“Is that the delightful Castiel Zephyr?” I query, peeking over her shoulder.
She tucks it to her chest with a grin. “Hey, hey, Nosy Rosy. This is private.” I quirk a speculative brow and chuckle, glad to see the happy couple getting along. It just makes me anxious to get off work and hurry home to Jayson. “So, have you heard from your mom?” Grace asks, putting her phone away.
My smile drops but I shrug nonchalantly. “She won’t answer my calls. I thought about taking a trip over, but I’d die of embarrassment if one of the neighbors sees me this soon after that Christmas Eve party fiasco. I’m just gonna give her some time to cool down. Oh, and to lose that loser, Lamont.”
“Yeah, from what you told me about him, he sounds like a total fuckup.”
“You know, I looked into him to see if I could poke holes in his backstory, but everything checked out. I was hoping he was a broke nobody who was playing off of Mom’s apparent midlife crisis. Sadly, he’s rich as all get-out.”
“And, still a loser. Exactly my point about how what Jayson does for a living has nothing to do with whether or not he’s right for you.”
“Point taken.”
“Ladies, this store ain’t gonna run itself,” Hank peeks into the break room to say.
“Coming right out,” Grace supplies.
An hour later, I leave work and hop in my Fiat for destinations less tiresome. The dash clock reads nearly midnight, but it doesn’t even matter. Jayson plans to sleep over. The semester has kicked off with the normal getting acquainted with new professors and skipping homework until the last minute. I ignore the pile of books in the passenger seat because, yes, procrastination. When I pull up in front of my lovely little haven in Western Addition I have nothing but pleasant thoughts in my head.
“Jayson?” I call out as soon as I dot the door. A glance around shows me a fully decorated living room devoid of the remnants of Christmas. I won’t be that person that keeps up a tree until Easter. I march up the stairs two by two, shedding my sweatshirt and khakis as I go. “Jayson, you up there?”
He steps out of my bedroom holding a wine bottle and two glasses. I beam at him in welcome. “I was beginning to think I was the only one here. What’s the special occasion?” I gesture to the glasses. Jayson reaches for my hand wordlessly with a tired smile in return. He pulls me to the bathroom where the tub is filled and rose petals float on the surface of the water. An alluring floral scent floats smokily from a wand of incense. The lights are off and candles light my way. He pours us some wine. We toast and take a sip.
Appreciation wells up within me. Jayson steps closer and gets rid of my remaining clothes, all the while intensely staring me in the eyes. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this special treatment, but after a day of new classes and long hours at work, it’s exactly what I need,” I reply.
“Well, who really deserves their lot in life,” he murmurs. His lips coast across mine. I sigh breathlessly into his mouth.
“You’re the only person who can take me from a spark to a conflagration with just a look,” I confess.
He glides a palm all the way down my stomach to cup the hairless hill of my mons. It’s an intimate touch that gets even more intimate when he slips a finger inside of me. I squirm against his hand. “You can’t wait?” I tease with a throaty groan of pleasure.
“I never can.” He runs his nose through the cascade of my hair. His lips find mine. He kisses me delicately. As his teeth come together gently on my bottom lip, he eases his finger in and out of me. I gasp with yearning. Jayson steps forward and presses his shirted chest to my bare breasts. The fabric catches on a nipple and tugs. I hear soft music playing from my bedroom.
“I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have a man like you,” I sigh rapturously.
A tortured groan flies from his mouth. Jayson pushes away from me at my words. He refuses to look at me when I gaze at him askance. “Get in the tub. I’ll be waiting for you in the room,” he murmurs.
I pull back, confused. “Okay,” I reply, faltering. I climb into the tub and sink into the water, and the confusion persists when he walks out of the bathroom. I hear his footsteps retreating down the hall. Grabbing the washcloth, I tell myself I must be reading too much into things, but he seems to be upset about something. I’ve never seen Jayson in such a taciturn mood. “Well, everyone’s entitled to a bad day,” I murmur to myself. I’m sure he’ll tell me about it.
