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Tea just smirked. Drew a single fingernail along the ridge of my cock outlined by the taut, stretched fabric. "I thought I'd let my hands do the talking."

I swallowed hard, holding her gaze. "As long as you understand that I'm gonna go fucking crazy, wanting to do stuff back when I can't because it literally hurts too much."

Tea teased my length again. "When you can, I give you my word that I'll let you make up for it." She nuzzled my lips with hers. "As long as you understand that I'm not gonna keep score, so there's not gonna be anything to make up for.”

My heart was an erratic symphony of mad thunder in my chest, even as my breath caught in my throat and my cock throbbed. "Okay, then."

She grinned, and it didn't just light her up; it fucking illuminated her from the inside out. "Okay then. Let's see if I remember what to do."

Chapter 12

Tea

I was nowhere near as confident as I may have sounded. Excited? Yes. Afire with a sexual heat so intense it was nearly unbearable? Also yes. Nervy as fuck? Yup. Irrationally scared I’d do something stupid? Yes. I mean, this stuff is natural, right? You can't, like, forget how to touch a man.

Can you?

No, that’s ridiculous. It's only been a year and a half, not, like, decades. Stop being absurd.

Yet my pulse thrummed in my veins, my blood superheated and pulsing frantically in the closed loop of my circulatory system. My naked breasts ached, my nipples hard and sensitive in the cool air. My core was damp, and my belly tight.

I closed my eyes and let out a shaky breath.

"Tea," Jax started, his tone warm with concern.

I pushed at the rough, thick denim of his jeans near his hip. "You're wearing too many clothes."

He winced as he wiggled out of the jeans, leaving him, like me, in nothing but underwear.

And my fucking god, he was one hell of a fine-ass man. I just looked for a moment. Broad shoulders and a thick chest heavy with muscle, wide lats tapering to a tight waist, and a blocky set of abs carved in high-relief. Those thighs. The man didn't skip leg day. In fact, looking at his thighs, it kinda seemed like every day was leg day. Hot as fuck. Thick thighs save lives, and as I believe I mentioned, I happen to find thick thighs and a taut, hard, juicy bubble butt hot as fuck.

Jax was lying down, but the sheer girth of his thighs led me to what felt like a pretty safe assumption that he had some serious cake.

My stomach flipped, heat billowing through me, especially as my gaze raked to his groin. The bulge there was huge, a thick, wide ridge encased in stretchy black fabric, the head outlined clearly.

It's been a long time since I've been intimate with a man. Obviously, Luke was my last, but the last time we'd found the time and privacy to be intimate together had been a few weeks before that fateful op. And that had been quick and rough, standing up with my back to the wall of a corrugated steel Quonset hut, partially hidden by stacks of discarded tires and drums of old oil. Not sexy or romantic in the slightest, but that was a case of beggars not being choosers.

I felt a sharp twinge of pain at the memory, because Luke was gone and was never coming back, and I'd loved him, in a fucked-up kind of way. But I also knew Luke well enough to know that if he could give me a message from the grave, he'd tell me to let him go and focus on now.

"Quit thinkin' about my dead ass, Tay," he'd say in his rough voice and street kid patois. "That man is real. I ain't. Not any-fuckin'-more. If you wanna honor me, then do what I'd do: go getcha some, girl. You know you fuckin' want it, and I'm beyond giving any fucks."

The ghost of 2nd Lt. Luke Palmer faded, nebulized. He'd always be with me, and I'd always miss him, always mourn him. He was my first love, after all, forged in a period of my life I could never, ever forget, even if I sometimes wished I could.

My eyes snapped open, and I saw Jax watching me with hawkish intensity. "Where'd you go?" he asked.

I rolled a shoulder, shook my head, leaned down, and kissed him. "Just…saying goodbye, in a way."

He didn't have to ask. "Tea," he whispered.

I shook my head again and covered his mouth with my fingertips. "I'm okay. Promise. There's nothing you need to say or do. I'm good." I kissed him again. "I'm exactly where I want to be, doing what I want to be doing with the person I want to be doing it with."

He kissed my fingers. "Okay," he whispered. "Long as you're sure and not, like, pushing yourself because you think you have to be more over things than you are."

My thoughts went in a billion directions at this. "I'm not," I said. "No more than you are, at least."

"Fair."

I traced the outlines of his abs with my index finger, but my gaze was on his manhood, straining against the confines of his boxer briefs, curved and angled away from center in a way that looked uncomfortable as hell.