Releasing Me

by Jewel E. Ann

  “So what was your plan B?” I asked.

  He wrinkled his brow and cocked his head to the side. “If this didn’t work?”

  I nodded with a smile.

  “Fly you to the most remote place on Earth without telling anyone and never come back.”

  “I’m guessing it would have been less expensive than all this.” I motioned to the room with my mug in hand.

  “Probably, but who cares? I gave them your credit card, not mine.” He kept a straight face as he lifted a frosted cookie to his mouth.

  I shoved his hand, smashing his cookie into his face. “You shit.”

  He was undoubtedly caught off guard as he sucked in a deep breath, his eyes wide. I hopped onto his lap, straddling him, then wiped some frosting from the tip of his nose. I sucked it off my finger with a smile. “I knew you were just after my money.”

  “Mmm and this …” He grabbed the back of my head and smashed his mouth against my lips. When his tongue slid next to mine, I could taste sweet vanilla and him. As he released me, we both laughed at the sight of the other’s messy face. Then our eyes locked and our smiles faded. There was an almost palpable electricity between us. My heart raced as his chest rose and fell against mine. He curled a tendril of hair behind my ear and cupped my face with his hand.

  I leaned into it and closed my eyes, “Quinn,” I breathed out.

  Dropping his head to my neck, he slid his tongue all the way to my ear. Sucking in my lobe, he grazed it with his teeth. “Addy,” he whispered back.

  My nipples pebbled under my thin white tank and heaviness filled my sex. He teased my bottom lip with his teeth and pulled on it, soliciting a moan from my throat. The bulge in his jeans pressed against my panties as I ran my fingers through his hair and arched my back so my taut nipples pressed against his chest.

  “Make love to me.”

  He stilled and looked into my eyes then dragged his gaze to my lips for a moment before meeting my eyes again and nodding his head. Standing, he hiked me up on his waist as I interlaced my fingers behind his neck.

  As he walked toward the stairs, I shook my head. “By the tree…” I grinned “…so the elves can watch.”

  He reached over and grabbed the plush, new, holiday blanket from the back of the couch and attempted to spread it on the massive rug by the tree. Then he kneeled down and laid me on the blanket. “Well, since I’m not sure if you left a big enough tip, maybe they do deserve a little show.”

  Kneeling between my bent legs, he removed his T-shirt. My shameless eyes admired every inch of his sculpted to perfection body. Each second with him was a gift. So I continued to watch him remove the rest of his clothes, as well as my tank and panties, making sure I committed the moment to memory. That moment was everything when our future seemed so grim. I never wanted to forget the way he looked completely exposed to me, but more than that, I never wanted to forget the way he looked at me.

  Ghosting his lips over the swell of my breasts, he feathered his fingers up the curves of my hips to the sides of my breasts, finally pushing my arms above my head. As he interlaced our fingers, his tongue traced the areola of my breast once before he sucked in my nipple. My breath hitched as a bolt of sensation descended upon my sex. When he moved to my other breast, he lowered his hips just enough for the tip of his hard cock to graze through the seam of my wet, swollen sex. My hips jerked up as the rest of my body writhed beneath him.

  “Again,” I moaned.

  He licked a hot wet path from my nipple to my mouth. Then as he plunged his tongue in to dance with mine, he angled his hips back and dipped forward taking a deeper swipe between my folds and up across my clit.

  “Again,” I begged, pushing my hips completely off the floor.

  Engulfing my mouth, he released my hands. One of his hands went straight to my breast, squeezing, tugging, and kneading it. The other snaked between my thighs. His fingertips softly brushed over my sex and just as I released a needy whimper, his middle finger penetrated my folds and slid up my channel. I squeezed his finger and nearly orgasmed. My breathing became erratic as I tried to control the building sensation ready to explode.

  “Let it go,” he whispered in my ear as his thumb circled my clit.

  “Ung … oh God!” Closing my eyes I saw stars as I climaxed to his expert touch.

  Before I came down, he slid his erection into me––completely. He paused as my muscles clenched around his delicious fullness. I waited for him to move, but he didn’t. He pinned me to the floor with just his eyes. I rolled mine to the side and nervously chewed the inside of my cheek.

  “Addy … look at me.”

  I couldn’t.

  “Addy …” He rested his forehead on mine as my damn tears came back. When I finally looked at him, he kissed them away. “It was one night. I was drunk, but not passed out yet. I never even kissed her or looked into her eyes. I closed mine and thought of you … with Jake.” He brushed his lips against mine as he pulled back and pushed into me again and again. “It’s you, only you, always you.”

  I wrapped my legs around his waist as he made love to me. It was no longer about a mind-blowing orgasm … it was feeling connected to him in every way. Memories of the night he proposed to me on the beach played in my mind. I remembered the same feeling of need, anxiety, and desperation. Every inch of my skin starved for his touch. Fisting his hair, I pulled him to my lips so hard I felt them bruising as they melded together. I didn’t care. I surrendered my body to his as he breathed life back into me.

  His warm release flowed into me as he stilled with tensed muscles. “I love you … I love you so fucking much it hurts,” he groaned out.

