by Anne Jolin
Sometime during my rant, my gaze drifted across the room, and now that all my ugly truths are finally out there, I draw it back to Jami. His hands are fisting at his sides and he’s grinding his teeth.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” he grits out through clenched teeth. His entire body is radiating with anger.
I reach out, running my hands through his hair before locking them behind his neck. “It was a long time ago, Jami,” I say weakly.
He tightens his hold around me, piercing me with his chocolate stare as he speaks. “Listen to me, beautiful girl. That man...” He clenches his jaw again. “That sorry, sad, pathetic excuse of a man didn’t deserve you or your mother.”
I know it’s taking everything he has to stay calm. He’s always been incredibly protective, but now that we’re…whatever we were, his protective instincts have quadrupled.
“I don’t know why he did what he did, but I know that it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t because you weren’t good enough.”
I close my eyes, a lone tearing escaping. He leans forward to kiss the sadness on my cheek away.
“Lennon, you have the most beautiful heart out of anyone I’ve ever known. A man who can’t see that doesn’t deserve the love you are capable of giving. I know you feel like you’re broken. I know you’re scared, but listen to me, Beatle.” He puts a finger under my chin, dropping his forehead onto mine. “I will never hurt you. Never. That’s a promise. Okay?”
“Okay,” I respond. I mentally curse my inability to not say more than that.
“I have another promise,” he growls seriously, pulling away so he can see my face. “I will kill that fucking piece of shit if I ever see him.”
I give him that, because the look in his eyes tells me that he means every word. Somehow, this man I didn’t see coming is putting together the wounded pieces of me. I only wish I had the guts to tell him that, but I don’t.
“You’re quite possibly the best thing that has ever happened to me, Jamison Henley.” It’s all I have to give. It’s not what he wants to hear and it’s not even a fraction of what I feel for him, but it’s all I can manage to say out loud. I press my lips against his in a slow kiss, hoping that it does a better job of expressing my feelings than my words do.
He responds, his lips still attached to mine. “You’re absolutely the best thing that has ever happened to me, Lennon Montgomery.” He touches a kiss to my lips. “I love you,” he says before crashing his mouth against mine again.
My lips part greedily, wanting to deepen our kiss. It feels different than it has before. It feels raw and exposed, like he’s really seeing everything I am. For once, it doesn’t send me running to the hills, —quite the opposite, actually. It has me craving more.
His rough hands dig into the soft skin over my hipbones as he lifts me to straddle his naked body, my pussy dripping as I slide over his cock. I moan into his mouth, our feverish kissing only growing more passionate as the seconds pass. Then he slides his hands up my back, tangling them into my hair, as I grind against his hard length. It can’t even possibly be categorized as dry-humping with how wet I am. When I reach down between us, wanting to feel him inside me, he grabs my wrist.
“I didn’t get to taste you before,” he growls between kisses, referring to our post-dance sex. It was frantic and wickedly hot.
He tightens his grip in my hair, tugging my mouth away from his. I’m panting, my full chest bouncing as I struggle to breathe.
“Sit on the edge of the coffee table,” he tells me, nodding towards the large trunk a few feet away from us.
When he lets go of me as I stand slowly, I instantly miss the feel of his perfect cock rubbing between my folds. Once I sit down on the edge of the heavy table, he stands, stalking over before dropping to his knees in front of me.
“Bring your ass to the edge, Lennon,” he demands.
I must not be moving fast enough because he grips me under the ass, hauling my waist towards him. Grabbing the sides of the trunk, I brace myself, only half my ass now resting on the surface. Jamie grabs my knees with each of his hands, spreading my legs wide. The coffee table is a little higher than most, leaving my bare pussy directly in his line of vision as he kneels before me. His left arm slides down my leg, gripping me around the ankle as he puts it over his shoulder. Then he looks down, devouring my wet heat with his eyes, and I whimper.
“I want to thank you for opening up to me tonight, Lennon,” he tells me, licking his lips. He trails the index finger of his right hand down my thigh before draping my leg over his other shoulder.
“Please,” I beg him out loud, barely recognizing the tone in my own voice—it’s so altered by want. He’s not actually touching me anywhere yet and the anticipation is like its very own form of torture.
He tears his gaze away from my pussy to look at me. “This is about you. Tell me what you want, Lennon.” The lust in his eyes challenges me.
I moan again, writhing desperately on top of the table. “I want your mouth on me,” I say, staring back into his eyes. “Now.”
“What my baby wants, my baby gets,” is the last thing I hear him say before he sucks my clit into his mouth.
“Ahhhh!” I cry out, watching his dark head move between my thighs.
He teases me, languidly licking my folds and nibbling on my clit but never going inside me. I want nothing more than to grab his fingers in my hair and shove his face deeper into my pussy, but I can’t. If I move my hands from the edges of the table, I’ll fall back and I don’t want to miss watching him eat me out. There can’t be another man on the fucking planet who eats pussy like Jamison Henley.
