Burn for You

My hips rose to meet his. My neck arched. My eyes slid shut. I heard his rough whisper against my ear like it was coming from somewhere very far away.

“Bianca. My Bianca. I knew we’d fit just right.”

Then he dropped his mouth to my neck and started to fuck me.

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t controlled, but it was everything I wanted and needed. I praised him with such loud, wanton moans I probably scared Droopy Dog half to death as he heard the echoes down the halls.

Jackson still had on his jeans, which somehow made everything even hotter. The waistband was bunched around his ass. I shoved it down farther so I could grip those gloriously firm globes as he pumped hard into me, grunting and swearing.

“So good so amazing oh God don’t stop,” I babbled, writhing beneath him.

He panted. “I can’t—we have to—slow down—”

I hollered, “If you stop, you die!”

He groaned like he was in agony. I gripped his face and kissed him so hard I tasted blood. I wrapped my legs around his back and held on as he started to buck wildly, thrashing the bed. We were both sweating, panting, moaning, and kissing sloppily, out of our minds and loving it.

He reared up on his hands, threw his head back, and roared my name at the ceiling.

So this is what all those stupid love songs are about, I thought, just before I went supernova and exploded in a white-hot ball of fire into space.

THIRTY-THREE

JACKSON

We lay stunned and speechless, tangled in each other’s arms on the demolished bed like victims of a bombing.

After a while, Bianca said in a tremulous voice, “Oh. My. That was . . .”

“Perfect.” I stared at her in awe. “Incredible. Mind-blowing. We should get a trophy.”

Blinking slowly, she smiled. It was a heartbreaking smile, a thing of such soul-lifting and astonishing beauty I felt like a man who’d just discovered religion.

She was my religion. My north and south, my heaven and earth, the axis of rightness around which everything had suddenly aligned. For the first time in my life, all my polarized parts worked as one, humming happily along in harmony with the universe, finally understanding their place.

I surrendered to the feeling completely and without hesitation, knowing that most people would never experience this. This blinding joy. This transcendent bliss. This seismic shift of focus from themselves to someone else that strangely and simultaneously gave birth to the freedom and bone-deep peace they’d been seeking all along.

I always thought love was a pair of shackles, but I was wrong. Love was the opened door of a cage.

“You certainly have a lot of energy, Mr. Boudreaux,” my love said, prim as a librarian. It made me laugh so heartily it shook the bed.

I threw my leg over her, pulled her to me, and sighed in happiness. She burrowed against me, making soft growly sounds of pleasure, her little hands pawing my chest.

“Sex fiend,” I whispered indulgently as she ran her hands all over my body.

“I can’t help it,” she protested. “You’re built like a skyscraper, and your skin is like a unicorn’s mane.”

I frowned. “A unicorn’s mane?”

“All silky and shiny and mystical.”

She said it like, Duh, what moron doesn’t know what a unicorn’s mane is like? I laughed again, helplessly charmed.

“You’re awfully jolly after sex,” she said. “Me likey.”

Oh God. My fucking heart was going to split open like an overripe piece of fruit. “And you’re awfully chatty.” I captured her lips and kissed her to shut her up.

When we finally came up for air, she stretched against me like a cat, supple and satisfied, lazily licking her lips. “You’re a dish,” she declared. “If you were food, you’d be the filet from that cow on your father’s plane that was massaged and coddled into beefy, delicious perfection.”

“That’s disturbing,” I said, kissing the tip of her nose. “But thank you. I think.”

Her mood shifted like quicksilver, from gossamer light to guarded. She pursed her lips and contemplated my sternum. “Speaking of your father.”

“What?” I was instantly on high alert.

She glanced up at me. “You need to talk to him.”

There was something behind her eyes that worried me. “Why?”

She dropped her gaze to my chest and started toying with my chest hair. “Um. Well. I had a little chat with him last night after you passed out.” Her pause was infinitesimal. “With your mother, too.”

My blood pressure went from sleeping baby to day trader on the stock market on Black Monday. “About?”

Her eyes flashed up to mine. “Don’t shout!”

“I’m not shouting, I’m asking!”

She glared at me.

I blew out a deliberate breath and lowered my voice. “I’m sorry. Talking about my parents when I’m naked in bed with you is . . . yuck.”

She pouted for a second, then relented. “How much do you remember from last night?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. How much did I remember? Backtracking to before the amazing dream that turned out not to be a dream this morning, I recalled arriving at Moonstar yesterday evening, meeting my father in the foyer, coming up to my room to change, going back down to dinner to suffer through the screaming silence of all the family dinners I’d enjoyed growing up, and then . . .

Nothing.

“I drank too much,” I pronounced. I slanted my eyes down at Bianca, hoping she’d fill in the blanks.

She knew I was bluffing but took pity on me. “You told me about Linc and Cricket,” she said gently. “And about what happened after. Going to New Orleans. Christian. Cody. Everything.”

Coldness sliced through me, freezing as an arctic wind. Then, worse, suspicion. Did she sleep with me because she felt sorry for me?

Examining my face, Bianca pounded her little fists on my chest. “If you ever look at me like that again,” she said, seething, “you won’t be a nice, tasty filet anymore, Jackson Boudreaux, you’ll be ground beef!”

Her threat made me feel oddly relieved. “I love it when you threaten me with bodily harm,” I said, and kissed her again.

She sighed contentedly against my lips. I was enamored by how quickly she could get over anger. It usually took me days.

She said, “Well, someone’s got to keep you in line. Might as well be your wife.”

It was a throwaway line, but it speared me right through the heart. It took a moment for my blood to start circulating again. “Wife,” I repeated solemnly, gazing into her eyes.

She wrinkled her nose. “Lord, you make it sound like someone just told you Christmas was canceled.”

I cupped her jaw in my hand. “No. It’s like someone just told me I won the lottery.”

“Do billionaires play the lottery?”

“They would if they knew you were the prize.”

She squirmed a little, pleased but acting like she wasn’t, and resumed toying with my chest hair like it was her new pet. I stroked her face, dazzled by all the little dancing hearts in my eyes.

“I need a shower,” she pronounced, then looked at me from under her lashes.

“God, those filthy eyes. You could probably be arrested for that look. Pervert.”

She said casually, “Well, since we’re doing a sex weekend before we go back to real life, I might as well make the most of it, right?”