He pinned my arms over my head, bringing his mouth to mine. His lips were soft and warm, but his stubble was rough, and I delighted in the contrast. No one had ever kissed me like this, like he hungered for me.
His tongue mingled with mine, massaging and pushing in time to his grinding hips. He worked his hard length up and down my slick valley, almost bringing me to the brink, only to pull away before I ignited.
He lifted himself off my body and kneeled between my legs. He took his length in his hand and guided himself in, watching the act with those intense blue eyes.
Over and over again, he worked himself in and out, bringing me to the edge, but never allowing me the release I needed.
I threw my head back onto the pillow, my chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. Please, please, please…
He knew what I was begging for.
“No.” He flipped me over, gripping my hips and bringing me to him. He was in me again, this time moving with excruciatingly slow, deliberate strokes. “I’m going to make you raw from fucking. Then I’m going to make you come and beg for more.”
I was already at his mercy. He could have anything he wanted. “Just don’t stop.”
He flipped me back over and stared for a moment, a look of wonder in his eyes.
He lunged forward, pushing his shaft deep inside me while trapping my mouth with another searing kiss. I wrapped my legs around his ass and tilted my hips, hungering to have him deeper. Not just his body, but all of him. There was a connection between us that I hungered for more of.
He broke our kiss and began moving at a feverish pace, pounding me toward that sweet, sweet release.
He came with a deep, throaty groan only a man could make. The sound of his voice triggered my own climax and pushed me out of my body once more.
There was nothing besides the waves of sinful pleasure and the sound of his animalistic groans. I felt him pull me into him, into his mind, allowing me to experience his body falling to pieces one wave of ecstasy at a time.
I didn’t know how long it lasted, but when I came back to myself, my body limp and sated, I spotted the sun coming through an opening in the curtains.
“It’s morning,” I said, stroking his back as he lay collapsed on top of me. I didn’t care how heavy he was. I didn’t ever want him to go. He was my dark addiction. We had been fucking for hours, and I was already wanting more.
“So it is,” he mumbled into the crook of my neck.
“I need to eat.” And I could use a shower, but I was too tired to move.
“This may help.” Jack rolled off me onto his back, resting his arm over his head.
Something churned behind those blue eyes, something that bothered him. If I were to make a bet, I’d say it was the same thing that had been bothering him earlier.
“What did you see at that house?” I asked, hoping that he’d answer me this time. When are you going to start trusting me?
He stared at the ceiling for a long while. “That place was evil.”
Yeah, no kidding.
He continued, “But I am not speaking of the sort of malevolence one might equate to a serial killer. I am speaking of something so dark it consumes everything around it. The walls of the home were dripping with it. The soil was saturated with it.”
I’d felt it, too.
He added, “People have died in that house by the hundreds. Thousands were tortured there. Nothing good ever lived there.”
“I don’t understand what it has to do with y—”
“The home was mine, Jeni. I know it was. And if it is any indication of the man I have forgotten, I am unsure it is wise to revive him.”
“You keep talking about yourself like you’re the devil, but you don’t know that. I’ve seen you do kind things.” For example, he saved me at the police station back in Tampa. He stopped Randall from hurting me. He healed my dad.
“I believe the reason I came back to life,” he said, “was not because of the ring. It was because death will not have me.”
The ring. The ring. “You mean the ring you were wearing before?”
“When I woke in that metal box, it was in my hand, and I knew what it was. I knew it reversed death. It heals injuries. That is why I put it on your father’s finger before I smothered him with a pillow while you slept.”
“I’m sorry. You did what?” I sat up and pulled the covers over my chest.
“He did not feel a thing, I promise. But he needed to die first in order to be brought back—healed. The next morning, I ensured he did not recall the incident.”
What the hell? He killed my dad?
Jack gave me a look. “Everything comes with a price, Jeni.”
I scrubbed my face with my hands. I couldn’t even handle thinking about it. “Where’s the ring now?”
“Your father still wears it.” He sat up and stared into my eyes. “I made a deal with you—to ensure he would be protected.”
I hadn’t even noticed my dad wearing it, but then again, I’d been distracted by the miracle of him standing in the kitchen, making pancakes.
Suddenly, another thought hit me. “So if you didn’t have the ring on at the warehouse, how did you come back?”
“That is part of the puzzle I was attempting to explain. I recall removing the ring while I was trapped inside the container, repeatedly drowning. I wanted the pain to end. I wanted to die. However, I kept coming back. Or, at least, this is what I remember. So I tested my theory in your motel room. A quick drowning confirmed that whatever I am, whoever I was, hell will not have me.”
Jesus. Rejected by hell? It explained why he kept telling me he was not a good man. He believed he was too rotten for even the devil’s taste. Of course, I didn’t believe in any of that stuff. Or maybe I did? Every belief I used to have was up in the air. “So you want to drop it—you don’t want to know who you were or how you ended up on the bottom of the ocean.”
“That house,” he said, “that office, my few memories are all pointing to the fact that I am beyond redemption. Beyond human.”
I never thought I would see a man like him fear his own evil. He wasn’t afraid of pain, of dying, of killing.
“Thank you, but I am not afraid.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“It is merely a question of logic. Someone went to great lengths to erase me off the face of this planet and punish me. Perhaps their actions were warranted, given what I have learned.”
“Okay.”
He turned his head to look at me. “I do not want to live forever. I know from experience that being unable to die is its own kind of hell.”
“And?”
“And perhaps I should attempt another path instead of continuing on the previous one.”
Redemption, I thought.
“Yes.” He nodded.
I couldn’t exactly argue with him. I had gotten a taste of that house’s…whatever it was. I’d felt the same darkness in that abandoned office. If he decided not to pursue his past life any further, I got it. I got why.
“I am glad you agree.” He placed his feet on the floor, putting his back to me. “I will order breakfast while you bathe,” he said.
I took that as a polite way of saying he needed a moment.
I got up and glanced over my shoulder at Jack, noting how something had shifted inside him. Even his face looked different. The dark shadows that once clung to him had been replaced by light. His cheeks were flushed, and his blue eyes seemed brighter somehow.