Page 18 of It’s You

H is house was beautiful.

Decorated in earthy tones, with soft, ambient light in every room, Darcy couldn’t have imagined a more perfect home if she had decorated it herself.

They entered the house by the front door, and she found herself in a small coatroom with a slate floor and brass hooks for hanging coats to her right, and a small bench for taking off muddy or snowy shoes.

To the left of the door was a room housing a veritable mountain of chopped wood.

“Did you chop all that?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

He smiled at her and winked. “Keeps me in shape.”

He pulled her into the living room, which was more of a great room with high ceilings, exposed beams, and skylights.

A massive flagstone fireplace dominated the wall to the right, with full bookcases on either side.

A sofa faced the fireplace with reading chairs and lamps to the left and right.

A stuffed elk’s head with fifteen points was mounted over the fireplace.

“You?” she asked.

He nodded. “Do you like to hunt?”

“No,” she answered. “I wouldn’t know how to kill anything. My brother, Amory, he hunts. Sort of the state pastime, I guess.”

“But not for you?” he asked, watching her intently.

She shook her head and shrugged. “Not for me.”

He took her hand and led her to the kitchen, which was relatively small for such a large house, but the deck that ran the length of the living room and kitchen made both rooms feel larger.

Two sets of French doors in the living room and huge picture windows made the outside feel like part of the room.

“I love how you’ve decorated, Jack,” she said approvingly, squeezing his hand.

“I had a decorator come up from Boston to make recommendations,” he said, running a free hand over the rustic table in the kitchen.

“From Boston?” she asked, trying not to sound impressed.

He shrugged. “I worked in Boston for years.”

“I went to school there,” said Darcy. “Harvard. Botany.”

“I remember.” He gave her a tight smile. “Um, hearing that. I remember hearing that you studied there.”

“What did you do there?” she asked, anxious to learn more about him.

“Security. Private security.”

“Like a bodyguard?”

He seemed surprised and chuckled a little, facing her. “Sort of. I had more duties than that, but it was part of the job, yes.”

“You’re certainly big enough,” she said, feeling her cheeks get hot and probably color red as she realized what she’d said.

“Is that right?” he asked, his thumb lightly stroking hers, doing crazy things to her stomach.

“I-I just mean…you’re in good shape.”

He raised his eyebrows, giving her an amused grin. She knew she was crimson now. She wasn’t making things any better.

“What’s through there?” she asked, gesturing to an old-fashioned swinging door.

“Dining room,” he said, pulling her back into the living room toward the stairs. “But you’ll see it at dinner. Want to see the upstairs too?”

She loved his house and was dying to check out every inch, but looked down instead. Their smoking hot kiss in the garage and her recent observations about his body made her wonder if seeing the bedrooms in his house was such a good idea when she had so many questions that still needed answers.

He dropped her hand, sensing her shyness. “I won’t touch you. Promise.”

She looked up at him and grinned, hands on her hips.

What if I want you to? she teased.

Do you?

What if?

Your wish is my command.

He grinned back at her wickedly, grabbing her waist and pulling her up against his body. His teasing eyes went dark and intense as he captured hers.

Is this what you want? he asked.

She shook her head. No. This is what I want.

She reached up around his neck and pulled his head down to her, pressing her lips against his, all traces of teasing vanishing as the warm velvet of his lips captured hers.

He wound his hand through her hair, bunching it at the back of her head, holding her head back so that his mouth could pillage hers.

She leaned into him, and his hands released her hair, skimming down her back to grab her hips and pull her tighter into his embrace.

She gasped as she felt the thickening of his erection against her pelvis, growing inside his jeans, evidence that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

She suddenly had the insane urge to drop her hands from his neck and touch him there, press her trembling fingers against the taut, hard flesh that she ached to feel inside her body.

Wait! Her mind screamed a warning, trying desperately to block out the knee-weakening sensations of his lips and tongue loving hers. You’re thinking about sex, and that’s exactly where this is leading.

And she had a sudden thought that sex was exactly where she wanted the night to go.

She wanted him to pick her up and carry up the stairs to his bedroom.

She wanted him to undress her in the firelight and press his lips to every inch of her hot, panting body.

She wanted that hot thickness to thrust inside of her, and she’d scream out his name, making up for all the years she longed for him to return to her.

