Present Day
Harper awoke with a small sob. Again, tears dampened her cheeks. She remembered more details of her dream than she had earlier today, but it was still murky. Mostly, it was the swelling emotion in her chest that lingered.
It took her a moment to find her bearings. She saw the glow from the distant yacht bridge and felt their subtle rocking in the water. The star-strewn sky curved above them, a half-moon lighting the surroundings to a surprising degree. Memory hit her in a rush. They’d fallen asleep after watching the fireworks.
“Jacob?” she murmured. She flipped over onto her belly on the sofa.
“Harper?” He stirred at her movement, his fingers falling out of her hair, his knee bending and rubbing against her shoulder. She rose up over him, planting her hands next to his head and settling her body beneath his spread legs. He felt warm and solid and wonderful. His hand rose again to her head, but his eyes were still closed. “It’s okay, Harper. Everything’s going to be all right,” he said groggily.
A pain went through her at his automatic, unconscious response. Again, that feeling of sharp longing sliced through her. She thought of how Jacob took care of the troubled Regina Morrow, and gave children of his town a moment of carefree summer fun with the fireworks; how he sponsored the women’s shelter Harper had gotten Ellie into, and how he protected neglected or abused animals with the local shelter. He did all those things—and probably countless other acts of kindness and generosity that she didn’t know about.
And how the first thing he did, even in the midst of sleep, was assure her—Harper—that everything was all right
Even so, people like Ruth Dannen and thousands of others made sly, nasty comments about his character.
A huge, powerful feeling of love and compassion rose in her. She pulled her sundress up to her waist and yanked the blanket up over her shoulder and part of her head, tenting them partially. She leaned down and rained small kisses on his jaw, finally settling on his mouth with a fevered kiss. It took her a moment to awaken him, but knew she had when his firm lips started to move beneath hers and his hands grasped her upper arms.
“Harper?” he mumbled against her mouth even as his lips plucked at her hungry ones. “What are you doing?”
“Making love to you,” she whispered, turning her head to get a better angle on his mouth and penetrating his lips with her tongue. He tasted divine. Their kiss turned hot and wet. He tried to shift her off of him onto the wide couch. She instinctively understood he wanted to come down over her, hold her down, make her a fixed target to ensure she received every ounce of pleasure he conferred.
“No,” she whispered, gripping his hips with her knees and keeping herself in place. “I’m making love to
you.”
“It’s a mutual thing,” he replied wryly, tangling his fingers in her long hair.
“It is, but it isn’t.
You
give and take. You take from me, and I offer it willingly. But you hardly ever let me
just
give
,”
she murmured, plucking at his lips hungrily. His hips flexed up slightly against his weight, and she felt his arousal. Relief swept through her. Given his preferences in bed, she’d worried he might be turned off by her aggressiveness. “Just relax, Jacob. Let me make you feel good.”
“You always make me feel good.”
“
I
have something to give. Let me
touch
you, Jacob.”
Her plea seemed to hang around them, swirling in the cool night air. Had he sensed that she meant more than touch him physically? She thought maybe he had, given the tension level of his body. He didn’t reply or move. Slowly, cautiously, she began to move her hands, sliding them across his muscular shoulders and powerful chest. Tears stung her eyes for some reason. She was reacting purely on feeling in that moment. He was so amazing to her. So miraculous.
She sunk her head, her lips moving feverishly across his skin.
“Harper, honey,” he said, and there was an edge to his tone as she delicately licked and then sucked at a small, flat nipple, making it stiffen. His fingers dug in her hair aggressively. By the time she kissed and ran her tongue along the side of his ribs, small bumps had raised along his skin. She flicked her tongue and he growled softly. She closed her eyes. It was sublime, feeling his body react so completely to her touch, feeling his power coil and tighten, starting to strain to break free.
A moment later, she knelt over his thighs and held the base of his cock in one hand, caressing the shaft and fat crown with the other. She stroked him for a while, admiring him in the soft starlight. She flicked the thick rim beneath the head with her fingers, and he made a rough sound. She looked up and saw that he’d come up on his elbows, and was watching her through narrowed eyelids. His face looked hard and shadowed, mysterious and beautiful in the glow of the stars. Holding his stare, she came down over him and squeezed her lips around the flaring head of his cock.
