Secret Love - Brenda Jackson [37]
“Who is it?”
“Jake.”
It seemed that her entire body suddenly became ultrasensitive to the sound of his voice. Diamond’s hands trembled, and whispers of nervousness vibrated through every part of her body as she undid the latch and opened the door.
She could barely catch her breath when she saw him standing silhouetted under the dim light on the porch. For a long time, she stayed perfectly still and just looked at him, realizing how much she had missed him during the last five days.
Diamond wasn’t the only one mesmerized. Jake suddenly was hit with a strange disoriented feeling when he saw Diamond, thinking she was even more beautiful than he last remembered. He tried not to notice how perfect her body looked dressed in a short silk nightshirt, or the look of her glossy hair that was spread sensuously around her shoulders. He tried to ignore the scent of her that was like an aphrodisiac. The fragrance gave him one huge galloping high as blood rushed fiercely to his brain, destroying any sane thoughts he may have had when he’d first arrived.
He smiled, and her responsive smile was automatic. She still had that smile, he thought. It was the one that made him want to kiss it right off her lips. His pulse began escalating from the way his thoughts were going.
“So, how have you been?” he asked in an attempt to break the awkward silence surrounding them. He didn’t know about hers, but his heart was beating in overdrive. The part of him that was trying hard to dominate was instinctively male.
“Fine. What about you?” Diamond asked, noting her voice was a little shaky. As far as she was concerned the man standing before her represented the essence of everything male, starting with the Stetson covering his head, down past the whiskered roughness of his chin to the boots he wore on his feet and the snug-fitting jeans in between. He was the epitome of man.
Jake crossed his arms over his chest and casually leaned against the door’s opening, nearly taking up the entire space. “If you must know, ma’am,” he drawled, still watching her closely, “I haven’t been doing so hot. But thanks for asking.”
Diamond’s smile widened as she remembered another time he had said those very words to her. “Would you like to come in, Jacob?”
He looked at her. “That would be nice.”
It would be more than nice, Diamond thought as she stepped aside to let him enter. It would be downright pleasurable.
As soon as he was inside the cabin he turned to her. “I missed you,” he said slowly, dispensing with small talk. He reached out and captured her face in the palm of his hand. “And I want you. There’s this chemistry between us, this heat. It’s been there from the first. Feel it?”
Diamond nodded, acknowledging his words to be true.
“It makes me want to taste you every chance I get and want to be inside of you every chance I can.”
Diamond was unprepared for the shiver of pure pleasure that ran through her with his words. Looking up into his face, her fingers shook as she reached up and took the Stetson from his head and placed it on hers. Removing the hat exposed his eyes, dark, intense and filled with red-hot desire.
Jake glanced up at his Stetson on Diamond’s head. His hat had always been his private and personal possession. It was something he didn’t share. It was a part of who he was and what he represented. From the time he was a kid he’d been told that a cowboy’s boots and hat were an ingrained part of his being, his inner person. They were the very core of what a cowboy represented—ruggedness, able-bodiedness and strength. In earlier days, it was an honor for a cowboy to die with his boots and hat on. For the first time, he not only felt those same things about his hat, but also shared those same feelings with a woman. This woman. What he was sharing with Diamond was private and personal. And tonight for a little while, she would be his to possess and not to be shared.
He leaned down and covered her mouth with his, claiming her, possessing her. As expected, the desire that sparkled between them blazed