When he pushes two fingers inside me, I almost come right then, regardless of the fact that he’s already given me two orgasms during our previous roll in the hay tonight. I thrust my hips up to meet the pumping of his fingers, grinding my pussy onto his face. I can hear how wet I am every time he shoves his fingers back inside me. It’s driving me crazy not being able to touch him, and it’s heightening all of my other senses. He always does this to me. He takes away one of my senses, mostly touch or sight, and it makes everything seem more intense.
My body is vibrating with need when Jami adds a third finger, hooking them inside me as he sucks my clit into his mouth again.
“Oh god.” I shake my head back and forth, lifting my hips into his face again. He reaches up, pinching one of my nipples between his fingers, and I explode, screaming his name.
I’m seeing spots, still coming down from the aftershocks of my orgasm, when I watch him lift his head, pulling each of my legs off his shoulders. When he licks his lips, I can see the shine of my come around his mouth.
“The sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever tasted,” he growls.
I came so hard that I’m not even sure if I can move, so I don’t. He chuckles softly, but even that does very little to break me from my daze. When he walks over to the fireplace, I assume that he’s going to put it out, but I’m barely paying attention. I vaguely register him turning off the lights before he hooks one arm around my shoulders and the other underneath my knees, lifting me off the table.
“Bedtime, beautiful.” Jami carries me down the hall to his room before laying me down on his king-sized bed.
I crawl under the covers, burrowing my face into the pillow. Then I hear a facet turn on in the bathroom, but I’m already half asleep when I feel the bed dip and his warm body behind mine. Between the blackout orgasms and the ugly crying I did, both my body and mind are completely exhausted.
I feel hands on me and whimper before I’m even completely conscious.
“I need you,” Jami confesses from behind, grabbing my breasts in his big hands. “I tried not to wake you.” He pinches my nipples, causing me to moan.
Moments ago, I was in the deepest sleep, and now, my entire body is alive under his touch. His hard cock presses against my backside, and I push my ass towards him, making him groan.
“Fuck. I need to be inside you.” He’s spoonin
g me from behind as I lie on my side when I feel him position himself at my entrance.
“Yesss,” I moan as he slowly pushes inside me.
He has one arm wrapped around my chest and the other around my waist, holding me tight against him as he starts to move. It’s the slowest he’s every gone before, which is another thing that’s different about us tonight. Turning my head, I meet his lips in a kiss. It, too, is passionately slow.
I absolutely love everything about the way we fuck, but this is something entirely different. With the only sound in the room being our labored breathing, it feels like he needs me, like he’s cherishing me… It feels like we’re making love. I really don’t know how else to put it.
I push my hips back again to meet his thrusts. I’m so close again. Reaching around, he presses down onto my clit. I come, screaming his name, and only a few moments later, he finds his own release, shouting my name. Then we lie there for a while, his cock still inside me, his arms still wrapped around my body.
“There’s nothing better in this entire world than waking up to you naked and sleeping in my bed,” he says, peppering kisses from my neck down to my shoulder.
“I don’t mind that kind of wake-up call,” I tease. “Even if it is still the middle of the night.”
“I really did try not to wake you,” he lies, and I grin into the pillow. “But I make no moves to apologize. Waking up with my cock pressed into your ass was more than I could withstand.”
I laugh. “No willpower, eh?”
“None whatsoever when it comes to you,” he whispers into my ear. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you in bed.”
My heart swells. The only natural reaction to the things he says is to swoon.
When he untangles his body from mine and pulls out of me, I wince, instantly feeling empty. It’s pitch black, so I only feel the bed dip and hear the sounds of his feet padding across the room. Moments later, the bathroom light comes on, flooding the bedroom in a glow. I hear the tap running before he returns with a wet washcloth. I really can do it myself, but every time I try, he just ends up winning anyway. He likes to take care of me, and now, it doesn’t occur to me to mind.
The light from the bathroom allows me to watch him as he takes his time cleaning me, making sure I’m well taken care of. When he’s done, he gets up, depositing the cloth into a laundry bin before turning off the lights.
Jami comes back to bed, and I curl into his chest as he pulls the cover over us. His running his fingers absentmindedly through my hair, makes me sleepy again.
“Have you ever tried to go see him?” he asks.
I open my eyes, staring into the black. “My dad?”
“Yeah.”
I wrap my body tighter around his for comfort. “Yes. Once.” I sigh. “It took Mom a few years, but she had a private investigator track him down. Why? I’m not sure. She said it was in case anything ever happened—at least we’d know where he was. That’s really beside the point though.” I start to draw circles over the planes of his muscular chest even though I can’t see him in the dark. Just feeling his body around me makes me feel safe. “He lives in Seattle. I guess his new wife is American or something. I drove down there once.”
“When?” he asks, moving his hand from my hair to tickle over my back.
“I was about nineteen I guess. We were out of school and I was going through this weird phase. Mom and Hannah had offered to go with me when I mentioned it, but I wanted to do it alone… I wanted to confront him.” I don’t feel sad talking about the memory, mostly just hollow. “It took me a little over six hours to get there.”
Six hours. My dad left and he’d been living all of six hours away from us. The whole thing was just too much to wrap my brain around. Six hours and he never called, he never visited—he never even tried.
