by Janice Lynn
He laved her most sensitive part until her breath came in short pants and she said his name over and over as if chanting a magic spell all her own.
Perhaps she had because certainly he felt enchanted, under her spell, as if some magical force was at work making him completely and totally hers.
She arched off the bed, curled her fingers tightly into his hair then cried out softly with her orgasm.
Hearing her pleasure, seeing her reaction to his touch, feeling her, tasting her overwhelmed Ross’s senses and he lost control.
Lost control of his mind and his body.
He finished the job she’d started, shucking his shorts off in record time and moving over her, positioning his body, then without hesitation slid home to where he’d always belonged.
With Brielle.
* * *
Brielle closed her eyes at the sheer pleasure moving through her body.
Every touch of Ross’s hand against her lit fires that had burned low for too many years. Every brush of his mouth against her body started infernos only he could quench.
Now, feeling him stretching her, filling her up with him, she wanted to cry from the joy of it. Then again, crying was what had started this.
No, she wouldn’t think about the emotions that had assuaged her when she’d gone to her room and given in to the tears. For the moment she was just going to be greedy, to take what his body was giving, to feel all the things she’d had denied her for five years.
Five long, lonely years since she’d made love to this man. To any man. Five long, forlorn years when she’d loved him, missed him, wanted him to miraculously reappear in her life, sweep her off her feet and tell her he felt exactly the same way about her.
Never had she actually believed he would.
Not really.
Or had she?
Sure, there had been a part of her that had dreamed, hoped, but she’d kept that part buried so she could survive day by day with a big chunk of her heart missing.
She’d focused on Justice, Vann, her job. She’d been happy, even if she’d always known something was missing. Someone. Ross.
But here he was. Buried deep inside her, his gorgeous body moving against hers, thrusting deeper and deeper until rational thought was becoming more and more difficult, until all she wanted was to lose herself in him.
His lips marauded hers, as if her mouth provided him with the necessities of life itself and he was a dying man in need of sustenance.
His hands caressed her, then supported his body above hers where he angled himself, driving even deeper into her, but where he could watch her beneath him.
From her vantage point she admired the chiseled lushness of his chest, of his cut abdomen. She wanted to reach out and touch him as she had earlier, but her insides began to melt and she could only curl her fingers into tight fists. First she melted only at the very core of her, but then she liquefied in a spiraling outward motion that built in momentum until every nerve cell was rocked with the force of a tornado turning her insides out in a pleasurable explosion.
She gripped her bed covers. Her fingers clenched and unclenched. Wave after wave of glorious spasms shook her body. She arched into Ross, then bit her tongue to keep from crying out with the enormity of the orgasm that hit her.
Total. Orgasmic. Meltdown.
But he wasn’t through. Oh, no. Just as she crashed over the pinnacle of her pleasurable ride, he jetted her right back up by taking her nipple in his mouth and giving her a hard suckle, all the while imprinting her body over and over with him.
She lost count of how many times he brought her up, let her fall just a little so she could appreciate the next ascent to an even higher crest. Over and over until she was positive her brain would never function again. That all of her body had completely short-circuited from the lightning running through her and she would remain a sizzled, spent gob of ooey-gooey goop.
When she felt the change in his pace, the tightening of his abdominal muscles, the tension pouring from every pore of his body, she arched into his thrust, meeting his rhythm, welcoming the rush of pleasure filling her body as, that time, it was her name crossing his lips in a possessive growl.
His body glistening with sweat, he virtually collapsed onto her, kissing her cheek. “Perfect.”
Not perfect, but his words and the way he hugged her to him, rolled them over to where she was lying on him rather than vice versa, holding her close and managing to keep their bodies joined throughout the maneuver as if he couldn’t bear to part from her yet, warmed a part of her that had been cold for a long time. A part she’d buried in the icy recesses of the past to keep the pain from destroying her.
Their bodies stuck together and she hid her face in the groove of his neck, breathing hard. Her heart pounded so forcefully that every finger and toe throbbed in pulsating cadence. Her entire body throbbed, ebbed, flowed.
The intensity began to recede and her brain began to reboot itself, to register the impact of what they’d just done. Her sweaty, spent body was stretched out over Ross’s long, hard body, both of them out of breath, both of them clinging to the other.
Crack after crack she heard the thaw, felt the reality of her vulnerability to Ross become more and more exposed.
Barely here two weeks and she’d already spread her legs and welcomed him inside her body. Did that make her easy?
Perhaps, but if so, she was only easy for this one man because he was the only one with the power to move her so. The only man she’d ever wanted.
Was she wrong to have taken what he’d offered? To have given in to the need within her to be with him?
She hadn’t planned on this. Had planned just the opposite, especially with him living with her and Justice. They didn’t need to be doing this or touching at all. There were too many obstacles between them as it was. Sex would just end up being one more.
Sex?