* * *
He held his breath, watching her take him into her mouth. Why were her cheeks damp from tears? The moment felt so fragile to him. Harper herself seemed like something from a dream, her graceful limbs and stunning face nuanced by moonlight. Her mouth wasn’t made of smoke and shadow, though. She clamped him hard with her lips. She sunk down on him, and he shuddered as pure pleasure rippled through him. Her mouth was hot. Sultry. And her suck . . .
“Harper,” he whispered harshly, one hand cupping the back of her head. She took him deep again, her mouth pulling at him. Not just his cock. She drew on something deep inside him. Her head bobbed forcefully for a moment. He winced in pleasure. Christ, it felt good. And she was so beautiful. He couldn’t take his eyes off the vision of her giving . . . and giving. He briefly fantasized about standing and bringing her to a sitting position, holding her head while he pierced her beautiful mouth . . .
. . . But the experience of being the target of her desire held him spellbound, as well. His paradoxical need created a friction in him: the need to dominate fighting with the desire to accept what she was giving him, to accept love rather than take it.
To acknowledge instead of demand.
A sweet, agonizing moment later, she rose over him, lifting her dress to her waist with one hand. She started to come down over his naked cock. He paused her by tightening his hold.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed. “I want you in me this way. Now. I’m like you, Jacob. I’ve always been very careful about making sure I was safe. Only for a moment.
Please
.”
“You don’t have to beg me,” he said incredulously. There was an intensity to her tonight that he couldn’t quite comprehend. Her cheeks were no longer wet, but her eyes looked mysterious and deep in the moonlight.
He helped her by guiding her hip. She sunk down over him, sheathing him in her sleek body. He saw ecstasy tighten her face, and knew her pleasure matched his. She paused in his lap and whipped the dress above her head.
He held her to him, the pleasure cutting at him. The feeling. She began to rise and fall over him. She looked so beautiful, naked and bathed in the glow of the stars and moon. Need tore at his throat. Desperation. He pulled her to him, clenching his teeth hard at the sensation of her erect nipples pressing against his ribs. He gripped the hair at her nape in his fist.
“What is it?” he hissed tensely against her mouth. “What happened, Harper? Tell me. Why were you crying when you woke me up?”
“I don’t know,” she said brokenly, and she looked every bit as desperate as felt. “I had a dream.”
“
What
dream?”
“About a boy,” burst out of her throat. “A boy I knew a long, long time ago. Why am I dreaming of him now? Why do I keep thinking of him?” she murmured, and it was as if she asked herself. Her face crunched tight.
Wild emotion rushed through him at the vision of her pain. It was like a knife in her side. In his.
“Make me forget, Jacob,” she whispered. She began to move her hips, pumping his cock in and out of her body. He gripped her head tighter.
“Come here,” he said, his mouth slanting. He’d seen her pain, and it’d driven a stake of urgency into him.
She’d dreamed of Jake.
Surely
she’d meant Jake.
Surely she’d remembered
me
?
The thought both panicked and excited him. He didn’t know on what side of the ledge he existed anymore, only that he felt like he was constantly falling off it, free-falling into Harper’s sweetness.
He kissed her voraciously, using one hand to guide her strokes over his body, mounting their frenzy of need. From every direction, he felt pummeled. Maddened. Because even while he gave her what she needed, he couldn’t have said for himself what desire was sharper inside him: for her to remember or for her to forget, for her to acknowledge him for who he was, or for her to remain veiled, safe, and protected. Did he want her to recognize the vulnerable boy he’d buried long ago? Or did he want even more to continue drowning in the sweetness of her loving him for whom he’d become, forever ignorant of whom he’d been . . .
Forever blinded to what they’d meant to one another.
* * *
The morning dawned crystal clear and luminous out on the vast, blue expanse of Lake Tahoe.
