As my eyes trailed down his body, they snagged on a thin scar that wrapped around from his back along his rib cage. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened. I was starting to want to know far too much about Walker.
When I had agreed to this silly, fake wedding date, I chalked up my attraction to him as just a passing thing. Like lightning that struck once on a hot summer day with no storm to follow in its wake.
The more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. Stepping to the side of the bed, I carefully tucked the covers over him, unable to resist the urge to brush the dark lock that had fallen over his forehead out of his eyes.
With my heart tumbling in an unsteady beat, I went into the bathroom, taking a cool shower to wash away the sterile, antiseptic stickiness clinging to me from the hospital.
I came awake to the feel of Walker’s muscled body curled around me from behind. His hard arousal pressed against my bottom, and I could feel the slick heat between my thighs. I decided I wanted to return a favor. Well, that was how I tried to rationalize it. I just wanted to touch Walker, and I wasn’t quite ready to let myself think it ran deeper.
My thoughts glanced off the curious detail that last night I’d been fully prepared to take things all the way. Somehow, my awareness of my vulnerability intimidated me. When I felt intimidated, I had one response—to take control.
Moving carefully, I rolled over. Walker was deeply asleep. Yet, when I rose up on an elbow, I found his eyes opening. For a moment, they were hazed with sleep but then they widened. “Jade,” was all he said.
Of course, he had to go say it in his gruff, gravelly, oh-so-sexy voice. I smiled, leaning over to string kisses over his chest and abdomen as I slid my palm down to cup the hard, hot length of his cock.
His breath came out in a hiss when I hooked my fingers over his fitted boxer briefs and pulled them down. His cock sprang free, long and thick, a little drop of pre-cum glistening on the tip.
“Jade, you don’t…” His words ended in a groan when I leaned down to lick that salty drop and swirl my tongue around his cock head.
I didn’t know what he’d tried to say, but he was a quick study. When I dragged my tongue along the underside of his shaft, his fingers laced in my hair on the heels of a ragged breath.
Shifting to my knees, I leaned down to take him fully in my mouth. My tongue slid back and forth as I drew upward again, curling my fist lightly around his cock. I felt a surge of power when his hips flexed up with each stroke of my grip, his cock bumping against the back of my throat.
When I moved upward, giving a little suction, my name came in a rough shout as his release spurted into my mouth. I waited until he had stopped shuddering, and then rose up slowly on my knees, looking down at him.
The sheets were fisted in his free hand, and he slowly released the other one from my hair. He stroked through my locks with his fingers brushing against my back and sending goose bumps skating over the surface of my skin.
“Come ’ere,” he murmured with a light tug on my hair.
This all felt like too much, like so much more than I’d bargained for. I tried to play it light and smiled and shook my head.
“Jade, it’s never a one-way street for me,” he murmured before he reached between my thighs. With no preliminary, he pushed my panties to the side and stroked his fingers through my soaking wet folds.
I bit my lip, but I couldn’t hold back. I cried out when he sank one long, thick finger inside, another immediately joining it.
Walker’s touch was crazy fuel to my fire. I was drenched and already on the edge just from giving him pleasure. I wanted to look away from the intensity in his eyes, but I was locked in. It felt as if an electric current was running between us. With me on my knees above him, he fucked me with his fingers. He was gentle and rough at once. He finally released my hair to lightly cup one of my breasts through my T-shirt, teasing my nipple as he drove me to madness.
“Come on, Jade,” he whispered. “Come for me.”
As if I’d do anything but that. I couldn’t have denied him if I wanted to. Caught in his sensual gaze with every stroke of his fingers inside of me, his thumb teased over my clit. Pleasure scattered through me as everything tightened in my core. My eyes finally fell closed and pleasure burst like fireworks inside.
I distantly heard him saying, “That’s it, sugar.”
I shuddered so hard from the aftershocks of pleasure that I collapsed against him. He held me close. I tucked my head into his neck as I tried to catch my breath.
When I lifted my head and found his silver-smoke gaze waiting, my heart split wide-open. It wasn’t just tiny pry bars to the walls around my heart anymore. With his touch, with his eyes, with who he was, Walker demolished them.
Chapter Sixteen
Walker
“How the hell are you feeling?” I asked.
Dave sounded a little tired, but otherwise okay, when he laughed. The sound carried through the phone line with a hitch of static in the middle. “I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse.”
Emotion tightened in my throat. I didn’t like contemplating the reality that Dave could have easily died that night. It had been a full two weeks since the wedding, and I’d yet to shake the unsettled feeling his heart attack had left behind for me.
“You have certainly been worse, and I’m so damn glad you survived. Seriously, though, you doing okay?” I pressed.
“Oh yeah. I really am. Don’t get me wrong, that scared the shit out of me. I sure as hell never expected to have a heart attack on my wedding night, and that’s not even considering that I’m only thirty-three years old.”
I took a breath, letting it out slowly as I leaned against the wall in a half finished cabin where I was helping Wade, Jackson, and Lucas with construction for the lodge. Dave’s call had come through right before I started to walk out with the guys to grab an early dinner in the staff kitchen. I’d waved them on, wanting a few minutes of privacy to talk with Dave.
“I’m just glad you’re alive, which sounds morbid, but I mean it. How’s Jenny taking everything?”
Although I couldn’t see him, I could practically feel Dave’s gaze sober through the phone line. “She’s fine. I mean, she was pretty shaken up, along with, I guess, everybody. Instead of our honeymoon, she’s been fussing over me at home. She’s also thrilled to have a reason to force me to eat healthy,” he said, finishing with a small laugh.
“Oh, I’ll just bet. Although, you were never good about eating healthy. I get to say it now because you just had a freaking heart attack.”
“I know. That’s what I keep telling her. The doctor made it crystal clear that at my age, it’s clear I had a predisposition for heart disease. Eating healthy will help me keep it under control, but it’s something I’m gonna have to manage no matter what for the rest of my life,” he explained with a sigh.
Rolling on my shoulder, I glanced out the framed window space that didn’t yet have an actual glass window installed. This row of new cabins offered a spectacular view of Stolen Hearts Valley. With it being late spring, wildflowers were in bloom in the field just in front the lodge with the green of the trees expanding beyond that. The setting sun glinted off a lake over to the side and left a watercolor of pinks and purples above the mountain ridge on the opposite side of the valley.