“Just lettin’ you know it’s not an option now. You’ll move here or I’ll move with you. Maybe we’ll find someplace to start over. But I can’t. Let. You. Go.”
“Nash,” I whispered as a hot tear slid down the side of my nose.
“You breathed life back into me. You brought me back to the light. Let me have you. Let me take you. Say you’re mine,” he demanded.
He thrust his erection through my slick folds.
“Y-yes,” I managed. I’d worry about the consequences of what I’d promised him after. I needed this, him now.
“Thank God,” he said, dropping an open-mouthed kiss to my shoulder. The shift of his weight had me angling my hips for more.
“Nash!” I gasped.
His grip tightened at the back of my neck as he dragged his erection back and then surged forward again, the crown of his cock nudging against my clitoris.
He needed this. And I needed to give it to him.
“I can never decide which way to take you,” he rasped, continuing those short, measured thrusts. “I fucking love watching you come. Watching your tits bounce while I move in you. But I love you like this too. When you give it all up and just surrender.”
I love you like this.
I can’t let you go.
His words echoed in my head like a mantra. A mantra that I had no right repeating. He didn’t mean it like that, I told myself. And then I stopped telling myself anything because Nash lined up the head of his cock with my eager opening and surged inside me.
Our shouts echoed off the tile.
Full. So full. He snaked one arm across my abdomen. His other hand closed in my hair, holding me to him. And then he began to thrust.
Hot water pelted me from above. But it was Nash’s heat that warmed me from the inside out. He powered into me, bringing me up on my toes with every drive of his hips until we both came, shaking and panting as each wave sent us tumbling. Each warm wash of his release branding me, soothing me from the inside.
FORTY-FIVE
A PERFECTLY GOOD PARACHUTE
Nash
Iwoke to warm, female flesh pressing against me.
“Wake up, hotshot. It’s time for some fun,” Lina murmured in my ear.
Me and my cock both gave her our full attention.
She kissed me hard, nipping my bottom lip with her teeth. “Sorry, handsome. We don’t have time for that kind of fun this morning. Time to get up.”
I guided her hand under the covers to my erection. “I am up.”
Her husky laugh was warm against my throat. “After,” she promised. “Come on. Get that cute ass out of bed.”
She slid off me before I could capture her and convince her to stay. My hard-on pitched a worthy tent under the sheet.
“No amount of fun is going to be better than staying in bed with me,” I warned, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
A pair of athletic pants hit me in the face.
“We’ll see about that,” she said smugly. “Get dressed. We’ve got an appointment.”
“No fucking way, Lina.”
She grinned from behind the wheel and said nothing as she turned the Charger onto the lane after the sign that said Just Jump Aviation and Skydiving.
The paved lane ran parallel with a small airstrip tucked between acres of cornfields just south of the Virginia-Maryland border. Unlike the misery of yesterday, the morning sun burned bright in the cloudless sky over the oranges and golds of autumn leaves.
Lina whipped the car into a parking spot against the cavernous red hangar with a white-and-blue logo painted on it.
Still grinning, she lowered her sunglasses to look at me. With those red lips, she looked like a temptress, a siren trying to lure me to my death.
“Planes are meant to land,” I insisted.
“It will land. We just won’t be on it when it does,” she said, shutting off the engine and unbuckling her seat belt.
I refused to move. Nothing was going to get me out of this car and anywhere near a goddamn parachute. “It’s irresponsible to jump out of a moving vehicle. Especially one that’s several thousand feet above the fucking earth.”
Lina reached between her legs and slid her seat back.
Before I realized her intention, she managed to climb over the console into my lap. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, Nash.”
“Great. Let’s go get some breakfast and then we can go buy caulk to fix the loose tile in the shower.”
She shook her head, still smiling that siren’s smile. “I’m going up. And I would love for you to go with me.”
Fuck.
“You’re not throwing yourself out of a goddamn plane.” A cold sweat erupted in my armpits.
She slid my sunglasses on top of my head and cupped my face in her hands. “Nash, I’ve done this more than a handful of times. This is one of my favorite things to do, and I want to share it with you.”
Double fuck.
How in the hell was I supposed to say no to that?
“Come on, hotshot. Have some fun with me,” she coaxed.
I’d put her through hell yesterday and this was my punishment. Death by gravity.
Less than a minute later, I was—reluctantly—following her toward the huge open garage door on the side of the building. Her hand gripped mine in a way that suggested she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Doesn’t this require a license or some kind of complicated paperwork that takes weeks to get approved?” I asked desperately.
She looked over her shoulder at me, smirking. “Not for a tandem jump.”
“What the hell is a tandem jump?” My back was turning into a Slip ’N Slide with sweat.
“Newbies jump attached to pros,” Lina said, pointing to a giant poster just inside the hangar’s open door. In the photo, a guy too stupid to be scared was grinning like a lunatic. He appeared to be harnessed to another man from behind.
“There’s no way I’m dying with another man strapped to my back.”
“Of course not. You’re jumping with me.”
I stopped in my tracks and dug my heels in, putting an abrupt end to Lina’s forward momentum. She rebounded into my chest.
“I’m certified,” she said.
Of course she was.
“Nash.” There was laughter in her tone.
“Angel.”
“Tell me what you’re feeling right now,” she insisted.
Abject panic. A little delirious.
“Just sit through the training video and then decide. Okay?”
A training video. If it was long enough, I could pray for a thunderstorm to roll in. Or a cloud of locusts. Or some kind of mechanical failure that would be discovered while we were still safely on the ground. Oh, two flat tires and a hole in the propeller? Too bad. Let’s go get some breakfast.
“Please?”
Fuck. Me.
I had two options. I could put my foot down and wuss out, in which case I’d have to sit here alone on the ground and panic until Lina floated back to earth. Or I could sign my own death warrant, defy gravity in a tiny tin can, and then hurl myself out of it with her. For her.
I was vaguely nauseous and extremely sweaty. But those brown eyes locked on my face. Her cool hands pressed against my chest.
She wanted this from me. And I had the power to give it to her.