Page 17 of It’s You

She reached out to touch the cold metal of the door, taking in the keypad. It had a standard keypad of numbers, but also additional buttons and a scanner pad the size of a man’s thumb. She placed her thumb on the scanner, and a light turned red and beeped angrily at her.

“Protective of your wine, huh?”

“I’m protective of anything that belongs to me,” he rumbled, closer to her ear than she expected him to be. “ Anyone who belongs to me.”

The taut possession in his voice made her heart burst, and she felt her body responding to him.

Her insides churned hot and demanding, making her fingers tremble and her eyes close as she gasped to fill her lungs.

She could feel the heat of his body directly behind her, smell his soap and sweat, and the fresh, masculine scent made her breath catch.

If she turned around, she knew her breasts would brush up against his chest, and she’d be face-to-face with him.

After a lifetime of waiting to feel his lips on hers again, this was the moment.

Her defenses were stripped, and the wait was over.

No matter what else happened tonight, no matter what else they needed to discuss or say to each other, what she needed right now—right this moment—was for Jack to touch her.

She took a tiny step backward, her heart pounding with want as her back stopped flush against his chest.

“Darcy,” he whispered, and she could hear the ragged emotion in his voice. The low tautness from before was replaced with heat, with intensity, with a hunger that rivaled hers.

His fingers gently pushed her hair to the side, exposing the skin of her neck.

Her eyes closed as she felt his warm breath behind her ear, and she bent her neck languorously to the side, offering up the smooth plane of her throat to him.

A small sound of pleasure escaped her throat as she felt his lips, soft and hot, press lightly against the pulse point under her jaw.

It was the same spot he had touched with his fingers so long ago, and it filled her with longing for this man whom she had loved so desperately as a boy. Whatever vestige of self-control she held onto collapsed in a heap at their feet, and she turned slowly to face him.

His eyes were like lava, copper flames dancing and leaping in the brown pools that spoke of hunger and need and want and long separations finally at an end.

“Jack,” she murmured, dropping her eyes to his full, soft, waiting lips, remembering the feel of them like he had only kissed her yesterday. “Kiss me again.”

His lips lowered to touch hers, and she felt his breathing change as he moved his hands to hold her cheeks, tilting her face so that his lips fit full and flush across hers.

She raised the hands hanging limply by her sides, until they covered his, and he parted his fingers so hers could lace through his.

He caught her lower lip gently, slowly, pulling lightly before sealing his lips over hers again.

Her breathing was shallow and hot, and she could feel how much he was holding himself back, easing into their intimacy, careful not to startle or frighten her.

But the same kiss that had rocked her fifteen-year-old world in high school wasn’t enough now.

A wild dart of pleasure shot through Darcy’s body as she boldly broke the seam of their lips with her tongue.

It was as though she’d touched him with fire.

A strangled sound rose from his throat, and he dropped his hands from her face, urgently lifting her up onto the hood of the car beside them.

Darcy raised her hands to his face frantically, palming his cheeks, threading long fingers through his thick, black hair, her body flooding with wet heat under the erotic sensation of his tongue swirling around hers.

She wanted to make up for twenty years apart.

She wanted everything he had to give, and more.

She had never felt such an all-consuming burn for anyone or anything in the entirety of her life.

It was like being under a spell, like a fever or an obsession.

Meeting his tongue stroke for stroke, desperate sounds of passion muffled between them as he kissed her.

She felt his hands move slowly from under her arms, down her sides until they rested on either side of her breasts, the heels of his palms pressed up against the softness there.

“Darcy.” He leaned back to see her, panting. “My god, I’ve waited so long…”

She pulled his head back down to hers roughly, finding his mouth and demanding its heat again.

He growled as she raised her legs, wrapping them around his waist. He moved his hands to her hips, shoving her up against the enormous, rock-hard bulge in his jeans, grinding into her softness with increasing passion.

His hands, his hot, gentle hands, slid under her sweater, his fingers skimming the aroused skin of her waist and belly until they cupped her breasts through the lacy material of her bra.

His thumbs massaged her nipples into hard peaks as he kissed her relentlessly.

