Never Let Go (The Storm Inside #4)

by Alexis Anne

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “They’re magical.”

  “Best medicine in the world, or so I’ve heard.”

  He nodded, groaning low in his throat. “God, Eve. I barely feel human these days.”

  “So let me remind what it feels like to love me.”

  His eyes snapped up to mine. “Have I made you feel unloved?”

  I shook my head slowly, taking his cock into my hand and slowly stroking up and down his length. His eyes rolled back in his head. “No, but I think maybe I’ve made you feel that way?”

  He shuddered, taking my hand away and pressing me backward onto the mattress so that the only thing I could see was him. “Never,” he growled.

  My core clenched. That overly masculine response did wonderful things to my insides. “Then let’s forget about everything for a few minutes.”

  Suddenly his hands were under my arms, hauling me back until I was in the middle of the bed. He nudged my legs apart with his knees and settled between them.

  “I never want to hear those words come out of your mouth ever again.” He kissed me and then ground his hips into mine. “There is no way you could ever make me feel unloved. Ever.”

  “Same,” I whispered and gasped almost in the same moment. “Oh, Jake…”

  “Yes, darlin’?”

  “I’ve missed this.”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead he showed me just how much he missed me, too. He moved to my shoulder and ran a line of sexy kisses up my throat before stealing a deeper, dirtier kiss. Then he dove back down—this time between my breasts. He kept going, trailing down my belly, dipping his tongue into my belly button, and then all the way south.

  He still hadn’t said a word when he started to swirl his tongue around my clit. So warm. So good. I could easily give in and let Jake distract me with sex—because that was what this was. A distraction from the real conversation we needed to have, but this was one time I was not going to give him control.

  He was going to have to earn it if he wanted it back.

  “Stop.”

  He immediately froze and looked up, concern written on every inch of his face. “Babe?”

  “Chair.” I pointed at the small, armless, leather-covered chair we kept in the corner (and shockingly free of clothes.)

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Chair?”

  “Chair,” I repeated. “You’re going to watch.”

  At first he scowled, as I totally expected him to do. Jake was awesome, but when he was upset he enjoyed being in charge. It gave him grounding. And normally I gave him that willingly, but today he needed a good knock to the head.

  His scowl slid away. “Okay.”

  I waited until he was seated, cock standing proudly at attention, before I touched myself. I was on display in the middle of our bed with the sapphire blue satin comforter. From Jake’s vantage point he could see everything I was doing. His eyes narrowed and his jaw ticked as lust took over.

  I took my sweet time warming myself up, rubbing slow, light circles around my clit, then ran my hands up to my breasts, massaging and cupping them until Jake looked like he might punch a hole in the wall.

  “You can touch yourself, too, you know,” I murmured.

  He cocked his head to the side as if it hadn’t occurred to him until I said it, then took his erection in his hand and pumped.

  It turned me on to see him holding his cock, aroused by what I was doing. So I pinched both my nipples at the same time and rolled. My entire body pulsed. I bucked off the bed and moaned.

  “Fuck, Eve. Are you going to make stay over here the whole time?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  He groaned.

  Good.

  I kept one hand on my nipple and used the other to play and tease my sex. Down between the folds, pressure on my clit, a finger wet and ready. It was all lovely and relieving until I heard Jake stop moving. His hand was no longer on his cock but there was also no evidence he’d had an orgasm. Instead it looked more like he wanted to jump on top of me.

  And really, hadn’t I made my point? An orgasm would be so much more relieving with his cock inside me than across the room.

  “Come here.”

  He was on top of me in a flash. “That was either cruel or awesome and I can’t decide which.”

  I shook my head as I tilted my hips up to catch the tip of his erection. He thrust inside a few inches and stopped while we both moaned. The stretch was fantastic and completely different from my fingers.

  “Can’t it just be awesome? Don’t you usually like watching me?”

  He pulled back and thrust again, this time deeper. “Yes, but only when I know I get to finish you off. Why the games?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.” It probably wasn’t fair that I’d waited until he was almost completely buried inside before I brought up what was really on my mind, but getting Jake to talk had been so difficult that I had to believe desperate times called for desperate measures.

  He pulled back and thrust again, this time to the hilt. “I’m not playing games with you.”

  “You’re lying to me about work, you aren’t talking to me, and you’ve become the absentee father. I don’t think these games are intentional and I don’t believe you’d ever be like this on purpose, but the result is the same. Jake, you can’t keep playing us like this.”

  I ground against him until he couldn’t stand it another moment. He pumped into me several times—enough to get us both hot and sweaty.

  “I’ve tried everything. I’ve been to the doctor, I’ve changed my workout routine, I’ve written pages and pages and pages…but the anger is still there. I can’t be with you guys when I’m like this.”

  He was so frustrated and desperate to be free of his anger that he was ignoring the one thing he should be holding on to hardest. If I thought a swift smack to the head would actually knock some sense into him, I’d have done it.

  So instead I ran my hands over his muscular shoulders and up into his hair, giving it a good tug. “Fuck me, Jake. Fuck it all out.”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Yes. Please? I can’t go another minute feeling like I’ve lost you.”

