Don’t stop.”

All while she moans at his touch, at her desire for him.

Now her hands alight on his chest, his belly.

Her mouth follows as she bends low. Oh, her touch is fluid, sliding here, weaving there, tracing pleasure along his torso until her fingers slip beneath his flannel pajama bottoms. She loosens the drawstring there and slowly drags the pants right off.

Boxers, too. Her hands, then, they keep surprising him in the shadows.

They slide up his legs. She strokes his thighs, traces fingers along his stump below his left knee.

Feathers her touch on the scarred web of skin there. “Do you like that, babe?” she asks him.

“Oh, Maris.” His voice is husky, her sensation almost more than he can take. “What you do to me.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she murmurs, before her mouth surprises him, too, following her touch with gentle kisses, licks.

He feels her lips smile on his skin the more she turns him on.

Until she’s beside him again and they both pause. Their chests rise and fall. Her hair is tousled. Jason presses it back as he rolls on top of her now. His arms, they cradle her head. His whispers between kisses tell her she’s beautiful. That he loves her.

The room is nearly dark with only those votive candles casting faint light. The movement—of the candle flames, of a scant sea breeze blowing in through the window—makes everything fluid.

Everything pulsing.

They become a part of it, too. Their sex moves just the same.

Maris raises her legs high to his hips and with his every thrust, with her every gasp, with his every grunt, neither are alone.

Her legs wrap tight as he goes even deeper, as their breath quickens, as she clutches his back, running her hands along his road burns there, as she quietly calls out, “Yes. Yes, Jason,” as he groans in full pleasure, their skin damp with perspiration, their bodies pulsing hard now, rising and falling with the night around them in the wavering light of the room.