61:Crossing Over

[6:32 PM]CHIARA: He’s ok.  More later.

[6:34 PM]JON: Excellent

[7:21 PM]CHIARA: They’re keeping him tonight. 

[7:22 PM]JON: You staying?

[7:25 PM]CHIARA: Not sure.  Waiting to see how he’s going to do.

[9:13 PM]JON: Still ok?

[9:15 PM]CHIARA: Yes. 

[9:16 PM]JON: K. Call if you need something.

Jon slid the phone onto the hotel coffee table as a news channels droned in the background.  Idle time wasn’t something he enjoyed, and he’d been sitting in this room for the last three hours with nothing but a loaner guitar, a bottle of wine and the television for company. 

Unless he counted the call from Lilah just after he arrived at the hotel, but that wasn’t what one would call company so much as aggravation.  God, what had possessed him admitting knowledge of Caleb’s situation and indirectly confirming that he’d been in touch with Chiara since the Hamptons?  He might’ve nailed his own coffin shut with that slip of the tongue.

The only thing he could do was trust that his sister-in-law would keep her word to cease and desist with the meddling in his personal life.  The more likely scenario involved her ramping up the meddling, but there was nothing to be done about it now.  As long as she didn’t find out about the counselor’s husband, he was going to forget about it and move on. 

Then again, maybe Lilah knowing about Owen wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  One more person on the counselor’s ass might motivate her to push ahead with that divorce.  It was worthy of consideration if this thing between him and the counselor continued its current course, anyway, and he was actually contemplating Lilah’s suggestion about bringing Chiara to Matt’s party.

You’re getting in too deep with a woman who hasn’t been honest with you. 

That wasn’t exactly a startling revelation, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.  He liked her spunk, her love for those boys, the way she played with his nieces, her surprising soft spot for a homeless woman, her fucking dog and even the sparks that flew when they argued.  Oh yeah, and the sex.  He couldn’t forget the sex that made him hotter than his first subscription to Playboy Magazine.

If only he knew what the hell she was thinking. 

Or if she was going to screw him over again, in a much more personal way this time.

The knock on the door coincided with his decision to order another bottle of room service.  As he went to answer it wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, Jon fleetingly wondered if he was catching Lilah’s psychic shit.  

A quick check of the peep hole told him that he was most certainly not psychic.

“Do I have to call if I need something?  Can I just show up?” Fatigue etched deep lines around the counselor’s mouth and emphasized faint crow’s feet, but it didn’t stop her from smiling with a genuineness that twinkled from within. 

“I guess.”  The blasé assent was softened by a wink, and Jon stood back to allow her entry so that she could deposit the overnight bag and purse on a chair.  Tired or not, she looked more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt than in the dress and heels she was wearing when he last saw her. 

“I told you once how fatigue makes me either quiet or blunt.”

There was a good six feet between them as he stood by the door with the crooks of both hands hooked on his hips, and she remained next to her bags.  He had the strangest urge to gap the distance for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.

“Yeah.”

“I’m going with blunt this time,” she informed him flatly, crossing her arms in a pose that he’d come to recognize could indicate self-protection as easily as defiance.  “It’s not ‘something’ I need, it’s someone.  You.  Hug me or fuck me.  I don’t care which as long as I can hold onto you.”

So much for wondering what she was thinking. 

As his bare feet ate up the carpet that separated them, Jon wasn’t really concerned with what anybody thought.  Her son was in the hospital, and if at the end of a grueling day, Chiara thought it was him she needed, then that’s what she’d get. 

He was little more than a breath away when his arms opened and she stepped inside them without hesitation.  Her nose buried in the crook of his neck as arms of delicate steel enclosed his rib cage to cling with equal parts determination and desperation.  It made Jon ache for the woman that he folded protectively against his bare chest. 

His lips touched the crown of her head as he murmured, “You wanna talk about it?”

“No.  God, no.”  Though muffled against his skin, the answer was easily understood.  “Caleb is going to be fine, but other than that…  No.”

This was a very fine line that he walked.  Although not quite as treacherous as the one between love and hate, it would be just as life-altering to cross over from a purely physical relationship to something more. 

You crossed to something more when you flew her out here. 

That was different.  That was something he would do for any friend, just like taking her dog out had been.  Those were acts of human kindness, not emotional tenderness. 