  Hurt flashed in his eyes. “I won’t fuck my feelings out with you, but I will be here. Right here. My mind isn’t anywhere else but here with you.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted, but I didn’t think it was possible to have the old Jake back. So I took what he was offering. “Okay.”

  We didn’t say anything else after that. It was slow, practiced lovemaking. The kind you naturally make with the person you love. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, but it was completely missing the extra element of passion I loved so much. Thrived on, really. Without Jake to spark and bounce off of in life and in this bed, I felt lost and alone. He was the fire in my life, and that fire was gone.

  I wrapped myself around him, holding on to whatever I could get. It had to be enough to last me until we figured our way through this. If I could have, I think I would have pulled him inside me, given him a safe space to hide for a while.

  He pumped into me over and over. Slow and steady. My orgasm wound tight inside, but refused to release. I was running out of time based on the sounds of Jake’s ragged breath and the layer of sweat we had between us.

  “Come for me, babe. Please?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just…”

  And suddenly my ass was in the air as Jake hiked his knees up and grabbed me by the hips, lifting me up with him. “It’s okay. We’ll get there. Together.”

  If only the stubborn man could hear his own damn words. We would get there together if he’d let me be there for him. Sex was symbolic of our life, didn’t he know that by now?

  But instead of pointing all of that out and having it fall on deaf ears, I remained silent and waited to see what Jake did next. Maybe it would give me a clue about what to do with him outside of the bedroom.

  He stopped everything. His cock was still i
nside me, but he didn’t move or touch me for several seconds. Then he parted my folds and exposed my very swollen clit. The fresh air caused a pulse to start at the very tip. It traveled down and inside to my core where a lovely pulse of pleasure rolled through me.

  Then he gently blew on my clit and an identical wave rolled through me all over again. He was stripping everything back to the basics. All the moving and touching was overloading my senses and overwhelming my pleasure centers. Each cool blast of air brought me back down from the chaos until I could actually feel again.

  It was nice.

  And might be exactly what Jake needed, too.

  Eventually he pressed against my clit with his palm and when I’d had a chance to absorb the way that made me feel, he started moving his hips in short slow strokes. With pressure on my clit and his cock gliding in and out, a new orgasm started to build. A good one this time. One I could hold on to and enjoy.

  The pulses started deep and picked up speed. “Harder, Jake. Harder.”

  Now that I was ready, I wanted everything. One giant explosion. He moved his knees and resumed his regular position on top of me, arms braced on either side, lips just above mine, cock thrusting deep.

  Over and over until I exploded.

  “Yes…Oh, yes,” Jake moaned, his hips jerking erratically as my powerful orgasm clenched his cock hard with wave after wave. And then I felt him, too. Pulsing and shuddering as we both let it all go and accepted the pleasure.

  He rolled to his back, panting. “Fuck, I’ve got to find a way through this. I can’t…”

  I closed my eyes wishing we could rewind time; erase Adam’s visit and the news that came with it. I really liked Adam and Elizabeth, but this was hell. I’d rather not know them than live like this anymore.

  But that wasn’t an option. As much as I wished we could get do-overs, that wasn’t reality. We were forever changed and I could either watch my husband slip further and further from my fingers, or I could shock him into action. Strip things back to the bare minimum. Start over.

  I really hated feeling like those were my only two options, but if the last few months had proven anything it was that Jake needed a swift kick in the ass.

  So I cleared my throat and went for the jugular. “I don’t think you and the girls should come to spring training this year.”

  The room went completely silent as Jake held his breath and stared at me. I rolled up onto my side. “I need some time to…” I shrugged and looked away. I couldn’t stand the hurt in his eyes. “I need some time to digest this reality. It’s been crushing.”

  To say the least. If we were going to live like this for the foreseeable future, then I needed time to accept it. But I really hoped this would be the change we needed and even though I was hurting him now, it would get him to where he needed to be.

  “But this isn’t what we do,” he whispered. “We don’t spend time apart.” His voice rose with panic at the end.

  Good.

  Jake needed to panic.

  “I know,” I said. “But we also don’t do overworking and not communicating, but we’ve been doing that for the last few months. I’m burned out on being a full time mom and prepping for the season. My schedule only gets crazier from here and if I’m going to be Super Mom while you work through this, then I think I need to take this opportunity to get some space.”

  A hope and lie all rolled into one.

  He shot up and ran his hand through his hair. “No. No… we don’t do this. Space leads to more space.” He turned to look at me with wild eyes. “Eve?”

  I sat up and spread my arms out, palms up. “I don’t know what else to do at this point, Jake. You’re working insane hours. You’ve stopped taking the girls to school in the morning, you don’t come home for dinner, and you don’t spend time with them on the weekends. They keep asking where you are.”

  And I do, too.

  He opened his mouth—I assume to argue with me—then snapped it shut. “They have?” he finally asked.

  “Yes. You’re dealing with shit, and I get that, but I got full-time single-mom duty dropped in my lap without any planning. We’re managing, but we can’t keep going like this. If you’re going to be working this hard and be this emotionally absent, then something has to give.”