“I found the house easily enough once I got there, some massive-looking all-American home. It was a Saturday in the summer, and I wasn’t sure if they were home ,so I waited in my car. When I finally saw him with her, I knew it was done. There would never be any salvaging of our relationship. Not even a little.” I wince inwardly as I remember the look on his face. “He looked so good—a little older than I remembered, but good. He was straightening his tie in the open doorway when a limo pulled into their driveway. It was white, rows of beautifully decorated cans dragging behind it. I watched him talk with the driver for a few minutes. They were laughing about something, probably sports. My dad always loved sports.” I murmur the last bit quietly.
“It wasn’t until he saw her that the last shred of hope broke inside me. When he looked up and saw his beautiful daughter walking towards him in her wedding dress, he cried. The man I loved—the man who was my hero for so long, my dad—was filled with nothing but pride and love when he saw her. His other daughter.”
Jami’s arms tighten around me as he kisses the top of my hair.
“I left before they got in the limo and I’ve never looked back,” I admit.
“I’m sorry, beautiful. I wish I had been there with you.” It’s easy to hear the pain in his voice when he speaks.
“It was a long time ago and it was something I think I needed to do alone. He will never be a part of my life again. The damage is done, and I’ve just been sifting through the rubble ever since,” I say into his chest.
“You have me now, Beatle.” He lifts my head so that I’m looking him in the eyes. “We can do it together, okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper back.
It’s one of the most painful things I’ve ever done, telling someone else about everything that happened with my dad, but my heart feels lighter. I’ve needed to do that for so long, and it feels right having done it with Jami.
He kisses me on the lips. “Goodnight, beautiful. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I smile as I place my head back onto his chest. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“I love you,” he whispers.
“Goodnight, Jami,” I say back. I’m still scared. I’m still not ready. But for the first time in my entire life, I feel really happy.
He makes me happy.
I don’t go to sleep right away, processing through everything we talked about tonight. I feel his breathing even out and just the hint of a snore, confirming that he’s fallen asleep. I kiss his chest before whispering into the dark, “I love you too.”
I’m not ready to say it to him, I’m not ready for him to know how I feel. But it doesn’t mean it’s not true.
I’m in love with Jamison Henley and there isn’t a damn thing I could do about it even if I wanted to.
IT’S BEEN A little over two weeks since we talked. Since I told Jami about my dad. It needed to happen and I have felt like I’ve been walking on cloud nine ever since. Like I said before, I’m not really the mushy-gushy type of girl. I’ve always been hard on love, but being with Jami makes me want those things.
I’ve come to enjoy all the silly, romantic things he has done over the last two months. I believe him when he tells me that he loves me, and I trust him. I know that it’s hard for him that I can’t say ‘I love you’ back, but he knows how much it takes me just to give him my trust. I’ve never given that to another man since my dad—only him. Only Jami.
I’ve just finished up at the market in town. Jami texted me a very detailed list of items he was missing earlier that day. I had to ask a few people in the market to help me. I’m not even sure I know what half the things I bought are. The man really loves his food.
It’s Friday night and we are cooking dinner for his parents. I am nervous, sure, but to be honest, having spent so much time in the Rhodes household growing up, I am pretty comfortable with happy parents. Am I nervous that they won’t like me? Obviously. Who isn’t when they meet their boyfriend’s parents? We haven’t really had the boyfriend/girlfriend conversation, but we are constantly together and I’m not even really sure if people have the ‘are we going steady?’ conversations anymore.
I hustle through the snow, puttin
g the bags in the back seat before climbing in and cranking up the heat. It is only five o’clock. I was supposed to be off at six thirty, but my last client of the day had cancelled, so instead of waiting around to see if a walk-in would show up, I left early. Cut someone’s hair or cook dinner with Jami? Yeah. That isn’t even a competition. Don’t get me wrong. I love my job, but seriously…
After pulling into the driveway behind Jami’s Jeep, I shut of the engine and think about how many years I’ve known him. Things are so different now. We’ve come so far so quickly this year, and I’m not too stubborn to admit that it’s all because of him. If this, us, had been left up to me, we never would have ended up together. I was so worried about him getting close that I didn’t even realize that he already had. It would have been my loss though. Taking a chance in choosing Jamison Henley is, to date, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Once I hop down from the SUV, I sling my purse over my shoulder. It’s one of Hannah’s older Michael Kors bags. She always gets a little overzealous with her purchasing of designer handbags, and thus, I get to reap the benefits when she cleans out her closet. She also has this weird obsession with naming things, although for the life of me, I can’t remember what the heck this one’s called.
I smile to myself as I think about my best friend and pull the bags from the back seat. Hannah is going to be a mom, and that is absolutely perfect. No one deserves a happily ever after more than my best friend.
I bump the door closed with my hip before I start up the walkway to the house. When I reach the steps to the front patio, I notice that the door is ajar. This might not be weird some of the time, but considering that it’s still the middle of winter, it’s a little odd. I push the door slightly, doing my best to be quiet. I’ve seen enough horror movies in my time to know that you definitely shouldn’t call out your location to a serial killer. The people that do that always die.
Then I step into the foyer and freeze. Standing in the middle of the living room in nothing but a thong and five-inch heels is motherfucking Malibu Barbie.
