“My God you’re incredible. You’re so responsive. So sexy. So beautiful. I want you.” He punctuated each statement with kisses against my neck, my jawline, my cheek and my lips.
I struggled to catch my breath, shaken by the intensity of my response to this man. I felt as though I was under a spell. This didn’t happen to me. I was always the cool and sensible one. I didn’t rush headlong into relationships, or orgasms, with men I had just met.
“What in the world are you doing to me?” I asked, with a feeling akin to panic rising quickly inside.
“I could ask you the same question,” he moaned.
I looked at him quizzically.
“Jennifer when you came into the bar last night, I felt an instant connection. I know that sounds like crazy talk but I’ve never experienced anything like that before. Some primal part of me recognized you as being mine and I wanted to claim you. Immediately. Completely.”
“As a feminist I should be offended and I don’t understand why I’m not,” I muttered, lightly biting my lip as I fought to make sense of my feelings.
“I know it isn’t rational. But it feels very real. I don’t want to scare you away. I know I’m getting way ahead of myself here. I can’t help kissing you and touching you. I love that I just gave you pleasure. Sweet Jesus, I think I now exist simply to give you pleasure. Watching you come was the most intense experience I’ve had in a very long time.”
“Jackson, I’m not the giddy girl type. I don’t lose my head over guys I meet in bars. I’m too practical and level headed for that.”
“Until me?” he asked, his sad eyes revealing that vulnerability, not cockiness, was behind the question.
“Until you,” I softly confirmed.
He pulled me close and hugged me tightly against him. “I believe we have the potential for something very special and rare. Let’s nurture it carefully,” his words felt like a promise.
I nodded, suddenly feeling emotional and raw.
“I want to throw you over my shoulder, find your bedroom and make love to you all night. Make no mistake, I want to fuck you too. Hard. Fast. Completely out of control. But let’s go to dinner first. Let’s talk and get to know each other better so that later we can make love and explore each other not as strangers, but as friends. If that is what we both want.”
My head was spinning. He was confident and bold and certain. I felt none of those things. I was definitely intrigued and physically attracted to this man. And I was possibly feeling a connection. Or maybe it was the realization that he had just given me the most intense orgasm of my life. And we weren’t even naked. “Dinner I can handle. Everything else, I’m not sure.”
He kissed me again, sweetly and reverently. “Let’s go feast then. I have a car waiting for us downstairs.”
He threaded his fingers through mine as we returned to the lobby and the waiting car. He rested his hand on my knee during the brief drive to the restaurant and kept glancing at me with a look of wonder. I was secretly pleased and relieved that he was feeling as unsettled as me. He wasn’t like anyone I had ever dated in the past. Most men had trouble being open and honest with their feelings. Jackson was so open and vulnerable that I was having trouble processing all that he was throwing at me in such a short span of time. I was looking forward to the evening ahead more than I could ever remember looking forward to a date, or anything, in the past.
************
The restaurant was intimate and understated with dimly lit booths offering privacy. I had expected Jackson to sit next to me in the booth but instead he sat across from me. My surprise must have registered on my face because he grinned sheepishly and by way of apology said, “If I sit next to you, I won’t be able to keep my hands off of you. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
“I appreciate the effort,” I said, smiling and blushing as our waiter filled our water glasses and rhymed off the daily specials.
“Tell me all about you,” Jackson softly commanded, pushing the menu aside after the waiter hurriedly walked away to attend to other customers.
“What would you like to know?” I asked, sipping my water.
“Start by telling me about your family, your friends and your job. I want to know where you were born and raised. Where you went to school. Men you’ve loved. I want to know everything. The important stuff. The little stuff. And everything in between.”
And so I gave him the condensed version of my life so far, interrupted now and then as we chose our wine and ordered our meals. I told him how my parents had died when I was a toddler in a boating accident and how my grandmother, a headstrong, compassionate woman, had raised me. I had adored her and losing her a few years ago had been the saddest, most difficult time of my life. I had no siblings or cousins. I was effectively alone in the world. Kate had been my best friend since undergrad school. I met Isobel through Kate. They were both the closest I had to family. Especially Kate. I filled him in on my undergrad and graduate programs and told him about my practice as a clinical psychologist. I confessed that there had been embarrassingly few men in my life so far. He reached for my hand when I told him about my parents and didn’t let go until our meals were placed in front of us. We traded questions and answers throughout the meal as he fed me bites of his ravioli and I returned the gesture by shyly offering him my risotto. He made me feel comfortable and his attention never wavered. I was getting a stronger sense that I really did like this man. I was developing a deeper appreciation for who he was and what he stood for. He told me about his passion for his company and I could hear the pride in his voice as he spoke of his team of employees. Like me, he had no close family but a handful of good friends. Our conversation was easy and I was pleasantly surprised by his dry sense of humor. I will admit that I also loved that he kept reaching for my hand across the table and especially the way his thumb circled my pulse at the base of my wrist. It was such an innocent gesture that was playing havoc with my libido. In addition to being outrageously handsome, Jackson Spencer was intelligent, charming and quite likeable. Time passed by so quickly that I was shocked when I glanced at my watch and realized it was after ten.