  He looked… Well, he looked like I’d just rocked his world. He had this overwhelmed and shocked look to his eyes, his face had gone white, and instead of standing with rigid muscles ready to fight off the world, his shoulders were slumped as if the fight had just gone right out of him.

  “A week.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “A week?”

  He nodded firmly, suddenly focused on something. “Take that first week. I’ve got the girls. We’ll have some serious Daddy time, but after that? We’re a family again.”

  I almost wanted to say yes to that deal. Almost. It was so close to being what we needed, but it wouldn’t help Jake with his anger. But I also knew if I didn’t give him something he’d stop listening to me.

  “All right. A week.” And when you arrive, you’ll have a surprise waiting.

  A surprise that would either get Jake through this hell, or push us straight toward divorce.

  12

  JAKE

  Eve was still at the stadium working out something with a vendor, so Zoe and I drove straight there with the kids. I didn’t think she knew exactly what was going on, but she knew enough. She had been nothing but awesome with the kids and working around my schedule this week, but she had a look. You know the kind…the “your-wife-left-you” look.

  Technically it was just a week apart and Eve was working, but anyone with two brain cells could see that we weren’t right. And when two people who are normally all over each other aren’t right and then suddenly choose to spend a week apart—a week they didn’t have to spend apart—you know it’s because they can’t stand to be around each other.

  “So we’ll go straight to the house after this?” she asked tentatively, with those big eyes that studied everything I was doing.

  Of course I could be reading the situation completely wrong. Sometimes Zoe was taking notes in her head for one of her books and I had no doubt that I was currently a fascinating character study. But more than likely she was just worried I was about to start crying or some shit like that.

  I was not going to start crying, even if it did feel a heck of a lot like a piece of my soul had been surgically removed without anesthetics, but Zoe didn’t need to know that.

  “Yes, we’ll say hi, see the stadium, and take her back with us. Cassandra is there and dinner will be ready when we arrive.” At least I thought that was what she said. I really hadn’t been paying much attention. All I cared about was getting my family back together.

  Max was passed out in her car seat, as she usually did on any car trip that lasted longer than twenty minutes, and Sam had her headphones on watching an episode of Paw Patrol.

  “Cool. It will be fun to have all the cousins together for a couple of weeks.”

  And the thing was, she genuinely looked excited. I wasn’t sure where we’d found Zoe, but I was grateful. A part-time nanny who could step in and work full-time on occasion, and was totally cool with extra kids? And pleasant to be around? And professional? She was a rare find indeed.

  “You don’t mind?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. Cassandra will be there most of the time so it’s not like I’ve taken on a small school by myself. All the kids get along for the most part. And the beach is five hundred yards away. Trust me, I’m good.”

  There wasn’t a game so the stadium parking lot was empty. I wound down to the loading ramp and parked in the small lot off to the side.

  “I’ll sit with Max if you want to take Sam inside,” Zoe offered.

  “You sure?”

  Ten-to-one she didn’t want to be in the room to witness the epic uncomfortableness that was about to occur between Eve and me.

  “There’s no reason to wake Max. But if she doe
s wake up, I’ll scoop her up and come in.”

  Sam excitedly dumped her electronics and scrambled out of the SUV. “I missed Momma.”

  “Me, too. Me, too,” I sighed as I shut our doors and took her small hand.

  I had hated the idea of a week apart from the moment the words left Eve’s mouth. I hated it even more as I went to bed alone each night. But she was right. I’d let my anger take hold of too much of my life. I’d allowed myself to become paralyzed. It had infected my entire life and taken me away from my kids.

  That was the last thing I’d ever wanted to happen. Sure life could get me down, and Eve and I would have our fights, but I never, ever wanted anything to stand between the girls and me.

  So while I hated our week apart, it had been a good knock to the head. I hadn’t even realized how much noise was buzzing around in my brain simply by carrying on as if nothing had changed.

  Things had changed. Living my life for the last few days without the woman that made my world go around was a painful reminder that my happiness was my choice. I chose to build a life in Tampa with Eve and the girls and I could choose to enjoy it, or let my past ruin everything.

  It wasn’t even a question and I wasn’t sure why it had taken me so long to realize the anger didn’t matter. Maybe it was because I’d stopped living my life. Without the girls giggling and Eve’s touch it was easy to slip away. I’d done that to myself, and then wallowed in the misery I created. It was a stupid mistake and it had been so easy to make.

  All it took was Eve knocking some sense into me and a dinner with Max in my lap touching my face and saying, “My Daddy,” over and over again like she hadn’t seen me in ages to snap me back to reality.

  I wasn’t my father. And I sure as hell wasn’t my mother. I would never treat anyone the way they treated me, their own son. Sure it was a shock to realize Lydia still took any opportunity to hurt me, but it was time to let it go. There was nothing I could do to change her. There was nothing I could do to make her feel pain like I’d felt. All I could do was ignore her. Giving her my anger was exactly what she wanted—what she fed on.

  So as Max stroked my beard and beamed up at me, the chains fell away. My anger dissolved. I loved my girls, and all I wanted for the rest of my life was to love them as much as they loved me.