He misses Jason.
Things aren’t the same when he’s not around. I ache for him too.
This relationship that I’m not even sure is a relationship has done nothing but encourage complexity and chaos, a slow, agonizing, insufferable and confusing torture and hell to three people in love with each other.
How could something like that ever work? How could something so off-limits and forbidden ever be a normal or satisfying way to live?
“Chow’s done.” Keith smiles, dull though it is, as he brings in a platter of delicious-smelling chicken that he’s grilled. He opens a well-chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, pours two full glasses, then takes a seat while I finish the salad. The air so brittle it could snap as he continues fighting to make conversation, hide his troubled expression, and conceal the continual agony flashing in his eyes.
Heart thundering after what seems like the longest dinner I’ve ever endured, my insides are jumping with curiosity and nerves over something I’ve been wanting to do since the night of the Grand Opening. My daddy used to say, “You will or you won’t. You can or you can’t.” I’m seconds from doing both.
“Will you tell me about you and Jason? When and how it all started? Please?”
His chest shifts awkwardly and uncomfortably, and he nearly hurls himself from the kitchen table chair. After he tosses his food scraps into the garbage, brutally, angrily, and with something blazing behind his hardened expression, he finds my eyes. “And what exactly do you want to know, Jen? The first time Jason sucked my dick? The first time he walked away with his thighs covered in deep red streaks from my belt? Or how I felt when I first left his neck covered with my teeth marks or the hot self-disgust that burned inside me when I finally slid my cock through the tight muscle of his virginal ass and fucked him until we both came in shamefaced, slippery-smooth chaos?” Possessiveness oozes off him as he turns back toward the sink—giving me an eyeful of the rippling muscles in his back and an ass flexing and filling out his jeans to a beautiful tight perfection—and drops his empty plate into the sink.
Every single crude and dirty thing he just uttered has my sex quivering with waves of heat and my skin flushing hot.
“Ask away.” His fingers sift through the sides of his hair, and something warm passes between us when he turns back to face me.
A mammoth-sized knot lodges in my throat, but I ignore it. “I—I don’t know. I mean, have you always … Were you and Jason together when … Is there any chance of…?” He takes a long swallow of wine while a swarm of warmth and desire stabs at my chest. Jesus, I don’t even know what I’m saying or exactly what to ask, or if I should ask at all. Dozens of questions rattle through my head and doubt swims inside me so deeply that I’m suddenly unable to manage complete sentences.
I’d die to have Keith love me the way he does Jason—the beguiling bond they share, the way they appear so in touch, so comfortable, so at ease with one other, and the way they seemingly ache when they’re apart. Keith and his commanding strength and confidence, his opinion and rules. Jason with his sensitive charm and charisma, his love of music. Hunger surges through me like an angry electrical storm, my entire body humming with need for these men.
Keith pushes off the kitchen counter and draws out a long breath. “I think there was always something between us. Something that neither of us was sure of for a miserably long time. The first time I knew that we were headed somewhere dark, somewhere forbidden, immoral, and everywhere I was raised to believe wrong, was the same day he’d been with you, the same day you begged for his cock. I hated every cell of his body. I wanted to snap his fucking neck.”
Anguish races up my chest like white-hot fire. Never once had I considered Jason being the kind of person to gloat, especially about his personal affairs. “That’s not exactly how it happened, Keith.” Jason’s betrayal hurts like a cold hard slap against the face or an agonizing kick in the stomach. For a minute, I almost feel a spark of hatred toward him but just as quickly I think of more of my daddy’s words. Jen, hatred is nothing but a surefire guarantee for more hurt, more agony, and will never be a cure or a solution to heal the heart.
“Who else did he share our private information with?”
“He didn’t tell me, Jen. I forced it out of him.”
I’m on my feet now and inches from Keith’s face. “Forced it?”
“I stopped by his place that afternoon. I’d run into his mother at the gas station earlier and she asked me over for dinner. He’d just gotten home when I got there. His skin was still flushed. He reeked of coconut and vanilla—just like that lotion you always wore. He also smelled like pussy.”
