He brought his head down to between her breasts and inhaled there, her true smell even stronger. It made his head dizzy. It made him want to thrust and take.
He let his instincts lead him then, he couldn’t help it. He removed her clothes, needy to know her, to smell her every secret place, to have her. He didn’t want her to keep secrets from him. He wanted to know them all. To take, and then take more and more and more. To feed himself until he was finally full and then sleep and feed himself some more. On her. Animal instincts, he reminded himself. I might scare her. Woman is sacred, he whispered in his mind, the quote from the notes her mother had written about the book he hadn’t yet read.
Sacred. Something that was a treasure. To him, she was. And he was still hungry for her. He didn’t know how to balance the two sides of himself. Not when she was lying beneath him, making sweet sounds and running her fingers over his arms, through his hair.
“Jak, yes,” she moaned when he removed her boots and then her jeans, sliding them down her legs and tossing them on the floor. He came over her again and her eyes showed a flash of fear then. He hesitated, trembling. Please don’t make me stop. But she reached for him, bringing him back to her.
He moved down her body, sniffing all the places he wanted to know, going back over her belly when she gasped. He licked her skin, tasting the sweet and the salt, nipping at it lightly so her backside came up off his bed.
He could smell the place between her legs, and the scent of it so close to his nose made him growl from the pleasure—pain—of the way his body swelled and hardened like he’d never experienced before. He ran his nose over the womanly mound beneath the cloth of her underpants and she gripped his hair in her hands, tugging. The need to smell her there was a hunger he could not ignore and with one quick movement, he brought the material down her legs and tossed them on the floor.
He nuzzled her with his nose and his mouth, inhaling, learning her scent so it became a part of him, and she jerked when his nose rubbed the spot below her mound.
She smelled like life, like sweet water, like fertile earth, and perfectly ripened berries that would take away the pain of hunger. Her woman scent was the beginning of everything and the place where he wanted to draw his final breath. She was meant for him, he knew that now. No other woman. Only her.
He paused, the fog clearing enough that he could focus on her sounds, the way she gripped his hair, and raised herself to meet his face. He moved more slowly, going lower, breathing her, his tongue darting out to taste her, to lick her sweetness. Mine, mine, mine, the whispers sang low and old like time and earth. She made a sound deep in her throat and gripped his hair more tightly, and so he lapped her again. Again. Again. He loved the way she tasted. It spoke to both sides of him—both the animal and the man. For that minute, it made him believe he could be both, that he didn’t have to choose which part of himself to turn away.
Her whimpers grew louder and closer together until finally she screamed his name, her thighs clenching around his head and then loosening slowly, her hands letting go of his hair.
He knew what had happened because it’d happened to him, that explosion of pleasure that made his skin prickle and stars burst inside his mind. And he’d made that happen to her. He felt proud. He grinned against her thigh, rubbing his lips across her silky skin.
She pulled on him and he moved up her body, lying next to her on the bed. She turned, her eyes half lowered and a small, happy smile on her lips. She pushed his shirt up and he removed it, tossing it on the floor, holding his breath. She ran a hand over his hair and down his face. She brought her mouth to his and kissed him slowly and for several minutes there was nothing but her lips, her tongue, the blood pumping hotly through his body, the snap of the dying fire, and the lowering light of the cabin as the sun moved somewhere else in the sky. Her warm skin was pressed to his and Jak had never felt anything better. Never.
Without taking her mouth from his, she unbuttoned his jeans, and slid her hand inside, gripping him, rubbing him. He groaned, his lips breaking from hers as he opened his eyes. She was watching him and for a minute, their gazes stared as her hand kept moving. It was almost too much, too much . . . closeness when he’d had none, too much pleasure when he’d only ever given it to himself. Too much, too much. He couldn’t believe this was real. He thought it must be a dream. Please don’t end. Please don’t end. He broke their gaze, squeezing his eyes shut as she kept stroking him, up, down until he jerked and shuddered, pleasure bursting over him like he was one of a thousand falling stars, streaking toward the earth below. But he wanted to fall, because when he opened his eyes, she was waiting.
His breath slowed, the world coming back together in small pieces, the crackle of fire, the light, the cold wetness of his pleasure, the feel of Harper’s hand moving up his stomach. He opened his eyes and she smiled at him, kissing him once, softly, quickly.