I wash away the day and soak in the soothing water without rush. A comfortable languor descends. Like I said, I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have a man like Jayson. I think of the last few days and how effortlessly he helped transform the empty house into a fully furnished home, and that’s not even counting him taking the damaged beauty I got saddled with when I bought the place and turning it into a livable residence.
There are so many reasons to appreciate this man that I run out of ways to count. I think back to the conversation with Grace when I told her I was a product of my environment and prone to the same prejudices as my mother. Examining the whole relationship with Jayson, it’s clear to me that I had it all wrong. I don’t need a big house or a lot of money to be happy. So what if I never return to Pacific Heights? One day we’ll live together, and even if it’s in a cabin, it’ll be ours. He’ll run the construction company, maybe even feature on my design show. We’ll be happy. Us against the world.
I climb out of the tub and walk into the bedroom with fantasies swimming in my head. I know I’m a hopeless romantic, but this could work. Why was I ever afraid of committing to him? “I’m ready, Mr. Zephyr,” I announce seductively.
I unwrap the towel from my body and let it drop to the floor with a whisper of terry cloth. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed with his shoulders slumped, as if he’s deep in thought, but the minute he sees me his troubled eyes darken with lust. Before we discuss whatever’s bothering him, I want to show him all the ways he’s made me a woman.
I step confidently up to him. My nudity doesn’t shame me. The moonlight illuminates the bedroom and casts a shadow of my naked silhouette, and I can see what he sees. My slender body is ripe with curves at the hips, the buttocks. My breasts are small but shapely, handfuls of sensitivity. I’m beautiful, and this is the way he sees me. It’s never been something I saw in myself before. Sure, I knew I was pretty, but beautiful? I was always more concerned with my intellect and ambition. But I see it now. I see the way he looks at me.
I stand before him like a sacrifice on the altar of lust. “I love you, Jayson Zephyr,” I say clearly.
He swallows. I see his Adam’s apple bob up and down. I think he won’t answer. He replies, “I love you too, Kitrina Schneider.”
His hand comes up to hold mine in a desperate grip that clings too tightly. I tuck a finger under his chin and lift his gaze to mine. “What is it, love?” I ask softly. He shakes his head and escapes my grasp. I lean down and kiss his lips. My tongue darts across the space separating us, and I taste his mouth. He is hot and spicy, like cinnamon. His breath exhales and sends butterflies flitting through me. “Whatever’s bothering you…it’ll be okay,” I promise.
I climb into his lap, and he scoots back on the bed so I can straddle him completely. His clothes are in the way, but I have no problem unbuttoning his black shirt until his tanned chest is exposed. I run fingers down the ridges of his taut stomach to his belt buckle and unfasten his pants. I ease back enough to bring his member free. The same wonder as before, when I was untried and unfamiliar with the mechanics of sex, persists. It doesn’t matter how many times we do it; it feels new every time.
“You’re so beautiful,” I murmur.
“Don’t you mean handsome?” he asks with a tired smile.
I shake my head. I squeeze his girth and run my hands up and down his shaft. “This is beautiful.” His swollen erection pulsates in my palm. I smooth my thumb over the tip of his hard-on. I trace the veins that run up and down its length. He exhales, sighs softly. He leans bac
k and looks at me while I masturbate him, but he makes no move to take things further. I ease down to a kneeling position at the edge of the bed, and my mouth waters at the prospect of tasting him. “You’re the one who’s beautiful,” he says with a gasp.
I guide him to my lips. My mouth descends over him. Silky tongue laving down his shaft, I lick up and down. He shivers with each flick of my tongue, and I know I have him right where I want him. Using my hands and my mouth, I bring him to the brink of culmination over and over. His silence is unable to be sustained. He freely moans my name as I continue. His hands tangle in my hair. He gently guides my head up and down, and his heaviness fills my mouth. His salty flavor spills on my tongue, pearls of pleasure. I never thought I’d like the taste. I don’t know if it’s just him—if he tastes better than other men. I’ll be happy if I never find out. This is my Jayson, my love.