Humiliation spreads through me like hot pointed needles, and an angry, shame-filled tear slips from my eye, which I quickly push away.
Crying changes nothing. I absolutely refuse to look weak or ashamed. Neither of us planned that first day together. It just happened. Keith was, and will always be, the man I love.
After an agonizingly long minute of silence, I finally speak. “We didn’t fuck, Keith. You absolutely know this.”
“Oh, but you wanted him to fuck you, sugar. You still do.”
With my temper already building, I snap. “You know what? You weren’t there. You don’t know all of what happened. And don’t call me that again. Not unless you…”
Flinching at his presumptuous words, I want to argue, want to make demands, but I can’t and won’t. Because he’s right. I wanted it. With every molecule of my body, I wanted it. And I damn well still want it. And I’m not ashamed. “Jesus, Keith. No. Yes. I—I don’t know what I wanted that day. I wanted you, but then I wanted him, and honestly, I had no idea where your head was. You weren’t exactly an easy man to read. You still aren’t.” I pull in a breath, an icy chill sending goose bumps over my skin when I exhale. “But none of this matters now. It was years ago.”
Keith arches his brows. “Doesn’t it? Did you want his dick inside your pussy, Jen?”
For a long minute that feels like a lifetime, we fall quiet. I look into Keith’s eyes and see bitterness, jealousy, and cold ice like he wants to detest me. Like he wants to throw me over his lap and wreck my ass until tears slide down my face and my skin is bloody and covered in painful punishing marks. “Why is this important? My God, Keith, we were just kids. And he didn’t want me. He made that very clear. Now I know why. I just wish I’d known then. It could have saved me years of heartache.”
“The fuck he didn’t want you!” Keith’s jaw clenches, and he starts pacing. “He wanted you! I wanted you. But this thing between us … Christ, it’s complicated, and was much more so back then. Neither of us understood what was happening. Or why. I nearly squeezed the life from him that night. I couldn’t stand the fact that he smelled like you or that he’d had his fingers inside your pussy and his lips on you. I punched him in the gut hard. He punched back. Then I took his throat in my hands. I squeezed and squeezed, but he didn’t fight me. He fucking liked it … and I liked doing it. Jesus Christ, I didn’t want to be bisexual. I fought it. God, I did.”
Keith’s eyes look deep into mine, remorsefully, full of regret and hurt, making my stomach sink. Envy and anger and lust all envelop me in a dark black cloud that has me suddenly lost and disoriented, so severely that I want to scream and cry and pound my fists against his chest. I want to hate every seductive word he’s spoken. I want to ignore the way his eyes are dilating … the way his skin is flushed … the way his jaw is clenched tight as he speaks of his first sexual experience with Jason … and the way it all makes my core throb.
Hot streaks of guilt rake through my chest at how turned on I am, how heated my body has become, how wet and needy my sex is at the thought of the two of them together and Keith topping Jason, Jason covered in ejaculate and bruises, both of them naked and hard and inflamed with lust.
I’ve never been more scared of being hurt than I am at this moment.
“After my first time with you, I really believed you wanted me. I felt su
ch a connection with you. My God, I thought you loved me, Keith. I really believed you felt that same connection. Why did you do that? Why did you call me sugar? Why did you tell me I was beautiful? Why did you apologize and hold me like it mattered when I cried from the pain of having a penis inside me for the first time? How could you do those kinds of things to someone that you didn’t want? There were days I thought I would die of heartbreak. Days I wanted to die. I was still struggling over Rylee, still filled with shame over choosing to shop for new jeans that I absolutely did not need when she was at the lowest point of her life and needing me that day. Saying goodbye to my best friend, and then to you, was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. Just make me understand why and how. Why did you take my most precious asset then leave me? Why were you fucking every girl you could get your hands on only days later? Why, Keith? Why, you cold-blooded, insensitive bastard?”
