Page 108 of Drive
Her lips were near his ear. “I’m not on the pill,” shepanted.
Jacques froze. He swallowed and nodded. Condom. He had to find acondom.
“My wallet,” he muttered, pushing himself off her. Where was his damnwallet?
“Jacques…” He heard her draw a deep breath as he picked up his jeans. “…pleasehurry.”
He nodded again like a man convulsing. The front pockets were empty. The back pockets — curse them — wereempty.
“Damn,” he hissed, dropping the disappointingjeans.
“Jacques—”Her cry seemed to light each nerve in his body like a fuse. Her eyes were closed, and she wore a small frown on her lovely, flushed face. Where was his fuckingwallet?
And then he spotted his wet jeans in a heap at the foot of the bed. He picked up the sodden garment, groped around until he found the leather rectangle in the back pocket, and yanked itfree.
“It’s beensix years,”she whimpered. He felt those words — and the plaintive tone — deep in his core. His fingers prized the condom from his damp wallet, which he let drop to the floor. As he leveraged back onto the bed, he tore open the packet, and then he was there between her legs again. Right where he needed tobe.
Her eyes flew open and held his. “It’s been a lifetime.” The words were just a whisper, but they might as well have been a shout from heaven. Because as she said them, Jacques heard both the words and thesense.
It had been a lifetime. She had waited a lifetime to be loved. Just as hehad.
Just as hehad.
And in that moment, Jacques knew hispurpose.
He hovered over Rainey, smiling down at her. “For me too.” Jacques brushed his lips against hers. “For me too,love.”
In one, fluid movement, he thrust inside her to thehilt.
Rainey’s lips parted. “Oh,God…”
For the span of four heartbeats, they held perfectly still, their eyes locked on each other. The sweet torture of her body, her heat contracting around him, her thighs pressing into his hips, made him afraid even to move, but the look in hereyes…
He could have sworn on his life that her eyes spoke the words he so desperately wanted tosay.
Her mouth closed and opened as if she wanted to tell him a sacred truth. And then she closed her eyes with the slightest frown, and before he could press her to speak, she rolled her hips and called his name. “Jacques.”
And the world tipped off its axis and rolled like a marble down a flight of stairs. His hips obeyed hers like heavenly bodies obey gravity, his motions as precise, as irrefutable as the laws of physics. When she wrapped her legs around him and lifted her hips, he drove them higher on the bed, his own body straining to claim more of her before their fallingceased.
“Rainey,” he echoed with her name, knowing for him that it was code, a symbol that now meant love. Love.Love.
His mind was swept clean of anything else. All that remained was the increasing rhythm of their bodies, the mounting ascension of her cries, and the blinding radiance of bliss that overtookhim.
And all of it meantlove.
* * *
Minutes passed.Perhaps even hours. The only sound in the room was their recovering breath and the sparking embers of the dying fire. When Jacques came to his senses, he rolled them over so Rainey lay on top of him, knowing he had to be crushing her with his spentweight.
And when he did, she gripped his shoulders, resting her cheek on his chest as though she were loath to let him go. Jacques smiled in the gathering darkness of the room. He tightened his arms aroundher.
There would be no lettinggo.
He dragged his fingertips delicately down her back and watched as goose bumps broke out over herarm.
“Are youcold?”
She tilted her chin up so her eyes met his, and she shook her head. The sight of Rainey, naked and gazing up at him from his bare chest was just about the sweetest in the world. His grin wasirrepressible.
