by J. S. Scott
I raised my head to look at him. “You’re perfect,” I blurted out.
The intensity of his stare made my heart start to race. I could feel the same longing I was experiencing reflected back to me in his eyes.
His gaze locked with mine, he expertly found the hidden zipper of my dress and lowered it. I held my breath as he kept me pinned in place only with his gaze.
He tugged, and I helped him pull the dress down my body. His breath caught as the material cleared my bare breasts. I didn’t stop. I just wiggled the material down my legs until I was standing in front of him in a pair of panties and my thigh-high stockings.
“Nice panties,” he remarked huskily.
They were the black pair he’d given to me at the resort. “They were a gift,” I answered in a shaky voice.
“Jesus, Jade. I want you so damn much that it almost hurts just to look at you.”
Liquid heat rushed between my thighs, so I knew exactly what he meant. My core clenched, and my body was pleading with me to ease the ache.
I wrapped my arms around him. “Then let’s make the pain stop,” I suggested in a low, sensual tone. “Because I hurt, too.”
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he rasped.
“Then fuck me, Eli,” I pleaded.
An animal-like sound came out of his mouth as he lowered his head to kiss me, and I savored his desire.
His embrace was ravenous, but he teased my lips with his teeth, and then devoured them again. He repeated the same actions over and over again, teasing until I wanted to scream at him to fuck me.
I rubbed my body shamelessly against his, reveling in the feel of his bare skin against my diamond-hard nipples.
“I need more, Eli,” I whimpered when he’d finally lifted his head.
“You’ll get more, Butterfly,” he answered gruffly. “Probably more than you want. But I need to find condoms.”
“I’m on birth control. Now,” I insisted, reaching for his pants.
“Not yet,” he commanded, grabbing my wrist to keep me from freeing his cock. “I want both of us to enjoy this, and I’m not going to last very long.”
“I don’t care,” I told him defiantly.
“I care,” he growled as he gripped my panties and yanked them off with one hard pull. “Jump up.”
I quickly obeyed, hopping up enough to wrap my legs around his waist as my torn undies fell to the floor.
I shuddered as I tightened my legs around his waist and pressed my lower body forward until my sex met his hot skin. “Yes,” I hissed, gyrating against his rock-hard body.
I sighed as I absorbed the feel of our bodies meeting skin-to-skin, and my pussy pressed up against the outline of his erect cock.
Eli’s hands grasped my ass and pulled me even tighter against him, and then moved to the nearest wall to prop my back up.
“Dammit!” he cursed, his fist slamming against the wall over my head. “I have no control when it comes to you.”
“You don’t need it,” I whispered in his ear. “You’ll never need it with me.”
My words must have sunk in, because I could feel Eli freeing himself, and I shivered in anticipation.
His impatience was evident when he sheathed himself inside me with one powerful lunge.
I panted and speared my hands into his hair. Eli was a big man, and the stretching sensation of having him buried to his balls inside me was slightly painful. But the satisfaction of being joined intimately with him was so much more earth-shattering than the twinge of pain.
“Yes. God, Eli, I’ve wanted this for so long,” I confessed.
He grunted. “Probably not nearly as long as I have.”
The pain faded away, and all that was left was the carnal pleasure of Eli squeezing my ass cheeks as he pulled out and plunged back into me again.
I held on to him, and he set a punishing rhythm, one that threatened to make me lose my mind.
He gripped my ass so hard I knew I’d probably have his finger marks on my butt cheeks, but his hold also helped me move to meet him on every stroke. My hips moved down and forward, accepting every forceful movement.
“Eli. You feel so good,” I moaned.
He’d overwhelmed me, just like I’d always wished he would, but I hadn’t been prepared for just how amazing it was.
I’d never felt more alive. Every cell in my body was filled with the taste, smell, and feel of Eli Stone.
It was too much.
Yet it wasn’t enough.
“Take what you need, Jade,” Eli said roughly. “I’m not going to last.”
I went with my instinct since I had no idea what I needed. I tightened my legs around him, keeping his thrusts short and fast. It was exactly what I needed to get some stimulation to my clit.
My climax rose up to meet me ferociously, and it was almost scary.
“Eli,” I moaned as I felt every muscle in my body tense.
The pressure was nearly unbearable until the hot wave of pleasure washed over me, hitting me so hard that my body started to shake. I rode that wave of pleasure as it took me over and then spit me back out again.
I felt Eli’s muscles contract, and I knew the clench and release of my internal muscles had milked him to climax.
“Fuck!” he cursed fiercely, his breath ragged and erratic.
I panted for air as we both tried to catch our breath.
Eli hefted my body up a little higher, walked to the couch, and collapsed down onto it. He landed on his back and cushioned my fall with his body.
Our bodies were slick with sweat, and I waited silently for my heart and respirations to return to normal.
“That was incredible,” I told Eli when I’d finally come back into my body.
“There’s only one problem,” he answered in a lazy voice.
I moved back so I could see his face. “What problem?”
I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with what had just occurred.
