Jilted: Promise Harbor, Book 1 (28 page)

He didn’t need to say more. They understood each other, understood that this was about trust and intimacy and deepening their relationship, and she loved him so much for asking.

When he pushed into her, it felt incredibly good. He moved so deep inside her, he touched nerve endings that thrilled her and filled her with such aching pleasure, so deep he touched her heart, touched her soul. She watched his face, entranced, as his eyes fell closed, his long eyelashes resting on his cheeks, and then he fell over her, taking his weight on his elbows, his arms sliding around her head, one hand coming on to her forehead in a possessive, protective gesture that softened her heart and made her go liquid around him.

Her body closed around him, pulling him in, and she wrapped her arms around his back and her legs around his waist as he moved against her. Their bodies pushed together, seeking more, finding a rhythm that matched the beating of their hearts. His breath rushed hot over the skin of her neck. “Devon, god Devon, don’t leave me.”

“I won’t. I never will.”

Sensation spiraled inside her, a taut coil of pleasure and heat, everything inside her tightening, pulling hard, up and up.

“Yes,” she urged him. “Yes, yes…oh god.”

He rose up again onto his knees, spread wide between her thighs. He cupped her breasts, thumbed her nipples, then slid his hands down her rib cage to close around her waist, holding her as he thrust harder into her. Once more their eyes met, his blazing at her with a golden flame, full of worship and devotion. She felt so lucky, grateful to have this man, this superhero, in her life, loving her, and she wanted to give him so much—anything. Everything.

She loved him.

More than the love she’d felt for him before, this time it felt stronger, as mighty and bottomless and immeasurable as the ocean—because nothing stood between them now. Everything was out there. Because she’d taken the risk, shared parts of herself with him she never had before. Because she’d given him her whole self this time, all her flaws and insecurities and fears. And he loved her anyway.

Emotion swelled and rushed through her. He reached for her hands and held them, and she tightened her fingers around his, still holding his gaze. She never wanted to let him go, never wanted him to let her go, and she gripped his hands as her climax burst upon her, an explosion of sparks and heat, pleasure sliding outward from her core, lovely and warm and sweet.

“Love you,” she gasped. “Oh god, I love you.” With their clasped hands at her chest, his eyes fell closed, and his body tensed and went still for long, pulsing moments, and then once again he stretched out over her.

“Love you too,” he groaned against her neck. “I love you too.”

“I know I don’t have to offer you a job,” Josh said a long time later. They still lay in bed, wrapped up in sheets and each other’s arms, lounging in somnolent satisfaction. He ran his hand down the silky curve of her back. “And I do know that’s not the kind of work you’ve always wanted to do. But you really are helping me, Dev. Doing stuff I have no clue about.” He slid his hand up and into her hair and tugged until she looked up at him. “I need you, Dev. But not just for that. That was a huge load off my mind, but I need you for so much more.”

“I need you too,” she whispered. “And it scares the crap out of me. But if my dad can admit he has feelings for someone…whoa. And if you—a superhero—can say it, I can too.”

His lips quirked. “I kinda like how you think I’m a superhero.”

She smiled and rubbed her body enticingly against his. “When you left, I kept telling myself I’d find someone else. Someone like you. Someone who’s loyal to his family and honorable and responsible. It was kind of funny, because the things I loved the most about you were the things that took you away from me.”

“I’m sorry too, Dev. It wasn’t all your fault. We both could have done things differently.”

“If I’d begged you to stay in Boston with me, would you have?” She tipped her head.

He thought about it. “Honestly? I’m not sure. I was pretty terrified about my mom and everything that was happening when Allie’s mom died. But I do know…I really
wanted
you to beg me to stay.”

“I should have told you,” she said in a choked voice. “I thought telling you how much I wanted you to stay made me seem weak and pathetic. Like when my mom left and I begged her not to go without me.”

“Fuck.” He drew her closer and pressed his face to her hair. “I should have realized. I should have known how hard that was for you.”

She
hadn’t
been fine with him and Allie seeing each other or getting married. Of course she hadn’t. He couldn’t speak for Allie of course, but had they been willing to accept Devon’s words at face value to ease their own consciences?

And maybe he’d been willing to accept her words at face value because he needed to believe that
he
was the one who’d been wronged when he left Boston to move back to Promise Harbor. Because if Devon had really loved him, she would have come with him. Wasn’t that what he’d always believed? So she
couldn’t
be hurt by him and Allie being together, because she’d made her choice to stay when she knew he had to leave.

So, Allie’d done her duty by calling Devon, making sure she was okay with it all, and then they’d forgotten all about her so they could just move on with things, with making everyone else happy by getting married. He wanted to roar with anger and pain now, feeling like a hot knife was twisting in his heart. But he forced himself to breathe, to relax, to not squeeze Devon so tight he might pop her eyeballs out of her head, even though he wanted to.

“No.” Her head moved against him. “It wasn’t your fault. I just have this weird hang-up. I’m working on it. But it wasn’t just that, Josh. I knew what you were like—I knew how important it was to look after your family. How could I have stood in the way of what you had to do?”

“Oh my god, Dev.” He closed his eyes, his throat tight, emotion surging up from his chest. And there was the thing that had been bothering him. Because he’d been so focused on how she should have been willing to open herself up to him, he hadn’t even realized that, in a way, she’d been making a sacrifice for him. Overwhelming gratitude and love for her washed over him like an ocean breaker, and he held on to her tighter for long moments.

“What about Allie?” Devon whispered eventually.

“I thought we already talked about that. Allie and I are done.”

“It’s going to make things weird between your families, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“I was kind of afraid about that. That you’d put that first, instead of us.”