To return to her. God, how she wanted him.

She unlaced her fingers, digging them into his thick hair and moaning into his mouth as his hands slipped under her sweater, thumbs and forefingers massaging the skin of her waist insistently, moving closer to the button of her jeans.

No! Her mind broke through the haze of white-hot desire she felt for Jack Beauloup. You don’t want this. Not yet. You came here for a reason.

She tore her mouth away from his, trying to catch her breath, swiping the back of her hand across her lips as much to protect herself as to prevent herself from seeking his lips again.

His chest heaved up and down. “Darcy, you’re like…an addiction to me.”

She swallowed, resting her forehead against his.

She skimmed her hands down to her hips and removed his fingers from her waist gently, lacing their hands together by their sides.

She didn’t know what to say. Her body longed to feel his, flush and naked, beside her.

But their intense, explosive chemistry aside, she needed to understand the strange bond that seemed to pull them together.

He leaned back, capturing her eyes with a smile. She was grateful he didn’t look disappointed in her for breaking off their kiss.

“Want me to make a fire?” he asked, glancing toward the fireplace.

“I think we just made one,” she whispered, still feeling limp against him. Something occurred to her. “Didn’t I see smoke as I drove up?”

“I had one in my bedroom before you got here,” he answered, dropping a sweet kiss to her lips before pulling back. “I’m sure I can stoke it back up if you want to?—”

“Oh! Um…”

Yes! screamed her body. Let’s go up to his room and—No! You’re here for answers , insisted her head.

“Darcy?”

She looked up to see Jack’s amused eyes and teasing grin. Her internal battle must have been playing out on her face.

“What?”

“I’m just kidding.”

She exhaled shakily, sitting down on the edge of the couch and watching as he kneeled before the fireplace with his back to her, rolling up newspaper, and laying kindling under larger logs that looked newly chopped.

“Jack.”

“Mmm?”

“I have to understand what’s going on.”

He kept his back to her, reaching for matches on top of the mantle, then squatting down again.

“Ask me anything.”

“How come we can read each other’s minds?”

“We can’t do that. We can only hear each other’s thoughts when we’re looking at each other. It’s called eyespeaking. It has to do with the binding.”

Eyespeaking. Huh. So he did know more about it, as she had suspected. She decided to let it go for now.

“Okay. The binding. Tell me about that.”

He grabbed a poker and moved the logs around to better catch the heat, then replaced it, turning to her. She had never seen him more beautiful than he was tonight, his face watching her, lit by the growing flames of the fire behind him.

He approached her, sitting on the leather trunk in front of her that doubled as a coffee table. His knees touched hers, and he reached out to take one of her hands, stroking her fingers gently as he started speaking again.

“There’s a legend in my family. It says that a man will find his, um…

his woman the summer before his eighteenth birthday.

If he believes he’s met the one to whom he should be bound, he kisses her, and…

well, it says that for them it will feel as though the world disappears and is born again around them.

” He looked up from their hands, his voice a whisper. “Ever felt like that, Darcy Turner?”

She nodded. “Once.”

“It was you.”

He said this so tenderly, the timbre of his voice almost made her cry. She squeezed his hand lightly, and he raised her fingers to his lips, bowing his head, resting his lips on the back of her hand.

When he looked up, his eyes had darkened.

“But it shouldn’t have been you. It should have been one of the girls I grew up with. If I’d known…” He shrugged, his eyes shuddering with seeming regret. “I never would have kissed you. I just liked you so much, and I?—”

Darcy put her hand on his cheek, and he leaned into it, closing his eyes and exhaling low and soft. “Hey. Hey, come on, now. It’s just a legend. It’s just a story.”

He swallowed, opening his eyes and turning his lips into her palm for a moment before answering. “I never got over you. It’s been twenty years. I never forgot. I never found anyone else I wanted to be with more than you.”

She smiled at him gently, sorry to break the romance of the moment with what she was about to say. “Jack, we barely know each other.”

His eyes burned into hers, copper flecks churning into fire.

“Okay. Then how do you explain the eyespeak between us?”

“I can’t explain it. But there are mysteries the human body hasn’t revealed to us. I guess it isn’t impossible that we’re…evolving.”