She arched toward him, moaning into his mouth, locking her feet around his waist, trying to get closer, only she couldn’t.

She couldn’t get closer through the layers of clothes between them, and her frustration made her bite his lip lightly.

He bucked against her, grinding into her and pinching her nipple, his low, surprised growl of pain and passion swallowed by her mouth.

He moved his lips to her cheek, to her neck, to her throat, slowly kissing a trail from her mouth to her chest.

She was starting to feel hot and faint, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She opened her eyes and saw his were closed, but they glowed under his eyelids just as they had after his encounter with the bear. It was just strange and startling enough to jolt her out of the dream.

“Jack!” She leaned back, panting, her chest rising and falling dramatically with the force of her breathing. “Your eyes!”

His eyes flashed open, fiery and bright until he blinked twice quickly, which returned them to their normal brown.

Darcy stared at him, aroused, frightened, confused. His hands relaxed on her breasts, but he didn’t release them. He stared at her in surprise, as if coming out of a fog of desire and want.

“Your eyes were…glowing.”

He shook his head lightly, taking a deep breath and blinking again.

“Okay. Yeah,” he panted. “They do that. Sometimes.”

He leaned forward to rest his forehead on hers. She felt his breath hot against her cheek.

“Why?” she asked softly. “Eyes don’t do that.”

He lowered his hands from her breasts slowly, letting them lightly caress the aroused skin of her belly before resting them on the skin of her waist under her sweater. She lowered her legs from his hips until the backs of her feet touched the front tire of the car.

Like hers, his chest rose and fell dramatically with ragged breaths, brushing her chest as he inhaled and exhaled.

He licked his lips as she unlaced her hands from his neck and raised them to his face, running her fingers lightly over his prickly beard, and vaguely thinking it had seemed softer when he was kissing her.

“Why do your eyes do that?” she asked again.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s a family thing.”

“Another family thing?” she asked weakly, thinking she’d have to talk to Willow about retinal anomalies when she had a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his low baritone raspy as he found her hands and grasped them, lifting the knuckles to his lips. “I lost control. I just want?—”

“—you,” she finished for him. “Me too.”

He nodded, leaning forward to kiss the bridge of her nose. “It’s hard to stop. Being with you…God, it’s like a fever. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

“Me neither, Jack. It’s like a spell.”

His fingers laced through hers, and she felt him take a deep, shaky breath before leaning back from her just enough to see her eyes.

There’s a reason for that.

What do you mean?

She could see the worry in his eyes besieging hers as he bit his lower lip. He swallowed, looking down, before meeting her eyes again.

“That kiss, Darcy. That night in high school. It was…” He tried to look away, and Darcy wiggled her hands away from his, placing them gently on his face, forcing him to look at her.

“What? It was what?” Besides the most amazing moment of my life until five minutes ago.

“Binding,” he breathed, his fingers curling into fists in her lap. It was binding.

“B-binding?”

He nodded once, his face a mixture of worry and remorse as he courageously held her eyes.

“What does that mean?” she asked, desperate to understand, searching his eyes for answers. “I don’t know what that means.”

It means what it meant from the beginning.

“It means that I belong to you,” he whispered.

“And I belong to you,” she murmured.

The vow came easily, but Darcy still wasn’t sure what he meant. She knew what the word binding meant in terms of contracts, but it was nonsensical that a kiss between two teenagers could mean anything that serious. And yet…

Without realizing it, she had dropped her hands from his face and was surprised to feel the cool metal of the car under her fingertips.

“Binding,” she murmured again.

He nodded at her again, taking a deep breath and watching her intently, as though worried she might scream or faint or try to run away.

Suddenly, nothing felt as important as reassuring him.

She met his eyes, finding his hands in her lap and clutching onto them, feeling her face soften with the strength of her feelings for him.

I’m not going anywhere, Jack…

“But I don’t understand.”

He brought her knuckles to his lips again and kissed them tenderly.

“Let’s have dinner. We’ll talk. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll try to explain more.”

She nodded, lacing her fingers through his as he led her out of the garage her brother built and into the lodge of her dreams.