Enjoy the Ride (Winter Games Book 3)

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  “I’m so sorry, Jessa.”

  “Me too,” I replied shakily.

  “I love you. It’s only ever and always been you.”

  With a mind of its own, my lips turned into a smile. “I love you too, Chance. I love you so much it sent me away and then brought me back again. I love you so much that I wanted you even when you wanted to break me. I love you so much that even if you never spoke to me again after yesterday, I wouldn’t change a thing because I helped you find your way back to yourself—and back to the mountain.”

  His lips crushed mine and the world around us shattered into a million flickering crystals of light. Opening my mouth, I breathed him inside and tasted him into my soul. This was the kiss that stopped the clock.

  Our future was our history.

  The sound of the door shutting again made me pull back.

  Crap. We were still at the gym.

  “We should go,” I suggested. At least the room had completely cleared out by now, although I was sure that Dr. Lev was probably upstairs in his office otherwise he would have asked us to leave already.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, his forehead pressing to mine.

  “For…”

  “For kissing you,” he rasped. “Before making sure that this is what you want—that I am what you want.”

  “You should be sorry,” I murmured, tilting my head so that my nose brushed against his, “but not for that.”

  “No?”

  “You should be sorry because we’re still standing here. In the gym. When you should have me halfway back home already,” I teased.

  The happy breath of his laugh brushed over my cheek before he covered my lips once more.

  “What was I thinking?” he whispered. And then I squealed as he lifted me up, my arms and legs tangling around him like vines around a tree. I held on for dear life, but I knew he was never letting go.

  The Star: This card says that over the long-term, you should have trust and faith in the Universe because a better future is waiting for you, but in order to reach it, you have to trust that it is possible. You have endured life’s challenges and have been through difficult times, but you are now open to healing and transformation. Hatred, envy, bitterness, and revenge have all burned themselves out and no longer shadow your potential for future happiness. You are making significant changes in your life—transforming from the old you into the new you. The Star says to trust in yourself, trust in your worth; it is the call of destiny that compels you to go on.

  “CHANCE…” MY SHOCKED WHISPER WHOOSHED over the space as I opened the door into the house. Chance was right behind me with his hands on my waist—I refused to let him carry me over the threshold, telling him that that was reserved for the next time he got down on his knees.

  I froze overwhelmed by the sight and scent of candles. All my candles—and more—were lit and littered throughout the room. It was still light outside, but with the snow that was falling, the cloud-cover darkened out the sun, providing for a dim, dusk-like day.

  Pine. Pineapple. Eucalyptus.

  “What did you… how did you…” I whispered as I stepped further inside so that he could shut the door behind us.

  The house hadn’t looked like this when we left. And he had been at the gym the whole time—I’d been watching.

  “I may have called in a few favors.” His voice tickled my ear. He stood pressed tight against my back. I could have, but I didn’t move inside further because I wanted his closeness.

  My body had burned with anticipation the entire ride home. My heart felt free and it sent my body into overdrive with wanting him. My legs were crossed and locked as we drove, afraid that if I let them go, my core would start screaming with how much I needed him.

  Now, he stood at my back, his hard length pressed against my ass that I kept rocking back against him.

  “Why…” I half-turned to look at him and I saw his face wince as I rubbed over his erection.

  “Just in case I couldn’t convince you with my groveling.” His eyes sparkled with humor. “I wanted to make sure that you came home… to your home.”

  I raised my arms and wrapped them around his neck.

  “I would have as long as I came home to you.” I pressed myself tighter against him and he growled. “I want you.”

  His head dropped to my neck and he nuzzled into my skin, goosebumps running rampant over my body.

  “Are you sure?” he rasped, kissing along my jawline. “Because I want to talk to you… I want to know…”

  My hands clasped his face. “And I want you to know. But right now, I want to feel. I want to feel you. I want to feel that there is nothing between us anymore. I want to love you. Only, ever, always.”

  “Anything for you.” His lips brushed over mine. “Only, ever, always.”

  The wall was against my back and my limbs snaked around him as his mouth devoured mine. We kissed like we had eight years to make up for. My scrub top disappeared over my head and landed on a heap along with his t-shirt.

  The next time I came up for a gasp of pine-scented air was as the carpet on the floor greeted my back. Even though it was soft and plush, it felt ragged compared to the hard smoothness of his skin against mine.

  Tongue for tongue, he marked every wet inch of my mouth as his own, licking and biting my lips. There was no cell that went untouched.

  He was everywhere and everything. Every. Damn. Thing.

  He slid down my chest, tearing my bra from my chest. His lips closed over my nipple and my hips rocketed up against his.

  A firm hand gripped my waist and pinned it to the floor. “Don’t do that.” He bit into the tight bud, sending an encoded message down for my clit to unravel.

  “I need you,” I whispered, following the plea up with a moan as his other hand cupped my other breast.

  He ignored me.

  Laving, scraping, and sucking on my tit like it was the only piece of me he was getting today.

  My head dug back into the floor as his mouth drifted over my stomach. Everything stopped. Both hands slid to my waist and he stared at my stomach. It was a stare that I’d seen a thousand times before. In the mirror. As I stared at the part of me that had carried our child.