Silence works its ugly way in again, leaving unsaid words that need speaking, twisted and knotted between us. I spin on my feet, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here and listening to anything he’s telling me. Keith yanks me toward him and shoves me into the kitchen wall then cages me between his arms.
“I fucking hate what I did to you! Do you understand me? Fucking detest it! And I’ll never forgive myself for that. I really thought I could be someone different. God knows, I tried. For years, I tried.” He lets out a long breath and takes my cheeks in his palms. “You know damn well why I did what I did. Because I did love you. I loved you then. I love you now. And just like before, I’ve fucked up where you’re concerned by putting my own selfish needs over yours. You deserve the house, the garden, the kids,” he adds with the pads of his thumbs stroking my cheeks. “I’m nothing but a narrow-minded fucking bastard bringing you back here to a town you despise.”
There’s a grating agony to the tone in his voice, and the hundred different hues in his brown eyes sends warm heat spiraling inside me. “Keith, don’t you understand by now?” I press my palms against the hard steel of his chest while trying to understand where this conversation is headed. “I’m here because I want to be, dammit. Because I need to be. I love you, and I love that you love Jason, because … I love him as well. And I have a house. I have a yard that’s plenty big for a garden. And kids? There’re hundreds that need good homes and a loving parent should I ever get baby fever.”
With a breathy curse, Keith pulls away when his hard erection bumps against my belly. A whimper slides off my lips, and now, more than ever, despite everything he’s just said, I want to drop to my knees, take him into my mouth, and milk every single drop he has to offer and submit, submit, and submit some more.
“Keith.” I take his hand and move it in a slow slide over the curve of my breasts and the length of my torso, shamelessly, boldly, then push it inside my thin leggings and right down the front of my panties. “Can’t you feel how badly I want you?” I urge his fingertips down lower. “Just like that afternoon nearly fifteen years ago, I want you however or wherever. I want your hands on me, feeling me, punishing me, owning me. I want you to use my body. I want you to call me sugar but treat me like sin. God, I just—”
“Shut up, Jen.” He nearly annihilates me with his beautiful, flashing brown eyes as his finger brushes over and through the damp folds of my sex.
I’ve never wanted a man the way I want Keith. I’ve never ached on such a level to drop to my knees, bow my head, crawl, sit quietly, or offer my body in any way he chooses. With a groan deep in his chest, he pushes a finger, then two inside me, and I’m urgently reaching for his face and lips, my body on fire, my hips lowering onto his hand, but before I’m there, he’s already dragging my leggings and panties down one-handed while his fingers thrust farther and tap at the pea-sized, knotty spot on my front wall.
“You make me so fucking hard, baby girl. I need my mouth on you. I need my cock inside you,” he says in a tone low and soft that’s so damned real and provocative that it makes the muscles inside my sex clench fiercely and frantically like a blustery gale twisting and turning inside my core.
I open my mouth to tell him I feel the same but stop when he starts tossing my clothes to the floor then sweeps me into his arms with his eyes dark and fierce as he walks us to his bedroom.
****
“Don’t you dare come, baby girl. Not until I say. Your orgasms are mine.”
“Keith.” My fingertips twist and turn through his hair, my body grinding shamelessly against his face as he pushes my thighs apart, his hands heavy against the delicate skin while he licks, teases, sucks, and does a seductive dance over my clit.
“Keith.” The fight to restrain myself from coming is almost more than I can bear. It’s painful. It’s agony. “Please. I can’t wait.” I’m growing emotional, achingly so, my fingertips curling into his scalp as his control of my body has me almost in tears.
“You can. You will,” he orders. “You’re beautiful this way, sugar.”
He watches me with a hooded gaze as his tongue slides and licks, pushes and strokes, his hands driving into the flesh of my ass. The ache inside my belly is dropping lower and lower as his eyes flicker with heat and their tint of sienna and his tongue stabs inside me like he’s desperate, like he’s never tasted a woman, like he’s starving.
