Bring It On (The Exes #5)

by Cheryl Douglas

  “That’s because I always want you.” I drew his lips to mine while his fingers prodded, getting me ready to take him. “I need you, Carter.”

  He groaned. “Let me grab a condom.”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, kissing him deeper. We’d never used condoms before. He had to be tested at the start of every season and I’d believed him when he said he always used a rubber with other women. I’d only had three lovers before him and was on the pill.

  “Do we really need that?” I asked against his lips.

  “Baby?” He wrapped his hand around my cheek. “I gotta know…” I could see the tick in his jaw as though he was clenching his teeth. “Did you, uh, use a condom with him?”

  Given the fact Alex had slept with a stripper and probably countless other women, I couldn’t blame him for being concerned. “Always.”

  Alex had insisted. He didn’t want to be among the one percent of couples tricked into believing the pill was enough to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.

  He narrowed his eyes. “But you don’t want to with me? You’re sure?”

  “I don’t want anything between us, but if you want to—”

  “No.” He shook his head as he climbed on top of me. “No, Jazzy. I want to be as close to you as I can possibly get.”

  Chapter Four

  Carter

  I was losing myself in her. Again. That shield that was supposed to protect my heart after she dumped me had cracked wide open. And I wasn’t complaining. I wanted to let her back in. I wanted to take another chance. It was worth the risk just to experience this high one more time.

  I was filling her, stretching her, making her mine again. And no other feeling could compare to that. Sure, I got a rush on the ice when I scored a goal or we won a big game or series. But this was different. This wasn’t fleeting. It was solid and real. It stayed with me even when she was gone.

  “God, I missed this,” she whispered, fixing me with an intense stare as her hands traveled up and down my back. “Being this close to you. Having you look at me like that…” She kissed me. “Like you can’t get enough of me.”

  “I can’t.”

  I’d never be able to get enough of her. Three years without her had taught me a hard lesson—I didn’t want to live without her. Everything was better with her in my life. I was happier. I felt freer. I was more hopeful. I was able to put things in perspective. The game I loved was just a game when I got to wake up to her. But she… she was everything.

  It had been so long, I’d expected to need fast and furious tonight, but when I felt her heat drawing me in, I knew I needed something entirely different. I needed slow and easy. I needed to reconnect the frayed pieces of my soul that had been untethered since she left me. I needed to reestablish our connection, one stroke at a time, one kiss at a time, and learn to believe this time it would last.

  Our kisses were long and deep and hungry. The words we whispered healed the scarred parts of ourselves we rarely let others see. I absorbed her sweet sounds, taking it all in, praying this wasn’t another dream I’d wake up from.

  I was harder than I’d ever been, and I felt like I could go all night. Which was amazing, given how much this woman turned me on. But I never wanted this feeling to end. I wanted to remain buried deep inside her incredible body as long as I possibly could, savoring every single second.

  “Unbelievable,” she whispered, echoing my thoughts. “No other way to describe it.”

  “Glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

  Her eyes were glazed, her fingers digging into my flesh, and I suddenly needed to watch her freefall. For me. Only for me. The shift was subtle as I gradually picked up the pace, watching for signs she was close. Her shallow breathing, almost as though she’d forgotten how to breathe, was the first sign, followed by the tension in her body, as though she was physically bracing for the delicious onslaught.

  I lifted her chin with my index finger to expose the creamy column of her neck. I knew this woman intimately, the things that aroused her, the things that angered her, the words that would earn me a tongue lashing or her laughter. I wanted her to remember, as I brought her to completion, that this wasn’t sex with a comfortable stranger. This was me. A man who worshipped her, who could give her anything, everything she’d ever wanted or needed. She gasped as I kissed her neck, her body coiled tight. I wanted to release all that tension, to feel her relaxed and satiated in my arms.

  “Come for me, Jazzy.” Words I never thought I’d be able to say again, yet they felt so familiar, so right on my tongue, reminding me I’d said them hundreds of times before.

  “Ahhhhh… Carter…”

  I closed my eyes, breathing deep as I gave her what she needed, without taking more for myself. She was clenching me without meaning to. Her throbbing and pulsing, combined with her lips on my neck and her teeth sinking into my flesh, made it difficult to hold back, but I did. I drew her mouth back to mine, claiming her cries as my body took over, rendering my mind useless.

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. It was too intense, felt too damn good. “I’m gonna come, baby.”

  “Yes.” She locked her legs around me, holding my face as she kissed me.

  I tore my lips from hers, my grunts animalistic, frenzied… raw. I felt stripped down, exposed. And I loved it. Spilling into her, filling her, was the most satisfying thing I’d done… since the last time I left her with a part of me.

  “I love watching you lose control like that,” she said before kissing me sweetly.

  “I love…” You. “Everything about you, gorgeous.”

  She smiled as though I’d just made her day. Her week. Her month. Her year. And maybe I had. I knew she’d made mine.

