Jake (California Dreamy) - By Rian Kelley Page 0,47

start young.”

“Don’t you think you’ve matured some over the years?” she challenged and her tone was becoming not a little antagonistic.

“What’s the problem, exactly, Ivy? Am I not pleasing you?”

“No, you’re not.”

And that sank into his jugular. He actually felt the blood drain from his head.

“Not today,” he agreed. “But I intend to fix that.”

“I’m not talking sexually, Jake.”

“The hell we aren’t.”

“Well, we are, but I’m going a little deeper here. You want to explore the possibility of a relationship between us,” she reminded him. “You’ve pointed out how well we communicate, and I agree, we’re really good at it. So why throw up road blocks here? Why don’t you just tell me what you’re afraid of? Is it the physical aspect of getting that close to me? Or is it the intimacy itself?”

His body stilled. He felt caught but refused to examine it too closely. For him, it was always about safety—but what if she was right, and it was about keeping his distance? He turned the tables on her, remembering her hesitancy, her insistence on regarding them as an affair and nothing more. “Since we’re talking about intimacy,” he began, “why don’t you tell me what you’re afraid of, Ivy? Why insist we’re sex only? ”

She froze, her eyes shifted from his face and she shrugged uneasily.

“Now who’s not trusting?”

“I was afraid you’d hit me,” she admitted, and lifted her gaze. Her eyes blazed with the effort of meeting his challenge. “I know you won’t, because I know you better now. But that’s the fear that goes through my head whenever a guy catches my interest.”

He ignored the guy part, because that was definitely past tense as far as he was concerned, but he latched onto the violence and he felt sick.

“Did your ex-husband hit you, Ivy?”

She maintained eye contact and nodded. “He beat me.”

More than once then. Jake felt everything inside him tighten, like his whole body was clenching into a fist. His sweet, lovely Ivy.

“Not me,” he said. “I will never harm you.”

“I know. I trust you,” she emphasized.

“This is different. I’m a big man, Ivy. If I let all that loose on you, I couldn’t promise you I wouldn’t hurt you. And it would kill me if I did. I won’t risk it.”

“Have you ever surrendered control to a woman, Jake?”

He shook his head. “And just a few minutes ago was the closet I’ve ever come.” It was like fading out. Like falling into that final dip on a roller coaster. Everything except climaxing had become unimportant to him. Almost. “It’s selfish and irresponsible.”

She stroked a finger down his chest, turning a dog tag. Jacob L. Emerson. He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips.

“I think you’re afraid of intimacy,” she asserted. “I think that’s what’s holding you back.”

“Control isn’t always about a fear of intimacy.” But her words resonated inside him.

“I know that. But this time--" She lifted her shoulders again, in a gesture that was more sadness than agitation “—that’s what it feels like.”

“We have to be clear on this, Ivy,” he pressed, pinning her gaze. “Are you going to be okay with that? If I never completely give you control?”

“I don’t know.”

And he heard the doubt in her voice and watched it shadow her eyes.

Chapter Fifteen

Jake didn’t give her long to think about it. Sometimes you had to show a woman how much she meant to you, and Jake could do that. He sat up and smoothed her hair back from her face. A small frown drew her brows together and Jake saw to that next, opening his mouth over the puckered skin and laving a kiss there.

“You’re trying to change the subject,” she accused, but her hands curled around his hips and she leaned into him.

“I’m showing you what I can give to you,” he said. “Maybe you’ll see it’s enough.”

“That’s not the issue,” she returned. “It’s what you’ll let me do for you.”

It was a matter of confidence, maybe, which Jake was beginning to understand in new terms, following her revelation about her relationship with her ex-husband. Or maybe it was a mix of both—it almost always was—and he had some adjusting to do even if he had no idea how he’d get to that place of surrender where Ivy waited for him. Just the thought made him break out in a cold sweat.

“Then really look at me, Ivy,” he instructed. “When you’re touching me. When I’m buried deep inside you. When you’re coming and breaking apart and