They’d mated . . . but they hadn’t. He knew they had not done the thing the animals did when they mounted and thrust. The way he’d thrust into his own hand when he thought about mating with a woman he wanted to call his own.
“What?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”
For a minute he wasn’t sure he could speak, so taken over by what they’d done, by the way they were still lying together, her mostly naked, her hand moving over the scars on his chest. “Do humans . . . mate in all kinds of different ways?”
She smiled, a sweet one, her hand moving to another scar, her finger going along it. “Yes, I suppose so. It’s not called mating for humans though. It’s called sex. Or making love. There are different terms too, but those are the best ones to start with, I think.” Then her smile turned to a frown, when her finger moved to the part of the scar on his ribs that the wild pig had made. He didn’t want her thinking about him fighting with wild pigs right then—or ever actually—and so he turned a little so her finger fell away from that scar. Her gaze met his and she said, “We didn’t make love though. That’s”—her eyes moved to the side and then back to his—“different. It’s when—”
“It’s when a male mounts a female and thrusts inside her.” He paused for a moment. He wondered if she wanted to do that, but wasn’t sure he should ask. He wanted to. He could feel his body hardening just thinking about it. That had never happened to him before—getting hard right after he felt the rush of pleasure that made his seed burst from his body.
“Yes, that’s right.” A blush moved up her neck, and it confused him after what they’d just done. I said things the wrong way, that’s why, he thought and felt a little bad, but that feeling wasn’t as strong as the happiness he felt at having her in his arms, of whispering to each other as her hands ran over his skin. “We didn’t make love, but we touched each other intimately, and that’s a very special thing. To me, it is anyway.” She looked down, so he couldn’t see her eyes and that blush that had moved up her neck, stayed in her cheeks now. He couldn’t understand why she was acting shy talking about it, when they’d just done it. That seemed . . . backward. Another rule he’d have to figure out.
“It’s special to me too,” he said. “I want to do it again with you. And . . . again.”
She laughed, a happy sound, her eyes shining as she met his gaze. “Me too. But first, feed me, Jak. I’ve worked up an appetite.”
He grinned. He could do that. He could feed her. Nothing would bring him more happiness.
**********
They spent the day taking turns reading aloud from The Count of Monte Cristo. Jak read slowly, carefully, and would halt when he came to a word he didn’t know, his eyes moving over it several times before he’d attempt to say it out loud. Nine times out of ten, he’d say it correctly the first time. He’s smart, Harper thought over and over. More than smart. If he ventured into the world, he would adeptly figure out modern-day society in a matter of weeks. As they read, he brought up questions that were both sophisticated—considering how he’d lived—and extremely insightful. He was a complete dichotomy—wild and sensitive, uneducated and astute, and he fascinated her to no end.
Her skin flushed when she thought about what they’d done, the lust that had taken over when they’d kissed in a way lust had never controlled her before. Since she’d graduated from high school, she’d had this idea that experiencing sex with partners of her choosing, and then controlling those relationships, was the key to her healing. She’d take back her power, she thought. And yet . . . she’d always felt . . . removed from her partners. Emotionally disappointed in the aftermath. As alone as ever. So, for the last couple of years, she’d abandoned sex entirely. She knew why she had sexual hang-ups, of course, but the knowing had never altered her reaction to a man touching her. Until now.
Something about it had felt so . . . decadent. It was funny that that particular word would come to mind in a sparse wood cabin in the middle of the forest, not a scrap of luxury to be found. But yes, that description felt right. Lying there with him, touching each other’s skin in the golden light of afternoon had felt like the most decadent thing she’d ever experienced. Their bodies were decadent, she realized. They were made to feel that way. It was a revelation.
She liked his uninhibited joy at touching her. She liked his frank questions. They aroused her. Excited her.
Jak was obviously inexperienced, but there was something amazingly erotic about watching him follow his instincts when it came to sex, to touching her body, to taking pleasure for himself. I could fall in love with this man, she thought, but pushed the notion aside. There were too many questions, too many uncertainties when it came to how a relationship with him might work. And somehow it felt . . . unfair to think too much about her own desires when it came to him. He had lived a life of strife and struggle, and he had so many more—albeit of a different kind—in front of him. It was going to be challenging, to say the least, to learn the many things his life thus far had not taught him.
But for the moment, those were topics too vast and removed to think about. For right then, there was Jak,