  “Being back here with you feels so right,” she whispered, confirming what I already knew. We were in sync. We were experiencing the same raw emotion. This was real. She wasn’t going anywhere, not this time.

  “For me too, sweetheart.”

  When I rolled onto my back, she curled into me, just as she always had, and something in me shifted. I felt as if I could finally breathe for the first time in a long time. Like I could relax, because everything in my world was right again.

  “This is where you belong, you know,” I said, tightening my hold on her. “Right here, in my arms.”

  She sighed contentedly before looking up at me, her smile satisfying me in a way nothing else could. Her smile meant she was happy, that I’d made her happy, and nothing was more important to me than that.

  “I love when you look at me like that,” I said, promising myself I’d never make the mistake of holding back with her again.

  “Like what?” she asked, drawing her fingers over my pecs.

  “Like this is the only place you wanna be.”

  Her wandering hand stilled, resting over my heart. “It still scares me a little. The intensity of what I feel for you. It’s kind of overwhelming.”

  I took that in, knowing she needed to say it and I needed to hear it. This wasn’t going to be easy for her, for either of us, because she was right. It was scary as hell to put yourself out there and give another person the power to devastate you.

  “I feel the same way.”

  “You do?” she asked, looking surprised.

  “I do.” She needed to know this time, without a doubt, that I was right there with her.

  She kissed my chest. “Are you tired?”

  “No.” I felt invigorated, as if I’d been sleepwalking through life for the past three years and had finally woken up. “You?”

  “I should be, but I’m not.”

  “So talk to me. Tell me about your life.” And how I can fit into it. My career was so demanding, I usually expected other people’s lives to revolve around mine, their schedule to adapt to mine, but it couldn’t be like that with Jasmine. I had to give as much as I took from her if I wanted this to work.

  “My life,” she said, chuckling. “By that I assume you mean my business, because a
t this stage of the game, they’re one and the same.”

  “Okay, tell me about your business then.” And how we can get rid of the son of a bitch who’s trying to worm his way back into your life. Because I would get rid of him. I just didn’t know how yet.

  “I love what I do. And I know how lucky I am to have accomplished so much in no time.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. You’re brilliant, hardworking, and ambitious. I had no doubt you’d make it big someday.” Most of the women I’d known would have been happy to live a life of leisure on my dime. But not Jas. She’d always wanted to make her own mark on the world and I loved that about her.

  “Thank you for saying that.” She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “You may not know this, but the concept for my business was born right here, in this bed.”

  “I remember.” I’d forgotten very little where this woman was concerned. “I was telling you that you always smelled so amazing, that I’d become addicted to your scent.” When she wasn’t sleeping in my bed, her scent was there, enveloping me. Making me miss her like hell, but also making me smile because it evoked so many hot memories.

  “Yeah, and I told you I’d blended them myself, depending on my mood. Certain scents for when I was happy. Others for when I was anxious and needed to relax.”

  I kissed her shoulder, letting my lips travel to her neck. “Others for when you were feeling sexy… or wanted to turn me on.”

  “Didn’t think I had to work at that,” she said, treating me to a saucy grin.

  “Believe me, you don’t.” I was getting hard again. With Jas, recovery time was a formality. One touch, one kiss, and I was good to go again.

  “You’re so bad,” she said, giggling. “Getting me sidetracked.”

  “Right, we were talking about how your business evolved. Tell me.” I wanted to know everything about her life now, about how she’d made it big and the challenges she’d faced along the way. The trials that had made her even stronger than the woman I’d fallen in love with.

  “Well, once we started talking about it, I thought about what I do, you know, with mixing and blending scents. I started experimenting with different products. All-natural soaps, bubble baths, lotions, bath salts, you name it.”

  “Uh huh.” My lips were still trailing over her skin, my hands now joining the quest. Damn it. I wanted to listen to her talk, but I couldn’t stop touching her. After so many nights without her, I needed to make up for lost time.

  “And, um…”

  I could tell she was distracted by my touch, so I pulled back, forcing her to continue. “Go on.”

  She bit her lip. “You don’t make it easy to think about anything but you.”

  This conversation was probably better suited to a dinner table than a bed, but her business was important to her and I wanted to hear about it. “I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hands. “I’ll keep my hands to myself, I promise.”

  She pouted, looking adorable. “That’s no fun.”

  I laughed, pulling her into my arms as I smothered her with kisses. “Okay, enough! You were telling me about your company. Keep going.”

  “Well, personalizing scents according to mood took some work,” she said, facing me. “Especially when it came time to scale it. Then we added personalized packaging on our website, which definitely takes the product to the next level, but again complicates the process. It’s all proprietary, but even if it wasn’t, it would be difficult to duplicate, which I think has contributed to our success.”

  I was so damn proud of her and loved to watch her come alive when she talked about her work. “Sounds like you’ve got a great thing going.” I wanted to stop there, to end on a positive note, but I couldn’t bite back the question that had been dogging me since I’d learned about it. “So how the hell did he get involved?” And why are you letting him fund your dream?