  I was two separate people at that moment—one consumed with the need to have him inside of me, the other, overflowing with emotion as I watched the man that I loved dip his head and reverently place a kiss on the flesh that quivered underneath his touch.

  A promise. For our future.

  My hand reached for his head, tipping his face up so I could see him. His mouth openly kissed my palm as his eyes traveled up my arm, stopping at my elbow. He turned my forearm slightly, staring at the heart that was carved into it.

  “For the baby?” he asked.

  My throat was so thick, but my head jerked in a nod.

  He glided up so his face was over mine, piercing eyes that strolled right into my soul.

  “I love you,” he whispered, kissing my lips softly. Repeating the phrase, he kissed along over to my ear. “We’ll have another one, J-bird.”

  I gulped air into my lungs.

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I do know that. I know because I love you. I know that because with you, when I look at myself, I see a future and a family, where before I saw nothing. And,” his voice dropped deeper with a growl, “every time I fuck you, all I think about is filling you so full of me that you have no other fucking option than to have my baby.”

  My hips spasmed again. So hot. So sweet. I groaned.

  How did he do it? How did he manage to touch my heart and make me so damn horny at the same time?

  I felt his smile against my neck, knowing exactly what he was doing to me. So, I rolled my hips up against his cock again and watched the smile harden and disappear, desire burning over his features.

  Pulling back, my scrub pants were the last piece of clothing to go. His eyes greedily found my sex.

  His hands moved to his waist, unbuttoning his
jeans. I saw the thick outline of his arousal against the fabric and my core clenched, releasing another hot gush of moisture. Chance’s fingers froze, seeing the desire that rushed from me.

  With a curse that said he couldn’t stop himself, he forgot about his erection and dove between my thighs.

  The flickering flames from all of the probably twenty candles that I could see became indistinct blurs of light. Little balls of white danced in my vision as his mouth swallowed my sex and everything that was coming from it.

  He licked and nipped. Sucked and swallowed. And my body came apart piece by piece with every touch. His beard only magnified every sensation and I lost it.

  Thrashing on the floor, my hands speared into his hair, holding his head to me like I could shove his mouth inside of my desperate sex to fix the ache that he’d created.

  I felt like I was turning into one of the damn candles. Burning. Melting. Popping and sizzling. The bright flame of desire made its way down to my core. My orgasm demanded release. It banged on the walls of every cell in my body as Chance pushed his tongue inside of me.

  And then he reared up, oxygen shooting into my lungs with a gasp. The sight of him—kneeling between my legs, his hands freeing his erection, while his mouth dripped with my desire was more than any woman should ever have to take.

  He stood to rip his jeans off of his legs. His body was hard and covered with sweat. His dick hung out, an angry purple-red, demanding to be swallowed by my sex.

  Ice-blue eyes raked over me and I licked my lips. I would swear that I’ve never wanted him more—never wanted anything more than him inside me—than at this moment.

  I knew it was something that I would swear another thousand times during my life.

  “Touch yourself.” Eyelids heavy, my right hand slid down over my stomach, my fingers disappearing into my folds. I bit my lip as I felt the pleasure building inside of me.

  “Chance…” I moaned. I was getting close again. I hated being close without him.

  While I rubbed over my clit, his fingers found their way back inside of me. Two, then three, pushing in deep. As much as my eyes wanted to close, as soon as they met his, it was like they were locked open knowing how much he loved watching me lose control over his touch—almost as much as I loved losing it.

  “You’re so beautiful, J-bird. Beautiful and all mine.”

  I moaned. Don’t stop. Talking. Touching. Any of it.

  My breath caught, feeling the reckoning of my delayed climax begin to threaten through my body.

  “Fuck,” he swore, pulling his hand from me. “I should get a condom.”

  “Chance,” the moment froze, “I-I’m on the pill now.” And it was a good thing because we both silently admitted that there was nothing going to stop him from coming inside of me right now.

  Blue flames of the hottest kind of fire burned in his eyes. I should have let him get one because I knew better than to think that anything was one-hundred-percent safe. But, after eight years, I wanted to feel him. All of him.

  I saw his jaw muscle flex.

  His hand gripped my wrist and pulled my hand away from what was about to definitively become his. His body came down over mine, his erection sliding over my sex. His right hand kneaded my breast, rolling my nipple in the way he knew made me insane.

  “I love you, Chance.” I was going crazy.

  “You want the truth, Jessa?” He rasped into my ear, poised at my entrance. “Given the choice, I would break my fucking knee all over again as long as it meant that I would end up here. With you.”

  I choked on the warm winter-scented air. This is why I came back to him. Why I kept coming back for more even when more had promised to destroy me.

  I kept coming back to him like he was the last breath of air left that I needed to breathe. I kept coming back because this was an all or none kind of thing.

  Except it was only-ever-always an all.

  I would have to melt over his words later. Right now, I was melting under his touch.

  He slammed inside of me and stars shot across my vision.

  My strangled gasp echoed throughout the vaulted ceilings of the house. The feel of his hot naked flesh sliding tightly into mine broke me.