  After he showered my face with soft kisses, he started to pull out.

  “Don’t … not yet,” I said, digging my heels into his firm butt.

  He slid his arm under my back and lifted my body to his chest as he rolled to his back without breaking our connection. I rested my head against his chest, picking up the rhythm of his heart.

  “I’m not trying to be needy it’s just—”

  “Shh, you don’t have to explain. And for the record, I could live the rest of my life buried inside you like this. Besides, it speeds up the recovery time,” he thrust his hips so I could feel how his shaft was already starting to stir again.

  *

  We stayed tangled together on the floor by the tree for two more hours. I never wanted to leave our little bubble. We worshipped each other’s bodies through leisurely caressing and tasting. His scent drove me crazy. It wasn’t a cologne, lotion, or soap; it was those damn pheromones. I loved nuzzling my nose in his chest, hair, and the crook of his neck. He breathed me in just as often, and every time he did it sent chills down my spine. It felt like he could devour me; and in terms of crazy, insane, love addiction, nothing could be better.

  Wrapped in the blanket, he had me tucked into his body, spooning my back.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked in a soft voice.

  He didn’t answer right away, but I knew he heard me. “Whatever it takes.”

  Could you be any more vague?

  Permanently landing in Chicago in twenty-seven weeks with Quinn was not going to happen. I would undoubtedly be there for Mac as her due date approached, but Quinn would be in New York, waiting for his own child to be born. The thought was crushing.

  “Financially she doesn’t need my help, but I’m sure she’ll insist on it anyway. Other than money, there’s not much I can do until the baby is older. Then I suppose it will be no different than shared custody in a divorce situation.”

  “God, Quinn … could you be any more naive? You honestly don’t think she’s going to expect you to be at every prenatal appointment? What about the birth, will you be in the room with her? And what makes you think she’s not going to expect you to have this child fifty-percent of the time from day one? Not every woman breastfeeds their baby. If she opts for formula, then it is quite possible you could be playing dad to a newborn. Bottles, diape
rs, late night feedings, crying, spitting up … have you even considered this?”

  “I’ll hire a nanny.”

  “Who’s here every night?”

  “Of course, it’s not exactly unheard of. Lots of wealthy people hire nannies to basically raise their children.”

  Is he for real?

  I sat up and pulled the blanket over my chest. “So if we had a baby and I died you would hire a stranger to raise our child?”

  “No, of course not, that’s not the same––” he ran is fingers through his hair in frustration.

  “As much as it pains––no, as much as it kills me that she is pregnant with your child, it is in fact still your child. You can’t treat this baby any differently than you would if it were our baby.”

  Shaking his head he exhaled. “That’s just it … it’s not the same. No person wants to or should be told that they were a mistake, but what happened the night that child was conceived was a mistake. I can’t love you the way I do and ever say otherwise. Don’t you understand? It’s just biology to me right now. I feel no more attachment to this child than a sperm donor would. But I don’t have the option of anonymity and I fucking hell wish I did!”

  I jumped in his lap straddling him as I hugged him into me with a fierce intensity. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, I’m just … I don’t know.”

  “I don’t care if I sound like the biggest prick in the world, but even if I feel a connection or some sort of love toward this child, it will never compare to the way I would love our child. We would create something from us … our love and part of my love for it would be that it was part of you … the woman who is the love of my life. Can’t you understand that?”

  I did understand, and in that moment, I fell even deeper in love with him. Everyone has a dark side, those thoughts that enter our minds uninvited. Sometimes it is just a random “what if.” What if I jerked the steering wheel to the right while going over a bridge and sent the car plummeting into the lake? What if I jabbed this knife through my chest?

  Then there is the part of our dark side that’s called brutal honesty. How does my hair look? Like a fucking poodle. Does this make my ass look big? Like the Titanic. Will you still respect me in the morning? I don’t respect you now. The real truth is––honesty is rarely the best policy. Most nice people are liars and most jerks are honest.

  Quinn was brutally honest. He was never going to feel absolute love for a child who, in his mind, was the result of the biggest mistake of his life.

  I leaned back and cupped his scruffy jaw in my hands. “I do understand … I really do. Now, let’s change the subject.”

  He kissed me and tugged the blanket away from me. Then dropping his gaze to my naked body, he grinned. “We don’t have to talk at all.”

  I leaned in and traced my tongue below his ear. “You’re right, we don’t,” I whispered in a sexy voice, “we can … eat.” Grabbing the blanket again, I stood up and wrapped it around myself.

  He groaned, “Tease.”

  *

  Later that day I checked my phone and found fifteen missed calls from Mac. Guilt washed over me when I thought of her trying to reach me in an emergency.

  “Fifteen, huh? And that doesn’t count the five times I answered when she called,” Quinn said, looking over my shoulder.

  “You talked to her?”

  “From the looks of things, I did a fourth of the times she called.”

  “What did you say?” I was worried he told her about me, about us. Mac was my go-to person, but pregnancy officially removed her from my call list. The last thing she needed was my problems.

  “I told her you were under the weather.”

  “Crap, why’d you tell her that?”

  “Um … because I figured you’d be upset if I told her the truth.”