I groan as he passionately clasps the back of my neck and stops the oral sex. He brings me to my feet and throws me on the bed. I’m used to his unbridled lust. It turns me on. I eagerly roll onto my stomach in anticipation, rising up on hands and knees, ready for him to enter me. I look back, and Jayson’s stroking his thick, hard cock. When he finally pushes inside, I let out a wail of ecstasy. He slides a hand around my throat and lightly squeezes my neck as he roughly pumps in and out of me with a primal growl of enjoyment.
“Don’t stop,” I gasp. I moan as my womanhood swallows and releases his thick member over and over. My legs tremble and my bare bottom slaps against his bare upper thighs as his jeans slip lower and lower until they hang around his ankles. As he plows into me, Jayson takes off his shirt. He grasps my hips and leans over my back, and I feel his sweat drip like raindrops. It’s nothing compared to the storm where our bodies join. He stretches me and makes me whole. I cry out his name in abandonment and ecstasy. Expletives explode past my lips that I’d never say under normal circumstances.
It’s the way he makes me feel—like I’m out of control, like I’m a few minutes from dying of pleasure. The glorious thrusts rock me back and forth as I invite and accept him into my body. “I need you,” he says brokenly. His fingertips dig into my skin. He gasps as if in pain. He pulls my hair and turns my face for a kiss while his hard strokes push me to the edge. I barely hear the music now. It’s like the room, the world, doesn’t exist. It’s only me and him.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers into my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
His erection surges into me again, and the pleasure is too much to bear. My body shatters into a million tiny pieces. My hands clutch at the comforter. “Oh, Jayson!” I come undone. Fire rushes through me. Copious wetness gushes from my womanhood and I clamp down tight around Jayson’s shaft, shaking from the intense waves of pleasure rolling through me. With a tortured sob, he yanks out and jerks off against my ass. His hot, creamy ejaculation douses my skin and it’s like the thick fluid is a secret language, communicating the depth of his orgasm. This is the part of sex I never expected—to feel so much of, to care so much about, another person’s pleasure. I reach behind me to milk him of every drop. Jayson pants as he tries to catch his breath.
“You’re amazing,” he murmurs. “Absolutely amazing.”
With a breathless, tired laugh, I turn onto my back to look up at him. Jayson plops down on the bed next to me. He kicks off his pants, lays back. “Kitrina.” He says my name solemnly, too seriously. But, before I can respond, I hear his phone ring. Jayson swears and sits up to dig it out of his jeans. He answers tersely, “Hello?”
Chapter 32
JAYSON
“Where are you? Momma told me everything. Jayson, you can’t let that batty old hag, Candace Schneider, run you away like this,” Castiel shouts through the phone.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I hint. I glance back at Kit, who’s all ears. “Hang on a second.”
Collecting my shirt and pants, I get dressed while listening to my younger brother try to tell me it’s a big mistake to break up with Kitrina. I let Cast talk. It’s the only way to shut him up. When he finally says his piece, I walk out onto the balcony for a little privacy. I don’t need Kitrina to hear this conversation.
“Cast, you and Momma don’t understand what’s at stake here. I’ve gotta do what I have to do. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how I feel about Kit or how she feels about me. If the woman wants me to break up with Kitrina, then that’s what has to happen. Besides, I can’t keep living a lie. Sooner or later Kit’s going to find out anyway, and that will be the end of that.”
“If what woman wants you to break up with me?”
I spin around. Kit’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed. “What woman, Jayson? And, what lie are you living? Is there someone else?”
I hang up the phone, mouth dry. “Kit, no, it’s not what you think.”
“Don’t lie to me!” she yells. “Is there someone else?”
KITRINA
Impotent rage powers through me. The thought of Jayson with another woman makes me physically ill, and it takes everything in me not to throw up. I step back, shaking my head. “I cannot believe this,” I say in shock. Not Jayson. How could he do this to me?