If he held her close and called her “baby” in an effort to make it all better, the emotions he'd purposely held at bay earlier in the day were hereby invited into this thing.  If he operated under the assumption that she craved the hot, hard release he could provide as a distraction from reality, they were left with the status quo.

What did she want?  Hell, for that matter, what did he want?

Inching away from her, Jon tucked a gentle knuckle under the counselor’s chin, angling it so that her face was illuminated by the lamplight.  Confronted with his analytical gaze, he found that she wasn’t fighting nor hiding.  Instead, she revealed exactly what he needed to see.

Dunked in the smooth chocolate or her irises was a mirror image of his indecision, and with it came the intuitive answer he’d been looking for within himself.

Her. 

He wanted her, no matter how little fucking sense it made.  He wanted to let her - his - emotions to flow in whatever way came naturally.  He wanted to be the one who made this hard woman soft.

Neck bending slowly, he swept her lips in a kiss that wasn't meant to be seductive but comforting.  The gentle sweep of his tongue against that full bottom lip was geared toward coaxing her out of the hellish day and into a night that would make her forget it.  The protective arms that cinched her into his chest held everything else at bay but them.  But this.

“If you’re gonna start a fight,” he whispered while methodically destroying the ponytail that prevented her tresses from seductively licking his skin.  “Do it now.”

“And if I don’t?”  Haziness cloaked her indecisive irises now, hiding her thoughts, but it wasn’t necessary that he know them.  His mind was made up to trust the instincts that had never let him down before.

“If you don’t…”  Jon’s nose pushed into the freefall of waves as gentle hands enclosed the column of her neck to glide up and cradle her skull.  “I’m gonna seduce you.  Gentle touches and tender kisses for hours until you can't think anymore.  Until you beg me to do whatever it takes to make the ache go away.  Then, when my cock finally wedges into your sweet slit, I’ll own you in a brand new way.  Just like you want me to.”

The indecision multiplied as wide eyes appeared that much wider with fully dilated pupils.  “How do you know what I want?”

“Happens to be the same thing I want,” he murmured absently, taking great care to keep his touch feather-light as he grazed the tips of his fingers forward over her nape, beneath her ears and finally along the underside of her jaw. 

An argument would be okay, if that’s the route she chose.  In the end, she’d still know he possessed more of her than before, but Jon was warming to the idea of torqueing her into an erotic frenzy.

Light and easy contact.  Indirect foreplay.  Suggestively sexual.  Overtly emotional.

“I can’t go through that and be the same when I come out the other side.  It will change things.” 

Was she trying to warn him or herself, he wondered, tracing the edge of her bottom lip with one thumb.  Because he didn’t need warned.  A woman who inspired this level of protectiveness in him rated more than a bang against the wall, and she deserved know it.

“That's the idea.”

Comprehension was welling from the founts of chocolate to wash away her indecision.  She was finally getting enough dots to see the picture he was drawing, and it was producing a combination of fear and excitement.

His instincts weren’t wrong.  They were both ready.

No matter what the calendar, her marital status, his family or any-fucking-body else said, it was time for this.  They’d sort everything else later.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into.”  It was a whisper, but there was no tentativeness in the words that were clearly intended to be a warning.  

His lip-tracing thumb lip skated down her chin, then under, to the hollow of her throat while he deliberately disregarded the warning.  “Eventually… I’m getting into you.  That's all that matters tonight.”

The rise and fall of her chest under the cover of the plain white cotton tee had tantalizing breasts silently begging to be released, and who was he to deny them?  Easing both hands beneath the shirt, he was careful to touch as little skin as possible when working it over her head and throwing it aside.

Standing before him in only a bra and jeans with her hair mussed, lips invitingly parted and desire shining in her eyes…  She was fucking beautiful.  It was going to require a Herculean effort of willpower to keep from stripping the counselor naked, bending her over the back of the couch and driving like a madman until they were both spent and satisfied.

Good thing he fully understood the benefits of delayed gratification.  

“I’d like a shower first.”

“Okay.”  His agreement was accompanied by ghostly palms shadowing the swell of her breast to barely scuff nipples that strained against lace.  “We’ll take a shower.”

“We?” she repeated, trying her best to arch into his touch.  He'd known the counselor would openly seek to run this show at some point, and she wasn’t disappointing him.  Soon, though...  Soon she would learn to appreciate what a fine showman he was, if left to his own devices.  

“We.”  After a touch of lips that could qualify as an air kiss, he took one step back and began popping the buttons on his fly.  “I’ll go start the water.”