"No one is asking you to be in love with anyone. That is your choice."


A/N: I don't do gratuitous love scenes guys, and I swear I am not some sort of deviant by posting two PG-13 scenes back-to-back; (for the record this will be the last one for awhile!). This steamy scene is indeed plot related. At long last, the mystery man of Lana's that she was cheating on with Miles is revealed! For those of you who read Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman...recall WHY Ema was there at the bar in the first place? ;)


Chapter Forty-Four: I'll Be Right Here Waiting For You

Lana Skye and Prison Inmate
Detention Centre, Los Angeles

April 16, 2019

She walked into the trailer wearing a short black dress and thigh high boots. The outfit, along with her long silky hair, looked younger than her actual years, appearing to be in her late twenties. Her tight, sexually provocative clothing had been chosen to aid the illusion of youth.

But she wasn't young anymore. She was 32. Older. Wiser. More experienced. And as this would be her last time seeing him for a long time, she was going to draw upon all the experience to ensure it would be one neither of them would ever forget.

Pulling the strings to allow this special visit had been tough business. Lana had known it would be. After all, they weren't married – therefore, she and the inmate didn't really fall under the typically allowed realm for a conjugal visit.

However, there were some perks to having been a detective, and then chief prosecutor, none the least which included a mere two-year sentence for tampering with a murder scene, even if at the time her helpless intentions had been thought they were for a greater good. She'd done her hard time, and Lana Skye was now a free woman - even though she'd pretty much agreed to sell her soul to the devil in order to beget her freedom.

Her lover hadn't been as lucky. Despite being a former lawman, there would be no early parole for a man who had taken a cop's ID, assaulted a fellow officer, and stolen evidence.

She sat down on the bed in the trailer and closed her eyes, waiting.

She smelled him before seeing him.

The scent came from her right. She sniffed the air, breathing in the familiar aroma of tobacco and earthy patchouli. Looking up, she saw a tall man with midnight coffee brown eyes smiling down at her.

"I just wanted to stand here and admire you for a spell longer. Just take in the sexy as sin sight of you," he drawled, his lips curling up into a slow smile. "I'm enjoying it tremendously."

She rose and silently rubbed her body up against his. Her hip dug into his groin and she could feel the slight telltale swelling there already. She knew from experience how much promise that bulge held. She sniffed again. Sweet smelling. Smiling easily. No display of sadness, that this would be their last time seeing one another for ages. A mellow and amused expression, eyes dancing with unrepressed desire. Her inner goddess stretched inside her, urging her to take him, right then and now, and the hell with foreplay.

"Oh, really?" She raised one brow and wriggled against him again. The size of the ridge against her hip increased. Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun, she though, as she realized, from memory, that his more than adequate proportions weren't fully erect yet.

He nodded, his dark eyes gleaming as they raked over her from the top of her caramel head to the tips of her designer boots. "Of course, we'd both enjoy it a lot more naked in that bed," he told her candidly.

"You don't believe in wasting time, I see." She turned, deliberately rubbing against him, breast to chest. In her boots, she almost matched his height.

He quirked a dark brown brow at her. "And you do? You can't tell me that after all this time apart, you're not dying to be clawing to get me, bambina."

Lana began to smile. There had been a time when she'd been sick of being called a baby girl in Italian by a wannabe Texan who was really from California, but right now, after so long, the endearing term was like music to her ears. His body might have been apart from hers for some time, but he obviously still knew the details of how to rile her up intimately, regardless. Good. One less thing she'd have to retrain him on.

"You're a bold young thing, aren't you, cowboy?"

He laughed. "I'm not young anymore, bambina. Gonna be two score age in five years yonder."

He shifted his hips against her and the hard ridge of his erection bumped against her belly. Instinctively, she grinded against it.

"Like a fine wine, you've only improved with age, though am sure," she purred, reaching down and boldly stroking the front of his prison uniform pants. "But if you want, we can play student and teacher and you can pretend to be the bad little boy who didn't do his homework…"

His engaging smile widened.

"I'll be teacher's pet, I promise," he joked.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Not a bad game. Have you been bad today? Do you need a spanking?"

As the words fell from her lips, she could have kicked herself. This time was supposed to be about vanilla sex, not kinks or fetishes.

However, the handsome cowboy man just shrugged.

"I'd rather just take you. All that other crap isn't necessary for me. As you can tell, I'm pretty much good to go."

His eyes gleamed. One hand cupped the side of her face, the long elegant fingers sliding into her long hair. Angling his head toward hers, he dropped a quick kiss on her lips. An electric tingle went through Lana's body as she felt the heat rushing to the surface of her skin.

When he deepened the kiss, parting her lips with his tongue, she sighed into his mouth. His free hand slid over her hip and curved over her taut buttock. She rubbed herself against him again as his intoxicating scent grew stronger. Lifting her arms, she draped them over his broad shoulders, feeling the hard muscle and bone beneath his inmate shirt. He sucked on her tongue and heat pooled deliciously between her thighs. God, he was hot! She slid her hand up his orange-clad thigh and caressed him intimately. He responded instantly to her touch.