He cocked an eyebrow. “I still haven’t managed to get you into my bed.”
“You haven’t asked me,” I teased.
He sat up, cradling my body as he stood. “I’m not asking. I’m just going to take you there. I refuse to give you the chance to say no.”
I smiled against his shoulder. Eli had never been good at asking for anything, but in our current situation, I was willing to let him be as high-handed as he wanted to be.
CHAPTER 24
ELI
“Holy fuck!” I cursed, angry because I couldn’t seem to control my own body.
I shrugged out of my suit coat as I stumbled forward, my body hitting my bed with a giant thud!
“Son of a bitch!” I rasped, my throat so sore that I could barely get the words out of my mouth.
Maybe I was a billionaire mogul, but right now I couldn’t put two coherent sentences together.
I rolled over onto my stomach, and was immediately hit by Jade’s tantalizing scent that still lingered on the pillow from the night before.
Butterfly.
She’d left my place earlier in the day, after I’d gone into the office, but her seductive fragrance was still with me.
As sick as I was at the moment, my body still reacted immediately to the smell of her on my sheets.
I need to call her. I shouldn’t have left without talking to her this morning.
As I’d watched her sleep like an angel, exhausted from getting very little sleep during the night, my heart hadn’t allowed me to wake her up, even though I knew we needed to talk. So I’d gone into the office to catch everything up so we could spend more time together and talk about everything we should have discussed a long time ago.
Jade was mine, and I sure as hell knew I was hers. If I wanted to get real, I’d known it almost from the first minute we’d met. My Butterfly had grabbed my balls and my heart from day one. I’d just been having a very hard time accepting that I deserved a woman like her, and that she’d be stuck with me for life if I acted on those emotions.
&nbs
p; But I was done fucking fighting my fate. I’d never wanted to in the first place. My only real apprehension had been saddling a woman like her with a guy like me, so I’d found every excuse possible not to do it.
Truth was, I’d been a major dick, and it had taken some kind of come-to-Jesus moment like I’d experienced last night to snap me back into reality.
I needed her, and I just hoped to hell she felt the same way. Screw the fact that I didn’t deserve her. I’d make her so damn happy that she’d never regret taking me on.
I fumbled for my cell phone in my pocket.
She needed to know how I felt.
I wanted her to know.
But the synapses in my brain weren’t quite connecting all that well, and the flu medication I’d taken didn’t seem to be helping much. One moment I was burning hot, and the next I was cold to the bone.
Just the exertion of reaching for my cell phone had me hacking and coughing so hard that my ribs ached.
Need to call Jade.
But I don’t want her to come here, because I’m currently contaminating my entire home.
Not sure I could even hold a conversation at the moment, much less tell Jade everything I wanted to say, I tried to focus on my phone, and just texted exactly what I was feeling. Then I dropped the cell on the bed, my energy spent just from typing some words into a text.
I rolled over onto my back with a groan. My entire body felt like it was on fire, and I hurt from the top of the head to my damn toes.
All I wanted was to escape being miserable, and I got my wish when the medication I’d taken finally kicked in and I fell into a restless sleep.
“She still hasn’t answered?” I asked my mom in a hoarse voice as I lay in a hospital bed seven days after I’d initially gotten sick, my body being pumped with fluids because I was dehydrated.
As if the flu hadn’t been bad enough, I’d ended up getting a secondary bacterial pneumonia that had delivered the knockout punch. My damn cough had gotten so bad that my chest and my ribs felt like I’d been slugged repeatedly with a baseball bat in those areas.
My mother glanced at my phone and said, “I don’t see any new text messages.”
“Shit! What if I got Jade sick, too? She was with me the night before I left the office because I was coming down with the flu. Maybe something happened to her.”
“She’s fine, Eli,” my mother said as she ran a gentle hand over my sweaty forehead. “She just texted me yesterday to ask a question about one of her investments. She’s not sick.”
Jesus! I felt like a kid again with my mother keeping watch at my bedside. And I hated it. I was a grown man, and it was deflating to be so damn weak that my mom had to help out.
“So she isn’t pissed or angry at you,” I confirmed. “She just isn’t talking to me.”
That hurt like a bitch. I was sure I’d let Jade know that I didn’t want her to rush to San Diego for me because I was sick. In fact, I’d been trying to make certain she didn’t, because I hadn’t wanted to infect her. But she could have at least answered my texts.
Something.
Anything.
Although I was glad that she wasn’t ill, I desperately needed some kind of communication from her. I’d been on her list of people to ignore once before, and I hadn’t liked it.
Because I felt like I was constantly hacking up a lung, I probably couldn’t talk. But I could text.
Sort of.
My mother gave me a suspicious look. “Why would she be angry at you?”
“No reason,” I muttered, wishing I hadn’t said anything to her.
My mother could be like a hunting dog on the fresh scent of game when she wanted to be. She’d chase down an answer if it killed her.
I started to cough again, and the pain that shot through my ribs felt like somebody was nailing me with a hot knife. “I hate being sick,” I grumbled irritably as soon as my body had calmed down.