“Your body was made for me,” he utters against my sex while my legs tremble and his Dominance continues to command and control and I continue to comply and surrender.
“My God. Please. I need you … inside me.” I brazenly grind my body into his face. “And I don’t want a condom. I trust you.”
With eyes flickering with a look that says he trusts me as well, when he slides up the length of my body while kissing every inch slowly, tortuously, and deliberately, I arch and writhe underneath him then reach for the cheeks of his ass and squeeze hard.
“My God! What do I have to do to get your cock inside me?” I curl my hands viciously into the flesh of his butt cheeks then bend my knees and widen my legs.
“Christ, Jen.” Keith takes my face between his palms then flashes that damn panty-melting, arrogant-laced grin of his that says he’s happy with himself that he has me begging and pleading and miserable. “My sweet Jen. How I love you, sugar. But for now, we use condoms.” He reaches into the night table and quickly covers himself then looks down at me with his piercing brown eyes and kisses me with long sensuous licks that spreads my arousal over my tongue, my teeth, the roof of my mouth, and then he pushes inside me with one long, hard, beautiful thrust.
“Christ, I’ve missed you.” He lowers his mouth over my nipple and strokes his tongue over the hard tip. “There hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought of you. Not one.” His voice is low and throaty, exuding sex, intimacy, and beautiful, provocative sin.
My hips raise and lift against each deep thrust as my hands skate over the firm curves of his ass and pull him into me deeper and harder as this mindless desperation to make him climax fills me with a dire, unrelenting urgency.
“Show me. Show me how badly you’ve missed me.” I stare up at him with my core tightening and tensing with the urgency to come.
He parts my thighs and spreads me wide then pumps into me with deep, luxurious, powerful strokes while his hands spear through my hair and his beautiful dark gaze stares deep into mine. “Watch me, baby girl. Feel me. Look into my eyes, dammit. The eyes … they don’t lie.”
His jaw tightens while his breath becomes deep and strained and his irises magnify to a brown that looks like dark roast coffee. His body shifts, then with his teeth gritting, he pulses again while looking straight into my eyes and jets hotly into the condom when I wish like hell it were me.
“Jen. Christ.” His voice sounds almost pained as he empties with deep spurts of warm semen that I feel even through the thin latex, that seem to go on and on until I feel like my sex is swimming with his release.
“Keith.” I surge in climax, clenching and spasming as bliss soars through me and a cry falls from my lips that doesn’t subs
ide until I’ve milked him dry and we’re both breathless and limp.
“Is that proof enough, baby girl?”
His gaze is soft and covered in an unusual gentleness that I feel through my bones and deep inside my chest. He strokes the dampened hair from my face and lowers his lips to mine for a kiss so slow, so passionate, so powerful and affectionate, that warm emotion creeps into the corners of my eyes as I ache with this need, this desperation not to lose him again, and this hunger to have him inside me skin to skin, even if he can never give me his whole heart.
“Stay with me tonight, sugar. I want you beside me when I wake up.”
Chapter Fourteen
Keith
Thursday morning ends way too quickly. It’s only seven AM, and we’re still in bed, still naked, still needing more. I’m holding her against me while we share deep, lingering kisses that I’m nowhere close to being finished with. Just as I’m about to roll her on top of me and pull her onto my stiff cock, my cell phone rings.
“Ignore it,” I utter against the sweet soft skin of her neck.
“It could be important. You should at least see who it is.”
“Fuck!” The voices in my head tell me she’s probably right, especially considering there’s been another anthrax scare only two counties over. I inch back, reluctantly, and reach for my phone from the nightstand and immediately accept the call when I see who it is.
Jason is an hour from Ryker Ranch.
“When did he get back?” Dark and swollen nipples call for my lips as I end the short phone conversation and watch her step out of bed into the crisply cool room. Warmth swells through every pore of my body and hardens me all over again when I’m greeted with the smell of sex and that sweet female scent that is Jen and only Jen, which has two thoughts stirring in my mind.
Call Me Sugar Page 12