After they’d made love on the top deck last night, Jacob and she had gone down to the bedroom and slept the rest of the night in each other’s arms. Harper awoke before Jacob, studying his face in repose for a moment in the light of dawn. Her chest grew tight when she recalled their emotional, charged . . .
bewildering
lovemaking last night beneath the stars.
She wasn’t sure what had happened. It all seemed so confusing: the dream, her uncontrollable eruption of feeling, his passionate, soulful response. What really bothered her was how she kept recalling that dream. His face was emerging from the shadows with startling clarity.
Jake.
Jacob had promised her an affair that was about forgetting, about staving off grief and loss. But strangely, she was remembering
more
.
Is this what it meant to really fall in love? she wondered numbly as she stole from his arms a moment later. Did it mean that you felt
everything
more clearly, the sad along with the amazing? Maybe so. She’d considered herself to be in love several times in the past, but that pale feeling had nothing to do with the vibrant, powerful emotions Jacob evoked in her.
She was making them breakfast with the eggs and a freshly baked loaf of bread that Lisa had packed for them in the hamper when he found her. She turned upon hearing his tread on the stairs, her heart in her throat.
He touched her almost immediately after he entered the galley, taking her into his arms and kissing her deeply. She was glad to realize that their newfound closeness and intimacy remained, despite her uncertainties and vague embarrassment about her emotional display last night. Maybe he sensed her uncommon shyness or some shared strain, and was determined to melt it. Knowing him, and his bullheaded determination to have nothing separate them physically, that was probably it. If so, it worked in spades, Harper realized dazedly a moment later when he lifted his head from their kiss, and she very reluctantly left his arms to finish making the eggs.
By some silent pact, neither of them spoke of what had happened last night under the stars. They spent a nice morning on the top deck basking in the bright sun. He read some files from his briefcase and Harper consumed a book Cyril had given to her about writing screenplays, her feet resting in his lap.
“Is it good?” Jacob asked a while later, nodding at the book she read, setting aside his file and grasping one of her feet instead, massaging the muscles deeply.
She sighed in pleasure and lowered the book. “It is. I’m excited to start writing.”
“Excited is good. Very good,” he murmured, his deep, mellow voice washing over her and prickling her nerves to life. “I have some of Cyril’s movies at the house. Do you want to watch a couple, when we get back?”
She nodded eagerly, warming as she saw that small smile she loved shaping his mouth before he picked up the report again. This time, even with his attention focused on his reading, he continued to massage her until she drifted off into a sun-warmed sleep.
* * *
They anchored the yacht at about two that afternoon. Harper was a little sad to leave the water and their temporary escape from the rest of the world. It’d been heaven being out there on the water, just the two of them.
When they returned to the mansion, Elizabeth stood at the top of the terrace, ready to greet them. So . . . Jacob’s faithful assistant had come back to his side. Harper wanted to ask Elizabeth about Regina Morrow’s well-being, but recognized it wasn’t her place. Harper could tell by the urgent, strained look Elizabeth gave Jacob even before they’d exchanged hellos that she wanted to confer with him privately.
“Why don’t you go up and shower and I’ll meet you upstairs in a minute?” Jacob asked Harper.
“Sure,” Harper replied, her smile assuring both Jacob and Elizabeth she was fine with that plan. In truth, she’d held on to a small hope that Jacob would tell Elizabeth that she could speak openly about Regina in front of Harper. That wasn’t the case, though, Harper acknowledged grimly as she went through the terrace doors. Apparently, there were still secrets regarding Regina that Jacob wasn’t ready for Harper to know.
But in all fairness, what Jacob had said in San Francisco in regard to Regina was true. Regina obviously had a lot of emotional and mental health issues. As a friend, Jacob couldn’t in good faith go around blabbing about her problems to someone like Harper, who was a stranger to Regina. But Jacob had also admitted Regina was a former lover, and that he cared for her deeply.
It’s only natural that the hush-hush, charged aura surrounding Regina Morrow bothers me a little.
Maybe because of her conflicting thoughts, she was overly sensitive about reading Jacob’s mood when he joined her in his suite a while later. If he seemed a little subdued at first, his preoccupation passed quickly enough.