Was that what they’d just done? Had sex?
Never in the past when she’d been with Ross had she questioned that they were making love. Never.
But then he’d left her and that had changed everything, had changed her. He may have been irresistible, he may have exposed her vulnerable heart, but no longer was she the naive girl who’d fallen in love with him and given him her heart and body.
This time she knew that Ross wasn’t playing for keeps and the good thing was that even if he was, she wasn’t.
He’d permanently cured her of that.
She refused to be like her mother and that one thing would keep her safe from Ross, even if nothing else would.
Despite his tight hold, she rolled off him, lay flat on her back and stared at the ceiling, each breath still coming hard and fast. Ross’s breathing was coming even harder, faster from his position next to her.
He took her hand, squeezed, dropped their clasped fingers to the bed, and took several deep breaths, before blowing everything she’d just thought right out of the water.
“We should get married.”
* * *
Ross didn’t have to turn his head to know Brielle was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. He felt her horrified glare. Felt the shock pouring from her every pore as she gawked at him.
Not exactly the reaction a man hoped for when discussing marriage with a woman.
“We have sex once and you say we should get married?” She sounded incredulous, as if he’d spoken in a foreign tongue about something impossible and far-fetched.
“Not just once,” he reminded her, expecting her to point out that it had only been once in the past five years.
A deep V cut into her forehead and she just continued to stare at him as if he’d lost his mind. “All those times that we did so much more years ago, when I loved you with all my heart, and none of the previous times inspired you to want to walk down the aisl
e with me. Am I so good now that after a single time you feel the need to shroud me in white and listen to wedding bells peal? Pardon me if I don’t buy it.”
He rolled onto his side so he could see her more easily. “Sarcasm? Really? After what we just shared you give me sarcasm when I ask you a serious question?”
She didn’t so much as flinch. “You asked nothing.”
Ross frowned. Hadn’t he?
“You want me to get down on my knee and propose, Brielle? Would that put a nice smile on your face? Would that make you happy? Because if that’s what you want, I will.”
“No.” Her gaze narrowed and he regretted his snappy comment. Only hadn’t she just been right there with him, experiencing the same things he’d experienced? Sex between them had always been good, but that had been... He searched for a word and still failed to define what he’d just shared with Brielle.
“I don’t want to marry you.” Her words sliced into his thoughts.
“What?” He sat up, stared down into her stubborn face, not quite believing she was serious. She’d loved him, was the mother of his child, had practically beat him over the head with bridal magazines just a few years before, and now she didn’t want to marry him?
“You heard me.”
He glared at her, trying to read her expression, trying to decipher what was really going on behind her words. “Is this your idea of retribution because I didn’t jump on board five years ago when you were trying to shotgun me down the aisle?”
She sat up too, glared much more fiercely than anything he could pull off. “No, this is me not wanting to marry you and saying so.”
“You used to want to marry me,” he reminded her, not liking how his euphoria of just moments before had completely dissipated and was being replaced with something dark and ugly.
She shrugged. “What I used to want is irrelevant to what I want today. I don’t want to be your wife.”
He eyed her, noting the slight quiver to her lower lip, the rapid pulse at her throat. “People don’t change that much.”
“Exactly,” she agreed, although he didn’t understand what she was agreeing to. She crossed her arms over her breasts then, seeming to realize she was naked, she yanked her bed covers over her body. “You are the one man I won’t ever marry. Got it?”
What the...?
“Why not?” He didn’t bother keeping his voice low because...well, just because, although he remembered too late that his son was just down the hall and the last thing he wanted was Justice to hear them arguing. “Why not?” he repeated much more softly, hoping she’d take his cue and keep her voice down too.
“Justice.”
“Now I really don’t understand. Our son is why you won’t marry me? Perhaps you didn’t notice but the boy likes me and needs his father, me, in his life.”
“I never said he doesn’t need you or that you shouldn’t be in his life. And of course he likes you. You’ve showered him with attention and gifts. Why wouldn’t he like you?”
“You make the fact that I bought my son a few things this week sound as if I was trying to bribe him. Thanks to you, I have five years to make up for so forgive me if I go a little crazy here at the beginning and want to see my kid’s face light up a few times. I’ve only been a father, that I knew of, for a little over a week. Forgive me if I don’t get everything just perfect. I’m learning as I go. I think I’m owed a little slack there, don’t you?”
Gaze downward cast and pulling her comforter over her body, she nodded. “I’m sure you are. I can’t change the past any more than you can. What’s done is done. If I’d known you’d have wanted to be a part of Justice’s life, I’d—”
“Oh, spare me your sob story,” he interrupted, frustrated, angry, pulling on his underwear and shorts. “We both know the truth. You didn’t tell me to punish me for leaving.”
“I didn’t,” she gasped, sounding horrified.
