A/N: 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 a 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 many promises 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 thought, 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.
"And you do?"He quirked a dark brown brow at her. You can't tell me that after all this time apart, you're not dying to be clawing to get at my man-meat, Bambina."
Lana smiled coyly. 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 let out a throaty chuckle.
"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 ground 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 merely shrugged.
"I'd rather just nail you six ways to Sunday. 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 to his orange-clad thigh and squeezed it intimately. He responded instantly to her touch.
He sucked in a breath.
"I gather you're not much for chitchat right now."
"Nope," she replied. Naturally reticent, whenever she was horny, as she was now, she was even less inclined to words. The only action of a sexual nature would calm the beast inside her. "Just looking for some amazing sex to send you off with, cowboy. 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 that I used to be now, Lana?" He growled. "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,"
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 were 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?
The former detective 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," he whispered, shocking her with his unexpected choice of words. "And that all I want is to pound you until your knees blow out and that sweet box of yours turns into rubber."
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 give it to you until you can't see straight, 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 internal 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. It was 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.
When he turned toward her, she reached back and unzipped her dress, letting it fall to the floor...
SORRY FOLKS!
Due to FF site content restrictions, the rest of this scene has been cut. The full version, along with the entire uncut version of this story, can be found on thejordanphoenix dot com
See you there!
And for those of you still here, we now return to the family-friendly ending of this chapter:
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 gasping for air. Then he reached out and brushed a lock of hair off her face.
"I'll give you fifteen minutes to recover. Then I'm pounding that lady garden again after I lick it into submission."
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," she told him, still trying to catch her breath. "They've given us a few good hours to do nothing but just screw each other's brains out."
"Well, I'm good at it and I like to do it for hours. After all, this needs 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 seen your own fireworks."
Although he hadn't framed his words as a question, she shook her head anyway.
"I don't think I can send you away," she replied, her own smile growing as approval flashed across his face. "At least, not until I'm worn out and can't walk,"
"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."
You have the opportunity to free-fall at this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the non-threatening openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love. No one is asking you to be in love with anyone. That is your choice.
The sudden tenderness in his cadence made her heart flutter with anticipation.
"I love you, Lana Skye. Always have. Always will." He took her face in his hands and stared earnestly into her eyes. "Wait for me, Bambina. Marry me."
Her mind reeled with shock. Despite everything that had happened, he still loved her? He actually wanted to marry her?
Up until she'd been incarcerated, the whole world, from Miles to her 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 the sexy ruffian who'd once captured her heart. The core of her knew she loved him, and that ultimately, she wanted to be with him.
Maybe we are too different but the sun and the moon can still love each other why can't we? Since love is the bridge between hearts, going beyond the mind is the key to authentic relationships.
Nevertheless, 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 within sight.
Inside her, behind the icy bitch, the real Lana Skye gazed at Jake Marshall's beautiful face and wished with all her heart that her life was different.
Mood music from this chapter - full video and lyrics on thejordanphoenix dot com:
Richard Marx – Right Here Waiting
February 14, 2022: This story is now being uploaded to be more family-friendly as the previous version was removed for being too steamy and setting off the site smoke alarms, and for having song lyrics. No harm, no foul. Seriously, I'm not worried - who the heck only reads a story for song lyrics and like, TEN chapters of canoodling out of 196? That's grossly underestimating my amazing and loyal readers, wouldn't you agree?
In the meantime, as I go through the painstaking task of ensuring my new version complies with regulations per the admin's advising, the full uncut version of Turnabout Everlasting, and Filling The Void (the other far too sexy for this site previous casualty, which I've started reposting in a less risqué format) plus all 100+ chapters of Singing In The Courtroom can be found on THEJORDANPHOENIX dot com
All 196 chapters are now on my personal site and going forward, I will be posting there first when I write new chapters, so make sure to follow me for the latest updates and direct music video links! (I am still taking reader song requests, BTW) 😄