  “I met Alex through a mutual friend from school.” She sighed. “He was friends with my girlfriend’s older brother. Anyhow, he was a trust fund baby with a degree in finance and a good mind for business. I had the business degree too, of course, but I was so excited about the creative process that I needed someone to ground me sometimes. He did that.”

  I clenched my teeth so hard I could almost hear my dentist clucking his tongue in disapproval. “Uh huh. And?”

  “And he offered to give me the seed money I needed to get started, in exchange for twenty-five percent of the business.”

  “Which means you’re stuck with him.”

  She smiled, running her hand over his shoulder. “I hate to admit this, but he’s a good CFO. He’s a big part of the reason we’re as successful as we are, and even if I could get rid of him, I’m not sure it would be in the best interest of my company.”

  It was a business decision, not personal. I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t soothe my frustration. I didn’t want her going into work every day to deal with a man who’d not only cheated on her but was determined, by her own admission, to get her back.

  She ran her fingertip over the frown lines now etched in my forehead. “Tell me what you’re thinking. You know you don’t have to hold back with me.”

  “I just don’t see how it can work. The guy’s a dirtbag—you said so yourself. How can you trust him? And why the hell would you want to work with him every day?”

  “We all make sacrifices,” she said, taking my hand and curling it against her chest. “Ask anyone who’s ever started a business. There are hundreds of sacrifices you have to make. Some big, some small. This is just one of the sacrifices I have to make to keep our business moving in the right direction.”

  Our business. I hated knowing she shared something so important to her with a man who’d once been equally important.

  “How’d you two end up getting engaged?” The last thing I wanted was to hear about their love affair, but I figured I should know what I was up against.

  “We dated for about a year,” she said, staring at the colorful ink wrapping around my shoulder. “It just seemed like the next logical step, I guess. We were partners already, in everything. He understood why I worked as hard as I did, so he wasn’t on me all the time about long hours. He was passionate about it too. And he understood why I wanted to wait to have a family. We were on the same page about that.”

  The thought of her having a baby with another man made my stomach roil in protest. She must have seen that in the dark look I gave her because she said, “Hey, you asked. I didn’t want to talk about him.”

  “You’re right, I asked.” I sighed, rolling back onto my back. I felt marginally better when she curled into my side, wrapping her arm around me. “Did you ever talk to him about us?”

  “Sure, he knew we dated, but he’s not much of a sports fan, so I don’t think it fazed him.”

  “That’s what you told him?” I asked, curling my arm tighter around her. “That we dated? Nothing more?” I wanted her to have told him that she’d been in love with me, that she’d wanted to take our relationship to the next level. That I meant something to her.

  Shit. I’d been so relaxed, so confident a few minutes ago, but a conversation about her ex had me on edge again. Was it going to be like this from now on, me battling my anger and frustration every day because this asshole would be spending more time with her than I would?

  “I don’t remember exactly what I said, babe. We had that conversation a long time ago.”

  So she’d mentioned me to her ex once? Only once? Clearly I’d been thinking about her a hell of a lot more than she’d been thinking about me.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked, obviously able to feel the tension in my body.

  “Are you going to tell him we’re back together?” I needed to hear her say she was going to make it clear to him she was off-limits.

  “When I’m around Alex now, I try to keep it strictly professional. That’s not easy, of course, because he always tries to circle back to the wedding.” She sighed. “We’re suppose
d to be getting married next weekend. I can’t tell you the nightmare, having to cancel everything, let everyone know…”

  Next weekend. If he hadn’t been stupid enough to cheat on her, she would have been marrying another man next weekend. And I hadn’t even let another woman sleep in my bed. Was I crazy for getting this close to her again when it was obvious she’d meant a lot more to me than I had to her?

  I removed her arm from around me and sat up before setting my feet on the floor. I dropped my head into my hands, tugging gently on my hair. Fuck. This didn’t feel good. I hated this indecision, this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that no matter what decision I made, I could get screwed.

  “Hey,” she said, touching my back. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

  “I don’t know if this is right for me,” I said, looking at her over my shoulder.

  She clutched the blanket, her shoulders curling in as though she was trying to shrink away from me. I hated that, but I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions coursing through me. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I sure as hell didn’t want to get my heart handed to me again.

  “You don’t know if this is right for you? Or you don’t know if I’m right for you?”

  I had no doubt she was right for me. She was everything I’d ever wanted and didn’t even know I needed. But would that be enough to combat the reality of her working with her ex every day, sharing a part of herself with him that I’d never get to see?

  “It’s just pretty obvious to me that our lives moved in different directions after we split.” I laced my hands and hung my head. “You had an easy time moving on and I… didn’t.”

  “You don’t know how I felt.”

  “Okay, so tell me.”

  “I immersed myself in business because it was the only thing that distracted me. I would have made myself crazy thinking about you if I hadn’t had a project to throw myself into.”

  “Really?” I needed more, so much more, before I could feel confident that our breakup had rocked her the way it had me.