They moved so their eyes met, and he touched her chin. “No,” he said firmly. “You come first with me, Devon. I want you to know that, without a doubt. Whatever happens, know that.”

She nodded, her lower lip quivering, her eyes full of love and trust that made him feel—fuck yeah—like a superhero.

“When—if—Allie comes back, we’ll figure things out. But now it’s you and me, Dev.” He paused. “I wish you and Allie could be friends again.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I do too. I miss her. But I don’t know…”

“Can you forgive her?”

Her lips quirked. “Yeah. I think I can. Since you’re
mine
now.”

He grinned. “Okay, so how about we stay here for now, since you have no reason to rush back to Boston. You help with the business, maybe help out your dad too. Get to know Promise Harbor again. Help me decorate my house. And we’ll see how things go, and if you want to move back to Boston, we’ll talk about that.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do want to stay here with you. I’ll try to be better. I want to be a superhero like you.” He chuckled and pressed her head into his chest again. And she said just what he was feeling too… “I want to be worthy of someone like you.”

About the Author

Kelly Jamieson lives in Winnipeg, Canada and is the bestselling author of over twenty romance novels and novellas. Her writing has been described as “emotionally complex”, “sweet and satisfying” and “blisteringly sexy”. If she can stop herself from reading or writing, she loves to cook. She has shelves of cookbooks that she reads at length. She also enjoys gardening in the summer, and in the winter she likes to read gardening magazines and seed catalogues (there might be a theme here…). She also loves shopping, especially for clothes and shoes. She loves hearing from readers, so please visit her website at
www.kellyjamieson.com
or contact her at
[email protected]
.

Look for these titles by Kelly Jamieson

Now Available:

Love Me

Friends With Benefits

Love Me More

2 Hot 2 Handle

Lost and Found

One Wicked Night

Rule of Three

Sweet Deal

Hot Ride

With Strings Attached

Coming Soon:

How to Love

Slammed

Sometimes you have to get lost before you can find yourself.

Bolted

© 2013 Meg Benjamin

Promise Harbor Wedding, Book 2

Greta Brewster McBain in a bind. Two, if she’s really counting. First there’s the can-barely-breathe bridesmaid’s dress from hell. Second, the stranger who just carried her “perfect” brother’s fiancée out the church door has made it impossible to tell her own mother about her own divorce.

Rather than confirm her reputation as the family screw-up, Greta takes a drive to clear her head.

Trapped in a hole and unable to reach his cell phone, Hank Mitchell is resigned to becoming a permanent part of his own archeological dig when help arrives—in the form of a woman who looks like a
Gone With The Wind
refugee. Behind the ruffles and lace, though, is something he appreciates: a woman who isn’t afraid of a little dirt.

Their instant connection draws Greta into the eccentric world of the Hotel Grand, where she impulsively trades her hoopskirts for an apron. Soon things are getting hot—not only in the hotel kitchen, but in Hank’s arms…

Warning: Contains hot moonlit sex, a melancholy turtle, two wisecracking seniors, and the world’s ugliest bridesmaid dress.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Bolted:

Hank Mitchell looked down at his foot, still wedged tight, still unmovable. The rocks in that part of the wall had looked sturdy enough when he’d stepped on them. By the time he’d realized how unsturdy they really were, and how ready they were to crumble under his weight, it was too late to jump back. He’d already tried pulling his foot out of his shoe, but the rocks on either side were squeezed too tightly to get it loose.

Okay, how many times over the years did you tell the interns never to go to a dig alone?
Not enough times to drill it into his own thick skull, apparently. Now he stood at the base of a three-foot wall, the possible remains of a Wampanoag settlement, his foot jammed tightly in the midst of some Wampanoag rocks. He didn’t have the right angle to pry the rocks apart and he didn’t have any tools that might make it easier.

If he were a superstitious man, he’d say the Wampanoags were having their revenge on him. If so, they were doing a damned good job of it.

He checked around the dig one more time, hoping against hope that something might have changed in the three minutes since he’d last looked and that he’d find some kind of tool he could use to pry himself loose. His notebook and cell phone still sat where he’d left them next to the ladder, thoroughly out of reach, along with his trowel and his pick. He might try lying down full length to see if he could touch them, but he was guessing his knees wouldn’t exactly bend in that direction.

Surely the sisters would miss him at some point. Even if Alice didn’t, surely it would occur to Nadia that he hadn’t been around when he should have been. Surely they’d call the cops to at least check on him. Of course, he didn’t exactly have a regular schedule at Casa Dubrovnik. They might not even notice he hadn’t come home until he’d been missing for a couple of days.

He’d get very hungry in two days, not to mention thirsty. At least the five-foot depth of the excavation would keep him from getting chilled.

Unless it rained. As it had regularly for the past month.

Hank sighed. He was possibly going to die here. At the very least he was going to get hungry, thirsty, and probably wet. And it was all the result of his own idiocy, which made the whole thing that much worse. Alice would probably say she’d told him so, although he was fairly certain even her wide-ranging complaints had never covered this particular situation.

He tensed. For a moment, he could have sworn he’d heard something rustling. Probably a rabbit or something in the underbrush. And he couldn’t think of any way to use a rabbit to rescue himself.

He paused, listening again. The rustling seemed more persistent than a rabbit, and it was coming closer. He ran through a quick list of large animals found in the Massachusetts woods. Bears and moose were possible, but unlikely. Coyotes were more likely but not particularly worrisome unless they decided he was easy pickings. Chances were it was some other kind of animal, though. Maybe a fox or a wild turkey.