“Kit, just let me explain. Look, I know how you feel about keeping secrets. I wanted to tell you from the very beginning, but I held out. Then, it was too late. I need you to understand that I never wanted to hurt you.” Jayson comes at me with hands outstretched to hold me.
I snatch away from him. “Don’t touch me!” I yell.
“Kitrina,” he pleads.
“Get the hell out of my house!”
I turn away from him because I can’t bear to look at him. Was this the reason I got treated to a candlelit bath and hot, kinky sex? So he could break up with me to be with someone else? “I trusted you,” I sob in horror. “I trusted you! How could you do this to me?!”
He looks at me in silence, starts to speak, then shakes his head as if to get rid of a crazy idea. “I’m sorry,” he finally says dejectedly. I guess he realizes I’m not stupid enough to accept a lie. I start flinging anything that might possibly belong to him out of my closet. I grab the snow globe he brought me for Christmas and dash it to the floor where the glitters spreads out in a pool of limpid wetness. I think about everything I gave up. My family. The schoolwork I put on the hold. The nights I was bone weary from working and going to school but still stayed up to entertain him.
After everything that’s happened between us, this? I choke down the wild sobs and work desperately to control myself. Covering my face, I breathe. In and out. In and out. Slowly.
“I do love you, Kitrina,” he says. I shudder at the part of me that longs to ask why, to say please, to fight this other woman and win, take him back whatever his flaws.
I shake my head and keep breathing. When I finally drop my hands and look at him again, I know there’s nothing he can say or do to dissuade me. I look at him, eyes sparkling with all the agony he’s caused. “I gave you the best of me,” I say in a whisper. “I can’t take it back. But I refuse to be your fool, Jayson Zephyr. It’s over. Get the hell out of my house. I never want to see you again.”
He drops his head. My chest rises and falls in laborious inhales and exhales. I realize I’m naked, and it’s not beautiful anymore. I feel exposed, vulnerable, ashamed. The very person who told me he loved me has hurt me more than I ever imagined possible. Those words. He should never have said them if he didn’t mean them…much less said them again…and if there’s someone else, then he couldn’t have meant them, not the way I did.
I watch Jayson trudge out of my bedroom with his belongings in his arms. I don’t move. I listen for the door to close downstairs to signal his exit. When I know he’s gone, I slowly sink to the floor and let the tears fall freely. Us against the world, we said. Now it’s only me.
Part 4
Chapter 33
KITRINA
The night he leaves, I cry myself to sleep, the shock of his betrayal vibrating throughout my bo
dy. I feel hot and cold at once, alternately numb and exquisitely sensitive. Yet in many ways it’s the easiest night, with the wounds so fresh. Rage anchors me to the mattress as surely as an anvil.
But every night for the week after that, I restlessly shift and turn in the big, empty bed, the luxury of not having to sleep on a pallet on the floor lost to me without Jayson there to enjoy it too. Come the weekend, when he’d definitely be at my place if we hadn’t split, I spend Saturday going through the motions of work and school assignments, dreading the sinking sun. As soon as it slips beneath the horizon comes the fever. I should’ve known it would come, but the lust rises up unexpectedly. I am not prepared. I don’t know how to combat it. I find myself burning for him with a heat cold showers can’t break.
“This too shall pass,” I intone as I punch my pillow and flop into a new position. I try to ignore the desire that moves through me, the need. But it’s as if my body pretends not to know what happened, why he’s not here, why he won’t be coming back. My breasts, my hips, my thighs remember him and shiver with anticipation—as if he’s just about to touch me.
Insomnia gives me hours to replay the tragic breakup a million different ways, as if by dissecting exactly what happened I’ll come closer to understanding why it has to hurt. I wish I could harden my heart and take back the love I now know he never deserved, but I can’t hate him. I don’t know how. No matter how I spin it, I can’t find the loose thread that unraveled us. I can’t remember a single moment he treated me badly or gave me reason to doubt him.
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