She looked up at him, and his gaze had gone molten. His teeth dug into his bottom lip as though he was trying to stop himself from saying something. She didn’t want him to censor himself around her—she certainly didn’t watch what she said around him.
“Kiss me,” she ordered.
He lowered his head and pressed his lips against hers, pulling her close. She wound her arms around his neck and went up on tiptoes, licking the seam of his lips until he opened up for her. Her heart picked up speed, and she whimpered. She wiggled against him, nestling closer, and felt how turned on he was. But his hands didn’t wander below her upper back. She wanted him to palm her ass, maybe pick her up and drop her on the couch. She just wanted more of him.
“Touch me,” she said when he pulled back for a moment to get a breath.
“I shouldn’t.” That was not what she’d expected him to say. In fact, she expected him to just do what he was told.
Indignation rose inside her. “Why the hell not?”
“I should go.” And then he actually pulled away from her. Unbelievable.
She grabbed two fistfuls of his sweater and pulled him closer. She must have caught him off guard because he stumbled close enough that their thighs were touching. She felt as though she was on fire from her quads to her lower belly. And one part of him definitely didn’t want to leave. When he stayed close, she said, “You should stay.”
“It’s really soon.”
She might have felt shamed by that. With anyone else, she definitely would have. But not with Jack. Fisticuffs with his brother aside, he was too good a guy to deny her for any other reason than he thought he would be protecting her. She simply had to show him that the best thing for her in this moment was for him to kiss her and touch her and do all the things that she’d wanted him to do since the first night they’d met.
Even though she should be keeping the walls up because this would all be over within a few days, she wanted to get naked with Jack. More than any other guy she’d been with, he’d shown her who he was. She didn’t like everything, but the fact that he’d been less than perfect made her trust him more somehow. She wanted to go soft for him in a way that she hadn’t ever wanted with any other man.
She’d never felt this way about anyone else. And she needed to show him how she felt about him because she didn’t have the words yet. That need was what made her go up on her tippy-toes and press her mouth to his.
His grip on her upper arms tightened for a moment, as though he was going to push her away, and she internally braced for the hot spray of that humiliation shower. Only she would go from shunning all romantic relationships to throwing herself at a man in less than a week.
But he surprised her when he pulled her closer and took over the kiss. One of his hands moved to cup the back of her head, and that same sense of security she’d felt when he’d introduced her to his brother washed over her again.
This was how she’d always wanted to feel in a relationship. Although she’d never been able to explain it, she’d never felt the mix of attraction and utter safety with anyone else that she felt with Jack.
Actions spoke louder than words in this case, and they could talk about everything later—much later. After they’d stopped breathing like one being. Post everyone’s clothes coming off and everyone coming.
Jack pulled back. “Dammit, Hannah. I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this with you.”
“Why?” What they’d been doing until he’d stopped kissing her was set to become her most favorite hobby, and she only wanted more of it. More than any conversation they were going to have about this being too soon. That kind of conversation would remind her of Noah and how the timing for moving their relationship forward had never been right until the time had been right to dump her. She couldn’t take that kind of shit from Jack—it would hurt so much more from him.
He gripped the sides of her face, and she could see and feel his conflict by the way his touch was sort of desperate and his eyes wild. Lust and pragmatism warred there, and she wanted to tell him that that’s what made him wonderful.
“It’s really soon.”
She placed a kiss on his stubbled chin. “This is like date four, and you’ve already gone down on me.” Another kiss. “I think this is plenty slow.”
“I promised my priest that I would wait until I got married.” She froze and backed away slowly. He shifted on his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets. For a second, she wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking. But then his face turned bright red. A clipped hysterical laugh came out of her mouth before she could clap a hand over it.
Once she calmed down, she decided to try reasoning with him. “But going down on me was sex, Jack.”
He shrugged. “We’ve been on the ‘everything but’ track.”
“So, you’re—like—a virgin?”
He pointed a finger up in the air for emphasis. “Not exactly, but P-in-V sex is for marriage.”
“What?” Hannah turned away from him and walked toward the window. “You know they made up that rule so that they could control female sexuality, right?”
“We can do other stuff,” he said as she felt him approach her from behind. And she was tempted to take him up on his offer. He’d broken the seal on her celibacy after all, and just being in the vicinity of his pheromones made her unbearably horny.
Combined with the fighting-with-his-brother thing, his virginity pledge put the kibosh on her desire to stay in a relationship with him after the engagement party. So she might as well enjoy what she had while she had it.
She turned to look at him and smiled. “All right. Let’s do this.”
Once they were in the bedroom, Hannah became preoccupied with how she just couldn’t get a read on Jack. The night they’d met and on their first date, she’d thought him charming and confident. She’d actually felt a little bit bad because it had seemed like he liked her and she had an ulterior motive for dating him. But now he was a super-religious virgin who observed plenty of loopholes to his vow of chastity?
Trying to square who he’d been with who he was acting like now distracted her as he kissed down the side of her neck. It felt great enough that she wasn’t going to stop him, no matter how much she wanted to interrogate him on his little living room proclamation.
It almost took her back to college, when she’d made out with a seminary student for the better part of a semester. It was kind of thrilling—that he’d found her so attractive that he’d been willing to cheat on God with her.
But this—he’d let her sit on his face, but his penis was sacred?
He kissed his way down her belly, and that felt really good, but her thoughts were so loud that she didn’t spread her legs when he palmed her thigh.