“You did. Did it give you satisfaction to know that you’d given birth to my child, were raising my son all without me being any the wiser? Did you feel as if retribution had been served every time you looked at him and knew my eyes had never even seen him?”
Her mouth fell open, her gaze narrowed, and her eyes flickered with anger. “Get out!” she ordered, pointing toward her bedroom door.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Get out!” she repeated, grabbing her clothes and dressing in haste then tossing his T-shirt at him. “Get out of my bedroom, out of my house, and out of my life! You aren’t wanted here. Do you hear me? We did just fine without you and don’t need you here. I don’t want you here!”
“As if you could make me stay,” he countered, sliding on his T-shirt, wondering how the magic of moments before had morphed into something so ugly, wondering why he wasn’t stopping this because deep down he knew he didn’t want to go.
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,” he said, instead of begging her to forgive him for his pride. “I tried to do this the nice way, even asked you to marry me, but you had to be difficult, didn’t you?” Or was he the one being difficult? Had he rushed things? No, he wanted to marry the mother of his five-year-old child. If anything, he was behind the times. But she no longer wanted to marry him. A fresh pain stabbed his heart. “Have it your way. We won’t get married, but my son will live with me. Not just every other weekend.”
“No,” she cried, her face paling to a pasty white as she dropped onto the edge of the bed as if her legs were no longer strong enough to support her. She sat, staring at him in horror. “You can’t do that.”
He wouldn’t do that. She was a good mother. Justice needed her.
“Oh, yes, Brielle.” He barely recognized his own voice, but defensive pain pushed him down a different path than the one he wanted to travel. No, he didn’t need to feel sorry for her. He needed to remember what she’d done to him, to their son, and why? Because she’d had some misguided notion that he should have married her without knowing and since he hadn’t agreed, she wouldn’t marry him at all? She didn’t deserve his consideration. She sure hadn’t shown him any. “You had five years. I want what you stole from me. Five years.”
Red splotched her pale cheeks. “No judge is going to give you that!”
“No?” He arched his brow, too hurt and angry to stop his bitter words. “You think you can provide that boy with a better life than I can? Think again.”
“I have provided him with a good home, a good life. I give him everything he needs,” she insisted.
“No.” He shook his head with disdain. “You didn’t. You didn’t give him the father he obviously craves and needs. Me.”
With that he gave her one last look of disgust then left her bedroom. He wanted to slam her door. Lord, how he wanted the satisfaction of slamming her bedroom door. Instead, in deference to their hopefully still sleeping son, he closed the door behind him with a resounding click that echoed through his mind as he walked down the hallway.
Away from Brielle.
Why did that feel so wrong?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BRIELLE HAD DREADED going in to the hospital because she’d have to see Ross. There would be no way to avoid seeing him in the emergency department with them both working there.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have bothered worrying.
He seemed as intent on ignoring her as she was on ignoring him.
She’d not seen him since he’d stormed out of her apartment three days before. A mere week at her house and everywhere she looked she saw him, had flashbacks of seeing him there with Justice, of hearing his laughter, of his scent filling her home, of just knowing he was there.
As much as she missed him, Justice missed him more.
The day after their argument Ross had called and very tersely asked to speak to Justice. She’d handed her son the ph
one, wanted to listen in, but had forced herself to go to the kitchen for a moment to give her son a minute of privacy. When she’d come back into the room, Justice had set the phone down and gone to his room. She’d picked the phone up but the line had been dead.
The silence at the end of the phone a harsh reminder of the void in her life.
Justice hadn’t mentioned what Ross had said, but he’d been full of questions.
“Where’s my daddy?
“Why did my daddy have to go far away?
“Is my daddy coming home soon?
“We need to go find my daddy.”
Justice couldn’t seem to focus on anything except the void Ross’s disappearance from their house had left. Even Vann had commented on it when he’d come to visit them. Her brother hadn’t said too much about Ross. He’d just listened to her give a glossed-over version of what had happened because she sure wasn’t telling him she’d been stupid enough to have sex with Ross. Then Vann had told her to be patient and forgiving, that Ross was dealing with a lot and probably just needed some time.
That hadn’t sat well and so they’d opted to not discuss Ross for the rest of her brother’s visit.
Only Justice had grilled his uncle on Ross’s whereabouts.
Her poor son. She’d wanted to protect him. Instead, she’d been stupid, given in to her own passion for Ross and ended up ruining every thing.
Had they been destined to fail from the beginning? The past too painful for them to forge any kind of amicable relationship in the present?
For Justice’s sake, she hoped not.
Part of her had been on edge, expecting to receive a court summons regarding custody. Probably she would as, realistically, those things took much longer than a few days to set into motion.
She wouldn’t fight him regarding sharing their son. Justice needed both of his parents. But she would fight till her dying breath if he attempted to take Justice from her completely.
Maybe he did have the right since he’d missed five years of his son’s life, but he’d destroy her if he denied her access to Justice.