"I gather you're not much for chitchat right now." He sucked in a breath, his hand coming up to cup her bosom.

"Nope," she replied. Naturally reticent, whenever she was horny, as she was now, she was even less inclined to words. Only action of a sexual nature would calm the beast inside her. "Just looking for some amazing sex to send you off with. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"Well, just in case you feel the urge to shout my name later, I like it when you call me Jake," he said and grabbed her by the back of the head.

Shock rippled through Lana as he held her firmly. He kissed her deeply, ravaging her mouth with the kind of kiss she'd expect and gotten accustomed to from an Alpha like Miles, not a Beta like Jake Marshall. If his kiss hadn't completely overwhelmed her and made thinking next to impossible, she would have wondered if she had pegged him wrong all this time. Where his kiss had been leisurely before, now it burned hot and urgent, demanding a response from her rather than accepting what she doled out to him.

Abruptly, he let her go. Her chest heaved as she sucked in great gulps of air. Jake's eyes glinted enigmatically at her in the dim light trailer.

"Does it still surprise you I'm not the kind of mild-mannered man I used to be now, Lana? Or does the prison jumpsuit make you think I could no longer be that anyway? You gotta be more careful about judging a book by its cover," he growled.

She blinked. He looked at her with a feral light in his eyes. Ho-ly shit. She'd never misjudged an Alpha before. Of course, her familiarity with former policemen turned inmates was few and far between…She was starting to feel skittish. Two years in the clink…how much of her beloved Jake Marshall had been changed since?

Jake took her chin in his hand, forcing her to meet his gaze. His eyes were the color of espresso, rich with reddish brown flecks. She could feel the steely strength in his long elegant fingers.

"You're lucky after all this hard time, I'm still a nice guy. I promise not to give it to you harder than you can handle," he whispered, shocking her with his unexpected choice of words.

Her eyes widened a little. He smiled then, and the sunny, amusing persona he'd always displayed that she'd grown to love, the one that'd always whispered words of love and adoration to her all these years, snapped back into place.

"You are going to let me have my way with you, aren't you?" he asked as his fingers turned from steel to silk, sliding warmly across her skin.

Lana nodded. Several strands of her hair caught in the dark stubble that covered his jaw. His warm, masculine scent grew stronger and she realized his arousal intensified it. The more aroused he became, the stronger the scent grew. The sweet smell flooded her entire being, making her mouth water. She wondered what he tasted like now…

In a split second, the inner tigress within her roared to life. She pushed Jake against the back wall of the trailer and kissed him hard, her lips and tongue sucking urgently at his. The heat and depth of the kiss pushed her arousal up several notches. It had been a long time since a man had affected her so strongly, and never had one's scent overpowered her as Jake's did. Potent and distinctive, she would have been able to find him in a crowd of thousands. Definitely something to remember as she tried to savor the memories of this day.

Jake's hands slid up under the hem of her mini dress, his fingers digging into her bottom. She rubbed herself against him and he rewarded her with another growl. Pure sex emanated from the sound, with none of the male fierceness that had colored it previously. The sound skittered along her nerve endings, rousing her tremendous sexual appetite.

A wave of heat flooded through her. Jake's nostrils flared and she knew he was as ready as she was. Beneath her hand, his manhood had swollen to a satisfying proportion. The long thick ridge through his pants promised to fill her as no one had before. Size had never mattered to her, but then, she'd never had someone as big as Jake, ever.

When he turned toward her, she reached back and unzipped her dress, letting it fall to the floor.

Standing in front of Jake in her black silk thong and leather boots, a sense of empowerment filled her. Jake looked at her hand and arched one dark brow in amusement, almost as if he could read her thoughts. He casually pulled off his inmate shirt and tossed it on the floor.

Lana's eyes raked over the muscles of his arms and chest. He had a fine boned aristocratic caste to his build, with pale gold skin, a shade or two lighter than her own tan. The muscles of his arms, pecs, and shoulders were sculpted and well defined, but not bulky. His rock hard abs had classic six pack ridges. A fine dust of dark hair encircled each of his pale brown nipples… pale brown pierced nipples.

Her lips quirked in a smile. He really wasn't the hardened inmate he appeared to be, she thought as he bent and removed his shoes and socks. When he straightened, she briefly eyed his long narrow feet. Elegant like his hands. Her gaze shifted to those hands. They pulled down his pants pushing the material down his muscular thighs. He kicked the pants away and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers. With a practiced flick, the garment in question hit the floor and he kicked them in the same direction as the jeans.

"Will I do?" he asked, as her eyes wandered his hard body. Dark hair arrowed from his navel to his groin. She saw that he'd somehow kept himself man-scaped. It'd been so long she'd nearly forgotten how well-endowed he was. Her mouth watered at the sight of him.