  “Oh God, Chance,” I whimpered. Maybe I was imagining it, but I felt every twitch, every pulse of him inside my core. He paused at his own peril when he was fully seated inside of me—so far inside that it felt like his dick was entering my womb with each thrust.

  “Jessa…” My name a plea that slipped from the man who was dying a small death inside of me. His teeth locked onto my neck as he slowly slid in and out of me. “God, you are so tight, J-bird,” he growled angrily as my sex clenched at his words. “Is that what you want, gorgeous? My cum inside of you making another baby?”

  He ground his hips into mine, somehow pushing himself deeper. Hand in my hair, he tugged my head to the side so his lips could speak over my ear. “Because I’ll give it to you, J-bird. I’d give you any fucking thing.”

  He tore me apart. Demanding, yet completely willing to do anything for me.

  “I just need all of you, Chance. I just need to feel all of you inside of me.”

  He shook above me—a sign of acquiescence before his punishing thrusts began, giving me exactly what I needed. He slipped inside easier now that I was dripping wet, gliding through muscles that would realize in the morning that they were still not equipped to handle him. Each time sending a tremor through my body, a sign that the earthquake was coming.

  “This is mine,” he rasped as his finger pulled on my nipple. I squirmed underneath him, my orgasm hanging on a string right in front of me, just out of reach. “You are mine.” His cock drove into me, harder this time and my hips rose eagerly, needing more and eager for further invasion.

  It was raw and wet and I’m sure, in the morning, the mess we made on the floor would tempt me to be embarrassed. But right now, all I could feel was Chance, sliding inside of me over and over again. Claiming me. Never letting me go.

  This was what my dreams were made of.

  My nails dug into the carpet and then into his back, searching for a foundation as my body rocketed towards the edge of cohesive existence. The bright little bulbs of light seemed to be floating around me as I lost sense of all reality except for him.

  The moans and wet slapping noises that echoed between us probably could have been heard by the neighbors, but the scream that erupted from me when I came could be heard from the mountaintops. My orgasm incinerated me and then remade me stronger and brighter from its flames.

  Seconds later, his shout shook the windows and the only thing I felt was the heat from his release spreading through my body from the hard flesh pulsing inside of me.

  He stayed there. In me. On me. With me. For me.

  Our chests moved in sync. The past and the present dissolved into one.

  With a grunt, he rolled over and pulled me against him.

  “We should get up,” I murmured.

  “Why?”

  “I think we’re making a mess on the carpet.”

  “Don’t give a fuck about the carpet, J-bird.” He sighed, leaning over to kiss my forehead. “But for you, I will clean it.”

  He kissed me one more time before he slid out of my sex. It felt like I’d lost a limb.

  I tried, but I couldn’t move. So, I lay there in the sea of candles watching the flurries outside the window until Chance came back with a warm cloth. I moaned as he reached between my thighs cleaning up what had become of the two of us.

  I almost drifted to sleep as he went back into the kitchen, but his arms underneath me, hoisting me up off the floor quickly ended that thought.

  “What are we doing?” I asked as he sat on the couch, holding me on his lap and wrapping a blanket around the two of us. Naked and cocooned, I’d never felt happier than I did at that moment.

  “I want you to tell me,” he whispered, brushing stray pink strands of hair off of my face.

  “Tell you
what?” I stared up at him.

  “Everything that I should have been there to hear. Everything that I should have been there to hold you through.”

  Chance made me a liar. I said I’d never felt happier and he’d gone and proved me wrong.

  “I like to think it would have been a little girl,” I began quietly. They weren’t good memories, that was for sure. It hurt to revisit and remember what had happened and everything that I’d felt. But he demanded to know it all.

  “I didn’t know when I left. You have to know, I wouldn’t have left and not told you that I was pregnant.” My hand rested over his heart, like it could force him to believe it was the truth. “I didn’t know until a month later. I was so busy with moving and then moving into my dorm. I didn’t realize until almost a week after I should have had my period.”

  “Who was with you?” he rasped.

  “No one.” My heart thudded in the silence as his arms around me tightened.

  “I’m so sorry, Jessa,” he whispered against my hair, the heartfelt hurt seeping into his voice like water soaks through clothes. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I continued because if I stopped now, I didn’t think I’d ever get started again. “I-I took the test in the bathroom on my dorm floor. And when it came back positive, I thought the world had stopped. I-I had this whole plan—everything I’d worked towards in high school, coming back to Texas for college. I just hadn’t planned on falling in love with you. And I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant.”

  The soft strokes of his hand along my arm and then my back calmed my heart during memories that normally made it frantic and emotional.

  “You’d think you would call someone, you know?” I laughed weakly. “Not that I thought about this ever happening, but I guess I just always figured in that moment I would freak out and call my mom or a friend or someone… but I didn’t. It’s like, if I spoke it, that meant it was real,” I continued softly. “But the more I thought about it, the more I just wanted to call you. To talk to you. To tell you that I was stupid and I didn’t know what I was doing and I shouldn’t have tried to decide your life for you. To tell you that what happened with Nick was a lie and that, with my whole heart, I was sorry.”