My mother smiled. “You’ve always been a bad patient. Luckily, you don’t get ill very often.”
I was relieved that she didn’t seem ready to hound me about Jade.
“I have your pain medication, Mr. Stone,” a friendly nurse said as she breezed into the room.
“I don’t want pain medication,” I said like a petulant kid. “It screws with my head.”
I’d just woken up from the previous dose. The last thing I needed was to conk out again.
The nurse looked at me disapprovingly. “If you don’t keep your pain level down, you won’t be able to do the deep breathing and coughing like you need to do. That means the pneumonia could get worse than it is right now.”
I weighed my choices with a frown, and then took the pill cup from her hand, tossed back the medication, and swallowed it with some water.
If I had to be out of it for days, so be it.
Since Jade wasn’t answering me, I was determined to go and find her the moment I was able to get the hell out of bed.
And taking any longer than absolutely necessary to get healthy again was not an option.
CHAPTER 25
JADE
“It’s been nearly two weeks, Brooke. I don’t think Eli is going to call.”
My words hung in the air like a dark cloud as I chatted on the phone with my sister.
I looked down at the text messages that I’d received from Eli the day after we’d slept together. I’d probably stared at them a thousand times, but they still didn’t make any sense. But the message was loud and clear.
Don’t want to see you.
Don’t want you here with me.
Better off being alone.
There was really no question about what he’d been thinking after we’d slept together.
He was done with our relationship, and his swift rejection had nearly broken me.
Okay, I’d rationally known that there was a chance that things might not turn out well between me and Eli, but I hadn’t expected that the night he’d finally taken me to his bed would be the last time I ever saw him.
We’d reached for each other all night long, both of us hungry for the passion that we found every time we touched.
To be honest, we hadn’t really slept much, so I hadn’t expected to wake up to find Eli already gone to his office in the morning. His driver had arrived to take me home during the late morning, but I hadn’t really been worried. It was the radio silence I’d had from him for fourteen straight days after his text messages that told me that he didn’t ever intend to see me again.
“Honestly, Jade, I just don’t see it,” Brooke answered. “I don’t know what’s up with the weird text messages, but the guy is crazy about you.”
“Maybe he wasn’t,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe I was just a distraction.”
I hadn’t uttered a word about the things that Eli had told me the last time I saw him. It was personal, and I was pretty sure that he hadn’t shared the experience with very many people.
My heart still bled for him, even though we hadn’t seen each other. Not only had he lost his twin brother, but his father had died two years after Austin. So while he was still trying to twist himself into a person he was not, he’d had to give up his own dreams to take over for his dad.
How does anyone recover from two enormous losses so close together in their life?
“You were not a distraction,” Brooke answered. “Nobody acts like he did when you were in the hospital, over a casual fling. He has feelings for you, Jade. I can’t say that I understand what happened, but I’m positive I’m right. I think it’s more likely that he’s afraid of the way he feels, and wants to run away.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I muttered as I got my lazy butt off the couch and headed to the kitchen. “Whatever the reason, I’m not going to see him anymore. I wish it had lasted longer, but I knew what I was getting myself into when I started seeing him. No commitments. No strings attached. It was just sex.”
Really, really good sex.
“You can’t fool me, Jade. Please don
’t try to sound philosophical. It’s not working. He broke your heart.”
“He did,” I admitted softly. “But I’ll get over it. I’ll have to.”
I’d been crying nonstop for the last two weeks, and it needed to stop. Even if Eli was running away, I couldn’t stop him from doing it.
“Oh, Jade. I’m so sorry. He’s such a jerk for hurting you.”
“I thought you liked him,” I reminded her.
“I did. But I don’t anymore,” she said adamantly. “How could I still like him if he doesn’t have enough sense to know what he had?”
I sighed. That was one thing in my family that was always consistent: if you mess with one Sinclair, you’re messing with them all. We all stood by each other no matter what.
“Please don’t say anything to our brothers,” I requested. “You know how they are.”
“I’m not so sure that I don’t want to see them clean Eli’s clock,” Brooke said.
“Brooke,” I said in a warning voice.
“Oh, all right. I won’t say a word,” she promised, sounding like staying quiet was the last thing she wanted to do.
“I’ll be okay, Brooke,” I said, not sure if I was trying to reassure my twin or myself.
“I know you will,” she replied softly. “I just hate seeing you hurting now.”
“Sometimes experiencing pain leads to something good, right? Look what you went through. And you found Liam because of it.”
Brooke snorted. “You’ve been reading too many romance books, sister. Pain sucks. And don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. But I did find Liam.”
“Okay. If you want to know the truth, I’ve been thinking about calling him. I have to fight my instincts every damn day. And it does hurt.”
“I know,” Brooke said with a sigh. “I can feel your pain.”
I had no idea why I ever tried to brush things off when I talked to Brooke. Maybe because she was so happy, and I didn’t want to be a downer. But she always knew, just like I could always tell when something was wrong with her.
My twin and I had the same kind of connection that I knew Eli had experienced with his brother.