  “I would have, but you should not have said I was sick,” I groaned as I scrolled through the dozen or more texts she sent too.

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is now she knows you were lying which means she either thinks I’m avoiding her or I’ve been abducted.”

  “How does she know I was lying.”

  “Because I don’t get sick.”

  “What do you mean you don’t get sick … ever?”

  “Ever … well, except food poisoning my senior year in high school and the occasional alcohol overdose.”

  “How is that possible?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Apparently I’m a freak of nature of sorts. Well, that and I eat a plant-based diet.” After I finished reading her messages I sighed. “I think we’re in the clear. The gist of her messages was she wants me to call her when you untie my naked, over-sexed body from the bed. Apparently, her pregnancy brain is stuck on one thought and one thought only … sex. Anyway, she wants to know if we’ll be returning to Chicago for Christmas. Well?”

  When I looked back at Quinn he was in a daze looking at the tree while pinching the sides of his bottom lip together.

  “Earth to Quinn …”

  He shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. “Sorry, I didn’t hear anything past your naked, over-sexed body tied to my bed.”

  “Sadist. Yes or no to Chicago for Christmas?”

  He looked around at our miniature North Pole and smiled.

  Mine matched his. “We’re staying here for Christmas?”

  He winked with a slow single nod.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Quinn stayed home several more days to make sure I was off suicide watch. Then he reluctantly went back to the office Wednesday morning, but not before having his wicked way with me twice in bed and once in the shower. I sat, bundled in my robe, on a padded bench in the massive walk-in closet. I loved watching Quinn dress for work. I had a ridiculous weakness for him in a three-piece suit, and he knew it.

  He smirked at me in the mirror as he finished tying his tie. “I need to go back to work today, but if you don’t stop fucking me with those beautiful blue eyes, I’m going to be forced into tying you to the bed and torturing you with my tongue until the people standing across the street know my name.”

  “I think you’re a little too full of yourself this morning. If you don’t make it to work today, it won’t be because of me, it will because your big head won’t fit through the door.”

  He tilted his chin up as he made a final adjustment to his tie. “A thousand dollars says you have a pool of hot, wet desire for me nearly ready to seep down your legs as we speak.”

  Cocky little shit!

  Squeezing my legs together, I squinted my eyes at him. “I think you’d better just save your money for your venture capitalistic wagers at your stuffy, boring, financial geek job.”

  He walked over to me and bent down close to my ear. I caught a whiff of his aftershave wafting from his neck just inches from my lips. He slid his hand under my robe as I tried to tighten my legs together even more. My efforts were frivolous in such close proximity to him. His long finger easily slid between my folds into my drenched channel. After moving back and forth a couple of times, he removed it.

  “Cash is fine,” his deep voice resounded in my ear.

  As he stood straight, he stuck his wet finger in his mouth and sucked it. “Mmm, have a good day, my beautiful.”

  *

  Although Quinn was at work, it felt quite crowded in his condo with just me and all my thoughts. I never imagined the day would come that I would actually consider seeing a therapist again, but with my BFF being off limits for counseling, I was considering finding someone in New York. I tried yoga and meditation, and maybe it was because I was in a place that held so many hurtful memories, but I couldn’t clear my mind. Everything was eating at me, and I knew the longer it lingered in my mind festering, the worse things were going to get for both me and Quinn. I wasn’t looking for someone to solve my problems or even validate my feelings. I simply needed a safe dumping ground for my garbage of emotions, a sounding board that wasn’t pre
gnant or that didn’t make me weak in the knees every time he looked at me.

  Thankfully I had a few nice distractions, technically one every hour as my phone chimed with a text from Quinn.

  What are you doing?

  Not slitting my wrists if that’s what you’re wondering.

  Not funny.

  A little funny :)

  An hour later …

  What are you doing?

  Tying a noose.

  Still NOT fucking funny!

  Ahh … now that was totally funny :)

  Another hour later …

  What are you doing … and don’t give me any shit this time!

  Smelling your shirt from yesterday and touching myself.

  What the fuck are you trying to do to me?

  Nothing yet … I’m doing it all to myself … gotta go … actually not going … I’m COMING!

  That was pretty much the end of him checking up on me.

  As the door opened later that afternoon, my body was transported back to its morning frenzy as my sex god walked through the door. I stole a moment to drink him in as he thumbed through the mail.

  “Christmas cards from all your closest friends?”

  He looked up just as I was moving toward him. Tossing the mail and his keys aside, he wasted no time pulling me into his arms. “Fucking. Little. Tease.”

  Biting my lip to hide my grin, I worked on loosening his tie. “Did you touch yourself after we last talked?” I asked with a devilish grin.

  Grabbing my ass, he yanked me closer until the bulge in his pants pressed into my abdomen. “I touched myself so much my fucking pecker is probably chafed,” he growled.

  “Poor baby,” I said with pouty lips. “Do you need me to rub some lotion on it for you?”

  He crashed his mouth to mine. Our tongues wantonly moved together as my fingers fumbled to unfasten his pants. I slid my hand under the waistband of his briefs and fisted his erection. He moaned into my mouth as he cupped my breast. Then his phone rang.