"I believe you will." Desire turned her voice husky. "Tell me, you still wanna go for a ride, cowboy?"

Jake smiled angelically. "For now, yes. I'm ready whenever you are, bambina."

As his voice trailed away, Lana bent over and unzipped her boots. She could feel Jake's eyes on her body, as if he touched her. The weight of his gaze made her rush and she kicked the expensive designer footwear off, something she never did. She lifted her head, her eyes holding his as she shimmied out of the black silk thong.

Her insides churned, knowing that the tension they shared would soon be released. Lana walked over to the bed and ripped the covers back. Lying on the sheets, her inviting smile visible even in the low light.

If you want it, come and get it, big boy. Standing there staring doesn't do either of us any good.

Jake's eyes jerked to hers and for a split second she had the weird sense that he had heard her thoughts. But then he flashed a seductive smile that widened as he started toward her.

"You're as beautiful as I remember, bambina," he said softly, his tone filled with satisfaction.

When he reached the side of the bed, his long fingers trailed over her knee and up the inside of her thigh. Her heart thundered in her chest, her breathing harsh.

Jake leaned over her, his hands denting the mattress on either side of her hips as he sat on the edge of the bed. "How much foreplay do you want, bambina? Because as far as I'm concerned, kissing those full succulent lips while you grinded me for a spell was all I needed."

Lana licked her lips, watching as Jake's eyes darkened even more. "I don't need any more teasing. Just take me hard and fast before I explode from looking at you."

She didn't know what to expect, but what happened next still surprised her. With an economy of movement that made it all seem like a single smooth move, Jake reached out, flipped her onto her belly, drew her back against him, and swiftly took her. Pleasure ripped through her in a great wave. She had no idea how he remembered what she liked. He'd certainly never before been a rough lover before.

He jerked her up off her hands, his chest cradling and supporting her torso. His hips stilled as his hands swept over her body, finding all the places she most liked to be touched. When she moaned uncontrollably, he licked her neck and she shivered. The most incredible sensations overcame her body when his tongue stroked over her skin as he moved with her.

"Come, bambina, you're almost there," he growled. "Finish for me…I know you can…"

"Not yet," she gasped. "I want you to be there with me…"

Jake chuckled but his tempo didn't lessen. He gave her exactly what she'd asked for. She shuddered and gasped for air, her heart racing thunderously. His tongue licked at her neck as his movements grew more frantic. His teeth nipped the back of her neck as his hands tightened on her thighs.

Heat flooded her veins. Shivers of pleasure racked her body. Her release crested and she cried out, tossing her head just as with a muffled cry, feeling her spasms, Jake joined her over the edge. Shaking uncontrollably, her arms gave out and her face landed on the sheet. She moaned at the feel of his flesh separating from hers. Jake flopped onto his back beside her and her knees gave out, her lower body sprawling bonelessly on the bed. They looked at each other, both of them gasping for air. Then Jake reached out and brushed a lock of hair off her face.

"I'll give you fifteen minutes to recover. Then I'm good to go again, bambina."

Lana's eyes popped open in astonishment. She didn't know what astonished her more, the fact that he would be ready again so soon or the way he took control. Her lips curved in a grin.

"I worked something out with the boys. They've given us a few good hours to do nothing but just wildly hump like bunnies," she told him, still trying to catch her breath.

"Well, I'm good at it and I like to do it for hours. After all, this had to tide me over for a long time, ain't that right?" His dark eyes twinkled at her. "Unless you're sending me away now that you've had your way with me already."

Although he hadn't framed his words as a question, she shook her head anyway.

"I don't think I can send you away. At least, not until I'm worn out and can't walk," she replied, her own smile growing as approval flashed across his face.

"Good." He leaned over and kissed her hard. "Because if you can't walk away, then maybe you won't run away screaming when I say this to you." He took her face in his hands and looked earnestly into her eyes. "I love you Lana Skye. Always have. Always will. Wait for me, bambina. Marry me."

Her mind reeled with shock. In spite of everything that had happened, he still loved her? He wanted to marry her?

Up until she'd been incarcerated, the whole world, from Miles to her own baby sister, had accused her of being an unfeeling bitch, it stung. Those words from people she had cared for struck deeply into emotions she struggled daily to control. To survive the pain, she'd retreated into the cold bitch persona she'd been accused of.

Now, that same self-preservation kept the lid on her emotions, when she looked at Jake. The core of her knew she loved him, and that ultimately, she wanted to be with him. But the icy bitch who'd taken control of her all those years ago still refused to let go. The bitch coolly surveyed Jake, wondering how she was expected to accept a marriage proposal from cowboy-obsessed former patrol officer turned convict who was sure to remain in the slammer for at least another seven years. She snarkily thought that all her life, she'd dreamed of being proposed to, never dreaming it would be in a conjugal trailer, without even a ring or sign of parole in sight.

Inside her, behind the icy bitch, the real Lana gazed at Jake's beautiful face and wished her life was different.