Jake raised one knee, his foot flat on the bed. The defined muscle of his thigh under a dusting of dark hair made her want to lick her lips, as if she hadn’t just come so hard that her lights had blown. He was just so pretty. The kind of pretty that made a sex slave out of a usually sensible woman.
So was it any surprise that when he turned to her with a lazy glint in his eye and put one hand on the side of her cheek, she let him turn her head toward his and kiss her? The kiss was slow and deep and unhurried, flicks and licks and tasting.
Juliet turned fully into him and he seemed more than okay with that, pushing one tautly muscled thigh between hers while fisting his free hand in her hair. She’d thought it would end with a kiss, but oh, it didn’t. It was slower this time, his rough-skinned hand stroking over her softness with open appreciation and his mouth a lush caress on hers.
She didn’t even care that, the best foreplay of her life or not, she was tender from the first time—it had been a while, okay. She wanted him, wanted this. He let her explore him as she wished, as generous with his body as he was every other way in bed.
But when he nudged his hand between her thighs and rubbed all the right things with just the right pressure—after saying insanely hot things like “Slow or fast?” and “Move my hand how you like it”—she gave up and held on for the ride.
He felt even bigger inside her the second time around.
She was a jellyfish by the end, a soft squishiness of postorgasmic bliss. Jake took his time getting up to take care of the condom, as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him too. She watched him come back into the room, all bronzed skin and muscle and that stunning ink, and couldn’t quite believe he’d had his hands all over her—and that she’d had hers all over him.
She lifted her foot. “It’s hot.”
He tugged off one sock, then the other… and dropped a kiss on the top of her foot.
Butterflies took flight inside her as he walked around the bed to lie down next to her again.
“That’s just made the problem worse, hasn’t it?” he said.
She nodded, strands of her hair stuck across her face and her skin damp with perspiration. They might’ve scratched the itch, but in doing so had turned it into a chronic ailment—because now they knew how good it could be between them.
No, not good. SPECTACULAR.
“I didn’t know sex could be like that.” The unsophisticated words slipped out past all her sex-addled filters.
Instead of laughing at her, Jake said, “That was not normal.”
Phew. At least he was discombobulated too.
Silence.
Until she started to feel uncomfortable for the first time since this began. Shifting a little, she managed to tug a soft fleece blanket over her body. “What happens now?” Her heart clenched even though she knew not to expect any kind of ugliness from Jake—he’d never been that way, and she didn’t think he’d changed, not with what she’d seen of him.
He was no Reid.
“I have to go home,” he said very deliberately. “We need to think about this.”
She wanted to quip that there was nothing to think about, but the fact that she was lying naked in bed with Jacob Esera and wanted to jump his bones again told her she’d be a big fat lying liar. The scorching chemistry between them…
“Okay,” she said. “That’s sensible.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that. Sensible. Like an old grandma. But she felt tentative, not knowing where to go or what to say. Sleeping with Jake hadn’t been in her five-year post-Reid plan. It hadn’t been in any plan.
Jake’s dark gaze held hers, but he didn’t say anything further before getting up to dress. Her eyes lingered on the sculptured lines of his body for a moment before she made herself get up and grab her robe from where she’d thrown it over a chair the previous day. Printed with red hibiscus blooms and green foliage against a black background, it was a silky mid-thigh-length thing from Everett’s autumn collection four seasons ago.
He’d gifted it to her after she worked seven days in a row to secure a critical supplier.
And she couldn’t keep fiddling with the belt forever.
Turning on her heel, she left Jake to finish dressing and walked out. She was making a cup of tea when he exited the bedroom, his hair messy from her hands and a few small marks on his neck from either her mouth or her nails. Heat kissed her skin, but she kept it calm, channeling her professional self. “Drive safe.”
A curt nod before he picked up his keys. “I’ll call you.”
Because this was Jake, she thought he probably meant that, but he’d come to his senses soon enough. Because while she’d been in the kitchen, she’d glanced at her phone and seen an alert that said she’d been mentioned in a recent media article. It had been nothing bad, simply a reference to Everett’s upcoming campaign with Jake and his teammates—but the reporter had noted that the campaign was being coordinated by “former cricket WAG Juliet Nelisi.”
It was a potent reminder that the tabloids would never let her live down her past. And Jake had both a kid and a squeaky-clean reputation to protect. Some of his sponsorship deals would likely fall over if he was linked to a scandal, but even worse, it’d hurt his daughter—children heard things from parents and repeated them in the schoolyard.
Juliet respected Jake for his fierce protectiveness toward Esme. She knew what it was like to grow up without a defender, understood how much hurt could be done to a small heart by a few thoughtless words.
Never would she hold his desire to protect his daughter against him.
“It’s all right, Jake,” she said gently after she’d opened the front door for him and he’d stepped out. “You don’t have to call.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Someone will catch us if we do this again, and that wouldn’t be good for either you or me.”
Any contact with a sports star, much less a sports star of Jake’s caliber, would bring the tabloids knocking on her door. They’d throw up old accusations of her being a “gold digger,” would reprint those pictures of her falling out of nightclubs at Reid’s side. She had a different life now, and if she kept her nose clean for a couple more years, maybe the tabloids and women’s magazines would forget her.
Jake frowned, grooves in his forehead. “Jules—”
Shaking her head at him, she smiled softly before closing the door. The sense of loss that came with the action shook her. It’d pass, she told herself as the quiet of her home settled around her again. She’d loved the quiet after leaving Reid, loved the peace, loved knowing no one would hurt her with thoughtless words or actions in this sanctuary.
Today, for the first time, the quiet felt empty.
Jake stood outside Juliet’s door for long seconds before he could force himself to move. Everything in him rebelled against just leaving after she’d shared her body so generously and sweetly with him. Jacob Esera didn’t do that.
He didn’t generally stay overnight with women, but that was because he wasn’t about to leave Esme with his parents all the time. It was different on nights like today, when Esme was with her cousin and his parents had plans to do grandparent-grandkid things the next day.